A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
A number of voices in conservative media piled on former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes on Friday following the publication of his piece in the Atlantic, “Trump’s Cuba Policy Will Fail,” criticizing the president’s reversal of Obama’s Cuba policy. “Rhodes, who famously admitted to creating an ‘echo chamber’ to sell the Iran nuclear deal to journalists who he said ‘literally know nothing,’ was one of the officials behind Obama’s outreach to the communist dictatorship,” wrote Breitbart’s Adam Shaw. “[W]hile Obama figures like Rhodes may be unhappy with the move, many Cuban dissidents are delighted by Trump’s reported moves.” In the afternoon, Rhodes tweeted that Miamians backing Trump’s visit to announce the new policy should be “embarrassed/held accountable,” prompting a series of angry responses.
“Rhodes’ rhetoric demanding some unspecified punishment of minorities who had the audacity to oppose the previous administration’s Cuba policy comes on the heels of Wednesday’s politically motivated terrorist attack against Republican members of Congress,” the Federalist’s Bre Payton wrote. “Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) remains in critical condition after being shot by a progressive Democrat activist who opened fire on the elected officials at a public park as they prepared for the Congressional baseball game, a bipartisan annual tradition.”
The Daily Caller’s Amber Athey reported that Trump won over the crowd in Little Havana. “The crowd was so thrilled by Trump’s reaffirmation of his commitment to the Cuban people that they spontaneously broke out into a loud ‘USA’ chant,” she wrote.
“Trump was loving the chant and pumped his fist in unison with a big smile on his face.”
In other news:
A number of sites ran posts on remarks made by provocateur Camille Paglia during an interview with the Weekly Standard in which she condemned “state-sponsored coercion to call someone a ‘woman’ or a ‘man’ simply on the basis of his or her subjective feeling about it.” The Daily Caller’s Amber Randall wrote that Paglia, a “famous feminist,” had “pointed out that liberals aren’t concerned with scientific facts when it comes to the debate about transgenderism.” The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo praised Paglia’s assertion that the prescription of puberty blockers for children amounted to a “criminal violation of human rights.” “Paglia is correct,” she wrote. “Giving your gender-confused child hormone blockers, therapies and even facilitating mutilating surgeries (yes, that happens) is tantamount to child abuse. In fact, there is a movement of such victims currently sounding the alarm on the so-called ‘transgender cult’ pushing these harmful ideas.” “Most conservatives stand opposed to almost everything Ms. Camille Paglia represents and advocates in both her politics and social values,” the Resurgent’s Patrick Fitzhenry wrote in a post appraising her recent political commentary. “But it is highly refreshing to see someone on the left express dissent intelligently, without vitriol and bile.”
National Review’s David French commented on the involuntary manslaughter conviction of Michelle Carter, a young woman who urged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself:
To argue that Carter committed manslaughter is to diminish Roy’s moral agency. It denies his free will. It’s wrong to deny compassion to someone so troubled that they’d attempt suicide, but we can’t move so far in the other direction that we race to find who’s “really” to blame when a person voluntarily takes their own life. It’s still an act of self-murder, and while Carter undoubtedly played a persuasive role, I can’t imagine where we will draw the line. Will we prosecute mean people for manslaughter when troubled teens kill themselves?
Finally, late in the day, the Daily Caller ran an exclusive on a list of assassination targets reportedly found on congressional baseball shooter James Hodgkinson’s body:
The list was written out on notepad paper and found in the shooter’s pocket, according to multiple sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. The list of names included Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan and Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, TheDC has confirmed.
The FBI has contacted at least one of the three congressmen to inform them of their inclusion on the list.
