Election

Trump Caught Red-Handed Lying About Biden Using a Teleprompter

Posted by on September 23, 2020 at 12:24 pm. 2 Comments :

Catching Donald Trump in a bald-faced lie is about as difficult as bench pressing a pool noodle. Washington Post fact-checkers have already caught him telling more than 20,000 lies since his inauguration. However, there are times when his fabrications are so distant from reality that they require special attention, because they reveal the extreme lengths to which Trump will go in order to spread his political manure.

Donald Trump Angry

Early Tuesday there was just such a case. In Trump’s morning tweetstorm – that produced twenty-five tweets before noon – there was one post that declared triumphantly that Joe Biden was “caught red-handed using a teleprompter.” This is an allegation that the Trump camp has been unsuccessfully – and with blatant dishonesty – trying to peddle for months. It’s an ironic line of attack considering that Trump regularly uses a teleprompter, but still can’t speak coherently. He recently bragged about how the United States would soon land an astronaut on Nars.

Trump’s latest lame attempt to malign Biden came in the form of a retweet from Jason Miller, the senior advisor to Trump’s reelection campaign. Miller in turn was retweeting Eric Trump, whose superpower is being impervious to the shame of ignorance. What Eric posted was a video that he snatched from another Trump campaign shill that supposedly showed Biden reading answers to questions during a Telemundo interview. Eric’s comment accompanying the video was “Unreal!” Which, of course, it was. Here is the tweet posted by Miller and retweeted by Trump:

The reason Biden wasn’t “pretending” to look at the interviewer was that he was looking at a monitor from which he was taking questions from Telemundo viewers. CNN’s fact-checkers debunked the teleprompter fiction saying that…

“Biden was not using a teleprompter during the interview. Here’s what happened: Telemundo set up a screen, to Biden’s left, for viewers to ask Biden their own questions; Biden was looking to the left because he was addressing his answer directly to a woman who had asked him a question about deportations. Midway through the answer, the screen showing the woman went black, so Biden said, ‘I lost that line.’ Díaz-Balart responded that Biden could just talk with him on the subject.”

All of this was easily verifiable by simply watching the interview. But that’s too much like actual, honest journalism for anyone associated with Trump. So instead, they make up their own perverse version of reality and disseminate that to their dimwitted cult followers who are so cognitively challenged that they will believe anything, no matter how preposterous. These are the same Darwinian rejects who think that the coronavirus is a Democratic hoax.

Watching the Trump Klan go through these motions to disparage Biden as mentally unfit is becoming something of a joke. They are getting nowhere. In fact, in a recent poll by Fox News (yes, that Fox News) a majority of the American people said that it’s Trump who doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve. What’s more, Trump has been steadily trailing Biden in every national poll, as well as in most of the critical battleground states.

Trump’s vain determination to belittle Biden’s mental acuity is a strategy sprung from desperation. Trump knows he’s losing and is trying to claw his way out of the ditch he dug for himself. The problem is that these tactics are what got him there in the first place, and he’s only digging himself in deeper.

This will become all the more apparent during the first presidential debate next week. Trump has lowered the bar for Biden so much that Biden only has to show up and refrain from drooling. Meanwhile, Trump will exhibit his customary hostility, ignorance of facts, compulsion to lie, and tendency toward infantile outbursts. That’s not exactly a winning game plan.

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

Kayleigh McEnany’s Lame Attempt to Whitewash Trump’s Blame for 200,000 Deaths

Posted by on September 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm. 0 Comments :

This week the United States achieved another milestone under the “leadership” of Donald Trump. More than 200,000 Americans have died as a result of his negligence, incompetence, and deliberate malfeasance in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Add to that the 6.7 million people who contracted the disease, many of whom will suffer permanent, debilitating disabilities.

Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump

This is unarguably a record of abject failure that translates into tragedy for millions of people. Yet somehow Trump gives himself a A+ for ranking near the bottom worldwide for managing this crisis. The only area that he concedes falling short is in public relations, for which he gives himself a D.

Trump deserves some credit for recognizing how terrible his White House communications operations are. For the most part they have ignored the traditional duties of conveying important information to the American people, choosing instead to conduct itself as an arm of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. And he has repeatedly been at odds with the medical experts on his Coronavirus Task Force. No wonder the cases and fatalities stack up even as other countries are returning to relative normality.

