PolitiFact 2017 Lie of the Year: Trump Calling Russia’s Election Interference a ‘Hoax’

PolitiFact has just announced the winner of their annual “Lie of the Year” honors. It must have have been an excruciating task to whittle down the contenders from the plethora of brazen, purposeful truth manglers. They could have just given up and called 2017 “The Year of the Lie.”

Donald Trump

Nevertheless, PolitiFact persevered and came up with a worthy recipient. Donald Trump’s near inability to ever say anything truthful was bound to score a victory one way or another. The rest of the political liars stood little chance against someone who is certifiably pathological. The Washington Post has documented more than 1,600 lies told by this record-breaking prevaricator.

In 2015 Trump won his first Lie of the Year award for “The campaign misstatements of Donald Trump.” They were so numerous the fact-checkers couldn’t settle on a single lie. He didn’t take that well and, in a typically lame Trump tantrum, he responded on Fox News. Trump even got an honorable mention of sorts in 2016’s Lie of the year, “Fake News,” because he was such a frequent contributor to the fakery. However, this year PolitiFact managed to narrow down Trump’s gushing geyser of bullshit to one lie that is particularly significant in terms of its bald-faced dishonesty and its potential for severe harm: “Russian election interference is a ‘made-up story‘.” They began their analysis by saying that:

“A mountain of evidence points to a single fact: Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election of 2016.

“In both classified and public reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered actions to interfere with the election. Those actions included the cyber-theft of private data, the placement of propaganda against particular candidates, and an overall effort to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.”

Achieving this “honor” may be consolation to Trump after not being chosen as Time Magazines’s Person of the Year. PolitiFact noted that virtually every assessment of Russia’s activities concluded that Vladimir Putin and Company did interfere with the U.S. election in a multitude of ways. It was not a partisan observation. Republicans and Democrats alike recognized that Russia was deeply involved in election hacking and propaganda. And as PolitiFact put it, “After all this, one man keeps saying it didn’t even happen.” Indeed, Trump stood alone in denying the obvious and defending his pals in the Kremlin.

“This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt. “It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.” And he tried desperately to shift the blame elsewhere, including to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, China, or some fat guy in a New Jersey basement. Anyone but Vlad. In fact, Trump explicitly let Putin off the hook because the Russian dictator assured him that he didn’t do it. And Trump believes Putin over his own American intelligence agencies.

PolitiFact spent little time addressing whether or not Trump colluded with Russia to impact the outcome of the election. But it’s hard to separate the two. Especially when every utterance by Trump supports the Russian version events. What’s more, Trump and his associates repeatedly denied any encounters with Russians during the campaign and after. However, they later had to admit that many of them had many meetings that they all somehow forgot for some reason. There can’t be that many blatant misstatements by that many people without there being some intent to hide something.

And just to top off this Christmas tree with a distinctly Trumpian ornament, the President tweeted about this very issue this morning:

He is still calling the Russia investigations fake news. And despite the indictments (and two guilty pleas) of four of his accomplices (so far), he stubbornly asserts that the investigations are a waste of time and money. Then he shifts from that to his desperate denials of sexual misconduct and crimes. This may be his first bid for 2018 Lie of the Year. And he’s off to great start by claiming that he doesn’t know, or never met, any of his victims. The only problem with that is that one of his accusers was a contestant on The Apprentice. Another participated in his beauty pageant. And another was placed at the scene of his abuse by his own witness.

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

PolitiFact may have to exempt Trump from any future recognition in this competition. No one else can possibly challenge such an accomplished liar and skilled reality distortion machine. Perhaps they should rename the whole affair “The Donald Trump Lie of the Year Awards” and let some other sham merchants have a chance to win.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Proposes Unconstitutional Senate Investigation of the Media

One of the first things that aspiring tyrants do after assuming power is to suppress and/or control the media. That’s a difficult task in a country that has explicitly protected a free press in its Constitution. But that isn’t stopping Donald Trump from trying anyway.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

In his latest Twitter tantrum, Trump has taken another step toward the monarchy that he so fervently desires to lead. He has escalated his relentless (and unsuccessful) smear campaign against what he refers to as “fake” news, but is actually any news that isn’t fawning adulation. On Thursday morning he tweeted this disturbingly fascist proposition:

There are several easy answers to Trump’s frightful question. To begin with, “so much of our news” is not fake. Trump doesn’t bother to offer any proof of his allegation because he doesn’t have any. The media may get things wrong from time to time, but “made up” news is rare and dealt with harshly. Unlike what happens when Trump himself makes things up. He refuses to issue corrections or apologies and, more often than not, repeats the lies after he already knows they are lies. The Washington Post has documented more than 1,100 false or misleading claims since his inauguration. That’s almost five lies per day.

