Election

While Americans Suffer, Trump is Laser Focused On – His Polling?

Posted by on May 3, 2020 at 12:24 pm. 2 Comments :

The voracious ego of Donald Trump continues to run roughshod over our nation. He seems unfazed by the latest reports of 1.1 million Americans infected by the coronavirus, and more than 67,000 dead. And he’s equally unmoved by the news that more than 30 millions Americans have lost their jobs. Trump posted 19 tweets on Sunday morning and hardly mentioned pandemic or it’s consequences at all. So what did he mention?

Donald Trump

It’s all too apparent what is consuming the thoughts of our “president” these days. He makes his priorities known by expressing them unabashedly on Twitter. And on this Sunday morn he revealed that his primary interest is – as usual – himself. The most frequent subject of his tweets was his approval rate polling, with four addressing that one fetish:

It needs to be said that what Trump is bragging about repeatedly is a Gallup poll that is a conspicuous outlier. Most other polls put Trump in the low forties. It is also notable that Trump is excited about this being the highest number Gallup has posted for him, even though it is still below 50% which he has never achieved.

For some reason Trump tempers his giddiness over this poll with a swipe at the “Fake News,” “Lamestream” media that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” But whining that the press “doesn’t show real polls” while celebrating a Gallup poll that the press always shows is a strange way to boast about his alleged popularity. He’s tearing it down even as he’s using it to lift himself up.

Additionally, Trump twice makes reference to a “96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party” that he fails to back up with a link or even a name for the pollster. The fact is, that poll doesn’t exist. Nor does Trump offer a source for his assertion that he’s beating Joe Biden. Which is likewise not supported by reality. Biden is shown ahead of Trump both nationally and in critical swing states.

For contrast, the rest of Trump’s morning tweetstorm was littered with tributes to himself and bizarre divergences from the matters that are of interest to most Americans. For instance:

  • Whining that George Bush didn’t speak out against his impeachment.
  • Some guy who wrapped his boat in a Trump ad.
  • How much he misses his cult rallies.
  • Two propaganda videos (here and here)
  • Mike Tyson (?)
  • An old propaganda video attacking Democrats.
  • A shout out to his Turnberry golf course in Scotland.

And then there’s whatever the heck this is:

So rest assured that Trump is on the case, working to ensure that the American people don’t suffer from any deficiency in impotent Trump exaltations and syrupy propaganda. This is how a reality TV game show president thinks governing is done. When he isn’t neck deep in mounds of his own PR manure, he’s maligning the free press or the political foes that he is so transparently afraid of. and naturally, he’s always upselling, such as with these Trump-branded coronavirus face masks. This would all make an entertaining social satire if it weren’t for the corpses that are piling up due to Trump’s negligence and incompetence.

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

Jared Kushner Tells Fox News that 60,000 Dead ‘Is a Great Success Story’

Posted by on April 29, 2020 at 1:34 pm. 6 Comments :

History will record the total absence of “leadership” provided by Donald Trump and his regime as a catastrophic failure. It is unimaginable how thoroughly negligent Trump has been as a deadly pandemic spread across the nation and the world.

Donald Trump, Jared Kushner

Trump’s first inclination was to ignore the coronavirus entirely. He failed to take heed of at least a dozen warnings in his Daily Presidential Briefings. Then he cavalierly dismissed the threat as trivial, saying that it was “totally under control,” that it would “disappear…like a miracle,” and that “you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” It is now more than a million. And through it all he refused to take any responsibility for his negligence and incompetence as he wasted crucial months shifting blame to others.

At the same time, Trump hijacked the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings to cast himself as the star of what became an egocentric reality TV show that functioned more as a Trump 2020 reelection campaign infomercial. Instead of focusing on public education, he disseminated lies, insulted reporters, and bragged about the ratings. It got to the point that even his political allies were grimacing at his bizarre behavior. So he announced that he would cease to attend the briefings. That didn’t last but a couple of days.

Which brings us to Wednesday morning when Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made an appearance on Fox News for his regular propaganda and happy-talk segment (video below). And he didn’t disappoint his hosts, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. He kept his remarks socially distant from reality by faithfully adhering to pre-established talking points such as his disparagement of health experts as “the eternal lockdown crowd.” Then he elaborated…

“We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. So the federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story.”

