Activists Seek To Purge Suspected Pro-Trump White House Sign-Language Interpreter
“Do we have the same considerations for the interpreter who also worked for the Trump White House and more than likely has the same ideological leanings?”
Here at LI, we’ve been covering the creep of cancel culture from our nation’s universities into our society.
Generally speaking, the trend moved from shouting down conservative voices on campus to the demand for “safe spaces” where leftist college children could play with Play-doh and blow bubbles to hide or recover from exposure to ideas that challenged and/or conflicted with their own.
It wasn’t long before this idea that wrong think was unacceptable and must be eradicated manifested itself in Twitter mobs combing over old tweets, interviews, etc. for “racist” and [insert whatever]phobic statements. Once “evidence” of a person’s deviation from woke orthodoxy was found, the mobs would howl, protest, and boycott until that person was fired from their job. Before long, they didn’t have to howl or protest or boycott; they just had to tweet to, call, or email the targeted person’s boss, and the person’s life was destroyed.
It appears we have now entered an even more sinister stage of this ideological witch hunt. There is no need to find a decades-old quote; instead, all that is needed now to get one cancelled is “evidence” of support for President Trump, Republicans, or anything to the right of Stalin. A literary agent, for example, was fired for having accounts on Paler and Gab.
The latest victim of this guilt by association manifestation of cancel culture is sign language interpreter, Heather Mewshaw.
Tune in for a briefing with @PressSec Jen Psaki and Domestic Policy Advisor @AmbassadorRice. https://t.co/r2MXiv1FoZ
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 26, 2021
Some random Twitter user somehow recognized Mewshaw from her work with Right Side ASL and decided that she was unfit to translate for the Biden administration.
This interpreter used to do work on Right Side ASL on Facebook. You want to find them? Can't. They aren't on Facebook anymore. But they had a site on Gab. See the picture below. pic.twitter.com/JMLgaJvIHW
— Jon Henner (@jmhenner) January 25, 2021
But I am wondering if this interpreter who shall be unnamed is appropriate to work for the Biden government? I personally cannot trust the integrity of her interpretation. That means I have no reason to trust what the Press Secretary says if it's coming through her hands.
— Jon Henner (@jmhenner) January 25, 2021
Note that there is not even a hint of a whiff of a suggestion that Mewshaw in any way misrepresented what was being said at the presser. Just her suspected affiliation with the right is enough.
The Democratic Coalition has jumped on the bandwagon.
"A TIME Magazine investigation found that Mewshare manages a group of ASL interpreters that provide translations for videos that embrace right-wing ideals, including some that peddled baseless election claims and vaccine misinformation."https://t.co/EmD1gBMbql
— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) January 30, 2021
Heather Mewshaw, who Psaki introduced on Monday as “today’s interpreter, Heather,” also appears to manage a group of ASL interpreters who provide sign language accompaniments to right-wing videos. Some of these videos have featured vaccine misinformation, conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, and false claims about Michelle Obama being transgender, according to a review of social media posts by TIME.
. . . . Mewshaw’s group, which was originally known as Right Side ASL and had pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and far-right app Parler, changed its name to Hands of Liberty after its previous Facebook page was deleted in November. “Sad News: Our Facebook Page, Right Side ASL Backup, has been flagged for violating community standards and will be taken down at any time. It’s up to Facebook to decide. Not us,” read a post on the Hands of Liberty ASL page on Nov. 17.
. . . . The Hands of Liberty interpreters are volunteers, according to the group’s social media accounts, and each video features a disclaimer saying that the video does not belong to them. “This isn’t our original video. Hands of Liberty provides, upon request, ASL interpreting accommodations to the Deaf community for inaccessible online video content. This service is provided by volunteers,” the disclaimers read. “Remember that censorship is considered an act of violence and oppression that causes trauma to everyone involved.”
