Here’s how to tell when Republican politicians or journalists or activists are making headway: left-liberal media networks start accusing them of being — wait for it — conspiracy theorists. In recent days, for instance, NBC’s Ben Collins and Joy Reid claimed that the grassroots parent uprising over critical race theory in schools was being driven by QAnon.
Or remember last February when Sen. Tom Cotton raised questions about the origins of the coronavirus? The New York Times headline read, ‘Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins’.
In May, when Sen. Rand Paul pressed Dr Fauci on the Wuhan lab and gain-of-function research, Newsweek wrote, ‘Senator Paul didn’t directly accuse Dr Fauci of engineering the pandemic, but that seemed at times to be his implication; it’s a line of questioning that appeared to play to conspiracy theories that circulate on the internet.’
In October 2020, the New York Post and a handful of sites decided to report on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop scandal. The press knew this would be bad for Joe Biden. So the collective mind warp began. Politico declared ‘Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.’ Rolling Stone’s E.J. Dickson, wrote ‘Moreover, the Delaware repair shop owner, a Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist, told reporters that he is “legally blind” and did not even see who dropped off the alleged laptop, only believing it to be Hunter’s because it allegedly had a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation.’
More recently, when Fox News’s Tucker Carlson informed his audience that he was being spied on by the NSA, he was met with mockery. Brian Stelter, who was notably silent yesterday about his former-BFF Michael Avenatti being sentenced to 30 months for attempted extortion, asked, ‘Is it a stretch to say Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones?’ Steve Schmidt tweeted, ‘Carlson has invented this nonsense to wrap himself in the imaginary cloak of right-wing victimhood at the hands of a fantastical conspiracy. The lie will be believed by millions and spread to millions more.’ A week later an Axios story proved that Tucker was telling the truth after all. How fantastical!
But let’s go back to MSNBC’s Joy Reid, a perfect example of a talking head who lacks facts but makes up for it with name-calling and a healthy dose of condescension. Joy seems particularly passionate about critical race theory.
At first Joy simply mocked the parents who were slowly starting to speak out against CRT. The host played a video of an emotional mother from Missouri who said, ‘Just because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school does not mean I’m a racist, damn it!’ When the camera panned back to Joy, she laughed before sarcastically responding, ‘Yes it does.’
But ridiculing parents didn’t work. As time went by, more and more moms and dads mobilized against this controversial academic movement. So Joy had to step it up a notch. When one of the lead opponents to CRT, the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, challenged Joy to an on-air debate, she begrudgingly accepted. Rufo wanted to discuss the harmful tenets of the theory and how it had been taught to third-graders at an elementary school in Cupertino, despite the left’s adamant claims that it is not taught in schools K-12. But the MSNBC host had zero interest in an honest conversation. Reid interrupted Rufo several times, told him it was her show, then abruptly cut him off before ending the interview.
Joy, like so many woke activists, knew she was losing this battle. So she resorted to the last refuge of a liberal. This week, while interviewing NBC’s Ben Collins, the host came out with this whopper: ‘That hysteria over the perceived encroachment of race-conscious education is being exploited by another insidious force: followers of QAnon who are now using the battle cry to similarly target school boards, with many who have espoused QAnon theories now melding their own conspiracies with the lies about critical race theory.’
In Reid’s mind, the only possible explanation as to why so many American parents aren’t buying into the CRT doctrine is because they are being brainwashed by a cult of internet extremists and, er, racism. That’s right — the same woman who once tried to convince the world that homophobic posts on her old blog were posted by a time-traveling saboteur is now telling American parents that they are being duped online.
The irony is too thick. The same people who spent four years obsessively promoting a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory are now trying to accuse their opposition of wearing tin-foil hats. The brilliant minds at MSNBC and CNN think that smearing Americans will quell the dissent. But it’s amusingly revealing. The more Brian Stelter and Joy Reid chortle and denigrate, the more conservatives can rest assured that they are getting something right.
