Media Bias

So Stupid: Fox News Guest Says CNN ‘Needs Illegal Immigrants to Get Their Ratings Up’

Posted by on February 7, 2018 at 3:00 pm. NO Comments :

The right’s relentless campaign to demonize immigrants is an openly racist attempt to “make America white again.” There is no ethical justification for deporting productive, law-abiding people, who have lived here since childhood, to countries they never knew as home. But Republicans are determined to conflate these good neighbors with criminals and force them to leave their families and businesses for no reason other than their hatred of what they consider dark-skinned invaders.

Fox News

Consistent with their support for conservative bigotry, Fox News invited right-wing radio talker Wayne Dupree to discuss immigration with the knuckleheads of Fox and Friends (video below). The discussion was triggered by a clip from CNN wherein host Brooke Baldwin stated the obvious truth that it’s wrong to imply that all immigrants are criminals. Well, that indisputable fact was too much for the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends to comprehend.

The Fox segment featured a banner that read: “CNN Analyst: Trump Labels Illegals as Killers.” Setting aside the racist and insulting “Illegals” rhetoric, it was otherwise accurate. Trump has been tying immigrants to criminals since the day he announced his candidacy. But co-host Steve Doocy still had to admit that he couldn’t understand what Baldwin was talking about:

Doocy: You’ve got her saying that people are here for all kinds of valid and patriotic reasons. I don’t get that part.
Dupree: Oh, I do. It’s easy. CNN is trying to raise their ratings. They need illegal immigrants to watch their ratings, to get their ratings back up so that’s why they’re calling them patriotic. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on over there, whether it’s wacky tobacky or Latin lettuce in the break rooms or what not, but the American people right now, we want our polticians to enforce the laws.

Are you friggin’ kidding me? This deep-fried dope is in the media business and has no idea how ratings work. Does he think that immigrants dash across the border and are picked up by representatives from Nielsen Media who immediately start to register their TV viewing habits? This is too stupid, even for Fox News. Yet Dupree portrayed it as the “easy” answer to Doocy’s asinine question.

And if that weren’t enough, Dupree then implies that CNN’s reporters are drug users, and that results in them opposing law enforcement. Does anything coming out of his mouth make the slightest bit of sense? And before you answer that, consider this unadulterated nonsense:

Dupree: Illegal immigrants…don’t have any allegiance to this country. They don’t care about this country. And that’s why they can go out drinking and run over a rising NFL star.

What the F…? If anyone is high here, it’s Dupree. There is simply no discernible logic in that statement. Does he really think that anyone would get drunk, then take the car out for spin because they don’t like America? That would be stupid enough by itself, but it’s even worse when accusing people who take great risks to come to this country of not caring about it. What’s more, if Dupree thinks that drunk driving fatalities are caused by people who don’t like America, then let him explain the 10,000 annual deaths caused by drunk driving American citizens.

This idiotic argument is nothing new for Fox News. They exploited the same sort of thing with the tragic death of Kate Steinle. In that case an immigrant accidentally fired a gun he had found. He was acquitted of any criminal homicide charges. And every time there is any crime committed by an undocumented resident, Fox News goes bonkers trying to associate the crime with the person’s residency status. Which has nothing to do with the crime. Something else that Fox News will never accept is the fact that undocumented immigrants commit far fewer crimes than native-born citizens. But why let facts get in the way of a good racist narrative?

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

Attack of the Democratic AGs: Fox News Freaks Out Over ‘Swarm’ of Trump Lawsuits

Posted by on February 6, 2018 at 2:48 pm. 2 Comments :

There is a lot going on in the world right now. The stock market is roiled in historic volatility. Donald Trump is being investigated for colluding with Russia and obstruction of justice (among other crimes). The government is facing another possible shutdown hinging on Trump’s insistence on building a useless border wall and punishing immigrants who were brought here as children. But this is what Fox News regards as the big story of the day, featuring it at the top of their website:

Fox News

The article predictably puts Democrats in a negative light, casting them as obstructionists who simply want to monkey wrench Donald Trump’s sincere efforts to make America great again. It begins…

“Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. The Russia probe. The “deep state.” Of all the obstacles that could potentially thwart the Trump agenda, add to that tempest the flood of lawsuits now being plotted by blue-state attorneys general who have made no secret of their disdain for the administration’s policies.”

