Media Bias

Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Faces Legal and Financial Turmoil Amid Disclosures of Russian Funding

Posted by on March 17, 2023 at 11:59 am. 1 Comments :

Truth Social, the website that Donald Trump launched after Twitter suspended him “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” has had a rocky existence from its inception. It’s first days were marked by technical failures and user frustration. And it was all downhill from there.

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This week it was revealed that Truth Social may have been the beneficiary of millions of dollars of investments from Russian sources who are connected to Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reports that…

“Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.” […]

“The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and DWAC, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.”

The report notes that the sources of the funding include the off-shore Paxum Bank, based in the Caribbean island nation, Dominica. It is notorious for “providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.” These revelations compound both the financial and legal ordeals of Truth Social. It is already being investigated for various alleged corrupt activities.

RELATED: LOCK HIM UP: Trump’s TRUTH Social Scam is Being Criminally Investigated By a Federal Grand Jury

What’s more, the shell company that Trump planned to use to get Truth Social’s parent corporation, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), on the stock market is itself being threatened with being delisted. Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) recently received a notice from NASDAQ warning them of the pending action. It’s stock price has declined nearly 90%.

In advance of that, Trump, hoping to avoid personal liability, removed himself and Don Jr from the board of TMTG. However, if the DWAC deal doesn’t go through, Trump won’t be able to pocket the billions of dollars that have been raised by his criminal cronies.

Trump’s interest in Truth Social has always been focused more on enriching himself and getting retribution for having been banished from Twitter. It was a scam that never had any credible prospects for success. That was evident in Trump’s hiring of former congressman Devin Nunes to run the venture. Nunes had no experience whatsoever in media or technology, and it shows. But he was and is a devoted Trump-fluffer.

Truth Social’s business model is based on advertising. However, it has utterly failed to build a viable stream of ad revenue. According to an exhaustive study by the New York Times, the platform has only been able to attract interest from “hucksters and fringe marketers.” “Ads from major brands are nonexistent on the site,” the Times found, and that instead “the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets.”

SEE THIS: Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch

As an example of the bogus product pitches on Truth Social is an ad for a blatantly racist, and thoroughly worthless, Trump keepsake: A Trump-branded White Privilege Card:

UPDATE: In the midst of all this turmoil, DWAC has just fired their CEO, Patrick Orlando.

And that about sums up the decrepit state of affairs at Truth Social. For more on what is perhaps the biggest flop on Trump’s long resume of failures, see these related stories…

UPDATE: DWAC and the SEC have reportedly reached an agreement regarding the company’s merger deal with TMTG. According to CNN, “If it’s approved, the SEC will enter a cease-and-desist order with the company, finding DWAC violated ‘antifraud provisions’ connected to initial public offering filings. [and] If DWAC amends its IPO filings, it will have to pay the SEC an $18 million civil penalty after the closing of any merger deal.”

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IT’S A CULT: Most Fox News Viewers Are Still Loyal After Dominion Lawsuit Discloses Their Lies

Posted by on March 16, 2023 at 1:06 pm. 9 Comments :

Fallout from the billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting systems continues to rain down on Fox with some notable consequences. In recent weeks Dominion has filed motions in court that have revealed the brazen dishonesty of Fox executives and hosts in their own words.

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Fox News Lies

Dominion was able to acquire internal communications from Fox News that show how they have been outright lying to their audience in support of Donald Trump and his phony election fraud lies, while privately acknowledging that they knew that there was no truth whatsoever to his baseless allegations. And their lying was deliberately intended to stay in Trump’s good graces, despite the fallaciousness.

RELATED: In Dominion v Fox News, Network Cries ‘We Can’t Make People Think We’ve Turned Against Trump’

The purposefully deceitful remarks that Fox personnel made privately included…

  • Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch: Really crazy stuff.
  • Tucker Carlson: What [Trump is] good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.
  • More Tucker Carlson: I hate [Trump] passionately [and he is] a demonic force.
  • Rupert Murdoch to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: We don’t want to antagonize Trump further.
  • Suzanne Scott: You can’t give the crazies an inch right now […] The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us.
  • Laura Ingraham: Sidney [Powell] is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy {Giuliani].
  • Sean Hannity: That whole narrative that [Sidney] Powell was pushing, I did not believe it for one second, [and that] she’s a f*cking lunatic.

