Politics

Bring It On: Trump Flunky Lindsey Graham’s Proposed Hearings Could Backfire, Proving Trump’s Treason

Posted by on February 18, 2019 at 2:45 pm. 2 Comments :

The hypnotic effects of cult worship have never been so clearly displayed as with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. In short order he went from a virulent opponent of Donald Trump to his most devoted sycophant in Congress. Graham’s metamorphosis would make a superb to sequel to Kafka’s novel about a man who turns into a cockroach.

Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Let there be no ambiguity with regard to the transformation that Graham had to undergo. He literally described Trump as a “kook” who is “crazy” and “unfit for office.” But after chugging what must have been gallons of Kool-Aid, Graham reversed himself with those very same words in the opposite context:

Now Graham is the newly installed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a brand new compulsion to protect Trump from any and all criticism, while slandering those he perceives as the President’s foes. That puts former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe in Graham’s crosshairs. McCabe just published a book on “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.” He goes into some detail regarding the evidence that Trump and his associates had suspicious connections to Russia and various Kremlin operatives. In a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday McCabe summarized some of his concerns saying:

“If the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator, you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that? […]

“So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder if there is an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?”

Based on the growing evidence against Trump, it would have been dereliction of duty had McCabe and his FBI colleagues not looked into the matter. Republicans persecuted Hillary Clinton with far less cause over everything from Benghazi to her emails. In fact, Graham was one of the fiercest proponents of those congressional probes. But now he has abandoned that ferocity in order to make himself a human shield for Trump.

To that end Graham announced that he would hold hearings to ascertain whether there was improper bias on the part of McCabe or others in the FBI and the Justice Department. That would be a risky proposition for him because it would result in many of the treasonous charges against Trump being aired publicly. McCabe, Rosenstein, and the Democrats on the Committee would be able to fill in the gaps that Graham would like to leave out. He wouldn’t be able to get away with the sort of biased pronouncements he unleashes in the media. For instance, in a Sunday interview on Face the Nation, Graham proclaimed that:

“It’s stunning to me that one of the chief law enforcement officers of the land, the acting head of the FBI, would go on national television and say, ‘Oh by the way, I remember a conversation with the deputy attorney general about trying to find if we could replace the president under the 25th Amendment. We’re a democracy. People who enforce the law can’t take it into their own hands. Was this an attempted bureaucratic coup? I don’t know.”

Actually, McCabe never had a conversation about the FBI trying to replace Trump. There was a conversation about whether there was support within Trump’s own cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which would declare the President unfit to serve. That’s something Graham already weighed in on before “the change.”. And it is entirely within the purview of law to consider such actions. In fact, it’s absurd to characterize it as a “coup” because it would require the affirmation of Trump’s closest allies. Plus it would give him an opportunity to refute the allegations. And then the Congress would need to confirm any action with a super-majority. It’s called “Constitutional Democracy.”

For Graham to assert that it would be improper for “people who enforce the law” to “take it into their own hands” is utterly ridiculous. That’s actually the job of people who enforce the law. It’s like saying that a police officer who catches you trying to steal a car can’t arrest you because he’s a person who enforces the law so he can’t take it into his own hands.

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

It’s logic like that that permeates the Trump cultists like Graham. You simply cannot make any sense of it, nor is it productive to argue with them. They’ll just get that glazed look in their eyes, call you communist, and blame Obama for whatever it is you were arguing about. It’s one thing to have to suffer through interactions with these Deplorables online. But it’s another thing entirely to have them as sitting U.S. senators. Hopefully that will change next year.

Wannabe Dictator Donald Trump Threatens Saturday Night Live with ‘Retribution’ for Mocking Him

Posted by on February 17, 2019 at 10:17 am. 4 Comments :

The aspirations of Donald Trump to become America’s first nationalist dictator are well known to anyone who has listened to his deranged ranting for the past three years. He frequently cozies up to foreign tyrants and displays his obvious jealousy for their authoritarian control over their oppressed people. And on Sunday morning Trump let those desires loose again in a disturbing Twitter outburst.

