Author Archives: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

“The Left is attempting to cancel an important voice for liberty — The Epoch Times newspaper,” wrote Colorado Congressman Ken Buck in a fundraising email today, spotlighting Buck’s claim that The Epoch Times had its U.S. House Gallery press credentials revoked.

Investigations by NBC, the New York Times and the Atlantic paint a picture of the newspaper as a hotbed of partisanship and pro-Trump misinformation, including promotion of QAnon and election fraud conspiracies.

In an interview posted on his Shootin’ Straight podcast yesterday, Buck asked Dr. Dana Cheng, one of the founders of The Epoch Times, if she thought there are “forces in the United States that are trying to limit” her newspaper’s “access to information or “de-legitimize The Epoch Times” as a press outlet.

“Yes,” Cheng replied, “They are left media, like the New York Times, and the Atlantic, and NBC. They put a lot of effort to write hit piece to discredit us. And it is such a surprise. We thought that this is a free country and people respect each other’s speech. And people respect each other’s right to do media and respect different voices. But obviously, they are trying to suppress our voice. It’s agenda-driven.”

“My friends saying, ‘We thought that China is going to become America. But instead, America is going to becoming China,'” continued Cheng, whose Falon-Gong movement newspaper is on an anti-communist crusade. China has persecuted Falon Gong members.

Last year’s Times’ investigation described how The Epoch Times evolved to become a “partisan powerhouse” that’s “created a global-scale misinformation machine that has repeatedly pushed fringe narratives into the mainstream.”

Cheng complained to Buck about recent “hit pieces” with “a lot of lies” that have been directed at The Epoch Times.

“And they don’t care to check with us or they don’t care to find out whether it’s true or not,” she told Buck “It is clearly agenda-driven. And this is such a surprise. For us, we fled communists. And we thought, ‘This is a free country and we can enjoy the freedom of speech, freedom of press. And we can provide a voice, that people can choose.”

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Scott Gessler.

Scott Gessler, a candidate to lead the Colorado Republican Party, recently bragged about how media savvy he is, claiming credit for getting Colorado Public Radio to run a story critical of a top Colorado Democrat.

But last week, he made a media-relations mistake widely regarded as amateur: After conducting an interview with ultra-conservative blogger Holly Casan, he asked that she keep the recording of his comments under wraps.

“So I am going to ask you one thing, and I should have demanded this at the beginning,” Gessler told Casan, according to a recording posted on Casan’s website. “So I know you’ve recorded me. I’m going to ask you not to make the recording public.”

Gessler’s comments came at the end of his interview with Casan, directly after she had complimented Gessler on his “candor.”

“Listen, Scott, thank you for your candor, and you really clarified a lot of things for me and my readers,” Casan tells Gessler in the recorded segment posted on her website. “I think it was super helpful to hear it from you in long form, so that, you know, we were able to air out the details in long form. And I just think that’s really valuable. And I really appreciate you taking the time.”

Casan agreed to Gessler’s request but nonetheless published a transcript of her Gessler interview with a little bit of audio on her website, which is called “The Real Scott Gessler.”

Gessler is a former Colorado Secretary of State and former candidate for governor with tons of media experience. He even indicated in his Casan interview that you normally lay out the rules for an interview, if any, before it takes place, not after.

So Gessler’s unusual request to can the audio recording led his critics to speculate that he was so concerned about what he’d said during his recorded conversation with Casan that he wanted it buried.

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

This post was written by Gabrielle Bye, a reporter for the Colorado Times Recorder.

A controversial school board recall effort in Douglas County, Colorado, could set the stage for a covert political battle.

Parents in Douglas County announced last month an effort to recall more than half of the county’s school board members after the school board voted to postpone a transition to hybrid or in-person learning for middle schoolers and high schoolers.

The school district was supposed to start in-person or hybrid learning for students no later than Jan. 25, but the school board postponed that return to Feb. 8 after some students and teachers expressed concern.

As a result, Nate Ormond, from Castle Rock, started the Road2Recall campaign by donating $100,000 of his own money to the cause, hoping to collect enough signatures to recall four members of the board: Christina Ciancio-Schor, Elizabeth Hanson, Susan Meek, and David Ray.

Dana Torpey-Newman, Chair of the DougCo Democrats, told the Colorado Times Recorder that she is strongly opposed to the recall, calling it “really shady.”

“The school board elections are divided into two different times,” explained Torpey-Newman. “Four of the seats are up in November, and the other three seats were up two years ago.”

“Those four seats will flip the board, if [conservatives] win them back,” Torpey-Newman said. “And what they’ve decided to do, interestingly, in their recall, is they’ve decided to try to recall the three people who were just elected in 2019, and now they are targeting one of the school board members who is actually in the same district as… Nate Ormond. He lives in the district of Christina Ciancio-Schor, who is the fourth person who they are recalling.”

Ciancio-Schor’s seat, however, is up this November.

So what’s the point of recalling someone whose election is practically around the corner? Torpey-Newman hypothesizes that Ormond is planning on a coup.

“He wants to run for the seat. That’s what I think,” Torpey-Newman said. “I don’t think that is a good idea, given that he doesn’t know anything about the school board.”

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(Facebook is forever – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

About five years ago, Kenneth Wilkison got in a Facebook dispute with Denver-area lawyer Elliot Fladen that ended with Wilkison writing, “And JEWs wonder why they are so disliked.”

Fladen is reflecting now on why he mostly ignored Wilkison’s comment.

Part of the reason, says Fladen, is that Wilkison was a “nobody,” just another extremist on Facebook, where Fladen is used to taking hits.