More importantly, what Trump is suggesting is blatantly unconstitutional. He is directing another independent government body to investigate the independent media. The Constitution prohibits Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” A White House sponsored Senate investigation based on news content is an unambiguous breach of the First Amendment.

Another reason the Senate Intelligence Committee isn’t looking into fake news is that it’s the Intelligence Committee. It has no jurisdiction in that area. Trump’s proposal is a clear effort to deflect the Committee, and the nation, from an entirely different investigation. Already under way is the probe into Trump’s electoral collusion with Russia and related financial corruption. Trump’s obviously afraid of what they’ll discover and is anxious to divert attention away from it.

Another reason Senate Intel isn’t looking into fake news is that it would likely turn up more evidence of fakery by Fox News than by any other media organization. The Republicans in charge of the Committee are aware of this and thus reluctant to pursue it. Fox News has been found to have lied far more often than any of their peers. PolitiFact scored their coverage as “Mostly False, False” or “Pants on Fire” sixty percent of the time. That compares to forty-one percent for MSNBC, and only twenty-seven percent for CNN. So Trump’s favorite network would suffer the most damage from such an investigation were it constitutionally permitted.

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

Trump’s obsession with portraying the media as fake is driven by fear. He’s afraid of reports that correctly describe his ignorance and incompetence. He’s afraid of being caught in bed with the Russians (literally and figuratively). He desperately wants to change the subject and poison the minds of news consumers. And he’s willing to subvert the Constitution in order to assuage his fears and achieve his goals. That’s what dictators do. And Trump has been behaving like a manic tyrant throughout his brief residence in the White House. And for most of his adult life for that matter.

It’s Official: Fox ‘News’ Is Not News And is Allowed to Lie, Says UK Communications Agency

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to advance the agenda of America’s conservatives and the Republican Party. That could not have been more obvious due to its founding by ultra-rightist Rupert Murdoch and GOP media strategist Roger Ailes. The network has spent the last twenty years defaming liberals and Democrats while vigorously supporting right-wing politicians and policies.

Fox News Lies

Much of what Fox News produced brazenly ignored the standards of professional journalism. They aired overtly biased “news” stories that were filled with misrepresentations and outright lies. PolitiFact has rated sixty percent of their their work as “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.” The other cable news networks don’t even come close to that dubious achievement. This shameful record may have contributed to Fox News being yanked from British television for what they said was lack of viewers.

Now Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch is trying to acquire the remaining portion of Sky Broadcasting (a European network) that he doesn’t already own. The U.K. has some stringent requirements for approving media deals that will impact the independence of the nation’s journalism. They also review any deal that could put too much power into the hands of a single outlet. On those grounds their Office of Communications (OFCOM) has been investigating Murdoch and his 21st Century Fox corporation.

Unfortunately for Murdoch, concerns about Fox News are stalling, and might kill, the approval process. The network is awash in scandals involving presenters and executives engaging in sexual harassment and related misconduct. They fired their now-deceased CEO Roger Ailes, their top star Bill O’Reilly, host Eric Bolling, among others. That doesn’t look good to the regulatory body considering the acquisition.

And that’s not all. Fox News is also being scrutinized for its reporting and its chumminess with Donald Trump and his administration. Talking Points Memo writes that:

“British authorities have increased scrutiny of the impending deal following several complaints raising concerns that the Fox News parent company is not fit to own Sky News. That scrutiny followed several resignations at Fox News over allegations of sexual harassment, as well as a lawsuit alleging that the network worked with the Trump administration to push a conspiracy theory about a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer.”

The characterization of the personnel matters as “resignations” is overly generous. These slimeballs did not leave voluntarily. But their terminations were also not likely due to Fox having a moral awakening. In fact, it was more likely a self-serving attempt to appease the U.K. regulators by trying to show that they were correcting their problems.

However, the most troubling conclusions coming out of OFCOM’s review were related directly to the editorial content of Fox News. In an ironic twist wherein the agency was actually defending approval, they offered an odd justification for why Fox’s misreporting should not stand in the way:

“In dismissing complaints about certain claims made on Fox News shows, Ofcom determined that ‘Hannity,’ ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight,’ and ‘Fox and Friends’ are not news programs and therefore do not have a ‘due accuracy requirement.'”

