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Paging Jessica Tarlov Re: Astroturfed Anger at DOGE
Jessica Tarlov is the token Democrat talking head often appearing on the Fox News program The Five surrounded by four more level-headed center-right and conservative commentators including Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Judge Jeanine Pirro, and often Dana Perino. It’s a thankless job but someone must do it. Typically, when Tarlov is unavailable, Harold Ford, Jr., a calmer and much saner thinker, takes the Democrat seat at the table.
Tarlov, the other day, made the point that even Republicans in red districts were not happy with Elon Musk and the DOGE effort to root out waste, fraud, and corruption in various government departments and agencies, and were raising their voices to object to the way that DOGE is going about its work. This seemed to be a Democrat talking point because other leftist commentators were aping this same story on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. (not that identical, unified messaging has ever <cough, choke> been spewed on these networks).
Here is Tarlov making her claim.
There’s just one problem with the claim. According to The Washington Free Beacon:
Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk ‘Backlash,’ Were Organized By Left-Wing Groups
Huh. Go figure. Who woulda thunk?
In one case, a former Dem county board candidate and self-described ‘political activist’ helped organize a viral demonstration in Georgia.
Turns out that George Soros-funded organizations were behind organizing these astroturf town halls. Again from The Washington Free Beacon:
Across the country, similar protests played out at House GOP town halls and district offices. The demonstrations drove mainstream media coverage of brewing backlash against the Trump administration as the lower chamber left Washington, D.C., for a week-long recess. Well-funded liberal organizations organized many of them.
The George Soros-funded groups Indivisible and MoveOn were at the center of the demonstrations. Both groups launched national “mobilization” efforts targeting the “Trump-Musk agenda” and “Trump-Musk coup” during the recess period. MoveOn said its “members and allies will show up at congressional-led town halls and congressional offices around the country, targeting House Republicans whose votes will be crucial in opposing Trump and Musk’s harmful policies.” Indivisible issued a “Musk or Us Recess Toolkit” that showed members how to find their local town halls and urged them to “take the fight to Elon.”
It did seem rather ludicrous that suddenly town halls around the country were being held in less than a month since Donald Trump was inaugurated…and to assume that Republicans who voted for Trump on the promise that Musk and DOGE would root out waste, fraud, and corruption had somehow changed their minds and now had buyers’ remorse.
We’ll see if Tarlov apologizes for spreading Democrat propaganda and a false narrative in the next installment of The Five this afternoon. I’m sure she has a decent contract with Fox News but there do appear to be openings at MSNBC where she might feel more at home.
Published in General
I should have known the Dems were behind all that ! And Soros! Thanks for sharing this, Brian.
It’s inconceivable.
Here’s an unexpected narrative:
Remember Andrew Yang? He Just Conducted a Poll on Trump’s Approval—Bet He Wishes He Hadn’t
I won’t watch the Five is she is on. I really like Harold Ford Jr, who can hold his own without being shrill. Plus he has a good sense of humor and gives it right back to Waters and Gutfeld unlike Tarlov. She won’t apologize.
I’ll bet with the withdrawal of the USAID cash, we’ll see even more of the Patriot Front!
The question remaining is whether Tarlov knew that these town halls were fake and funded by Soros organizations – or – whether she was duped.
She’s a media professional in the news business. She has the resources and connections to find out what’s bogus and what’s real before commenting on it publicly. Either answer to the question noted above is not good.
More like she’s a propaganda professional in the media business. She was just reading off her talking points.
She is clearly a Democrat supporting opinion media type. When alleged facts are used in the opinion narrative, she has a responsibility to fact check before repeating.
Fox News has always gone out of their way to include a Democrat party person in their shows to liven up the discussions. Alan Colmes, Bob Beckel, Juan Williams, Donna Brazile, Harold Ford Jr., Geraldo Rivera (technically a TDS RiNO), Mara Liasson, etc.
And also on their regular news shows; Sheppard Smith, Chris Wallace, etc.
For the first time ever, politicians are openly promoting WASTE, FRAUD, & ABUSE. We expect them to promote such things behind closed doors, but this is brazen theft.
I wonder if the new FBI will look into such groups.
Speaking of Harold Ford, Jr, wonder why he hasn’t tried to run again. He’s at least a level headed democrat. Maybe that’s why.
They just covered this on today’s show, though Jessica Tarlov was not there.
Some social apps do that as well, to drive engagement. But I don’t mean to be paranoid.
