Yesterday, CNN's Jim Acosta had his White House press credentials suspended after he repeatedly questioned president Trump over his use of the migrant caravan to stoke the fears of American xenophobes. While he and Trump were having at it, a young, female, White House intern ...read more
I've long been an admirer of Matt Taibbi's journalism and writing style -- so much so that it helped inspired me to become a writer myself. Early on as a writer, I would read as much of his work as I could, quote him at length in pieces I struggled to find the right words for, ...read more
Rarely do I ever complain about my work. Frankly, I feel quite lucky that I get to do what I love every day. However, sometimes it's a lonely job, observing American politics and reporting back to you about what I'm seeing. The specific downside is that I'll occasionally sift ...read more
Ok, hear me out on this: Great Britain was in fact behind the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury last month because the UK government is actively trying to foment war with Russia. Why? Because in her weakened state over the Brexit disaster, Theresa May is ...read more
I guess I'll have to respond to some of the major points in internet conspiracy theorist Caitlin Johnstone's latest assault on The Daily Banter, but not before doing a rundown of her hilarious insults in her response to Jeremy Fassler's piece calling out leftist media outlets ...read more
The entire basis for Fox News host Sean Hannity's existence is the moral superiority he has assigned himself by virtue of his religion and political affiliation. Hannity has spent decades hammering liberals for their godless depravity, extolling the moral virtues of the ...read more
After a tumultuous week that included calls for boycotts, advertisers dropping out, and a leaked recording of a pre-interview phone call, Megan Kelly’s 17-minute special on Alex Jones finally aired. Kelly was more than critical during her questioning of the radio host and ...read more
Over the past few days, myself and Banter writer Jeremy Fassler has been engaged in a war of words with far left, self described "rogue" journalist Caitlin Johnstone. Fassler mentioned Johnstone, a writer and one-time astrologer from Melbourne, Australia, as an example of the ...read more
As a big fan of Joe Rogan and his truly unique podcast, this is somewhat difficult for me to write. But given the massive influence his voice carries, particularly with young and somewhat impressionable men, I feel compelled to urge him to stop his egregious mischaracterization ...read more
Update, 8.23.16: From AP: "WikiLeaks' global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press has found. In the past year ...read more
In her latest installment of increasingly unsettling conspiratorial social media posts, Sarah Palin has quite literally declared war on her own government. In a rambling post published today about the FBI's recommendation that Hillary Clinton not be prosecuted for her use of ...read more
Part of me feels slightly bad consistently laying into Sarah Palin for her transgressions against civility, general decency and the English language -- she is after all another human being with thoughts, feelings and emotions. Then again, her presence in the national dialogue ...read more
If you're wondering what might happen if the Republican Party attempts to strip the nomination from Donald Trump, conspiracy weeble Alex Jones and former Trump adviser Roger Stone have an idea. And it's not what you think. Stone appeared again on Jones' radio show the other day, ...read more
"There you go again, asking me about Trump." -- Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) Yeah, asshole, there somebody goes again, demanding that you answer for the monster made out of pure, concentrated conservative id and canned aerosol cheese. The one you unleashed on the ...read more
With Donald Trump's accusation that Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz assisted in the assassination of JFK, we are officially in no-mans land. The media is now struggling to come up with words to describe the sheer insanity of this Republican primary -- a process that is so bizarre ...read more
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the craziest conspiracy theory of 2016. In an amazing 10 minutes of utter lunacy from 'InfoWars' nutjob Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist lays out why he genuinely thinks Beyonce's latest video 'Lemonade' was paid for by the CIA in order to ...read more
I need to make something perfectly clear, so please listen carefully. It is essential that you put your support fully behind Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Let me repeat that: It is absolutely essential. This isn't to say that Bernie Sanders, who's also ...read more
