Election

Fox News Affirms Its State TV Status with Slobbering Interview of Trump Campaign Shill

Posted by on December 1, 2019 at 1:21 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s getting more difficult with every passing day to differentiate between Fox News and the Republican Nationalist Party. And even though the network was created to serve as a propaganda vehicle for right-wing politics, the degree to which it has become the communications office of Donald Trump’s cult movement still manages to be surprising.

Donald Trump Fox News

On Sunday morning Fox and Friends co-host Ed Henry “interviewed” Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary for the Trump 2020 campaign. It was another in a frequent series of Trump campaign and administration officials appearing regularly on Fox News. They know they have an open door at Fox where they can deliver their disinformation at any time without interruption or dispute. And this booking was no exception. Henry asked a total of four question, and each one seems like it was written by some Trump PR hack, complete with hostile allusions to Democrats. The first exchange went like this:

Henry: Well, Democrats in the media are not taking time out over Thanksgiving, going after the President over his Thanksgiving visit to see troops in Afghanistan. […] What in the world is going on here when you can’t visit men and women in uniform and thank them for their service?
McEnany: It’s amazing. This is the Trump obsessed media. Anything and everything will always be wrong. They can’t tolerate when he does something good.”

Henry offered no evidence of any plot to “go after” Trump for visiting Afghanistan. It was just a way to frame his question with a built in bias against Democrats. And it was a softball thrown at McEnany who went on to say that whenever the press criticizes Trump they are delegitimizing themselves. For the record, Democrats would have no problem tolerating Trump doing something good, and they’re still waiting for the first time. The next question from Henry was no better:

Henry: What about the fact the House Democrats are now moving forward on impeachment as the President is doing another part of his job as commander-in-chief, which is heading to London to work at a NATO summit and tackle some big national security issues?
McEnany: It’s shameful. As you noted there has been a precedent that we don’t criticize presidents when they are overseas, much less pursue a coup against a sitting president. And that’s what this is. This was never about the facts. […] This is a coup against a sitting president of the United States without evidence, without facts, and that is why the polling is going south on this. It’s despicable that they’re doing this, particularly when the President is overseas.

Once again, Henry’s question was loaded with anti-Democratic bias, portraying them as unpatriotic. Does he think that Democrats should halt the impeachment hearings, which were already in progress before Trump’s junket to London? And holding impeachment hearings isn’t exactly analogous to criticizing the President. It is a constitutional proceeding that members of Congress are obligated to conduct when warranted by the legal and/or ethical misbehavior of the President. It doesn’t cease if the President decides to take a trip.

What’s more, it is certainly not a coup. Republicans have been floating that canard for months, despite the fact that the Founders included impeachment in the Constitution for a reason. And there is an avalanche of facts that affirm that it is warranted in this case. Look no further than the assessment of Andrew Napolitano, the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News, who says that “the evidence of impeachable behavior is overwhelming.” But still, Henry marches on with his lambasting of Democrats disguised as questions:

Henry: I can’t have you leave without asking you about the “No Malarkey” tour that the former Vice-President is launching. He says there are a lot of lies out there. I don’t know if he’s pointing at his fellow Democrats and/or the President. What’s your reaction to Joe Biden, who’s struggling in Iowa right now, going out on a bus for eight days?”

Really? Henry doesn’t know whether Biden is calling Trump or his fellow Democrats liars? That’s some pretty stark ignorance he’s admitting to if that’s true. McEnany, of course, took the opportunity to disparage Biden’s campaign as “fledgling” and “desperate.” What on Earth did Henry expect to her say? It was a preposterous question to ask the Trump campaign’s press secretary. McEnany further claimed that Biden’s campaign, which is still leading in national polls, is “just about over.” A bizarre assessment that Henry didn’t bother to challenge.