So Fox News is asserting that Democratic leaders and the GOP-appointed special counsel are aligned in a “deep state” conspiracy to undermine the President. With partisan-charged rhetoric like “thwart,” “tempest,” “flood,” and “plotted,” Fox News makes its biases clear. And they seem to be surprised that “blue-state attorneys general” have political differences with the extremist agenda of Trump and his blindly obedient Republican comrades.

The article also characterizes the work of the Democratic AGs as purely partisan, rather than inspired by their Democratic principles. Fundraising and campaigning takes up a fair amount of space in the column. But most of all the author focuses on the “sheer volume” of multistate lawsuits (35 so far) that have been filed against the Trump administration. Near the end of the article it finally acknowledges that “Republican attorneys general brought 46 multistate legal challenges” during the Obama administration. Although that was for the full eight years.

If there are any reasons to justify an increase in lawsuits currently, it’s because Trump and his cohorts are so determined to violate the law. In so many areas of his government, this president continues to prove his disdain for the law. It infects almost every cabinet department. And the GOP-run Congress refuses to conduct any oversight. That’s why it has been necessary for Democrats to respond by going to court. The issues span ObamaCare, DACA, Muslim bans, the environment, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, student loans, network neutrality, fracking and offshore drilling, transgender troops, civil and voting rights, and many more.

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

If anything, it’s surprising that there haven’t been even more lawsuits. There surely will be as time goes by. Trump continues to break laws related to his businesses. He is still profiting from his presidency. And many of his cabinet secretaries are doing the same. That is, the ones that haven’t already been forced out in scandal and disgrace. And yet, the only thing that Fox thinks is newsworthy about this is that honest public servants are working hard to do something about Trump’s lawlessness. Meanwhile, Fox couldn’t care less about the lawlessness itself.

Confederacy of Morons: Trump Thanks Fox and Friends for Funneling Him Another Blatant Lie

Posted by on February 5, 2018 at 12:11 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s Monday morning and Donald Trump is deeply embedded in his ritual of “Executive Time,” stretched out with last night’s cheeseburger and his (not very) smart phone. As usual, he is glued to his daily so-called “intelligence” briefing from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, who are his most trusted advisers on pretty much every issue. What could possibly go wrong?

Fox News

The crew at Fox News prepared a lengthy report on alleged problems with Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). They invited ultra-rightist British politician, and Fox News contributor, Nigel Farage, in for a well-scripted segment bashing universal healthcare (video below). The apparent inspiration for these eight minutes of unadulterated hogwash was a report that thousands of protesters took to the streets of London to express their dissatisfaction with the U.K.’s health care system. And our TV-addicted president was paying close attention. He tweeted that:

And giving credit where credit is due, Trump shortly after acknowledged his pals at Fox and Friends for enlightening him:

You have to wonder why Trump sounds “soooo much” like a thirteen year old girl when he tweets. But more to the point, you should wonder why he is soooo oblivious to the truth. The President, following his marching orders from Fox News, completely misunderstood the British rallies. The people were, in fact, protesting the Conservative government that has been cutting funding to the NHS and curtailing services. The marchers were in favor of their universal healthcare and were demanding that the NHS be properly funded. British leaders, including the Conservative Party Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, lashed out at Trump’s ignorance:

The Farage interview on Fox News brazenly lied about the purpose of the demonstrations and the state of British health care. And to make matters worse, Farage went to great lengths to blame what he alleged were problems on immigrants:

“The National Health Service has turned into the International Health Service and we’re providing a lot of healthcare for people coming into Britain from all over the world.”

