Election

Here’s a Solution for Trump’s Whining that ‘Something Strange is Going on at Fox News’

Posted by on May 21, 2019 at 1:27 pm. 1 Comments :

The single most predictable expression emanating from Donald Trump at any given moment is his relentless, childish whining. If he isn’t whining about the Mueller investigation, he’s whining about something a Democrat said, or the “fake news,” or Hillary Clinton’s emails, or invading caravans of refugees at the border, or China, or Iran, or worst of all, Obama. And that’s the short list.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Strange

A new entry into Trump’s parade of targets for his whine-feasting is one that many might not have expected. Although no one and nothing is safe from his wrath because all it takes is one slip up and you’re on his shitlist. But his recent attack on Fox News certainly raised some eyebrows.

During his latest cult rally in Pennsylvania, Trump ricocheted from one random nuisance to another with his typical flair for incoherence. He threatened to have his Attorney General, William Barr, investigate Democrats and the FBI for treason. He “joked” about serving five terms as president. And he accused Joe Biden of “deserting” Pennsylvania by moving to Delaware with his parents – when he was ten years old. This is a new wrinkle on his abhorrent policy of separating families. And then he unleashed this brilliant bit of paranoid mush (video below):

“What’s going on with Fox, by the way? They’re putting more Democrats on than Republicans. Something strange is going on at Fox, folks! Something very strange. […] Somebody’s gonna have to explain the whole Fox deal to me?”

Somebody’s gonna have to explain nearly everything to Trump. But more to the point, that was Trump’s response to the town hall Fox News aired on Monday with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. But more importantly, it was Trump’s admission that he regards Fox News as his personal publicity shop where only his views – and those of his GOP allies – are authorized to be broadcast. And if Fox should dare to stray from Trumpian orthodoxy, they are officially guilty of betraying the cause of white-wing nationalism, and him personally. He did exactly the same thing after the Bernie Sanders town hall on Fox.

Trump is actually right in an odd way. Research by Media Matters found that Democrats do appear on Fox News with some frequency. In fact, that occurs far more often than the cowardly Republicans appear on CNN or MSNBC. Trump himself is the King of the Cowards. He has not done an interview with either of those networks since becoming President.

Part of the reason that Fox News is hosting more Democrats than usual is that the Democratic primary field currently consists of twenty-four candidates. However, there is solution to this foreboding problem. Since Trump believes that there are too many Democrats taking up airtime on Fox News, all they need to do is schedule some more Republicans to even out the alleged imbalance. At the moment there is only one other Republican challenging Trump for the GOP nomination. That’s former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld.

As the chief executive of a large state that generally skews blue, Weld should be considered at least as viable a candidate as Buttigieg, the mayor of a small town in rural Indiana. Although Weld is taking on an incumbent president, that shouldn’t be a consideration for a legitimate, independent news network. If Fox News isn’t a Trump-fluffing propaganda operation, they should have no problem inviting Weld to do a town hall.

On the other hand, if Fox fails to offer an invitation to Weld, they are conceding that they are in the tank for Trump and will abide no opposition. To date there is no indication that any such invitation has been proffered. This seems like a perfect opportunity for Weld to approach Fox and insist that he be given the same consideration as Buttigieg, Sanders, and Trump. He is a serious contender with a platform that resonates with millions of Americans. And he would satisfy Trump’s call for Fox News to book more Republicans. So it’s time for Fox to step up and try to prove that they have at least a sliver of journalistic integrity. That, of course, may be too much to ask.

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

Sen. Warren Declines Invitation to Do Town Hall Because ‘Fox News is a Hate-For-Profit Racket’

Posted by on May 14, 2019 at 12:17 pm. 3 Comments :

The debate over whether or not Democrats should appear on Fox News continues to divide many of the current candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand are each scheduled for upcoming town halls. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar have already done their Fox events. And all the evidence proves that they have nothing to show for it. In fact, both have lost points in subsequent polling.

Fox News, Elizabeth Warren

Oddly enough, Donald Trump had one of the most relevant responses to the Sanders town hall on Fox. He tweeted that it was “So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews.” That’s an acknowledgement that Fox News is regarded as the State TV outlet for the Trump presidency and anyone not devoutly worshipful of Dear Leader and the right-wing agenda is out of place and unwelcome.

