‘American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads to show their gratitude,’ said Courier Newsroom’s Nina Burleigh
Courier Newsroom, the web of local news websites funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros to publish glowing stories about Democrats in newspapers disguised as humble local news outlets, has announced a new hire: Nina Burleigh, the former Time White House reporter who offered to give former president Bill Clinton a blowjob “to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”
Courier publisher and former Democratic operative Tara McGowan said Tuesday that Burleigh will serve as a “national contributor publishing a weekly newsletter on the absurdity and threat of the MAGA movement.” While Burleigh now operates a Substack titled, “American Freakshow,” she is best known for expressing her carnal desires for Bill Clinton.
In a 1998 Mirabella magazine essay, Burleigh recounted a trip she took on Air Force One with Clinton while working as Time‘s White House correspondent. After playing cards with Clinton, he took a “long, appreciative look” at Burleigh’s legs, sending the journalist into a libidinous frenzy.
“It was riveting to know that the President had appreciated my legs … If he had asked me to continue the game of hearts back in his room at the Jasper Holiday Inn, I would have been happy to go there and see what happened,” Burleigh wrote. “It took several hours and a few drinks in the steaming and now somehow romantic Arkansas night to shake the intoxicated state in which I had been quite willing to let myself be ravished by the President.”
Days later, when a Washington Post reporter called Burleigh to ask if she could “still objectively cover the president,” Burleigh reiterated her sexual appetite for Clinton. “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal,” she said. “I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”
McGowan’s tactic of wrapping a nakedly partisan objective in the guise of down-the-middle local news reporting has prompted pushback from several media outlets. A 2020 Politico report noted that even some Democrats find Courier’s tactics “unethical,” while media watchdog NewsGuard skewered McGowan for “exploiting the widespread loss of local journalism to create and disseminate something we really don’t need: hyperlocal partisan propaganda.”
But the former Obama aide found a friend in the New York Times, which hosted a panel conversation on “fake news and social media disinformation” with McGowan in 2020. During that panel, Times reporter Davey Alba praised McGowan for her “really essential work.” “I really love that your mission is to be an offensive player,” he said.
Burleigh shrugged off criticism from fellow reporters, arguing in a New York Observer column that “reportorial objectivity” does not exist. That belief will serve Burleigh well at Courier, a billionaire-funded network of Democratic propaganda sites designed to appear as legitimate news.
McGowan, a former Obama campaign aide who served as digital director for Hillary Clinton’s super PAC, launched Courier in 2019, citing a need for “progressives” to combat “misinformation, especially from right-wing political actors.”
Courier went on to launch an array of “local” publications in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan, with McGowan using those publications to target prospective voters with content aimed at helping vulnerable Democrats win elections.
In 2020, for example, Courier spent millions of dollars on a digital ad campaign that used its stories to promote Democratic candidates in swing districts. Some legitimate local outlets condemned the practice, with Maine’s Sun Journal calling Courier “a fake online newspaper that aims to elect Democrats to Congress.”
McGowan has rejected that criticism, saying Courier is “pro-democracy” rather than partisan. In an internal 2019 memo, however, McGowan noted that a Courier affiliate in Virginia would “function to support the flipping of both State House and State Senate chambers in Virginia this November.” Two years later, in 2021, Soros sent Courier $1.2 million through his Open Society Foundations.
McGowan’s former employees have been critical of Courier, writing in online reviews of the company that McGowan’s incompetence and “constant gaslighting” drove staffers away. “Everyone else is paying for it while she grifts,” wrote one former employee. Another called McGowan the “Ja Rule of the progressive political world,” urging prospective employees to “STAY AWAY.”
Burleigh’s decision to join Courier comes as the network expands its operations in an attempt to influence the 2024 election through “a new slate of national contributors and newsletters, video series, op-eds, and podcasts.”
The former Time reporter’s newsletter seems to fit in well with the fake news network. In her first iteration published in partnership with Courier, Burleigh likened former president Donald Trump’s campaign donors to German “bankers and industrialists” who contributed to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The newsletter also referred to Trump as “the Fat Man” and lamented the “aggressive, ugly violence of white nationalist, toxic masculinity that is the hallmark of Trumpism.”
Courier did not respond to a request for comment.
