Talk:Andrew C. McCarthy

speedy deletion
This bio was updated with recent information. There is no need to delete it now. Larryfooter 04:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It's still a blatant rip off of a .org site that has no evidence that it is in the public domian. I apologize for removing the hangon, because at the time it was not tagged.  Then I realized why it was in my watchlist (I think TW watchlists all articles tagged), and then checked the logs and realized that I had tagged it before.  The text is the same.  Please, please, please, c-and-p'ing is bad. hbdragon88 04:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Second time that this copy and paste has been done. Doesn't look good - LarryFooter, I've reported your editing to WP:AN/I. There is more than enough warning messages that tell you not to copy text from other websites without a GFDL-compatible license. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I had permission to use modified versions of that content from the author - apologies for not adding the tag - when you the article is unblocked, i will add it back in with the proper content tags ... and doesn't your user page say "Can everyone just clam down?" ... not a bad idea! Larryfooter 03:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Permission is not enough. Will the copyright owner allow the material to be released under the GFDL? If so, tell him/her to send an email to permission at wikimedia dot org. hbdragon88 03:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

When this is all straightened out, we'll need to merge it with Andrew McCarthy (journalist). -- Randy2063 20:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Is it the same person? - Ta bu shi da yu 23:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. He writes for National Review, as that article says, but I don't think he's technically a journalist.
 * -- Randy2063 00:51, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * So should we just move the material in Andrew McCarthy (journalist) into Andrew C. McCarthy? Would be easiest. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I just did the move.  FWIW: I'm not certain about the claim that he served as a lawyer for Rudy Giuliani, but I haven't read all the sources yet. -- Randy2063 17:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * He worked under Rudy Guliani at the Southern District, and says so in his book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.--71.38.210.205 (talk) 23:32, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

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Deleted section titled '2017 special counsel'
I deleted this section. It read:

McCarthy believes that the 2017 special counsel investigation conducted by Robert Mueller is simply a corrupt attempt to impeach President Donald Trump.

There is no citation for the claim. I am aware that McCarthy has written at length about the probe, and that he has argued the special counsel has its sights set on impeachment. But there is no evidence that he believes the special counsel probe is "simply a corrupt attempt to impeach" Trump. The implication of corruption is specifically unsupported by his writing, and the word "simply" carries some NPOV problems.

"Conspiracy theory" claims from editor of Wikipedia
I removed the unsupported claim that McCarthy engaged in "conspiracy theories" during the Obama administration. There was no reliable source to support this claim. It is attack by an editor of Wikipedia on McCarthy. There has been no reliable source provided to support this. There needs to be a reliable source provided to support this claim before this defaming information is re-inserted into the article.--CharlesShirley (talk) 12:28, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe removal was correct action because WP:BLP says remove contentious "poorly sourced" material. There was a cite to a book review but WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV says that for opinions in-text attribution would be required, and in any case picking a negative book review was not a WP:NPOV thing to do (I had no trouble googling a positive one). Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:46, 1 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Conspiracy theories revisited

"I removed the unsupported claim that McCarthy engaged in "conspiracy theories" during the Obama administration. There was no reliable source to support this claim"--

the fact that McCarthy thought and repeatedly stated that Obama was a secret Muslim doesn't qualify as a conspiracy theory? That he was using the presidency to promote Sharia Law?

https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-andrew-mccarthy/

"Andrew McCarthy, who has served as an advisor to leading Republican politicians like Ted Cruz, has worked with anti-Muslim groups like the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center to advance falsified and unfounded claims about Muslims. He has also advocated for discriminatory practices that would target Muslim communities."

"McCarthy is the author of four books, among them a New York Times bestseller, on the topic of Islam and Muslims, including titles How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America."

"Like many who run anti-Muslim groups, McCarthy does not believe Islam is a religion, but an “ideological, sweeping system.” The notion that Islam is a political ideology or totalitarian regime, and not a religion, is a common anti-Muslim trope. It also carries serious potential consequences — Muslims would not be afforded the same constitutional protections as other religious communities."