Donald Trump

Responding to the opening of Saturday Night Live’s latest episode, Trump was clearly jolted out of his plush lazyboy at Mar-A-Lago. He may not even have been able to enjoy the omelette bar or his golf cart ride to tee time. What triggered the President this time was merely another appearance by Alec Baldwin as Trump in a satirical look at his embarrassing Rose Garden announcement of a fake national emergency. This was a speech where he sang a little song about the Supreme Court and admitted that Sean Hannity and Fox News are his chief advisors. Baldwin did his usual spot-on impression that we all know tortures Trump everytime he sees it. And for some reason, he keeps watching:

Trump, however, has demonstrated that he has no sense of humor (or decency) whatsoever. His reactions to satires like this are always overflowing with the petulance of a cholicky infant. But on this occasion he went a bit further than his standard “angry POTUS “ routine:

First of all, Trump seems to think that Saturday Night Live is part of NBC’s news division, referring to it explicitly as “Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC.” That may just be another symptom of his senile dementia kicking in. But then he went on to suggest that SNL shouldn’t be allowed to “get away with” mocking him. He apparently is unfamiliar with the Constitution and the right of free speech.

But the worst part of this bruised ego spasm was Trump’s threat that SNL ought to be subject to “retribution” for having the temerity to express themselves freely. Who does he think should have the authority to administer that retribution? And who else would he punish for similar “crimes” of believing they live in a free country? He says that this “should be looked into.” By whom, and for what? Does Trump want to make it illegal to say anything critical of him?

Naturally, he followed up his fascistic tweet with another one that goes even further. His common complaint that “the media is the enemy of the people” was lifted verbatim from Joseph Stalin. So no wonder Trump feels so connected to it and its message of pure despotism.

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

This may have been only a tweet about a late-night comedy show, but in Trump World it could very well be a prelude to prison camps for free thinkers and speakers. It’s happened before, even if Fox News wants to erase the memory of it. And not just in Hitler’s Germany. The legacy of Joseph McCarthy (who Trump admires) remains as a stain and a warning on the tapestry of American history.

SRSLY? Fox News Complains About ‘Embarrassing’ Coverage of Kamala Harris Shopping

Posted by on February 16, 2019 at 12:52 pm. 1 Comments :

You have to hand it To the Trump-fluffers at Fox News. It hardly matters what the substance of any story is, they will twist it into a positive propaganda piece for Donald Trump, or a lame criticism of of his opponents. They have staff on call 24/7 to massage the news of the day into something utterly dishonest so that it would fit nicely into a Trump campaign ad.

Fox News, Brit Hume, Donald Trump

Take for instance Brit Hume, the Sr. Political Analyst at Fox News (and former chief news anchor). On Saturday morning he was riffling through the Twitter-verse on the hunt for anything he could spin to tickle the fancy of of Fox’s fave fascismo, Donald Trump. And, lo and behold, he stumbled onto a video of Sen. Kamala Harris campaigning in Columbia, South Carolina.

This video shows Harris visiting a boutique during a campaign swing that featured small businesses owned by women. Ordinarily that would seem to be an admirable recognition of an important, and too often neglected, constituency. It is certainly a sector of the electorate that both Trump and Fox News generally ignore, when they aren’t insulting them. But for Hume to complain that this was somehow “embarrassing” just boggles the mind.

Hume was triggered by what is merely a human interest clip of a candidate interacting with voters. The video was posted by CBS News reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns. There was nothing “glowing” about it. It was a typical observation of a candidate in the field. There are thousands of these presented in every election for every candidate.

Someone needs to remind Hume that he works for the network that serves as the dedicated PR division of the Trump White House. Everyone from their morning suck-ups on Fox and Friends, to their primetime knob polishers, do nothing but deliver video wet kisses to Trump (which hasn’t been working out very well for them in the ratings). The biggest star on Fox News, Sean Hannity, unleashes slobbering poems of political devotion every night. He has even appeared on stage with Trump at his cult rallies (and Trump has returned the favor with promotional tweets). That’s true for several other Foxies also, including Brian Kilmeade, Pete Hegseth, Laura Ingraham, and Jeanine Pirro. These are people who unambiguously campaign for Trump.

If Hume is so concerned about an eleven second video of Harris in a local shop, what does he have to say about hours of Fox News cameras focused on a stationary plane that Trump was expected to come out of? What does he have to say about hours of uninterrupted broadcasts of Trump’s hate-filled and that contained zero newsworthiness? What does he have to say about the dozens of interviews (more than forty so far) that Trump has done with Fox News as President, while doing none with CNN or MSNBC during that time?

