Dumba** Rumor Monger Trump Says Democrats are Changing Name to the Socialist Party

One of the only true records that Donald Trump has achieved as president is his Olympic-class achievement of having told more than 10,000 lies. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking that trophy from him. He is a leader in both quantity and sheer audaciousness, considering his unflinching ability to utter absurd, known falsehoods and to repeat his flagrant dishonesties ad nauseum.

Fox News, Socialism

However, having reached the pinnacle of prevarication, Trump is now broadening his horizons with a new form of deceit – Rumors! In an interview on Thursday, Trump thought he found an opportunity to take a jab at those he considers to be America’s most vicious adversaries. No, it wasn’t Russia or North Korea or ISIS or even Central American refugees. It’s just the plain old Democrats for whom his hatred is unbound. The Rumor-Monger-in-Chief told the interviewer that…

“I heard there’s a rumor the Democrats are going to change the name of the party from the Democratic Party to the Socialist Party.”

Let’s set aside the fact that there isn’t anything wrong with being a socialist. In fact, most Americans are socialists, whether they know it or not. Everything from Medicare to fire stations to interstate highways to public schools and libraries are societal benefits born of socialism. But Trump and his ignoramus Deplorables have no idea what the word means. They just use it as a handy pejorative because they don’t have vocabularies that allow them to converse above a third grade level.

And just to intercept the likely excuse that Trump and his defenders will probably serve up, you’ll notice that there isn’t a hint of a smile, or any indication that Trump was trying, in his pitiful way, to be funny. He’s simply casting out an asinine insult that has no basis in reality in order to malign his sworn enemies and to incite others to join him in his hate fest.

Not surprisingly, Fox News has already joined Trump’s Contempt Choir. On Trump’s favorite Fox News morning show, Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes reveled in a segment bashing the Democratic primary debate (which they also did the day before) that featured a full screen graphic that blared “Socialism Takes the Stage.” Once again, these clods couldn’t provide a definition of socialism if an immigrant child’s life depended on it. (OK, that’s a bad example because they would give a damn about an immigrant child’s life).

This is more support for the argument that Democrats should pay any attention to what Trump or Republicans say about them. The have been calling Democrats socialists for decades, even when they advocated for the same policies. They would call the most conservative Democrats socialists just to keep the phony narrative intact. Presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked a question about this by Joy Behar on The View and had a pretty darn good response (video below):

“Literally anything we do they’re going to call socialist. If it’s conservative they’ll call it socialist because it’s coming from Democrats. If it’s further left they’ll call it socialist. So let’s not worry about what they’re calling it. Let’s worry about whether it’s a good idea … Call it whatever you like, but let’s get it done if it’s a good idea. And the others can argue about what label to slap on it.”

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

Fox News Smears Democratic Debate Host Rachel Maddow in a Fit of Hysterical Hypocrisy

The first night of the 2020 Democratic primary debate was a refreshing departure from the infantile politics of the Donald Trump era. There was no childish name-calling; no hostile outbursts; no hateful displays of misogyny, racism, or other forms of bigotry; no narcissistic delusions of grandeur; and no shameless lies. Remember when politics used be like that?

Rachel Maddow, Fox News

However, Trump himself was watching and couldn’t help injecting his unique brand of loathsome immaturity. He began with a typically whiny criticism in a one-word tweet that just said “BORING.” Probably because it lacked the histrionics of a kindergarten full of cholicky crybabies like Trump. And it went downhill from there. He later mocked a brief technical glitch that lasted about six seconds. And he followed that up with a fake video of the glitch.

It didn’t take long for State TV (aka Fox News) to weigh in with their own “fair and balanced” debate analysis. It consisted of a report by their media correspondent Brian Flood, and was headlined “PEACOCK PROPAGANDA? Media critics blast NBC over far-left opinion host Rachel Maddow’s role at Democratic debate.” It’s cute that Fox News still has the gumption to criticize other networks for being biased. But this report really stretched the boundaries of idiocy.

First of all, Flood quoted four “media critics” for his article. All four of them from ultra-rightist outlets that could be relied on to despise MSNBC and Rachel Maddow regardless of how they performed. They included Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV, the noxious Accuracy in Media, the venerable wingnuts at the Media Research Center, and the Daily Caller, a website founded by Fox’s own Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson.