At the helm of Trump’s communications team is his press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. She’s an accomplished liar who is ably filling the shoes of her weasley predecessors Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and “alternative facts” spinner, Kellyanne Conway. As evidence of McEnany’s prowess for falsehoods, observe this response to a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta:

Acosta: The country has had over 200,000 deaths from coronavirus. What do you say to Americans who are outraged over this and blame this administration for so many lives lost in this country?
McEnany: Well, as you’ve heard several doctors on the task force note from this podium, we were looking at the prospect of two million people perishing from the coronavirus in this country. We grieve when even one life is lost, but the fact that we have come nowhere near that number is a testament to this president taking immediate action. After shutting down travel from China, when the other party, Democrats were saying that was xenophobic; for shutting down travel for Europe; for developing landmark therapeutics that are working, like Remdesivir.

There’s a lot to unpack in that brief commentary. To begin with, we were never “looking at the prospect of two million people perishing.” That was a baseline estimate of fatalities if nothing were done at all to mitigate the spread of virus. While Trump didn’t do very much, many governors and mayors took independent actions to shut down hazardous activities and to promote safe practices such as social distancing and the wearing of facial masks, both of which Trump dismissed and even mocked. The two million fatality estimate was never intended to be a benchmark for success. Trump himself used smaller numbers, beginning with fifteen and rising with reported deaths to 60,000. It’s now more than three times that, and growing. That’s a testament to failure.

Furthermore, Trump never shut down travel from either China or Europe. His restrictions were full of exemptions and he applied them too late, after the virus was already spreading in the U.S. The criticism of his xenophobia was connected to his focus on China – even calling it the China virus – despite the fact that most of the cases in the U.S. were traceable to Europe. And finally, McEnany summed up Trump’s accomplishments by giving him credit for developing Remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences in 2009.

It’s easy to see why Trump’s PR operations are held in such low repute, even by him. In the exchange above, McEnany never even answered Acosta’s question. But Trump’s own efforts aren’t helping. Just this weekend he made some ludicrous and blatantly false remarks about the coronavirus and it’s potential for transmission:

“Now we know [the coronavirus]. It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it. In some states, thousands of people, nobody young below the age of eighteen, like nobody. They have a strong immune system. Who knows? Take your hat off to the young, cause they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”

You’ll recall that just last week Trump was heard on recordings by Bob Woodward for his book, RAGE, saying that COVID-19 affects “not just old…older. Young people too. Plenty of young people.” That was in addition to his admission that he knew from the start how deadly it was, but was playing it down.

200,000 are a lot of “nobodies.” But it was always Trump’s intention to trivialize the massive amount of suffering for which he is directly responsible. That explains the fallacies disseminated by his PR team. However, it isn’t because they performed poorly. In fact, it was probably the best performing agency in his administration. That’s because they were saying precisely what Trump wanted them to say.

McEnany and company were lying on Trump’s behalf and at his direction. So it’s unfair of him to grade them with a D, when they were just doing what they were told. They may have been grossly misinforming the public and putting untold lives at risk, but they were doing exactly the job that Trump hired them to do.

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

Impeached Presidents Should Not Be Able To Nominate Supreme Court Justices

Posted by on September 19, 2020 at 1:38 pm. 2 Comments :

The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is firstly a personal tragedy for her family, friends, colleagues, and the millions of people throughout the world who admired and were inspired by her intellect, her heart, and her fighting spirit. She is a historical figure whose impact has yet to be fully appreciated.

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

However, it would be naive to pretend that this grievous loss isn’t also a blow to the hopes and dreams of those Americans who value gender and racial equality and the Constitution’s protection for the rights of people over corporations and against the authoritarian aspirations of rogue “leaders.”

Justice Ginsburg was a guardian of the principles that ensure freedom for all Americans. Her loss would be staggering under any circumstance. But to lose her while an ignorant, sociopathic, narcissist is salivating over the prospect of replacing her with an unqualified, neanderthal wingnut is especially painful. The thought of Donald Trump selecting one of his pre-chewed right-wing Stepford judges to take the place of a bona fide superhero of constitutional jurisprudence is excruciating. And Trump’s undisguised glee at having this opportunity is salt in our wounds:

What’s missing from this statement is any hint of reality. Trump was not “put in this position of power and importance” by the American people. They voted against him by a record margin. He was installed by an archaic Electoral College that is anathema to democracy. What’s more, Americans are not proud of Trump. Quite the opposite. He is regarded as a buffoon who is only interested in himself and his puerile pleasures of golfing, tweeting, watching Fox News, and exacting revenge on his perceived enemies.