True to form, Fox News is seeking to make immigrants the cause of every problem that rich, pseudo-patriotic, white, Christianists suffer through. Whether it be the supposed hoards invading the U.K., or the imaginary masses streaming into the U.S. across the Rio Grande. Foreigners always seem to be the cause of whatever these bigots happen to be upset about at any given time. And America’s first TV game show president buys into it and spreads his diseased ignorance to the glassy-eyed disciples who worship him. it’s a closed loop of hate and stupidity that feeds off of itself.

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

The Desperate Fox News Effort to Spin the Nunes Memo is a Pretty Bogus ‘Bombshell’

Posted by on February 4, 2018 at 10:51 am. 2 Comments :

The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Devin Nunes, spent the last couple of weeks alleging that he had proof of an all-consuming, “deep state” conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump. He didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from beating the drum for partisan drivel that was giddily embraced by many of his GOP colleagues, as well as the conservative media echo chamber.

Not surprisingly, Fox News was the first, and most enthusiastic, torch carrier for the overblown hype that Nunes was peddling. Take a look at how they presented the “news” announcing the memo’s release:

Fox News

Okay, that last one in the bottom-right was from Saturday Night Live, but even they have better journalistic ethics than Fox News does. The others are from Fox’s primetime Trump-fluffers Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and Saturday’s pitiful wannabe propagandist, Jesse Watters. And what they all have in common is the compulsion to characterize the super-dud Nunes memo as a “Bombshell.”

Let’s be clear, the memo fell as flat as the Earth that Fox’s science deniers are perpetually squawking about. It failed utterly to prove any of the allegations its authors and promoters had put forward. In fact, it literally proved the case made by Democrats that the FISA court’s granting of a surveillance warrant for Trump flunky Carter Page had nothing to do with the Russia investigation or the work of special counsel Robert Mueller. If anything, that was the “bombshell” produced by the memo. And even several Republicans who sit on the Intelligence Committee agree. As reported by Talking Points Memo:

  • Trey Gowdy (R-TN): “I actually don’t think it is has any impact on the Russia probe.”
  • Brad Wenstrup (R-OH): “I don’t think it really has anything to do with” Mueller’s probe.
  • Chris Stewart (R-UT): “This memo has frankly nothing at all to do with a special counsel.”
  • Will Hurd (R-TX): “I don’t believe this is an attack on Bob Mueller.”

None of these Republican members of Nunes’ committee agree with Nunes. Nor do they agree with Trump’s deranged tweet that the Nunes Memo “totally vindicates” him. The measure of psychosis that Trump displays by his narcissistic self-delusion is off the scale. And therefore, so is the hyperbolic, pro-Trump editorializing of the well-orchestrated Fox News “bombshell” amen chorus. They can’t even tell the truth when their own side is dismissing the vacuous memorandum (with an emphasis on the “dumb”).

And don’t expect the designated media expert of Fox News, Howard Kurtz, to set the record straight. He is currently promoting his new book, Media Madness, that is a right-wing take on how much the media allegedly hates Donald Trump. (To be accurate, it isn’t just the media. It’s the vast majority of Americans, but that’s another subject). One of the reasons that Kurtz’s book has rocketed up to #710 on Amazon is that he is undoubtedly the worst media analyst in the business. In one of his recent book tour appearances on Fox News (of course) he said that…

“There is something about Donald Trump, the candidate and now the president, where many journalists and commentators believe they have some kind of mission to save the country from an erratic president. And that’s not journalism.”

Actually, that absolutely is journalism. Kurtz apparently thinks that the mission of the media is to be an obedient lap dog that serves no purpose other than presidential stenography. But the Founding Fathers put a unique protection in the Constitution for freedom of the press specifically because it is sometimes required to take positions that will offend the powerful. It is the duty of the press to alert citizens when their leaders are corrupt, lying, treasonous, ignorant, and even erratic. And it’s all the more critical when we have a president who is all of the above. That is, without a doubt, a real bombshell that is ready to blow bigly.