As someone who has worked protests and carried the long stick protests are organized. When you have hundreds of people showing up on the street with the same signs and several capos using bullhorns to lead the chants and the crowd magically appears to block traffic on a specific highway or a city street that is funded by political advocacy groups.
When you have the mainstream media that does not know the difference between a riot and a peaceful protest, they help feed the appetite of organizers to cross the line between protected speech and criminal activity.
In one battle between Antifa and the Proud Boys an Oregonian reporter was hit in the head with a bottle. The report from the Oregonian was they could not determine who launched the bottle. I can assure you it was not the police. We did not use glass bottles as less than lethal impact munitions.
I can’t take her voice, let alone her views.
Know that there are also protest hoaxes – take a small number of people with signs, stick them in front of an unrelated crowd, snap the photo, and leave. It looks all the world like you’ve assembled a large protest.
I’ve actually seen this done at a newly opened Chic-fil-A restaurant in San Jose. There was a large crowd of happy customers with the line wrapped around the building, and some folks came in with a protest banner on two PVC poles, stood in front, snapped the photo, and headed out.
For years and years and years I worked for Wall St banks and brokers. Every two weeks we published PowerPoint documents showing what our teams had done during the past two weeks. What’s the big deal?
Unless…..
You haven’t accomplished a damn thing in the past two weeks
I was walking around a Tea Party rally early in the movement. There were a few hundred people there, mainly little old ladies in red, white, and blue floppy hats and a few odd politicians. Some clown popped up in the crowd. He was wearing a multicolor fright wig of the type that the John 3:16 guy wore on Monday Night Football broadcasts. Instead of scriptural enlightenment, his sign read “Obama is a Martian Space Wizard.” The local TV news film crews materialized, got footage of this nitwit and his sign, and evaporated. He ended up featured on the evening news.
Maybe we were fortunate to work in the financial business. Whether it was a single station or a whole department tellers’ line, bookkeeping, or proof department when I worked in the banks, we had to finish and balance the work every day. The seven years I was Chief Disbursing Officer for Treasury I had several regional disbursing centers that had to deliver every work day and I had statistics on performance to see comparative productivity for expended resources. The years in software development were a little different but still very measurable. This is not complicated.
You’re shocked that a Democrat espouses Democrat talking points? Next thing you know you’ll be telling me that Scott Jennings is saying Republican things over on CNN! Unbelievable!
Not shocked. Just wondering if she knew it was bullish*t when she espoused it.
Like this example shows, her positions are often superficial, easily countered by reality. One wonders how much self awareness Tarlov has. Is she independent but unintelligent and careless, repeating any advantageous point she hears? Or is she a good soldier, always on board with the message of the day?
And what of the show bosses, what is their purpose re Tarlov? I get the need to drive engagement. I note that she gets more talk time than the other four, and I think that the cons take it a little easy on her. Has anyone on the panel called her out for this or anything similar?
Last week, I
The latter. She delivers talking points like a pro.
Like I mentioned above, Fox has a long history of bringing in Democrats, and giving them the opportunity to make their point, which makes the shows far more interesting.
I’m listening to today’s Five now. It’s Harold Ford today. He’s reliably left-apologist, and he kept it short today. Jesse is entertaining.
I think we might have a vulnerability with our Captain of DOGE. Disruption is great, but Elon’s asperger-boss move with the email is guaranteed to cause conflict. People answer to their boss in the org chart, not to a cross-cut management program no matter how wonderful.
You know what I’ve been expecting? There was this autocrat one time who managed his government by keeping responsibilities informal and granting his lieutenants overlapping authority. If all these leftists today with their third-reich-sight (I see Hitler …) had learned any deep history, they’d be all over that comparison.
Despite her vocal-fry voice, Jessica Tarlov is a major upgrade over her predecessor, the execrable Juan Williams.
But I’d be very happy if Harold Ford Jr. ended up replacing her full-time.
Who is paying for this? I thought we had stopped the USAID funding of the left?
The instructions were to include their manager in the response.
Similar instructions are issued regularly to white collar workers all the time. If you are STEM and you are familiar with the Agile project management methodology, this is old hat.
It will be interesting to see how brand new hires react to getting asked to do what is apparently freaking out most of the federal employees. It would also be interesting to know how many of the federal employees just forwarded their current weekly status reports (or an appropriately edited version) on to Elon.
Democrats are going to have a great time defending government employee(s) who do not put in a full day or government wasteful projects when we are trillions in debt.