For several years now, those of us who've been following the political career of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) have noticed that he's not the brave, principled destroyer of the left/right paradigm. Rather, he's a melange of several related ingredients: 1) A dash of Ron Paul's ...read more
The conservative media have never exactly been in a state of child's pose when it comes to Barack Obama, but what we're seeing right now from them is something new altogether. The sudden presence of Ebola inside Fortress America is causing a spontaneous freak-out on the right ...read more
Gretchen Carlson must be keenly aware of our ongoing "FOXTOBERFEST of Stupid," because she seems to be making a bold play for the top slot. Yesterday afternoon, she wrapped her show on Fox News as she typically does, with a segment called "My Take." As a rule, Gretchen's "take" ...read more
Download the mp3 (55 minutes, 23mb) Kobayashi Maru: Brand New Dan Bidondi Tape: Gun-Grabbin’ Senator Part 2; Obama’s Plan for ISIS and Syria is a No Win Situation; The Middle East Conundrum; Domestic Chez Goes to PTA; Remembering 9/11 and Replaying it on Television; Michael ...read more
Under normal circumstances it would be easy to brush off a bad hire at The Huffington Post because, with a few very notable exceptions, the site doesn't offer the kind of journalism that befits its original promise and pedigree. But HuffPost is still one of the most powerful ...read more
Rasmussen released the results of a poll on Monday showing that 23 percent of Americans believe President Obama wasn't born in the United States. By itself, that number isn't too shocking. But when you add the percentage of people who "aren't sure" whether the president was born ...read more
Weird Al Yankovic has been on a social media roll lately, releasing song parodies of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" ("Word Crimes") and Pharrell's "Happy" ("Tacky"). But it's his take on Lorde's "Royals" ("Foil") that's a fantastic satire that skewers the tin foil hat crowd. ...read more
The great thing about America is that almost anybody can run for public office. The frightening thing about America is that almost anybody can run for public office. Let's say you're somebody who once interrupted the question-and-answer portion of an important post-Boston ...read more
If you need a real world example of the damage being caused by the ongoing campaign of disinformation against childhood vaccinations, look no further than a new study published in Pediatrics. According to the pretty extraordinary report, researchers have traced a measles ...read more
We spend a good amount of time here either debunking or mercilessly ridiculing conspiracy theories and those who believe in and espouse them. The reason for this is simple: media proliferation has reached the point where there's as much misinformation out there as there is ...read more
Judge Jeanine Pirro's television career began as the host of a reality courtroom show not unlike Judge Judy or any of the dozens of other knockoffs. But for the last few years, she's become a regular contributor to NBC's Today as well as the host of Justice with Judge Jeanine, ...read more
Photo (FILE): Jim Urquhart/Reuters I'm not sure how this didn't immediately hit the media bloodstream but apparently over the weekend there was a shooting in California, near the Nevada state line, that left a California Highway Patrolman and an agent for the U.S. Bureau of ...read more
Las Vegas cop killers Jerad and Amanda Miller were big fans of Alex Jones. You can tell because Jerad Miller's Facebook page contained several references to Jones as well as repostings of InfoWars pieces, he occasionally left comments at InfoWars, and because Jones went way the ...read more
The husband-and-wife team that shot and killed two Las Vegas police officers, then killed a third person at a nearby Wal-Mart before taking their own lives, had an extensive history of far-right, anti-government beliefs and were obsessed with conspiracy theories and the idea of ...read more
One of the easiest ways to get pageviews is to write an impassioned screed against a celebrity for having done or said something stupid, outrageous, or offensive. Virtually all writers reliant on social media have done it at some point, either out of a sense of obligation to get ...read more
Grace McDonnell was one of nearly two-dozen children killed by rounds of ammunition fired from Adam Lanza's AR-15 at Sandy Hook Elementary. Since then, a memorial playground was established with a commemorative sign featuring Grace's photograph and the message: "Celebrating the ...read more