Now Sen. Elizabeth Warren has weighed in with her response to an invitation from Fox News do to her own town hall. And her reply shows precisely how every Democrat ought to respond when being asked to voluntarily subject themselves to the bias and abuse of these avowed media foes:

That tweet initiated a thread that properly characterized Fox News as the politically prejudiced scam that they have been since inception. Warren’s take down was both brutal and insightful and deserves to be read in its entirety. What follows is the content of her next six tweets:

“Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracy theorists. I won’t ask Democratic primary voters to tune into an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates. Sign up now to join me and take a stand.”

“Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet. It’s all about dragging in ad money—big ad money.”

“But Fox News is struggling as more and more advertisers pull out of their hate-filled space. A Democratic town hall gives the Fox News sales team a way to tell potential sponsors it’s safe to buy ads on Fox—no harm to their brand or reputation (spoiler: It’s not).”

“Here’s one place we can fight back: I won’t ask millions of Democratic primary voters to tune into an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates—especially when Fox will make even more money adding our valuable audience to their ratings numbers.”

“I’m running a campaign to reach all Americans. I take questions from the press and voters everywhere I go. I’ve already held town halls in 17 states and Puerto Rico—including WV, OH, GA, UT, TN, TX, CO, MS & AL.”

“I’ve done 57 media avails and 131 interviews, taking over 1,100 questions from press just since January. Fox News is welcome to come to my events just like any other outlet. But a Fox News town hall adds money to the hate-for-profit machine. To which I say: hard pass.”

There isn’t much to add to that. Except to note that Democrats should not be lending their credibility to a network that exists to malign them and prevent them from having any political success. Also, every study shows that Fox News viewers are the equivalent of cult members whose loyalty and opinions are immovable. They are hopelessly gaslit victims of Trump’s propaganda. They are a fanatical, irredeemably warped cult of right-wing extremists. They simply cannot advance the prospects of any Democratic candidate. Particularly during the primary where the candidates are only trying to appeal to their own party’s voters.

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

Refusing to reward Fox’s hostility with guest spots isn’t about being afraid to face their lame hosts. That’s a cake walk. It’s about refusing to help them sanitizing their hateful agenda and outright lies. And if anyone is exhibiting fear it’s Trump. He is so petrified of MSNBC and CNN that he has never permitted these networks to interview him as president. Then again, Trump’s whole persona is rampant with examples of how frightened he is by any sort of challenge. His Twitter feed is dripping with panic and dread of everything from his dismal polling to his anxiety about being loved by his authoritarian idols, Putin, Kim, etc. And you can bet he’s having nightmares about special counsel Robert Mueller.

Fox News: Lying or Stupid? Hosts Falsely Claim that Trump is Second in Donations By Women

Posted by on May 4, 2019 at 11:27 am. 2 Comments :

When America is suffering through a presidency that has achieved the rare milestone of having told more than 10,000 lies since it began, it may not be an earth shattering revelation that this president’s media mouthpiece traffics just as flagrantly in deliberate falsehoods. But, sadly, that’s what we are enduring in the era of Donald Trump and Fox News.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

The latest example of this occured on Saturday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show. and a significant source of data for his executive decision making. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes raised the subject of the 2020 race for the White House and sought to reveal some financial statistics that they thought would help boost Trump’s prospects in the upcoming election. Their typically partisan and shallow discussion resulted in this exchange (video below):

Jedediah Bila: In 2020, donations for the first quarter in 2019 – Gillibrand, $1,271,135. Kamala Harris, $3,661,680. And third is President Trump at $1,473,830.
Ed Henry: So he’s number two for female donations.
Bila: Right. These are women donations. So everyone that’s out there on the left making the talking point that women are anti-Trump, or Trump is anti-woman, have to remember that the chief issue that drives women to the polls is the same thing that drives everyone to polls. And that is jobs and the economy.
Pete Hegseth: Also, a lot of women, they are our culture warriors. They see what is happening in our schools, in our churches and elsewhere, and they look at this President’s willingness to focus on patriotism.

Let’s set aside Hegseth’s tangential and condescending remarks and the fact that Trump is a notorious abuser of women. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that Fox News got everything about their story horribly wrong. To begin with, the data Fox was citing was from the campaign finance research website, Open Secrets. However, the Open Secrets report was about the “gender distribution” of the donations. In other words, it was studying the percentage of the donations that were from women, not the total receipts. And that’s how the table they posted was sorted.