Flood began his rant by lying about Maddow being “too biased for The New York Times.” In fact, the Times only indicated that they would prefer their reporters sticking to programs that were focused on news without opinion. Flood failed to mention that the Times had the very same restrictions on almost every program on Fox News.

Then Flood tried to portray Maddow’s debate questions as a “softball fest” because she asked about things like climate change and the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. Of course these are serious issues that every candidate should address. Particularly Democratic candidates because these are the issues that are most important to their constituents.

Holding candidates accountable on the subjects that matter most to the electorate is apparently being too soft according to Flood and Fox News. But then again, Fox is the network that has been working overtime to spin the Mueller report as having exonerated Trump when it explicitly said that it didn’t. And lately they have been frantically trying to sweep the latest allegations of rape against Trump under the carpet.

Finally, Flood posted a flurry of tweets that criticised Maddow and MSNBC. They included frequent Fox News contributors like Mollie Hemingway, Jonah Goldberg, and Dan Bongino. Every one of them are virulent opponents of all things liberal or Democratic. Is it any wonder that Flood’s article concluded that “media critics” were universally negative toward the debate? He didn’t bother to ask anyone who was independent or left leaning.

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

It would be interesting to see how Fox News would handle a Republican primary debate. But it doesn’t appear that we’ll have the opportunity, even though there is a credible candidate running against Trump. Bill Weld is the former two-term Republican governor of Massachusetts, but he can’t even get a town hall or an interview on Fox News. Did they get an order from Trump to bury Weld? What do you suppose they are afraid of? Other than – obviously – Rachel Maddow.

Fox News is Already Trash-Talking Mueller’s Upcoming Congressional Testimony

When you are Donald Trump’s State TV media mouthpiece, why should you wait three weeks until one of the most potentially consequential congressional hearings of all time? That must be the thinking in the editorial suites of Fox News as they prepare to malign and belittle Robert Mueller, who will be testifying before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on July 17.

Fox News, Robert Mueller

On Wednesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends brought up the subject of Mueller’s upcoming testimony. They were clearly worried about what he might say and how the public might respond to a complete airing of the conclusions of the special counsel’s investigation. That may be because objective analyses of the report agree that it is a virtual criminal indictment of Trump and his associates.

The report states unequivocally that there was Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that was intended to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. It states that Trump could have been indicted, but for a controversial Justice Department memo that recommends against the indictment of a sitting president. And it enumerates at least ten instances of obstruction of justice committed by Trump.

Much of these conclusions were lost in the media cacophony that erupted when the report was released. And most the cacophony was orchestrated by Fox News and Trump’s dishonest and tedious repetition his “no collusion, no obstruction” mantra.

So when Mueller testifies next month it will be the first time that the American people will hear the special counsel explain the often ambiguous passages in his report. He will surely be asked whether he would have indicted Trump were it not for the DOJ memo. He will be asked if he was referring to impeachment when he said that the Constitution provided ways to hold the President accountable other than through the criminal justice system. He will be asked to make a distinction between not having sufficient evidence to indict and not having any evidence. And he will be asked about the spurious charges that he and his team were conflicted, and claims that the investigation was biased from the start.

It will interesting and informative for most Americans to hear the answers to these and other questions. But not for the Trump-fluffers at Fox News. They would prefer to sweep Trump’s crimes under the carpet. And with that goal in mind, they have already begun a campaign to denigrate the hearings and slander Mueller (video below). Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade came out swinging wildly on Wednesday saying that…

“I don’t think he knows the details of the report. He is like the King of England on this. He assigns the people. They’re gonna say ‘Why are most of them Democratically affiliated? Aren’t you concerned about the perception if you hire people like that to do this job? Do you understand why some feel there was an agenda in there?'”

Really? First of all, there is no King of England. But more to the point. Kilmeade’s assertion that Mueller was ignorant of the details of his own report is ludicrous. And Kilmeade failed to back up that nonsense with anything resembling logic or reason. In fact, he immediately veered off into a rant about the makeup of the special counsel’s team. And even that was a lie. Mueller himself is a lifelong Republican who was appointed by a Republican (Rod Rosenstein), who was appointed by Trump.