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

This is a superb example of the tunnel-blindness of Fox News. They lash out at Democrats and liberals for the most innocent activities, but ignore the the flagrant crimes committed by Trump and his nefarious associates. A perfect recent example is Trump’s Hannity-inspired declaration of a national emergency. Just the sort of thing they said Obama should be impeached for. If you strung Fox’s hypocrisies together, they would encircle the Earth a few hundred times, while still insisting that the Earth is flat.

Trump Confirms that Fox News Shills Are His Chief Influencers in Psycho ‘National Emergency’ Speech

Posted by on February 15, 2019 at 10:51 am. 3 Comments :

It’s official. The most aggressively biased Fox News propagandists are acting as Donald Trump’s primary advisors on the question of a “national emergency” to fund his precious vanity wall, as well as a host of other issues. In a Rose Garden address, the President cited the entire primetime roster on Fox News when asked about which conservative voices shape his views.

Donald Trump, Fox News

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Trump is known to consult his “braintrust” at Fox News frequently, even in nightly phone calls with Sean Hannity before bedtime. In fact, it was Hannity who gave the order for Trump to declare a national emergency in the first place. So when Trump stepped out onto the White House lawn to announce that he would sign the bipartisan congressional bill to fund the government – despite the fact that it contained no money for a wall – he answered an inquiry about the right-wing pundits he is known to rely on without hesitation or shame (video below):

Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News: Mr. President, could you tell us to what degree some of the outside conservative voices helped to shape your views on this national emergency?

Trump: Look, I would talk about it. Look, Sean Hannity has been a terrific, terrific support of what I do. Not of me. If I change my views he wouldn’t be with me. Rush Limbaugh, I think he’s a great guy. He can speak for three hours without a phone call. Try doing that sometime. For three hours he speaks. He’s got one of the biggest audiences in the history of world. I mean this guy is unbelievable.”

Of course, Hannity would withdraw his support if Trump didn’t continue to advance the same radically rightist views that Hannity holds. That’s the whole point. And it’s why Trump doesn’t change his views. He fears losing Hannity’s support, and that of the Fox News Deplorables who are glued to him and the rest of the network’s crackpots. And it’s predictable that Trump admires Limbaugh’s ability to ramble on incoherently for hours on end. It’s a “skill” that they share. Then Trump continued:

Trump: They don’t decide policy. In fact, if I went opposite…I mean they have somebody, Ann Coulter, I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying Ann Coulter. Probably if I did speak to her she’d be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her. I would speak to her. I have nothing against her. In fact I like her for one reason. When they asked her like right at the beginning, ‘Who’s gonna wing the election? Donald Trump.’ And the two people that asked her that question smiled.

So Trump doesn’t know Ann Coulter. Well, except for his admission that he has spoken to her during his presidency. And the fact that she has appeared with him at his rallies. And he claims that she is one of his conservative critics, but then cites her prediction that he would become president as the one reason he likes her. Then he went on:

Trump: Laura’s been great, Laura Ingraham. Tucker Carlson’s been great. I actually have a couple of people on CNN that have been very good. I have some on MSNBC the other day. They did a great report on me. I say ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I think it was the only one in over a year.

And there you have it. Trump filled in the rest of the Fox News primetimers, all of whom he praised as being “great” because they are such constantly slobbering sycophants. As for the MSNBC segment, he actually tweeted about that last week, but included a video clip that was deceitfully edited to cut out the criticism and to make it appear as if it was wholly positive.

Trump’s speech was predictably deranged as he stumbled from one topic to another without any connecting logic. It was a smorgasbord of his unhinged rants that are familiar to anyone who has seen him at his cult rallies. He even did a childish, sing-song style bit about how he expects the legal challenges to his emergency declaration to go down. This performance was, in fact, sufficient to justify the reported considerations by former FBI official, Andrew McCabe, to remove Trump from office via the 25th Amendment for being mentally unfit to serve. But then, we already knew that.