. . . . While the group frequently solicits requests from the public, the vast majority of videos it has chosen to interpret, with the notable exception of the recent White House press conferences, are right wing or pro-Trump in their sentiment. In a Jan. 20 video titled “Thank You President Trump From the Right Side ASL Team!,” Mewshaw signs along with a compilation video of Trump dancing to the song YMCA.
. . . . “I was honestly surprised,” Jon Henner, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro who studies ASL and is deaf, said in an email. “For me, it would be problematic for someone who has aligned herself with alt-right discourses to be the public face of the White House for the deaf communities and people who are curious about ASL.”
Having gone on for 12 paragraphs about Mewshaw’s “alt right” radicalism for appearing to support a duly-elected president, Time finally admits that there have been no allegations of her inaccurately or inappropriately translating anything.
Mewshaw holds three certifications from the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), a national membership organization for interpreters. There is no indication that Mewshaw has signed inaccurately at the White House or in past work, and no one TIME spoke with alleged that she had.
But they quickly get back to their purge the witch message.
Regardless of a specific violation, Henner says the incident shows the importance of hiring the right ASL interpreter for the situation. He does not believe it’s possible for any interpreter to be completely free of bias, which is why it’s important to understand what someone’s beliefs are when deciding whether to trust them to get a message right.
“Pres. Biden selected Jen Psaki to be the White House Press Secretary because Kayleigh McEnany would not be an appropriate choice because of who she worked with, and her ideological leanings,” he said. “Do we have the same considerations for the interpreter who also worked for the Trump White House and more than likely has the same ideological leanings?” [emphasis mine]
“More than likely” thinks wrong thoughts is the new bar for cancellation. Let that sink in.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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Comments
I am confident she will have an appropriate hand sign when she leaves.
Make it a point to not know this Communist China hack’s name, nor listen to anything she says.
Shun her. She’s full of sh-t anyway.
https://youtu.be/mMZOQZz4-qc?t=49
Jen Psaki does not present herself or issues anywhere near as well as Kayleigh McEnany. She does not have the same spunk, intelligence or attractiveness 🙂 Maybe some of Dems ugliness, external and internal, rubbed off on Jen.
This is the way purity revolutions proceed. They go from “You’re not pure enough” to “You might not be pure enough” to “Show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”
By then, the camps are overflowing.
The end goal of course is, “If you aren’t me, you aren’t pure enough.”
Jon Henner says he does not trust what the Press Secretary says if it comes through Mewshare’s hands.
No thinking person is going to trust what any press secretary says absent confirmation from another source.
I have hired quite a few PR people over 50 years. Most were dishonest, not just with the public, they often take clients money and do almost nothing for the client, that was especially true of those in the Beltway.
It takes a leftist mind to come up with ways that someone doing nothing wrong could potentially do something that leftists would probably like to do first…subvert messages in any way possible.
Yes, let’s burn her at the stake and add that one to the future ideas collection!
These are intrusions on personal liberty. The lawsuits have to start, and make their way to the Supreme Court, and survive in spite of that corrupt rat John Roberts.
maybe Roberts wasn’t a bad player on the bench until after he sample young stuff and was blackmailed 🙂
Now don’t tar and feather me, I am just trying to stimulate conversation.
And maybe Trump did the same. There’s just as much evidence (i.e. none at all) against Trump as there is against Roberts.
Really…isn’t there though…the beyond pretzel logic, straining, bizarre rulings of his to deliver to the left on the rulings that really matter to them every time…Occam’s Razor…I’m not postulating what they have on him but that they do is the simplest explanation…and certainly makes more sense than his rulings.
Didn’t Roberts visit Epstein’s island pedo playpen?
I just searched internet, all the liberal media are busy claiming that Roberts is squeeky clean, now I don’t know hat to believe, since these are all known to lie.
“More than likely thinks wrong thoughts” is rapidly becoming the old bar.
Some things that qualify as the new bar….The mere suspicion one has wrong thoughts. Voluntary association with anyone having wrong thoughts. An accusation of having wrong thoughts is assumed true until proven not.
