Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we review the media’s reaction to the expulsion of two Tennessee Democrats, recap yet another mistruth from Rebekah Jones, and hit more media misses.
Talking Heads Rally around the ‘Tennessee Three’
Tennessee’s Republican-led House voted Thursday to expel state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two of the three Democratic lawmakers who staged demonstrations on the House floor last week to call for gun control. A vote to expel state Representative Gloria Johnson, who was also involved in the protest, failed by one vote.
The vote came after Jones got into a scuffle with a fellow lawmaker and all three encouraged raucous protesters in the House chambers during a demonstration in the wake of the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville that killed six people, including three children.
Protesters stood on a balcony within the chambers chanting, “Fascists! Fascists!” Demonstrators also blocked several entryways and exits, forcing state troopers to step in to assist members in moving throughout the building.
“What they did is they hijacked the House floor which has never been done in our history,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton told National Review of the three lawmakers. “They pulled out a bullhorn. They weren’t recognized. They were ruled out of order and they led a protest from the House floor with a bullhorn to those in the balcony. They shut down the proceedings of the House. We had to go into recess due to their actions.”
“They disregarded the sergeant at arms asking them to leave the well at multiple occasions and they really didn’t stop yelling in their bullhorn until I had to clear out the balcony because of behavior that was caused blatantly by those three members,” continued Sexton. “Those actions that they did on the House floor deserve expulsion.”
Nonetheless, after the vote to expel Jones and Pearson on Thursday, the cable news talking heads’ Chicken Little–style screaming quickly ensued.
CBS News anchor John Dickerson warned that the move was a “maximalist” reaction and could lead to violence.
“Well, politics needs some cartilage. It needs some give. It can’t be totally brittle. So when you have a situation in here where, okay, Republican lawmakers thought these Democrats broke decorum and stepped out of line, there are a series of steps to punish. But when you go to the maximalist, when you kick them out, that’s brittle. There’s no give,” he argued.
He continued: “When there’s no give, the only way the other side gets to respond is by punching back. And so, when you lose those interim steps, all you get is response and response and response. And that is not only — you know where that leads. Right? That leads to violence.”
He went on to suggest that the reason democracy and faith in the judicial system are “so important” is that we’re “at a moment where – more on the conservative side – but on both sides, you have people who think the system isn’t working, we’ve got to effect change outside of the system through violence.”
Over on MSNBC, hosts and guests invoked Easter and the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ when discussing the lawmakers’ expulsions.
The Reverend Mark Thompson appeared on The ReidOut just before Pearson was ousted and said, “for these Republicans in Tennessee to do this, and for them to be so evangelical and as Bible-thumping as they are, to not realize the irony in trying to expel three today on the eve of the day when tomorrow, when three were crucified, simply for standing up for what is right and trying to end gun violence in this country.”
Host Joy Reid then took a similar tack: “I will just close on his behalf by saying it is apostasy to call yourself a Christian and claim you believe in God and Jesus when what you believe is in death, what you believe in is distributing as much death as possible to as many people as possible, even your own children, because you don’t love them like you love firearms. You don’t love them like you love the NRA.”
She concluded by telling Republicans not to go to church on Sunday “and put your money in the basket hoping it will grow as a seed and multiply” because all the GOP is multiplying is death.
Jason Johnson, while discussing the expulsions as guest host of MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, noted the proximity of Easter and the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to suggest “this is a time of year we have to remember that governments have a tendency to kill Black men who stand up against oppression and violence on behalf of the underprivileged and underserved.”
Before Pearson’s ousting, Johnson, who is white, suggested to reporters that the reason she was spared expulsion while Jones, who is black, was voted out “might have to do with the color of our skin.”
CNN reporter Sara Sidner suggested during an interview with Representative Jeremy Faison, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Caucus, that despite his claims that the three lawmakers were riling up the crowd, “I can tell you from the reporters that were out there, the crowd was already riled up.”
Sidner’s insistence on defending the three Democrats led Faison to suddenly end the interview. Sidner told Faison that the protesters were “extremely upset that your legislature wasn’t trying to deal with the issue of keeping children safe in school but instead going after these two Democrats.” She went on to suggest ousting the two Democrats had led to “tens of thousands of constituents that are also being punished and don’t have any representation right now.”
Faison dismissed Sidner’s suggestion that the crowd was already riled up and said the three lawmakers were essentially “leading a choir” and giving the protesters hand signals.
Sidner pushed on, saying CNN reporters spoke to protesters, some of whom were teachers, “who were so distraught, they were near tears because they could not believe that their lawmakers were doing this, as opposed to dealing with the biggest issue at hand — the No. 1 killer of children is gun violence. And they wanted y’all to do something about that instead of wasting time — in their mind — when it comes to this.”
“It’s not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace,” Faison concluded. “The conversation can’t happen because they’re sucking all the air out of the room. So I would just push back on you, saying we can’t get there if they won’t let us.”
Meanwhile, Sexton rejected claims that he and other Tennessee Republicans are silencing the lawmakers.