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

On Orders from Sean Hannity (His Fox News Boss) Trump Will Sign Border Bill, Declare Emergency

Posted by on February 14, 2019 at 1:34 pm. 1 Comments :

After the unmitigated disaster of the Trump Shutdown last month, Donald Trump is taking steps to avoid another embarrassing loss to his nemesis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Under Pelosi’s guidance, the bipartisan committee in Congress tasked with drafting a new funding bill has arrived at a consensus that does not include any money for Trump’s idiotic vanity wall. So the President is responding in the most ignorant and undemocratic way possible.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

The Constitution of the United States makes clear that the Congress is responsible for all spending allocations by the federal government. Ordinarly, the president would be bound by the decisions of the Congress that is made up of the people’s representatives. But Donald Trump is in no way ordinary. It appears to be his intention to ignore – and even insult – the people (who polls show are overwhelmingly opposed to the wall) and do an unconstitutional end run around Congress to get funding for his precious wall.

Of course, Trump didn’t come to this decision on his own. That would require reading a bill that is over 1,000 pages and being able to grasp what it means. Instead, Trump is merely following orders from his superiors at Fox News who are accustomed to telling him what to do, and having him obey. It was only one day ago that Sean Hannity delivered his command to Trump in the form of commentary on his program. Hannity’s segment was built around this premise: “How Trump can take Congress’ garbage deal, and stick the wall down their throats.” That’s a particularly fascist tone to take with regard to presidential powers (something they are familiar with). What Hannity actually proposed was this:

“Step one: The president signs the deal, and uses the $1.375 billion as a downpayment for the wall. Step two: President Trump has identified some $900 million for additional construction that is already available for the administration’s discretion. That would bring the pot to about $2.3 billion. Step three: This needs to happen simultaneously, and it has the president declaring a national emergency. This is the time.”

So how did the White House respond to the bill that Congress is about to send him?

Gee. That’s exactly what Hannity told him to do. And this isn’t the first time. In fact, the Trump Shutdown was largely the result of Hannity’s insistence that Trump not agree to any deal that didn’t include wall funding. This time, however, they knew that a shutdown would only make matters worse for Trump, so they decided to try to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. But that’s isn’t going to work out any better them.

The emergency declaration will surely be challenged in court, where Trump will likely fail because there isn’t any emergency. And Trump’s own words and actions are the proof of that. He has repeatedly claimed that his administration has reduced illegal border crossings. He said that he already stopped two “caravans” of refugees at the border without any wall. And he has been putting off any executive actions on this for months. All of this affirms that no emergency condition exists.

Trump is engaging in pure theatricality in order to get his way, not to secure the nation, but to be able to say that he fulfilled a dumb campaign promise (that included Mexico paying for the wall, but now that’s been forgotten). No court in the nation will rule that Trump saving face over a campaign promise constitutes a national emergency. So Trump will lose in the end. But in the meantime he will have degraded democracy and divided the country even more than he already has. And that’s the Trump legacy that will endure long after he’s gone.

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

Too Close to Trump? Fox News Won’t Run Ad for Oscar-Nominated Anti-Nazi Documentary

Posted by on February 14, 2019 at 10:45 am. 1 Comments :

The Trump-fluffing by Fox News has been going on for three years now. It hardly seems like news to point out new instances of their blatant bias and propaganda. But every now and then they achieve new lows of sycophantic sucking up that require special attention. And on Wednesday they had just such an achievement.

Donald Trump

A documentary about Nazis in America in 1939 has been nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short category.. It’s called “A Night at the Garden,” and tells the story of a rally in New York City by supporters of fascism. It’s a revealing, albeit disturbing, moment of truth from America’s past. And it’s something that all Americans should be aware of. To that end, the producers sought to run an ad for the film (video below) on fox News, but ran into an obstacle. According to the Hollywood Reporter

“Fox News has rejected a national advertising buy for a 30-second spot that warns viewers about the potential dangers of American fascism after an ad sales representative said network leadership deemed it inappropriate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.”

“The spot doubles as a promotion of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary short A Night at the Garden, which recounts a 1939 Nazi rally in New York City, and a warning — ‘It Can Happen Here’ – to Hannity’s largely conservative viewers about the potential dangers of President Donald Trump’s brand of populism.”

So Fox News doesn’t think this ad is “appropriate” for their network? You have to wonder what about this ad they considered inappropriate. It is almost entirely historical footage of the Manhattan rally. It never says anything political, other than the closing tag line that “It can happen here.” It doesn’t mention Donald Trump or any political party.

The only plausible explanation for rejecting this ad is that Fox News simply considered it too close to the sort of fascism that is recognizable in Trump’s rhetoric and demeanor. Without any direct or indirect references to Trump, Fox made this association on their own and decided to ban the ad for fear of shocking the tender sensitivities of Sean Hannity’s Trump worshipping audience.