I could go on.. Conspiracy theory is absolutely warranted as a descriptor of McCarthy's bigotry, fear mongering, and outright lies — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.104.129.49 (talk) 23:24, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

There is a consensus that Mother Jones is a RS
RS Perennial list:. Thus, there is zero reason to remove content sourced to Mother Jones, other RS and primary sources. Content that is 100% verifiably accurate. The Daily Beast is also considered a RS per the RS perennial list, and there is ZERO reason to doubt that the content sourced to the Daily Beast is inaccurate. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:28, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll compromise on leaving the Ayers matter in even though I still think it is undue. The whole of the information in the MJ source is in this quote: Sadly, Sementelli didn’t ask about whether McCarthy still thinks former Weather Underground member William Ayers wrote Obama’s autobiography. This doesn't really support the text in any case; I think we should stick with the New Yorker source you found for this reason if nothing else. The DB source is very thin as well, and RSN says "Some editors advise caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons."Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no "controversial statement of fact", so that caution regarding the Daily Beast is completely redundant in this case. The MoJo sources is a source for the fact that McCarthy pushed the insane conspiracy theory that Ayers wrote Obama's autobiography. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The New Yorker source is sufficient for the statement that he promoted the claim about Ayers. The MJ source only implies this (it directly says only that he wasn't asked a question), and MJ is clearly inferior to New Yorker per RSN.Shinealittlelight (talk) 17:51, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * This is very tendentious. The MoJo source explicitly says that McCarthy pushed the falsehood and links to the actual piece written by McCarthy where he explicitly pushes the falsehood. That "caution" regarding the Daily Beast is null and void, given that there is ZERO dispute over the fact that McCarthy pushed the theory. It's incredibly weak form and unprincipled to argue for the exclusion of text based on a misreading of the RS perennial list, and then edit-war even after your misreading of the list has been corrected. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Your claim that The MoJo source explicitly says that McCarthy pushed the falsehood is just not true. The MJ source says only that Sadly, Sementelli didn’t ask about whether McCarthy still thinks former Weather Underground member William Ayers wrote Obama’s autobiography. I'm not edit warring; we have a good faith disagreement, and we need to try to find consensus. My proposal was to accept your substitute source (the New Yorker), which seemed clearly superior to me, and to drop my concern that the matter was undue. Let's both try to give a little here to improve the article. Shinealittlelight (talk) 18:39, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Recent editing seems to be more about New Republic than Mother Jones or New Yorker, and I see that Snooganssnoogans also wants to insert thinkprogress.org, mediamatters.org, etc.. The New Republic source is biased so citing it without attribution would be a violation of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, and also it contains a quote of McCarthy which is available in National Review where he said it, so citing New Republic would be a violation of WP:RS ("To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted.") I believe that Snooganssnoogans's insertion and re-insertion of such contentious material is not appropriate in a BLP. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Removed unsupported editorial assertion re falseness
Here I've deleted the word "false" from the assertion, "promoted the false theory that Bill Ayers, co-founder of the militant radical left-wing organization Weather Underground, had authored Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father". The assertion is unsupported here and is made in Wikipedia's editorial voice. There are sources reporting that Ayres has himself has claimed to have written the book, and other sources saying that he must have been joking when he said that or, perhaps, he said that in order to hypa a book of hia own ). I have no idea whether Ayers or anyone else ghost-wrote the book, but if this articles is to assert that assertions that Ayers wrote it are false, that assertion needs support, and WP:DUE needs to be followed if alternative sources with different viewpoints on that exist. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 18:49, 27 May 2020 (UTC)


