Election

UH-OH: Fox News Speculates that Trump is a Loser Who Might Drop Out of the Race

Posted by on June 29, 2020 at 12:56 pm. 1 Comments :

The downward spiral into which Donald Trump is descending may finally be beginning to sink in, not just to Trump, but to the right-wing media propagandists who are struggling to shore up his sickly presidency. With each day there is news that contributes to the terminal prognosis of Trump’s floundering reelection campaign. And the accumulating sense of doom has become impossible to ignore.

Donald Trump

Trump himself is well aware of the dilemma he faces as every national poll shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden. Even worse, polls of the seven most crucial swing states (Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and Minnesota) are also showing Biden leading. So Trump has fallen back on his customary dismissal of the media and the independent firms they hire to conduct their surveys:

Trump is certainly “sorry,” but not for the reasons he states. He’s a sorry excuse for a leader who resorts to petulant whining whenever he doesn’t get his way. And he’s surely sorry that everyone from the New York Times to Fox News is reporting how thoroughly the American people have rejected him. Even his favorite pollster, the rabidly biased Rasmussen, has Trump’s approval rating at 42%, matching lows as far back as January of 2018.

These numbers have Trump repeating his oft-mentioned lie that he has 95% approval within the Republican Party. Not only is that untrue, it’s irrelevant. He is not the president of the GOP. What’s more, Republicans represent a measly 28% of the electorate. Which is hardly enough to secure a victory in November.

The conditions for Trump’s campaign have deteriorated so badly that close associates are speculating as to whether he might drop out of the race entirely rather than suffer defeat. Politico is reporting the prospect of Trump’s renowned cowardice, along with comments from insiders who say that…

“The president has privately come to that grim realization in recent days, multiple people close to him told POLITICO, amid a mountain of bad polling and warnings from some of his staunchest allies that he’s on course to be a one-term president.”

And as if that weren’t bad enough, Fox News is joining those with suspicions of Trump running away from an expected rout. Fox host Trace Gallagher prefaced a question to Trump surrogate John Sununu (video below) saying that “President Trump’s poll numbers declining in recent weeks […] is leading some speculation that if his support keeps falling, the president might drop out of the race.” And Fox News featured a graphic during the segment that warned of a “rough polling stetch” (sic) for Trump.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Polling

Whether there is any chance of Trump bailing is an open question. He has a reputation as a coward who flees from any trouble that confronts him. But he also has a stubborn streak and a massive ego that can overwhelm his fears. In the end it makes no difference because either outcome would be similarly humiliating for Trump. His malignant narcissism prevents him from accepting that he is less than the manifestation of perfection. And that will result in his eventual downfall being all the more debilitating when it comes to pass.

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

Reality Game Show ‘President’ Trump Thinks TV Ratings are ‘The Real Polls’

Posted by on June 27, 2020 at 1:12 pm. 1 Comments :

Every day seems to provide a new opportunity to declare that Donald Trump has done or said something that is even worse than anything he’s done or said before. It may seem redundant or hyperbole, but somehow Trump actually does rise to the challenge and manages to exceed whatever heinousness he excreted the day before. It’s a gift.

Donald Trump TV Set

On Saturday morning Trump took to his Twitter machine to unleash another series of frenzied, paranoid, and nearly incoherent rants. Among them, he has apparently abandoned his “Sleepy” nickname for Joe Biden and is trying out “Corrupt” because nothing is working for him. Biden continues to expand his lead in national polls, as well as in every swing state. Trump’s desperation shows in his Twittering that is now rampant with QAnon conspiracy crackpots. And he’s touting his efforts to kill healthcare for 20 million Americans during a pandemic in which he has already killed more than 125,000 people. It’s notable that he’s been promising to repeal and replace Obamacare for 4 years, but still doesn’t have a plan. The GOP has been running the same con for 10 years.

Of particular interest is one tweet that reveals just how shallow, delusional, and devoid of substance Trump is. His background as a failed real estate grifter and self-proclaimed “King of Debt“ (with six bankruptcies under his bulging belt) never prepared him for the presidency. Nor did his most recent professional experience as a reality TV game show host. But that’s the one that continues to guide his conduct in office:

Trump is lashing out in a state of dread and hopelessness as he realizes that his prospects for the future more closely resemble his worst nightmares. So he grasps onto the ludicrous notion that television ratings are a reasonable alternative to scientifically conducted public opinion surveys. “These are the real polls,” Trump whines in an attempt spin some something positive out of the dregs of a news cycle that holds only misery for him.