Henry’s final question was a muddle of negativity about the Democratic debates and candidates who are lower in the polls. Which gave McEnany another opening to bash her opponents as “failing” and to brag that the GOP has “only one candidate that we love and have kept at the top.” Indeed, the Cult of Trump is strong within the tiny community of Deplorables. They do love him and regard him as their savior who is infallible. That’s to be expected from a political party that has given up any pretense of integrity or patriotism. But it’s still somewhat jarring to see an alleged “news” network worshiping at the same alter.

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

IMPEACH NOW! Why Trump Cannot Be Allowed to Stay in Office Until the 2020 Election

Posted by on November 25, 2019 at 12:44 pm. 4 Comments :

The impeachment inquiry hearings held last week by the House Intelligence Committee revealed a case for the impeachment of Donald Trump that is – in the words of the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News – “OVERWHELMING!” Career diplomats and national security professionals provided first-hand testimony affirming Trump’s efforts to extort the president of Ukraine in order to help him smear a potential political rival.

Donald Trump

Nevertheless, Trump continues to insist that he’s done nothing wrong. And Republicans in Congress, along with Trump cultists in the press, refuse to give any ground or to acknowledge the piles of evidence against the President. In fact, in their zeal to defend Trump, they are brazenly advancing conspiracy theories concocted by Russia intended to harm the U.S.

When their reserve of talking points and slander against Trump critics run out, the Trumpian brigades resort to the pitifully weak backup argument that efforts to impeach Trump should be abandoned because there is an election next year. However, when that proposal is explored in detail it makes no sense whatsoever. So in the interest of providing a concise and logical rebuttal, what follows are three principle reasons for why it would be unthinkable to allow Trump to remain in office until the election of 2020:

REASON NUMBER 1: Cheaters Gonna Cheat
The offenses that Trump is being charged with are specifically related to his attempts to undermine a fair election. By abusing his power of the presidency in a plot to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, with the forced assistance of a foreign country, Trump has shown that he cannot be trusted to run an honest campaign. No one would play a round of golf for money with someone who has been proven to cheat at golf (as Trump has also done). And no one should expect Trump to conduct a fair campaign in 2020. What’s more, with what we know about his unsavory connections to Russia and Wikileaks, it’s clear that he cheated in 2016 as well. That’s not someone to whom you give the benefit of a doubt for an upcoming election.

REASON NUMBER 2: No Free Pass
Were we wait until 2020 for Trump to be voted out of office, that would not suffice as punishment. Any president who runs for reelection is subject to voters choosing someone else for the next four years. It might be due to dissatisfaction with his performance in his first term, or rejection of political policies, or even a personal dislike. Or it could be be simply because voters liked the other candidate better. But there is nothing associated with an electoral loss that can be strictly designated as punishment. However, when a president commits offenses that warrant impeachment, it is imperative that a historical record show what happened and why. Impeachment is the only way way to insure that the president is punished and that a deterrent is established for future presidents.

REASON NUMBER 3: You Can’t Trust a Con Man
The argument that we should all just a wait patiently because the next election is only a year away is an argument to be blindfolded for a year. In this context a year is quite a long time. A president inclined to breach ethical and legal standards can do a lot of damage in a year. He can issue executive orders, appoint judges and other powerful political allies, and engage in vengeful retaliation against critics. Someone under the kind of cloud that impeachment presents – particularly when it’s related to unlawful or corrupt acts – cannot be trusted to behave honorably for another twelve months in an office that they shouldn’t occupy to begin with. That time could be spent obstructing justice, maligning opponents, or just feathering his nest financially.

CONCLUSION
Those who say we should wait and let the voters decide are forgetting that the voters already decided. In 2016 they chose Hillary Clinton by a 3,000,000 vote margin. In 2018 they handed the power of the majority to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House of Representatives. And all of the polling today indicates that most Americans favor impeaching Trump and removing him from office. Given that endorsement, and the reasons stated above, there really is no other path forward than impeachment. The arguments to the contrary are impotent, devoid of logic, and steeped in the cult worship of glassy-eyed disciples whose only interest is in appeasing Dear Leader.

