Politics

An Ugly Celebration: Fox News Cheers the ObamaCare Ruling that Will Cause Millions to Suffer

Posted by on December 15, 2018 at 11:47 am. 1 Comments :

On Friday evening an ultra-conservative judge in Texas handed down an obtusely argued ruling that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. His reasoning hinged on the fact that Republicans in Congress, who have long aspired to kill the popular legislation, amended the law in a manner that rendered it invalid. This was a well orchestrated plot to kill a program that has helped millions of Americans and saved lives.

Fox News Donald Trump

So what was the reaction on Fox News? Well, it began with an early morning episode of Fox and Friends (video below) that should put to rest forever any doubt that these cretins are sadistic, uncaring, and filled with hatred for their fellow citizens. The program that Donald Trump watches religiously began with this exchange by co-hosts Ed Henry, Pete Hegseth, and Jedediah Bila:

Henry: Today, a little gift ahead of Christmas.
Hegseth: I already got a gift today. I got a gift last night.
Henry: It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Hegseth: Well, I don’t know what your gift was but …
Henry: I know what you meant. Obamacare is unconstitutional. That is what a federal judge is ruling in Texas. He said the Affordable Care Act is invalid as open enrollment closes today. What’s fascinating about it this is that the judge is saying that the whole law, the entire Affordable Care Act should in fact be torn down because the individual mandate demanding that you buy health insurance is unconstitutional.
Bila: It’s about time. I mean we’ve been having this debate for a long time. I was so happy to see this. This was completely unconstitutional from the start.

This is their idea of a Christmas “gift” that “keeps on giving”? This is something that they are “so happy to see”? Do they realize that millions of Americans depend on this program for critical healthcare? That means medical services and pharmaceuticals for people with potentially lethal illnesses. It means care for sick children and pregnant women. If ObamaCare is struck down then everyone with a preexisting condition will once again be shut out of the insurance market. It means that young people on their parents’ insurance plans will lose their coverage. It means the return of discriminatory pricing and the elimination of preventative care. And even for those who don’t have serious medical problems, it means much higher premiums.

Republicans have chanted “repeal and replace” for eight years, but in all that time have failed to offer their “replacement” for ObamaCare. Now the ACA could be lost with nothing to protect those who rely on it. And this makes the Foxies shiver with glee. Of course, it wasn’t just the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox News who threw a party for this ruling. Donald Trump tweeted his own holiday joy at seeing millions of people thrown into healthcare nightmare, calling it “Great news for America.”

Watching these grotesquely inhumane gasbags laugh about this ruling as a gift for Christmas is painful in itself. It almost makes one wish that they would have to go through this hardship themselves, or with a loved one. They have no concept whatsoever of empathy or concern for other Americans. But if there is any silver lining to this, it’s that there will be stronger demand for Medicare-For-All than ever before, and for the Democrats who support it.

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

Scared Bro? Trump is Featuring Rachel Maddow in His Phony ‘Media Accountability’ Come-Ons

Posted by on December 14, 2018 at 11:58 am. 3 Comments :

Throughout his public life – and especially while president – Donald Trump has demonstrated what an awful poker player he would be. He has what pros call a “a tell” that gives away what cards he’s holding. And for the most part, Trump is holding a hand that is panic full of fear. He displays that on a nearly daily (hourly?) basis with his insipid “Witch Hunt” tweets and his frantic attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller.

Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow

Of course, Trump is also squarely focused on the media that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” His frightened reaction to every new disclosure of wrongdoing by him or his crime family is obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention. And the more he attacks CNN or the New York Times or whatever reporter happens to ask him the probing question of the day, the more he reveals what’s scaring him the most at that moment.

So what’s clearly scaring Trump now is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” reelection committee just posted an ad Facebook that asks his dimwitted cult followers to take a survey, and Rachel Maddow is featured in the ad’s graphic, although not in the video to which it links. She’s the bait for this campaign that implores his fans to “Take the Survey.”

The alleged “survey,” however, is an old marketing trick aimed at getting respondents to sign up and divulge personal information, including their email addresses. These are later used to beg for donations and organize political events. The results of the fake survey are never published, and if they were they wouldn’t have any real value due to the smarmy tactics used to lure respondents. Like everything else Trump does, it is hardly scientific.