Now a new poll has measured the impact that these revelations have had on Fox News viewers. and the results are disturbing, to say the least. Here are some of the surveys highlights…

  • While 21% of viewers say that they now trust Fox News less, 45% say that they continue to trust the network.
  • 13% say they no longer believe the 2020 election was stolen, but 50% still believe Trump’s “Big Lie.”
  • 16% say they have a less favorable opinion of Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, but 52% still have favorable opinions.

It’s somewhat encouraging that some of Fox’s audience have embraced reality and backed away from their prior blind acceptance of everything Fox says. However, most of their viewers remain firmly attached to the Fox doctrine even after learning that they have been lying to them. That’s the behavior of a cult.

Some good news in the poll includes that Fox News viewers have about the same awareness (60%) of the Dominion lawsuit as the general public (56%). And yet they still largely trust the network. However, they must be exposing themselves to other media, because Fox News has a near total blackout on the subject.

RELATED: FOX News FINALLY Reports on the Dominion Lawsuit and is Predictably Dishonest and Biased

Not surprisingly, there is a significantly greater awareness of the lawsuit among viewers of MSNBC (82%) and CNN (71%), where reporting on it has not been suppressed. Also notable is that 10% Fox News viewers who were aware of the lawsuit say that they now watch it less. But 75% say their viewing has not changed. Inexplicably, 16% say they watch Fox News more after finding out that they are dupes being mislead by propagandists.

That’s some pretty powerful cult programming right there. They actually prefer being lied to, and they reward their deceivers. Those poor souls must now be regarded as lost and irretrievable. It’s a good thing that there aren’t very many of them (16% of Fox’s highest rated program = about 500,000, which is about 0.15% of the U.S. population).

UPDATE I: Another new poll found that “Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) think Fox News should be held accountable after … spread[ing] false information about the 2020 presidential election.” That includes 41% of Republicans. Although 47% of the GOP cult do not think Fox should be held accountable.

UPDATE II: In a March 31 ruling on summary judgement, the judge found that “The evidence is ‘CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements [made on Fox News] relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.'”

UPDATE III: The judge in the Dominion case has sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence. He also made several other rulings that hamper Fox’s ability to deflect from the issue of defamation.

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FOX News FINALLY Reports on the Dominion Lawsuit and is Predictably Dishonest and Biased

Posted by on March 14, 2023 at 11:44 am. 2 Comments :

The biggest media story of the year – or even the century – is the billion dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting systems against Fox News. Recent disclosures in court filings have unmasked just how brazenly Fox News has deceived their viewers by repeatedly lying on air about matters for which they privately held diametrically opposing views.

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Fox News, Howard Kurtz

For weeks following the Dominion filings, Fox News refused to even bring up the subject of the lawsuit. Then their chief media correspondent, Howard Kurtz, addressed it briefly on his Sunday program, MediaBuzz. However, his only comments were to tell his audience that he was not going to be reporting on the lawsuit because he had been forbidden to by Fox editors and executives.

MORE HERE: BANNED ON FOX NEWS: The Network Prohibits Any Reporting on the $1.6 Billion Dominion Lawsuit

Apparently that censorious edict has been revoked and Kurtz was given some sort of conditional permission to cover the story. So he did so in the most Fox-ish manner possible. Which means that he was overtly dishonest in his starkly biased presentation that looked like it was written by the Fox News PR department. What follows are some of the lowlights of Kurtz’s whitewashing coverage (video below).

Kurtz began by defending the indefensible saying that “there is a crucial First Amendment argument here involving the coverage of unsubstantiated claims of 2020 election fraud by Donald Trump and his allies.” That’s patently false. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Dominion is not Congress. Furthermore, Dominion is not seeking to censor Fox News. They are suing for damages due to Fox’s purposeful and repeated defamation, which is not protected by the First Amendment.