Literally every line of that is flagrantly untrue. We are certainly not “on the other side of the medical aspect of this.” To the contrary, the number of infections and fatalities continue to rise. We have not “achieved all the different milestones.” Unless Kushner regards 60,000 deaths an administration milestone. What’s more, we are not even close to the number of Americans tested that experts say are necessary to “flatten the curve.”

Kushner’s assertion that “the federal government rose to the challenge” is not only false considering its tragically poor performance, it contradicts what Trump says is the federal government’s role. Trump has repeatedly insisted that the states have primary responsibility and the feds are are just a backup of last resort.

Finally, Kushner closed by calling the Trump administration’s handling of this crisis “a great success story.” That’s an assessment so preposterous it hardly deserves a response. With tens of thousands of dead Americans, and over a million more suffering, any characterization of this as successful can only come from deranged and callously insensitive mind.

However, Trump is desperate to sell this snake oil story. The American people are not buying his self-serving presentations of an allegedly flawless response to the COVID-19 pandemic, nor his utterly insufficient efforts to bring relief to a nation crippled physically, emotionally, and financially. And he has fallen behind Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as polling in many of the critical swing states. It is in that state of desperation that Trump is frantically struggling to survive politically and psychologically. But with each passing day he seems to be losing both battles.

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

GOOD NEWS! Trump is Reportedly Retreating in Fear to His Bunker

Posted by on April 25, 2020 at 11:15 am. 3 Comments :

For the past several weeks Donald Trump has cast himself as the star of his latest reality TV show, “The Coronavirus Task Force” (aka “The Trump 2020 Reelection Campaign Infomercial“). He has shamelessly exploited the public health crisis by hijacking these briefings to make himself the center of attention and advance his own political objectives.

Trump Fear

Trump’s voracious ego compelled him to take center stage for these pseudo-informational events because he was convinced that his magnetic presence would be impossible to resist. Unfortunately for him, his impression of his own charisma was a figment of his acutely narcissistic imagination. As the briefings played on (and on and on and on), it became clear that Trump wasn’t doing himself any favors. He was also hurting his fellow Republicans and even the reputations of the experts on the task force. Polling on both Trump’s job approval and his handling of the coronavirus have declined sharply. What’s more, surveys showed that he was losing the presidential election to Joe Biden nationally and in key swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Consequently, Trump’s advisors sought frantically to persuade him that he needs to fire himself as the COVID-19 spokesmodel. and it appears that they have finally gotten through. Axios is reporting that…

“A number of Trump’s most trusted advisers – both inside and outside the White House – have urged him to stop doing marathon televised briefings. They’ve told him he’s overexposed and these appearances are part of the reason polls aren’t looking good for him right now against Joe Biden. ‘I told him it’s not helping him,’ said one adviser to the president. ‘Seniors are scared. And the spectacle of him fighting with the press isn’t what people want to see.’ But Trump has defended the practice, telling critics that the briefings get good ratings.”

Indeed, Trump has been fiercely fixated on the ratings for the televised briefings. He has the shallow view that high ratings are reflective of his popularity. They aren’t. Many people tune in to get information from experts like Dr. Fauci. Still more watch to see what bizarre nonsense Trump will disgorge next. And on that front at least, Trump doesn’t disappoint.

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone finds Trump’s hysterics at these briefings appealing. He spends the bulk of his time lying about imaginary achievements, lavishing praise on himself, and yelling petulantly at reporters. His behavior is so outlandish that even many of his allies are repulsed. In addition to prescribing potentially fatal “cures” like injecting bleach, Trump passes off fiction as fact, such as his claim that the United States has done more virus testing than all major countries combined (Fact check: U.S. tests = 5 million, other countries = 20 million).