So contrary to Fox’s claim, Trump was not the second biggest recipient of donations from women. He was not even close. The study they were citing actually just noted that he ranked third in the percentage of female donors. All it took was a glance to see that Trump was actually sixth in terms of total female donations. And that’s despite the fact that many of the female donors were divided among four Democratic women (Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, and Warren) who were less well known than the current president. Trump’s total take from women even ranked lower than Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker.

It took a prodigious amount of ignorance, carelessness, and/or dishonesty for the Foxies to screw up this simple story so badly. But those are “skills” that they work on every day. Don’t expect Fox News to acknowledge this error, or to offer a retraction or apology. They knew what they were doing and they’re proud of their efforts to mislead their already pitifully ill-informed audience. It’s what they were created to do.

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

Trump’s Reelection Campaign is Stealing Millions of his Donors’ Dollars for His Legal Bills

Posted by on April 27, 2019 at 3:14 pm. 2 Comments :

Within hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration, he did something that was peculiar and unprecedented. He announced the establishment of his reelection committee for 2020. At the time, no one could figure out why he would do that so far in advance of the next presidential election. But his reasons are now apparent, and they affirm his status as Grifter-in-Chief.

Donald Trump

When a campaign committee is formed it can immediately begin raising funds and making expenditures. Since January of 2017, Trump has pulled in more than $60 million dollars, just to his campaign committee, which doesn’t count what’s been raised by the Republican Party and pro-Trump PACS. Some of that money has already been been spent on his frequent cult rallies. He’s done about sixty of those to date. Remember, this is the candidate who said that:

“I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice. I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”

That was one of his very earliest lies to the American people. He then created a marketing machine that peddled hokey red baseball caps, t-shirts, and anything else he could scribble his name and slogans onto. He also mined donations from a vast email list by appealing to the fear and ignorance of his Deplorable supporters who he taunted with threats of invasions from south of the border and promises of tax cuts for all. Which were just more lies.

Now ABC News is reporting that Trump’s campaign committee has spent an extraordinary amount of money on his own legal fees. And since this is a president who is drowning in criminal complaints, investigations, and even civil lawsuits by women he’s assaulted, his lawyers are among the busiest in the nation. According to ABC News:

“Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees, according to ABC News’ analysis of campaign finance records through last month, with record-breaking quarterly expenditures doled out in the last three months of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

ABC also reveals that Trump’s campaign has been paying the legal bills for others in his inner circle, such as his son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Even his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had some bills paid prior to his cooperation with the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller. Of course, much of the expenditures were explicitly for matters related to Trump’s conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice.

Generally these sort of legal bills are paid by separate legal defense funds, which Trump also has set up for himself. But it’s much easier to raise money from his cult followers than from the big money donors who contribute to dedicated defense funds. Trump’s defense fund has raised less a million dollars, and spent only half of that.

You have to wonder whether Trump’s supporters know that fully fourteen percent of the money they are donating to help him get reelected is going directly into the pockets of shady lawyers like Rudy Giuliani? Would his glassy-eyed disciples even care?

What Trump has created with his reelection committee is just another vehicle for him to fleece the dupes who buy into his scams. He knew that when he started it two years ago. He is no better than the evangelical hucksters who ply their gullible devotees for bribes to God to get into heaven. And he can’t even promise that these donations are going to get him reelected, or even keep him out of prison.

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 ‘Welcomes’ Joe Biden to a Race that Will Be Dominated By Trump’s Fear

Posted by on April 25, 2019 at 11:57 am. 0 Comments :

As might be expected, Donald Trump demonstrated today that he has still not progressed emotionally from the stage of a chollicky infant. In response to Joe Biden’s announcement that he is entering the primaries for the Democratic nomination for president, Trump lashed out with a sarcastic welcome that featured a recycled nickname that he previously gave to NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Sleepy” Joe Biden.

Donald Trump

Trump’s tweet was typically boorish and devoid of either wit or substance. It was just another one of his ad hominem harangues that he thinks are so clever, that his cult followers lap up, but that prove nothing except for how shallow and hateful he is:

For Trump to demean the intelligence of Biden, or anyone else, is truly peak irony. This is a man who thinks winter is an argument against climate change; who thinks that stealth bombers are really invisible; who doesn’t know that tariffs are paid by consumers, not countries; who says he’ll take any attempt to impeach him to the Supreme Court. And the irony continued with Trump’s assertions that it’s the Democrats who are “nasty, sick, and demented.”

