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by Jon Sutz, Editor, SaveTheWest.com
Contents
(1) HuffPost’s year of scorched-Earth efforts to smear Republicans, and protect Sec. Clinton
UPDATE: Proof, via Wikileaks, of HuffPost’s collusion with the Clinton campaign, in part to derail Sen. Sanders
(2) HuffPost’s wildly-inaccurate election prediction, its pre-election “Twitter war” with legendary pollster Nate Silver, and his exposure of its unprofessionalism and dishonesty
(3) The election outcome, by the numbers
(4) Rather than acting responsibly, HuffPost instead went on a “journalistic jihad” of lies and incitement against the electoral reality, and half of America’s voters
(5) Conclusion: This is part of HuffPost’s ongoing pattern of creating and perpetuating false, subversive depictions of reality
(1) Background: HuffPost’s scorched-Earth efforts to smear Republicans, and protect Sec. Clinton
From the moment the Republicans began announcing their candidacies for the presidency, in mid-2015, HuffPost has been posting the most inflammatory, libelous headlines against all of them. Below is just a sampling. It has never posted a single headline that recognized any virtue in any of them, no matter what they did or said.
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One of HuffPost’s ongoing criticisms of Donald Trump, was that he was attracting the endorsements of some ultra-fringe, racist organizations, including a faction of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had vehemently denounced the Klan and its head, David Duke, on numerous occasions, though some raised legitimate questions as to why he falsely claimed later he did not know who Duke was.
What was blown out of proportion, however, was the size and influence of these organizations. Experts recognize that at most, each has but a few thousand members.
Despite this, HuffPost went on a sustained “propaganda jihad” to claim or insinuate that anyone who was considering voting for Trump was a racist, a Nazi, or similar:
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In contrast, HuffPost went to extraordinary lengths to advance and protect Sen. Clinton and her campaign. For example:
- HuffPost never mentioned the fact that the Communist Party USA endorsed Sec. Hillary Clinton. For those who don’t know, the CPUSA and its front-line “direct action” arm, “RevCom,” explicitly advocate violence, and the overthrow of the U.S. government, to usher in a Stalinist-Maoist communist totalitarian system,
- HuffPost never publicized CPUSA’s and RevCom’s murderous ideology. Specifically, they represent and advocate an ideology that is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 94 million people in the 20th century, and the oppression and terrorizing of untold millions more.
- HuffPost completely ignored RevCom’s incitement against police officers. Days before four police officers were murdered in a 24-hour period in November 2016, RevCom members in Austin, TX were captured on video chanting for people to do exactly that: “What’s better than twelve dead cops? Thirteen dead cops!” HuffPost completely ignored this incident, just as it has ignored dozens of other threats against police officers, after it has repeatedly incited hatred against them.
- Throughout the presidential race, HuffPost had established a de facto firewall against featuring any evidence of Sec. Clinton’s serious medical problems — then fired a journalist who published some of it. Throughout the 2008 presidential race, HuffPost repeatedly posted blaring headlines and news items demanding Sen. McCain’s health records, because of suspicions of serious, undisclosed problems. Yet throughout the 2016 race, HuffPost established a firewall against any articles on the matter, even after videos emerged of Clinton fainting while walking, and her coughing spasms. Then, in August 2016, HuffPost abruptly fired journalist David Seaman, who wrote several articles that contained substantive concerns about this issue from physicians, which contained a video of supporting evidence. In a final act of Stalinist whitewashing, HuffPost removed Seaman’s entire archive of unrelated articles, and apparently helped create such public hatred against him that he began to fear for his life.
- HuffPost never mentioned the undercover videos that exposed top consultants to the Democratic National Committee openly admitting that they a) paid homeless people to incite violence at Trump rallies, and b) engaged in numerous other campaigns of electoral fraud, deception and subversion. Further, these operatives admitted, on video, that Sec. Clinton and the DNC knew exactly what they were doing, and endorsed them. All resigned or were fired from their positions soon after the videos went public. HuffPost also never mentioned that one of these consultants is a long-term HuffPost front-page blogger — and a convicted felon, or that he visited the Obama White House 340 times (42.5 times per year, or almost once per week).
