The Stream

The Brew: 50 Days to Election Day, Another Assassination Attempt and the News Is Raining Cats and Dogs

By Al Perrotta Published on September 16, 2024 •

Al Perrotta

Happy Monday!

Grab your biggest mug because we have a lot of pouring to do. We’re 50 days out from the presidential election, and news is breaking fast. This obviously includes Sunday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course. The suspect has been identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58.

You can read our coverage HERE. We will obviously have more to say about this on today’s serving of Al’s Afternoon Tea. 

ABC News Whistleblower Alleges Network Fixed Debate — and Claims to Have Audio Tapes

ABC News has some ‘splainin’ to do. A whistleblower who works there released a sworn affidavit Sunday alleging the network fixed last week’s debate every which way possible.

According to the whistleblower, whose name has been blacked out, ABC News:

  • Provided Kamala Harris’s campaign with “sample questions, while not the exact questions, [that] covered similar topics that would appear in the debate.”
  • Agreed to fact-check Trump, while not fact-checking Harris.
  • Agreed not to ask any questions “regarding the perceived health of President Joe Biden.”
  • Agreed not to ask any questions about Harris’s brother-in-law, Tony West, who was involved in shady plea deals at the U.S. Justice Department during the Obama administration that funneled millions to assorted leftist organizations, and is accused of embezzling billions.  
  • Agreed to make “no inquiries related to her tenure as Attorney General in San Francisco.” (Harris would have been Attorney General in Sacramento after she was elected to state-level office. She was the district attorney in San Francisco before that. But it is strange she wasn’t asked about her more controversial actions in those roles. It’s not strange, though, that Harris wouldn’t want to be asked about them, since that’s how Tulsi Gabbard wrecked her in a 2019 debate.)
  • Agreed to ample use of split screens to allow Harris’s facial expressions to respond to Trump as he spoke. (Remember, she begged to have the mics unmuted. ABC News refused.)

The whistleblower also claims to have recorded several conversations that’ll prove these things. 

The affidavit was published by social media influencer Black Insurrectionist.

Black Insurrectionist said in a later post on X that he plans to sue ABC News for election interference, and is working with Gateway Pundit to set up an interview with the whistleblower. 

By the way, the affidavit was signed and notarized the day before the debate. 

ABC News Denies Giving Kamala Harris Debate Questions as Top Dem Advisor Strategist Calls for an Investigation

ABC News took the whistleblower allegation seriously enough to issue a statement denying hanky-panky in advance of its release.

“Absolutely not,” an ABC News spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “Harris was not given any questions before the debate.” The network also denied that the moderators had spoken to any of Harris’s aides.

But did the network give her campaign anything? Besides, Harris’s aides don’t need to speak to the moderators if their boss is one of her BFFs. That ABC News statement says a lot less than they want you to think it says.

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After all, moderator Linsey Davis openly admits a decision was made to intervene in the debate and fact-check Trump. Why? Because “people” were upset that CNN had let many of Trump’s statements “hang” during his debate with Biden in June.

“People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators,” she told the L.A. Times.

What people? The L.A. Times didn’t seem interested in finding out. Why then let Harris’s multitude of lies “hang”? There was no interest in asking about that, either. Nor did they ask why the moderators thought it was their job to do Harris’s job.

This bias bugged Democratic pollster/consultant and former Clinton advisor Mark Penn. Penn wants ABC News to do an internal investigation into the debate and its clear and overwhelming effort to help Harris and hurt Trump.

“I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don’t know how much of this was planned in advance,” Penn told Just the News.

I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that.

Again, this is not the Trump campaign whining. This is a Democratic fixture. 

Oh, So That’s Why They Keep Them Away from Interviews

The Democrats will have to play election games because, frankly, their ticket is bad at talking to the press. Kamala Harris gave an interview Friday to the local ABC News affiliate in Philly.

She was asked to name some specifics about how she’d bring down prices. She repeated her debate riff about being raised in the middle class. “I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn,” she said.

Great answer. If you are running for president of Scotts.

Here’s another clip. Don’t just listen to the words. Watch the face.

Is that a president? Or the scared student in civics class hoping the professor is buying her dumb answer? 

It’s not just in interviews, though. Whenever someone asks a random — and EASY — question, like “How do you like your chances in Pennsylvania?” the answer should be simple (no matter which candidate is answering): “Our chances our great! We’ve got a great team on the ground, our supporters are pumped, and our message is resonating with voters!”

Instead, Harris offered this.

Is that hope and joy — and confidence? (Meanwhile, Trump was in super-blue California pushing the idea that there’s no state he can’t win.)

The good news? At least Harris is getting her Southern black accent down. Here she is, pandering to the Congressional Black Caucus — the Canada-raised daughter of a Jamaican and an Indian, again sounding like she’s on the chitlin’ circuit in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz had a bright idea: On Saturday, he urged Democrats to go up to strangers in grocery stores and have “hard conversations” about why they should vote for Harris.

Really. Accosting people who are paying through the roof for groceries to get them to support the woman whose policies sent grocery prices flying? This is like going to Palestine, Ohio to pitch the joys of chemicals or Ground Zero to get folks to sign a birthday card for Ilhan Omar. 

This is like going to Springfield, Ohio to tout the beauties of Haitian cuisine. (Meow much?)

“Eating the Dogs, Eating the Cats,” Continued

What’s the latest with the Great Cat Scandal of 2024?

The media is still holding the line that Haitian migrants aren’t feasting on local animals and pets in Springfield, Ohio. Yesterday, CNN’s Dana Bash got contentious with J.D. Vance over it. Big mistake.

While the media wants to throw cold water on the fiery story, investigative journalist Christopher Rufo threw on additional coals. He posted video from nearby Dayton, Ohio of African migrants cooking cats.  

https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1834926318883852543

Meanwhile, officials in New York announced they’ll be cracking down on animal sacrifices after a rise of incidents in Jamaican Bay.

How much is the cat story impacting the campaign? At a Tim Walz speech last week, supporters chanted, “We’re not eating cats!”

We’ve come a long way from “I Like Ike!”

 

Along The Stream

Dr. Michael Brown’s latest is up, “Politics: Important, But Not the Gospel.”

We also have Sarah Bragg’s inspirational “Redefine Purpose.”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.

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