While Fox News considered this ad inappropriate for their air, they didn’t feel the same way last year about an ad by Trump that literally accused Democrats of being responsible for every crime committed in the U.S. by undocumented immigrants. It had a truly fascist tone in saying that “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.” In addition to that disgusting attack, the ad was a flamingly racist assault on all Latino immigrants. But Fox news aired it anyway, until the public backlash caused them to reverse course.

In rejecting the documentary ad, a statement was released by Fox’s ad sales group that was troubling all by itself:

“A Fox News national ad sales representative told the distributor’s media-buying agency on Wednesday that CEO Suzanne Scott (“our CEO”) said the ad was ‘not appropriate for our air,’ according to email correspondence viewed by THR.”

Imagine that. The Fox News CEO actually stepped in to make sure the ad would not air. That’s highly unusual. Executives at that level rarely make decisions about advertising content. This shows how determined the network is to shield Trump from any potentially negative fallout.

Even though the ad doesn’t allude to Trump in any way, the top brass at Fox still made that association and nixed the ad. And in doing so they actually affirmed their own fears by acting like the fascists they are striving to disassociate themselves from. Good work, Fox.

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

Tucker Carlson of Fox News Parrots Trump’s ‘No Collusion’ Mantra in the Stupidest Way Imaginable

Posted by on February 13, 2019 at 1:30 pm. 2 Comments :

The competition for “The Stupidest Person on Fox News” is always a heated affair with way too many deserving candidates. With people like like Sean Hannity (a perennial leader, but ratings loser), Laura Ingraham, Steve Doocy, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, etc., in the running, it’s may be impossible to name a single winner. But if anyone holds the inside track it’s usually Tucker Carlson.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson

On Tuesday Donald Trump caved in again to his superior, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, over the funding for his idiotic vanity wall along the southern border. The deal that the bipartisan committee in Congress hammered out actually allocates less money to the wall than the deal Trump rejected before his shutdown. So in an effort to draw attention away from yet another example of his pitiful negotiating skills, Trump went back to his whining about the numerous investigations of his criminality that are in progress. He tweeted this on Wednesday:

Of course that tweet, like almost everything Trump says, is totally false. The Senate Intelligence Committee did not make the statement that Trump is attributing to them. It was just the opinion of Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chair of the committee. The Democrats disputed Burr’s opinion on its face and noted that their probe is not even complete. What’s more, Burr didn’t even say that there is “no evidence of collusion.” He said that he hadn’t seen any “direct” evidence. Which leaves plenty of room for circumstantial evidence or the simple fact that they had not seen the volumes of evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller has.

Naturally, Trump isn’t interested in the complexities of the truth. His mission is to simplify and distort everything to the point where his dimwitted Deplorables can be fooled into thinking he’s winning. He previously tweeted a “Thank You” note to MSNBC for airing a segment that reported Burr’s comments. But Trump cut off the video just before it went into the detail that exposed the very real legal jeopardy that Trump faces.

Enter Tucker Carlson. It won’t surprise anyone that Carlson acted out his sycophantic infatuation with Trump as he always does. He agreed with Trump’s mistaken comments about the Senate committee’s non-conclusion. And he went into great (but malformed) detail to make his point. He insisted that, according to the Senate committee “There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trump campaign conspired in any way with the government of Vladimir Putin during the last presidential election.” As noted above, none of that is true. But what makes Carlson’s suck-up a candidate for awards in stupidity is how he frames his phony argument:

“If you’ve been following the story at all, and of course you have been, you will not be surprised by this. “No Russian collusion” is a lot like the moon landing actually happened, or the abominable snowman was probably a long-haired mountain goat. You knew that already because you are not an idiot.”

So Carlson is arguing that the proof that there was no collusion is that it’s self-evident, that that’s just the way it is and everyone knows it. Never mind all the indictments, convictions, and disclosures of secret meetings with Russians by dozens of Trump associates. You just know it couldn’t be and, therefore, it wasn’t.

And here is where the dumbness becomes Olympic-grade. Carlson later quotes former Navy intelligence officer, Malcolm Nance, saying on MSNBC that there was no direct evidence implicating Benedict Arnold in treason, but that “everyone knew it was treason when they caught the man.” Carlson found this out-of-context soundbite so absurd that he repeated three times. And not once in those repetitions did he realize that he was ridiculing exactly the same reliance on something being self-evident that he relied on himself a few minutes earlier. He apparently has the attention span of brain-damaged gnat.

