Scandalous

And You Thought Trump Was Nuts? Wait Til You See Giuliani on Fox News!

Posted by on October 6, 2019 at 2:23 pm. 1 Comments :

Watching Donald Trump descend into a steaming abyss of madness is horrifying for Americans who love their country. Although most can’t deny feeling at least a smidgen of satisfaction and relief that a dangerous sociopath is suffering the well deserved consequences of his betrayal. Trump is lost in a toxic fog of rancid anger and fear that threatens to turn every artery in his jellified skull into tiny anueristic IED’s

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump

Lately Trump’s desperation and paranoia has driven him to furious and false attacks on his perceived enemies including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee chairman, Adam Schiff. He has made incoherent defenses of his obviously illegal entreaties to Ukraine and China. And his own behavior and words are turning out to be the best justifications for his impeachment.

However, as stunningly bizarre as all of his antics have been for the past few weeks, he has some stiff competition in the race for Psycho of the Year. His own personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is challenging the Lunatic-in-Chief with some memorable routines in the Fox News Cirque du So Lame. On Friday Giuliani told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that his mission is “to disrupt the world.” And on Sunday Giuliani was interviewed by Fox’s MediaBuzz host, Howard Kurtz. To say it was a hot mess would be far too mild. Giuliani was a virtual advertisement for cocaine-infused Red Bull. See for yourself:

WTF is he talking about? After telling Kurtz, a Trump-friendly Foxie, that he should be ashamed of himself, Giuliani took out what he said was “thirty years of articles,” which far pre-date Joe Biden’s term as Vice-President. What this has to do with the four year old Ukraine affair is anyone’s guess. But Giuliani was so hyped up that Kurtz couldn’t stop him to go to commercial.

A second clip in that thread shows Giuliani shushing Kurtz and calling him “pathetic” as the host tries to ask him about the “transcript” of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky and Trump’s own confession to extortion on national TV. Naturally, those questions weren’t answered. And while Giuliani was whining about being interrupted (which he wasn’t), the chyron below him read “Ukrainian says no evidence of Biden Wrongdoing.” That’s a Fox chyron!

A third video clip shows Giuliani responding to Biden’s suggestion that news programs stop booking him due to his constant and flagrant lying. So in the midst of his continued whining about imaginary interruptions, Giuliani raises a brand new issue saying that “We haven’t moved to Romania yet. Wait til we get to Romania.” We’re waiting, Rudy. Then he asserts that “they” are laughing at us. If by “us” he means himself, I’ll have to agree. And once again, Kurtz can’t get him to shut up long enough to end the segment.

With impeachment becoming an inevitability, Trump couldn’t be in more trouble. Well, unless he were saddled with a nutcase like Giuliani as his attorney. Giuliani has been reduced to spewing third-rate conspiracy theories and wailing like a insolent child who was denied a fourth cupcake. He makes no sense whatsoever as he connects dots that only he can see. And this is the legal counsel that Trump is relying on to get him through this debacle. No wonder he’s flipping out.

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

Corruption Fighter or Political Hack? Trump is a Hypocrite Who is Dirty on Both Counts

Posted by on October 4, 2019 at 12:06 pm. 4 Comments :

When the first allegations surfaced that Donald Trump had put pressure on Ukrainian President Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Trump vociferously denied it. Then the partial White House summary of a phone call between Trump and Zelensky revealed that Trump did raise the issue of investigating the Bidens and even tied it to Ukraine receiving military aid from the United States. So what began as a hot mess is congealing into the world’s biggest dumpster fire.

Donald Trump

After forceful denials, then vague acknowledgements, then outright admissions on national TV, Trump is now making a new argument in his tattered and incoherent defense. Trump is asserting that he has an “absolute right“ to ask foreign governments to conduct investigations on U.S. citizens, including those who are his political opponents. He doesn’t bother to identify where in the Constitution he derives that right, but he’s determined to exercise it despite it being completely imaginary. And his justification for engaging in a blatant betrayal of the country is that he’s only concerned about corruption, not politics.

That’s an absurdity that requires some further examination. First of all, if Trump believes he has evidence of corruption he should be calling the FBI, not foreign governments, particularly not those with whom we have adversarial relationships. The notion of asking China – whose legal system is itself corrupt – to investigate an American citizen and political foe is ludicrous and is begging for wrongful outcomes. And it’s all the worse considering that Trump is simultaneously seeking trade concessions from China while making these improper requests.