There are so many layers of ridiculousness in the Bundy Ranch story, it's difficult to know where to begin. Above all else, it ended up being a fantastic opportunity for a pack of ignorant states' rights cowboys to get intimate with their rebellion and secessionist fetishes, ...read more
There's a positively vicious little piece getting a surprising amount of social media circulation right now -- surprising because it's actually two years old. Titled "Age of Ignorance," the piece is a scathing polemic written by Charles Simic for the New York Review of Books, ...read more
At face value there admittedly shouldn't be much left to say about Abby Martin. She made a statement against Russia on a Russian state network; she unfortunately has a long history of being a player in the conspiracy theory movement headed by Alex Jones; she's still working for ...read more
A minor confession: I admit to not having been completely familiar with Abby Martin's full body of work when we began writing about her three days ago. I'd seen her show a couple of times and obviously knew that she had just taken a laudable stand against the Russian invasion of ...read more
One of the interesting things about columns on conspiracy theories is that they tend to have a very long half-life. I can write a piece mocking Alex Jones and his insistence that every tragedy under the sun is a "false flag" attack by the government, and a year later Jones's ...read more
I'll make this quick. I was going to write it in the comment section of the post I banged out earlier today on Joe Rogan's schooling of Roseanne Barr on the basics of science, but I think it probably deserves its own spot. This is mostly because I'll probably want to be able to ...read more
"Here is the problem, there is science behind those trails. You can track when it is going to happen and when it is not going to happen. It is all based on the humidity in the atmosphere. That is what it is all based on. When you have a jet engine and it burns jet fuel and it is ...read more
Yesterday, Cesca threw together a quick post on a conspiracy theory that was apparently too crazy even for Alex Jones. The theory: that Paul Walker's car had been destroyed not by a head-on collision with a tree but by a drone strike. On Monday while writing about Walker's death ...read more
"Don’t you think it’s a little curious? Some of my friends were talking over the weekend, isn’t that curious timing? Out of nowhere, you know, in the midst of Obamacare not unrolling correctly, the president’s poll numbers never been lower then, look, John Kerry pulls a rabbit ...read more
Roseanne Barr is the libertarian left's answer to Victoria Jackson: she was popular on TV years ago, mostly for one very specific brand of shtick, but somewhere along the line willfully gave up entertaining people in favor of being a rabid political ideologue, loud-mouthed ...read more
If you had "about five minutes" in the over-under on how long it would take for Alex Jones to insist that today's Capitol shooting was a "false flag" attack, congratulations -- give yourself a prize. From Media Matters: JONES: Shots fired, U.S. Capitol. Oh, they're -- ...read more
From the Department of Getting Paid To State the Incredibly Obvious comes this tidbit: If you're a conspiracy theorist, you probably don't believe what scientists have to say about vaccinations, genetically modified foods, and climate change. From Mother Jones: The new ...read more
Well, it's finally happened. Behold the single worst thing to ever be shot out of Glenn Greenwald's Twitter feed: Actually, I suppose that if you're looking to compile physical evidence of Greenwald's sins against both journalism and intellectual honesty and to gain an ...read more
If you see any remaining daylight between the rapidly converging spheres of the Glenn Greenwald Left and the Alex Jones Right, you'll have to point it out to me because not only have those two factions begun to merge, but they're locked together in what could be a permanent Venn ...read more
I'll try to make this quick. If you're one of those people now posting long-winded internet screeds filled with supposed hard evidence that proves that George Zimmerman didn't really help pull a family out of an overturned vehicle last week in Central Florida, please stop. ...read more
"Dirty, lying little piece of big business funded, corporate scum. Tell your children that tonight." -- Eric144144 responding to Slate's column, "'The View' Hires Notorious Anti-Vaxxer Jenny McCarthy" This column isn't about how Jenny McCarthy shouldn't be given a nationwide ...read more
When it comes to the topic of conspiracy theories and their believers, I could, were I so inclined on a Friday, simply pop up a now-famous quote from the late, great Christopher Hitchens and let that be the end of it: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be ...read more