To be clear, the agency is making a judgment call that those programs do not qualify as “news.” Consequently, they have no obligation to report factually or even to tell the truth. Anyone who has watched for more than a couple of minutes already knows that those shows have abandoned fact-checking and honesty. And now their flagrantly unethical standards may actually help the company’s acquisition bid. But they would have to accept the argument that they are allowed to lie because they aren’t really news. So far, Fox News has not complained about this characterization of their programming. What does that tell you?

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

BREAKING: Donald Trump Says Something That’s Actually True – Hurricane Irma Will Be ‘Not Good’

The frequency with which Donald Trump has been caught lying has broken all records for political chicanery. And in the world of politics, that’s saying something. The Washington Post has documented more than a thousand Trump falsehoods just since Inauguration Day. PolitiFact records sixty-nine percent of his statements as being “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.” Consequently, another disgorged dishonesty isn’t really news anymore. But when he says something that’s true – even accidentally – Stop the Presses!

Donald Trump

Wednesday morning is one of those rare occasions when Trump uttered something with some semblance of truth buried in it. That’s if you could decipher the inarticulate word salad he tosses around. In response to reporters questions about the approaching Hurricane Irma, Trump managed to squeeze out this brutal mangling of the English language (video below):

“The fact that there’s a new and seems to be record-breaking hurricane heading right towards Florida and Puerto Rico and other places. We’ll see what happens. We’ll know in a very short period of time. But it looks like it could be something that will be not good. Believe me. Not good.”

Well, the residents of “Other Places” better be on high alert. Because “something that will be not good” is headed their way. Apparently it’s very different than the catastrophic weather that pummeled Texas recently. When visiting the victims there Trump described it in positive terms saying that “It’s been a wonderful thing.”

However, the “not goodness” of Hurricane Irma may just be another example of the left-wing media fake news. At least according to Rush Limbaugh. He floated his theory yesterday that the the press focus on Irma was really just part of a devious plot. The purpose of the plotters was to help markets sell more bottled water and other supplies. It’s Limbaugh’s confirmation of the notorious cabal between Democrats and the convenience store lobby. What’s more, Limbaugh also claims that warnings about Irma advance the “hoax” of climate change:

“You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don’t need a hurricane to hit anywhere. All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.”

Since Limbaugh, a resident of South Florida, isn’t buying the fake news reports about Irma, he might want to consider a day at the golf course. He surely doesn’t need to prepare for that phony storm the media is trying to sell. Maybe he could even plan to meet Trump at the President’s mansion on the island of St. Martin. Which is, or is not, in the direct path of Irma, depending on whether you believe Limbaugh or some nerdy scientists.

Trump has yet to embrace Limbaugh’s conspiracy theory. But that may just be because he’s too busy manufacturing his own. The White House reported today that the President will go to North Dakota to deliver remarks about his (still non-existent) tax reform initiative. He tweeted the announcement of his trip saying that “We are the highest taxed nation in the world.” And with that, he added another notch to his belt of outright lies. We are not even close to the top. But at least he got the thing about Hurricane Irma being “not good” right. Even if he did sound like choleric two-year old.

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

Donald Trump Just Made the Best Friggin’ Argument for NOT Building the Border Wall

Donald Trump’s agenda so far has been a complete bust. The so-called master negotiator has failed to kill ObamaCare. He’s made no progress on tax reform. His budget has never advanced beyond the imaginary. He hasn’t even proposed a jobs bill or any infrastructure legislation. Hillary Clinton hasn’t been locked up. After seven months, everything he campaigned on is still in limbo, if that.

Donald Trump

That goes for his most recognizable campaign chant as well. Trump’s promise to “build the wall” along the border, that Mexico would pay for, is still an unrealized, unrealistic fantasy. Especially the part about Mexico paying for it. Even Trump is now conceding that American taxpayers would have to front for his vanity wall. And on top of the billions that we now have to devote to the victims of Hurricane Harvey, that becomes even more unlikely.