“They speak on bills more than anybody. They speak in committees more than anybody. They’ve had the same opportunities and they’re held to the same rules and standards as all other members in the House body, but what they did had nothing to do with the protests that went on inside or outside the chamber,” Sexton told National Review. “It was about their actions inside the chamber and what they did to disrupt the proceedings.”
“When they came off the House floor, they asked their caucus if they were going to be arrested,” he said. “When you ask someone if you’re going to be arrested, then you know that you’ve done something very wrong.”
Sexton’s critics conveniently ignore that the Tennessee legislature is currently considering a GOP-backed proposal to provide more than $200 million in funding to public schools and, crucially, private schools like Covenant. And Tennessee governor Bill Lee has already signed into law a bill that enables private schools to contract with local law-enforcement agencies to hire school resource officers. (National Review reported earlier this month that Christian schools throughout the country have increased security measures in response to the shooting and are struggling to figure out how to fund increased expenditures.)
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) shared her own ominous warning in response to the expulsions.
“Republicans may think they won today in Tennessee, but their fascism is only further radicalizing and awakening an earthquake of young people, both in the South and across the nation,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “If you thought youth organizing was strong, just wait for what’s coming. Gen Z don’t play.”
The comment was just one of several controversial remarks the progressive “Squad” member made this week: She suggested that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas be impeached over his friendship with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow after a ProPublica investigation found the justice had domestic and overseas travel covered by the Republican donor, despite Crow and his firm not having had a case before the Supreme Court since Thomas was confirmed. She also said the Biden administration should ignore a federal judge’s ruling that suspends the FDA’s approval of the abortion-pill mifepristone.
Vice President Kamala Harris gave her own impassioned speech at a Tennessee church on Friday.
“It wasn’t about the three of these leaders. It was about who they were representing. It’s about whose voices they were channeling! Understand that!”
“And is that not what a democracy allows? A democracy says you don’t silence the people! You do not stifle the people!”
She added: “You don’t turn off their microphones when they’re speaking about the importance of life and liberty! That is not what a democracy does.”
Headline Fail of the Week
The Miami Herald fell hook, line, and sinker for Rebekah Jones’s latest lie last week, publishing a headline claiming, “13-year-old son of Rebekah Jones, whistleblower who clashed with DeSantis, arrested over memes.”
The paper ultimately changed its extremely misleading headline to reflect the reality of the situation: “Son of Rebekah Jones, Florida Whistleblower, arrested in probe of threatening internet posts.”
The paper initially took Jones at her word when she claimed in a Twitter thread that her son was “kidnapped” on the order of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
“My family is not safe,” Jones tweeted. “My son has been taken on the gov’s orders, and I’ve had to send my husband and daughter out of state for their safety. THIS is the reality of living in DeSantis’ Florida. There is no freedom here. Only retaliatory rule by a fascist who wishes to be king.”
Jones was fired from the Florida Department of Health in 2020 for insubordination. She was later charged with accessing a state computer system without authorization to send a mass text urging state employees to speak out against Florida’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. She ultimately signed a plea deal admitting guilt to the charges and agreeing to pay a $20,000 fine. She rose to prominence by making a number of false claims about Florida’s Covid-19 response.
She suggested the arrest was retaliation for a lawsuit she filed last month in an effort to get her job back. Yet video shows Jones turning her son in to authorities, refuting her claims that he was “kidnapped.”
She claimed her son had been cleared as “not a threat” by local police and school officials and that he had only shared internet memes about mass shootings in a group chat with his friends.
As the Pensacola News Journal reported, Jones’s son had in fact made several concerning threats on social media. He allegedly said, “I want to shoot up the school,” and “If I get a gun I’m gonna shoot up [Holley Navarre Middle School] lol.”
Other messages included: “I’m getting a wrath and natural selection shirt so maybe but I don’t think many ppl know what the columbine shooters look like” and “Okay so it’s been like 3-4 weeks since I got on my new antidepressants and they aren’t working but they’re suppose to by now so I have no hope in getting better so why not kill the losers at school.”
Media Misses
• Jen Psaki, MSNBC’s newest host, suggested Republicans are hypocrites because “after all their outrage and fearmongering, they are the ones who want to defund law enforcement.” Her comments came in response to calls to defund the FBI and DOJ because of the politicization of those agencies. “So if you worry about crime and want law enforcement to be fully funded and supported, the only place you should be directing your outrage for not doing more, it turns out, is MAGA Republicans and their now indicted leader,” she said.
• MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan looked past some of the startling findings in the Twitter files in favor of presenting minor gotcha errors during an interview with journalist Matt Taibbi this week. Taibbi ultimately addressed two of the errors, which included misidentifying the Center for Internet Security with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a contested number of flagged tweets. “For @mehdirhasan to gloat over two minor errors, while dismissing both the substance of censorship story in the #TwitterFiles and the fact that those stories exposed significant uncorrected mistakes by his own network, is incredible. I stand by my work.”