Along with the horrific rise in coronavirus infections and fatalities (which studies prove were intensified by viewing Fox News), Trump is also having to explain the poor attendance at his revived cult rallies. He is saddled with responsibility for an economy in recession. His former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has exposed Trump’s ignorance in a new book that Trump was unsuccessful in suppressing. Same goes for the book by his niece, Mary Trump. And the New York Times just reported that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, and Trump knew but did nothing. How is that not treason?

With all of that going on, Trump found time to go golfing at his Virginia country club and tweet idiotic tributes to himself. For the record, Trump’s boasting about the TV ratings for his Oklahoma speech and his interview with Sean Hannity are just the ratings for Fox News programming. So naturally his Deplorables would be tuning in. That proves nothing except that he and Fox News are running a bona fide cult whose members have abandoned free thought. Those ratings are only “polls” of people watching that particular network and amount to less than one percent of the American population. That’s the pitiful pittance of viewers that Trump is trying to characterize as “the Silent Majority.”

Trump has been plaintively beseeching the nation to “not believe the Fake News Media” for at least four years now. But his whining has been met with ridicule as the American people continue to reject him by ever larger margins. In fact, the real polls show that more Americans trust CNN than either Trump or Fox News. So nice work, Bunker Boy. Despite tedious repetition and relentless hostility, the “fake news” branding campaign has been an epic flop. Pretty much like everything else Trump does.

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

Panic Sets In As Trump Sees America Overwhelmingly Rejecting Him

Posted by on June 24, 2020 at 12:56 pm. 3 Comments :

With just over four months until the 2020 election, Donald Trump is on bunker duty, forlornly devouring Fox News and tweeting frantically as his poll numbers slide ever further into the abyss of ultimate defeat. The stench of a loser emanates from his dialog and demeanor. And his fury is shooting out in all directions – at Democrats, the press, and his cowering staff and family.

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

The best evidence of Trump’s electoral peril is that his once cherished campaign rallies are shadows of the cultish festivals of messiah worship they used to be. In Tulsa, Trump spoke of a million ticket requests, but ended up with a pathetic crowd of only 6,200 (along with other problems). A few days later he took his traveling revival show to Phoenix, a city with four times the population of Tulsa, but drew half as many Trump-chumps.

Among the reasons for the desertions of these once rabid fans include the still spreading coronavirus. As infections and fatalities continue to mount, concerns about gathering in large crowds who ignore safety precautions (i.e. face masks) could be taking a toll on attendance. But that factor cannot be separated from Trump’s dismal approval ratings. After all, it is Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance that is the cause of the current COVID-19 spike. Even his supporters, at some level, have to know this.

In addition to the attendance decline at Trump rallies, his polling has fallen to new lows. He is losing to Joe Biden by double digits nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. He is declining in critical demographic groups that he won in 2016 (such as evangelicals and suburban women). And Trump cannot whine about “fake” news (well, he can and will, but it doesn’t register as credible with anyone) being against him because his downward spiral is showing across a broad array of media sources, including Fox News (which drives him nuts). In fact, every one of the ten most recent polls as compiled by RealClearPolitics have Trump floundering with an average in favor of Biden that exceeds 50%:

RCP Average 51.0 40.9 Biden +10.1
Economist/YouGov 49 41 Biden +8
NY Times/Siena 50 36 Biden +14
Harvard-Harris 56 44 Biden +12
FOX News 50 38 Biden +12
Quinnipiac 49 41 Biden +8
CNBC 51 41 Biden +10
CNN 55 41 Biden +14
NPR/PBS/Marist 50 43 Biden +7
Emerson 53 47 Biden +6
The Hill/HarrisX 47 37 Biden +10

UPDATE! The New York Times just released a new poll of six swing states and things are just getting worse for Trump. Biden is now extending his lead: by 11 points in Michigan and Wisconsin, 10 points in Pennsylvania, 9 points in North Carolina, 7 points in Arizona, and 6 points in Florida.