Furthermore, Trump’s intentions are unarguably political. He’s totally focused on only the alleged corruption of Joe Biden, for which every credible investigation has found no wrongdoing. He repeatedly mentioned Biden in his communications with both Ukraine and China. If Trump is a corruption fighter, why isn’t he asking Ukraine – a nation rife with corruption – to look into anything other than Biden? And why isn’t he asking China to investigate presidential offspring who are suspiciously getting Chinese trademarks approved (Yes, that’s about Ivanka)? And why is he blocking efforts to probe corruption here in the United States (Yes, that’s about his tax returns)?

Clearly Trump doesn’t give a damn about corruption. He is only concerned with smearing his political opponents and stealing another election with the help of foreign governments. He’s doing almost exactly what he did in 2016 with Russia. The difference is that last time he was a passive beneficiary of the election interference that welcomed and encouraged. But this time he is actively initiating it, and using the power of the presidency to force his criminality on others.

The distinction that Trump is impotently trying to make between corruption and politics is impossible to reconcile (unless your Fox News). The truth is that Trump is both flagrantly corrupt and brazenly political. And all he’s doing by pretending that there is any difference between the two in his immoral behavior is reminding everyone what a slimeball hypocrite he is and always has been.

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

The Madness: ‘I’m Donald Trump and I Approve this Message’ that Impeachment is a Coup

Posted by on October 2, 2019 at 1:35 pm. 8 Comments :

For those of you who have been waiting for Donald Trump to finally crack wide open and devolve into madness, that time has come. Sure, there are those who will that say it happened long ago, but now the cracks are rupturing into massive fissures that threaten to swallow the entirety of Trump’s frazzled psyche and, if we’re not careful, the whole nation..

Donald Trump, Constitution

Trump is sweating out the prospect of his impending impeachment with the worst imaginable reactions. If he were smart he’d just resign now. His tweets and public comments reveal someone who has given up on reality in favor of throwing bizarre tantrums and lashing out at his perceived enemies. He has actually warned that criticism of him could lead to civil war. But on Wednesday morning he whined that “the press has gone crazy” because they reported on his unspeakably cruel proposal to shoot migrants and to build a border moat stocked with snakes and alligators. By the way, Fox News confirmed those reports, so they must be crazy too.

Trump also ranted about what he called the “Do Nothing Democrats.” Nevermind that the House has passed more than 200 bills that are being blocked by GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump complained that Democrats were “wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT.” And isn’t that a lovely presidential expression of bipartisanship.

Trump’s derangement continued during a press avail wherein he attacked the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, impotently calling for him to resign and recklessly accusing him of treason. This obsession with Schiff stemmed from a brief passage in Schiff’s opening statement at a committee hearing. Trump has been incessantly whimpering that Schiff fraudulently put words in his mouth. But the truth is that Schiff merely paraphrased Trump and said he was doing so in advance. But Trump leaves that part out.

However, the most disturbing recent remarks from Trump concern his allegation that the efforts to impeach him are a coup. That’s a charge that Trump picked up from the wingnut media that has been bellowing this absurdity for several days. But it’s one thing for right-wing propagandists to spew these ludicrous conspiracy theories, and another when it comes straight from the President as it did when he tweeted that “what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP.” And now Trump has included this preposterous nonsense in an official campaign ad:

This video is abhorrent for many reasons. It is filled with lies about Democrats “trying to undo an election.” The video includes a clip of Fox News host Mark Levin making a declarative, and ignorant, statement that Trump broke no laws. Levin asks his Fox colleagues if they can name one. They can’t, but I can: The laws that Trump can be charged with violating right now include extortion, campaign finance, witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy against the United States.

The video also falsely alleges that Democrats are “fabricating evidence.” It includes images of mostly women in Congress including Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. And it closes with the abhorrent charge that the Ukraine affair and the whistleblower complaint are “nothing short of a coup.” And remember, this is an official campaign ad that Trump was required to approve.

Apparently Trump has no idea what a coup is. For the record, it’s an illegal, and often violent, overthrow of a government by force. Impeachment, on the other hand, is the constitutional provision for removing a corrupt leader through a defined legal process that requires the bipartisan affirmation of Congress.

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

So you have to wonder what Trump is so afraid of. There is a Republican majority in the Senate. It would take twenty of them to join with every Democrat to convict Trump and remove him from office. If Trump is scared – and he obviously is – it suggests that he knows something about what he did that could result in enough Republicans voting against him. And that fear would explain the extreme hysteria he’s displaying by his lies, insults, and paranoid references to coups. Because he knows that soon we will all know the gravity of his crimes. It’s just a matter of time, which he is rapidly running out of.