Kurtz then quotes from a Fox News statement saying that “Dominion has been caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press.” Nothing in that statement is true. Dominion was not “caught red-handed,” and Kurtz doesn’t bother to substantiate any of its charges of “distortions and misinformation.” Yet somehow, Kurtz asserts that his framing of the “facts” will be fair to both sides…

“Now I’m going to give you both sides, but let me say this: Fox’s critics and competitors are denouncing the network, and many of them are rooting not just for Fox to lose the suit, but to be wiped out as a company because they can’t stand the mostly conservative view of a relative handful of opinion hosts”

Notice that Kurtz immediately contradicts his own assertion to give both sides. The criticism of competitors is completely irrelevant to the misconduct that Fox has been engaging in. If Fox News were a legitimate news enterprise, they would tell the truth regardless of what their competitors are saying. And the claim that only “a relative handful of opinion hosts” are disgorging conservative views is pure fiction. Fox’s alleged “journalists” (i.e. Brett Baier) were shown to be just as dishonest as Sean Hannity in the Dominion filings. Even so, Fox’s opinion hosts are the highest rated personalities on the network, so their lies carry more weight than unknown field reporters.

Kurtz went on to soft-pedal Fox’s deceit saying that “The heart of dominion’s suit is a gap” between what hosts said on the air and what they said privately among each other. Referring to Fox’s outright lying as merely a “gap” is like referring to the Grand Canyon as a pothole. Kurtz is deliberately underplaying the severity of Fox’s corruption. And he spent the remainder of his remarks spewing defenses for it. For instance, Kurtz said that…

“There was, to be sure, straight reporting by the news division, which also caused some friction, but the fact that some people in the chain of command privately dismissed the fraud claims as nuts or outlandish or insane doesn’t necessarily mean Fox couldn’t cover and comment on the extremely newsworthy spectacle of a president saying an election was stolen.”

Actually, no reputable media organization would allow a reporter to cover a story they were caught lying about. What’s more, the problem wasn’t that Fox was “covering” what Donald Trump and others said about election fraud. The problem was that the Fox News hosts were endorsing the fraud allegations themselves. That isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda.

In conclusion, Kurtz – still claiming to be fair to both sides – closed with a comment by Fox’s CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, who said that…

“The network has an obligation to report the news fairly. I think a lot of the noise you hear about this case is actually not about the law, and is not about journalism, and is really about the politics.”

Really? For Murdoch to brag about Fox’s “obligation to report the news fairly” after what the Dominion lawsuit has revealed is preposterous. That has never been the mission of Fox News, and the recent disclosures of their internal communications proves that it isn’t now. Not when you have their hosts knowingly deceiving viewers and spreading flagrant falsehoods that undermine democracy and foment violence.

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REALLY? Tucker Carlson Claims the NSA Scared Him Off From Interviewing His Hero, Vladimir Putin

Posted by on March 12, 2023 at 12:15 pm. 1 Comments :

It really seems like a day can’t go by by without Fox News Senior Propaganda Dispenser, Tucker Carlson, making ever more ludicrous claims that serve only to exalt himself or the foremost objects of his affection, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It must be exhausting having to come up with such asininity day after day.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson

This week Carlson had an especially strong incentive to spread his BS. He desperately needed to deflect from a couple of recent stories that cast a spotlight on his utter lack of principles.

First there was the public disclosure – via the billion dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News – of his internal communications with his colleagues following the January 6th insurrection. Those communications exposed him and his fellow Foxies lying to their viewers, advancing baseless assertions of election fraud, while privately conceding that there was none. Even worse, he revealed his true feelings about Trump, saying that “I hate him passionately,” and “can’t wait…to [be] able to ignore” him. [Update: Trump finally posted a weak response to Carlson hating him, saying that “He doesn’t hate me, or at least, not anymore!”]

SEE THIS: In Dominion v Fox News, Network Cries ‘We Can’t Make People Think We’ve Turned Against Trump’

Secondly, Carlson made a pitifully unsuccessful attempt to portray the January 6th insurrection as nothing more than peaceful tourists on a sightseeing tour. He presented what he regarded as video evidence (acquired exclusively from House Squeaker, Keven McCarthy) that assertions of a violent insurrection were false because part of the time there were people observed just wandering around. Never mind that they were already criminals for having broken through police barriers, doors, and windows, in order to trespass and try to block Congress from certifying the election.