What Trump is calling an “obligation” is actually just another attempt to steal a seat on the Supreme Court on behalf of his neo-fascist associates in Congress, tunnel-blind evangelicals, and corporate overlords. Trump is violating the precedent set by his GOP confederates who refused to even give a hearing – much less a vote – to an Obama Court nominee during an election year.

Were there any justice in this world, a president who has been impeached ought not to be able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore, impeached presidents with close ties to numerous felons (and pending indictments of his own) should be prohibited from nominating any judges or agency heads or bull manure shovelers. Although, if you’ve ever seen Trump speaking at one of his cult rallies you’d know that shoveling bull manure is something that he is actually pretty good at.

Unfortunately, the last thing we can expect from Trump, or any Republican, is integrity or consistency. They will shamelessly march forward to breach their own precedents without regard to the brazen hypocrisy of their actions.

Consequently, Democrats need to up their game. First of all, they need to win back the White House and the Senate. Then they must abolish the filibuster. Then they need to expand the Supreme Court to fifteen seats. And finally, they need to advance to statehood Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. And it wouldn’t hurt to collapse North and South Dakota into a single state. Seriously, do we really need two sparsely populated Dakotas?

After completing these steps we can begin to restore the nation’s honor and respect for the constitutional principles that empower our democracy and enable our freedoms. We can bring justice to bear on those who betrayed the country in pursuit of greed and power. And we can heal the divisions that Trump deliberately created and exploited in order to advance his self-serving agenda.

It won’t be easy, but it wasn’t easy for Justice Ginsburg to wage a lonely fight for decades either. She should be our inspiration today. And we should be the custodians of her legacy and her last request: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

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

UH-OH: GOP Accuses Biden of Cheating By Being More Intelligent than Trump

Posted by on September 18, 2020 at 12:17 pm. 2 Comments :

This week both Donald Trump and Joe Biden held nationally televised town halls. The difference between these two events could not have been more stark. Any voter who saw both broadcasts would likely – and ironically – agree with something Trump tweeted Thursday: “At no time before has there been a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, & two agendas for the future.” Can’t argue with that.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Trump had his town hall on ABC with George Stephanopoulos and spent 90 minutes repeating many of the same lies he’s been telling for months. He utterly failed to exhibit the slightest bit of knowledge on any subject, stumbling awkwardly off topic on virtually every question in order to hew closely to the tiresome talking points that litter his cult rally rhetoric. At the same time, he displayed a callous disrespect and lack of empathy for questioners who challenged his dishonest muttering, or for the millions of Americans they represented.

On the other hand, during the CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, Biden was plainly well acquainted with the issues that are uppermost on the minds of the American people. And he articulated his views with a minimum of error. What’s more, he reaffirmed why he is often praised for his compassion and ability to relate to the common man and woman. His performance exposed Trump’s infantile taunts of “Sleepy” Joe, and his baseless insinuations about Biden’s mental acuity, as wholly outside of reality. Which is a place where Trump must feel comfortable considering how often he goes there.

Consequently, the Republican Confederacy of Trump-Fluffers sprung into action to malign Biden’s town hall presence. Since they can’t allow the public to simply observe Biden speaking coherently, the rightist slander squadron deployed to accuse him of cheating, implying that he must have had prior access to the questions. A representative example of this desperate attack line came from the disgraced former Fox News host, and serial sexual predator, Bill O’Reilly:

REALLY? Just to be clear, what O’Reilly and the rest of the right are accusing Biden of is being smart enough to anticipate that he would be asked questions about such topical matters as the coronavirus, jobs, voting, healthcare, the economy, policing and race, and climate change. They seem to think that only a super genius would have been able to figure that out. Obviously Trump wasn’t able to do it.

Plus, at the same time that these wingnuts are insisting that Biden couldn’t possibly retain knowledge about pressing matters that he’s dealt with for decades, they are also suggesting that he is capable of memorizing a slate of questions – and the answers – that he was allegedly provided beforehand. That alone would require a fair amount of mental dexterity that Trump could never muster.