As a result of this reality, Trump is lashing out with panic, fear, and delusion. He has proposed “slowing down” virus testing as a way of reducing the number of cases. Of course, the number would remain the same, but we just wouldn’t know what it is. He is also threatening to use “serious force” against Americans exercising their constitutional right to protest. He and his crony Attorney General, Bill Barr, are purging the Justice Department of career professionals in order to escape accountability for his crimes. He tweeted a couple of Internet videos of African-Americans committing random acts of violence. They have nothing to do with politics or protest. They are just intended to reinforce a racist fear of “scary” black men. And he is ramping up his bizarre attacks on Democrats and President Obama, who he has now publicly accused of treason.

These, and so much more, are examples of how deranged Trump has become as he recognizes that his political and legal future is virtually dead. And we can expect his crazed behavior and wild attacks to become even more extreme as election day draws nearer. For that reason, no Democrat or progressive can relax. The fierce determination of Trump and his GOP confederates will stop at nothing to retain power. That includes cheating, voter suppression, and recruiting help from foreign governments. He is already laying the groundwork to challenge election results when he loses. So this calls for vigilance, hard work, financial commitments, and enduring resolve to restore American values. We must not let this moment pass.

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

Trump Admits to Presiding Over ‘The Most RIGGED Election In Our Nation’s History’

Posted by on June 22, 2020 at 2:43 pm. 7 Comments :

Like a wounded grizzly bear, Donald Trump is exhibiting the sort of ultra-aggressive behavior of an animal that is desperate and mortally fearful. He knows that the American people are overwhelming repulsed by his noxious antics and totalitarian aspirations. He knows that every poll shows him trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. He knows that his political demise is imminent.

Donald Trump, Vote By Mail

In response to these facts, Trump has initiated a frantic and dangerous campaign to undermine America’s democracy. At a time when voters are understandably concerned about the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus, Trump and his Republican confederates are plotting to suppress votes in the upcoming presidential election. They are on a crusade to deny voters the right to cast their ballots by mail.

Even worse, Trump is attempting to delegitimize the election if mail-in voting is permitted. His intent is to lay the groundwork to challenge the results when he loses in November. Never mind that every study (including one by a Trump White House commission) found no evidence of fraud or any other problem. On Monday morning Trump pounded out four tweets condemning mail-in voting as rife with fraud. For instance…

Trump’s all-caps tirade sounds eerily like a threat. Is he soliciting foreign countries to print ballots? Is he proposing it as a tactic for his campaign or its devotees? It’s reminiscent of when he asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Not that any of that would work. The security features of vote-by-mail systems would catch those fakes easily. But Trump would claim that just the fact that they existed was proof that cheating occurred. Even though their existence would most likely be due to his involvement. The “scandal of our times” indeed.

Trump’s assertion that “MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history” is supported by nothing but the hot air steaming from his lying lips. And his attempt to compare it to voting during previous world wars is simply asinine. Besides being a call to revert to voting systems that are as much as 100 years old, it ignores the fact that there were no impediments to voting because of the wars. There were no German soldiers lurking around polling places in Kansas. However, our soldiers, and their families stationed abroad, did vote by mail. That’s hardly analogous to the current situation with the presence of a highly contagious virus spreading throughout the country.

Trump also tweeted an article from the rabidly right-wing Breitbart News that quoted the Attorney General, Bill Barr, agreeing with Trump that mail-in voting would lead to a “rigged election” and would “absolutely open the floodgates to fraud.” Once again, there was no effort made to back up that claim with any proof. Very much like another of Trump’s morning tweets that was just another crackpot outburst about alleged “millions of mail-in ballots being sent out,” that no one “knows where they are going, and to whom.”

In reality, it is well known and documented where all vote-by-mail ballots are going, and who is receiving them. It is a tested and secure method of voting that is currently used by the military, most (but not all) states, and even Trump and his family.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from illegally threatening governors (ala Ukraine-style quid pro quo) with the withholding of federal funds if they disobey him and implement mail-in voting. He has explicitly admitted that his reasoning for opposing the practice is purely political due to his baseless belief that it benefits Democrats. And he has embarked on a campaign to destroy the Postal Service in order to achieve his goal of vote-by-mail prohibition.

