Salon.com > Daily Caller

Melissa Harris-Perry doesn’t want to steal your children

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Melissa Harris-Perry thought it was, in her words, "an uncontroversial comment." But when the MSNBC host and political commenter made a "Lean forward" spot for the network in which she made the bold wish "for Americans to see children as everyone’s responsibility," the conservative spin machine went into extra-frothy mode.

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have," she says in the spot. "We haven't had a very collective notion of, these are our children. We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, we start making better investments."

Tucker Carlson, you’re no Andrew Breitbart!

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Strangely, the night before the latest humiliation of the Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson -- by a Washington Post report that the Caller’s key source for its “scoop” that Sen. Robert Menendez patronized prostitutes now says the website paid him to find women who would lie about it -- I watched the documentary “Hating Breitbart,” a hagiographic 90 minutes of the late Andrew Breitbart ranting, vamping and raging for the admiring camera of his friend Andrew Marcus.

I wasn’t going to write about it, not because I hate Breitbart – I didn’t, and don’t – but because, sadly, it’s kind of slight. It doesn’t do justice to its outsize subject, however much it worships him. But the Carlson news juxtaposed with the documentary reminded me how much more talented Breitbart was than the pale imitators he left behind – as well as how much his rage-fueled, by-any-means-necessary character assassination posing as journalism lives on, albeit ineptly.

Report: Lawyer links Daily Caller to paid Menendez prostitutes

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:47:00 +0000

According to law enforcement officials in the Dominican Republic, a local lawyer alleges that he was approached by someone claiming to work for the Daily Caller about finding prostitutes who would say they were solicited by Sen. Bob Menendez, the Washington Post reports.

From the Post:

The local lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

The details are sketchy and the lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, is unreliable, himself accused of paying the prostitutes to lie about Menendez. He also recently accused four news outlets, including the Caller, CNN, Telemundo and Univision, of pushing him to make up the allegations.

Dominican police say prostitutes were paid to lie about Menendez

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 20:05:00 +0000

Three Dominican women were paid to falsely claim that Sen. Robert Menendez solicited them for prostitution, according to law enforcement officials in the Dominican Republic.

The Associated Press reports:

Police spokesman Maximo Baez says officers traced the payments to attorney Melanio Figueroa. Baez says two women received about $425 each and the other was paid about $300 to falsely state on camera that they had sex with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Baez said at a news conference Monday that authorities were seeking to interrogate Figueroa about the payments. Figueroa did not respond to messages left at his office. The women's videotaped statements were published on a conservative U.S. website. Menendez denied the allegations.

The Daily Caller was the first to bring attention to the allegations, when it published a video back in November with two of the women, appearing with Figueroa, who claimed that Menendez paid them for sex at the home of shady Florida ppthamologist Salomon Melgen. Earlier this month, one woman claimed in a court filing that she had been paid to make up the prostitution claims. The Caller eventually allowed that “several troubling elements in the story remain.”

The exoneration of Bob Menendez?

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:37:00 +0000

Remember that story about Bob Menendez and the two prostitutes from the Dominican Republic that major news outlets were so hesitant to pursue? It turns out it was for good reason. One of the two women who initially claimed that Menendez paid for sexual acts has recanted. According to the Washington Post:

The woman said a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez and a top donor, Salomon Melgen, according to affidavits obtained by The Washington Post.

That lawyer has in turn identified a second Dominican lawyer who he said gave the woman a script and paid her to read the claims aloud. The first lawyer said he found out only later that the remarks would be videotaped and used against Menendez, the affidavits say.

Knives out for Ashley Judd

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:38:00 +0000

Actress Ashley Judd has faced an unusual onslaught of political attacks for someone who hasn't even announced that she is running for office. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom she is reportedly considering challenging, has already run an ad mocking her, as has Karl Rove's American Crossroads. Today, add the Daily Caller.

Alex Pappas, the Caller's best reporter, writes today that "Ashley Judd’s biggest problem" is "her history of bizarre comments." The comments, about gender inequality and mountaintop removal coal mining, could be damaging in conservative Kentucky, but are not overtly explosive.

Daily Caller’s outrageous smear

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:35:00 +0000

In the grand tradition of Daily Caller scoops, the latest one leveling sex scandal allegations at Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., seems to have underwhelmed the general public.

Last night, the Drudge Report and the Daily Caller were hyping a sex scandal involving a "powerful" U.S. senator. It turns out, the story involved two Dominican women who claim Menendez paid them for sex. The evidence is pretty flimsy, relying on testimony from the two women, who identified a client as Menendez by looking at a picture. Nor does the Caller have any evidence that Menendez was definitely in the Dominican Republic at the time. From the Caller:

"When shown a photograph of Sen. Menendez, the women said they recognized him as the man with whom they’d had sexual relations at Casa de Campo this spring. Both said they were brought to the resort with the understanding they would be paid for sex.

Neither knew the identity of the man at the time. Both claimed to recognize him later as Sen. Menendez.

'He called him[self] "Bob,"' said one."

Conservatives screech bias over Raddatz

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:18:00 +0000

If it's the week of the vice-presidential debate, it's time for conservatives to accuse the moderator of being biased. Last time, in 2008, the problem was that Gwen Ifill was writing a book about race and politics and it had Obama's name in the subtitle, which was obvious proof that she was "in the tank." This time, the connection between the Obama campaign and moderator, Martha Raddatz, is even more insidious: Obama was at her wedding!