So now Biden is “guilty” of being more intelligent than Trump (a low bar, to be sure). But this is consistent with the Republican mindset that intelligence is an elitist trait that should disqualify one from public service. They malign universities as centers of left-wing indoctrination. They refuse to respect the guidance of doctors, scientists, and other experts in professional fields. And they cling to Trump’s prideful ignorance as the leader who famously declared that he “loves the poorly educated.” And why shouldn’t he. Without them he’d have no cabinet – or voters.

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

Trump Knows He’s Losing and It’s Driving Him Crazy(er)

Posted by on September 17, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 5 Comments :

There is an almost pitiable factor to the very public descent of Donald Trump into an abyss of anxiety and debilitating terror. His fragile mental state is so obviously decaying before our eyes as he unleashes ever more bizarre rants and transparent, implausible falsehoods.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

There may never have been a more conspicuous case of a public figure sucked into a downward spiral of emotional decomposition than what we are witnessing with Trump. He has been reduced to whining about an election that he’s already concluded he’s lost even though it’s still more than a month away. By his own estimation, the election has been rigged against him and the results will therefore be invalid. And not a single person has yet to cast a vote.

Trump is venting his rage at having lost in advance in an avalanche of tweets that all say essentially the same thing: “I’m a hapless victim of people having the audacity to vote against me.” He is baselessly warning that the “election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” and imploring to anyone who might be listening to “Stop Ballot Madness!” For instance…


So Trump wants to interfere with states’ rights in order to demand that all voters be forced to go to the polls amidst a deadly viral pandemic. He asserts that it would be “like always before” even though mail-in voting has been a part of the electoral process for decades.


For the second time Trump is threatening some unspecified “MAYHEM” if people vote the same way they have been for years. And he also repeats the vague admonition that these states had better obey him “before it’s too late.” Or what?


Now Trump is repeatedly alleging, without any evidence, that foreign countries will disrupt our election if voting by mail is permitted. But the only foreign interference that has been documented is that conducted by Russia with Trump’s cooperation. Also notable is that all three of the tweets above were flagged by Twitter for dispensing misinformation.


And to top it all off, Trump is now trying to persuade his cult followers to vote by mail themselves, after having declared the whole thing an invitation to fraud and espionage.

These attacks on mail-in voting are simply Trump’s way of priming his deplorable disciples for what he clearly realizes is a historic electoral defeat. Rather than display some measure of dignity and patriotism, Trump is determined to incite civil unrest as he advances his aspirations for authoritarian tyranny.

So it’s up to the American people to prevent such an outcome by producing the sort of landslide victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (and Democratic senators and congresspersons and state representatives) that will make it impossible for Trump’s impotent accusations of fraud to be taken seriously. That means unwavering commitment and hard work. Because the clearer it is that Trump is a loser, the more insane his assaults on his political foes – and America – will become. Stay Strong!

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

Trump Shocks Fox News By Leaking Secret Deal for a Weekly Segment.

Posted by on September 15, 2020 at 12:48 pm. 4 Comments :

Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has affirmed his cowardly approach to the media. The vast majority of his interviews have been reserved for the Fox News Trump-fluffers that he knows will be gentle with him. He has virtually sealed himself in a Fox News bunker. But despite his tedious and impotent repetition of Stalinist inspired catch phrases like “fake news” and “the media is the enemy of the people,” Trump, as he recently admitted, spends hours watching Fox every day.

Donald Trump, Mask, Fox News

Trump’s reliance on glassy-eyed disciples like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and Maria Bartiromo, is further evidence of the cult-like nature of his following. And no one can plausibly deny that Fox News isn’t fulfilling its role as Trump’s Ministry of Disinformation. It’s the same sort of mutually beneficial relationship that parasites enjoy with their willing hosts.

On Tuesday morning Trump visited once again with the network’s “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. The “interview” was typical of the slobbering tongue baths that Trump is accustomed to on the network. The adoring hosts smiled vacantly as Trump accused Joe Biden of using drugs during previous debates and public appearances. They declined to follow up after he asserted that the governor of Nevada is going to rig the ballots in his state. They fawned over his phony “peace” agreement that entirely excluded the Palestinians. They valiantly kept straight faces when Trump blamed wildfires on “exploding trees.”

However, there was a moment of melodrama when Trump seemed to reveal a secret agreement that he made with his Fox News benefactors. It went something like this…

Trump: It’s good to be here. It’s great to be with my friends. I think we’re gonna do this, we’ve agreed to do it once a week in the morning, and I look forward to it. Like the old days.
Steve Doocy: I haven’t heard that. Well, that’s an exclusive.right there.