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

The Illness That is Sean Hannity is Infectious and Has Spread to the Trump White House

Posted by on February 3, 2018 at 10:11 am. 4 Comments :

The release of the infamous “Nunes Memo” may have been the worst anti-climax since O.J. Simpson’s promise to “find the real killer.” (Like Trump, Simpson spent most of his time searching on a golf course in Florida). The memo was supposed to crush special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and its interference in the presidential election. But the actual document was about as revealing as a stripper in a concrete burka. (See this breakdown of the Nunes embarrassment).

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

But leave it to Sean Hannity, the Chief Trump-fluffer of Fox News, to continue trying to peddle the pitiful prattle after its public fizzling. Hannity, practicing total abstinence from reality, opened his Friday night program with a monologue that future psychology textbooks will include to illustrate complete cognitive failure (video below).

Hannity isn’t content to simply spin what he incredulously calls the “FISA Abuse Memo” into one his typical pro-Trump rants. Not this time. His spittle-inflected delivery features unsupported hyperbolic nonsense like “shocking” and “stunning” and “the biggest abuse of power corruption case in American history.” Hannity’s unhinged tirade asserts that he has…

“…irrefutable proof of a coordinated conspiracy to abuse power by weaponizing and politicizing the powerful tools of intelligence by top-ranking Obama officials against the Trump campaign, against the Constitution, and against your Fourth Amendment rights.”

Holy hallucination, Batman. The only thing we have irrefutable proof of is that Hannity scored some wicked acid. His wind-tunnel of wingnutisms continued with hoary references to the “Deep State,” “unelected bureaucrats,” “undermin[ing] a duly elected president,” and the baseless contention that the memo “proves that the entire basis for the Russia investigation was based on lies that were bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and her campaign.” And Hannity’s closer was an impotent demand that “The Mueller investigation does need to be shut down. And the people involved – who we will name tonight – many need to go to jail.”

All of that was all that Donald Trump needed to make a painfully misinformed analysis of his legal jeopardy. He tweeted that “This memo totally vindicates “Trump” in probe.” Notice the sarcastic quotes around his own “alleged” name:

Notice also that Trump – he of the best words – misuses “their,” capitalizes incoherently, and makes the delusional pronouncement that “collusion is dead.” That’s exactly what he said about ObamaCare, which enjoyed record-setting sign-ups last year, despite his attempts at sabotage. What’s more, even arch-conservative Benghazi inquisitionist, Trey Gowdy, flatly disagrees with Trump on the matter of vindication, tweeting that “The contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit [Mueller’s] investigation.”

Hannity’s harangue was just the latest evidence of how he exercises influence with our TV-addicted president. Trump’s reliance on the counsel he gets from Fox News, whether it be Hannity, “judge” Jeanine Pirro, or the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, is unshakable. He assigns greater authority to their inane ravings than to all of the available intelligence that he has at hand as Commander-in-Chief. Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng documented this mental disconnect in their article for Salon, saying in part that:

“…by all indications, the president is less amenable to the concerns of his own FBI than those shared by a less formal, more bombastic adviser. That adviser is Sean Hannity, who has been hyping the so-called Nunes memo all week, and with whom the president continues to speak regularly.

“According to three sources with knowledge of their conversations, Trump has been in regular contact with Hannity over the phone in recent weeks, as the Fox News prime-time star and Trump ally has encouraged the prompt release of a controversial four-page memo crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. […] Sources say Hannity’s persistent advocacy reinforced Trump’s already growing determination to get that memo into the public realm.”

Having succeeded at publicly embarrassing everyone connected to that memo, Trump tapped out the tweet noted above. His confidence in the mental midgets of Fox News appears to even override that of his own gaggle of lawyers, who are not well regarded or considered to be especially competent in the law. Particularly when compared to the legal superstars assembled by Robert Mueller. Trump is setting up a title fight for his life wherein he has put all his money on the likes of Sean Hannity. It’s going to be a massacre that will be both painful and beautiful to watch.

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

Fox News Host Whines That ‘It’s Just So Anti-American’ to Criticize Trump

Posted by on January 29, 2018 at 6:44 pm. 1 Comments :

Last week the news broke that Donald Trump had ordered his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. That attempted obstruction of justice was foiled when McGahn threatened Trump that he would quit if required to carry out the order. The incident occurred in June of 2017. Since then Trump and all of his surrogates have denied that he ever entertained the notion of firing Mueller. That, apparently, was a lie.