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

Terrified Trump Lies and Lashes Out at Nancy Pelosi, Calling Her ‘Grossly Incompetent’

Posted by on November 19, 2019 at 1:40 pm. 3 Comments :

The impeachment hearings continue on Capitol Hill with the testimony of Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and others from the administration. Their depositions already reveal incriminating evidence against Donald Trump and his efforts to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That isn’t expected to change during the live testimony, although Republicans will surely try to assassinate their characters and change the subject.

Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi

As for Trump, he began the morning with his customary hostility toward Democrats and the legal and proper process that is underway. It is the duty of Congress to ascertain the facts about an unlawful bribery conspiracy intended to benefit Trump’s reelection prospects. And since the facts are all aligned against him, he is wholly consumed with defaming his perceived foes, Democrats and the press. That objective was neatly summarized in his remarks during a White House press avail wherein he unleashed a tirade that was completely devoid of any substantive defense of his actions. It was pure venom and wrath (video below). He began…:

“The woman [Nancy Pelosi] is grossly incompetent. All she wants to do is focus on impeachment, which is just a little pipe dream she’s got. And she can keep playing that game.”

Naturally the first inclination of Trump is to throw insults at his enemies. And of course they are completely lacking in any factual basis. Trump is well known for spewing whatever vile nonsense comes into his hollow head at any given moment, so his attack on Pelosi as “grossly incompetent” is just an empty slur. In fact, he had a very different opinion of her when Democrats won control of the House in 2018:

However, Trump was far from finished with his morning malice. He continued by introducing an imaginary scenario that he pulled straight from his asinine fantasies of how he thinks the world should be:

“I’ve been told – who knows if this is so, but I think it’s so. I have pretty good authority on it – that she’s using USMCA (United States, Mexico, and Canada Trade Agreement) because she doesn’t have the impeachment votes, so she’s using USMCA to get the impeachment vote. And it doesn’t matter because right now you have a kangaroo court headed by little shifty Schiff, where we don’t have lawyers, we don’t have witnesses, we don’t have anything.”

To be clear, Trump was told this by the voices in his head. There is absolutely no evidence of Pelosi associating the USMCA with the impeachment vote. What’s more, it’s already been established that she has the votes of a significant majority of Democrats for impeachment. But Trump couldn’t help himself and had to pound out another insult aimed at House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. Trump has previously displayed his rank childishness by insulting the Chairman as Adam “Schitt.”

And still Trump wasn’t through. His whining about not having his lawyers or witnesses at the hearing could be resolved by him agreeing to testify. He tweeted that he would consider that, but anyone holding their breath waiting for it to happen better have a soft place to fall when they pass out. Also, not having Rudy Giuliani there can only be seen as a positive.

Finally, Trump exhibited the depth of his delusion by claiming that “The Republicans are absolutely killing it” at the hearing. He apparently hasn’t heard any of the incriminating testimony. Then he rattled off his routing ranting about the whole thing being a hoax and how the Founders, who deliberately wrote impeachment into the Constitution, would have nevertheless opposed it. And he has the bizarre impression that he’s a beloved leader who is doing well in the polls. Perhaps so, if he thinks that having a majority of Americans favor his impeachment and removal from office is “doing well.” In his diseased mind the Democrats are are simply out to get him, but…

“It’s had the opposite effect, because you’ve seen the polls and I’m the highest I’ve ever been in the polls. You don’t hear that on television because the news and the Democrats are one and the same.”

The reason you don’t hear that Trump is high in the polls is because it isn’t true. But that’s just another of the fallacies that Trump is disseminating. On Monday he tweeted with shock that Nancy Pelosi said “It is dangerous to let the voters decide Trump’s fate.” Which would be shocking if she actually said that. In reality, Pelosi only said that not conducting the impeachment inquiry would be dangerous “because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.” That’s very, very different, and true. Trump’s “quote” actually came, not from Pelosi, but from Mike Emanuel of Fox News. Is anyone surprised?

