Just a day after they tried to shame Second Lady Karen Pence for working at a Christian school, the CBS Evening News took time out of their Thursday broadcast to try and downplay the rampant and well-documented anti-Semitic and racist bent of the Women’s March organizers.
CBS finally found the topic over a month after a Tablet magazine story had been circulating that detailed how deep the organization’s anti-Jewish roots crept. But judging by the report by CBS correspondent and former MSNBC host Alex Wagner, it may have been to defend why their upcoming protest in Washington, DC would be so small (just 10,000).
“Several factors have seemingly contributed to lower enthusiasm, weather conditions, a lack of funding, and controversy,” she noted. As the sole example given for the controversy, Wagner pointed to a recent interview Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory did on The View:
Women's March co-president Tamika Mallory appeared on The View this week defending her association with Louis Farrakhan, top minister in the Nation of Islam, an organization dedicated hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of the “racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric of its leaders”. Mallory posted this photo with Farrakhan on his birthday in 2017 calling him the “GOAT”, the greatest of all time.
“Certain chapters have canceled their plans for this year, citing concern over Mallory's support for Farrakhan and the group's refusal to remove her from its board,” Wagner added before giving Woman’s March national co-chair Linda Sarsour a platform to claim the group’s leadership were against anti-Semitism. Of course, there was no mention of Sarsour’s own string on anti-Semitic sentiments and ties to the Nation of Islam.
Wagner seemed to excuse the group’s behavior, suggesting: “Sarsour understands the current controversy to be an inescapable part of building a big tent movement.” If the Women’s March was trying to grow a “big tent movement” like Wagner asserted, then why was a California rally called off for being “overwhelmingly white?” And why did they only explicitly invite “Jewish women of color” to the DC event?
CBS effectively turned the other way in order to not draw attention to the highly detailed and credible Tablet piece. In it, one of the group’s original leaders, Evvie Harmon, exposed Mallory’s bigoted feeling toward white people. “Tamika told us that the problem was that there were five white women in the room and only three women of color, and that she didn’t trust white women. Especially white women from the South,” she explained.
Tablet also spoke with former March spokeswoman Mercy Morganfield and questioned her about the group’s anti-Semitic bent. “There are no Jewish women on the board. They refused to put any on. Most of the Jewish people resigned and left. They refused to even put anti-Semitism in the unity principles,” she told them. In other words, it was a direct contradiction to what Sarsour told CBS.
Morganfield would also expose that the Women’s March’s ties to the Nation of Islam ran deep. “It was around this time that Morganfield says she first heard that Nation of Islam members were acting as security detail and drivers for the co-chairs,” Tablet found. “Two other sources, with direct knowledge of the time, also claimed that security and the drivers for the co-chairs were members of the Nation of Islam.”
Therefore, CBS and Wagner misled their viewers about just how bigoted the Women’s March organizers were. It was clear they were trying to protect the group, because as they were wrapping up the segment, Wagner downplayed what the smaller crowd meant for the group.
“Organizers say a decline in participation is inevitable. Three years after that first historic march, but they point to the results of the 2018 midterms as proof that women across the country are engaged, evidence that the spirit of the march remains strong,” she boasted.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CBS Evening News
January 17, 2019
6:46:55 p.m. EasternJEFF GLOR: For the third straight year this the Women's March will take place in several cities on Saturday. Organizers say they're resisting Trump administration policies and building power. But this year's event will be different as Alex Wagner explains.
[Cuts to video]
ALEX WAGNER: Millions made history at the first Women's Marches across the country in 2017. One million rallied in D.C. alone. But this year Washington organizers are expecting far fewer in attendance, around 10,000. Several factors have seemingly contributed to lower enthusiasm, weather conditions, a lack of funding, and controversy.
TAMIKA MALLORY: I go into a lot of difficult spaces.
WAGNER: Women's March co-president Tamika Mallory appeared on The View this week defending her association with Louis Farrakhan, top minister in the Nation of Islam, an organization dedicated hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of the “racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric of its leaders”. Mallory posted this photo with Farrakhan on his birthday in 2017 calling him the “GOAT”, the greatest of all time.
MALLORY: Just because you go into a space with someone does not mean you agree with everything that they say.
SUNNY HOSTIN: But let me push back a little bit. Why call him the greatest of all time?
MALLORY: I didn't call him the greatest of all time because of his rhetoric. I called him the greatest of all time because of what he's done in black communities.
WAGNER: Certain chapters have canceled their plans for this year, citing concern over Mallory's support for Farrakhan and the group's refusal to remove her from its board. Organizer Linda Sarsour.
LINDA SARSOUR: The Women's March and the leadership of the Women's March unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia.
WAGNER: Sarsour understands the current controversy to be an inescapable part of building a big tent movement.
SARSOUR: Sometimes we’ll have hard conversations but I believe in our potential as a movement and I’m not going to turn back on an intersection women's movement.
[Cuts back to live]
WAGNER: Organizers say a decline in participation is inevitable. Three years after that first historic march, but they point to the results of the 2018 midterms as proof that women across the country are engaged, evidence that the spirit of the march remains strong.
GLOR: Okay. Complicated story but good to have you here.