Trump Must Resign: His Own Reprehensible Words Require Immediate Removal From Office

Posted by on September 30, 2019 at 1:14 pm. 12 Comments :

With each new day Donald Trump makes the case stronger for his impeachment. This isn’t a close call. He is acting out in a way that can only be explained by a fearful and guilty conscience. Trump’s Twitter tantrums are getting more hostile and disconnected from reality. And his ravings serve as incitements to his glassy-eyed disciples to resort to violence.

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

For these reasons Trump cannot be tolerated in the White House for any longer than it takes to invoke and complete the legal and constitutional process of impeachment. He represents an imminent danger to the nation that worsens by the hour. And this threat rests on top of the blatant assault on the rule of law by a reckless and self-obsessed aspiring tyrant. Trump’s defenders keep asking what laws he has broken. So for those wingnuts in denial about Trump’s legal jeopardy, the laws he can be charged with violating right now include extortion, campaign finance, witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy against the United States.

As the sinkhole widens around our panicky president, he appears to be determined to use his own shovel dig ever deeper. His Twitter feed is infested with conspiracy theories, personal insults, unbridled hatred, and outright lies. But worst of all are his flagrant attempts to sow national discord and even civil war. His tweets have taken on the persona of a paranoid schizophrenic who shouts gibberish at passing cars. For instance:

  • Trump tweeted that “I want [House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam] Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”
  • Trump asked “Was this person [the whistleblower or his source] SPYING on the U.S. President?”
  • Trump alleged that Democrats “are lying & cheating like never before in our Country’s history in order to destabilize the United States of America.”
  • Trump asserted that “the Democrats don’t care if they burn down and destroy this nation.”
  • Trump quoted a “pastor” who predicted that impeachment will “cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”
  • Trump charged that he’s “looking for Corruption and … By the way, the Bidens were corrupt!”
  • Trump repeated the absurdity that “Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine … Arrest for Treason?”

These utterly unhinged outbursts reveal Trump’s severe mental infirmity and unfitness for office. There is simply no rational justification for charging a Democratic congressman with treason, a crime punishable by death. Nor is it rational to claim that Democrats want to “destabilize” and “destroy” the nation. And aligning himself with the opinion that the lawful process of investigating the President is a valid basis for civil war is just plain insane.

However, Trump’s confession that he did indeed illegally solicit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Joe Biden was a bit of a surprise. The surprise isn’t that Trump did it, just that he admitted it. And notice that Trump, who often whines about due process for himself, isn’t giving it to Biden who he flatly says – with zero evidence – is corrupt.

Trump’s manic hysteria is producing some of his most dishonest statements to date. And for someone who has been documented as telling over 12,000 lies, that’s saying something. Among his recent falsehoods are that Rep. Schiff purposefully misquoted Trump. In fact, Schiff prefaced a brief portion of his opening statement at a congressional hearing by stating explicitly that he was creatively paraphrasing Trump. There was no effort to mislead anyone.

Trump has also been tweeting that the whistleblower is fake. But he’s ignoring the fact that the whistleblower’s complaint matches perfectly Trump’s own memo summarizing his phone call with Zelensky. And Trump keeps citing Zelensky as saying that there wasn’t any pressure put on him to dig up dirt on Biden. But you don’t ask the hostage if his captor is putting pressure on him. What was Zelensky supposed to say? He obviously feared losing the foreign aid that Trump was withholding from him.

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

This combination of brazen illegality and psychotic breakdown is far more than enough reason to oust Trump from office. And the urgency increases as his mental meltdown accelerates into orbit. Trump can still do an enormous amount of damage to this country and its international reputation. Yes, even more than he’s already done. And we as a nation must not allow that.

Hysterical Impeachment Syndrome: Trump Issues Impotent Demands that Adam Schiff Resign

Posted by on September 27, 2019 at 1:11 pm. 5 Comments :

Donald Trump is previewing his regularly scheduled Weekend Tweetstorm with a special Friday edition. And the lengths he goes to to exalt himself and malign his critics is reaching new levels of hysteria and panic. If Trump thinks this sort of behavior is consistent with that of an innocent man, he is suffering from a deeper case of dementia than anyone previously imagined.