So Trump just broke the news of a programming agreement between him and Fox. Trump was also fondly recalling his pre-presidential days when he had a weekly segment on Fox and Friends called “Mondays with Trump.” However, now that he resides in the White House, such an arrangement would be wholly inappropriate for both Trump and Fox News. It was so improper that when Trump repeated the news later in the program, Doocy – probably on orders from producers in the control room – shot it down in this awkward exchange:

Trump: We’re going to do it every week. Every Monday, I think they said. And if we can’t do it on a Monday, we’ll do it on a Tuesday like we did today.
Doocy: You may want to do it every week but Fox has not committed to that. We’re going to take it on a case-by-case basis. And Joe Biden, as well, is always welcome to join us for 47 minutes like we just did with the president.

Note that Trump had already hung up by the time Doocy issued his denial that an agreement had been reached. But Trump was not expressing some vague desire to have a weekly segment. He explicitly said that “we’ve agreed to do it,” and referred to what “they said” about his new regular Fox gig. Of course knowing Trump, that could have been either a lie, a figment of his imagination, or the truth that was supposed to be confidential.

No matter, Trump’s casual acceptance of such a flagrantly unethical deal reveals how comfortable he is with embracing blatant propaganda. It also tells us that he has an hour available to chat with with his Fox friends every week. That’s important because it would significantly cut into his other primary duties: golfing, tweeting, and watching other programs on Fox News.

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

Wannabe Dictator Trump Orders AG Barr to Prosecute Clinton for Following the Rules

Posted by on September 14, 2020 at 2:31 pm. 1 Comments :

It’s always to easy to see when Donald Trump is freaking out over some perceived slight or the unforgivable offense of someone daring to tell the truth about him. If he were a poker player his “tell” would be throwing a tantrum and overturning the table. He has the emotional response mechanism of a four year old, if that.

Donald Trump, Bill Barr

On Monday morning Trump overturned the figurative table in a frantic tweetstorm that was clearly intended to deflect from some of the more serious news stories of the past week. For instance, Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, exposed Trump for having known just how deadly the coronavirus is, but lying about it to the American people. An article in The Atlantic revealed Trump’s disregard for America’s war dead as “losers” and “suckers.” And his polling versus Joe Biden continues to decline, as does his fundraising.

Consequently, Trump needed a distraction to avoid having to deal with these problems. So he reached back into his bag of golden oldies and pulled out a moldy conspiracy theory regarding cell phones used by Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration. The nightmare tale that Trump unfolded suggests that these folks conspired to hide damning evidence of some imaginary crimes by deleting the contents of their phones before returning them to the government inventory. Trump posted eight tweets on this subject. The substance of his commentary consisted of profound remarks like “Action must be taken!,” and “DOJ?,” and this classic that also trivializes a threat to lynch a black NASCAR driver:

Trump has tweeted and spoken about these bogus allegations dozens of times in recent weeks. And he has been helped by Sean Hannity of Fox News, who hosted Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, Friday night to disseminate the same falsehoods (video below).

There is, however, absolutely no credibility to these charges. In fact, Clinton, and every other government employee, are actually required to wipe the contents off of their phones and other electronic devices, or physically destroy them, as a security precaution to prevent confidential information from being exposed. A State Department official explained this directive to Wired Magazine in 2016, saying that…

“‘…department security policies mandate that all electronic devices are cleared of sensitive or classified information prior to reuse or disposal.’ Some devices are wiped and reused, in other words, while others are destroyed as part of the recycling process.”

So Trump’s purported scandal is that Clinton et al are following the rules. Nevertheless, Trump is improperly pressuring his Attorney Genuflect, Bill Barr to “take action” against his political foes. And all because of this fictional “crime” that is really just another example of Trump’s flaming ignorance of the government that he pretends to lead. And Barr is likely to follow those orders, just as he has with regard to dropping charges against Michael Flynn, and siccing his “special” prosecutor on Joe Biden. Fortunately, the American people are not falling for it, and Trump is just digging himself into an ever deeper hole.