This is just another example of Fox News shilling for the President they worship like a cult leader. They are laying the groundwork to dismiss whatever truths come out of the hearings. Because there is nothing more dangerous to Trump’s Republican Nationalist Agenda than the truth. So be prepared for more of this unhinged hostility between now and July hearings. And expect Trump to join in with his own deflections and lies. In fact, Trump has three weeks to contrive some national “emergency” to completely torpedo the hearings or otherwise diminish their effectiveness in informing the American people. This is how aspiring dictators behave. And Fox News is fulfilling its role as Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda.

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

Ex-Fox News Reporter Scorches the Network’s ‘Right-Wing Hosts’ and ‘Partisan Misinformation’

Viewers of Fox News will remember a frequent face on the network during many of the elections for the past couple of decades. He was such a ubiquitous presence he was referred to endearingly as Campaign Carl. However, Carl Cameron retired from Fox News after twenty-two years a couple of years ago. And if anyone is wondering what happened to him since, well, you might be surprised.

Fox News Sad

Cameron just announced his participation in a new Internet news aggregation site called Front Page Live. He formed it with David Romm of ThinkProgress to be “an antidote to the Drudge Report.” The founders plan to provide a platform for progressive news along with opportunities to take action on causes like climate change and liberal politics. And unlike Drudge, their focus will be on accurate news stories, rather than flagrantly slanted propaganda of shills like Breitbart and Infowars and … Fox News.

Cameron released a video (see below) explaining his new venture, and he didn’t mince words about his former employer and colleagues at Fox:

“What’s a former Fox guy doing here on Front Page Live partnering with progressives? Well, it’s about facts, not partisanship. The idea of fair and balanced news appealed to me. But over the years, the right-wing hosts drowned out straight journalism with partisan misinformation.”

Indeed, the State TV hucksters at Fox News (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, and more) have submerged the network with a deluge of falsehoods. Note that Cameron didn’t merely criticize partisan information, but explicitly called it what it is: Misinformation. He could have gone even further to label it disinformation and would still have been correct. He continued with some biting commentary on Donald Trump saying that:

“I have a unique insight and understanding of how the right operates and literally 30 years of covering Donald Trump. Trump’s a conman. He DID collude, and coordinated with Russia to get elected. He encouraged them to intervene in the 2016 election on live television. We all saw it. And recently he said he’d accept their help again because he sees nothing wrong with it. And yes, he is still helping Russia by refusing to take strong actions again a future cyber attack.

This is a remarkable transformation. Cameron says that he kept his political views to himself while at Fox News because he was interested in being a journalist. Had Fox known that they would have fired him. It will be interesting to see if the new website is able to generate the kind of viral news dissemination that Drudge has managed for the conservative media. At least it’s satisfying to see that someone was able to shed the mantle of the wingnut cult and renounce the professional liars at Fox. There may be hope after all.

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

WHUT? Fox News Media Hack Says it’s ‘Unfair’ if Networks Don’t Cover All of Trump’s Cult Rallies.

It is well known that Fox News has foraged an uncommonly close relationship between themselves and Donald Trump. In fact, Trump would not be president today but for Fox News. They shamelessly championed his campaign, while simultaneously maligning Hillary Clinton and slandering his critics. Subsequently, they have continued to serve as his private PR operation throughout his presidency.

Fox News, Donald Trump

During the 2016 presidential cycle, Fox News covered every single one of his cult rallies in full and uninterrupted. It amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free TV airtime. And that’s not even counting the dozens of interviews Fox did with adoring Trump-fluffers like Sean Hannity and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. They never did anything similar for Clinton.

Now, Fox’s primary media correspondent and host of MediaBuzz, Howard Kurtz, is weighing in on how Trump is being covered by the cable news networks. And he’s not a happy camper. In an interview with his colleague Bill Hemmer, Kurtz seemed to mimic Trump by raging against CNN and MSNBC for not carrying all of his alleged campaign kickoff rally in Orlando.

First of all, the assertion that this was the kickoff of Trump’s campaign is a blatant lie. He actually filed for reelection on the same day he was inaugurated in January of 2017. And he’s held dozens of rallies since then. This was a charade that was was really just another one of his cookie-cutter cult rallies where he repeated exactly the same tedious themes that he has in all of his other ego-stroking affairs. Just because he calls it a kickoff, doesn’t mean that the media has to obediently buy into that lie.