Donald Trump

Trump’s morning rant follows Thursday’s late night flurry of Fox News videos, many of which proposed a bizarre theory that impeaching Trump would hurt Democrats more. It’s clear from their nasty reactions, however, that they don’t really believe that. And Trump’s own response is escalating in animosity – and incoherence – by the minute. For example:

So much derp in one “liddle” tweet. First of all, Trump is outraged that CNN omitted an apostrophe from his infantile prefix to Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s name. So outraged that he forgot the difference between an apostrophe and a hyphen. He also forgot how to spell the word “describing.” And he thinks that this punctuation atrocity somehow changes his meaning in a “dishonest” way.

Trump then moves on to bash the New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker (and for some reason his wife) for writing a story about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that clearly included an extortion threat. Trump has been denying the reality of that even after the incriminating memo summarizing the call was released. But the worst part of this tweet was Trump’s assertion that Baker “should not even be allowed to write about me.”

Trump continues to have the delusional impression that he’s a tyrannical monarch who gets to decide who and what is permitted in the free press that he repeatedly calls, in Stalin’s words, “the enemy of the people.” That burning hatred for the Constitution was further reflected in Trump’s next tweets that continued his attack on Schiff:

Apparently Trump doesn’t grasp the concept of paraphrasing with emphasis to make a point. That’s what Schiff was doing. He even prefaced his remarks (video below) by saying that Trump’s phone call “reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character, and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates.” So contrary to Trump’s brazen lie, Schiff was not “supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call,”

What’s more, nobody has to make Trump sound horrible or look guilty. Trump does an excellent job of that without assistance. Which makes his demand that Schiff resign all the more pathetic and shimmering with the impotence of a wannabe dictator who doesn’t know that he lacks the authority he imagines he has. But Trump wasn’t through with Schiff.

It’s ironic that Trump would call Schiff “sick” in a tweet where he once again makes an absurd demand that Schiff “must resign and be investigated.” Notice the backwards order that Trump puts those in: resign, then be investigated. Trump followed that up with an all-caps tweet that his conversation with Zelensky was “perfect.” If that was perfect, what kind of horror would mediocre be? (Note: Why does he keep saying “perfect,” a word that is generally reserved for things like hanging pictures or seasoning chicken dinner?) Trump also claimed that Democrats are “now to be known as the DO NOTHING PARTY!” Nevermind that they have passed more than 200 bills that Mitch McConnell is blocking in the Senate.

Finally (well, for now), Trump took a wild swing at the whistleblower, who he said without explanation “isn’t a Whistleblower at all.” That contradicts his own Acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, who told Congress under oath that the whistleblower and his account of the events, was credible and made in good faith. Trump, nevertheless, whined that the complaint was inaccurate and speculated baselessly that it was the work of either a leaker, a spy, or a partisan operative.

At this point Trump is just sending conspiratorial trial balloons into the polluted air that he’s making worse with the incessant and toxic exhaust from his own mouth. And the frequency and fury of his Twitter tirades is only exacerbating the public perception of his guilt. A poll on Thursday showed a thirteen point increase in Americans who think Trump should be impeached. And that’s even before many of these latest revelations had time to percolate through the mediasphere.

Long story short: Trump is revealing a measure of fear that is weighing heavily on him. But that may be the most sane response he’s had to any of this controversy to date. Fear would be precisely the right emotion under these circumstances. So if he’s scared it’s because he has good reason to be.

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

Lacking Any Coherent Impeachment Defense, Trump Deploys An All Fox News Blitzkrieg

Posted by on September 25, 2019 at 10:44 am. 11 Comments :

On Wednesday morning Donald Trump released the transcript White House provided, non-verbatim memo of his July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was somewhat anticlimactic considering that he had already admitted that he pressured Ukraine to smear Biden, and even declared Biden “corrupt” and subject to the electric chair. Still, he has been saying for days that the call was “perfect,” that he had done nothing wrong, and promised that it would exonerate him. What the hell was he thinking!

Donald Trump, Phone, Pacifier

Keeping in mind that several days prior to this phone call, Trump had frozen nearly $400 million dollars in military aid to Ukraine, who were engaged in a conflict with Russian troops on their eastern border. With that as context for Trump’s remarks, here are some relevant and incriminating parts of the memo (full document below):

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. […] I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance.”

“Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it. […] I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.”