SEE THIS: Tucker Carlson Spins January 6th Insurrection Videos to Spread Blatant Lies, Trump Praises Him

With those humiliations haunting him, Carlson appeared on the ultra-rightist Fullsend podcast in order to rescue his floundering reputation (video below). In the course of that appearance, Carlson spun a preposterous story of intrigue involving his attempt to interview Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin that was allegedly scotched by the National Security Agency (NSA). He began by stating that he was “hiding my plan to go interview Putin, because it’s an interview.” Then, when asked how he knew that the NSA had interfered, he said that it was “Because they admitted it. I got a call from somebody in Washington – who would know. Just trust me”

Carlson then recounted a tale of a mysterious figure who asked him about his planned trip to Russia and appeared to know all the details. This shocked Carlson because he said that he hadn’t told anybody, including his wife. His source told him that the NSA had “pulled his texts.” Whereupon, Carlson said that “I was immediately intimidated,” and he called off the interview, which he said he was “embarrassed to admit.”

If any of this is true – a highly specious assumption – it is no wonder that he’s embarrassed. The whole story is profoundly stupid. First of all, Carlson says his reason for hiding his plan to interview Putin was because “it’s an interview.” Which isn’t actually a reason. Then Carlson introduces his source as “somebody in Washington – who would know,” and asks us to trust him on that. This, coming from a known liar who was just revealed to have been lying to his audience for years about 2020 election fraud, and his “passionate” hatred for Trump, who he’s been fawning over every night on his program.

Furthermore, why would Carlson be so astonished that the NSA was monitoring the communications of a Putin associate in Russia? That’s their job. It would be worrisome if they didn’t know about Carlson’s prospective interview.

Finally, why on Earth would he cancel the interview just because the NSA knew about it? Did he think that he could travel to Russia and meet with Putin without American intelligence being aware of it? Any legitimate reporter, who had nothing to hide, would still conduct their interview and proudly air it as a journalistic coup.

Carlson, however, may have had much to hide, considering his long adulation for, and support of, Putin. He has taken Putin’s side on the war in Ukraine. He has heralded Putin as a strong, Christian leader. He has argued that Russia should be treated as an ally. He has positioned himself as staunchly pro-Putin and anti-American.

Consequently, any meeting that he has with Putin should be regarded as suspicious and potentially harmful to U.S. interests. He is no more trustworthy in that respect than Putin’s fanboy, Donald Trump.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson of Fox News Rattles Off His Ridiculous Reasons for Why You Shouldn’t Hate Putin

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Does the White House Consider Fox News a News Organization? Let’s Ask the WH Press Secretary

Posted by on March 11, 2023 at 12:42 pm. 3 Comments :

The question as to the legitimacy of Fox News is not one that has been difficult to answer. It was designed from the start to be a right-wing propaganda dispenser by its founders, Rupert Murdoch (an ultra-conservative newspaper baron), and Roger Ailes (a Republican media consultant). That’s not exactly a roster of reputable journalists.

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Fox News, Peter Doocy, Karine Jean-Pierre

Twenty-seven years later, Fox News has exceeded the aspirations of its politically prejudiced founders. In recent weeks the network has been exposed as being brazenly dishonest. Internal communications made public by Dominion Voting Systems in their defamation lawsuit against Fox reveal that its executives and hosts were telling their viewers one thing, while saying the opposite to one another in private.

RELATED: Hannity Admits in Fox News Lawsuit that ‘I Did Not Believe [Trump’s Big Lie] for One Second’

Those depositions affirm that Fox News knew very well that there was no truth to their “reporting” of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. While they were lying to their viewers on the air, they were discussing privately among themselves about the “crazy” and “idiotic” assertions that Donald Trump had actually won. They even openly disparaged Trump as dangerous confessed their personal hatred for him.

The subject of the Dominion vs Fox News lawsuit came up Friday on MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight.” Wagner prefaced a question addressing the matter during an interview with White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, by noting that “The White House has been fairly outspoken about what’s happening in certain Republican circles – specifically, what’s going on over at Fox News.” Which led to the following exchange…

Wagner: Does the White House consider Fox News a news organization?

Jean-Pierre: I’ll say this. When you look at the depositions that have been out there recently, it even states from FOX leadership that they do not see Tucker Carlson’s show as news or even truthful. That is coming from the FOX News leadership. That is not coming from me. That is coming from them.

