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Tag: coronavirus lies
Kris Kobach

Trump Ally Kobach Marketed Dubious Product That ‘Kills COVID’ To Kansas Legislators

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Back in October, far-right Republican Kris Kobach — Kansas' former secretary of state and a "birther" who promoted the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama wasn't really born in the United States — promoted a device he claimed would fight COVID-19. But a two-month investigation by the Columbia Journalism Review, according to the Kansas Reflector, showed nothing to verify Kobach's claims.

Kobach, along with his business partner, Daniel Drake — the CEO of MoJack Distributors in Wichita — made a sales pitch to Kansas legislators in October. Drake described the product as a "revolutionary" device that would "kill COVID" and claimed it would bring "several hundred jobs back to Wichita."

Kobach told Kansas legislators, "This stuff is very cutting-edge," saying that he wanted to give them the "first bite at the apple" and noting that the product was part of a new line called Sarus System.

"The former, controversial secretary of state and his new business partner made sweeping claims before the (Kansas) Legislature about the efficacy of Sarus Systems' products, but experts say the claims were misleading," Kansas Reflector reporters Jeremy Fassler and Nia Yancopoulos explain. "After a two-month investigation, Columbia Journalism School was unable to verify the vast majority of their statements."

Fassler and Yancopoulos continue, "There is no evidence Sarus Systems has made material steps toward rehoming hundreds of jobs to Kansas, and shipping records show products are currently being manufactured in China. There is also scant evidence their machines, or ozone in general, can safely eliminate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And while the pair have hyped the products' popularity, claiming a three-month backlog and international interest, we were unable to verify any purchases — from the State of Kansas or otherwise."

In October 2020, Fassler and Yancopoulos note, Drake claimed that his product did more to fight COVID-19 than common household cleaners — saying, "Our product actually kills COVID, SARS-CoV-2, everywhere, everywhere, it can touch. So, it kills the underneath of the desk, top of the desk, the underneath of the chair, the air in the room, the cracks and crevices in the keyboards. It does a 100% super deep clean job that even a human couldn't do."

In Kansas, Kobach is infamous not only for his birtherism, but also, for his voter suppression efforts. The former Kansas secretary of state ran for governor in 2018 but lost to centrist Democrat Laura Kelly, who is now Kansas' governor, by 5%.

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Punishing The Murdochs For Carlson’s Racist Poison

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Tucker Carlson is responsible for the vile rhetoric he spews to the Fox News audience every night. But it is Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the billionaires who pay his salary, who decided to make him the unaccountable face of their right-wing propaganda network.

Carlson turned his show into a clearinghouse for white nationalist talking points, denouncing the immigrant "invasion" he claimed was ushering in the systematic "demographic replacement" of Americans and making the country "poorer, and dirtier,"because that's what the Murdochs wanted.

After the Fox host spent 2020 pushing lies about the novel coronavirus that endangered the lives of his viewers, spreading bigoted invective about Black activists seeking an end to police violence, and encouraging violent right-wing vigilantism, the Murdochs promoted him.

So when he denigrates pregnant active duty U.S. service members, then lies about the massive backlash he received from rank-and-file members of the military, veterans, the brass, and the Pentagon in order to paint himself as a victim, he does so knowing the Murdochs will have his back.

Carlson is now Fox's lodestar. He has its highest-rated show, his commentary is regularly injected into the rest of the network's coverage, and his work is the lynchpin of Fox's new push to generate sign-ups for its Fox Nation streaming platform. Like his colleague Sean Hannity during the Trump administration, Fox treats Carlson as too big to fail, too important to restrain.

The Murdochs made Carlson the face of Fox even as advertisers have abandoned his program. Its commercial blocks now effectively consist of spots for a right-wing pillow company; ads the network is purchasing from itself; and tumbleweeds. Thursday night's show featured a single ad break with a total of six commercials, one of which was a Fox promo.

Changing the calculus for the Murdochs means ensuring that Carlson's brand is no longer an asset to their other revenue stream.

That means encouraging corporations that don't want their own brands tarnished with his bile to remove their advertising from the entire Fox network. And it means that people who don't want to be inadvertently supporting Carlson should push their cable carriers to stop financing his bigotry.

The Murdochs care about money. The best way to reduce Carlson's malignant influence is to make him less profitable for them.

Donald Trump

‘Cheerleader’ Trump Tries To Talk His Way Past Woodward Revelations

Donald Trump is defending his decision to downplay the coronavirus outbreak, telling reporters his deception occurred because he is a "cheerleader for this country."

"I love our country and I don't want people to be frightened, I don't want to create panic," Trump said on Wednesday. "We don't want to instill panic, we don't want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a tremendous problem, scare everybody."

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