“The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

So Trump starts out by asking for “a favor.” That’s precisely how Godfather Don Corleone began his conversations with shakedown victims when he made them “an offer you can’t refuse.” Zelensky knew that the aid his country needs was at risk. This is as close to a quid pro quo as is ever encountered in organized crime. And having that followed up by a request to meet with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and his Attorney General, William Barr – which is a new and troubling revelation – only makes Trump’s clearly unlawful intentions more clear.

The fact that Trump bothered to malign special counsel Robert Mueller is another indication that he is tying this call to his own political tribulations. And directly warning Zelensky that “it’s very important that you do … whatever you can do,” is hardly a subtle nudge. Trump then brings up the Ukrainian prosecutor who he calls “very good” despite being held in disrepute by the U.S. government, the European Union, the World Bank, and other international institutions.

Trump then got to the real point when he brought up Joe Biden and made the objectively false statement that he “stopped the prosecution” of Biden’s son. In fact, the corrupt prosecutor wasn’t even actively pursuing the case. And every investigation into the matter found zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden. Nevertheless, Trump pressed this issue repeatedly in the phone call and kept pressing for a meeting with Giuliani and Barr.

If this is Trump’s idea of an exculpatory document, you have to wonder what he considers incriminating. Trump is seen here explicitly abusing his power by recruiting a foreign leader to interfere with an American election. And he is using funds allocated by Congress to extort the illegal results he wants. There is no defense for this criminal behavior. Trump couldn’t even provide one, so he claimed on Wednesday that it should all be ignored because the stock market went up. Really? For the record, the market today is stagnant at best. It’s exactly where it was in January of 2018, a year and a half ago. Trump is also arguing his innocence based on his leading poll numbers. Except that he’s losing to every top Democrat. In fact, a Fox News poll saying just that was released a week before Trump called Zelensky. Coincidence?

Then Trump turned to his goto protectors at Fox News to vainly try to spin this in his favor. He posted (so far) twelve (12!) tweets of Trump-fluffing sycophants that contained no factual refutation of the damning contents of the White House summary phone call. They included:

  • Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway writing that the whistleblower’s attorney worked for Hillary Clinton and “Schuck” Schumer. That was for short internships nearly twenty years ago.
  • Fox host Mark Levin asserting that the is media trying to protect Biden.
  • Sean Hannity interviewing Attorney Joe DiGenova, whose reputation was so bad that he couldn’t be added to Trump’s staff.
  • Tucker Carlson interviewing Jenna Ellis, a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board.
  • Sean Hannity interviewing GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a sellout who once called Trump an idiot and a liar, but who now kowtows to him in the most embarrassing fashion.
  • Lou Dobbs interviewing Harmeet Dhillon from the Republican National Lawyers Association.
  • Sean Hannity (again), this time with Kevin McCarthy, House Republican Leader.
  • Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro, another Fox News host and shameless Trump-fluffer.
  • Yet another Hannity reference saying that the whistleblower has a political bias.
  • Fox and Friends asserting that “Democrats have been talking about Impeaching Donald Trump since before he was inaugurated. @SteveDoocy @foxandfriends”
  • Fox host Bret Baier saying that “You don’t see a direct quid pro quo in this.”
  • Fox’s White House correspondent, John Roberts, saying that there was no quid pro quo in the memo.

Someone who has a good argument for innocence wouldn’t have to resort to a cadre of notoriously biased pundits and Fox News propagandists for legal help. But this is Trump’s whole modus operandi. Remember, his preparation for the presidency was hosting a reality TV game show for fourteen years. His entire reference to his job is tied to television and celebrity. So rather than accumulate knowledgeable defenses from intelligent, reputable people, he leans on dishonest TV personalities talking to partisan hacks. You know, people just like himself.

UPDATE: The whistleblower complaint has been declassified and released. It’s available here with a few redactions.

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

Trump’s Ukraine Phone Call Transcript Doesn’t Need a Quid Pro Quo to Impeach Trump

Posted by on September 24, 2019 at 2:22 pm. 3 Comments :

This has been a disastrous week for Donald Trump. With the emergence of a White House whistleblower disclosing that Trump illegally extorted the President Of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, the prospects for his impeachment have escalated exponentially. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just announced that Congress is now “moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.” And Trump’s deteriorating demeanor is showing the intensity of his fear and panic.

Donald Trump Impeach

Trump is so desperate that he has caved into demands that he release the transcript of his July phone call with Zelensky, that he previously refused to do, saying that it would set a bad precedent. While that’s a good start, it is not nearly sufficient to clear up this controversy. For one thing, Trump is still refusing to release the whistleblower’s report that his own National Intelligence Inspector General said contained “serious” and “urgent” allegations that impact national security. Without that report we don’t know what the whistleblower was referring to, or even if it involved this phone call.