However, the best argument against building the wall may have come from Trump himself. During a recent press conference, Trump drifted off into campaign mode to brag about his achievements with immigration and border issues. Naturally he focused on the evils of our neighbor to the south as a crime-ridden haven for drug trafficking. All of which he used to justify going forward with the wall. But then he said this (video below):

“The wall is needed from the standpoint of security. The wall is needed from the standpoint of drugs. Tremendous, the drug scourge, what’s coming through the areas that we’re talking about. As you know, I have General Kelly here. We stopped traffic coming through, 78 percent. It’s going to be, I think, 81 percent this quarter, which is a record.

“In other administrations if they stopped it just a little bit, like 1 or 2 or 3 percent, they considered that a great thing. Well, we’re up to almost 80%, we’ll soon be over 80%.”

So Trump is asserting that without any new funds or personnel or legislation, he has already nearly eliminated illegal border crossings. That’s quite an success story. In fact, it makes the very notion of an expensive, questionably effective wall obsolete. Why spend billions of dollars on a problem that is already pretty much solved? The remaining percentage of the problem (in the teens) should be manageable with the same methods that produced these results.

If Trump’s boasting about these numbers is true, the wall would provide little benefit. Particularly since it was never a very good idea. Most undocumented residents did not scurry across the desert into the U.S. They came through border checkpoints with valid visas. And the major drug cartels ship their inventories primarily by sea and air. Neither of which would be impeded by a wall. So Trump has provided the best possible justification for ditching the wall project entirely.

By declaring victory and moving on, Trump could actually see a rise in his dismal approval ratings. The American people are staunchly opposed to the wall. And that opposition has only grown in recent years. According to a new poll by Fox News, the wall was supported by fifty percent in November of 2015. That went down to forty-one percent in September of 2016. And it now sits at only thirty-nine percent approval. The trend is crystal clear.

So the only conceivable reason to proceed with the wall would be to satisfy Trump’s gargantuan ego. Unfortunately, that’s generally the only reason he does anything. But in this case, the reasoning laid out above has a small problem. Trump’s contention that his inept and unproductive administration reduced border crossings by eighty percent is verifiably false. PolitiFact researched the claim and tried to run it through a variety of scenarios to get it to work. They all failed.

Trump has tried to peddle this falsehood on prior occasions, and it wasn’t true than either. So what we are left with is Trump’s lie about cutting illegal immigration. Which, ironically, serves to to make a lie of his insistence on the need for a border wall. It’s an usual three dimensional lie that only an accomplished liar like Trump could pull off.

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

In the Wake of Terror in Barcelona, Trump Repeats 6 Month Old Pants on Fire Lie

Thursday afternoon the world was stunned by another terrorist attack on innocent civilians. This one took place on a popular street in the heart of Barcelona, Spain. Authorities are still investigating the circumstances and possible suspects. At this time there appear to be twelve fatalities and dozens more injured.

Donald Trump

Compounding this tragedy is the callousness of America’s pathologically dishonest president, Donald Trump. Shortly after the news broke, Trump rushed to the situation room – scratch that – to his cell phone to comment on Twitter:

This tweet was posted without the slightest bit of irony in recognition of the events of the past week. It took him only a couple of hours to publicly declare this unfolding incident a terror attack. Contrast that with the two days it took for him to condemn the white supremacist perpetrators of terrorism in Charlottesville. Does he care more about the victims in Spain than does about those in the United States? Or do white terrorists get a pass from Trump? And what about his insistence that “Before I make a statement, I need the facts. So I don’t want to rush into a statement.” That was his excuse for not speaking out sooner about the murder of Heather Heyer. But today facts seem to have gone out of favor in this White House.

To make matters worse, Trump’s cell phone fingers were still twitchy. Only forty-five minutes later he posted another tweet:

Trump is offering good advice by encouraging people to study. He ought to take that advice himself. Because the incident he’s alluding to never happened. It concerns a hoax that General Pershing had dissuaded Muslim opponents in the Philippines by executing them and burying their bodies with dead pigs. This is a lie that Trump has told before. In fact, in February of 2016 he was awarded one of his many “Pants-on-Fire” ratings from PolitiFact. At that time PolitiFact consulted actual historians and concluded that the incident Trump describe never took place:

“Of the eight historians we checked with, all were at least skeptical that what Trump said actually happened, and some expressed disbelief even more forcefully than that. The only evidence of something approximating what Trump said stems from one letter documenting a different scenario written by a veteran more than a half century after the fact.

“Perhaps more important, the historians took issue with Trump’s suggestion that the tactic — if it was even used at all — actually worked to end tensions, noting that unrest persisted for years. In all, Trump’s claim is ridiculous, so we rate it Pants on Fire.”