Soon not sufficiently denouncing wrong thinking will be the new bar. Not denouncing wrong thought enthusiastically enough will draw suspicion.
Just as with Critical Race Theory. Where merely not being an implicit racist is insufficient and unacceptable. One must be actively, and enthusiastically, anti-racist in order to not be deemed ‘part of the problem’.
The American left is now Maoist and Stalinist to its core.
A possible silver lining is they might soon start eating each other.
Good thing that the NeverTrumper cruise-ship cucks have assured us all that ‘cancel culture is a figment of our imaginations…
Yet we have that clueless Ginger saying ” I’ll have to circle back to you on that.”
Sleazy, ain’t they?
I’m just bumfuzzled that the Democrats can apparently fire anyone they want in the government for any reason, while Trump was apparently unable to fire traitors running intelligence services and sitting in his own Cabinet. How does a Republican get to use rules like the Democrats always seem to have available to them?
Dems can’t fire career civil servants without a good reason. Whom have they fired? And Trump could and did fire anyone “running intelligence services” or “sitting in his own cabinet”; who ever suggested he couldn’t?
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-moves-to-oust-top-labor-board-attorney-robb
Not a career civil servant. And if he’s got a contract that this breaks, he’ll sue and win.
Also, Trump could and did fire people in equivalent positions.
Yah..that rarely happened and when it did …the Dems immediately screamed for hearings. Guys openly hostile and openly working against Trump kept their positions….love you to post this list you imply exists of all these people Trump was able to fire
Guys,
You are totally missing the opportunity here. The d/progressive whacko folks are pointing out that they don’t feel comfortable with someone ‘interpreting’ who doesn’t share their ideology.
That’s great! Why you ask? Because they justified the existence of ideological based services. What the Heck are you talking about Chief????
An interpreter doesn’t make a statement they simply translate the statement from one language to another. Certainly the accuracy of the translation depends upon the education of the translator. If you ‘speak’ say English and Spanish but have zero education or knowledge of Physics, your ability to translate a presentation about physics is ..limited.
This brings us to the various news networks. Certainly we on the conservative side, need someone in the anchor chair who ‘speaks our language’ but also someone whom we trust.
So the d/progressive bloc, by going after a sign language interpreter for her ideology has just approved and endorsed news and communication outlets for conservatives. Such as Parlor.
Since logic isn’t a strong point of d/progressive, I don’t believe they meant to do that nor do I expect them to willingly admit it. That makes it all the more important to press them on this point.
You’ve just “proved” that the left will apply completely opposite “principles” depending on which one gives them what they want. But nobody here needs that proved to them, and nobody else is listening.
Coca-Cola is applying diversity standards where legal firms working with them will need to supply 50% non straight White male, half of whom must be Black.
Suspicion of wrongthink enough to cancel? Coca-Cola is guilty of promoting bad thinking. Time for conservatives to look for another brand, if they haven’t already jumped ship.
These people like John Henner and the Democratic Coalition would be beside themselves with glee if a like-minded lefty were Trump’s ASL interpreter and did what they *assume* Mewshaw *might* do.
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”
Political Reliability is the first and most important progressive criteria – capability is a distant second. See UC system and their “inclusivity” initial screen.
Republicans will have to do this
So she’s signing “Jen Psaki is dummber than a box of rocks”? Who knew? Well half the world did know that—without the sign language.
Apparently, faithless interpreters are a thing.
Trump made the mistake of keeping Obama WH holdovers. The Dem’s are not that dumb. They know what damage these people may cause.
They’re really taking this unity and healing shit seriously. I feel so much better.
Kerry and Buttigieg have demonstrated wholesale ignorance of the term skilled labor and of the term professional. Apparently that ignorance permeates more deeply than I’d expected.
The Democrats have decided that a professional is still nothing more than a political hack. How about we point that out to them about Fauci?