Suddenly, the media supports insurrection
Jan. 6 takeover = " insurrection" ... Tennessee takeover = "Democracy"
Dear Friends —
The media has been lying about what happened with lawmakers in Tennessee. Three state reps faced expulsion last week, and two were actually expelled, although one was reinstated.
NYT Opinion writer Thomas Edsall, along with most of the establishment media, completely misconstrued the situation when he wrote about it.
Edsall called the expulsion
“the most recent development in a pattern of attempts by Republicans to fire or limit the powers of elected Democrats in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and elsewhere, including Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision in August 2022 to suspend Andrew H. Warren, the elected Democratic state attorney of Hillsborough County, who had signed a statement saying he would not prosecute those who seek or provide abortions.”
So, what were they expelled for?
CNN said the lawmakers were expelled for staging “a demonstration on the floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.”
CBS News said they joined “a protest on the House floor demanding stricter gun control.”
Reuters characterized the incident as “protesting gun violence on the chamber floor.”
What they actually did was pretty much exactly what the January 6 protesters did. They were not, as Edsall claimed,
“expelled for choosing to “defy Republican-endorsed policies.” They do that every day as legislators and private citizens, as is their right. They were expelled because they broke the rules of the legislature and they ground all legislative business to a halt.”
They weren’t participating in a “boisterous protest,” as Politico claimed. They led a mob onto the House floor, disrupted the business of government, and screamed at people through a bullhorn.
The two black state representatives who were thrown out are being painted as martyrs who acted with bravery and integrity (and there’s a strong implication in many of the stories that they were expelled for being black.)
The National Review points out that for the last two years, we’ve been told that
“storming into legislative chambers and interrupting their work is “undemocratic” per se, and that, if we do not want to see more of it, it must be punished wherever it happens.”
Unless, of course, the storming into chambers is on behalf of something the establishment media happens to support.
2. Debate on Rumble
Rumble has announced they have an exclusive deal to live stream the first debate of the Republican primaries. The debate will be broadcast by Fox News.
3. NPR quits Twitter
NPR posted a long tweet about how they won’t be tweeting anymore. The public radio network is upset that Elon Musk and Twitter labeled them as “state-affiliated media.” As I noted earlier this week, the outlet’s claim that they only get 1% of their funding from the government is misleading and the label is accurate.
4. Finally, speaking of NPR, remember this one?
Come on, the January 6 insurrection was a violent attempt to overturn an election and harm legislators and the vice president. People died, including cops, and the vice president was just feet away from being overrun by a mob that had set up a gallows to hang him. It was nearly the end of our democracy.
The Tennessee protest was a peaceful attempt to draw attention to gun control. Nobody was hurt or threatened. The legislators took it too far with the bullhorn, but really -- this was not January 6.
Been that way with state capitol protests, remember them & then 2020 riots too aside J6