It’s no secret to those paying attention that Trump has been using the briefings to replace his cult rallies that can no longer be held. Not being able to soak up the adoration of his glassy-eyed disciples has put Trump in a funk. The briefings have allowed him to unload his spiel while lashing out at the press that for some reason still thinks they need to cover his mania as if it’s newsworthy. But lately he’s been frustrated by not being able to coherently respond to questions challenging his mounting failures. And Trump shut down Friday’s briefing in less than thirty minutes without taking a single question.

If Trump does retreat from the briefing podium he is surely going to find something else to satisfy his starving ego. He may visit factories that are making medical supplies and take credit for their productivity. He could show up at businesses that are prematurely reopening, putting the lives of their employees and customers at risk. He’ll surely be a more frequent guest on Fox News. Or he’ll do what was just announced on Friday: deliver a commencement speech at West Point which will require cadets, who had been sent home, to return to New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus, in order witness another Trumpian display of propaganda and rancor.

At this point Trump is running on the fumes of his fear. He is afraid to answer questions that aren’t posed by Trump-fluffers on Fox News. He is afraid of his polling declining even further. He is afraid of losing the election in November. Sadly, he isn’t afraid of making fatally misguided decisions that are putting the lives of more Americans at risk. But getting off of the the TV every day can only benefit the nation. Ironically, it will also benefit Trump, but he’s too stupid to realize it. As a result, he’ll somehow screw up whatever personal benefit he might have otherwise enjoyed. Which is more good news for America.

UPDATE: Trump tweeted about this and, typically, whined about the press being mean to him, displayed his ignorance of ratings, and proved that he can’t handle honest criticism so he calls it fake in an impotent effort to dismiss it. Can he be any more pathetic?

Trump saying that “the American people are getting nothing but Fake News” during an event where he is the dominant speaker is quite a confession. Notice also that Trump is only complaining about his role in the briefings. None of the other participants, the doctors, scientists, public health administrators, even Mike Pence, are complaining in this pitiful manner. But it sounds like Trump is planning to not only bow out of the the briefings, but eliminate them altogether. We’ll see.

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

Trump Campaign Unleashes Vile, Racist Attack on Joe Biden

Posted by on April 17, 2020 at 2:24 pm. 3 Comments :

Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency he has demonstrated a profoundly noxious brand of racism. Whether it was hysterical fear mongering about non-existent caravans of Latino refugees, praise for the “fine people” participating in neo-Nazi protests, personal assaults on African-American Democrats, or just his refusal to appoint people of color to high-level posts in his administration, Trump’s bigotry has been consistent and hurtful.

Donald Trump, MS-13 Ad, Team Joe

Now that we are in an election year, it would be expected that Trump would escalate his bigotry and seek to energize the most repulsively hateful segment of his Republican Party. And that’s just what he’s doing. On Thursday the official Trump Campaign Twitter account posted an unambiguously racist meme to attack Joe Biden. It features a photo (above, slightly modified) of stereotypical Latino gang members alongside a message asserting that they are “on Team Joe.”

This is reminiscent of the grotesquely racist “Willie Horton” political ad that George H.W. Bush and the Republicans used in the 1988 presidential campaign. Thirty-two years later their tactics have only gotten worse.

There is no connection whatsoever between the gang members in the photo and Vice-President Biden. He has never advocated for an end to deportations for any foreign nationals who commit crimes. Trump’s campaign outright invented this allegation in order to frighten his dimwitted supporters and motivate them to vote their hate in November. And the ad is not just a slam on Biden, it’s also an insult to all Latinos who Trump is tarring with the broad brush of violent criminality. For the record, the people in the ad aren’t even in the U.S. They are in prison in El Salvador.

This is standard operating procedure for the bigots of the GOP, and especially for Trump, whose racism goes back decades. Trump was caught discriminating against African-American rental applicants in his properties. He mounted a campaign to execute five African-Americans in New York who were wrongly convicted, and maintained his position even after they were proved innocent. And then there was Trump’s long and sordid history as America’s most prominent “birther,” insisting that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, therefore, an illegitimate president.

By resorting to this sort of rancid campaign strategy, Trump is admitting that he’s in big trouble. His approval ratings are declining, even as he desperately and vainly attempts to craft an image of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. He must know that the American people don’t believe a word he says. He’s even taken to citing polls that don’t exist. Every major poll in the real world shows him losing to Biden, even in many of the all-important swing states.