As for the question of a “quid pro quo,” there isn’t any requirement that an explicit demand be attached to Trump’s threat in order to constitute a breach of law and/or ethics. The Mafia had a way of insuring that their victims knew what was expected of them without saying so directly. “Nice little country you have here,” Trump might say, “Sure would hate to see something happen to it.” And Trump has plenty of experience with that mobster mentality as a Manhattan real estate developer. In his announcement that he would be releasing the Ukraine phone call transcript he tweeted:

It remains to be seen if any transcript made public by Trump is actually unedited. As a documented pathological liar, nothing he says can be taken at face value. This is especially true on the day that he made remarks about the charges against him wherein he managed to contradict himself within a single sentence (video below). “There was no pressure put on [Ukraine] whatsoever,” Trump began. Then he continued, “but there was pressure put on with respect to Joe Biden.” Well, that’s crystal clear. There was no pressure except that there was pressure of a blatantly political nature.

Trump went on to say that “What Joe Biden did for his son, that’s something they should be looking at.” So even now he is still making improper demands on Ukraine that can still be regarded as ultimatums associated with future foreign aid. What’s more, the accusations aimed at Biden, that Trump is using to deflect from his his own crimes, have all been investigated and there was zero evidence of any wrongdoing. Biden was delivering a message to dismiss a corrupt prosecutor. It was the official policy of the U.S. government, not a personal matter involving Biden or his family. And it was also aligned with the policies of the Ukraine parliament, the European Union, the World Bank and other international institutions.

Trump also made the familiar and tiresome claim that he is the victim of a “Witch Hunt.” He said that Democrats are fixed on impeaching him because he’s leading in the polls and they can’t beat him any other way. That would be an interesting argument if it weren’t for the fact that most polls show him losing to every Democratic opponent, even the polls from Fox News. That’s the sort of “real” news that is driving Trump insane. And it’s another reason why he needs to be impeached as soon as humanly possible.

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

Crazed Trump Declares Biden and Son ‘Corrupt’ and Subject to ‘Getting the Electric Chair’

Posted by on September 23, 2019 at 2:06 pm. 6 Comments :

The scandal over Donald Trump pressuring Ukraine officials to conduct a bogus investigation of Joe Biden just hit a new level of totalitarian barbarity. Trump is sinking rapidly into the Mariana Trench of desperation with his latest outrageous defense for extorting a foreign government to help him steal an election.

Donald Trump Zombie

In a press avail at the United Nations (video below), Trump was asked about the Ukraine affair and lashed out with what has become his robo-response. Building on prompts from Fox News, Trump has been trying to divert attention from his crimes to false allegations that Biden was guilty of what Trump is being accused of. Nevermind that there is zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden, and even Fox News confirmed that in a report on Monday afternoon. But in this exchange Trump crossed over to the most nauseating torrent of slander imaginable. With an evil sneer and deafening hostility in his voice, Trump unleashed this abomination:

“Joe Biden and his son are corrupt. But the fake news doesn’t want to report it because they’re Democrats. If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair by right now.”

Trump is no longer speculating about the already debunked charges against Biden. He is now stating them bluntly as a matter of fact. This is the Commander-in-Chief, to whom the Attorney General reports, asserting absolutely that Biden is guilty of a treasonous act. And he even goes so far as to suggest that Biden be punished by death.

If there’s one thing this insanity reveals it’s that Trump is terrified of what is unfolding in this Ukraine matter. He clearly fears the consequences if the truth about him comes out. These comments about Biden are not his typically childish name-calling and awkward deflections. This is much more destructive and dangerous. And therefore, more illustrative of his panic and mental collapse. There’s nothing subtle about it. It’s a blaring signal that he’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown due to his knowledge that his world is falling apart.

For the record, nothing in his wild-eyed accusations is remotely true and independent analysts affirm that. Biden went to Ukraine to articulate the position of the United States government, not his own personal position or that of his son. Plus, he was addressing a corrupt prosecutor whose dismissal had been demanded by a majority of the Ukraine parliament, as well as the European Union and other international institutions. There is no parallel between that and Trump’s efforts to bully Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, into helping him smear a potential political opponent.