So what’s the news that has triggered Trump’s assault on Maddow, someone he rarely even mentions? Right now Maddow is perhaps the most insightful and effective commentator on Trump’s exploding legal problems. She is dissecting them in a coherent and relatable manner. But is that enough to set him off. After all, he has never tweeted about her since becoming president. Although he did retweet his son Eric once, nearly a year ago. And that retweet contains a clue:

Trump is very concerned about his friend, and “shadow” chief of staff, Sean Hannity. Lately Maddow has been beating the pants off of Hannity. She has dominated him in the ratings ever since the election last month. So far in December she has beaten him every single day in both total viewers and the all-important advertising demo of 25-54 year olds. So it looks like Trump is rushing in to rescue the floundering Hannity. Or maybe someone at Fox News reached out for this aid.

Let’s not forget that the former president of Fox News, Bill Shine (who was fired for mishandling the sexual misconduct of Fox CEO Roger Ailes and host Bill O’Reilly) is now Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Or that Shine was Hannity’s producer before being bumped up to the executive suites. So it isn’t particularly surprising that Maddow would suddenly appear as the face of the “Mainstream Media … out to bring down [his] Administration.” In reality, he’s doing that pretty much on his own. Maddow is merely providing a factual chronicle of the criminal path that Trump chose for himself. But consistent with his warped character flaws, he’s determined to blame it on someone – anyone – else.

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

Is Paris Burning? Donald Trump’s Flaming Lunacy Abounds in Bonkers Fox News ‘Interview’

Posted by on December 13, 2018 at 7:41 pm. 2 Comments :

The Big 4-0. That’s what Donald Trump has hit with his latest infomercial (aka interview) on Fox News. It’s his fortieth since becoming president. As usual it was a slobbering love-fest with Fox host Harris Faulkner hand-holding Trump through a series of softball questions. And when he wasn’t filibustering with barely comprehensible blather, he was interrupting with almost relevant filler (video below).

Donald Trump Climate Change

The Oval Office affair covered a few pertinent subjects with the thinnest veil of substance. Harris asked about Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen and his National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, but she never pressed him to answer for their criminal activities or how they implicated him. Nor did she challenge any of his meandering obviously deflecting replies.

However, she did bake up some sweet questions that displayed her sincere devotion to her guest. Faulkner never once challenged any of Trump’s dishonest answers. She prefaced a question about the disclosures in Michael Cohen’s sentencing by quoting a former anti-Clinton special counsel saying that “he couldn’t see grounds for impeachment over that.” Then she described Cohen as “someone who has surreptitiously recorded you and is now known as a criminal liar.”

It seems every question was waterdown with platitudes before Trump even had to answer. When referencing a new Fox poll showing that Trump is still underwater at 46-52 percent, she spun it as being “just a couple tics off your highest point.” Which means, of course, that he has never risen above fifty percent. But she wouldn’t say that. Although she did let him get away with bragging about how well he did with women in 2016 (he lost women).

When he lied about how well he’s doing with China and trade, Faulkner chimed in that “that takes the pressure off the economy a little bit.” She did note that all of the gains for 2018 in the market are gone, but then added with a big smile that the market is still up since his inauguration (due to the record bull market that began in 2009 under President Obama). While discussing the economy and jobs, Faulkner got nearly teary-eyed about her impression of Trump going after companies that have had to impose layoffs, saying “I love this, cause I hadn’t planned to ask this, but your you’re calling out companies and what not. And the nation got to see you.” After his incoherent non-response she praised him saying that “This is your wheelhouse. Everybody knows this. I mean, to see the energy and the electricity as you talk about these issues.” Does anyone else need a towel?

As Faulkner wrapped things up she couldn’t help but show more unconditional love by asking him “What do you love about being President?” Trump’s reply was a vague “I love getting things done for the people,” but that it’s “a nasty job because I get hit so hard.” And Faulkner closes by sucking back the drool and telling Trump that “You have such energy for this.”

But perhaps the most disturbing part of this extended fluffing session was Trump’s insistence that he’s been a fantastic steward of the environment. His justification for that delusional self-appraisal was this disjointed nonsense:

“The Paris Accord is not working out too well for Paris. Take a look at what’s happening over there. Because of the Paris Accord that whole country is burning down, OK? And I was the one that kept us out of the Paris Accord. If I was in the Paris Accord we would be paying trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars for nothing.”