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

What’s really disturbing is that this is precisely the sort of logical malfunction that works so well among Trump’s cult followers and Fox News viewers. They won’t catch the obvious contradictions or cognitive failures that define the right’s crackpot ideology in the Era of Trump. But they will follow along blindly with whatever their Dear Leader and his State TV surrogates tell them is the truth. Which makes one wonder whether their stupidity is even worse than that of Carlson, Fox News, and Trump.

Trump Tweets ‘Thank You MSNBC’ with Video that He Deceitfully Edited to Clear Himself of Collusion

Posted by on February 12, 2019 at 7:31 pm. 2 Comments :

It isn’t often that Donald Trump will offer praise to any TV news network other than his pals at Fox News. In fact, he generally denies that he ever watches anything else. His Twitter feed is filled with examples of his live-tweeting whatever he’s watching on Fox. But somehow he finds out what the others are saying about him and whines about it for days. That’s when he isn’t smearing them in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

But on Tuesday Trump saw a segment on MSNBC that warmed his shriveled heart. Host Hallie Jackson was interviewing NBC News intelligence and national security reporter, Ken Dilanian, about the breaking news that the Senate Intelligence Committee had concluded that they had not found any “direct evidence” of Trump colluding with Russia. Trump was so gleeful upon hearing this that he dropped everything and posted the video on Twitter with these words: “Thank you to @MSNBC!”

There’s just one problem. Trump cut off the video while Dilanian was still talking. And what he had to say had a direct bearing on how Trump’s involvement with Russia should be perceived. For instance, Dilanian said that Democrats on the committee never thought they would find “a contract between Trump and Vlad saying ‘Hey, let’s collude.'” And what Dilanian said immediately after the point where Trump cut the video was this (video below):

“The disagreement comes, though, over that pattern of contacts that we’ve all seen and heard about over the last few years. More than a hundred contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians. The Democrats say that those remain highly suspicious and that there’s a pattern here that still raises questions. […] And Robert Mueller still has yet to weigh in. And that’s a big question because Robert Mueller knows things that the Senate investigators do not have access to.”

You have to wonder if Trump would have still thanked MSNBC if he had the courage and honesty to present the full video in context. What’s more, Dilanian also tweeted that “The Senate intelligence committee has not found evidence exonerating Trump, either.” And that’s the heart of the matter. The Senate committee deliberately limited the scope of their investigation to avoid stepping on Mueller’s toes. So their conclusions are not what anyone would describe as, well, conclusive. But they still couldn’t clear Trump af anything, and the final word rests with Mueller.So Trump should not be planning his big exoneration party just yet. However, if he wants to thank MSNBC for anything, perhaps it should be for how they are killing Fox News in the ratings. Thanks indeed.

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

The Trump Effect: More Countries Now View the Influence of the U.S. as a ‘Major Threat’

Posted by on February 12, 2019 at 11:57 am. 0 Comments :

One of the most recognizable personality flaws of Donald Trump is his compulsion to brag about everything he does as the bestest, most awesomest of whatever it is in the history of mankind. To be fair, he is entitled to some credit in specific areas. For instance, no president has ever been documented as telling more lies (8,000+) than Trump.

Donald Trump

However, pretty much everything that Trump has done more of than anyone else has had a decidedly negative impact on the country and the world. They include his withdrawal from the Paris Accords on Climate Change, his ditching the Iran nuclear treaty, his tax scam that benefitted only corporations and the wealthy, and his shutdown of the government over a useless and ineffective vanity wall along the southern border.

To this list we can now add a new accomplishment. According to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center, The United States is now seen by more nations as a “major threat” than prior to Trump’s presidency:

“More people now say [the U.S.] is a threat than in 2013 and 2017. Indeed, in 10 countries, roughly half or more now claim that American power is a major threat to their nation.” […]

“The largest change in sentiment among the global threats tracked are for those who see U.S. power and influence as a major threat to their countries. In 2013, only a quarter across 22 nations saw American power as a major threat to their country, but that jumped substantially to 38% in 2017, the year after Trump was elected president, and to 45% in 2018.”