Trump’s un-American determination to deny citizens their right to vote needs to be resisted in the strongest possible terms. Democrats in Congress are trying to pass legislation securing these rights, but they are being obstructed by anti-democratic Republicans. Organizations like the ACLU are working hard to make sure that mail-in voting is available to all Americans. They need our support now.

However, there are some idiotic Trump disciples who actually have a plan that we can all happily get behind. They are burning the applications they receive for vote-by-mail ballots. In their diseased minds they think that they are getting the better of Democrats who support mail-in voting. Okay, fine. That’s the sort of deranged behavior that we should all encourage. If they are so convinced that voting by mail will result in fraud, then they are free to opt out. And if Trump thinks that 2020 will have historic levels of election fraud, it’s only because he knows exactly what he is capable of. It isn’t a warning. It’s a threat.

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

Trump’s Tulsa Rally Troubles Go Way Beyond the Pitiful Turnout

Posted by on June 21, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 1 Comments :

Donald Trump had several weeks to plan his return to the campaign trail after three months of a COVID-19 enforced lockdown. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, a deep red city and state that should have guaranteed a capacity crowd of glassy-eyed disciples. but things didn’t work out exactly as planned.

Donald Trump, Tulsa Rally

According to the Tulsa fire department, Trump’s rally managed to pack in a measly 6,200 of The Donald’s dimwitted devotees. That’s less than a third of the 19,000 people the arena can accommodate. What’s more, Trump and his campaign bragged repeatedly about having a million requests for tickets and they projected that there would be an overflow crowd of 40,000-60,000 out side the arena where Trump would give an additional speech.

However, the attendance turned out to be far less than projected. The overflow crowd never materialized at all, leading to the cancellation of the outdoor activities. If Trump thought that this rally would be his opportunity to turn around his polling slump (he’s losing to Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as in the crucial swing states), he must be mighty disappointed this morning. And his disappointment generally translates into fury directed at the “losers” responsible for his humiliation. Because, of course, it’s never him.

On Sunday morning Trump campaign advisor Mercedes Schlapp was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. She was there to attempt to put a positive spin on the previous evening’s fiasco. That plan didn’t work out very well either (video below):

Wallace: Your campaign said that more than a million people wanted tickets to this rally, but we all saw the pictures last night. The arena was no more than two-thirds full, and the outdoor rally that had been planned for the overflow crowd was canceled because there was no overflow crowd. Question: What happened?
Schlapp: When it comes to understanding how the rallies work, it’s a first-come-first-serve basis. Basically what the one million RSVPs include, it’s an opportunity for us to gather data, to get information obviously.

Schlapp went on to make absurd excuses about people having been too frightened by protesters to show up. But she didn’t explain how more than 90% of the predicted hundred thousand rally-goers were scared off by a few protesters, who were kept blocks away from the arena by the police. She also bragged about the number of people who watched online which, of course, included many Trump opponents and other curious independents. To his credit, Wallace wouldn’t let Schlapp deflect, and reminded her that Trump is always talking about the attendance at his rallies as a measure of his popularity. But now he isn’t popular enough to draw supporters in the right-wing hothouse of Oklahoma.

Wallace also disputed Schlapp’s false assertion that protesters prevented anyone from attending. Schlapp actually wants people to believe that Trump’s supporters stayed home because they didn’t want to expose their families to protesters. But exposing them to a deadly virus apparently wasn’t a problem.

More importantly, Schlapp’s reply to Wallace revealed what she considered to be the primary objective for the rally and the reason it should be regarded as a success. “It’s an opportunity,” Schlapp admitted, “for us to gather data.” Indeed it is. Everyone who requests a free ticket to the event is required to provide their name and other personal identification. That’s all entered into a database that is later used to contact potential voters. Trump’s campaign chairman, Brad Parscale made the same admission prior to the Tulsa affair, tweeting that this would be the “Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time.”

There’s just one problem. There are reports that an army of Tik-Tok users requested tickets that they had no intention of using. It’s hard to estimate the precise impact of this Trump trolling project, but there were thousands of interactions with the prank on social media. So somewhere between the 6,200 people who showed up at the rally, and the million who allegedly requested tickets, there an untold number of fake respondents. That means that there is a significant amount of fake data currently residing in the Trump campaign database. And that’s on top of the fake data that was there before this event. [NOTE: News Corpse is in that database, despite never having provided any information] So when the campaign begins its voter outreach they will be wasting huge sums of money and effort on ghost voters.