Consequently, CNN covered the rally just long enough to observe that Trump wasn’t saying anything that he hasn’t said at every other rally. MSNBC monitored the event in case Trump said anything newsworthy. He didn’t, and therefore they didn’t bother interrupting their regular programming for some of Trump’s harshly partisan and hostile rhetoric. And this infuriated Kurtz who said that…

“What I have to say about this is it’s just a lack of class. Now, I’m not saying that the cable networks have to cover every Trump rally, and it did turn into a highly partisan speech in Orlando last night. But this really is sort of networks playing into what Steve Bannon used to call acting like the opposition party. To just simply say we’d rather have our own pundits talking while the president is talking, spending the whole next day analyzing and picking apart what he said, rather than letting our viewers hear from the president as he asks for a second term or begins that process, just seems fundamentally unfair and raises questions about how they’re going to cover this entire campaign.”

A “lack of class”? Kurtz never bothers to explain what was newsworthy about Trump’s speech. But he did associate it with the disgraced former Trump aide and aspiring neo-Nazi, Steve Bannon. Kurtz thinks that people can’t form their own opinions of what Trump said unless they heard it in this address, even though they’ve had the opportunity to hear it dozens of times in the recent past. And he thinks it’s “fundamentally unfair” for news networks not to force Trump down everyone’s throats for the umpteenth time.

It’s interesting to note that Kurtz has never gone to bat like this for any Democrat. He has never whined that it’s unfair or lacks class that Fox News declined to air all of Clinton’s public speeches, or any of those by the current batch of Democratic candidates. No matter how many times they occur. It’s only Trump who is being treated unfairly if his drooling and repetitive rampages are not broadcast 24/7 on every channel.

The one thing that Kurtz said that has some merit, at least with regard to Fox News, is in his closing when he said that this “raises questions about how they’re going to cover this entire campaign.” Although, anyone who has watched Fox for more than few minutes knows exactly how they’re going to cover the campaign – like the loyal StormTrumpers that they are and have always been.

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

WOW! Fox News Lies About Their Lies About Their Own Poll on Whether to Impeach Trump

One sign that the 2020 presidential campaign season is in full swing is that Fox News is pulling out all the stops for their State TV approved candidate, Donald Trump. Of course, Fox has consistently supported Trump since his inauguration, even through episodes where he took Vladimir Putin’s side on the election hacking, or declared that he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.” And Fox News has unflinchingly defended Trump’s unsavory relationship with Russia and flagrant obstruction of justice, as revealed in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller.

BEST FOX NEWS “ALERT” EVER!
Fox News, Impeach Trump

Meanwhile, Trump continues to incriminate himself, as he did during his ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos. And Fox News continues to cover up the impact of his increasingly severe, and often incoherent, meltdowns. Calls for Trump to be impeached are growing rapidly, with more than sixty Democratic members of Congress (and one Republican) voicing that view publicly.

So naturally, Fox News joined other media outlets in polling voters on that question. Their results could not have pleased Trump. The survey found that 43 percent think that Trump should be impeached and removed from office. Another 7 percent favor impeachment without removal. That’s a 50 percent majority versus the 43 percent who say he should not be impeached at all.

However, Fox News reported on these results with a graphic that said 50 percent oppose impeachment or removal. That’s a blatant lie that misrepresents their own poll. It was so egregious that it resulted in Fox issuing a rare clarification to correct their error. Fox and Friends First host Heather Childers said that…

“We would like to make a clarification to a poll we aired earlier this week. The graphic that we showed had responses to the question ‘Do you think President Trump should be impeached OR removed from office?’ Well, the actual question question in the poll was ‘Do you think President Trump should be impeached AND removed from office?’ As seen on your screen right now.”

HUH? The wording was indeed wrong on the graphic, but that was hardly the main problem. Fox is deliberately trying to suppress the fact that most Americans want to see Trump impeached, and most of those want him removed as well. To be clear, there was another question in the poll that didn’t differentiate between impeachment and removal. It did find that 50 percent said “no.” However a follow up question found that 12 percent of them still wanted Trump to be impeached, but not removed.

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

So no matter how you slice it, Fox is mangling the results of their own survey in order to protect Trump from bad news. They are doing this to disinform the public as to how much support there is for Trump’s impeachment. They are also doing this to pacify the fragile ego of the Narcissist-in-Chief. And finally, they are doing this to avoid triggering an onslaught of outrage from their glassy-eyed, cult worshiping viewers. But in the end, they will fail on all three counts, because the American people are not as stupid as the subset of them who watch Fox News.

