Sunday Standard - December 4
Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read.
And after you read my Sunday Standard, please leave me a comment.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
Pelosi attack: How does a reporter become a nonperson?
This was originally published on 11/30.
On November 4, NBC NEWS reporter Miguel Almaguer did an on-air report about the incident at Paul and Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home around 2AM October 28 between Mr. Pelosi and a hammer-wielding assailant. The 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Pelosi, who was in Washington DC at the time, had suffered injuries to his skull and arm and had been taken to the hospital, where he underwent surgery for a fractured skull. He was released from the hospital a week later, is expected to make a full recovery, and we continue to pray for him and wish him well.
But Almaguer’s report differed in some details from the ‘Justice’ Department’s account. (For the record, so did that of local police.) According to Almaguer, Mr. Pelosi opened the front door to police when they arrived at his house with a “knock-and-announce,” and instead of immediately asking for help or rushing outside to safety, he stepped back into the home before being attacked by the assailant, David DePape, who was later found to be a “nudist activist” and a very weird person who indulged an odd assortment of conspiracy theories.
NBC NEWS took swift action after Almaguer's report quickly went viral, retracting it that afternoon and scrubbing it from the internet, saying only that this reporting “didn’t meet company standards.” As Brian Flood at FOX NEWS reports in an update, “Almaguer’s report seemed to coincide with theories that key details are being withheld from the public.” It appears that Almaguer, a Los Angeles-based correspondent, was suspended from the network, though NBC has made no official announcement of that.
The established narrative is now that DePape broke into the home and was looking for the Speaker, threatening to break her kneecaps if she didn’t “tell the truth” and even calling out “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” as some of the Capitol Hill protesters did on January 6. (Incidentally, we’ve never heard from whose account that little detail came. Who is the witness who offered that conveeeenient piece of information, so evocative of J6? It seems this would have had to come from Paul Pelosi unless there was another eyewitness in the house.)
Some critics were quick to say that Almaguer’s report had “fueled conspiracy theories,” but we now know that police bodycam footage supports what he'd said about Mr. Pelosi answering the door to the cops himself. According to the WASHINGTON POST, NBC sources told them that Almaguer was incorrect when he said Mr. Pelosi had told police he was not in danger. Was that definitely determined to be a mistake? And if it was, didn't they want to get that detail right instead of just being murky? In such a case, doesn’t a network usually just issue a specific correction and move on?
But San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins certainly has the “correct” narrative down pat: DePape’s motive “could not have been clearer,” she insisted. In her filing, she wrote, “He forced his way into the Pelosi home intending to take the person third in line for the presidency of the United States hostage and to seriously harm her. Thwarted by Speaker Pelosi’s absence, Defendant continued on his quest and would not be stopped, culminating in the near fatal attack on Mr. Pelosi.”
After being a regular correspondent on NBC’s “Today” and “NBC Nightly News,” Almaguer has been completely off the air for nearly a month now. The FOX NEWS update does offer some speculation from “NBC insiders,” but that’s all it appears to be --- guesswork. One theory is that they had a problem with his source, and we’ll likely never know who that was.
And this might be the strangest part of an already strange story: Since Almaguer’s apparent suspension, the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area reported details similar to what he had in his original report, and even asked the logical questions. But that report wasn’t scrubbed, and anchor Jessica Aguirre and reporter Bigad Shaban weren’t taken off the air. This twist to the media coverage should have everyone scratching their heads…
Almaguer’s status as a nonperson, at least for now, seems nearly complete. Although, like most reporters, he had been active on Twitter, he hasn’t tweeted anything since November 3. As far as we've seen, the only social media presence he’s had was this picture of himself posted on Instragram from Barcelona, Spain, last week. Perhaps he was spending the Thanksgiving holiday there.
NBC NEWS didn’t respond to questions from FOX NEWS such as how long Almaguer would be off the air and what was wrong with his report. Almaguer’s agent was reached but declined to speak “on client matters.” Jack Phillips at THE EPOCH TIMES also tried to contact both NBC NEWS and Almaguer and received no response from either. If you have a subscription to ET, here's a link to Phillips' report.
A former NBC NEWS executive who worked with Almaguer told FOX NEWS Digital that “NBC’s silence on this matter speaks volumes, and that the network “owes it to its audience to be truthful and not cover this up.”
And that’s the main point to keep in mind about this whole story. In looking at what happened to Paul Pelosi, my focus certainly has not been on his personal life at all, but rather on what’s happening to our media and how we can ever trust what it’s telling us. There’s a reason Miguel Almaguer is not on the air at NBC NEWS, and we all should be asking what it is.
LEAVE ME A COMMENT, I READ THEM!
Word of the year
This was originally published on 11/30
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary people chose “gaslighting” as the “word of the year” for 2022. And if you think it’s not, you must be crazy.
It first entered the language with the 1938 movie, “Gaslight,” about a husband trying to convince his wife that she’s losing her mind. But only in recent years have politicians, academia, the media and social media made both a science out of brainwashing people into believing things that they should know instinctively are not true (for instance, yes: gender is binary, and men can't get pregnant.)
Fortunately, more people are waking up to the scam every day. One reason the gaslighters hate Elon Musk so much is that he’s pulling back the curtain to reveal how they’ve done it. For years, they’ve gaslighted us that there was no political bias in the decisions to ban or shadow-ban Twitter users, when it was obvious to many of us that it was leftwing censorship of anyone to the right of Rob Reiner.
But now, expect more howling from the left as Musk just announced that he’s found the Twitter files on free speech suppression and will soon make them public on Twitter because “the public deserves to know what happened.”
If you want to know who’s gaslighting you, just watch closely to see which “news outlets” applaud the idea of the public having a right to know what actually happened, and which ones openly oppose that principle and attack Elon Musk for pursuing it.
Related: CNN scolded Elon Musk, “Be better,” after they claimed he posted disinformation about them. It was actually an obvious joke meme of a fake news headline reading, “CNN: Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by literally allowing people to speak freely.”
https://www.westernjournal.com/cnn-rattled-elon-musks-humor-posts-fact-check-blows-face-better/
It’s easy to knock CNN for having no sense of humor and being unable to recognize a joke, but look at it from their point of view. That sounds so much like an actual CNN headline, it’s easy to see how they might assume people would think it’s real. Maybe the solution is for CNN to be a better news network, so their headlines aren’t indistinguishable from satire.