Tucker Carlson’s website publishes vicious, sexist rant against new ‘Crossfire’ host

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Tucker Carlson’s online publication The Daily

Caller published a review of the new version of Carlson’s old show “Crossfire” on Tuesday that went beyond a bad review and veered into a viciously personal attack against co-host Stephanie Cutter. The review —written by the Caller’s Patrick Howley — called Cutter, variously, a “sociopath,” a “treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption” and an “unmitigated monster.”

“A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators,” bemoaned Howley. “A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.”

The piece’s title, “Crossfire Review No.1,” implies that there will be more reviews to come. “Crossfire” was hosted by Daily Caller editor Carlson and Paul Begala in 2004 when “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart appeared as a guest and notoriously took Carlson and Begala to task for “hurting America” with their tedious back and forth and reduction of every issue to a left-right binary.

The show’s already diminished audience fled and CNN mothballed “Crossfire” until this fall, when the show was rebooted with hosts Cutter and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

“A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kidness (sic) of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society,” Howley continued. “This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn’t care enough to stop her from getting them.”

The columnist called Cutter “feminism mutated into grotesque cartoon,” comparing her to”Carrie Bradshaw without the literacy,” “Chelsea Handler without the punch lines” and “Kirsten Powers without the prettiness.”

“She leaves us exhausted in our discomfort,” he continued, and demanded to know why Cutter got the job. He was asking, he said, on behalf of “every cute, shy, intelligent young woman rejected by sororities at the fuchsia nails of clipboard-toting middle managers like Cutter,” as well as “every hardworking man forced to report to vaguely qualified female ‘corporate consultants’ in a post-Anita Hill world.”

Cutter was the deputy campaign manager for Pres. Barack Obama’s winning 2012 re-election campaign. She attended Smith University and graduated from Georgetown University School of Law. She has worked at the Environmental Protection Agency, at the White House during Pres. Bill Clinton’s term of office and for former Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

Right Wing ‘Daily Caller’ Posts Racist Tweet, Then Quickly Deletes It

Sky Palma/Americans Against the Tea Party

According to a report from White House reporters, there is an aspiring rapper who calls himself “Rhymes Priebus” somewhere in Chicago. The name is a play on the name of Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus. The White House reporters were driven around by the 26-year-old rapper as part of President Obama’s motorcade on a trip to the Windy City today.

The conservative website Daily Caller did a write-up on the story, but it’s a promotional tweet that’s getting the site some unwanted attention, rather than the story itself.

Click on image to enlarge

The tweet was quickly deleted, but not before it was screen-captured and posted on Twittersoon after.

The acronym “HNIC” is internet slang for “head n*gger in charge,” according to the Urban Dictionary.

‘Daily Caller’ story on IRS director’s many White House visits a bust

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

The Daily Caller story that kicked off the latest round of finger-pointing and blame in the IRS “scandal” currently gripping the right blogosphere and Fox News was actually based on erroneous information. According to the Atlantic, the editorial staff at the Caller overestimated the number of visits by now-former IRS director Douglas Shulman by 146, claiming that Shulman visited the Obama White House 157 times rather than the 11 visits he is confirmed to have actually made.

The Daily Caller eagerly reported on Wednesday that Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee, visited President Barack Obama’s White House “at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.”

The Tucker Carlson-run conservative website failed to make the distinction between the actual White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is covered by the Secret Service’s visitors’ log. Shulman was required to meet with administration officials about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” in the Eisenhower Building. The Secret Service log also covers the New Executive Building, which is located up 17th Street and off the White House grounds.

According to the Atlantic:

Shulman was cleared primarily to meet with administration staffers involved in implementation of the health-care reform bill. He was cleared 40 times to meet with Obama’s director of the Office of Health Reform, and a further 80 times for the biweekly health reform deputies meetings and others set up by aides involved with the health-care law implementation efforts. That’s 76 percent of his planned White House visits just there, before you even add in all the meetings with Office of Management and Budget personnel also involved in health reform.

Furthermore, there’s no proof that Shulman did or did not attend the meetings, since there are no arrival or departure times listed. He may have been scheduled to pass through the Secret Service checkpoints, but this has little bearing on whether he did. Shulman’s time of arrival is only confirmed for 11 specific events between 2009 and 2012.

