Youngkin’s victory has resulted in indignation, not self-reflection.
Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we catalog the progressives who insisted that Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia was attributable to his campaign’s winking at racists, remember the fanatical champions of the discredited Steele Dossier, and hit more media misses
Democrats Run Back the Racism Canard
In the final leg of Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, Democrat Terry McAuliffe leaned heavily upon characterizing his opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, as either a racist or, at the very least, someone cynical enough to appeal to racists.
At one event sponsored by the McAuliffe campaign, a surrogate insisted that a Youngkin ad — that referenced but did not mention African-American author Toni Morrison or her book, Beloved — was a “disgusting and gross . . . racist dogwhistle.” Another accused Youngkin of seeking to “silence black authors,” through racially motivated book bans.
McAuliffe released a statement using the same language. Youngkin had expressed support for a bill vetoed by McAuliffe and backed by 14 members of Virginia’s Black Legislative Caucus that would have notified parents of sexually explicit material and allowed individual exemptions. Youngkin’s ad did not mention race or book bans — or the bill he criticized McAuliffe for opposing.
The smears did not dissuade voters from choosing Youngkin over McAuliffe — who began the general election cycle as a heavy favorite — last Tuesday.
Incredibly, the loss has sparked less self-examination than it has indignation. Virginia has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 2008 and just chose a black woman (Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears) for statewide office for the first time in its history. But the corporate media didn’t let those inconvenient facts get in the way of their diagnosis: Youngkin’s win was driven by hatred and bigotry:
Nia-Malike Henderson, CNN: “Glenn Youngkin played the race card for a reason”
Chris Hayes, MSNBC: “He did stoke white grievance politics”
Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC: “He’s laundered Trump’s really sort of disgusting, flagrant, out racism, he’s wrapped it in ‘education.’”
Joy Reid, MSNBC: “‘Education,’ which is code for: White parents don’t like the idea of teaching about race”
Wajahat Ali, The Daily Beast: “Whiteness remains undefeated. Let’s wait and see who those white suburban voters went for tonight in Virginia. Any guesses?”
Tiffany Cross, MSNBC: “The subtext of all this was: We can’t let these black and brown people run the country.”
Van Jones, CNN: “I think all the CRT [Critical Race Theory] stuff is trumped-up dogwhistling.”
Brianna Keilar, CNN: “Some of it was dogwhistle racism.”
Mara Gay, New York Times: “One thing is clear, if Democrats don’t learn how to talk about race, Republicans will do it for them.”
Jemel Hill, The Atlantic: ”It’s not the messaging, folks. This country simply loves white supremacy.”
Andrea Mitchell, NBC: “You cannot ignore the racism in this race; it is not just a subtext, not just a dogwhistle.”
Chuck Todd. NBC: “I think it’s a new dogwhistle.”
Greg Sargent, Washington Post: “But this cannot entail backing off holding Republicans accountable for the conflict and chaos their race-baiting demagogy has unleashed.”
Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media correspondent, was unable to pick up on the trend. When Batya Ungar-Sargon, Newsweek’s deputy opinion editor, pointed it out to him on Stelter’s show, the host countered “There’s a hundred medias, a hundred reactions; you’re being pretty over-generalizing, I think.”
Ahead of the 2022 midterms, the only thing more encouraging for Republicans than Youngkin’s victory may be Democrats’ reaction to it.
The Steele Dossier and Its Disciples
John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to investigate the origins of the federal investigation into alleged ties between Donald Trump and the Russian government, handed down a new indictment last Thursday. Evidently, many claims made in the infamous “Steele Dossier” came from information relayed by a Democratic operative, contrary to the prior testimony of Igor Danchenko.
While many on the right were instinctively skeptical of the dossier thanks to its fantastical claims (remember the “pee tape”?) others took its word as gospel. Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine wrote in 2017 that “The Steele Dossier on Trump Is Looking More and More Real.”
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes invited Chait on his show to discuss the writer’s “unlikely but possible” theory “that Trump has been a Russian intel asset since 1987.” Fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow brought former director of national intelligence James Clapper on her show to insist that nothing written in the dossier had been disproven, and former FBI director James Comey who called its namesake, Christopher Steele, “reliable.”
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the dossier “corroborated” and said there was “no evidence Steele was wrong.” Her colleague Max Boot parroted an apparently ill-informed intelligence official who maintained that “a lot of it is bearing out.”
We now know that the Steele Dossier was poison fruit born of a poison tree, but we may never know if its dissemination by major media figures was the result of incompetence or malice.
Headline Fail of the Week
On its home page, CNN posted: “Often lamented by critics, ‘SNL’ gets raves, led by Cecily Strong.” The piece is authored by the aforementioned Stelter. He recaps it thusly:
“On ‘Weekend Update,’ Strong played ‘Goober the Clown Who Had An Abortion When She Was 23.’ Take three minutes and watch the video if you haven’t seen it yet. On Twitter, it has already racked up more than 2.5 million views, according to the site’s metrics.
“I found that it took a second viewing to fully appreciate what Strong was doing with the segment. It was a ‘startlingly effective bit of political commentary,’ Vanity Fair’s Karen Valby wrote. In the words of TheWrap’s Andi Ortiz, ‘her candor left fans cheering.’”
The segment included lines such as “it’s a rough subject, so we’re gonna do fun clown stuff to make it more palatable.” A startlingly effective bit of political commentary, indeed, but not in the way Stelter means.
Media Misses:
• Democrats weren’t the only ones to learn the wrong lessons from Election Night. Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took the occasion of Youngkin’s victory to declare that “President Trump continues to be a huge boost for Republicans across the country.” Youngkin won in Virginia a year after Trump lost the state by ten points to Joe Biden.
• Tom Nichols mused, “So, the guy who defeated the NJ senate president ran because he was denied a concealed carry permit. I’m sure this will all go very well and produce a fine, informed legislator.” When the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out that running for office was a logical response to having constitutional rights infringed upon, Nichols replied, “I don’t recall the concealed carry part of the Constitution.” Time will tell what kind of legislator Edward Durr will make, but Nichols can hardly claim to be well-informed himself.
• A New York Times push notification this week asserts that “Americans are in a better financial position than they have been in many years,” and asks, “Why do they believe the economy is in terrible shape?” The notification seemingly ignores that the price of food, gas, and utilities have skyrocketed and that Americans are increasingly encountering empty shelves in stores due to supply-chain constraints, increasing demand and labor shortages.
Even MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called attention to rising costs — and Democrats’ lack of public concern on the issue.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough blasts Democrats on messaging:
“I haven’t heard a Democrat this year talk about how groceries cost more, how gas at the pump is costing more…the supply chain is screwed up, inflation is high.” pic.twitter.com/QL1TLif1my
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 5, 2021
• MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan disingenuously argued that parents’ concern over critical race theory being taught in schools is “based on nothing”:
An apolitical friend asked me tonight: “But where did this Critical Race Theory thing in VA come from?”
Me: “Nowhere.”
Them: “But it must be based on something?”
Me: “Nope. It’s based on nothing.”
Them: 😳They couldn’t believe it. Normal people can’t believe this stuff works.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 3, 2021