- HuffPost refused to cover any of the violence and hate crimes that were documented to have been perpetrated against Republicans, and Trump supporters — and even the animals in their care — which the cauldron of lies and hatred it created could only help to incite, and perpetuate.
Here is a 4-minute video that contains excerpts of the hate and violence that HuffPost incited and justified throughout the campaign:
All of these acts and omissions are in direct contradiction of HuffPost’s repeated public statements, since debuting in 2005, that it is a strictly nonpartisan “newspaper,” only dedicated to “ferreting out the truth, consequences be damned”:
“[W]e are increasingly seen … as an Internet newspaper, not positioned ideologically in terms of how we cover the news.”
– Arianna Huffington
“There is an objective reality, and it is the media’s job to present it unequivocally.”
– Arianna Huffington
“What we’re doing is two things. We do news. I don’t believe news is left wing or right wing. And then we do the group blog, which is going to be a dialogue from all viewpoints.”
– Arianna Huffington
“If you’re looking for the usual flame-throwing, name-calling, and simplistic attack dog rhetoric … don’t bother coming to the Huffington Post.”
– Arianna Huffington
“It’s time for all of us in journalism to move beyond left and right… [A]ll voices have been welcome at the Huffington Post.”
– Arianna Huffington
UPDATE: Proof, via Wikileaks, of HuffPost’s collusion with the Clinton campaign, in part to derail Sen. Sanders
In general, SaveTheWest never cites little-known bloggers, unless they provide original, important content that can be independently verified. Such is the case with the blog “OneAngryGamer,” which compiled the following revelations, based on the Clinton campaign emails that were stolen and disclosed to Wikileaks:
Huffington Post Requested To Be An Echo Signal For Clinton Campaign, by “Billy D,” OneAngryGamer, November 8, 2016. Excerpt:
[T]he Associated Press was doing a setup story based on the e-mail servers with the help of the State Department. However, to cudgel the impact of that story they were feeding the AP a response in advance of what they had been working on with the State Department to soften the blow.
The statement was about deflecting queries about 16 e-mails that were missing involving the Benghazi incident. Merrill’s job was to ensure that the message got out that Clinton turned over all the e-mail messages and pages that the State Department had requested.
The collusion between the Clinton campaign and the media such as the Huffington Post dates back much further than that.
An e-mail dated April 28th, 2008, from Susan McCue, a Huffington Post contributor and the political strategist and president of political action firm Message Global, wrote to John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign during their run for the White House against Barack Obama, saying…
“I spoke [with] Arianna [about] PMUSA Board and will send her more info. She is enthusiastic [about] the project but asks if she’s more useful to us not being on the Board and, instead, using Huffpo to echo our message without any perceived conflicts. She has a point. We’ll keep talking. She liked the Geffen idea. He’s on his boat and returns May 9. She’ll make the ask.”
Essentially, Huffington Post was willing to be an echo signal for the Clinton campaign upon request. Echoing out the “message” without any “perceived conflicts”.
This has carried out quite hardily throughout Clinton’s bid for the White House during this year’s elections. Various other Wikileaks e-mails have revealed that Huffington Post has regularly colluded with the Clinton campaign to shape the message for the general public. This also explains why they fired a journalist for publishing a piece questioning Hillary’s health.
(2) HuffPost’s wildly-inaccurate election prediction, its pre-election “Twitter war” with legendary pollster Nate Silver, and his exposure of its unprofessionalism and dishonesty
HuffPost’s senior management was apparently so satisfied that it had created enough hatred against Republicans in general, and Trump, specifically, that on election day, it announced at the top of its front page that according to its polling model, she had a 98.2% chance of winning:
The HuffPost presidential forecast model gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory.
Clinton’s win will be substantial, but not overwhelming. The model projects that she’ll garner 323 electoral votes to Trump’s 215.