Fox News Friends

Also last June, Sean Hannity was ranting on his program that Mueller was corrupt and should be terminated. He had only been appointed a month prior, so Hannity’s obsession was difficult to understand until we learned what we know now about Trump’s demand to McGahn. Hannity appears to have been doing Trump’s dirty work. And now Fox News thinks the reporting of this affair is part of a clandestine conspiracy.

In a segment of Trump’s favorite show, Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes ventured down a delusional trail of speculation that the story was deliberately held for seven months so it could be dropped strategically following Trump’s allegedly triumphant visit to Davos, Switzerland. What a devious cabal of “deep state” villains. During an interview with former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer, the hosts engaged in this paranoid exchange:

Kilmeade: Isn’t it amazing, the timing, something comes up about the Russia investigation, like for example, a story that could have broken in June comes out in January after the president goes to Davos and is treated like a rock star.
Spicer: Somebody will dig something up from when he was, like, 8 years old about how he didn’t clean his tray and try to take away the momentum from another great speech.
Doocy: Well, that’s what they’ve done in the past. It’s a formula that worked.
Earhardt: It’s just so anti-American. Where is the unity?

Anti-American? Suddenly it’s no longer sufficient to merely attribute the diabolical left’s motives to partisan politics or libtardiness. Now it’s anti-American to offer any criticism of the President. There’s a reason Fox and Friends is Trump’s favorite show. The one that he watches religiously and tweets live almost every morning. They are the most driven, sycophantic Trump-fluffers on television. Where else could he be defended by flunkies who will describe factual news stories as anti-American? And you’ll notice that at no time during this segment did any of the Fox crew dispute the substance of the report.

The plaintive cry for “unity” is also somewhat mind-boggling considering that it was these same Fox News cretins who sought to portray President Obama as a threat to America. When they weren’t questioning his birthright to even serve in the presidency, they were manufacturing “scandals” to get him thrown out of the White House and into prison. Which makes one want to ask “Where was the unity?”

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

Severely Delusional Fox News Guest Declares That Donald Trump Has Never Incited Violence

Posted by on January 28, 2018 at 2:56 pm. 3 Comments :

Last week the CNN offices in Atlanta received a barrage of threatening phone calls by a man who claimed he was on his way over to “gun down” everyone at what he called the “fake news” network. His language was straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook for intimidating the media that he despises so much. Any objective person would recognize that the deranged caller was inspired by what he heard Trump saying for the past two years.

Fox News Kurtz

That said, it might be unreasonable to expect to find many objective persons at Fox News. And Sunday Morning on MediaBuzz proved that point. The program hosted by Fox’s media correspondent, and right-wing tool, Howard Kurtz, raised the subject of the threats against CNN with his panel of analysts (video below). Among them was Emily Jashinsky of the ultra-rightist Washington Examiner. When asked whether she thought Trump bore any responsibility for the threats, Jashinsky said that…

“I don’t think there’s anything specific that you can point to that Donald Trump himself has said or done that is directly inciting violence.”

SRSLY? Has Jashinsky been held in captivity in underground Idaho bunkers by Apocalyptic cultists for the past couple of years? If not, her ignorance exposes a profound cognitive fracture. There are too many examples of Trump’s overtly hostile rhetoric to list here. But a few of the more heinous ones include:

  • Calling the media “the enemy of the American people.”
  • Praising neo-Nazis as “very fine people“ after a march where a counter-protester was murdered.
  • Posting a tweet of him body-slamming a CNN character in a video.
  • Posting a tweet of a train running over a CNN character in a video.
  • Speculating about whether he might kill reporters covering his campaign.
  • Asking his supporters at a rally to “knock the crap out of” protesters, and promising to pay their legal fees.
  • Yearning for the days when a protester would be “carried out in a stretcher,” and saying that he’d “like to punch him in the face.”
  • When speculating about the possibility of Hillary Clinton nominating Supreme Court justices, Trump was comforted by the the thought that “the Second Amendment people” could stop her.