That represents a twenty-five percentage point increase from the presidency of Barack Obama to the Trump regime. Many of the countries with the highest increases are neighbors and allies like Mexico (64%) and Japan (66%). Germany, France, and even Canada reported significantly greater concerns about the threat of U.S. influence. And all of these numbers rose in sync with survey results showing “a strong connection between seeing America as a threat and lack of confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump.”

It’s notable that this PEW study focuses on what the global community regards as threatening, and that most of them cite Climate Change at the top of their list. Of the twenty-six countries surveyed, fifty percent consider Climate Change to be the most serious threat they are facing. That compares to less than a third who named ISIS. And the perception of Climate Change as a threat increased by eleven points worldwide, a gain that is second only to the the U.S. It’s not surprising that this rising concern coincides with Trump’s dismissal of Climate Change as a hoax.

Clearly, there is no ambiguity about the cause of this decline in the international reputation of the United States. Trump is driving America to a new low in the world, particularly with our longtime allies. It is not only embarrassing and disruptive, it is dangerous. And it is deliberate on the part of an ignorant narcissist whose only goal is to glorify himself and disparage the majority of Americans who disagree agree with him.

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

Fox News Primetime Shows are So Offensive that Fox is Afraid to Sell them to Advertisers

Posted by on February 11, 2019 at 2:05 pm. 2 Comments :

There’s been a pretty steady stream of bad news lately for Fox News. Most prominent is the success of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, along with many of her colleagues. She has beaten her Fox competition, Sean Hannity, nearly every night since early November, after the midterm election. Fox is also hurting from the exodus of advertisers due to the racist commentaries of their featured hosts. And they can’t be happy about Donald Trump coming to their aid, with all the baggage he brings along.

Donald Trump Fox News

On top of that, Fox is embarrassing itself with ludicrous lies, flagrant Trump sycophancy, and hosts who brag that they have nauseating personal hygiene practices. And in the midst of these self-made messes, Fox has to pitch their network to advertisers in the upcoming “upfront” sales season when networks make their cases to the advertising community for the new year. Given their ratings failures and sinking reputation, Fox is going to have a hard time making their network seem appealing. According to Variety:

“Whether or not they watch Fox News Channel regularly, a lot of people talk about its primetime hosts: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. Now executives at the network hope to spark new conversation about its news anchors, like Martha MacCallum, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace.” […]

“Fox News sparks the new initiative at a time when its opinion programs have come under scrutiny from advertisers. Some sponsors have pulled their advertising from Tucker Carlson’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” or Laura Ingraham’s “The Ingraham Angle” after remarks made by the hosts in 2018 and amid subsequent protest from advocacy organizations.”

In other words, Fox is trying to downplay the programs hosted by their biggest stars during primetime, the most watched daypart. This is an unprecedented display of cowardice for a television network. It would be like CBS trying to downplay “The Big Bang Theory” and “CSI” in favor of some daytime game shows. Variety quotes a Fox advertising executive as saying that they want to press “against the notion that the network is only for conservatives.” It’s way too late for them to sell that nonsense. Fox doesn’t even use the “fair and balanced” slogan anymore. They ditched it for “Real News,” an obvious suck-up to Trump.

Everyone knows that Fox News is now just a surrogate for the White House. They have become the closest thing to State TV that America has ever known. And now the ad sales people think that advertisers can be fooled into believing that Fox is “transcending its own genre and becoming popular culture, thanks in part to the Trump presidency.”

But there are two problems with that theory. First, Trump is decidedly unpopular. He has record low approval ratings hovering in the upper thirties on most polls (despite Trump’s lame effort to convince people that he’s universally beloved). And secondly, by positioning the network as popular culture, Fox is admitting that they are not news.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention already knows that Fox hasn’t been a legitimate news network in years, if ever. They have few, if any, reputable journalists. They have never won a journalism award from the Pulitzers, the Emmys, or any other industry association. Their program hosts are more like cheerleaders for Trump, who actually appear on stage with him at his rallies.

The problem for Fox is that advertisers are not the sort of ignoramuses who watch Fox. They deal with multimillion dollar budgets and they know what they’re buying. By pretending that Fox isn’t the equivalent of Trump TV, their ad sales people will only be insulting the intelligence of the media buyers. And if Fox thinks that’s going to pump up sales, they’re as stupid as their audience – and their President.

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