HuffPost was so confident in its erroneous model that on November 5, its “Washington Bureau Chief,” Ryan Grim, posted an article on its front page, assailing legendary polling analyst Nate Silver, accusing him of deliberately manipulating survey data in order to depict Trump with a chance of winning. In summary, omitting all the technical talk, Grim’s accusation boils down to these sentences:
Silver is putting his thumb on the scales […] changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them. […]
By the time he’s done adjusting the “trend line,” Clinton has lost 0.2 points and Trump has gained 1.7 points. An adjustment of below 2 points may not seem like much, but it’s enough to throw off his entire forecast, taking a comfortable 4.6 point Clinton lead and making it look like a nail-biter.
Outraged that HuffPost published this hit-piece at the top of its front page, Silver fired back at it and Grim on Twitter, explaining that it was they — not him — that had a dishonest forecasting model, and more, that HuffPost was acting in a grossly unprofessional manner. Silver’s “Twitter-blast,” which contained explicit vulgarity (he’d never used such language publicly before) was picked up by other media outlets, including Mediaite. Excerpts:
And the climactic conclusion of the exchange:
Needless to say, Silver was far closer to the actual results than HuffPost was. To our knowledge, HuffPost has never published an apology to Silver, or its readers, for the shoddy “journalism” that it practiced, or how it could have spent so much time and money to make predictions that were so wildly wrong.
To the contrary, as documented below and elsewhere in this report, once the election outcome became known, and exit surveys from across America revealed the metrics that produced this outcome, HuffPost reacted by:
- Doubling-down on the very kind of shoddy “journalism” that got it into this trouble in the first place
- Turning its venomous libel-machinery onto the American people in general, and half of the voting public in specific
The election outcome, by the numbers
Number of states won:
Trump: 30
Clinton: 20
_________________
Trump: +10
Number of electoral votes won:
Trump: 306
Clinton: 232
_________________
Trump: + 68
Ave. margin of victory in winning states:
Trump: 56%
Clinton: 53.5%
_________________
Trump: + 2.5 points
Popular vote total:
Trump: 62,958,211
Clinton: 65,818,318
_________________
Clinton: + 2.8 million
Popular vote total outside California:
Trump: 58,474,401
Clinton: 57,064,530
_________________
Trump: + 1.4 million
- New York Times: Trump won substantially more black and Hispanic votes than Gov. Romney did in 2012. 8% of black Americans vote for Trump, up 7% since 2012, and 29% of Hispanics voted for him, up 8% from 2012 (chart below).
- Philadelphia Tribune: “Almost two million black votes cast for Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Clinton.”
- Forbes: “Clinton’s black voter turnout dropped more than 11 percent compared to 2012. The support for Clinton among active black voters was still exceedingly high (87 percent, versus 93 percent for Obama), but the big difference was the turnout.”
- Wall St. Journal: 3.5 million fewer Americans — including 1.8 million black Americans — voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for President Obama in 2012.
- CBS-Pittsburgh, PA: 100,000 Pennsylvanians switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 2016, and the GOP claimed 240,000 new voters overall have joined the state party this year.
- According to one analysis, “Clinton has turned in the Democratic Party’s worst Electoral College performance in 28 years,” meaning, she failed to win districts that Obama and her husband won handily.
- After a momentary dip in the U.S. stock exchanges in the hours after the election was decided, by the next morning they recovered, and have steadily been reaching unprecedented levels ever since.
- President Obama said he’d consider it “a personal insult” if black Americans don’t have a strong turnout, and vote for Hillary. He also said that his legacy was at the heart of the 2016 race, and Sec. Clinton affirmed that she was seeking the presidency to enact what would amount to his third term. Only 28% of voters, however, cast ballots to support continuing Obama’s legacy, reflecting the trend away from Obama ever since he was first elected, in 2008.