So naturally, Trump stoops to the lowest rung on the scale of political ethics. Given his stunted emotional maturity and his severe case of malignant narcissism, it’s the only way he knows how to respond. And unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse as election day draws nearer. Trump has demonstrated that he has no moral grounding outside of his acute egocentrism. And as the walls close in around him, he will kick and scream like a an over-sized baby throwing a tantrum. Which is pretty much the only thing he has ever done well.

Consequently, it is imperative that Democrats, independents, and even woke Republicans, stay alert, engaged, and committed to making America sane again. It will be tough a slog, but the fate of the nation rests on our endurance and determination to boot Trump and his criminal regime out of the White House and, hopefully, into the Big House. In the meantime, since Trump is so fond of vitriolic attacks, let’s see how he likes it (although this is actually pretty accurate)…

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

So Trump Thinks That President Biden Will Have Total Authority?

Posted by on April 14, 2020 at 11:13 am. 2 Comments :

Among the innumerable problems that Donald Trump conjures up on a daily (hourly) basis are his tunnel-blind outbursts that assert bizarre and dangerous authorities. The “Chosen One“ actually seems to believe that he is an omnipotent despot whose decrees cannot be challenged by the riffraff over which he holds divine supremacy.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Now Trump is asserting that “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.” That’s a view that should scare the bejesus out of every American, regardless of political affiliation. It’s an assumption of power that is reserved for the sort of tyrants that Trump frequently shows admiration (Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un). And it is unequivocally undemocratic and un-American. Unfortunately, It is also an unambiguously Trumpian view that he is unashamed of:

“I’m going to put it very simply: the president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots,”

What Trump seems to have forgotten is that the powers he seeks to lavish on himself would create a precedent for future presidents. If Trump were to succeed in asserting totally authority, then Joe Biden would have it as well. Is that something that Republicans would support? Would Fox News accept a Biden presidency that exercised the same authoritarian power that Trump is advocating? For the time being we’d have to assume that they would, because everyone from Lindsey Graham to Sean Hannity have applauded Trump’s ascension to dictator. None of them have said anything to renounce it. Well, except for this guy:

Trump’s foreboding declaration of dictatorial aspirations was uttered during another of the Coronavirus Task Force briefings that he has hijacked to replace his cult rallies and transformed into de facto campaign events for his 2020 reelection. During Monday’s briefing Trump spent the better part of an hour defending himself from accurate media reports of his negligence and incompetence, when he was supposed to be providing the nation with vital information and updates. He even ran a blatantly political campaign ad that was illegally produced by White House staff and comprised of Fox News propaganda.

Trump’s embrace of total authority was referring specifically to his baseless claim that he has the decision making power with regard to when to “reopen” the country for business. He refused to say where he got that preposterous idea, but constitutional scholars agree that he’s wrong. The 10th Amendment states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Trump also said that the governors would do what he told them to do because they need things from the federal government. So he is overtly threatening them with withholding vital goods if they don’t obey his commands. That’s Trump invoking the same kind of mob-style extortion that he used on the president of Ukraine, which resulted in his impeachment. In fact, Trump has already started putting that pressure on state governors, beginning with Andrew Cuomo of New York:

That tweet packs a lot of bull. It seeks to shift the blame for Trump’s failures to the states. It implies that the states must show gratitude to Trump for doing what any other president would regard as a federal – and humanitarian – duty. And it threatens the constitutionally protected independence of the states. What’s more, it demonstrates the severity of Trump’s malignant narcissism with allusions to people “begging” for his grace. He has a long history of imagining people begging him. And following that, Trump posted a tweet wherein he chillingly compared himself to the brutal, maniacal, Captain Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty:

Trump’s identification with Bligh perfectly illustrates his own callousness, delusions of grandeur, and desperate need for unflinching loyalty. The fact that he thinks a mutiny against him would be “exciting and invigorating” reveals the sadistic nature of his derangement. And once again, he implies that he can control people through the disbursement of necessary supplies. That’s the perspective of a perverse and cruel overlord, not a president of a free republic. And it’s all the more reason that Trump needs to be replaced by Joe Biden, someone who understands the Constitution and its principles.