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

HOLY CREEP! Trump Admits to Using the U.S. Military Budget to Bribe Voters

Posted by on November 5, 2019 at 11:55 am. 5 Comments :

The degree to which Donald Trump lacks any hint of self-awareness is mind boggling. He shamelessly boasts about having record-breaking support among Republicans when that support is actually in decline. He demands that the whistleblower testify while, in the same breath, insists that nobody should testify. He pretends that he’s not worried about being impeached, but can’t stop talking – or tweeting – about it.

Donald Trump, Prison

Now, as Trump is being shredded by an avalanche of evidence that he extorted Ukrainian President Zelensky in order to get dirt on Joe Biden, Trump is simultaneously engaging in a another flagrant case of bribery. This one centers around the off-year elections that are now being held in several states. Trump has been consumed with campaigning in the past few weeks, focusing on those states. Both his tweets and his cult rallies have been centered around the election calendar. But in a disturbing Tuesday tweet Trump literally confessed to a bribery scheme to get votes:

This is one of the most brazen admissions of criminal electioneering ever. It begins with Trump reminding the people of Virgina of his “genorosity” with federal dollars. That, of course, isn’t true. Trump has even diverted military funds to building his vanity border wall, which won’t help Virginia in the slightest. And then Trump holds the promise of future spending in the state over their heads. He is plainly trying to frighten Virginia voters with threats that federal allocations will dry up if they don’t vote for him. And we know that Trump is not shy about abusing his power to punish those he doesn’t deem sufficietly worshipful.

This tweet cannot be interpreted as anything other than a bribe. He is trying to appeal to Virginians who are reliant on federal funds for jobs and the economic boost that military facilities bring to localities. That is illegal on its face. It is also a breach of national security as it directs the allocations of military funding based on Trump’s political whims, rather than the needs of the nation’s armed forces. In that respect, Trump is violating his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

For Trump to openly admit to this criminal activity is both shocking and predictable. His capacity for breaking the law and bragging about it is unheard of in American politics. And the saddest part of it all is that he so often gets away with it. As the current impeachment inquiry progresses, hopefully Trump will finally be held accountable for at least a few of his crimes. Were there any realistic administration of justice, Trump would never get 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.

Pyro Maniac: Trump’s Impeachment is Burning Down His Republican Support Firewall

Posted by on November 1, 2019 at 1:19 pm. 2 Comments :

On Thursday Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted to formalize Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry with rules providing for open hearings and bipartisan participation. It was everything that Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party were asking for, but still they complained and voted against it en masse. The official White House response was a pitiful heap of petulance and trash-talking points.

Flaming Trump

Nevertheless, the process has been advanced to a new phase where evidence and witness testimony that is certain to further incriminate the President will be made public. That will have a profound effect on Trump’s deteriorating mental state, which is already descending into the Mariana Trench of desperation. His attacks on any and all perceived foes will escalate in both volume and absurdity.

Likewise, voters will continue to be appalled by the abject criminality of their so-called president. There is already a majority of Americans who favor impeaching Trump and removing him from office. Even Trump’s favorite, ultra-biased pollster, Rasmussen, is showing him near his lows for the year. But what must be especially worrisome for Trump and his minions is the crumbling support from within his own camp. According to a new poll:

“Trump’s job approval rating is stable and low, at 38% in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with one notable result: a career low in approval among Republicans, 74%, down steeply from a career-high 87% in July.”

That’s right. Trump’s approval among Republicans is raging inferno of failure as the walls of impeachment fall in all around him. Which might be why he hasn’t mentioned once the disastrous wildfires in California. He doesn’t want to be reminded of things burning down.