“That does not mean that he did not go to other meetings,” wrote the Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta, “only that the White House records do not show he went to the 157 meetings he was granted Secret Service clearance to attend.”

At least one Shulman visit to the White House grounds had nothing to do with IRS business or the ACA. Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly asked Shulman in a Congressional hearing last week what would occasion a visit to the White House for him.

“Um, the Easter Egg Roll with my kids,” Shulman replied.

Franke-Ruta wrote that Secret Service logs are a wildly imprecise means of determining the comings and goings of visitors to the White House. The procedure is not the only means of getting clearance to enter the White House security perimeter. In large social gatherings like the aforementioned Easter Egg Roll, people enter the White House gates in pre-cleared carloads.

The Center for Public Integrity reported in April, 2011 that “(t)he logs include names of people cleared by the Secret Service for White House entry who never showed up. The Center analysis found more than 200,000 visits with no time of arrival, an indication the person didn’t enter the White House though there is no way to know for certain.”

Even the Caller admitted at the end of its article that “it is probable that the vast majority of visits by major Cabinet members do not end up in the public record.”

The Daily Caller Gets Burned By Their Own Menendez Source

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America:

The Daily Caller's lurid, fraudulent story of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) patronizing Dominican prostitutes has taken yet another hit as the lawyer representing the prostitutes, Melanio Figueroa, has reportedly let loose with a variety of outlandish story-changing allegations, among them that he was paid and pressured by various media outlets (the Daily Caller among them) to fabricate the whole affair. Figueroa's credibility is now non-existent, which only serves to reinforce how wildly irresponsible the Daily Caller was to run with the story in the first place.

The Washington Post reported on March 22 that a "top Dominican law enforcement official" said that Figueroa told investigators that in autumn 2012 he had been approached by a man claiming to be from the Daily Caller and offered $5,000 to "find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez." The Daily Caller adamantly denied the allegations, which as of yet lack evidence and appear far-fetched, and the Post acknowledged that the "account provided that Dominican authorities said they received from Figueroa could not be independently confirmed by The Washington Post." The Post also noted that Figueroa's new story is a reversal from his previous denials of having made the whole thing up.

The Daily Caller, meanwhile, has published a story pushing back against Figueroa, reporting that he "blamed four news outlets -- CNN, The Daily Caller, Telemundo and Univision -- for allegedly encouraging him to fabricate false accusations about Menendez." The Caller also reported that "CNN and Univision both issued statements forcefully denying Figueroa's accusations," and pointed out that the attorney has repeatedly contradicted himself in recent days as the Menendez story has collapsed.  

Again, Figueroa's credibility is extremely lacking, but the Daily Caller's attempts to demonstrate as much are telling, given that Figueroa featured prominently in then-Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle's original story reporting the bogus allegations against Menendez. Figueroa was the only Dominican source identified by name:

Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

The women spoke through a translator in the company of their attorney, Melanio Figueroa. Both asked that their identities remain obscured for fear of reprisals in the Dominican Republic.

A number of other news outlets were approached with the fake Menendez story -- ABC News, the Star Ledger (Newark, New Jersey),  The New York Post -- and they all turned it down because they didn't believe it passed muster. Their skepticism was wise -- one of the women who made allegations against Menendez hassince recanted, and the Dominican police say they have determined that all three were paid to offer the tale.

The Daily Caller, however, ran with it. And now they're working to discredit their original source, having come lately to the realization that he probably can't be trusted.

Alleged escort in Daily Caller video: I was paid to make claims against Democratic senator

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

A Dominican woman who appeared in a video accusing Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) of paying her to have sex now says she was paid to make the accusations, theWashington Post reported on Monday.

Nexis de los Santos Santana told Dominican Republic police that she had never met Menendez, who has visited the country multiple times. The woman and her friend appeared in the video after being approached by a lawyer. That lawyer identified a second lawyer who allegedly provided him with a script and paid him to find the women, according to affidavits obtained by the Post.

The documents were released by Vinicio Castillo Semán, the cousin of major Menendez contributor Dr. Salomon Melgen, according to the Miami Herald. Melgen was also implicated in the prostitution scandal.

The video was published by The Daily Caller days before Menendez was reelected last November. In the video, the two women alleged the Democratic senator had agreed to pay them for sex while he was staying with Melgen in the Dominican Republic.

The video appeared to back up claims made by Peter Williams last year.