It’s somehow appropriate that Trump would come so close to the question that Adolf Hitler reportedly asked about Paris after ordering his troops to destroy the city rather than let it be re-captured by the Allies: Is Paris Burning? Well, no. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. While there is some civil unrest, the city is not a charred wasteland. And the protests have nothing to do with climate change, despite Trump’s deranged attempt to conflate them. Also, the trillions of dollars he said would have been spent are a figment of his diseased imagination.

Sadly, this is the sort of warped dialogue that America is forced to engage in with a president who is too demented to grasp any subject that might come across his desk – or reality. And it doesn’t help when an alleged “news” network acts like the propaganda arm of a White House determined to mislead the public and work against the interests of the nation.

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

Fox News End of Year Poll Has Bad News for Donald Trump on Nearly Everything

Posted by on December 13, 2018 at 1:14 pm. 0 Comments :

This year has seen a mountain of scandal and embarrassment for Donald Trump both at home and abroad. His foreign junkets have been opportunities for him to demonstrate his ignorance of the world and how little respect our allies have for him. And domestically Trump is being buried in legal dilemmas driven by the testimony of his closest associates.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

Consequently, it isn’t difficult to see why the American people regard him so poorly. Even as recorded by the latest survey conducted by Trump’s favorite cable “news” network, Fox News, the outlook is affirmatively negative. Perhaps that’s one reason that Trump told Fox’s Harris Faulkner in an infomercial (aka interview) Thursday morning that “Fox has always given me a bad poll.” In this one Trump’s overall approval numbers are in the toilet. The poll had forty-six percent approval for the President, and fifty-two percent disapproval. That includes forty-two percent strongly disapproving with only twenty-seven percent strongly approving.

Nevertheless, the Gaslighter-in-Chief pretended to be thrilled with these results. He told Faulkner they were “amazing” considering all the bad press he gets. The poll also showed Trump underwater on most specific issues, including border security (46-49), immigration (43-53), trade (40-47). and on the issue voters cited as most important, healthcare, the President is behind by twenty-three points (33-56).

In addition, a whopping sixty-seven percent of respondents said that they believe that “Trump puts his personal business interests ahead of the interests of the American people” always, often, or at least sometimes. Compared to only twenty-eight percent who said rarely or never. And when asked if they would vote to reelect Trump in 2020, thirty-eight percent said they would, while fifty-five percent said they would vote for someone else.

By nineteen points those polled said that they approve of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation (56-37). So Mueller’s approval is ten points higher than Trump’s. What’s more, they say that the Trump campaign did coordinate with the Russian government during the 2016 election (48-37).

These numbers are certain to be troublesome for Trump when the new year brings a new congress wherein Democrats control the House of Representatives. And the rapidly unfolding investigations by both Mueller and the New York Attorney’s office are sure to bring more indictments and legal peril for Trump. As the evidence pours in that Trump is guilty of significant criminal activity during the campaign and his presidency, the likelihood that he won’t finish out his first term in the White House becomes stronger every day.

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

Fox News (and Ann Coulter) Pile On Trump for Lying About His Border Wall Being Built Already

Posted by on December 12, 2018 at 3:06 pm. 0 Comments :

On Tuesday Donald Trump insisted that a meeting between himself and congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer be televised. That turned out to be a bad move for the President who behaved like a petulant child demanding that he get funds for his idiotic, useless border wall or he would shut down the government. He actually agreed to accept full responsibility for what Pelosi termed “the Trump Shutdown.”

Fox News, Laura Ingraham

In addition to the whining from Trump about Congress not submitting to his divine will, he repeated a flagrant lie that has been part of his stump speeches for months now. Trump wants to convince people that his wall is already being built and is near completion in some areas. That, of course, is pure fiction. He has never had funds allocated to it, and there has been no construction whatsoever. But he keeps saying this because he knows his glassy-eyed cult followers will believe whatever he says.

On this occasion, however, Some of the ordinarily loyal Trump-fluffers in the conservative media are falling off the wagon. Most notably, Laura Ingraham of Fox News, who addressed the subject on her program and told her Republican guests that…

“I must have missed the wall being built. What wall? That’s not a wall. Stop saying it’s a wall. There’s no wall … you gotta stop saying that.”