 * There is no dispute among anyone who isn't a delusional crackpot that Obama authored Dreams from my Father. By suggesting to readers that there is an active dispute, we are violating both FRINGE and BLP. The notion that Obama didn't author Dreams from my Father can either be considered a falsehood or it can be described as a conspiracy theory. When you removed "false theory", I added "conspiracy theory", which is an attempt at compromise. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:07, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Following WP:BRD, I'll respond that the assertions in the article both of promotion and of falsehood are unsupported. Your reversion resulted in an edit conflict with my attemmpt to supply a cite supporting the promotion; that cite would have been. I have not added it to your post-revert article version because it only supports the assertion re promotion and does not support the assertion re falsehood. I am neither disputing that the theory was false nor asserting that it was true. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:32, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Looking at that source I was thinking of citing, I see that McCarthy says that he was inspired by the analysis here by Jack Cashill. I see that the article on Cashill only asserts that he promoted that authorship theory, not that the theory was false. Perhaps you would like falsify it there and to to add support for that falsification to both articles. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:53, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

... and, looking at the edit summary of this edit and seeing that the 'Barack Obama section of the article which cites that Ref 13 mentioned there and others, I see that the body there does have more info than the lead about the promotion of the theory, but it does not assert its falsehood. The lead should not go beyond what the body says on this. I looked at this diff of the article prior to my edit and the current version, and I see that the theory is now called a "conspiracy theory" in both places without being asserted as true or false in either. As this is supported in the body, I wouldn't argue for the cn in the lead. I would be happier if the theory was characterized as "disputed" rather than as a "conspiracy theory", and I think the cited sources support that, but I'm not going to spend a lot of effort arguing over it. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:09, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Snooganssnoogans, When I put the word dubious instead of false in on the information about the “death panels,” that was my attempt to compromise, but you didn’t accept it, The word false is an absolute word, meaning there’s absolutely no chance it could be true. The word dubious means it’s probably not true, but there’s a remote possibility it might be. For the purposes of this article, the word dubious, (even though it’s a stronger word than I would like), is an effective compromise, imo. Jay72091(2) (talk) 00:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