What’s more, Trump regularly refers to the press as “sleazy,” “dishonest,” and “the most horrible people.” He portrays the media, individually and as an institution, as corrupt and committed to destroying his presidency and the country. It isn’t hard to imagine that an unstable Trump supporter (are there any other kind?) might take those verbal attacks to the next level and be convinced that he’s carrying out Trump’s wishes.

As for Kurtz, he is a dyed-in-the-wool Trump sycophant who is no less culpable for this violent rhetoric. During the campaign Kurtz was aghast at what he incorrectly thought was negative treatment of Trump by the press. Kurtz said it was “almost like the press put out a mob hit on Donald Trump.” See? Nothing remotely violent in that kind of language. And nothing that would spur a Trump-worshiping nutcase to take matters into his own hands and “make America great again.”

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

Republican Cult’s Devotion to Trump and Fox News Revealed in ‘Most Polarizing Brands’ Survey

Posted by on January 27, 2018 at 1:36 pm. 1 Comments :

The success that Fox News has had in fulling their conservative propaganda mission is indisputable. They have corralled a committed congregation of faithful adherents to the far-right messaging and Trump-fluffing that is their hallmark. With sycophantic proponents like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Donald Trump’s favorite Fox News program, Fox and Friends, the network is a non-stop peddler of GOP swill and Trump’s snake oil.

Donald Trump Messiah

A new survey sheds additional light on the totality of devotion that Republicans have for their right-wing idols and “news” sources. Morning Consult’s “Most Polarizing Brands in America” survey conducted over 300,000 interviews to determine which brands divide Democrats and Republicans the most:

“From award shows to soda commercials, politics is increasingly seeping into most facets of American culture. As a result, brands that were once dutifully neutral have taken bold stands, and others have been involuntarily dragged into controversy. Morning Consult used a wealth of consumer tracking data – 336,370 survey interviews in the last three months – to determine which brands are the most politically divisive.”

Seizing the top spot in the survey, as most divisive, is Trump Hotels. As a brand, the President’s core business bitterly divides the nation with Democrats being particularly averse to the elitist lodging. More surprising is that Republicans, while positive, were not very enthusiastically so. Perhaps there’s a faction within the GOP’s working class constituents who recognize that they aren’t welcome at places like Mar-A-Lago.

The remainder of the survey results affirm positions most observers already know. With regard to the media, the partisan lines were predictably drawn between conventional news outlets and the stridently biased Fox News variety. But what’s interesting is how narrowly focused Republicans are. Among the top twenty most divisive brands, the GOP held more favorable views of only five of them: Trump Hotels, Fox News, Fox Business Network, Chik-Fil-A, and Breitbart News. For everything else, whether news, entertainment, or sports, Republicans held a more negative view. Although in the extended list of thirty brands, Exxon/Mobil, Koch Industries, and Halliburton found favor with Republicans. They are an unambiguous confederacy of wingnuts.

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

That Republicans are so religiously bound to Fox News and other right wing media is a troubling development. It means that they care little about anything other than the conservative agenda which they cling to like a mantra. It is the definition of a cult wherein you are directed to believe only that which the cult has certified as true. Everything and everyone else is lying to you. Hence the carpet bombing of “fake news” allegations coming from Trump and his rightist comrades. It’s a closed-loop clan of prescribed beliefs from which any deviation is considered blasphemy.

Hannity Repeatedly Called for Mueller to Be Fired in June 2017 When Trump Tried to Fire Him (Video)

Posted by on January 26, 2018 at 11:01 am. 3 Comments :

Thursday night the New York Times released a disturbing story about Donald Trump’s ongoing malfeasance in office. The news that Trump ordered his White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller was another confirmation of the President’s attempt to obstruct justice and punish anyone he perceived to be a threat. The fact that the firing was only averted because McGahn refused to comply and threatened to quit doesn’t lessen the breach of law and ethics.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Not surprisingly, Fox News was contemporaneously backing Trump at the time without disclosing their collusion with the White House. Media Matters looked back and found video of the biggest Trump-fluffer on Fox News, Sean Hannity, advocating for the resignation, recusal, or termination of the special counsel.

