***Article first published by 'Frontpage Mag' on June 27, 2018***

Keith Ellison has spent a lot of time avoiding questions about his extensive history with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The Women's March leaders have proven that it's possible to just grin and shrug it off. And still have enough political influence in lefty circles to ban Jewish critics from Starbucks. Obama has gone virtually unchallenged on his own photo with Farrakhan.

But Ellison has invested time and energy into denying his heavily documented past with the Nation of Islam, a racist anti-Semitic black nationalist hate group. And the media has mostly given him a pass.

Jake Tapper has been one of the few to call out lefties for their Nation of Islam ties. So Ellison should have been expecting something. Instead he came unprepared to this. So did Tapper, who focuses on a more recent Farrakhan meeting while failing to call out Ellison for blatantly lying about his past with the hate group. Ellison rants, talks over Tapper, sweats and insists that he should be immune from questions about the NOI. If a Republican had put on that kind of performance, every media shark would have smelled blood in the water. But it's Ellison and Farrakhan, so expect no follow ups.

The exchange is a mess. But Ellison denies that he was a follower of Farrakhan, whose name he won't even say.

That's easy enough to disprove. Ellison's extended history with the hate group, as documented at PowerLine by Scott Johnson includes his first entry into politics. There Keith Ellison is calling himself Keith Ellison-Muhammad, an NOI name, and is repeatedly described as affiliated with the Nation.

This is stuff the media would be all over if it involved a Republican. But this exchange is as close as it comes. The rest of the media mainly tossed Ellison softball questions and ignored the evidence.