However, the race that Trump is welcoming Biden into is one that will be dominated by Trump’s own fears and desperation. Immediately after the release of the redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump declared that he had been “totally exonerated.” But ever since he has been castigating Mueller and the report as a hoax that was corrupt and illegal. And despite his lame attempts to cover it up, he clearly knows that he has been exposed as having committed crimes and for obstructing justice. Which is why he also tweeted these anxiety-riddled thoughts today:

So now Trump is calling his former White House counsel, Don McGahn, a liar. Is that another example of his hiring “the best people’? Also, Trump never fires anyone himself. He always gets some other patsy to do it for him. And as for the claim that he “respectfully allowed [Mueller] to finish his work,” that was only after he called him a “conflicted, corrupt, illegal, disreputable Trump Hater,” who was on a “Witch Hunt”? That’s Trump’s idea of respectful.

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

And we can expect more of the same as the 2020 presidential election gets into gear. Trump will continue to act like a big baby, continue to lie, and continue to malign his opponents and critics with baseless and childish insults. If America is lucky, Trump will be impeached or resign before we all have to go through more of that.

HAH! Trump Campaign Memo Makes Strong Case for Banning Lying Trump Surrogates from TV

Posted by on March 25, 2019 at 2:38 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s was just two days ago that special counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation of Donald Trump and the nefarious connections to Russia by the President and his close associates. And it’s been less than twenty-four hours since Attorney General William Barr released his deliberately distorted letter that misrepresented even the few sentence fragments from Mueller’s report that Barr bothered to cite.

Donald Trump

However, that was plenty of time for the Republican Political Machine to contrive their propaganda offensive and to craft a brazenly false narrative that Trump has been exonerated and that his critics are witch hunting liars. The project they rushed to implement included a bizarre memo from Tim Murtaugh, the Director of Communications for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Murtaugh’s memo echoed what most of the GOP Surrogate Squad has been saying: Barr’s letter is “a total and complete vindication of President Donald Trump.” Of course, Mueller’s actually words dispute that. He literally wrote that his report “does not exonerate” Trump, at least with regard to obstruction of justice.

The rest of the memo consisted primarily of a list of Democrats who made truthful statements about Trump and Russia. They included Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Eric Swalwell, DNC Chair Tom Perez, and former CIA Director John Brennan. Each of them correctly noted that there is abundant evidence that Trump did in fact conspire with Russians to advance his election prospects. Murtaugh sent the memo to TV producers in an effort to poison the media trough by baselessly accusing the Democrats of lying.

Notice that the only argument that Murtaugh makes to support his allegations is what Barr wrote in his highly partisan interpretation of the Mueller report, which he has so far refused to make public. And on the basis of that he asks TV bookers to reconsider inviting Democratic guests for interviews. It’s a familiar dictators’ ploy to silence their opponents by starving them of media exposure. But perhaps the most ludicrous paragraph in the Murtaugh memo was the question that he proposed for TV bookers to ask themselves:

“Does this guest warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past.”

That’s a darn good question. The only problem for Trump’s whiny comms director is that if the media takes his advice, and uses that criteria for future bookings, it would be the end of all television appearances for Trump’s senior counsel Kellyanne Conway, his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, his campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, his son Don Jr., and pretty much anyone else who works for Trump. They are a team of recidivist liars who, when they aren’t mangling the truth, are feverishly trying to deflect and divert from the topic at hand. And of course, Trump’s record breaking 9,000+ lies would make him off limits for TV bookings.

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

So, come to think of it, this is a pretty good idea. Television news would be far better off without these tale-spinners butchering what should be an informative public discourse. Most of the time their interviews devolve into shouting fits wherein they cravenly try to filibuster the limited time available for their segment and avoid giving any substantive answers. So while Murtaugh meant to impose a thinly disguised demand for censorship, he ended up offering a solution to the pollution on the airwaves by dishonest Trump-fluffers and sycophants. We owe him our thanks.

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.

Elizabeth Warren Slams the Fox News ‘Echo Chamber’ of ‘Fear and Hate’ in Presidential Campaign Video

Posted by on December 31, 2018 at 11:35 am. 1 Comments :

On the precipice of a new year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released a video (below) announcing that she is forming an exploratory committee to test the waters for a prospective presidential campaign. She is the first of what will likely be a big pool of Democratic hopefuls seeking to cast out Donald Trump in 2020 – if he makes it that far (Mueller?).