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

CONFIRMED: Trump’s White House and Reelection Campaign are Joined at the Lip

Posted by on April 7, 2020 at 1:10 pm. 4 Comments :

Ever since the creation of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Donald Trump has hijacked their daily press briefings to advance his personal interests. He wasted the time of both the Task Force members and the American people so that he could spew lies about imaginary accomplishments and shamelessly pay tribute to himself. That’s when he wasn’t whining about media coverage and yelling petulantly at reporters who asked pertinent questions.

Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump

The briefings that were supposed to keep the public informed were exploited to boost Trump’s floundering reelection prospects and to satisfy his voracious ego and need to constantly be the center of attention. It has been an unethical failure of duty by both the White House and the media, which should have refrained from live airings of Trump’s flagrantly partisan, reality show-style tantrums.

Now the marriage of Trump’s White House and his 2020 reelection campaign operation is complete. CNN is reporting that White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has been given the boot. That’s not much of a loss considering that the only thing she did in her eight months on the job was to serve as the resident Trump-fluffer on Fox News. She never held a single press conference.

Grisham’s replacement – and Trump’s fourth press secretary in three years – will be the Trump campaign’s spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany. Clearly Trump is suffering some anxiety about the November election and feels that it’s necessary to turn his White House into an arm of his campaign. Apparently commandeering the coronavirus briefings for that purpose wasn’t sufficient. So Trump has tapped one of his most shrill and glassy-eyed devotees to make the case to the media that he is a “stable genius.”

For an example of the deft communications skills that McEnany will bring to the White House, see this video of her last month insisting that “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here,” and remarking that “isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.”

Like most of the Trump cultists and Fox News sycophants (I know, that’s redundant), McEnany was dismissing the threat of a pandemic that many experts were already warning was inevitable. And in this video she is being “interviewed” by Trish Regan, who was fired by Fox last month for a commentary asserting that COVID-19 was another Democratic “impeachment scam.” You have to wonder why Fox hasn’t fired Sean Hannity and others on the network who have said the same things.

However, what may have clinched this appointment for McEnany was an interview last August on CNN. Chris Cuomo asked McEnany if she believed that “Trump has never lied to the American people?” To which McEnany replied “No, the President hasn’t lied. I think CNN has lied to the American people.” McEnany went on to robotically repeat that “the fake news media lies.” It was a performance that was clearly inspired by the rabid ravings of her boss. Watch and wretch:

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

While America Hunkers Down, Trump Exploits the Crisis to Campaign for Reelection

Posted by on March 22, 2020 at 1:33 pm. 4 Comments :

Remember back in the olden times when there were Democratic primaries that dominated the news? There was a “Super” Tuesday and people were anxiously and excitedly exercising their civic duties to vote for the candidates of their choice. That all seems like so long ago. And now they are anxious for a completely different reason.

Donald Trump Virus

The remaining candidates in the Democratic presidential race – Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders – have purposefully put the brakes on their official campaign activities. That’s the responsible thing to do when a global pandemic has erupted and is spreading rapidly throughout the nation and the world. However, while the Democrats are acting responsibly, Donald Trump has chosen to behave in a manner that is consistent with his narcissistic psychoses. Even while the entire country is focusing on how to survive during these challenging times, Trump is focusing on himself and his own best political interests.

Let’s face it, Trump’s presence is utterly irrelevant at the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings. He has no useful knowledge or experience to offer. To the contrary, he most often unleashes blatantly false “information” that his own advisers have to later refute. He wastes valuable time either attacking legitimate journalists who are asking pertinent question, or embracing propagandists whose questions are nothing more than overt suck ups. Much of his comments are simply boasting about what he asserts are unprecedented accomplishments and victories that exist only in his self-serving imagination. And he insists on presenting an absurdly rosy scenario that ignores reality and dangerously understates the risk we all face. It’s one thing to offer hope, but another to deliberately mislead.