In a series of emails, he told Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) that Menendez engaged “in inappropriate sexual activities with young prostitutes while on vacation in the Dominican Republic.” The identity of Peter Williams has not been confirmed.

Menendez denied the allegations, describing them as a right-wing fabrication.

“It’s amazing to me that anonymous, nameless, faceless individuals on a Web site can drive that type of story into the mainstream, but that’s what they’ve done successfully,” Menendez said last month. “Now, nobody can find them. No one ever met them. No one ever talked to them, but that’s where we’re at. So the bottom line is all of those smears are absolutely false and, you know, that’s the bottom line.”

The FBI launched an investigation but found no evidence to back up the prostitution allegations.

Muslim group bans Daily Caller from event for being a ‘hate group’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Tucker Carlson’s website The Daily Caller reported on Wednesday that a Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization had blocked them from attending a news conference, labeling the conservative outlet a “hate group.”

According to The Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had scheduled the event to respond to recent attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya.

But after reviewing the reporter’s credentials, the CAIR communication director Ibrahim Hooper refused to let them join.

“The Daily Caller is not a news outlet, it is a hate group,” Hooper allegedly said. “You cannot come in.”

“We have any number of press people. In fact, we often have press people who are highly critical, or ask tough questions. But people who report for propagandist, anti-Muslim hate sites are not journalists,” he added, according to the report.

Earlier this year, The Daily Caller published two op-eds by a retired Army major general who had falsely suggested that President Barack Obama might be a Muslim. The outlet also published a column by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who implied that there was a sinister relationship between Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the Muslim community in Texas.

Coglianese argued that the CAIR spokesperson took issue with opinion pieces published by The Daily Caller, not the site’s reporting.

Suspended Politico reporter: Breitbart media ‘in the business of gathering scalps’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Suspended Politico reporter Joe Williams on Monday accused conservative publications like the late Andrew Breitbart’s Big Media and Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller of acting like a “schoolyard bully” by deliberately targeting him after he said GOP hopeful Mitt Romney was more comfortable around “white folks.”

Speaking out for the first time since Politico suspended him indefinitely, Williams told Current TV’s Bill Press that Big Media used “selective evidence” from comments about Romney on MSNBC and his Twitter account because they were in the business of “gathering scalps” from the so-called liberal media.

“It became about me and not about what I said,” he explained. “And that was something that was common to a lot of what you talked about earlier: Chris Hayes, David Shuster, the list goes on. And, you know, now my name is on that list. But the problem I see here is it’s not going to stop there.”

“Part of the issue here is the fact that we have an organization — we have a couple of organizations that have very clear agendas,” Williams continued. “They’re funded — we don’t quite exactly know how, but, certainly, they get their money to do what they do. Their agenda is quite clear. Their agenda is to make enough noise, to push back hard enough that organizations — independent organizations, independent news organizations that have foundations, that have credibility to their name — fold.”

“Basically it’s the schoolyard bully concept where if you make enough noise, if you push back hard enough, people are not going to fight back. … They’re in the business of gathering scalps.”

When it comes to the comments about Romney, Williams did not seem eager to apologize.

“If I apologize for that, there are going to be many other people who have to as well because this is not a new sentiment,” he pointed out, noting that the phrase “white folks” had been like waving a red flag in front of bull. “To me in my personal opinion at this point, those two words were the ones that set people off. You know, ‘white folks,’ ‘Mitt Romney.’ It’s a match to a tender keg to certain segments of people who decided they want to push back on what they believe is the liberal media.”

Williams also wouldn’t say if he wanted to stay on at Politico.

“That’s a question that we’re working on,” he told Press.

The Daily Caller on Monday revealed a March 30 tweet where Williams had accused Politico of an “overlay of blatant racism,” calling it the “secret sauce in the Politico shitburger.”

“Certainly at that point I was venting, I was spouting, I had frustrations at work, there were frustrations in some of the things that I saw that was going on on the Politico landscape,” he recalled. “And I vented and in error and I vented in a public place and that was a huge mistake.”

“There are a lot of frustrations in Washington, a lot of things that have racist kind of aura,” Williams added. “Politico, by and large, has a lot of things to deal with, questions as far as that’s concerned. Well, [minority] representation. Diversity is a problem for the entire D.C. press corps and I don’t think Politico is an exception in that regard.”

Watch this video from Current TV’s Full Court Press, broadcast June 27, 2012.