In the end, the legacy of the Tulsa rally will be that it revealed the softening support for Trump’s reelection, while simultaneously flooding his campaign database with bogus info. But at least he had the opportunity to soak up some cheers from his hardcore fans, while reinforcing his reelection themes of being able to drink water with one hand, stopping coronavirus testing, and defending Confederate statues. WINNING?

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

Trump’s Lie-Riddled Juneteenth Tweetstorm Ignores Juneteenth, Threatens Protesters

Posted by on June 19, 2020 at 12:34 pm. NO Comments :

It’s Juneteenth, and in celebration of this profoundly significant day in American history Donald Trump took the time to unleash a stream of hostile, egocentric, lie-riddled tweets. So it’s pretty much like every other day in Trump World. He utterly ignored the day’s meaning and memory in favor of paying tribute to himself and maligning his perceived enemies.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

At the top of Trump’s list of priorities was his determination to slander any protesters who might show up at his cult rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You know, the one where he’s purposefully exposing his cult followers to the coronavirus in a state that just reported a record high infection rate. His tweet was another demonstration of his anti-American aspirations of tyranny.

Notice that Trump associates lawful, constitutionally protected protesters with “looters” and “lowlifes,” because that’s exactly what he thinks of people petitioning the government for justice and liberty. And his assurance that they will not be treated like they were previously (which was also pretty awful) is an undisguised threat of more violence. That’s all the more offensive considering that this threat was made on Juneteenth, in a city that was the site of a brutal massacre of African-Americans.

Not to worry. Trump hasn’t forgotten to tell his Twitterati that he will have “big crowds” and that his campaign is just beginning. Never mind that he actually began his reelection campaign the same day he was inaugurated three and half years ago. That campaign is floundering desperately today as every poll shows that Trump is trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. He is losing in nearly every demographic category, including among normally reliable supporters like suburban women and evangelicals. His support among non-white voters has never been worse. That’s partly due to his flagrant racism and tweets like this one:

So after the Supreme Court ruled against his abhorrent attempt to deport Dreamers, Trump has the audacity to say that he “wanted to take care of DACA recipients better than” Democrats. Seriously? If that were true he wouldn’t be saying even now that “We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly” to finish the job of deporting these innocent Americans who know no other home. This has been a signature issue with Trump, which explains his outrage that the Court he thought he had under his thumb displayed some measure of independence.

Furthermore, Trump’s toxic fury is not reserved for the Supreme Court (or protesters, or John Bolton, or Joe Biden, or the press, or anyone or anything else that doesn’t bow down to him). He is also mad at his State TV network (aka Fox News) for publishing a poll that shows him losing to Biden by a whopping twelve points. The poll also shows Trump’s approval in the red by negative thirteen points, while Biden is positive by nine points. Almost every question in the poll has bad results for Trump. Which explains this tweet:

For the record, Trump has made this complaint before, but it’s always a deeply hypocritical whining session aimed at nudging Fox News into being even more reverential. He only thinks that “Fox is terrible” when they publish something that fails to sufficiently worship him as the Messiah he considers himself to be. But he continues to grant interviews almost exclusively to Fox because he knows they will pitch him softballs and ignore his flaming gaffes.

SIDE NOTE: A few days ago CNN posted a poll that also showed Trump trailing Biden by twelve points. So Trump sent them a “cease and desist” letter and threatened to sue the network for…oh, who the hell knows what. It will be interesting to see if he sends Fox News a similar letter. But don’t hold your breath.

Finally, Trump posted a couple of tweets accusing Democrats of false advertising. As usual, he neglected to provide any examples, or to offer any arguments to refute whatever the heck it is he’s whining about. But he did make blatantly false assertions that “China is paying us $BILLIONS” (actually that’s ZERO), and that he “LOVE[s] Seniors & protect Preexisting C’s” (he is currently suing to terminate Obamacare, including preexisting c[onditions]). In other words, it’s business as usual in the Trump White House where lying, insults, and undeserved boasting has replaced being presidential and serving the American people.