McCarthy's change of opinion about Trump
What's wrong with saying McCarthy did an about-face? First, he writes a book praising Trump, and Trump endorses it. Then he says Trump has done something impeachable. How is that not an about-face? We don't need any source at all for that. Would you prefer the word "reversal"? Stylistically, it just seems we need to transition into the opposite attitude; otherwise it's jarring and confusing to the reader. How do we transition without using a transitional phrase? YoPienso (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nothing. But it has to be backed up with a reliable source. If there was a reliable source that said it then I missed it. Was that quote from a r.s.? And if yes, which one? That's all. - CharlesShirley (talk) 12:58, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This was apparently kicked off by this revert by me. There have been some back and forth edits about this since then. This, Iis not an about-face and not not a reversal. it is incorrect and misleading to characterize it as such. This is a revision of opinion based on events occurring subsequent to the opinion having been stated. Analogously, one might have said in 2015 that Donald Trump had not been elected President. Subsequently, in 2018, one might say that Donald Trump had been elected President. That would not be an about-face or a reversal of opinion regarding the question of whether or not Donald Trump had ever been elected President, it would be the statement of a new opinion about that, taking into account the occurrence of an event which occurred subsequently to the previously stated opinion. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * For starters, we should move the sentence about McCarthy Hillary Clinton into a new subsection about Hillary Clinton her. I tried to, inserting it between the Barack Obama and the Jamal Khashoggi subsections, but it messed up the citations and I don't know how to fix them. I think I'll leave it that way to show you, expecting someone will either revert it or fix it. That way the subsection on Trump is on Trump, and makes more sense and has a better flow. YoPienso (talk) 15:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, yay! The citation problem disappeared when I saved my edit. How does that look now to you guys? YoPienso (talk) 15:55, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Defense of Trump during impeachment
The article says he defended Trump during his impeachment, then later changed his mind (paraphrasing), but this statement is not sourced and, more importantly, doesn't identify which impeachment. Since there were two of them. Hppavilion1 (talk) 15:01, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * , agreed. So far as I know, while he backtracked a bit, he's been backwards and forwards on this a number of times, and it's more nuanced than presented. I'd say just remove that part, pending an explanation by the editor who made those unsourced changes. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 15:15, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears to be who set the current language, though some variation of that statement's been in the article for quite a while. It's possible the first part of the sentence is referring to the first impeachment, the second part to the second impeachment? Either way it needs to be cited, and from past versions of the article it looks like it comes from McCarthy's book Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, but that it was not formally cited in the article. Hppavilion1 (talk) 10:53, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Re the first impeachment, McCarthy asked in an article published on November 11, 2019, "Is what happened so serious that the president should be removed from office]?]", and answered, "On the facts of the Ukraine episode, the answer is no." Re the second impeachment, McCarthy wrote on January 21, 2020, "There was a right way to impeach Donald Trump. This was not it." He later wrote in an article published on February 11, 2021, "The problem is that the House did not file such articles of impeachment. They accuse Trump of inciting insurrectionist violence at the Capitol.", and argued that Trump had not committed incitement. He did write there, "I myself have posited that the most impeachable conduct by the president was his dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief in failing to act while the Capitol was under siege.", but also wrote, "The problem is that the House did not file such articles of impeachment. They accuse Trump of inciting insurrectionist violence at the Capitol." Given that, I think that the currently unsupported assertion saying, "but in the last weeks of his presidency, McCarthy thought Trump had then committed an impeachable offense." would be original research if supported by citation of those articles unless "had committed" was softened to e.g., "might have committed" and the assertion also included the information that the house had not alleged that offense in its charge. Also, I think that the last two paragraphs in the WP:LEAD should instead be located in the Views body section. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:55, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't the one who added that info. However, I did just restore it. It's misleading to end the lead with the notion that McCarthy fully supports Trump. YoPienso (talk) 15:21, 14 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The article should obviously not source content to McCarthy's self-sourced claims. Content should be sourced to independent secondary sources. The fact that he ultimately criticized Democrats for impeaching him demonstrates why it's wrong to use self-sourced content with our own interpretations of his views. For example, to simply say "McCarthy later supported Trump's impeachment" is deceptive when his views on the subject were mealy-mouthed. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that it is appropriate to cite to a person's own published opinions. This is a basic citation guideline: How do we know so-and-so said that? Cite their work. YoPienso (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Which opinion should we cite? The one where he condemns the Democrats for impeaching Trump? Or the one where he offers a mealy-mouthed argument for why an alternative impeachment would have been better? This goes to the crux of the problem with picking items from primary sources. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:18, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In my view, the article and sources are fine as they are: McCarthy didn't think Trump had done anything to deserve impeachment the first time around, but did the second. We cite both opinions. I'll make sure each opinion is cited to McCarthy himself and to a secondary source.
 * (Btw, Now I understand your objection to "about-face.") YoPienso (talk) 19:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * But the second time, he opposed impeachment! The only impeachment he supported was an alternative universe impeachment that he himself wanted to see happen. In other words, it's a mealy-mouthed way to condemn what Trump did while attacking those who actually impeached him. It's having it both ways. By simply plucking out a line from his own article where he says Trump did something impeachable, while omitting that he opposed the actual impeachment of him, you are cherry-picking content and misleading readers. Which again goes to the crux of why we do not pluck snippets from primary sources. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not cherry-picking or plucking snippets. McCarthy did not oppose impeachment after Jan. 6 but thought it was mishandled.
 * Quote: "There was a right way to impeach Donald Trump. This was not it."
 * Maybe we should cite to another article by McCarthy that I can insert as a ref where he wrote, "Certainly, the president deserves to be impeached. He has profoundly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." YoPienso (talk) 19:38, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not grinding a personal political opinion axe here but, since the article is about McCarthy, I would say that his opinions might be relevant -- including his opinions on political matters. I would also say that his own statements of his own opinions are primary sources, that Interpretations of his stated opinions by reliable secondary sources might be worth mentioning, and that interpretations by WP editors matter not a whit. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:56, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Lead sentence
How do reliable sources describe the subject? Per BLP I would keep the lead sentence as "basic" as possible and flesh out details, ie, right wing, ect later in the article. --Malerooster (talk) 15:20, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That relates to this edit where you (correctly) removed "right-wing". That seems to have come from an unsupported POV insertion here. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 16:49, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Incomprehensibility is the goal?
I'm all about hammering on Trumpites, but this is really, beyond absurd. Are we trying to make the article utterly incomprehensible? My edits made the article demonstrably more clear, factual, and (only incidentally) more neutral--I only bothered improving it because this line is completely incoherent:

"McCarthy promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers, co-founder of the militant radical left-wing organization Weather Underground, had authored Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father. McCarthy reviewed the article as 'thorough, thoughtful, and alarming'."

And we're going to call *my* edits "vandalism"? OK then. Tahlor (talk) 04:10, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe that Valjean should either respect WP:NORESVAND or take such accusations to an admin noticeboard. But earlier discussions on this talk page re "false" "conspiracy" etc. have not resulted in improvement. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:55, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The red flags that alerted me to problems were the removal of "false" and "conspiracy theories". That lends credence to McCarthy and his false and fringe views. RS do not do that. Otherwise, feel free to improve the article. -- Valjean (talk) 15:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Promoted?
I have a problem with the word "promoted" in the context of "McCarthy promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers...". I just read the cited article and it doesn't strike me as a 100% endorsement of Cashill's book by McCarthy. Here is a quote from the cited Daily Beast article:


 * Given the even wilder charges the right leveled against Obama, it’s a bit surprising the authorship conspiracy hasn’t taken off among conservatives. It barely made a dent in 2008, despite approving nods from the National Review’s Andy McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.

I think that "approving nods" is a much better description of McCarthy's cited article than "promoted", and so is more accurate that the other citations (which are partisan attempts to extract the most negative mileage from McCarthy's writing).

We also have the fact that Cashill's book is not obviously a conspiracy theory in the way that "the 9/11 hijackers landed the planes and disembarked the passengers" is a conspiracy theory; it had a facade of plausibility that matches the somewhat silly speculations as to who really was William Shakespeare, and which the likelihood of disproof is not immediately obvious. Here is another example of this uncertainty: McCarthy's then NR colleague Jonah Goldberg initially dismissed Cashill, but later wrote this:


 * I am not sure what to make of the story that Ayers has now admitted to writing Obama’s autobiography. If it pans out, that is to my mind a very big story. Stay tuned. But I do think I should revise my earlier pooh-poohing of Jack Cashill’s effort to prove the Ayers-Obama connection. A while back, a close friend of mine (and a pretty famous person in NRland) harrangued me about how I didn’t give Cashill’s argument enough attention or consideration and that it makes a pretty persuasive case. This friend then walked me through it for a while and I was impressed. I’m still not sure what the truth is, but whether this latest story pans out or not, I figured I should at least withdraw some of my, uh, pooh-pooh.

As far as I can see Goldberg never went beyond this, he never called Cashill's account to be fact (at least at NR), but this does highlight the fact that Cashill's book is not prima facie a conspiracy theory (or more precisely the source of one). It takes a bit of digging to determine it is most likely not true (incidentally, Kathryn Jean Lopez concluded that Ayers was 'putting on' the reporter who was the source of the 'admission').

Also, McCarthy never wrote another original article on this subject, he only posted two back-and-forth blog posts regarding it, neither of which give absolute promotion to the book. At most he wrote "Cashill has written a very thorough analysis...As I said, I resisted reading Cashill’s analysis for a long time — and he’s not the first to advance the idea that Obama did not write his book — because I didn’t want to be accused of wading into what could be taken as nutter stuff. I was then persuaded that I should at least look at it with an open mind.  I’m convinced it raises major questions.  I tried to treat them in a serious way." Given all this, "promotion" does not appear to be NPOV.

So, I'd like to change "promoted" to "gave credence to". Thoughts?

Thanks. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 17:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC) Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 17:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)