Was it a coincidence that Hannity was speed-ranting about firing Mueller at exactly the same time that Trump was trying to do that? The tally per Media Matters was that Hannity pressed these attacks at least 111 times last June.

Trump was asked about the New York Times report while in Davos for the World Economic Forum. He casually sneered at the camera with his customary and tedious complaint that it’s “Fake news, folks. Fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories.” However Trump is ignoring that the story was confirmed by NBC, Politico, the Washington Post, CNN, and even Fox News. So is Fox now fake news to Trump as well? He didn’t say.

And don’t expect Fox News to bring it up. They barely covered the story when it broke on Thursday, or the following morning. And when they did cover it they dismissed it as the media being anti-Trump and using unreliable anonymous sources. However, the best presentation of Fox’s determination to defend Trump at all costs came with Hannity (of course), who was in the middle of his program when the news broke. At first Hannity predictably rejected the story as the media attacking his perfect president. But shortly thereafter Fox’s Ed Henry reported that his own source confirmed what the Times reported. Hannity’s reaction was priceless. He quickly went from “Fake news,” to “OK, it’s real news,” to “Oh look, a car crash.”

The fact that Hannity was so adamant about Mueller’s termination last June cannot be disregarded as an accident. Mueller had only been appointed in May, so there was hardly time for Hannity to get worked up about his investigation. There had to have been some incentive for him to go ballistic in so short a period of time. And since we know that Trump and Hannity talk often, it is likely that Trump encouraged Hannity to go after Mueller to justify him getting axed by Trump. In fact, Hannity’s smear campaign of Mueller last June is just further affirmation of the New York Times’ reporting that Trump was (and is) after Mueller’s scalp.

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

A Graphic Lesson in How Fox News Perverts Even Their Own Skewed Polls

Posted by on January 25, 2018 at 3:48 pm. 1 Comments :

The recent shutdown of the government was the subject of controversy in the media for a couple of weeks. Both sides were spinning furiously to place the blame on the other. It should have been a simple task to figure out who was most responsible for the leadership vacuum considering that Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. But when you’re dealing with a Republican Party that isn’t interested in the truth, and is led by a world-class liar, nothing is as easy as it seems.

Fox News Trump

Following the agreement to keep the government open for another three weeks, the press set about to determine where the American people stood. They conducted polls asking which party was most responsible for the shutdown. Fox News was among those media outlets conducting such surveys. And when they were ready to release the results, they made sure that their preferred political prejudices were front and center.

Rather than disclose the most relevant information, the crack Fox News creative department prepared a graphic that they immediately put on the air. The image contained partial results from the poll that put Republicans in an undeservedly positive light. Here is the tweet Fox News posted of the story that they broadcast:

Wow. So the American people think that Democrats were most responsible for the government shutdown? Not exactly. The survey question actually gave respondents another option. Donald Trump received thirteen percent of the poll’s votes. That means that the combined total for the GOP and Trump was thirty-seven percent, which exceeds that of the Democrats. Never mind that the built in biases of Fox’s poll likely undercounts the Trump votes. It was a deliberate tactic to divide the right-wing options and then only report one of them to insure that the number would be lower. Notice that they didn’t ask whether Democrats or Chuck Schumer were responsible, just the Democrats. And that’s after Republicans made a full court press to cast the blame on the so-called SchumerShutdown.

Remember, this is a Fox News poll that Fox News is distorting. It demonstrates the lengths they will go to in order to protect their lord and overseer, Donald Trump. For the record, every other poll decisively reports that Trump and Republicans were to blame for the shutdown (see this, and this, and this). There isn’t any real dispute on that question. So Fox News had only two options. They could report the news honestly (OK, stop laughing), or they could whip up a phony graphic that distorts the truth and makes their side look like winners. Guess which option they chose.

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