The International Committee of the Red Cross doesn’t do much advertising. The organization, to which American taxpayers are the largest donors, ran just five Facebook ads between 2019 and 2023, and its more recent digital spots ran exclusively in Europe, a Free Beacon review of Meta’s ad spending database found. That’s all changing now as the committee faces intense criticism over its participation in a series of shocking Hamas hostage release ceremonies.
On Monday, just five days after we reported on talks among Senate Republicans to reassess U.S. funding to the ICRC, the committee’s head of communications and public affairs, Steve Dorsey, wrote the Free Beacon asking for “more info on newsletter sponsorship or online ads.” The committee, Dorsey said, hoped to boost “generic ICRC visibility” through ads that would link to its website, which touts its status as a “neutral, impartial, and independent organization” that takes “action, not sides.”
The request, our Adam Kredo reports, suggests the ICRC is scrambling to shore up support on Capitol Hill as GOP lawmakers blast its Hamas propaganda platforming. Roughly two weeks ago, ICRC officials Nour Khadam and Stephanie Eller joined Hamas terrorists on stage to sign documents and shake hands. Last week, the committee again dispatched a staffer to appear alongside a Hamas terrorist on a stage that included an anti-Semitic sign depicting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodthirsty vampire.
Dorsey did not answer questions about the ICRC’s broader ad campaign, the motivations behind it, or its annual advertising budget. He did, however, “encourage Free Beacon readers to review” an ICRC op-ed published Monday in the Washington Examiner. In it, Dorsey called the Hamas hostage transfers “disturbing and dehumanizing.” He did not address the group’s failure to visit the Israeli hostages in captivity, as the ICRC has routinely done during other armed conflicts.
Joy Reid hosted her final MSNBC show on Monday, but it was her exorbitantly paid colleague, Rachel Maddow, who drove the headlines. Maddow, who is white, lambasted her bosses at MSNBC for firing Reid, who is black. The liberal network gave Alex Wagner, the half-Asian MSNBC personality, the boot. Maddow called the moves “unnerving” and “indefensible.”
Maddow did not disclose the terms of her contract during her anti-racist rant. Until very recently, she earned $30 million a year to host The Rachel Maddow show one night a week. “That’s roughly 10 times what the network was paying Reid, a proud black woman, to host significantly more hours,” our Andrew Stiles observes. “MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who are white, are also believed to have negotiated a ‘Maddow-esque’ compensation package, while Maddow look-a-like Chris Hayes is believed to earn a salary in the $4-5 million range. These highly paid network personalities are often eager to discuss topics such as income inequality and the ‘racial wealth gap,’ but they have yet to express public outrage about the alarming racial disparities within MSNBC.”
Reid and Wagner, meanwhile, weren’t the only non-white employees who lost their hosting gigs. MSNBC also “announced plans to cancel the weekend shows hosted by Ayman Mohyeldin, Jonathan Capehart, Jose Diaz-Balart, and Katie Phang. Mohyeldin, the Egyptian-born commentator best known for defending Hamas terrorists, is believed to earn a salary in the range of $500-750K per year.” Phang’s salary is unclear, given that no one has heard of her.
“These are precisely the sorts of changes MSNBC will be required to make if the network’s ultra-wealthy (and white-priveleged) hosts are unwilling to sacrifice a ‘fair share’ of their massive salaries,” Stiles warns. “Think of all the non-white jobs Maddow, Scarborough, and Brzezinski could save by agreeing to earn just $1 million per year. Better yet, they could channel the wise words of Barack Obama (net worth: $70 million), who once said, ‘At a certain point, you’ve made enough money,’ by forgoing their entire salaries or agreeing to donate 100 percent of their earnings to anti-racist charities dedicated to the eradication of white supremacy.”
READ MORE: Rachel Maddow Is the Boyish Face of White Supremacy at MSNBC
Last spring, Charlotte Kates, a leader of the sanctioned Palestinian advocacy group Samidoun, was teaching Columbia students the tactics of the “Palestinian resistance.” On Sunday, she was in Lebanon to mourn one of the foremost purveyors of those terroristic tactics, the late Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Kates, our Jessica Costescu reports, attended Nasrallah’s funeral at Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium, Lebanon’s largest sports arena. She posted a photo that showed her smiling and holding a Samidoun flag as mourners donning Hezbollah armbands and flags watched on.
“It is such an honor to be here in Beirut today, one among a sea of over a million people in collective tribute, mourning, love and commitment to the road of resistance and liberation exemplified by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” she wrote. “The masses are truly out in the streets, affirming the indelible living legacy of the greatest anti-imperialist leader of our day, the great Arab and international revolutionary, the beloved speaker of truth and warrior of justice.”