The general public’s negative view in this poll is consistent with other surveys showing majorities favoring impeachment. But this poll also notes that 18% of the pro-impeachment vote is coming from the GOP. That’s a devastating blow to Trump’s frantic reliance on the home teamers to prop him up during troubled times. One of Trump’s most frequent displays of neediness manifests on Twitter as boasting about the GOP’s glassy-eyed adoration of Dear Leader. For instance, he’s tweeted some variation of the following seventeen times this year:

It’s difficult to verify whether or not that’s actually a record because Trump didn’t once include a link or reference to wherever he got that figure in any of his tweets. Also, it seems to waver between 93% and 95% apparently depending on how much he wants to lie on that particular day. But now we have a documented source that puts Trump’s approval among Republicans at a much lower 74%, and it was never higher than 87%. Therefore, we can probably expect Trump to post a new tweet congratulating himself on reaching a phenomenally high (and laughably fake) 98% of GOP support.

Because Trump’s defenders are always asking what he could possibly be impeached for, here are just a few of the likely charges: extortion, campaign finance violations, witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, evidence tampering, breaching the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and conspiracy against the United States. Of course, many StormTrumpers will never hear these charges because they rely entirely on Fox News for disinformation. But then Fox is having problems of their own sustaining support.

The House is almost certainly going to pass Articles of Impeachment against Trump before the end of the year. One of the key factors in how GOP senators will rule on those indictments is the how their voters are lining up. Currently the Republican members are only privately concerned about the guilt of their president. But that concern will become more actionable as Republican voters drift farther from Trump.

When GOP senators are sufficiently afraid that Trump is hurting their reelection prospects, expect them to flip on the Offender-in-Chief and vote to boot him from the White House, or pressure him to resign, as they did with Richard Nixon. Either way, the next couple of months are definitely gonna be popcorn worthy.

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

Trump Gets Stuck in Berserk Brain Loop Over a Figment of His Warped Imagination

Posted by on October 16, 2019 at 12:35 pm. 7 Comments :

The Meltdown in the Oval Office is proceeding at a velocity that would have been unimaginable in any prior administration. But under Donald Trump’s regime the daily atrocities are so frequent and routine that they are becoming passe. Nevertheless, Trump appears to realize just how much trouble he’s in with his inevitable impeachment, and it’s expediting the rot of his already diseased grey matter.

Donald Trump

During a press avail with Trump and Italian President Mattarella, Trump wandered away from any subject that concerned this diplomatic visit and babbled manically about extraneous matters that are clearly consuming his consciousness. Those matters involve his obsession with the 2016 election and what he perceives were misdeeds by Democrats. He rattled off the names of people he has long despised and charged with crimes that he could not prove. They included former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and two of his favorite targets, FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

However, the most peculiar part of this event occurred when Trump barreled into a long ago debunked conspiracy theory regarding a computer server belonging to the Democratic National Committee. Trump’s tirade on this subject was a spectacular display of hysterical incoherence (video below):

I still ask the FBI, where is the server? How come the FBI never got the server from the DNC? Where is the server? I want to see the server. Let’s see what’s on the server. So the server they say is held by a company whose primary ownership individual is from Ukraine. I would like to see the server. I think it’s very important for this country to see the server. Nobody wants to see it. The media never wants to see it. I’ll tell you, Republicans want to see it.”

Trump mumbles about “the server” eight times in that brief rant. His brain seems to have gotten stuck in an endless loop from which there is no escape. It’s indicative of his deranged mental state that is possessed by some mysterious whirlpool of inanities. And everything in this harangue is wholly fictitious.

What Trump is alluding to in his demented way is a server that was suspected of being hacked by foreign operatives seeking to disrupt the election. Trump is regurgitating conspiracy theories that emanated from the dark recesses of the ultra-right Internet. There is no plausible explanation for why Democrats would be suspected of any wrongdoing since they were the victims of the hacking.

As for the FBI’s role in this, they did want to inspect the server to accumulate any evidence that might lead to the hackers. So the DNC made a “mirror” copy of its hard drive, which the FBI was satisfied would be sufficient for their investigative purposes. The FBI could have at any time requested to take into custody the physical server, but they determined that it wasn’t necessary.

Ever since then, the only people who were ever interested in the server were conspiracy crackpots at Infowars, 8chan, and Fox News. And, of course, Donald Trump. He even brought it up in the now infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Somehow Trump got the idea that the server wound up in Ukraine. There is zero evidence of that. But that doesn’t stop Trump and his cadre of propagandists from continuing to disseminate this nonsense.