I also would quote – I’ll paraphrase here – what the Chief of Capitol Police said. He said essentially when you watch Tucker Carlson as it relates to January 6th, it is misleading, and it is misinformation as with the conclusion of what happened on January 6th, the attacks that happened. As you saw from the President’s statement, nearly 140 officers were injured on that day. It was an attack on our democracy. It was an attack on our constitution. And you cannot whitewash that. Tucker Carlson cannot whitewash that.

Wagner: So, I’m gonna say that sort of sounds like the White House doesn’t think Fox is a news organization, but we gotta leave it there.

Jean-Pierre correctly noted that Fox News itself has defended its hosts (successfully) in defamation lawsuits by arguing that “no reasonable person” would take what they say seriously. Fox News lawyers singled out Tucker Carlson saying that…

“[Carlson] cannot be understood to have been stating facts, but instead that he was delivering an opinion using hyperbole for effect. [and that] given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.”

In other words, Carlson is a known liar whose commentaries can be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of a dishonest blowhard. And the evidence from the Dominion case drives that point home. The problem with this legal argument, however, is that Fox’s viewers are not remotely reasonable. Consequently, there is real and measurable harm done to millions of feeble-minded cultists.

While Jean-Pierre didn’t give a definitive yes or no answer, the gist of her response was plainly evident. Wagner got the message and rephrased it as an affirmative. Jean-Pierre smiled knowingly, and didn’t challenge Wagner’s interpretation. What’s more, the fact that Fox News is not a news organization was an opinion that the Biden administration held from the first days of its term. And they said so explicitly…

“Biden’s aides also promised not to allow outlets to use the briefings to spread baseless conspiracies. ‘We expect reporters covering the White House to operate in good faith and tell their audience the truth, and this White House will do the same. We are moving forward with that mutual understanding,’ […] ‘Organizations or individuals who traffic in conspiracy theories, propaganda and lies to spread disinformation will not be tolerated.”

If the Biden press team, as well as the White House Correspondent’s Association, were to adhere to those principles, they would be required to ban Fox News from all White House media events, including the daily briefings. And the revelations from the Dominion case provide the strongest argument yet to impose that ban.

A pseudo-news operation like Fox should not be credentialed so that it can masquerade as legitimate journalism. At the very least, they should be required to acknowledge their lies, apologize to their audience, their peers, and the nation, and take reparative action (i.e. fire Fox CEO Suzanne Scott, as well as hosts Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other offenders) before their credentials are restored. Short of that they should be shunned and banished to the pod swamps with the likes of Alex Jones and Steve Bannon.

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Hannity Brazenly Lies that Trump Supports Early/Mail-In Voting, Followed By Video Proof He Lied

Posted by on March 9, 2023 at 2:24 pm. NO Comments :

Fox News has itself been in the news lately due to the disclosures revealed in the billion dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. While Fox News has banned any reporting on their epic scandal, those disclosures have roiled the media ecosphere in extraordinary ways.

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Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Apparently it wasn’t bad enough that most of the Fox’s executives and hosts were caught lying to their viewers about the 2020 presidential election being “rigged and stolen,” and about their hatred and fear of Donald Trump. Internal communications revealed that everyone from Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, to propaganda spewing Tucker Carlson, considered Trump and his media mouthpieces to be “insane” and “dangerous.”

SEE THIS: In Dominion v Fox News, Network Cries ‘We Can’t Make People Think We’ve Turned Against Trump’

Among the Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers at Fox News is Sean Hannity. Despite his on-air infatuation with all things Trump, Hannity told his colleagues privately that he “Did not believe [Trump’s election fraud ‘Big Lie’] for one second.” And that dichotomy between Hannity’s TV persona and his true feelings persists to this day. In a segment of his program on Wednesday night (video below), Hannity said that…

“According to former president Donald Trump. the best way now to counter these efforts – and Republicans, you better pay attention, you better adapt, and you better adjust. You better get over your reluctance and resistance to voting by mail and voting early. And you better meet, and probably defeat, Democratic efforts at legal ballot harvesting based on state law. These efforts, by the way, are the only way you’ll get in the game, or otherwise you start election day down 500,000 votes. That’s hard to make up on election day.”