What’s more, Trump has actually confessed to what he’s been accused of. After denying it for days, Trump finally admitted that he did indeed discuss Biden with Zelensky. And on Monday he even conceded that U.S. foreign aid was part of the threat he made to get Zelensky’s cooperation. He went on to argue that “it would probably, possibly have been ok” to use American foreign aid as a cudgel to extract political favors that amount to election fraud.

This is trump being Trump. He routinely denies allegations against him until the evidence is just too solid. Then he accuses others of what he’s been accused of. Then he insists that it would be perfectly fine if he did it. The he blames the media. But in this case it’s hard to imagine any lower rung on this ladder of immorality and illegality. However, if there is one, trust Trump to find it. He will surely not be satisfied with with death threats against Democrats if his legal jeopardy continues to get worse.

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

Fox News Defends Trump’s State-Sponsored Political Extortion as Just ‘The Art of the Deal’

Posted by on September 20, 2019 at 2:00 pm. 6 Comments :

The news that Donald Trump may have promised the president of Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if he would open a bogus investigation into Joe Biden has captured the attention of the press. And rightfully so. This would amount to state-sponsored extortion by Trump in order to smear a political opponent. And it wouldn’t even be the first time that Trump has conspired with a foreign country to steal an election (see: Russia, 2016).

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

As this scandal continues to build steam, Trump is managing to get himself into even more hot water. In a press avail with the Prime Minister of Australia, Trump gave contradictory answers about what he knew about the affair. In fact, when asked if he read the report he contradicted himself in the space of a single sentence saying, “No I haven’t. I just – I tell you, everybody’s read it. They laugh at it.” He went on to attack the press, as usual, saying that “Our media has become the laughingstock of the world […] You’re a joke.” Which only proves that he is pitifully incapable of recognizing who the world is actually laughing at.

In the midst of this unfolding melodrama, Fox News is adopting their routine position as Trump-fluffing propaganda disseminators. And taking the lead is Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends. Their defense of Trump is a bizarre spectacle of ludicrous justifications for Trump’s potentially treasonous behavior (video below). Co-host Steve Doocy began by telling his dimwitted viewers to…

“Keep in mind this whistleblower filed this report with the inspector general of the Intel community on August the 12th. That was over a month ago. Then they kicked it around, sent it to the Department of Justice, and said ‘We do not have to hand it over to Congress.'”

First of all, it is entirely improper for the Justice Department to interfere in this process in any way. It negates the whole purpose of the Whistleblower Protection Act if the President’s henchmen (Attorney General William Barr, et al) can suppress information provided in good faith by insiders concerned about national security. And it endangers the welfare of the whistleblower whose identity is disclosed to people who have motive to retaliate.

That said, after having improperly interfered, the Justice Department has no authority to rule that the complaint can’t be turned over to Congress. The law says unambiguously that it “shall” be turned over. So the Justice Department is wrong, and Fox News is wrong to excuse this breach of the law. But Doocy wasn’t finished. He continued…

“The reason the whistleblower apparently said that it was ‘serious’ and ‘urgent’ is because that designation usually automatically triggers it getting to Congress. The Department of Justice says that that is not appropriate, so we don’t have to give it to the Committee. Well, somebody with knowledge of this person’s story didn’t like the fact that Congress wasn’t gonna get it and it wasn’t gonna become public. So they leaked the story to the Washington Post.”

Again, none of this is the Justice Department’s call. But Doocy is also introducing something that was never a part of this. He implies that somebody wanted this to become public. But had the complaint been turned over to Congress, they would have reviewed it privately. The only reason any of this is becoming public is because the process was breached by the administration.

It’s ironic that Fox News is more worried about this complaint leaking than the substance of the complaint which is Trump’s attempts to extort and/or bribe a foreign country and to pressure them into aiding his election fraud. But if you thought that Fox was bothered by any of that, here’s what Doocy’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt had to say about it:

“They say the President was making promises, leaking delicate information to another heads of state. But this is what they do. They talk. They negotiate. And the President’s known for that. The art of the deal. Who’s leaking this? Is it someone that works at the White House?”

So to Fox News this is standard operating procedure in negotiations. They consider it acceptable for Trump to bully foreign leaders into manufacturing political dirt on his opponents. They regard it as simple dealmaking, despite the fact that there are no components of this deal that are in the interests of the United States. It is a purely hostile swipe at Biden, who Trump expects to run against next year. So Earhardt is defending dealmaking that is only intended to disrupt an election. But then again, that’s what Fox News does every day. Disrupting elections by airing distortions and lies is the whole reason Fox News exists.