Coming from a primetime Fox News shill, that was rather surprising. Ingraham didn’t mince words either. And it was all the more significant since one of her guests was Steve Scalise, the third highest ranking Republican in the House. Of course, most of her other remarks during the segment were straight out of the Trump playbook (build the wall; stop the caravan; immigrants are criminals, drug dealers and disease carriers). But on the question of Trump lying that “A lot of wall has been built … big sections of wall,” she was spot on and uncharacteristically honest.

Ingraham was joined by another right-wing blowhard who usually shovels Trump propaganda by the barrel. Ann Coulter wondered whether Trump thinks his supporters are dumb in a tweet that called out his border wall lie:

Let’s just leave that business about what Trump thinks of his followers alone. It’s too easy. The important part of Coulter’s tweet is that she is not falling for Trump’s gaslighting of America with false claims that “People do not yet realize how much of the Wall … has already been built.” Coulter even posted a link to the Washington Post fact-checker who covered this issue earlier this year. Although, like Ingraham, Coulter swung back to her customary wingnut position. On the same episode of Ingraham’s show she unleashed a nauseatingly racist tirade against Democrats:

“We’re gonna be seeing a lot of these disputes in the Democratic Party base because they all hate one another. I mean you have the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers. The only thing that keeps the Democratic base together is for them to keep focusing on white men are the ones keeping you down. You must hate white men. It’s the one thing they have in common.”

So while these devoted sycophants for Trump can be relied on to spew hatred and lies on behalf of their Dear Leader, it’s nice to see that once in awhile they can recognize the inconvenient truth that Trump is a bald-faced liar. Although they have the luxury of knowing that Trump isn’t going to tweet nasty epithets at them, or make up infantile nicknames, the way he does if Maxine Waters or Hillary Clinton says the exact same thing.

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

Trump Saying ‘People Would Revolt’ if He is Impeached is Not His Opinion, It’s an Instruction

Posted by on December 12, 2018 at 11:02 am. 4 Comments :

The walls are continuing to close in around Donald Trump. And they aren’t border walls. With the sentencing of his former associates, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, there is more information being released that unambiguously implicates Trump in federal crimes. And, as is his customary practice, the more he feels threatened, the more hysterical he gets. He is transparently consumed by fear and desperation.

Donald Trump Revolt

That response was in effect Tuesday when Trump was interviewed by Reuters. The whole interview was woven with lies and nonsense. But one particular part is worthy of notice. When Trump was questioned about talk that he could be impeached for crimes related to his campaign and and his unsavory connections to Russia, he blew up:

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country. “I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened.”

Let’s set aside – after laughing uncontrollably – the patently untrue assertions that Trump has done nothing wrong, or that he’s responsible for the “greatest economy” in history. What is stunning about his comments is his warning that there would be a revolt if he were held accountable for his criminal activities. In fact, this is less a warning than it is instructions to his cult followers. He expects them to resort to violence on his behalf in the event he is impeached by the representatives of the American people.

There are lots of reasons to consider Trump’s impeachment. He shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to his mistresses in order to keep them quiet before the 2016 election. He failed to disclose those expenditures. He has received millions more from foreign operatives funneling money to him through his hotels and other businesses. He and his closest associates have lied repeatedly about his conspiracy to steal the election with his Russian partners. So impeachment is not much of a stretch for such a flagrant law violator, and a bad one at that.

Even more troubling is the fact that this isn’t the first time Trump has threatened violence directed at his critics. Even during his campaign Trump threatened the outbreak of riots if he was denied the nomination. Almost daily he refers to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He has accused the press of “creating violence by your questions […] The fake news is creating violence.” He accused Democrats in Congress of treason for not applauding him at the State of the Union address. “Can we call that treason?” he said. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.” He suggested that the media also committed treason with its coverage of his summit with Kim Jong Un, saying that “It’s a shame the fake news covers it the way they do. It’s really, it’s almost treasonous, you want to know the truth.” Do you detect a pattern?

