Leftist media backtracks after false reports that conservative host said at CPAC that transgender people 'must be eradicated'

During his speech Saturday at CPAC, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said, "For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level."

Knowles was underscoring how deleterious the transsexual movement has been, not just on the individuals who have been sterilized and mutilated with the help of pharmaceutical reps and surgeons, but on women and girls whose sex-specific spaces (e.g., prisons, bathrooms, shelters) and events have been infiltrated by biological males masquerading as women.

Multiple left-leaning media outlets — the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone in particular — ran false reports intimating that Knowles had made physical threats, calling for the eradication of transsexuals and their so-called community.

Knowles immediately demanded retractions.

Despite subsequent changes to their headlines and in some cases editorial notes, a number of these liberal outfits and others continue to intimate that opposition to an agenda is tantamount to "genocide."

The speech

Knowles, a conservative commentator, spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Saturday, discussing marriage and gender issues.

He noted that conservatives "suffer from low expectations – we think the thing we can most hope for is that we halt the left exactly where it is."

Rather than accommodate the left, making concessions about the age children must be to undergo sex-change surgeries, Knowles suggested conservatives ought to reject leftist ideology outright, especially when it comes to transsexuality.

Knowles said, "There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men can really become women, then it is true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can become women, as they cannot, then it is false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it."

Here are the remarks with some context:

Leftist apoplexy and disinformation

The remarks were not well received by the left.

John Knefel of Media Matters called the speech "[e]liminationist, genocidal rhetoric."

Adam Vary, a senior entertainment writer at Variety, tweeted, "Pay attention. This is genocidal. That is not hyperbole or alarmist; this rhetoric is calling for the eradication of a group of people for who they are."

The California Democrat, who proposed offering "Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum" and introduced legislation softening penalties for pedophilic statutory rape, suggested Knowles had called for genocide.

State Senator Scott Wiener tweeted, "It’s a straight up call for genocide. That’s what this fight is about. They want us gone."

The liberal media happened to agree.

The Huffington Post ran a piece originally entitled, "At CPAC, A Call For Trans People To Be 'Eradicated' Gets Big Cheers."

The Daily Beast originally ran a piece entitled, "Michael Knowles Says Transgender Community Must Be 'Eradicated' at CPAC."

The Rolling Stone, which has paid out millions in the past for false reporting and defamation, ran a piece with the headline, "CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be 'Eradicated.'"

Geoff Wetrosky, Human Rights Campaign’s national campaign director, told Rolling Stone, "Their words rile up far-right extremists resulting in more stigma, discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people. The rights and very existence of trans people are not up for debate."

It would appear that, contrary to Wetrosky's suggestion, the inciting language was not in Knowles' speech but in the liberal media's false coverage of his speech.

Pseudo-revisions

Knowles immediately called out the liberal outfits, accusing them of libel.

He tweeted to Rolling Stone, stating, "This headline is libelous, and I demand a retraction."

The Daily Wire host wrote both to Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post, who also reported on Twitter that Knowles had "called for trans people to be 'eradicated,'" and to the Daily Beast, noting, "I never said that and demand a retraction."

The HuffPost has since amended its article's headline to read, "CPAC Speaker’s Trans Comments About ‘Eradication’ Sound Downright Genocidal."

Previously, it claimed in the body of the article, "There are an estimated 1.6 million trans people in the United States. Knowles told the CPAC crowd that these people should not have a right to exist."

It covertly added in "essentially," so the sentence reads, "Knowles essentially told the CPAC crowd that these people should not have a right to exist."

The Daily Beast changed the headline of its article to "Michael Knowles Says Transgenderism Must Be 'Eradicated' at CPAC."

The Rolling Stone changed its headline to "CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People" and provided an editorial note stating, "This post has been updated to include statements from transgender rights activists and additional comments from Knowles."

The augmented Rolling Stone piece contains commentary by Erin Reed, a male transsexual LGBT activist, on Knowles' demand for a retraction, suggesting that it's "an absurd distinction. There is no difference between a ban on 'transgenderism' and an attack on transgender people."

Reed claimed, "They are one and the same, and there's no separation between them."

Following the changes, Knowles tweeted, "I’m pleased to see that both @thedailybeast and @RollingStone have at least partially admitted their dishonesty by changing their libelous headlines. I look forward to seeing the other outlets that are defaming me follow suit!"

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) commented on the leftist outfits' false headlines, writing, "It is indeed libelous. It’s an example of how a bad Supreme Court ruling from 1964 (NY Times v. Sullivan) has created a monster—giving the news media a license to lie about any public figure who can’t prove that the reporter acted with 'actual malice,' which is nearly impossible."

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