Supporting anecdotes:
From Milwaukee, WI, provided by CBN/AFP, gives insight into why so many more black Americans voted for Trump than voted for Romney in 2012 (after multiple local news outlets reported, on Nov. 3, that Trump was polling at “0.0%” with black voters in Wisconsin):
“On North Avenue, young black men with nothing to do wander past boarded-up buildings and dilapidated shops. It is a sad, desolate landscape. They and other African Americans in Milwaukee contributed to Hillary Clinton’s crushing defeat in the presidential election: not only did they not vote for her, as had been expected, some even backed Donald Trump. […] Some black voters reasoned themselves into backing the real estate tycoon with no experience in government. “I voted for Trump because I believe he can create jobs. Period,” said Dennis Johnson, a 39-year-old truck driver.”
From a retired female Marine, in the Daily Caller:
A senior fellow at the London School for Policy Research and a frequent guest on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC discussing national security, veterans, military and economic issues, this Marine finds it “appalling” when “racist” epithets are cavalierly thrown at Trump supporters.
“The average white working class person is not thinking about hating other people. They are thinking about paying their bills, getting the food on the table, getting their kids a decent education and worrying about the next paycheck,” she says.
She left home at age 17 and served 20 years in The U.S. Marine Corps, receiving a variety of medals and awards, and retired a gunnery sergeant.
Duff thinks many women voters rejected former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because they disapprove of open borders, unscreened refugees, political correctness and the inadequately-countered “war on police” by radical left groups.
Duff says many women felt a Clinton win threatened the real security of their own families. This enthusiastic Trump surrogate singlehandedly busts up the notion of identity politics and polarization in politics as antithetical to America. She says, “We are not white, black, and Asian Americans. We are red, white and blue Americans.”
(4) Rather than acting responsibly, HuffPost instead went on a “journalistic jihad” of lies and incitement against the electoral reality, and half of America’s voters
Instead of accepting these results, and presenting the American people with an honest, candid assessment of what gave rise to them, HuffPost embarked on a scorched-Earth “journalistic jihad” — against Trump, against the election outcome, against half of America’s voters, and against the metrics themselves. For starters, HuffPost published this wildly-inaccurate headline story, explicitly denying the reality that Trump won significantly more minority voters than Romney did:
Even the New York Times, which also incorrectly predicted the election outcome, had the integrity to report that Trump won a significant increase of black and Hispanic votes over Romney, just four years earlier:
Election 2016: Exit Polls, by The New York Times
In this close-up of the above infographic, the red arrows and numbers on the right margin indicate the percentage increase of black, Hispanic and Asian Americans voted for Trump, over Romney. For example, Trump received 7% more black votes than Romney, etc. (see original article here):
HuffPost, however, ignored this data, as reported by the New York Times, and numerous other (actual) news organizations.
Instead, as documented here, HuffPost began publishing front-page accusations that turned this reality on its head; specifically claims that:
- “It’s pretty clear who ruined America: white people”
- “The Klan won last night”
- White people conspire to “steal elections”
See more examples of HuffPost’s explicit incitement — against white people, conservatives, police officers, and America itself, and other examples of its shameful behavior before and after the election, at:
March 3, 2017 update:
Democrats Flip Zero Seats in Four Blue State Special Elections, by Andrew Kugle, Washington Free Beacon, March 3, 2017.
Democrats have failed since Election Day in November to take any Republican-controlled seats in four special elections in blue states, despite hefty investment from the Democratic Party.
Since President Trump’s election, there have been several state-level special elections across the country. The Republican State Leadership Committee, or RSLC, published a memo this week showing Republicans have won every district they previously held across multiple states that Democrats have won in the last three or more presidential elections.
Republicans kept their seats despite “hefty financial investments and high profile Democrats lending star power to state-level candidates,” RSLC noted.
Predictably, HuffPost ignored this development.
(5) Conclusion: This is part of HuffPost’s ongoing pattern of creating and perpetuating false, subversive depictions of reality
This is not the first time that HuffPost conjured up and spread a fake reality, to subvert Americans’ ability to understand and consider vital public affairs. To the contrary, here are several recent, highly-documented examples:
“The Huffington Post’s Anti-Semitic Bias and Incitement During the Third Intifada”
HuffPo Fires Writer Who Questioned Hillary’s Health
Many more examples are available by emailing us.
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