Trump Whines That The Media Isn’t Reporting The Lies He Tweets From Fox News

It must be terribly frustrating being Donald Trump. Day after day, having to see the “fake news” ignore the critical issues he’s trying to resolve. How many people attended his inauguration? How much he would have won the popular vote by if not for all the illegal voters? His skyrocketing approval ratings the polls would show if they weren’t rigged? How unfunny Saturday Night Live is? You know, all the things that matter most to the American people.

Fox News Donald Trump

In addition to those presidential priorities, Trump frequently consults with his most trusted advisor – his television set – to shape his nascent agenda. Firmly planted in front of the Fox News channel’s blue glow, Trump obediently regurgitates what they broadcast into his mostly vacant cranial cavity. He has been caught repeatedly tweeting things that were on Fox News minutes prior to his tweet.

The latest example of this came in tweet on Saturday where Trump boasted about his awesome stewardship of the nation’s economy:

The reason the media hasn’t reported that might have something to do with the fact that it isn’t true. PolitiFact’s analysis of the claim concluded that it is “a gross misrepresentation of the state of the debt and the role the new president had in shaping the figure.” PolitiFact sought the opinions of experts who said:

“‘Considering that Trump hasn’t enacted any fiscal legislation, it’s a bit of a stretch for him to take credit for any changes in debt levels,’ Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told us.” […and…]

“‘I wonder what he thinks he did to bring this about,’ said Harvard University government professor Jeffrey Frankel. ‘This one-month number is trivial in the long-run trend. The national debt will rise this year, and in future years. It will rise at a sharply accelerated rate if Trump carries out even half of his campaign promises for specific tax cuts (and specific spending increases).'”

What’s more, Trump’s misrepresentation of President Obama’s debt management is equally gross. Early in the Obama administration the debt increased because of a stimulus package that Congress had approved before he had even been sworn in. And the nation was still recovering from the worst recession in nearly a century. Subsequent to that, Obama’s economic policies produced a historic period of growth while cutting the deficit by two-thirds.

Which brings us back to where Trump got the notion expressed in his tweet. PolitiFact covered this as well, noting that:

“The tweet mirrors an article posted on the Gateway Pundit website a few days earlier. It was repeated by conservative pundit Herman Cain on Fox News shortly before Trump’s tweet.”

In fact, Herman Cain made the exact same claim on Fox & Friends less than an hour before Trump’s tweet:

So the Gateway Pundit (aka Jim Hoft, a notoriously unreliable source) was wrong. Consequently, Herman Cain on Fox News was wrong. And not surprisingly, Donald Trump was wrong again. Hopefully his relentless dishonesty, and unsavory connections to Russia, will seep through to his followers. To be sure, there’s gonna be demand for a lot of Kool-Aide antidote, but the effort must be made if America is going to survive the Era of Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.