Elizabeth Warren, Fox News

Notable in her video was the fact that she didn’t mention Trump’s name once. That will surely drive him nuts. There’s nothing he craves more than hearing his own name in pretty much any context. But she concentrated on bread-and-butter issues of importance to America’s middle class families. For instance, she laid out a platform that directly addresses the threat of corporatism and income inequality:

“I spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster. And what I found was terrifying. These aren’t cracks that families are falling into. They’re traps. America’s middle class is under attack. How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie.”

Warren went on to link the political class to the problems that Americans are experiencing. She noted that the one-percenters “enlisted politicians [and] crippled unions.” to achieve their self-serving goals. And she pointedly stated that “Today corruption is poisoning our democracy.” She may not have said Trump’s name, but he was ever-present in her remarks.

It was also encouraging to see that Warren wasn’t shy about holding Fox News accountable for their contribution to the decline of Western Civilization. She took on the wealthy elites and Fox News saying forthrightly that:

“The whole scam is propped up by an echo chamber of fear and hate designed to distract and divide us.”

While she spoke those words there were images of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Fox and Friends, and Laura Ingraham prominently displayed. She got in the whole primetime lineup, plus Trump’s favorite Fox News morning show.

This is the kind of fearless honesty that will be needed to beat Trump (or whatever GOP hack runs in his place) in 2020. You can rest assured that Fox News will there to advance the lies and hostility of the Republican agenda and defeat the champions of unfettered democracy who are fighting for the welfare of the majority of American citizens.

The Trump presidency has shown us that the GOP couldn’t care less about ordinary people, honest representation, or the rule of law. But it has also shown us that there are voters who are susceptible to flagrant deception and who are willing – even eager – to be lied to. They are the rubes that Fox News is designed to corral into the GOP camp. And the rest of us need to be alert and engaged in order to preserve our country and the democracy that it pioneered.

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

Fox News Freak Out: Host Says of Democrats that ‘We’ve Always Known they Were Socialists’

Posted by on November 25, 2018 at 11:55 am. 3 Comments :

Now that the 2018 election is over, and the “Blue Wave” has swept more Democrats into office than at any time since Watergate, the 2020 election is lining up at the starting gate. Democrats have much to be hopeful for considering the historically low approval ratings of Donald Trump (who has never managed to reach 50%) and the Senate map that has twice as many Republican Nationalists defending their seats as Democrats.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

This of course means that Fox News is already chomping at the bit to canonize Trump and malign Democrats. And nowhere more than Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends, is the mudslinging perched at the ready to attack. On Sunday’s episode of the melodrama that Fox passes off as “news,” the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were on the edge of their sofa with excitement at the prospect of smearing those pesky liberals who won by a massive majority three weeks ago. They began by featuring a tweet thread by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) wherein he rejected the notion that Democrats would engage in a fight between moderates and progressives. But then the Foxies ignored that and rattled off their own bitterly partisan narrative.

Co-host Pete Hegseth demonstrated his low comprehension skills by insisting that the 2020 Democratic nominee for president is going to be “a far-left progressive.” Never mind that the Democrats could nominate noted conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and the GOP would still label him as a far left radical. Republicans aren’t interested in honest assessments, only what they think will have a negative electoral impact. But then co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy (a former cast member on MTV’s The Real World, and wife of GOP congressman Sean Duffy) let loose what the GOP really believes (video below):

“A lot of people mocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I think the moment she came out and proud as a socialist, and caused the other members of the caucus – all of them basically took their masks off and said ‘Yep. We’re there too.’ We’ve always known they were socialists. So I think what’s really important here is that 2020 is gonna be an honest election between socialism and American capitalism.”

Really? Campos-Duffy actually thinks that all of the Democrats who might run for president in 2020 are masked socialists? However, she and her Fox News comrades have known it all along. That’s actually an accurate representation of Fox’s long held bias that has earned them the State TV label that was recently affirmed by the discovery that Fox’s former president, Bill Shine, now works for Trump is being paid simultaneously by both.

What’s more, notice how Campos-Duffy characterizes capitalism as “American,” but leaves off any such judgment of patriotism when she mentions socialism. That’s typical of Fox News and the right who routinely ignore the fact that many of the core principles of American society are rooted in socialism. That includes everything from public libraries and schools to Medicare and Social Security.

Campos-Duffy went on to say that she hopes Democrats nominate a progressive, which she said “means socialist.” Co-host Griff Jenkins then chimed in to say that the 2018 election proved that there are no “blue dog” Democrats who are moderates or conservatives. And of course, Hegseth agreed saying that “You’re totally right. And there will be no more ‘code talk,'” by which he meant Democrats hiding their clandestine socialist conspiracy.