If you think that this sort of hostile rhetoric is petty trumpery (“worthless nonsense” according to Merriam-Webster), you might want to refer to the polling that shows that one-third of Trump voters say Democrats who didn’t applaud during the State of the Union were “treasonous.”

And you might also note Trump’s obsession with maligning his critics as anti-American. For instance, there was the time he responded to an op-ed in the New York Times by an anonymous White House staffer who called Trump “amoral,” “unstable,” “erratic,” “ill-informed,” and “reckless.” The author further worried that the President has “a preference for autocrats and dictators.” And that other staffers were “working diligently … from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” In response to that article Trump blasted off four tweets attacking the Times, one of which contained a single word:

And that pretty much sums up the position of this wannabe dictator in the White House. He truly believes that any dissent is tantamount to treason, and the consequences of that is death. That’s the message that Trump is sending out to his glassy-eyed cult disciples. And this latest message raising the prospect of “revolt” is another escalation in his war against America, democracy, and freedom.

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

President Pathological: Donald Trump Dominates PolitiFact’s 2018 Lie of the Year Readers’ Poll

Posted by on December 11, 2018 at 11:18 am. 1 Comments :

If there is one thing that thrills Donald Trump more than anything else, it’s being “Number One” at whatever he is being judged for. So he will undoubtedly be writhing in ecstasy when he hears that the readers of PolitiFact have, once again, singled him out for tribute as America’s most unconstrained liar, even if he isn’t really very good at it.

Donald Trump

PolitiFact’s editors’ choice for Lie of the Year was the “Online Smear Machine” that viciously maligned the Parkland students who survived the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. The story of the conspiracy theorists who invented horrific tales of “crisis actors” was surely worthy of being featured as the year’s worst lie. PolitiFact noted that:

“The students and the country were about to learn a hard lesson about participating in democracy in 2018. That you don’t have to be a politician to be on the receiving end of the internet’s worst hoaxes. That the lies don’t vanish after being debunked. That the same hoaxes will spread again after the next attack.”

However, the site’s readers had a somewhat different take. They clearly saw Trump as the undisputed fountain of untruths that he is now world renowned for. And this isn’t the first time Trump has been “honored” in this manner. He previously won the 2017 Lie of the Year award for repeatedly calling Russia’s election interference a “hoax.” He 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. And 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.

However, in PolitiFact’s 2018 Readers Poll, Trump’s lies dominated the contest by taking five of the top ten spots. Here are those five flagrant and deliberate lies that Trump is even now continuing to disseminate:

  • “The Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country. And they want to sign them up for free health care, free welfare, free education, and for the right to vote.” – Donald Trump on Oct. 26, 2018, at a rally – False
  • A “horrible law” requires that children be separated from their parents “once they cross the Border into the U.S.” – Donald Trump on May 28, 2018, in a tweet – False
  • Saudi Arabia has ordered $450 billion, “$110 billion of which is a military order,” producing “over a million jobs.” – Donald Trump on Oct. 20, 2018, to reporters – Pants on Fire
  • “Democrats let him (cop killer Luis Bracamontes) into our country,” and “Democrats let him stay.” – Donald Trump on Oct. 31, 2018, in a tweet – Pants on Fire
  • “U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills.” – Donald Trump on July 31, 2018, at a rally – False

Plus, two others on the list are closely related to Trump and express views that he also holds:

  • “The Russian state has never interfered … into internal American affairs including election process.” – Vladimir Putin on July 16, 2018, in a press conference – Pants on Fire
  • “The deficit … is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly.” – Larry Kudlow on June 29, 2018. in an interview – Pants on Fire

In addition to those, PolitiFact also posted Trump’s Top Ten Falsehoods of 2018. They included some of those chosen in the Readers’ Poll above, plus these flaming whoppers:

  • Says 3,000 people “did not die” in two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico.
  • People “went out in their boats to watch” Hurricane Harvey.
  • “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”
  • “In many places, like California, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that. They always like to say ‘oh that’s a conspiracy theory.’ Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people.”
  • “The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so okay, they’re at a record level.”
  • “U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills.”
  • Saudi Arabia has ordered $450 billion from the United States, “$110 billion of which is a military order,” producing “over a million jobs.”