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

Raging Malignant Narcissism: Trump Whines that ‘the Supreme Court Doesn’t Like Me’

Posted by on June 18, 2020 at 12:35 pm. 4 Comments :

With each new day there is new evidence that Donald Trump is descending into an abyss of paranoia and mental infirmity. These are symptoms of malignant narcissism, along with acute sociopathy, unchecked aggression, and delusions of grandeur. It is abundantly clear that Trump is unfit for office and represents an imminent danger to the nation and the world.

Donald Trump, Twitter

Trump is freaking out again on Twitter. This time his tantrum was triggered by the Supreme Court ruling that his attempt to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was “arbitrary and capricious,” and therefore unconstitutional. He unleashed a stream of tweets complaining about the decision without offering any legal basis for his position. However he did tweet this very revealing message:

Well, do you? More likely you get the impression that Trump internalizes everything as an attack on him personally. It’s the sort of obsessive whining that he has actually bragged about and has become emblematic of his irreparably fractured and intensely flawed personality disorder. He has also explicitly complained in the past that “All I see is hatred of me.”

One of the most consistent features of Trump’s character (or lack thereof), is how predictably and viciously he will turn against anyone who isn’t unflinchingly loyal and slavishly adoring. That has been observed in his broken relationships with former staffers (Kelly, Mattis, McMasters, Tillerson, Sessions, etc). It has also been seen in his love/hate relationship with Fox News.

Most recently Trump has turned against his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton. In a series of Thursday morning tweets, Trump ranted that Bolton’s book is “a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad.” Notice that Trump is again consumed with how things make him look. But his assertion that the book is “pure fiction” destroys his case that it contains classified material.

Trump also elevated his hostility toward the Supreme Court decisions into a bizarre screed about the Second Amendment tweeting that the decisions “are shotgun blasts into the face of people,” and threatened that “we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else.” This, of course, is simply a wild swing at corralling his most rabid base-dwellers with nothing but blatant fear mongering. Which is likely to work on the few remaining dimwitted Deplorables who worship him as their Messiah. However, the imagery of faces bloodied by shotgun blasts as an argument against the Court’s rulings is not likely to appeal to most Americans.

The Supreme Court has surprised many people with its decisions on DACA, sanctuary cities, LGBTQ+ rights, and the census. But the Court remains a conservative body with a 5 to 4 right-wing majority. Trump should be optimistic that most of their decisions will fall into the conservative camp on party line votes. But because he isn’t getting 100% submissiveness from the judicial branch, he is bellowing frantically about the loss of “everything” and begging his cult to support him at the ballot box in November.

The only problem with that, from Trump’s perspective, is that everything he is doing and saying is driving voters farther away from his candidacy, as well as those of other Republicans running for the House, Senate, and state and local offices. Right now Donald Trump is the best campaign ad that Democrats have ever had, even if it is painful to watch and live through.

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

Trump’s Feeble Effort to Reform Policing Validates the Protests He Condemned

Posted by on June 16, 2020 at 12:21 pm. 2 Comments :

Three weeks after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, America’s streets are still teeming with outraged citizens who are no longer willing to tolerate such injustices. It’s an unprecedented and sustained demand for change that has been fueled by a string of atrocities and populated by a truly diverse cross-section of Americans.

Donald Trump, Police

Conspicuously absent from this nationwide (worldwide) outpouring of grief and determination is the President of the United States, Donald Trump, whose only contribution has been to malign the protesters as “rioters,” “looters,” “thugs,” and even “terrorists.” Trump has repeatedly assaulted both the protesters and local governments with noxious threats of deploying the military against the American people. In Trump’s view these concerned citizens are enemies of the state simply because they oppose police brutality and are willing to act on their constitutional rights.

So for three weeks the people have clearly stated their intentions to compel meaningful change. And during that time, despite (or because of) his stubborn and bellicose opposition, Trump has seen his approval ratings decline into record low territory. The American people overwhelmingly support Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests lobbying for reform.

Consequently, Trump has pivoted in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of his 2020 reelection campaign. He has apparently been convinced that he needs to grab onto this whirling tornado of dissent and score some undeserved points for himself. To that end he has hurriedly patched together a pitifully weak policing reform initiative that fails to address many of the core issues and solutions.