Sean Hannity Faceplants with Ludicrous Charge that Anti-Trump Protesters are Racist

One of the favorite pastimes of right-wing propagandists is to try to deflect the well documented history of their racism by flipping the narrative and falsely accusing liberals of being prejudiced. It’s a futile exercise in deception considering that liberals are the champions of equality for all, while conservatives put up obstacles at every opportunity. It’s liberals who fight for civil rights, and Republicans who suppress everything from voting to jobs to education and more.

Sean Hannity, Fox News

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the primetime block on Fox News is a virtual White Power Broadcasting service. It’s triumvirate of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity are beloved by America’s confederacy of white nationalists and neo-Nazis. The fact that that doesn’t make them (or Fox) nervous tells you all you need to know about them.

Leading this pack of weasels is Sean Hannity. He is also one of those who most frequently accuses Democrats of the abhorrent behavior that conservatives are known for. And that occurred again on Monday night’s episode of his program. In order to disrupt some anti-Trump rallies, Hannity sent Fox contributor Lawrence Jones to see if he could goad some innocent people into saying things that Hannity could take out of context. But he failed miserably, so he had to bend some comments into absurd misrepresentations of reality (video below). He began by saying that…

“There were some moments, vile, racist, vicious, horrible. Two men actually approached our own Lawrence Jones and one told him to go back to Fox News where there’s ‘more cotton for you to pick.’ [and another said] ‘He’ll tell you to go back to Kenya next.'”

This is what Hannity thinks is vile and racist? Anyone with an elementary grasp of the English language can see that neither of those comments were directed at Jones. Telling someone to “go back to Fox News where there’s more cotton for you to pick,” is a criticism of Fox News as a figurative plantation where African-Americans are exploited. That is, when they aren’t being disrespected, insulted, and belittled. And the comment about going back to Kenya was obviously a sarcastic reference to the Birther movement that Hannity and Fox participated in, wherein they maligned President Obama as an un-American, illegitimate president. The protester who said it was clearly referring to Trump as the person who would tell Jones to go back to Kenya.

So the first comment was directed at the racism of Fox News, and the second was directed at the racism of Trump. How any of that could be construed as racism aimed at Jones is beyond imagination. But departures from reality are what Hannity specializes in.

Hannity further demonstrated that by rattling off a list of phony “accomplishments” that he said Trump had achieved for African-Americans. Then he asks why, with all of that, the black community doesn’t support him. To which Jones had a pretty good response. He said that Republicans haven’t been articulating their message and that “the President can make a turn if he goes into the community.” Which, of course, Trump has never done. Every one of his dozens of cult rallies have been in snow white communities and attended by overwhelmingly white devotees.

Hannity is suggesting that African-Americans who don’t support Trump are stupid and don’t understand what’s in their own best interests. He thinks that they should submit to the nearly all-white GOP to be their paternal caretakers. It’s a condescending attitude that is racist at its core. The reason African-Americans almost universally support Democrats is because they can see that it’s a party that embraces diversity, including in the ranks of their representatives and leadership. But conservatives are devoted to oppressing anyone that doesn’t look and think like them. And these stunts by Hannity only drive home that point with greater emphasis.

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

Fox and Friends Transforms Into the Official Trump Campaign Media Headquarters

On Tuesday Donald Trump is “officially” launching his 2020 presidential reelection campaign. But like everything Trump does, it’s a phony stunt with a purpose wholly unrelated to what is advertised. In fact, Trump launched his reelection bid the day of his inauguration in 2017. The rally that Trump is planning in Orlando is just another opportunity to assemble his cult hordes and rant incoherently for two hours about Democrats, the press, and how awesome he thinks he is.

Fox News Friends

It’s no coincidence that this rally is taking place a week before the first Democratic primary debate, also in Florida. Trump is fond of stepping on the political events of others. It’s his campaign equivalent of photo-bombing. And he’s preparing for the big day by enlisting his State TV (aka Fox News) confederates in the promotion effort. To that end, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends booked Trump’s campaign press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany for a few minutes of uninterrupted Trump-fluffing (video below).

The segment began with a “sneak peek” at Trump’s first campaign ad for the 2020 cycle. It was predictably jam-packed with words and pictures that exalted Trump as the returning Messiah. Notably, the clip that Fox and Friends aired prominently displayed a number to send a text message to the Trump campaign. Then they silently re-played the same segment – with the text number showing – in two-thirds of the screen while interviewing McEnany.