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

Big Baby Trump Threatens to Sue MSNBC, O’Donnell Over Report that Russians Co-Signed Loans

Posted by on August 28, 2019 at 3:21 pm. 4 Comments :

Poor Donald Trump. He thought that all of his misdeeds and corruption would remain secret in perpetuity. Unfortunately for him, his methods of deception have been just as incompetent and ineffective as everything else he does. Consequently, each new day brings another revelation of some legal or ethical breach that he hoped would stay buried.

Donald Trump

The latest bit of bad news for Trump comes in the form of a speculative report that aired on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. On Tuesday night the program revealed allegations from a confidential source who said that some of Trump’s loans from the shady Deutsche Bank were co-signed by Russian oligarchs connected to Vladimir Putin. This could be a bombshell story that would explain much of Trump’s affinity for – and coddling of – Russia generally, and Putin in particular.

The public disclosure of this sort of financial arrangement would be devastating for Trump. Consequently, he is punching back with all his impotent might. Trump had his personal attorney, Charles Harder, dash off a letter with a stern warning to O’Donnell and the network that should make them think twice:

“We write concerning the false and defamatory statements published by Lawrence O’Donnell and NBC Universal […] The Program and Tweet make the false and defamatory statements that ‘Russian oligarchs’ cosigned loans provided to Mr. Trump by Deutsche Bank, and described these ‘co-signers’ as ‘Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.'” These statements are false and defamatory, and extremely damaging.”

Demand is hereby made that Mr. O’Donnell and NBCU immediately and prominently retract, correct and apologize for the aforementioned false and defamatory statements. [and that] Failure to do so will leave my clients with no alternative but to consider their legal options which could include immediate legal proceedings against Mr. O’Donnell and NBCU.”

This is an entirely bogus threat that is highly unlikely to ever be carried out. The allegations that O’Donnell reported were presented as speculative from the outset. He presented it that way in a teaser at the beginning of the show where he said that “I want to stress that it is a single source that has not been confirmed by NBC News [and that] it’s going to require a lot more verification before that can be a confirmable fact.” He repeated these disclaimers in the segment that aired later. He could not have been more clear, repeatedly prefacing his remarks by saying “If true…” Therefore, he never presented it as fact, only the assertions of his source, as is evident in the video of the segment:

Trump is well known to engage in legal bullying, wherein he threatens people with lawsuits, but usually chickens out before filing any. In fact, he’s done that before with O’Donnell. In 2011 he threatened to sue O’Donnell for saying that Trump was not really a billionaire. That lawsuit never materialized. And neither will this one. O’Donnell has already taken the high road by tweeting that he “made an error in judgment” by reporting the unconfirmed story.

It’s hard to know if his walking this back was due to his own journalistic standards or pressure from the network which might have been spooked by the threat of litigation. But there are good reasons why they need not worry. This lawsuit, if pursued, could have some unintended consequences for Trump and company. First, it would disseminate to a much larger audience the allegation that he needed Russian oligarchs to co-sign his loans. That would confirm already known facts regarding Trump’s dire financial status and inability to secure loans on his own from reputable institutions. The lawsuit would also result in a discovery process which would require Trump to provide otherwise confidential documents to the legal representatives of O’Donnell and MSNBC. That requirement by itself will likely scare Trump out of ever actually filing any lawsuit.

So no one should be getting out the popcorn to watch this goofy episode of Trump’s reality show. It is almost certainly going to be preempted by some other Trump nonsense like buying Greenland or nuking hurricanes. This will just end up being another infantile tantrum thrown by our Crybaby-in-Chief that will amount to nothing but blather and the pathetic hissing of a wounded weasel.

UPDATE: True to his word, O’Donnell opened his program Wednesday night with a statement about the Deutsche Bank story. He reiterated the story had not gone through “the rigorous verification process” at MSNBC. Along with the retraction, he also pointedly noted that “We don’t know whether the information is inaccurate. But the fact is we do know that it wasn’t ready for broadcast. And for that I apologize.”

Interestingly, although O’Donnell provided everything Trump’s lawyer’s asked for (a retraction and an apology), Eric Trump demonstrated why the Trump word is worthless. He tweeted that “Apologies are not enough,” and that “we will be taking legal action.” So there’s still hope that a lawsuit will proceed and the discovery process will force Trump to hand over documents they would otherwise keep secret. It’s still more likely that Trump will chicken out, but given his profound stupidity, he might just be dumb enough to go through with it.

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