Anyone who has been following Trump and his acute election obsession knows that he is adamantly opposed to early and mail-in voting. He has been unambiguous about his hostility toward these democracy-enhancing measures. He regards them as inherently corrupt and subject to rampant fraud, as he raged explicitly in a furious tweet…

Nevertheless, Hannity falsely claimed that Trump supports voting by mail and voting early. And he played a video that Trump posted on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, as proof. The only problem with it was that it only tangentially addressed voting by mail and voting early…

“Many states have banned ballot harvesting to keep our elections honest and fair. But in the states where ballot harvesting is still legal, we have no choice but to beat the Democrats at their own game. It’s very simple. Either we start ballot harvesting or you can say goodbye to our country. You can just wave goodbye, because Democrats would win every single election.”

Trump is (sort of) right. The more people who vote, the more likely that Democrats will win. However, in this context, Trump was talking only about ballot harvesting, a practice that he has also opposed in the past, but now appears to embrace, despite his conviction that it is dishonest and unfair. It’s likely that he was persuaded to adopt this position after the trouncing that he and Republicans suffered in 2020 and 2022. However, he never mentioned any other form of early voting or voting by mail. That was all Hannity putting words in his mouth.

For the record, ballot harvesting is only permitted by law in thirty-six states. And about half of them restrict who can harvest ballots (i.e. family members) and/or strictly limit the quantity that can be collected. So while it could make a difference in some close races in swing states, the other methods of early voting are likely to be far more impactful. And although Hannity is desperate to get Republicans to embrace it, Trump is still not doing so. But that didn’t stop Hannity from saying he does. Because, as recent news has affirmed, lying is what Fox News does.

RELATED: GOOD NEWS: Trump Warns That With Mail-In Voting There Will Be No More Republicans

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Fox News Fabulist Tucker Carlson Launches a Laughably Lame Defense of His January 6th Lies

Posted by on March 8, 2023 at 1:33 pm. 3 Comments :

On Tuesday night Tucker Carlson took to his Fox News balcony and delivered the second chapter of his January 6th insurrection inquisition. It was the sort of typically tedious televised tantrum that Tucker excels in. It provided no new information, nor any advancement of the ludicrous premises he has been so impotently implying.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson, QAnon

The sequel to Monday’s Capitol riot mythmaking practically ignored Carlson’s entire theme that there was no insurrection at all, just a bunch of patriotic “sightseers” paying a friendly visit to the Capitol that they “revered.” On Monday Carlson portrayed the rioters as peaceful tourists who “were orderly and meek,” despite the abundant video proof that they were violent and destructive.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson Spins January 6th Insurrection Videos to Spread Blatant Lies, Trump Praises Him

Tuesday night, however, was a different matter. Carlson’s first installment of his Grim Fairy Tales resulted in a barrage of well warranted criticism and ridicule. But much to his dismay, it wasn’t all coming from Democrats. While few in number, there were some notable Republicans who took offense to Carlson’s embrace of the seditious StormTrumpers who assaulted Congress. Take the following GOP senators for instance…

  • Kevin Cramer: To somehow put that in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie.
  • Thom Tillis: I think it’s bullshit.
  • Mike Rounds: I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today.
  • Chuck Grassley: The point is, what happened that day shouldn’t have happened.
    John Thune: I think it was an attack on the Capitol.
  • Mitt Romney: Any attempt to normalize what was a violent attack on the United States Capitol only makes it more intriguing for people to do such a thing in the future.

Even the Republican minority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, weighed in saying that…

“The Chief of the Capitol Police correctly describes, in my view, what most of us witnessed first hand on January 6th… It was a mistake, in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol says.”

Needless to say, Carlson’s humungous, yet fragile, ego was wounded, and he wasn’t going to take this disrespect laying down. So his Tuesday tantrum devoted a significant chunk of his program to whining and lashing out at his tormentors. Sadly, he was apparently too distressed to think straight (if he ever could). Consequently, after his reality-defying insistence that there was no violence on January 6th, Carlson wound up conceding that there was indeed a “massive disturbance” on Capitol Hill that “the Capitol Police were not prepared for.” And after having so carefully crafted his propaganda with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

RELATED: House Squeaker Kevin McCarthy Hands Over 41,000 Hours of January 6th Video to – Tucker Carlson?

Carlson also sputtered out some additional displays of derangement. Such as his assertion that “If there was a security failure on January 6, and demonstrably there was, it was probably Nancy Pelosi’s fault.” Which is another admission that there was a violent clash, but the thugs who conducted it weren’t to blame.