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

Fox News Poll: Majority Say Trump Doesn’t Have the ‘Mental Soundness’ to Serve

Posted by on September 13, 2020 at 2:14 pm. 3 Comments :

For the past several months Donald Trump has been trying to portray Joe Biden as mentally unfit to perform the duties of the presidency. Trump acts out his inner infant by referring to Biden with childish nicknames like “Slow” and/or “Sleepy” Joe. It’s an embarrassing display of desperation by an emotionally stunted candidate who relies entirely on lies and fear mongering.

Donald Trump

However, Trump’s frantic campaign of lame insults has not taken hold among America’s voters. He is behind in every national poll, as well as in most of the critical battleground states. Think about that. Trump is losing bigly to a candidate that he says is not only mentally deficient, but also a radical socialist bent on destroying America. If you can’t beat someone like that, you might as well give up.

In the latest Fox News poll (which Trump has a love/hate relationship with), Biden is beating Trump with a majority of likely voters (51-46%). Biden’s favorables are positive (54-45%), while Trump’s are underwater (46-53%). Biden is also leading on an array of the issues most important to the electorate. According to Fox News…

“Likely voters trust Trump over Biden on just one issue: the economy, by 5 points. Biden is favored on racial inequality (+12), coronavirus (+8), health care (+8), Supreme Court nominations (+7), and immigration (+7 points). Voters also trust Biden over Trump on ‘policing and criminal justice’ (+7), while the two are rated about evenly on ‘maintaining law and order’ (Biden +2).”

Trump has been especially obsessed of late with what he is characterizing as a nation besieged by violent insurrectionists like Black Lives Matter (a peaceful equal justice advocacy movement) and Antifa (a figment of Trump’s imagination). So it’s particularly notable that Biden is regarded by voters as the better candidate on policing and Trump’s adopted catch phrase, “law and order.” His hysterical rhetoric is having zero effect on voters, or worse (from his perspective), it’s alienating them and driving them in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the most noteworthy finding in this poll is that voters regard Biden as more fit mentally than Trump. The poll shows a majority of 51% attesting to Biden’s mental soundness. Conversely, Trump has a majority of 51% worried about his mental infirmity. This poll replicates the results of similar poll by Fox News two months ago. So once again, Trump’s barrage of malicious slander has failed to turn voters against Biden. Instead, his prepubescent pettiness appears to have splashed back in his face.

Another poll by ABC/Ipsos has more bad news for Trump. In addition to a broad majority (65%) disapproving of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic (which he was caught lying about), the poll found that “Most Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin (61-37%), think Biden has more respect for those who serve in uniform than Trump does.” So Trump has utterly failed to convince anyone of his phony devotion to the military. That isn’t surprising considering he’s a five-time draft dodger who insults POWS, steals from veterans’ charities, and thinks fallen soldiers are “losers” and “suckers.”

Trump’s tantrums are having the opposite effect of what they intended. Everything that he has embraced as the core issues of his propaganda output is turning out to be more advantageous for Biden. This should be a slap upside the head to those who believed that Trump was a marketing genius. The truth is that he’s a bumbling failure who can be expected to ruin any project that he so incompetently mishandles. It should be abundantly clear now that everything he touches turns to …let’s just say… bull manure.

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

Trump Wonders ‘How Different My Life Would Have Been’ if He Weren’t a Treasonous Swine

Posted by on September 12, 2020 at 1:48 pm. 2 Comments :

While it seems like this could be said about pretty much every week lately, this past week was one of the worst for Donald Trump. Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, exposed Trump for having known just how deadly the coronavirus is, but lying about it to the American people. An article in The Atlantic revealed Trump’s disregard for America’s war dead as “losers” and “suckers.” And his polling versus Joe Biden continues to decline, as does his fundraising.

Donald Trump Swine Pig

So what is a perpetually unpopular president (he’s never hit 50%) do to turn around his floundering campaign? In Trump’s case he resorts to moldy complaints about having been impeached due to an imaginary “witch hunt” and whining about his perceived persecutors:

When Trump says that “now we find out” something, he means that he just finished watching Sean Hannity on Fox News. Indeed, on Hannity’s Friday night program he discussed the “wiping” of phones with Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany (video below). “Now we learn what Mueller’s team was doing,” McEnany lied. “Several dozens – think about that – several dozens of devices returned damaged, wiped clean, some of them intentionally so.”