But they are deliberately misleading their willfully ignorant audience. The Democratic Party is far more diverse in every way than the Republican Nationalists, and that includes political ideology. In fact, there are even many right-leaning Democrats who Fox News has been crowing about for their opposition to Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House. So they are contradicting their own narratives.

Whoever the next Democratic nominee for president is, it will be someone who far surpasses the flagrantly idiotic, racist, narcissistic, criminal, treasonous, rage-aholic, fear fetishist who is occupying the White House now. And if it’s someone who recognizes the benefits of broad ideologies – including socialism – it will be the will of the people that got that person the nomination. And, hopefully, the White House. It’s called democracy. Get used to it Republicans, because your authoritarian, gerrymandering, voter suppressing ways are coming to an end.

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

Trump is Panic Tweeting Incoherently with 9 Posts About Election Fraud Containing Zero Evidence

Posted by on November 9, 2018 at 2:51 pm. 3 Comments :

The United States of America now has a president who can be relied on to FREAK OUT whenever something doesn’t go his way. He is a bundle of frazzled nerves that jolt uncontrollably at the slightest sign of an adverse situation. He is an impotent weakling who seems to be proud of his masterful ability to whine. Indeed, he even bragged about being “the most fabulous whiner.”

Donald Trump

However, that isn’t exactly the sort of composed, level-headed leadership that one expects from an American president. To the contrary, it’s emblematic of a loose cannon who is likely to cause untold damage if left unchecked. And the midterm election a few days ago was the perfect opportunity to apply some real checks and balances on this inflamed hemorrhoid of a president. So that’s what the American people did.

Unfortunately, Trump is taking his losses with his usual bad and infantile temper. After first delusionally proclaiming that the election results were a “very big win” for him, he is now in a rage over a few late-breaking results that are common in election tabulations. The races for senator in Florida and Arizona are trending toward the Democrats. So is the race for governor in Florida. And being emotionally incapable of facing reality, Trump has embarked on a deranged outpouring of utter nonsense on Twitter.

On Friday Trump has posted (so far) nine tweets assailing the election results as unfair or corrupt or stolen or otherwise not being obedient to his whims. He began with a tweet that ominously announced a legal investigation:

For the record, there is no agency looking into any “corruption scandal.” Rick Scott’s desperate plea to his own Department of Law Enforcement was summarily rejected, with this conclusive statement:

“After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Thursday night it would investigate two local election officials at the request of Gov. Rick Scott, the agency now says that because no voter fraud allegations were made, it is no longer pursuing an investigation.

“’What changed is that this morning we spoke with the Department of State and they indicated they had no criminal allegations of fraud,” FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger told POLITICO in an email. ‘So, after speaking to them, we offered our assistance in the event any criminal allegations are identified.’”

But that wasn’t sufficient to stem the red tide of Trump’s anger and fear. So he blasted out a series of tweets that maligned Democrats and made totally unsubstantiated claims that were notably lacking in any facts:


Kemp didn’t win, and it’s time to finish counting the votes.


This is Trump’s attempt at humor that also implies that his pal Vladimir Putin is innocent.


Uh oh. Trump is sending Rudy Giuliani to Florida. That should scare those pesky, vote counting Democrats.


They found lots of Republican votes, you doofus. They just found more Democratic votes in the heaviest Democratic leaning district in the state. Does that confuse you?


You are the “embarrassment to our Country and to Democracy!” And, by the way, concessions are not binding and Nelson never conceded.


Wait. So there aren’t enough people there to make a difference? Thanks for just invalidating your own argument.


Little Marco to the rescue. The world didn’t care before he stepped in.


Trump doesn’t provide any link to this specious charge. But for him to cry about protecting democracy after complaining about counting votes is pretty good proof that he’s gone totally berserk.

Of course, what has triggered Trump is the potential that he will face increasingly challenging opposition from a much more Democratic Congress. Wannabe dictators chafe at anyone questioning their imaginary authority. True democracy is their mortal enemy. And Trump is the epitome of this totalitarian mindset. So he lashes out with these pitiful tantrums in the hopes that his adversaries will see how miffed he is and back down.

Good luck with that, Donnie. You would be better off concentrating on the imminent indictments that you and your crime family are so scared of, and are likely be served in the near future. Even your unlawful manipulation of the Justice Department and the Senate will not save you now.

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