Trump’s latest exercise in hypocrisy comes in the form a unilateral move that Republicans regarded as an act of dictatorship when President Obama did it. His new executive order (EO) – the 162nd of his presidency – is an attempt to upstage congressional efforts to legitimately reform police practices by appropriating initiatives proposed by Democrats. However, this EO will be less comprehensive and will not have the force of law behind it. It can also be reversed or watered down by another executive order.

Additionally, Trump’s EO is a blatant contradiction of nearly everything he’s said about “law and order” since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began. Virtually every public comment he’s made has condemned Americans who have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and unequal justice. He has never acknowledged the systemic racism that permeates many institutions, and this EO doesn’t do so either. But the fact that he felt it necessary to take this step is actually a validation of the demonstrations and proof that they were required to force forward movement on these issues.

Trump’s Rose Garden speech, before a nearly totally white audience, spent far more time praising the police than criticizing the injustice and violence that his EO was supposedly drafted to address. And of course, he politicized the event by applauding himself as the great emancipator. He also heralded imaginary achievements with the economy, the coronavirus, and other matters that have nothing to do with law enforcement reform. And only Trump could say that “We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country,” during a speech meant to ease concerns about racist cops. It was a painfully obvious screed of propaganda aimed at boosting his floundering reelection prospects and nothing more.

Simultaneously, Trump falsely asserted that President Obama and Joe Biden “never even tried” to do anything about systemic racism. In truth, every time Obama tried to advance those matters he was blocked by Republicans and accused of being racist himself. The Trump administration actually repealed Obama’s reforms by executive fiat, slashed funding for community policing, and refused to enforce consent decrees won in court by Obama’s Justice Department. Obama also impaneled a task force to study the problems plaguing policing in December of 2014. In March of 2015, they issued a detailed report with specific policy recommendations. At the time, Trump was tweeting about how Obama was anti-police:

That tweet was in response to Obama’s remarks criticizing the failure of grand juries to indict police officers for the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Five years later Trump is still avoiding the real issues, and still doing nothing to prevent future tragedies because he only cares about how he can further his own personal and political interests. And anyone who fails to recognize that now is a fully indoctrinated disciple of the Cult of Trump and, sadly, beyond help.

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

Trump Supporters are Burning Their Own Vote-By-Mail Applications to Own the Libs

Posted by on June 14, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

There seems to be no outer limit to the magnitude of idiocy achievable by Donald Trump and his legions of glassy-eyed disciples. They have built up an impressive tolerance for humiliation, which serves them well considering how often they subject themselves to it. Just continuing to support Trump amid his endless string of failures and his noxious persona is a feat of Olympic-grade stamina and tunnel-blindness.

Flaming Trump

However, a group of Trump cultists in Michigan are pulling out all the stops in the competition for the gold medal in Trumpian crackpottery. They have embarked on a campaign to eliminate the scourge of election fraud by constraining their own options for voting. As reported by the Detroit News…

“People burned letters informing them that they can vote by absentee ballot in future elections during a protest near Grand Rapids.

“The applications were burned Friday during an event called Operation Incinerator outside the DeltaPlex Arena in Walker. Many people had flags, shirts and signs showing support for President Donald Trump and Republicans.”

That’s right! They received forms permitting them to apply for mail-in voting ballots and gathered to hold a public bonfire into which they cast the offending applications. No one was requiring them to fill out the applications or return them. No one was hindering their freedom to show up at a polling place on election day to cast their vote. But their repulsion of having been given the choice to vote by mail was too much for them to endure.

The organizers of this pyro-protest called themselves “Operation Incinerator,” and they posted the announcement of their crusade on Facebook saying “Together we will gather and burn all of the taxpayer funded applications, illegally sent to us from [Secretary of State] Benson. When you receive your unsolicited application, ‘harvest it’ and bring it with you.” This demonstration – attended by nearly half a dozen devotees – was inspired by Trump’s repeated and baseless attacks on mail-in voting as being rife with fraud. He specifically singled out Michigan and issued a tweet threatening the state:

As with almost everything Trump says, these assertions are utterly false. [Note: Trump first tweeted this saying falsely that actual ballots were mailed out. He deleted that tweet and re-posted the one above specifying that it’s only applications] It is certainly not illegal for the Secretary of State to send out these applications. However, it would be illegal for Trump to withhold federal funds in retaliation. Not that he cares about that. It’s reminiscent of his threat to withhold funds from Ukraine unless they helped with his reelection campaign. In fact, he was impeached for it.

Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting has been in progress for some time. He has ranted without a sliver of evidence that mail-in voting will produce “the greatest Rigged Election in history,” with “thousands of forgeries.” He has also posted hypocritical remarks that approve of mail-in voting for seniors, the military, and himself, but not for any other citizen. And as part of this voter suppression effort, Trump has been attacking the United States Postal Service and advocating for its demise. His bizarre and fabricated arguments stretch into his personal contempt for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

Now that Trump supporters have taken it upon themselves to join his anti-voting campaign, perhaps Democrats should give them some encouragement. These cretinous losers should be applauded for their determination to limit their own voting options. They are actually helping to raise the collective IQ of the electorate by not participating. So News Corpse has created an advertisement to spread this message to Trump supporters around the country. Feel free to retweet it, post it on Facebook, and otherwise cause it to be disseminated everywhere. If this is how they want to march toward November’s election, we should respect their wishes and lend them a helping hand.

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

Trump Refuses to Confirm that He Would Leave the White House Peacefully

Posted by on June 13, 2020 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday Joe Biden was interviewed by the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. In the closing minutes of the segment he asked Biden whether he had given any thought to speculation that Donald Trump might not leave the White House voluntarily if he lost the election. It’s a question that has been asked many times considering Trump’s already disgraceful record of disrespect for the Constitution.

Donald Trump, White House

Biden’s response to Noah’s question was direct and punctuated with relevant facts. He began by predicting that “This president is going to try to steal this election.” That hardly stretches the imagination since that’s what Trump did in 2016, and he is already laying the groundwork to do so in 2020. Trump has flatly stated his belief that all mail-in voting is fraudulent and shouldn’t be counted. And he has his Senate lackeys holding kangaroo hearings aimed at smearing Biden with manufactured allegations. Biden elaborated on his reply saying that he has confidence that the military will uphold the Constitution if necessary:

“I was so damn proud. You have four [chairman of the Joint] Chiefs of Staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are.’ I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The following day, Trump was interviewed (again) by Fox News (video below). Anchor Harris Faulkner conducted yet another televised tongue-bath enabling Trump to lie, deflect, and filibuster incoherently. Her last question for Trump addressed Biden’s remarks on the Daily Show, and produced this bit of surreal theater:

Faulkner: [Biden] said that he believes that you will steal the election, and if you don’t win he thinks that military will escort you from the White House.
Trump: Look, Joe’s not all there. Everybody knows it. And it’s sad when you look at it and you see it for yourself. He’s created his own sanctuary city in the basement of wherever he is, and he doesn’t come out. And certainly if I don’t win, I don’t win. I mean, you go on, do other things. I think it would be a very sad thing for our country.

It’s notable that Trump begins his response by launching into an attack on Biden’s mental health. It’s also pure projection, since Trump is the one that is showing actual signs of dementia. It’s also laughable that Trump attempts to characterize his utterly unqualified diagnosis as “sad” after having made innumerable jokes about it for months. And it wasn’t Biden who retreated to a real basement bunker when he felt threatened by peaceful demonstrators, and then lied about.

More importantly, Trump’s comments regarding leaving office have been twisted by the press into an assurance that he would quietly leave the White House if he loses to Biden in November. But that is not quite what he said. Trump merely stated that “if I don’t win, I don’t win.” So his departure from the White House would be reliant on his acceptance of having lost. But when has Trump ever admitted to having lost anything? He still thinks that he won the popular vote, had record breaking attendance at his inauguration, and was “totally exonerated” by the Mueller report.

Therefore, Trump could just say that the election was tainted by fraud and that he didn’t really lose. Consequently, in his diseased mind, he wouldn’t be required to leave. He would simply invent some “alternative facts,” challenge the results, and insist that he was victorious. That is what would initiate the process of involuntary removal to which Biden was referring. And it’s why the American people have to be vigilant and not allow Trump to usurp power in violation of the Constitution. Or to even let him get away with suggesting it, as Fox News did.

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