There is only one reason that Trump is showing up at these briefings, and that is to advance his reelection prospects. He has turned what should be a vital information channel into a crass campaign PR affair. That’s why he avoids any discussion of the hardships that the American people are enduring. and it’s why he so brazenly exalts himself and his phony achievements. These are nothing but extended political ads for Trump. They are also Trump’s replacement for the cult rallies that he can no longer have.

In addition to Trump’s cynical commandeering of the press briefings, he has likewise devoted his Twitter account to his reelection effort. In the past week Trump has tweeted hundreds of times. The vast majority of those have been retweets of two varieties: Fox News bootlickers lavishing undue praise on him. And messages from his Republican Senate comrades (more than 50 in three days). It is impossible to miss the fact that Trump incessantly retweets only GOP members of Congress bragging about legislation to address the health – physically and financially – of the American people. It’s as if there aren’t any Democrats working on these bills, despite the fact that they authored most of them.

The lengths that Trump is going to to make Democrats invisible is further evidence of his politicization of this crisis. He will need a Republican majority in congress if (gawd forbid) he is reelected in November. So these retweets are another thinly veiled campaign tactic on Trump’s part. Virtually every reference to Democrats on his Twitter feed is negative. That is not how a conscientious leader would work to bring the nation together in turbulent times.

The bottom line is that Trump isn’t interest in bringing people together. He’s only interested in extending his power and disparaging his perceived enemies. He may think he’s clever by trying to disguise his political ambitions in staged press briefings and innocuous tweets, but the only people he’s fooling are his glassy-eyed cult disciples and – unfortunately – some members of the press.

If the media were living up to the principles that govern a free press, they would cease to cover his briefings live. There would be nothing lost by taping the events and spending a few minutes fact-checking before putting them on the air. But it would prevent more disinformation from being disseminated to the public. And it would stop Trump from unscrupulously hijacking otherwise vital communications to get free ad time.

If anything is a “must watch” this is:

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

And then there’s this…..

Fox News and Trump are Infecting America with Lies About Viruses and Economics

Posted by on March 9, 2020 at 1:51 pm. 8 Comments :

Just at the time the country needs a steady hand to guide it through difficult times, we are unfortunately stuck with Donald Trump, an ignorant, narcissistic, sociopath, who is more concerned with his public image than with the lives of the American people. A budding pandemic is threatening to engulf the nation, and simultaneously collapse an economy that is already on thin ice.

Donald Trump, Fox News

Trump has been mishandling the Covid-19 (coronavirus) outbreak from the first days it was identified. He has stubbornly tried to downplay the seriousness of its impact on both people and economics. And he continues to this day trying to dismiss the risks that we are facing. Especially among his own supporters who are the most vulnerable to his alternative facts.

On Monday morning he posted several tweets intended to pacify the public with phony platitudes. In one tweet Trump compared the coronavirus to the flu. “At this moment,” he tweeted, “there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Having thought about it, it’s apparent that Trump can’t do math, because that data shows that the coronavirus, which is just beginning to spread, is 200 times more lethal than the flu. That isn’t exactly comforting.

Of course, Fox News has Trump’s back. They are promoting equally as troubling distortions of reality that are intended more to boost Trump’s polling than to protect people’s lives. Devoted Trump-fluffer Jeanine Pirro unleashed an extended rant that also used flu data to diminish the potential harm from the coronavirus (video below):

“Now they say the mortality rate for coronavirus is higher than the flu. But consider, though, that we have a flu vaccine, and yet in 2019, 16,000 Americans died from the flu. Imagine if we did not have the flu vaccine the flu would be a pandemic. So all the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn’t reflect reality. Without a vaccine, the flu would be far more deadly.”

How does someone this stupid get their own TV show? The mortality rate for the flu would not increase were there no vaccine. Pirro seems think that the mortality rate is based on the percentage of deaths from within the entire national population. Actually, the base is just those infected. So without a vaccine there would surely be more deaths, but they would likely occur at the same percentage rate. Pirro is also assuming that the coronavirus isn’t going to infect more people than the flu. At this time there is no way to predict that. And the fact remains that the mortality rate for the corona virus remains far higher than for the flu.