That changed recently as Wilkison began mounting a campaign to be vice-chair of the Denver Republican Party.

Wilkison became a itsy bitsy somebody.

A screenshot of Wilkison’s exchange with Fladen (right) verified by sources, as well as another post in 2018 in which Wilkison accuses Fladen of “circling the wagons to protect your rich, fellow Jew,” (referring to Polis) began circulating (below).

In response, just after Wilkison was elected vice-chair this week, Denver Republican Party leader Garrett Flicker said he and other newly elected Denver Republican leaders asked Wilkison to resign.

“We asked him to resign, and he did,” Flicker told the Colorado Times Recorder.

Wilkison didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Fladen is wondering if he should have done more five years ago to expose the posts by Wilkison, who also once served as treasurer of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans.

“What should we do when confronted by racist or anti-semitic statements from people who are nobodies in the world?” asks Fladen, who has only a vague memory of the Facebook exchanges with Wilkison, which Fladen did not unearth himself.

It’s a question we deal with every day at the Colorado Times Recorder as we expose misinformation, bigotry, and hate, much of it on social media and talk radio.

I pretty much agree with Fladen, who doesn’t have a clear answer.

“The lesson here is, the person who you think of as a nobody could become somebody,” says Fladen.

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(What’s old and weird is new and slightly less weird – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Jonathan Lockwood, once considered a right-wing GOP activist, wants Colorado Republicans to have a “robust conversation about whether we will be the party of Lincoln or loonies.”

And he’s challenging his opponents in the race to lead the Colorado Republican Party to a “formal debate” addressing that question and others.

“Do they condemn QAnon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and sedition?” Lockwood asks of his GO opponents, Kristi Burton Brown, the current vice-chair of the Republican Party and Scott Gessler, a former GOP secretary of state in Colorado.

Let’s take Lockwood’s questions one at a time.

On condemning QAnon, the question is more tricky than it appears. Many Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), say they “don’t follow” QAnon.

But they don’t condemn the conspiracy theory, which focuses on Trump-hating satanic pedophiles embedded in the government.

How great if Lockwood could press Burton Brown and Gessler on whether they fully condemn QAnon.

On Lockwood’s question about Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), do Colorado’s GOP candidates agree with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnel of Kentucky that Greene’s “loony lies” are a “cancer” to the GOP?

With respect to sedition, Lockwood’s last question, his two opponents for Colorado GOP chair have already stood up in support of election conspiracy theories, which fed the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol last month.

On Facebook, Lockwood hits Burton Brown and Gessler, both lawyers, hard on the topic.

“Trump’s own attorneys won’t defend him but two attorneys I’m running against won’t stop defending him,” Lockwood writes. “We need the head of the Colorado GOP to be a leader, not a follower.”

So maybe Lockwood should table sedition for the time being and ask a few other questions that illuminate whether Colorado Republicans want to be Lincoln or loonies, such as:

Do the Republican candidates think Weld County should leave Colorado and join Wyoming? Do they think Boebert has the right stuff to be president one day? Do they think humans are causing global warming at all? Was current chair Congressman Ken Buck right to say definitively, “our votes are not being manipulated,” speaking about Colorado’s own election? Are they in favor of scrapping Colorado laws requiring universal background checks for gun purchases and limiting the number of bullets allowed in guns. What about Colorado’s red-flag law allowing law enforcement to take a gun from a person deemed dangerous by a judge? Is gay marriage good for Colorado?

Jonathan Lockwood won’t win his race to lead Colorado’s Republican Party, but he can talk sanity at dozens of small GOP gatherings across the state, like a Feb. 25 meeting of Republican Women of Weld County.

He might catch some shit for talking sense about QAnon, Greene, succession, and the like, but you’d think he’s gotta be able to convince some Republicans that the party of loonies isn’t going anywhere in Colorado anytime soon–unless Republicans do something about it.

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

A local filmmaker has teamed up with community groups to produce a documentary featuring tragic stories, told from multiple perspectives, about an immigrant detention facility in Aurora.

The film, titled “The Facility” and premiering online Friday, spotlights current and former detainees, living on the inside, and family members and advocates, fighting for their release on the outside.

A trailer for the documentary presents detainees and family members describing abuse at the facility.

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-ifle).

You knew the only thing stopping Congresswoman-elect Lauren Boebert (R-CO) from exploding across the conservative underworld nationally was actually getting elected.

Now that she’s cleared that obstacle, Boebert is lighting up social media, Fox News, and other right-wing platforms as she launches her national campaign for…anything that will draw more attention to herself.

That’s the theme that runs through Boebert’s life. To the extent she’s been successful in business and politics, it’s because she knows how to get attention.

The latest sign of her national rise is her travel schedule.

She was on the radio over the weekend bragging not about returning to Colorado in December to talk to constituents but, instead, about “fun trips,” first to Georgia to inflame right-wingers there in hopes of getting them to vote.

“A couple of fun trips in December that we are taking,” Boebert told KNUS’ Randy Corporon Friday. “I’m gong to Georgia to help with the Senate races. And I’ll be down there with Senator Cruz. And we’ll be rallying the troops down there” (here at 43:30).

Republicans are worried that Trump’s lies about rigged elections will keep loyal and logical conservatives from voting in Georgia’s upcoming Senate election, because, why vote if the election is rigged anyway?

Boebert continues to not only question the election results, but also attacks any elected official who isn’t doing the same.

If you’re not fighting for election integrity, don’t bother running for re-election. We need more fighters, not less!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) December 1, 2020

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