This is typical of Trump’s deliberate perversion of the truth to suit his own propaganda needs. He seems to have no shame in repeating falsehoods that have been unambiguously debunked by experts. The only thing he cares about is the promotion of his own interests. He is very likely only exploiting the tragedy in Spain to distract from the mess he created here at home. And if keeping his glassy-eyed disciples neck deep in lies is the result, that’s their tough luck. Remember, he loves the poorly educated, and this is one reason why.

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

Conservatives Really Do Hate Facts – Study Shows ‘Striking’ Partisan Divide On Fact-Checkers

The rancorous tirades thrown by Donald Trump about “fake news” have had a profound impact on the public’s perception of the media. Prior to his entry into politics, the press was already regarded suspiciously in certain quarters. But Trump has escalated that to a visceral hostility that has even led to violence.

Donald Trump

This animosity toward the media extends to what is supposed to be the most neutral and independent sector of journalism. Fact-checking entities exist to to review statements by public figures for accuracy. Of course, like any other analytical exercise they can be mistaken or slanted by political bias. However, the most prominent fact-checking sites have generally proven to be – let’s say – fair and balanced. And that’s precisely what outrages right-wingers who dispute their findings.

A new study was just completed by The Reporters’ Lab at Duke University. They analyzed hundreds of references to fact-checkers by critics from both liberal and conservative perspectives. What they found was that conservatives were overwhelming antagonistic toward fact-checking and took every opportunity to disparage it. Liberals, on the other hand, demonstrated that they were not afraid of being fact-checked. The study’s findings revealed that:

“Beyond the use of Pinocchios and Pants on Fire ratings to win the daily skirmishes, fact-checkers have seen anecdotal evidence that conservatives and liberals have different views. Some of the harshest criticism of fact-checking has come from conservative media outlets that say the sites have a liberal bias. By contrast, liberal publications have often seemed more positive about fact-checking – or at least less critical.” […]

“The partisan divide was striking: 86 percent of the negative references appeared on conservative sites, while only 14 percent appeared on liberal sites. By contrast, almost 85 percent of the positive statements came from liberal sites, while 15 percent came from conservative sites.”

This perceptual difference is emblematic of the right’s aversion to truth-telling in the Era of Trump. Our president has imbued his base with a robotic tendency to spurn anything observed in the “mainstream” media as fakery. As a result, the characterization of fact-checking by conservatives is most often dismissed as the product of liberal bias. Never mind the documentary evidence supplied by the fact-checkers to support their analyses.

These views aren’t especially surprising considering that they are fully in sync with the diatribes spouted by Trump. Our president has shown repeatedly that he is unconcerned with dispensing known falsehoods, even after he has been corrected. This is, after all, the administration that invented the notion of “alternative facts.” It is also the administration whose chief White House strategist is former Breitbart News boss, Stephen Bannon. A few years ago Bannon’s website giddily declared that the “Era of Media Fact Checkers Intimidating Republicans Is Over.” In another article they ranted that “When Not Outright Lying, Fact-Checkers Make Fools of Themselves.”

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

It is that attitude that permits Republicans and other conservatives to casually dismiss fact-checkers. The documentation provided by these specialized journalists never sink into the heads of tunnel-blind wingnuts. And that, the study notes, can have “serious consequences for the nation’s fact-checkers.” It demeans the credibility of impartial observers attempting to bring some legitimacy to otherwise partisan arguments. And it obscures the very nature of the truth. But that’s very likely the purpose of the attacks from the right. When their entire agenda is riddled with lies, truth is anathema and fact-checkers are the enemy.

Trump Was So Rattled By the Tax Day Marches He Posted Some Dumb Crap on Twitter

Saturday, April 15, saw tens of thousands of Americans taking to the streets in more than 150 cities. And it had nothing to do with it being the deadline to pay their federal income taxes. The occasion was to protest Donald Trump continuing to renege on his repeated promises to release his tax returns.

Donald Trump Chicken

True to form, Trump was noticeably upset by the outpouring of criticism from across a broad spectrum of the public. Not surprisingly, he expressed his dismay in fewer than 140 characters on Twitter. And as usual he made very little sense:

First of all, Trump once again demonstrates his grammatical incompetence. We should expect better from a president than “…what was an almost an impossible thing…” Especially a president who brags that he “has the best words.” And despite his ego-driven blindness, his tax returns are not just now being brought up. They have been a continuing issue since his campaign began.