As for Trump, he is spinning furiously to avoid any negative repercussions from the dramatic drop in the stock market. He is alternately blaming it on coronavirus panic, the media, oil prices, Democrats, and probably Hillary Clinton’s emails. He’s frantic because he knows that a faltering economy will be the death knell for his reelection hopes. But he was never a particularly good market analyst. Just two weeks ago Trump tweeted that…

Everything about the tweet is utterly and painfully wrong. The coronavirus was hardly “very much under control.” on February 24. There were only a handful of confirmed diagnoses – and zero deaths – in the U.S. then. There over 600 known infections now, and 26 deaths.

Trump’s remarks about the stock market were triggered by a 1,000 point drop that day. But if anyone took Trump’s advice and acted on what he thought was a market that looked good, they took a considerable beating. The market has declined another 3,500 points since Trump’s grossly miscast, optimistic tweet. In fact, the market has declined to a level last seen in November of 2017. So anyone who invested in the last two years has lost money. And the more recent their investments, the more they lost.

With the challenges facing the nation today, it would helpful if we didn’t have to rely on a president who has been documented lying more than 16,000 times. It would also be nice if we didn’t have a propaganda outlet like Fox News covering up Trump’s failures, falsehoods, and mental infirmities. Getting through the next few months would be hard enough under normal circumstances. Remember “normal circumstances?” Yeah, those were the days.

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

PRIORITIES: Trump’s Rage-Tweets Focus on Bashing Democrats, Ignore Coronavirus

Posted by on March 4, 2020 at 2:49 pm. NO Comments :

The importance of the Super Tuesday primaries cannot be overstated. It’s results have reshaped the Democratic race to be the party’s nominee for president. But that is surely not the only story with national significance. The nation – and the world – continues to be threatened by an emerging health crisis that has the potential to be become a pandemic.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

These situations require the thoughtful and forthright attention of our leaders, from local medical facilities right up to the White House. So this would be a good time to see how Donald Trump is spending his precious time at this hour of need.

While news reports confirm that both infections and fatalities in the U.S. are increasing, Trump seems unperturbed by these developments. His Twitter feed on Wednesday morning consists of fourteen tweets, and not a single one addresses the coronavirus. Instead, Trump appears to be fully consumed by the drama in the Democratic presidential primary. Fully half of his tweets were attacks of one sort or another on the Democrats vying to oust him in November. And the majority of those were missives aimed Mike Bloomberg, who Trump derisively refers to as “Mini.” For instance…

It’s pretty hysterical that a pretend billionaire like Trump, whose bankruptcies and other business failures are legendary, attacks Bloomberg for not “having what it takes.” Bloomberg is worth over $58 billion. Also, Trump is lying about what Bloomberg spent on his campaign. But even if it were true, it would be less than 2% of of his wealth. And Bloomberg has promised to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat Trump.

That’s why Trump is so scared. He knows that Bloomberg has the resources to bury him politically. And whether Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders is the beneficiary of those funds, and Bloomberg’s digital operations, they will create the sort of “wall” that Trump can only dream about.

Trump fired off three other tweets about Bloomberg that were equally as insulting and devoid of substance. But he also went after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He continues to spin a deranged conspiracy theory that everyone in the Democratic Party is plotting to “crush Bernie Sanders.” And Trump is positioning himself as an advocate for Sanders, who he claims is the victim of a rigged system. Obviously Trump loathes everything about Sanders. So this dishonest expression of concern is rooted in something more sinister. As Trump tells it…

So what’s Trump’s game? He wants us to believe that he considers Sanders an easier opponent to beat. However, he didn’t come to that conclusion on his own. It also happens to be the view of his pal, Vladimir Putin. The Russian campaign to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic Party has been in operation for months. Sanders was notified of it earlier this year. And virtually everything Trump is doing and saying is aligned with the Russian agenda. It is no coincidence that Putin’s perspective and Trump’s are so tightly bound.