What Trump and McEnany are too ignorant to know (or too dishonest to admit) is that the federal government requires that phones and other electronic devices used by those with access to confidential and classified materials be either thoroughly cleansed of the data, or physically destroyed. A State Department official addressed this issue with regard to Hillary Clinton’s phones. He told WIRED magazine in 2016 that…

“‘…department security policies mandate that all electronic devices are cleared of sensitive or classified information prior to reuse or disposal.’ Some devices are wiped and reused, in other words, while others are destroyed as part of the recycling process.”

So the shock expressed by McEnany, Hannity, and Trump is really just confirmation of how woefully ill-equipped they are to do their jobs.

But Trump had only just begun to deceive. He went on to characterize the Mueller Report as a “scam,” saying that that “has now been determined.” Notice that he doesn’t say who or what determined it. That’s because he’s making it up. In fact, the Department of Justice Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found that the investigation was proper and was not motivated by political bias. Furthermore, the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee concluded pretty much the same thing.

All of this proves that Trump’s petulant whimpering and victimhood are the product of a weak and frightened man who is conscious of his guilt. And his plaintive yearning for a different life are really just the regrets of an inept criminal who is upset at having been caught.

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

Trump Wasted Millions of Donors’ Dollars on Himself and Other Idiocies

Posted by on September 8, 2020 at 12:23 pm. 0 Comments :

The Tribulations of Trump are continuing to descend into the Mariana Trench of political campaigns. His polling has remained steadily behind Joe Biden for months. In fact, he has never led. And on top of the widespread disapproval and personal disgust that Americans have for Trump, he is demonstrating his notorious inability to manage anything competently.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

In a flurry of frantic morning tweets – more than 60 before noon – Trump rambled incoherently on on a variety of subjects. More often than not he retweeted others who were adopting the primary theme of Trump’s 2020 campaign: Fear and Racism. Among these tweets were a couple that were attempts to respond to recent reports that his floundering campaign financing was going the same route as his four bankrupt casinos. Which may explain why Trump recently pulled his advertising in critical battleground states.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, just collected a record $364 million in donations in August. And he is outspending Trump for ads by more than 10-to-1. These facts triggered Trump’s anxiety which led to a defensive tweet saying that…

That is wrong on so many levels. First of all, the Trump Virus could not have cost his campaign anything. More likely it saved money because he was unable to hold his massive cult rallies. Furthermore, he should not be spending campaign funds to counter reporting on his failures in office. Those are official duties, not election activities As for having more money than he did in 2016, that’s only because he relied on a compliant and irresponsible media to cover his every word, which is not happening (as much) this time around.

It should be noted that Trump’s promise to “put up” his own money is a lie he has been telling for years. In his original candidacy announcement he bragged that he didn’t need any donations at all because he would self-fund his campaign. He didn’t. While he did loan the campaign some money, he paid himself back all of it with funds from his donors.

The real reason for Trump’s financial woes is his own incompetence and inability to manage anything bigger than a lemonade stand (if that). To start with, Trump’s mobster mentality has resulted in his tendency to skim profits off the top of all monies received. At least $17 million of donors’ contributions were paid to Trump owned businesses since 2016.

There have also been bizarre and self-serving expenditures that could not be justified in any reputable campaign operation. For instance, Trump’s campaign bought more than $1 million in TV ads to air in Washington, D.C., where the he has no chance of winning. These ads were bought only to pacify Trump who needs to see himself on TV as much as possible.

In addition to that, there was a “six-figure purchase of magnet-lined pouches used to store the phones of donors during meetings so that they could not record and leak the president’s comments.” In other words, Trump is spending his donors’ money on his own paranoia and fear of people hearing what he actually says.

No wonder his campaign is going broke at the most critical time. And no wonder he hasn’t even released his August financial reports. Politicians don’t delay good news, so draw your own conclusions as to why Trump is holding back. [Update: Trump finally released his fundraising for August, for some reason exclusively to Fox News. The $210 million is not insignificant, but it is far less than Biden’s $364 million] None of this looks good for his future reelection prospects. However he still has weapons in his arsenal. Like sabotaging the Postal Service and suppressing the vote by closing polling places or dispatching “poll watchers” to intimidate voters.

Which is why Democrats need to remain vigilant and energized in order to achieve victory. Trump is capable of anything legal or, more likely, otherwise. It will take nothing less than total participation, determination, and concentration to get across the finish line first. And we’ll need a landslide to avoid Trump’s post-election shenanigans. So no let up is allowed, people. This is for real!

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