Her first wedding. In 1991. Because she was marrying a Harvard Law classmate of Obama's. This story comes, naturally, from the Daily Caller, which got a big Drudge link out of it. Shocker: Obama danced. "A source who attended the 1991 wedding told TheDC that Obama was also a guest there, and remembered that a man by the name of 'Barry Obama' was among the guests dancing at the reception." Liberals consider Raddatz a mouthpiece for the Pentagon, so I'm sure they'll be relieved to learn that she is secretly In The Tank.

Underwhelming Daily Caller “scoops”: A recent history

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:57:00 +0000

When is a scoop probably not a scoop? When it's published by Tucker Carlson's conservative news site the Daily Caller. Here is a recent, and incomplete, history of its biggest flops:

* This week, the conservative site put out a four-part series on a 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank that trumps up Obama's role defending 186 African-American clients, when he was an associate at a law firm in the '90s. Most of the plaintiffs in the case were ultimately foreclosed on, the Caller reported. The Caller, in other words, wants the takeaway to be that Obama was totally responsible for precipitating the mortgage bubble. But then it admits that maybe Obama was ultimately not very involved after all. From the Caller, emphasis ours: "The Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1998 that Obama claimed $23,000 in billable hours for his role in the lawsuit. That role was limited, partly because he was networking his way toward his 1996 election to the Illinois Senate. But he stayed with the firm until 2004, and it was his lawsuit."

Daily Caller scoop: Obama didn’t kill bin Laden fast enough

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:55:00 +0000

The Daily Caller has a scoop! Barack Obama didn't kill Osama bin Laden, because of political reasons, and it was Valerie Jarrett's fault! Obama canceled a mission to kill bin Laden three times, for... some reason. (Valerie Jarrett hypnotizing him.) But then I guess he uncancelled it and now bin Laden is dead.

This is according to an advance copy of a book by conservative war journalist Richard Miniter, and Miniter's source is "an unnamed source with Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning."

“President Obama’s greatest success was actually his greatest failure,” Miniter told The Daily Caller Friday.

That is a hilarious line. What?

The only way a "the president canceled a mission to get bin Laden" attack makes sense is if the president is one of the presidents who didn't authorize a successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden. That is true of every president besides the one that Miniter and the Caller don't like. Even if the facts of this story are entirely correct -- and trust me, they're not correct, it's a Daily Caller story -- it's... meaningless. Bin Laden could have been dead maybe a couple months earlier, if the president had real guts!

Angry Daily Caller person shouts at president

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:21:00 +0000

So. The president was just giving a Rose Garden address announcing his administration's plan to stop deporting certain immigrants. Neil Munro, a reporter from Tucker Carlson's "Daily Caller," decided to start shouting at him, in the middle of the president's statement. "What about American workers who are unemployed as you import workers," he shouted, and "Why’d you favor foreigners over Americans?" President Obama looked pretty pissed at him. Munro kept shouting more things as the president actually attempted to answer his question, and then Munro walked away, after telling everyone that he's an immigrant. (Why did some president import him?)

It is in no way surprising that a Daily Caller reporter would act like a tremendous, disrespectful asshole, as "act like an asshole" is essentially the Caller's mission statement. Presidents shouldn't be afforded god-like respect by the press or the citizenry, but "don't interrupt people while they're talking to angrily shout disagreeable things at them" is just sort of basic politeness, really. (Of course, in a movie written by a liberal screenwriter -- *cough cough* Aaron Sorkin *cough cough* -- Munro would be a hero. And in a movie written by a liberal screenwriter, he also wouldn't be an obnoxious right-wing Irish-accented twit, and also his question would not be paradoxically nativist nonsense.)

Daily Caller genius: I don’t feel bad for black people anymore because I think a black person stole my bike

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Mark Judge would like the world to know that he no longer has any "white guilt" because his bike got stolen and the perpetrator may have been a black person, or possibly (the culprit is still at large!) black people in general.

Who is Mark Judge? He is some guy writing an opinion column for Tucker Carlson's online magazine, "Assumption of Trayvon Martin's Guilt Illustrated." (He is also the author of some awful-sounding book about being a right-wing Catholic who likes rock 'n' roll music, and he once wrote an unintentionally funny review of John McWhorter's book about hip-hop.)

What happened is, he had his bike locked to his car while he went to services on Good Friday, and when he came back, his bike was gone, and he doesn't think a nun stole it so basically his parents lied to him when they said "we are all the same" and his favorite movie is no longer "In the Heat of the Night." (The deductive reasoning on display is staggering: It couldn't have been monks, must have been black people.)

The right is attacking Media Matters because it matters

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:11:00 +0000

"Inside Media Matters," declares a Daily Caller headline on an article written by right-wing icon Tucker Carlson and journalist Vince Coglianese earlier this month, which claims that "Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior close coordination with White House and news organizations." The article launched a series aimed at attacking and undermining the popular progressive media watchdog group.

The Daily Caller paints a picture of a nefarious organization founded by an egomaniacal leader operating in the cover of darkness, working to prop up Democratic Party politicians. Boasting of their access to internal Media Matters memos and interviews with "current and former" employees of Media Matters, Carlson and Coglianese breathlessly report about some admittedly strange antics of founder David Brock and of the organization's success in achieving "its central goal of influencing the national media."