In addition to those anti-Democratic tweets, Trump also posted what amounts to a confession that he intended to obstruct justice when he appointed Jeff Sessions to be his Attorney General:

It’s hard to be any clearer that Trump expected Sessions to terminate the Mueller investigation. And when that didn’t happen, he fired Sessions and installed a more obedient lackey, Bill Barr. Now Trump is celebrating Sessions’ difficulties in winning back his old senate seat. And the reason that Trump believes Sessions is getting what he deserves is that Sessions wasn’t sufficiently loyal. Of course, that isn’t in the job description of the Attorney General. What Trump is looking for is a bootlicking sycophant, which is also not in the job description of the Attorney General, or any other cabinet position.

The larger problem that all of this represents is that, while America is worried about the emergence of a potential pandemic, Trump is obsessed only with his prospects for retaining power. That may not be news to anyone who has been paying attention to our Narcissist-in-Chief, but it is nevertheless troubling. The United States is presently burdened with a self-absorbed, wannabe dictator who is content to allow millions of Americans to suffer rather than fulfill the obligations of his job. And therein lies the most urgent reason to make sure that Trump’s presidency ends as soon as possible.

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

Donna Brazile Tells Trump-Fluffing GOP Chair to ‘Go to Hell’ Live on Fox News

Posted by on March 3, 2020 at 11:30 am. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party’s penchant for hypocrisy is legendary. They profess to advocate family values while supporting Donald Trump, an adulterous president who is on his third wife, all of whom he has cheated on. They disingenuously embrace patriotism while enabling Trump’s treasonous aiding and abetting hostile foreign governments that attack our democracy. They claim to have faith while idolizing an irreligious narcissist who calls himself “the Chosen One.”

Donald Trump

On Tuesday morning Republicans were apoplectic over a segment on Fox News where Donna Brazile lashed out at the GOP for interfering in Democratic politics. That’s something that Trump himself has been spending a remarkable amount of time on (mostly advancing the mission of Vladimir Putin). Never mind that no one takes his inane analysis of Democrats seriously. And why should they? His rancid animosity toward fellow Americans who don’t happen to worship him is the core of his moronic commentary.

So on Fox’s America’s Newsroom co-host Sandra Smith prefaced her question for Brazile by playing a clip of Republican National Committee Chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, speculating about how the Democratic primary is progressing. McDaniel said that…

“It’s leading toward a brokered convention which will be rigged against Bernie [Sanders] if those super delegates have their way.”

Following that clip, Smith threw the question to Brazile for her response. And it was a doozy:

“First of all, I want to talk to my Republicans. Stay the hell out of our race. I get sick and tired of listening to Republicans tell me and the Democrats about our process. They don’t even have a process. They are canceling primaries. They have winner take all. They don’t have the kind of democracy that we see on the Democratic side. And for people to use Russian talking points to sow division among Americans, that is stupid.

“So Ronna, go to hell! We are not trying to prevent anyone from becoming the nominee. If you have the delegates to win, you will win. This notion that Democrats are somehow out there trying to put hurdles or road blocks before one candidate, that’s stupid.

“I know what’s going on. They are scared of Democrats coming together to defeat Donald Trump. They need to be focusing on what we’re focusing on in the Democratic Party. And that is preventing foreign interference in our elections. And stop using Russian talking points, Madame Chairwoman.”

OUCH! That is precisely how Democrats should reply to the preposterous analyses that Republicans put out about Democrats. Brazile hit every salient point. The GOP is canceling primaries because they seem to be afraid that some of their cult members will wander off and vote for Bill Weld. Fox News has, to date, refused to even interview Weld. Trump is exposing his weakness. Brazile also noted that McDaniel was parroting Russian talking points. Actually, they are more than talking points. They are part of an orchestrated strategy to create discord and chaos. And Brazile forcefully defended the Democratic Party’s neutrality. The main proponents of the conspiracy theory that the primary is rigged are Trump and Putin.

This attempt by Fox News to ambush Brazile is just another reason why Democrats should never appear on Fox. They have only one objective, and that is to harm Democrats. In this case it backfired on them in a big way. But it is still giving Fox and their Trump-fluffing surrogates the opportunity to condemn Brazile for her alleged incivility. But just to put that hypocrisy in context, see the video below that compiles Trump’s frequent use of profanities that apparently doesn’t bother the pure as virgins GOP or Fox News.

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