More to the point, Trump’s ignorance of electoral history is appalling, but in line with his ignorance generally. Not only is it not impossible for a Republican to win the Electoral College, every Republican president has done it. And most have done it more easily than Trump. In fact, he lands at 46th out of 58 elections. As PolitiFact notes in rating his previous bragging false:

“Trump’s percentage doesn’t rank near the top. In fact, it ranks near the bottom, belonging somewhere between the lowest one-fourth and the lowest one-fifth of all Electoral College victories in history.”

Undeterred by reality, Trump goes on to question whether the protesters were paid to turn out. That would require quite a bankroll considering the massive attendance at these hardly “small” rallies. The assertion is absurd on its face. However, it isn’t the first time that Trump has proposed it. He leveled this charge during the campaign and was revealed to have been disseminating fake news. The only documented incident of payments being made to phony rally goers was when Trump himself did it.

In both of these tweets Trump returns to obsessing over an election that he lost by over three million in the popular vote count. That’s a record he is unlikely to brag about. He still seems to think that the election results have any bearing on the public’s interest in his tax returns. If anything, the public is more interested now than ever. Polls show that an overwhelming seventy-four percent of the people want him to release his returns. That includes forty-nine percent of his own supporters.

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

So contrary to his whining that only the media cares about this issue, it’s clear that the American people are not going to let it slip away. Whatever he is trying to hide is going to come out one way or another. Whether it be corruption, his true net worth, or unsavory connections to Russia. His impotent excuses for withholding this information will not protect him from his responsibility to the people.

Desperate Trump Tweets Threat To Investigate Debunked Clinton/Russia Uranium Deal

The walls are losing in around Donald Trump. Allegations concerning his unsavory connections to Vladimir Putin and Russia continue to accumulate. His closest associates are being investigated by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. The 2016 election was tainted by revelations of meetings between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives. And the Justice Department has already certified that Russia interfered with the election in an effort to harm Hillary Clinton and Boost Trump. The FBI is currently investigating the Trump campaign’s complicity.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

In the heat of all that, Congress is under fire for failing to hold independent hearings on the mounting scandals involving Trump and Russia. GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has himself been implicated in shady behavior. He reportedly met with a secret “source” at the White House prior to holding a press conference last week. At the presser Nunes released information intended to help the President evade further scrutiny. Then Nunes returned to the White House to brief Trump without ever sharing his information with the committee.

In the midst of this, Trump has now engaged in a pitifully obvious attempt at diversion. He posted the following tweets Monday evening:

Under the circumstances, asking the Intelligence Committee to investigate the Clinton’s is a transparent act of desperation. Especially since the Committee under Nunes’ control has zero credibility. In addition, the matters Trump cited have all been investigated by numerous legal and congressional entities. There was no wrongdoing found by the Clinton’s or President Obama. PolitiFact summed up the findings in a comprehensive analysis last year after a prior accusation by Trump. They rated Trump’s accusations “Mostly False” and said in part:

Russia’s nuclear energy agency, which also builds nuclear weapons, bought a controlling stake in Uranium One. The company has mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity.

So, to be clear, the 20 percent is capacity, not uranium that has been produced.

Given that Russia doesn’t have the licenses to export uranium outside the United States, it was likely more interested in Uranium One’s assets in Kazakhstan, the world’s largest uranium producer, our colleagues said. […]

The State Department did approve the Uranium One deal, but it didn’t act unilaterally. It was one of nine U.S. government agencies, plus independent federal and state nuclear regulators, that had to sign off on the deal.

And as FactCheck.org noted in a related fact check, while any of the nine agencies could have objected to the deal, only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it.

So there was nothing untoward about the deal in the first place, and Clinton didn’t have the power to approve or reject it anyway. Consequently, Trump’s only motivation could be to divert attention away from his potentially treasonous activities. It’s a pathetic scheme that is so clumsy it can’t possibly work. And that is the most damning proof of his desperation and fear. Stunts like this are only likely to exacerbate his situation.

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

So keep tweeting, Mr. President. Your outbursts merely serve to dig you in deeper. They certainly won’t have any effect on the law enforcement professionals examining your activities during and following the campaign. And as the evidence continues to expose your malfeasance you will lose even more support from your fellow Republicans in Congress. You know, the ones you just insulted because they didn’t buy into your phony healthcare scam.

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.