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Chuck Todd Defies Biology and the AP Rewrites Its Rewritten Dictionary

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  May 01, 2023
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

05.01.23

Low Octane Gas Lighting – NBC NEWS

  • This is what it looks like when the people lecturing to “follow the science” defy the words of a scientist.

Chuck Todd had on the upstart GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and in one exchange, they discussed gender dysphoria, and Todd challenged Ramaswamy and his position on banning gender alterations on children.

What is fun to watch is that Chuck Todd is not asking questions from the standpoint of wanting to learn, he is outwardly contesting the candidate’s position. Todd invokes that he has heard things from the scientific community, but he cites no specific studies or offers anything approaching data. Meanwhile, he is posturing as if he knows better than someone who literally has training in this exact field of study.

Glossary Over Things – ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Want to see just what a struggle it can be for the press when there are uprisings in state capitols, an activity they spent two years telling us was the worst thing to be undertaken as it could completely undermine our democracy? Here we have the Associated Press coming forward to suggest that anyone calling these protests that interrupt political activities “insurrections” are doing so in bad faith.

It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.

What AP does here is rest on the notion of violence being the factor – oh, and it depends on which century the dictionary is from, depending if liberals or conservatives are the ones being disruptive. See, their problem is that two years ago, the AP set out to define that the January 6 riot was an "insurrection."

The past week has brought phrases not commonly seen into use. One is insurrection, defined as 'an act or instance of revolting against civil authorities or an established government.' Another is sedition, or 'incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.' Merriam-Webster said the top words looked up in its online dictionary on Wednesday were: insurrection, fascism, impeach and sedition.

But now, we see these very same activities they complained about taking place today, but there is a need to be sympathetic to their cause. So, today’s Merriam-Webster dictionaries are tossed out. The AP now resorts to those definitions of the word from the 1700s in order to score a political point.

Legal experts say the term insurrection has a specific meaning — a violent uprising that targets government authority. That’s how dictionaries described it in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the term was added to the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.

Making this all the more desperate, as the AP has taken up two different hardline definitions of “insurrection,” they try to say that it is Republicans who are redefining the word.

Reporting on the Mirror – WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS ASSOCIATION

On Saturday, the WHCA Dinner was held, and it was as big of a spectacle of hypocrisy as expected. The people who love silencing “misinformation” hailed the First Amendment, and even as Jose Biden was praising the free press, in his very next sentence, he yelled about the “extremist press” and how they are dangerous.

The WHCA gave out some journalism awards, as well. (We discussed one such bastardized trophy last week.) For the award of excellence in coverage of the White House, Matt Viser of the Washington Post was the winner. It was for his gushing piece about President Biden and his family relationships. Not mentioned on stage but seen in the writeup on the WHCA awards page was this curious description of Vider’s process.

His sourcing on the James Biden story was unusual, plumbing emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop to illuminate the relationship of the two brothers.

This means the press will be willing to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop – so long as it is used to come up with information for glowing profile pieces.

Pathological Media Amnesia – CNN

  • The man forbidden from being heard will appear on their network next week!

The collective ignorance of their own mandate continues unabated in the press. Donald Trump, who we have been told for years needs to be banned, continues to be a regular source of content for the press these days. The latest to backslide is CNN, which has announced the man who must not be heard will be speaking exclusively with their own town hall centered on him.

Artisanally-Crafted Narratives – TIME MAGAZINE

  • The press that cannot define a gender also cannot define what constitutes a citizen.

The horrific shooting in Cleveland where an illegal immigrant stormed into his neighbor’s house and shot five people dead is leading to a manhunt. Despite this reality – and the reports that the killer has been deported from the country five times previously – the folks at Time did not want to let those pesky facts get in the way of describing this shooter as a “Texas Man.”

Low Octane Gas Lighting – MSNBC

  • What is it about this man and his revulsion toward research?!

In a bid to top this year’s Townhall 50 List, Mehdi Hasan is once again displaying abject avoidance of journalism ethics. For his latest, he attempts to paint Ron DeSantis as a rogue governor enacting policy no one prior has conceived.

Setting off Hasan this time was an offhand remark DeSantis made about Elon Musk moving Twitter to Florida but leaving the woke employees behind. This 100% serious comment set off Hasan, proclaiming that no other governor would have said such. He says “imagine,” which indicates that he never looked into the matter. Because had he done so, he would have seen where Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul have said similar things about conservatives in their states. We could also probably include Gavin Newsom and his red state travel bans if we wanted to get technical.