Jan. 6th rioters are 'patriots' - and pedophiles and rapists and wife-beaters

Recent NPR report is exactly the sort of 'liberal bias' that Republicans hate

By Sam Bellamy

News programs at NPR and PBS tend to produce the types of stories that Donald Trump and his Republican quislings detest.

Truthful ones, to be specific.

In a nation reshaped and misshaped by Fox News and imitators like Newsmax and One America News, it’s all too easy for conservatives to bemoan the supposed liberal bias of public broadcasting, simply because its reporters don’t traffic in – to use Kellyanne Conway’s adorable phrase – “alternative facts.” Or lies, to be specific.

All of which is why the FCC is launching an investigation of public broadcasting.

The focus of the probe would be funny, if the consequences weren’t so dispiritingly bad.

"I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials," Trump’s new head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, wrote last week to the presidents and chief executives of NPR and PBS. "In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements."

Egads, a cruise line is out of its swim lane. I feel faint! I must lie down!

Most of us see and hear these “underwriting announcements” and shrug. Some of us, to be honest, might have reacted to the first one we saw by wondering aloud when PBS started running commercials. And some of us, too, might find it unseemly for PBS to run self-serving blurbs for major corporations with sketchy records that might make them potential subjects of news coverage.

But snippets of commercialism are much easier on our blood pressure and mental health than, say, $100 Trump commemorative coins, $1,000 Trump-autographed Bibles or – the latest – Donald and Melania meme coins, whatever the hell those are, selling for about $75 each during the inauguration.

So, this is our reality: Republicans don’t want to direct tax money to public broadcasting but are hopping mad when public broadcasting attempts to raise money. But it’s perfectly OK for the president to use his public office as a personal U.S. mint.

"For my own part,” Carr wrote. “I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS given the changes in the media marketplace.”

The Republican hatred of public broadcasting, as I discussed in a recent column, is rooted in an inferiority complex that causes their faces to redden and their bodies to squirm when they hear the words “Sesame Street” or “Masterpiece Theater.”

PBS viewers and NPR listeners tend to be better educated, more appreciative of cultural offerings that lack car chases and flying folding chairs and generally vote Democratic.

Republicans will say this is an elitist point of view indicative of why Democrats lost the blue-collar vote. There’s some truth to that, as I – a fellow raised in a blue-collar home among blue-collar neighbors and likes a good car chase every now and then– can attest. When people look down their noses at you while telling you about all the wonderful things they’ve done for you, you tend to look over their shoulders for someone else to talk to.

But the people over those shoulders, Republicans, tend to be the Machiavellian sort, sometimes smart too, but intent on stripping away all the good things – Social Security, minimum wage, somewhat affordable health care, safe working conditions and even child labor laws, among other policies we take for granted – that Democrats actually did accomplish for blue-collar workers.

Regardless, it’s not my experience that many non-PBS and non-NPR listeners get riled up about public funding of those entities – unless, of course, the master con man, Trump, whips them up into a frenzy over it.

Interestingly, a special group of such frenzy-whipped people were the subject of a special investigative report issued the day after Carr sent his letter harrumphing about high-brow commercializing.

The NPR piece was about the multitude of Jan. 6 rioters, freshly pardoned by Trump, with criminal records so lengthy and sordid that they would make the least law-abiding Mexican immigrant blush.

For instance, there’s patriot and day of love participant Theodore Middendorf of Illinois, who was sentenced last year to 19 years in prison for what prosecutors called “an act of sexual penetration” against a 7-year-old victim.

Or how about Peter Schwartz, whom Trump freed from prison. In the sentencing for his role in the Jan. 6^th lovefest, federal prosecutors noted that he had a "jaw-dropping criminal history of 38 prior convictions going back to 1991,” including biting his wife in the forehead and hitting her multiple times.

Here’s how prosecutors said Schwartz parlayed that experience into beating cops on behalf of Trump: “Schwartz threw the first chair at the line of officers, creating an opening in the police line in the northwest corner of the terrace that enabled hundreds of rioters to flood the LWT [Lower West Terrace] as overwhelmed officers were forced to retreat. He then stole chemical munitions, including pepper spray, that had been left behind by the fleeing officers and used that pepper spray as a weapon to attack those same officers as they desperately tried to escape the growing and increasingly violent mob.”

He's certainly a sweetheart worthy of a few $Trump or $Melania memo coins as a thank you, but take a look at Kasey Hopkins, who was sentenced to only four months for his part in the riot, despite what prosecutors described as a lengthy criminal record that included a previous assault on a police officer as well as a rape conviction.

Kasey Hopkins, one of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6th rioters pardoned by Trump and celebrated as patriots, previously served a prison term for brutally attacking, raping and urinating in the mouth of a woman.

Here’s how prosecutors described Hopkins’ character for his sentencing report: “The defendant had forcible intercourse with the victim, choked her to the point of impairing her vision, banged her head into a wall, and urinated into the victim's mouth to humiliate her. When the victim attempted to flee, naked, the defendant caught up to her and threw her down."

Trump freed nearly 1,600 rioters. It appears discussions about picking which criminals to pardon were such a strain on him that he declared, “F--k it: Release them all,” according to a report from Axios. For good measure, last week he fired the federal prosecutors and FBI agents who brought those rioters to justice and is hunting for anyone else involved in those cases.

Since being pardoned, one rioter has been shot and killed by a police officer while allegedly resisting arrest with a firearm on him. Another is facing charges of child sexual assault and child pornography involving two young girls in his family.

At this rate, some undocumented workers might choose to return home rather than deal with Trump’s reprobates on parade.

Now, it’s true – as Carr claims – that the media marketplace can report many of the things that NPR and PBS do. But, in the coverage of Trump’s patriots, it appears to me that NPR got there first and told the story well.

Sure, these fine MAGA specimens didn’t do anything nearly as awful or illegal as disguise a verboten commercial as an “underwriting announcement,” but I do appreciate hearing about their pasts just the same.

I don’t mind some of my tax money going to support quality reporting and television programming. Snooty of me, I know, but – hey – pardon me.

On the cover: New FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who wrote a chapter on the media in Project 2025