The volume and frequency of Trump’s dishonest blathering is not exactly breaking news. The Washington Post has documented more 6,400 instances of his lying since his inauguration in January 2017. But it’s useful to have this compendium of his compulsive aversion to the truth for history’s sake. Plus, it gives him something to brag about since he’s to addle-brained to realize that this isn’t complimentary recognition. It won’t be long before he tweets “Take that Fake News. I’m #1 on PolitiFact.”

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

Fox News Host Pushes Trump-Fluffing Fox Contributor for the President’s Chief of Staff

Posted by on December 10, 2018 at 11:23 am. 2 Comments :

The State TV propagandists at Fox News are starting the week out with some profoundly self-serving commentaries. On a segment of Donald Trump’s favorite show, Fox and Friends, the hosts went out of their way to advance the White House careers of a couple of their colleagues. This is further evidence of the tightly integrated relationship between Fox and this Reality TV administration. And coming so soon after Trump nominated former Fox News reader Heather Nauert to be the ambassador to the United Nations, it’s particularly troubling.

Fox News, Donald Trump

Beginning the segment (video below), co host Steve Doocy set out to make the case for Trump firing his current Chief of Staff, John Kelly. Doocy said that “It’s no secret that John Kelly and the President were not on the same page.” So Kelly is just becoming another reject from the Trump fold (see Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Reince Priebus, etc.) who was previously touted as “the best.” Doocy went on to explain why Republican Nationalist Party congressman (and wingnut Freedom Caucus leader), Mark Meadows, “would be a smart pick.” But that wasn’t smart enough for co-host Brian Kilmeade, who immediately jumped in to suggest someone else:

“I think David Bossie, not on that list, would be perfect. I think he understands politics, understands the President, he understands investigations because he was on the offensive side against Hillary Clinton with great success. He also understands how the President got to be president because he was there from day one.”

For the record, Bossie is a political activist who was responsible for the Citizens United case wherein the Supreme Court allowed unlimited donations to political candidates without disclosure. He also produced several ultra-conservative films, including one that viciously slandered Hillary Clinton. He was a deputy campaign manager for Trump’s Russia-infested 2016 election operation. And most recently he co-authored “Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency,” with Corey Lewandowski. So obviously he’d make a great gatekeeper for a president mired in scandal and criminality. And just imagine how effective he would be working with the Democrats who now control the House of Representatives.

And if that weren’t enough, a Fox News reporter, Kevin Corke, later did a segment during a “news” cast wherein he floated another former Foxie for the chief of staff post:

“Our old colleague, White House Communications Director and former Fox News co-president, Bill Shine, could be a name to keep in mind.”

Prior to his former job as president of Fox News, Shine was the producer of Sean Hannity’s show. The same Hannity who is now reported to have nightly phone calls with Trump, and who campaigned with him during the midterm election. He is virulently anti-Democratic, which makes him suitable for a job in the Trump administration, but wholly unfit to be supported by American taxpayers as their employee in the Oval Office.

The spectacle of Fox News urging their bought-and-paid-for president to hire one of their own should make every American cringe. The bonds between Fox News and Trump (who himself once did a weekly “Mondays with Trump” segment on Fox and Friends) are outside the boundaries of ethical government or media. There has never been such a relationship in this country’s history, and it should not be tolerated now.

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

Trump Says Comey Set Record for Lies at 245, So He’s Only 6,000 Short of Trump’s Record

Posted by on December 9, 2018 at 11:03 am. 1 Comments :

The latest display of Donald Trump’s frantic fear and desperation appeared Sunday morning on Twitter (as usual). He is getting more unhinged with every passing day. Especially when those days include filings from special counsel Robert Mueller and the New York Attorney’s office sentencing Trump’s former close associates. The walls closing in on the President have driven him to make delusional assertions as to his innocence, and infantile, vulgar references about his critics.

Donald Trump

However, it’s the substance of his own analyses of his legal status that really stretch the boundaries of credulity. He simply blurts out nonsense in his defense that is steeped in panic and only serves to make him look even more guilty. That’s what occurred when Trump took to his Twitter machine and blasted out these messages:

First of all, it’s important to note that Trump’s information came from his usual unreliable source: Fox News. He was watching when ultra-rightist GOP congressman (and alleged pedophile enabler) Jim Jordan made the allegations of lying against former FBI director James Comey. How Jordan came up with the number “245” is unclear, but Trump repeated it blindly.