Following the campaign video, Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt introduced McEnany, and asked her “What do you think?” That’s right. She asked the spokesperson for the Trump campaign what she thinks about the advertisement produced by the campaign. That’s the sort of hard-hitting “journalism” we’ve all come to expect from Fox News. And naturally, McEnany’s response was the typical snake oil patter of a dedicated StormTrumper. Without even bothering to reply as to what she thinks about the ad, McEnany veered into an attack on “the dozens of socialists running in the Democratic field.” Fill-in co-host Dan Bongino then weighed into to ask a probing question which he prefaced by saying that…

“The tax cuts worked, the economy’s booming, unemployment is at historic lows, red tape is being cut. But when you look at polls – I was reading an article a while ago from the New York Times – a lot of Americans don’t even believe they got a tax cut. Contrary to the data which says they did. Do we as Republicans need to do a better job of getting the message out, that this economy is due to a change from the older Obama liberal ways?”

What we have here is an outright declaration by a Fox “News” host that he and his colleagues are Republicans and are seeking advice from Trump’s press secretary on how to advance their shared political agenda. Not that we didn’t already know that, but they don’t often admit it on the air. The rest of Bongino’s “question” was really a thinly disguised campaign pitch for Trump that was littered with provable lies. Most notably that the American people are somehow ignorant of their own tax burdens. Actually, they know very well that Trump’s Tax Scam has hurt them while helping corporations and the wealthy.

Then Earhardt returned to the video’s text message number. Because, just like any other commercial, you can’t repeat that often enough. At this point Fox and Friends began to sound more like the Home Shopping Network for Trump. She queried McEnany saying…

Earhardt: At the bottom of that video we just saw it says to text “Trump” to [REDACTED]. What happens if you do that?”
McEnany: It’s really important. It allows us to update our data. We have the best data in the business, Ainsley. That means we know what doors to knock on. We’re going to be able to isolate the handful of the few million voters who will decide this election. Because of that text you allow us to update our data. You also get to be a Trump volunteer. What’s better than that?

So now Fox News is participating in refining the Trump campaign’s election databases and recruiting volunteers. What’s better than that? This was followed by co-host Steve Doocy raising the issue of Trump’s floundering poll numbers. He noted that “The story over the weekend was that the President is not doing very well in his internal polls.” That’s true, and after denying that these polls exist, Trump fired the pollsters suspected of leaking the data. McEnany waved it all off with some lazy and transparent spin. But what Doocy didn’t bother to mention was that there was another poll over the weekend with similarly bad news for Trump. That one was by Fox News itself, and it showed Trump losing to all five of the Democrats that they pitted against him.

This is just the beginning of the 2020 election cycle, and already Fox News is fully engaged in their role as the media arm of the Trump reelection effort. If anything, they are even less ashamed of exposing their partisanship than in previous cycles. If there were any justice, Fox News would be forced to declare itself a political operation and report its services as in-kind contributions to Trump’s campaign. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen because integrity at Fox News is as rare as it is in the candidate they are working for.

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

Holy Fox News Poll: Every Democrat Beats Trump, Also Trump Coordinated with Russia

There has been a lot going wrong for Donald Trump lately. Most of it due to his own incompetence and big mouth. He admitted that he would take dirt on on political opponents from hostile foreign governments. He accused his own White House counsel of perjury. He threatened an economic catastrophe if he isn’t reelected. And he even speculated about declaring himself Dictator-for-Life.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

So what more could go wrong for Trump after a week wherein he has made assholery a hallmark of his presidency? Well, he might want to cut back on consumption of his beloved Fox News. That’s because they just released a poll that has almost nothing but bad news for him. It’s funny how Trump rejects polls across the board until one says something nice about him. And that one is often Fox News. But now he will have to lump Fox in with all the other “Fake News” haters trying to destroy him.

It starts with his approval rating that Fox puts at a dismal 45 percent. Even worse, the breakdown of those numbers showed that only 21 percent strongly approve, while 41 percent strongly disapprove. And this comes the day after Trump celebrated the results of a bogus survey by the notoriously disreputable Rasmussen Reports, that showed a ridiculous 51 percent approval.