And that’s not all, Later in the day Trump held a joint press conference with Mattarella. But in the middle of it Trump started talking about alleged corruption during the 2016 election again. Naturally, Trump sidestepped his own well documented criminal activities and launched into a bizarre rant about imaginary Democratic misconduct about which he asserted that “Maybe it goes right up to President Obama. I happen to think it does.” Needless to say, there is no evidence whatsoever of anything remotely resembling this reckless accusation.

It’s just Trump being Trump. And that’s what’s most frightening about all of this. He is totally unhinged from reality and getting worse every day. The imperative to impeach him could not be more urgent. There’s a lot of damage he could do in this condition. The American people are ready to remove him from office, and now our Congress must act.

And Speaking of Meltdowns: Later in the day Democratic leadership left a White House meeting after Trump called Speaker Pelosi a “third-rate politician.” They were supposed to be discussing the situation in Syria, but Trump just went bonkers with infantile, personal insults after he learned that 129 Republicans voted with Democrats to condemn his retreat from Syria and betrayal of the Kurds. And Trump followed up his tantrum with this tweet cementing his total insanity:

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.

Devotion to the Cult of Trump Risks the GOP Having No Presidential Candidate in 2020

Posted by on October 3, 2019 at 12:23 pm. 2 Comments :

Time is running out. It’s running out for Donald Trump as Congress is on a fast track toward impeachment. And as the walls close in around him, he is becoming ever more unhinged and incoherent. He’s even taken to crying “coup” about the constitutional process for considering the removal of a corrupt leader. It’s a sad spectacle that diminishes the stature of the nation.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

But time also running out for the Republican Party that seems to have no strategy for a post-impeachment electoral landscape. As the prospects for impeachment grow by the hour – mainly due to Trump’s own panicky and desperate outbursts – the GOP continues to fortify their bunker as it is under siege from all directions. Even the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News, Andrew Napolitano, is now saying that Trump’s “conversation [with Ukrainian President Zelensky] manifested both criminal and impeachable behavior.” Nevertheless, Republicans are all in on Dear Leader Trump and if he goes down, well dammit, they’re all going down with him.

The 2020 election is just a little more than a year away. Deadlines will soon be expiring for challengers to declare their candidacy. So what happens if Trump is impeached and the Republican Party has no one on the ballot running against whoever the Democratic nominee is? Pence will not automatically become the GOP’s candidate. There is a process for determining that which we all know as primaries. But the Republican National Committing has been working to cancel primaries in order to stifle any opposition to Trump. They also recently tightened the rules to “squelch dissent at the Republican National Convention next year.”

Currently there are three Republicans, other than Trump, running for the GOP nomination: Bill Weld, Joe Walsh, and Mark Sanford. The only reasonably qualified candidate among them is Weld, a two-term governor of Massachusetts. But other Republicans with qualifications and national name ID are keep their distance. They include Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, and former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.

All of this leaves Trump feeling pretty cocky. He tweeted Thursday that he has “95% Approval Rating in the Republican Party.” Which won’t help him in the least if he’s found to be guilty of impeachable crimes. After all, he isn’t President of the GOP. His national approval rating is still mired in the low 40’s (it’s never hit 50). And even his favorite pollster, the utterly disreputable and biased Rasmussen, shows him dropping six points in the last week (to 47) as impeachment heats up.

The Cult of Trump is in full force in the Republican precincts of America. They simply will not stand up for the principles of law and order and patriotism that they once heralded as their party’s brand. Not if that means going against their totalitarian boss. So if Trump is impeached, and there is little or no time to field alternatives in the primaries, the party may wind up invoking some arcane rule and shoving whatever candidate the party elites choose down the throats of their voters.