A search of the transcript of Comey’s testimony finds a total of 218 instances of “don’t know,” “recall,” and “remember.” But many of those were uttered by the Republican questioners (i.e. “Do you remember…”). Many others were Comey using the words positively (i.e. “Yes, I do remember that.”). Still others were Comey repeating his answer to identical questions. And of course, many were responses to immaterial questions like what job title someone held on a particular date or what a document said that he had never seen. There nearly 800 questions asked.

Trump can’t cite a single instance of an actual lie by Comey. He’s just making blanket statements with no basis in reality. For instance, it is not disputed by anyone that Comey and Christopher Steele did not know each other. Steele had limited dealings with the FBI, and always at levels below the Director. This is similar to Trump’s frequently stated falsehood that Comey and Mueller are best friends. Trump has even said that “there are hundreds of pictures” of them “hugging and kissing” (actually, there aren’t any). Comey did address that in his testimony, pointedly noting that, while he admires him, they are not friends. He elaborated saying that “I don’t know his phone number, I’ve never been to his house, I don’t know his children’s names. I think I had a meal once alone with him in a restaurant.”

Trump is also violating the tenets of Due Process that he previously whined was nonexistent. But the most hypocritical part of Trump’s tweets was his claim that Comey “set a record for who lied the most.” But even if you agree to use the 245 number that Jordan and Trump are falsely asserting, Comey is still far short of Trump’s 6,000+ lies that he’s told just since his inauguration.

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

For Trump to even criticize anyone else for alleged falsehoods is laughable. His pathological compulsion to deceive in all things great or small is well documented. And considering his utterly untrustworthy reputation, you would think he would avoid any such comparisons. But that’s just another of Trump’s psychoses. He really thinks he can do say anything – no matter how absurd or provably false – and get away with it. And at least with regard to his glassy-eyed cult followers – he may be right. Unfortunately for him, that’s a tiny (although still too large) minority of the country.

Be Best? Infantile Trump Follows Up His Crass ‘Adam Schitt’ Vulgarity with ‘The Dick’ Blumenthal

Posted by on December 8, 2018 at 2:05 pm. 0 Comments :

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump got a court order that prohibited him from banning CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House. Trump’s response to that was to issue a bizarre and unconstitutional decree governing the rules of behavior for journalists in the press corps. He claimed it was an effort to restore “decorum” in the White House.

Donald Trump

On its face that is an absurd proclamation from a president who has made boorishness and bullying a hallmark of his public life since even before he entered politics. Trump engages in relentless insults of the most infantile variety and hangs nicknames on his critics that a seven year old would be embarrassed to use. For example, in an attack on Rep. Adam Schiff, who will become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee next month, Trump tweeted this:

There were some who speculated whether “Adam Schitt” was intentional or a typo. But it’s entirely consistent with Trump’s perverse personality, and it’s still there. So there is no question that he meant it. And if you need further evidence, On Saturday Trump tweeted a similarly vulgar message to Sen. Richard Blumenthal:

First of all, Trump just making up the scenario in those tweets. Blumenthal never made any reference to his bravery or to “bullets whizzing by.” He did misrepresent his service once by implying that he served in Vietnam, when he was an enlisted Marine who spent his time in the States. He apologized for that. and in any case, his Marine duty was far more patriotic than Trump’s five phony deferments for alleged “bone spurs.” But for Trump to descend into the crassness of calling a Senator “the Dick” is just nauseating. Or it would be for anyone else. For Trump it’s typical. Plus, the spectacle of a pathological liar like Trump criticizing anyone else for their veracity is hysterical.

For the record, Trump was triggered by comments made by Blumenthal on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews (video below). So apparently Trump was watching MSNBC. Unless a Fox News program played a clip from Hardball to bash the network and the Senator. Which seems more likely than the notion that Trump would change the channel from Fox.

Blumenthal was giving his analysis of the latest news from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump was surely not pleased by Blumenthal’s view that Trump can be indicted. He also said that “the walls are closing in on Donald Trump and his inner circle, including his family” and that Mueller’s report “will be extraordinarily damning.” That’s the report that Trump is delusionally saying now that he is “very happy” about. Yeah, right.

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