‘Incredibly racist’: Media use false reporting to attack lawmaker’s personal history

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), the first Mexican-American woman to represent Florida in Congress, is trying to fend off an onslaught by mainstream media attacking her personal lineage.

Since her election last year, Luna has established herself as a firebrand within the Republican Party. She has opposed sending tanks to Ukraine and demanded that legislators be permitted to carry firearms to work. She was one of the holdouts against Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid for House speaker, prompting heated negotiations which earned her and her colleagues major concessions from the establishment Republican. She also refused to attend the White House’s reception for freshmen legislators last month after learning that attendees would be forced to complete an “Attestation of Vaccination”.

Last week, Luna turned heads with her hostile interrogation of former Twitter executives who colluded with the Biden administration to censor scientists, medical experts, and conservatives. The executives also meddled heavily in the 2020 presidential election by censoring information about the Biden family’s corruption.

On Friday, the Washington Post ran an article on Luna suggesting that Luna lied about her family lineage and upbringing. The effort was largely unsuccessful: The globalist news outlet tried to claim Luna is actually White and not Hispanic, even though the congresswoman has never hid the fact that she is White on her father’s side and Hispanic on her mother’s side. Luna has also claimed to be part Ashkenazi, which the Washington Post scoffed at.

WaPo questioned Luna’s past relatives, roommates and friends to find evidence that could discredit the Republican congresswoman, such as the fact that she “sported designer clothing” while serving at Whiteman Air Force Base. This fact was brought to challenge Luna’s description of a “broken home” childhood, despite the fact that Luna, then an adult, was moonlighting as a professional model to bring in extra money.

But the Washington Post did manage to uncover that Luna’s grandfather may have fought in the Nazi German army during World War II, a fact which Luna’s mother said surprised her. However, having Nazi lineage is unlikely to be considered a demerit by WaPo. The news outlet has awarded high marks to Canada Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, the granddaughter of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak. Chomiak was the editor of the Krakivski Visti, a publication seized from its Jewish owners and used for Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust. 

“Holy s— the Washington post just tried to claim my dad was never incarcerated, left out comments from my mom, said I was a registered Democrat, and did not report a convo they had with a former roommate, and interviewed ‘family’ I don’t talk to. This is comical,” she tweeted after the article was published Friday.

In a subsequent interview with “Jesse Watters Primetime” guest host Will Cain, Luna said, “They did start out with saying that I basically made up the fact that my father never went to jail and, as you saw with the records that we sent to Fox News, that’s completely false. You know, my story, growing up within the welfare system, going to over six high schools. That’s not something that the Washington Post wants to tell the truth about.”

Luna grew up Christian, though she says her father — who never married her mother — attended synagogue.

“I think that my story is something that they didn’t want to believe is true. Again, I grew up within the welfare system. I went to over six high schools. My parents were never married. I think also one of the craziest claims that they’re trying to say I wasn’t raised as a messianic Jew. You know, I have documentation and photos of my father at synagogue. My mother confirmed this to the Washington Post,” Luna said.

On cue, other mainstream media outlets parroted the Washington Post’s article — though some, like the Jerusalem Post, added their own disinformation.

In a Sunday article titled “Congresswoman claims to be Jewish, revealed to be granddaughter of Nazi – report”, the Jerusalem Post argued that not only is Luna the granddaughter of a Nazi, she has even compared vaccine mandates to forced vaccinations and yellow Jude stars during the Holocaust.

“Luna has not shied away from invoking the Nazis in her political rhetoric online. In 2021, she tweeted a video insinuating that a registry of Americans who were not vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus would be akin to the Nazis' list of Jews. ‘Nazi Germany Registry' of Unvaccinated Americans: Think About It Like The Jewish Star,’ she tweeted,” wrote the Jerusalem Post.

In fact, Luna did not say that; those quotes were made by an FDA official in the video attached to Luna’s tweet. When she transcribed the official’s remarks above the video, she placed quotation marks around them to show that she was quoting someone else.

The Jerusalem Post, it seems, did not bother to watch the video from Luna’s tweet before attacking her.

“It’s awful how they treat minorities and the fact is the undertone of the article was incredibly racist. They tried to undercut my Hispanic heritage,” Luna said about the Washington Post article. “They even spoke to my mother and did a report on what she was posting. The Washington Post is compost and they should do better.”

Mainstream media struggle with a troubling racist culture. In addition to the Washington Post, MSNBC has been known to push its own bigoted narratives, such as claiming that conservative minorities do not represent minorities. 

"But faces of color do not always equate to voices of color,” MSNBC host Tiffany Cross said in October.

A poll conducted by WPA Intelligence last year found that most people who watch MSNBC and CNN believe that Hispanics who vote Republican have been duped by “disinformation”. 

Hispanic voters, long considered Democrat loyalists, began turning red after President Trump assumed office and began fleeing the Democrat Party in droves since Joe Biden occupied the White House. Recent polls show that Hispanics are almost evenly split between the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, a seismic shift in American politics the Democrats seem averse to acknowledge. 

The poll showed that 57% of MSNBC viewers and 54% of CNN viewers believe it is the spread of “disinformation” that is causing Hispanics to vote red at the ballot box, not their own culture and values. 

Another 20% of CNN viewers and 16% of MSNBC viewers said that “internalized racism” and a “desire to fit into white society" explained the political shift among Hispanics.