And Trump isn’t making it any easier for them. On Thursday morning, Trump admitted to a national television audience that he asked Zelensky to interfere in an American election by digging up dirt on Joe Biden. That’s actually one of the anticipated articles of impeachment. And to add fuel to this dumpster fire, he added a request for China to do the same. Let that sink in. Trump wants China – a nation known for its corruption and absence of any ethical legal system – to conduct an investigation/smear campaign on an American citizen and candidate for president. That should go down well with voters. And still the GOP is marching lock-step with Trump, even though he may not even be their candidate next year. The whole party seems to be as confused and incompetent as Trump.

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.

After a Ludicrous Litany of Lies, Trump Admits He Pressured Ukraine to Smear Joe Biden

Posted by on September 22, 2019 at 12:05 pm. 5 Comments :

The President is drowning in his own flop sweat. What Donald Trump has asked us all to call the “Ukraine Witch Hunt” is boiling over with new revelations of his criminality and his own absurd utterances that, more often than not, just get him into even hotter water. His behavior illustrates how desperate and fearful he is. On Saturday he posted twenty (20!) tweets on this subject alone, including one that completely contradicted his flagrantly false allegations against Joe Biden and the media.

Donald Trump Sweating

Trump’s charges against Biden are widely repudiated by credible journalists and people with inside knowledge of the matter. There have been investigations that found no wrongdoing on the part of Biden or his son, Hunter. Biden’s role in lobbying for the dismissal of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was only to inform the Ukrainians of the official diplomatic position of the United States, as well as that of the European Union and Ukraine’s own parliament. At no time did Biden press for any action that inured to the benefit of himself or his family.

That’s in stark contrast to Trump threatening to withhold foreign aid that was allocated by Congress unless Ukraine complied with his demand to fabricate dirt on Biden. Trump was extorting Ukraine to actively interfere in the U.S. election to help him malign a possible opponent. That violates at least half a dozen laws and is an abhorrent act of betrayal.

However, that hasn’t stopped Trump and his cadre of worshipful defenders in politics and punditry from concocting and disseminating ridiculous conspiracy theories that challenge rational thought. Naturally, Fox News took the lead with surreal presentations from the usual suspects (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends). For his part, Trump unleashed at least eight different excuses for the Ukraine story on Twitter. And each one is wholly without foundation or any semblance of sanity. For instance:

  • The media is making up facts and sources
  • They’re turning a Biden scandal into a Trump scandal
  • Someone was spying on the president
  • A seditious effort to protect the Obama/Clinton gang
  • The whistleblower was “highly partisan”
  • It’s the “Deep State”
  • The whistleblower wasn’t really a whistleblower
  • It’s a Witch Hunt
  • Trump’s conversations were “perfectly fine”

Notice that none of these wild-eyed rants actually deny that Trump pressured the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Biden. That should be the first signal that Trump is lying and is conscious of the risk that his lies will be discovered. But we didn’t have to wait long for Trump to out himself. On Sunday morning’s episode of “Chopper talk,” Trump finally admitted that he did indeed talk about Biden with Zelensky. Trump said that…

“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place. It was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.“

Setting aside Trump’s mangling of the English language, he is unambiguously admitting that the Biden matter was raised in his conversations with Zelensky. So now we have both Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, confessing that they strong armed Ukraine’s leaders into a conspiracy to undermine U.S. democracy.

In Trump’s Sunday morning rant he also made a point of repeatedly saying that he was not looking to hurt Biden or his family. But every time he said that he followed it up with baseless accusations that Biden had done something terrible. It’s the Trump version of a schoolyard bully assaulting his victim and asking “Why do you keep hitting yourself.” And it’s a textbook example of a passive/aggressive personality seeking to distance himself from his own viciousness.

Trump has too many psychoses to enumerate, the most prominent being his malignant narcissism. So we can expect more of this bizarre behavior as Trump finds himself sinking ever deeper into the abyss of his own immorality. We can count on him charging his perceived enemies with the crimes that he is committing. And we can reliably predict his manic meltdowns and infantile reactions whenever he feels threatened. Which will be occurring more frequently as his lies and misdeeds continue to unfold.

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