Additionally, the poll pitted Trump against the top five Democratic candidates and Trump lost to all of them: Biden/Trump: 49/39; Sanders/Trump: 49/40; Harris/Trump: 42/41; Warren/Trump: 43/41; Buttigieg/Trump: 41/40.

Quinnipiac just ran a similar poll with the same results. What’s more, Trump lashed out at reports about leaked results to his own internal polling that also showed him losing. He called both the reports and the polls fake news. But for some reason, he just fired those pollsters.

Fox News included a question in their poll that asked “What would your reaction be if Donald Trump were reelected president?” The answers were Enthusiastic/Pleased: 36 percent versus Displeased/Scared: 50 percent. They also asked “Do you think a politician can have low moral and ethical standards and still be a good leader?” By a 25 percent margin (35/60) they said resoundingly “NO.”

There was plenty of other bad news for Trump in this poll. For instance: Respondents say that Trump’s immigration efforts have “gone too far” (50%); they support the Dreamers (72%); they oppose Trump’s tariffs (52%); they oppose his border wall (55%); a plurality say that Trump’s tax reforms “benefit people with more money” (48%); And on whether Trump coordinated with Russia, 50 percent of voters say that he did.

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

Taken together, this is devastating news for Trump. Not only because the numbers themselves indicate how deeply unpopular he and his ideas are, but because this is from a source that he relies on for sycophantic bootlicking and positive reinforcement. Unfortunately for Trump, he can’t wave off this poll like he does all the others. He can’t accuse the source of being Trump-haters or denizens of the “Deep State.” And he’s going to have a hard time pretending that the 43 percent of American voters in this survey who say that he should be impeached are paid plants by George Soros. He’ll need a whole new level of self-deception to slog through this.

Sean Hannity Gaslights America: Spins Trump’s Treasonous Remarks As ‘A Genius Setup’

Every aspiring dictator worth his salt has a media enterprise at the ready to peddle his version of an obviously fabricated, self-serving reality. And for Donald Trump that has always been Fox News. The network that was born as a propaganda tool for right-witn purveyors of policies that benefit only corporations and the wealthy quickly adapted to the Era of Trump and aligned their most prominent, primetime shills with the White House approved messaging.

Fox News, Sean Hannity

Leading the pack of StormTrumpers at Fox News is Sean Hannity, a sycophant so devoted that the shows up to speak at Trump’s cult rallies and appears in his campaign videos. Hannity has proven that he will do and say anything to support Dear Leader, no matter how deceitful, immoral, ar absurd.

So naturally when Trump takes a gaping bite out of his own bone-spur infested foot, Hannity is right there with the ketchup and a Diet Coke to help wash it down. On Wednesday Trump essentially confessed to George Stephanopoulos that he unlawfully received information from Russia and would be happy to do so again with any hostile foreign nation. It was an unambiguous admission of a “high crime” that would merit impeachment. Hannity’s response to this criminal treachery was to herald it as a brilliant ploy to discombobulate the hapless Democrats saying that “In many ways that was a genius setup because the media mob will fall right into his trap” See? Trump was only pleading guilty to treason in order to punk the libs. And Hannity continued (video below):

“Listening is much different than, let’s see, lying, spying, and paying for Russian lies and spreading it through the media by ‘deep state’ operatives and then using it as a basis for a FISA warrant … Why are they not so outraged about Hillary paying for Russian lies, disinformation, Comey generously using the unverifiable data from Russia to spy on the Trump campaign and get a FISA warrant? No doubt, by the way, this will all get another round of fake, phony, moral selective outrage over that interview, but it’s a perfect setup because if they are outraged about that then how can you not be outraged over what I just said?”

Needless to say, that voluminous disgorgement was nothing but more of the fantastical mythologies that Hannity is famous for. His first goto deflection is to bring up some old, debunked lies about Hillary Clinton. And his defense of Trump isn’t that he’s innocent, but that he’s only as guilty as (he says) Clinton is. That’s like Ted Bundy defending himself by claiming that the fictional Hannibal Lecter was way worse.

If this is the best that Hannity and Fox News can do to persuade their Deplorable, and easily fooled, viewers that Trump didn’t actually admit that he has taken, and will gladly take in the future, disinformation from operatives working for foreign enemies, then it’s clear they are running on empty. They are now having to literally scrape the bottom of their propaganda barrell. It’s a pathetic spectacle, but one that was inevitable considering how much bullshit they’ve been spreading around for the past few years.

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