Carlson also complained that “The people who fell down on the job, who didn’t do their job, they were not punished. They were rewarded.” He doesn’t identify any of these alleged failures who were rewarded, but only because they don’t exist. And he is notably ignorant of the fact that three top security officials did lose their jobs. He’s probably just upset that some of the front line officers who risked their lives to protect Congress and its members were recognized as heroes.

Carlson also murdered irony by proclaiming that “In free countries, governments do not lie about protests as a pretext to gain more power for themselves. They don’t selectively edit videos for propaganda services and then lie about them and fake hearings and show trials.” No, that’s Carlson’s job, damn it!

RELATED: HUH? Senior Fox News Misinformer, Tucker Carlson, Declares that ‘Misinformation Can Be True’

Carlson’s harangue continued with a direct slap at the Republican senators who dared to find fault in his fiction. He began by chastising McConnell for agreeing with Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, that Carlson’s lies were shameful and dangerous. Just the act of agreement was an atrocity. According to Carlson, any persons who “share the same outrage” are presumed to be colluding in some sort of nefarious cabal. What Carlson bragged that he learned from this was that all of his persecutors are “on the same side.” And it isn’t because they simply see the facts. It must be a conspiracy.

“The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader – Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney. They’re all on the same side. So, it’s actually not about left and right. It’s not about Republican and Democrat. Here you have people with shared interests, the open borders people, the people like Mitch McConnell, who are living in splendor on Chinese money, the people who underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else, and that would include almost all news organizations in this country as well. So, if you’re watching, this might be kind of interesting to keep a list.”

See? They are all against him. It won’t be long until Carlson is declaring that it’s all a witch hunt. And it appears to be because he won’t take Chinese money to open the borders. It surely couldn’t be because Carlson is acutely paranoid and devoted to dishonesty in pursuit of his own infallibility, could it?

SEE ALSO: GOOD LUCK: Democratic Leaders Call On Rupert Murdoch to Stop Fox News From Spreading Lies

Not to be left out, Donald Trump, who has lately been castigating Fox News for being insufficiently worshipful of him (and who Carlson told his colleagues privately that he “hates passionately“), has apparently been watching this week. And he likes what he sees. In a post on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump praised Carlson for doing a “great job,” and attacked the bipartisan House Select Committee that investigated the January 6th insurrection that he incited, as “thugs [who] should be tried for Fraud and Treason.” Once again, every accusation by Trump is a confession.

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Tucker Carlson Spins January 6th Insurrection Videos to Spread Blatant Lies, Trump Praises Him

Posted by on March 7, 2023 at 11:42 am. 2 Comments :

In February House Squeaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he would give 41,000 hours of raw video of the January 6th insurrection to the malicious liar and shameless sham artist, Tucker Carlson of Fox News. It was a brazen act of partisanship intended to allow Carlson and Fox News to craft a flagrantly false narrative of the treasonous assault on the seat of American democracy.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Q Shaman

On Monday night’s episode of his primetime propaganda hour, Carlson didn’t disappoint McCarthy and reality-challenged Republicans when he aired his first program featuring the cherry-picked video clips. Carlson has made it his mission to spread flagrant lies about the January 6th insurrection. He’s celebrated the rioters as “patriots.” He’s maligned the FBI, without evidence, as the perpetrators of the violence. He even produced a lie-riddled crocumentary about the insurrection. And this is the person McCarthy chose to curate the thousands of hours of video to force feed their BS propaganda to the American people?

RELATED: Breaking Down the Crocumentary By Tucker Carlson that Glorifies ‘False Flag’ Insurrection

Given his predisposed positions on the subject, it isn’t surprising that Carlson concluded that the Capitol riots incited by Donald Trump were innocent excursions by peaceful tourists. “They were orderly and meek,” Carlson lied. “These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.” But Carlson is not only lying, he’s contradicting himself. He’s illogically asserting that a mob of protesters who “were angry. [because] they believed that the election” was “stolen” were merely sightseeing. They can’t be both sightseers and an angry mob. Yet that’s precisely how Carlson presented them…

“On January 6th two years ago thousands of protesters walked from a Trump rally on the ellipse outside the White House to the U.S. Capitol where the certification of the presidential election was underway. The protesters were angry. they believed that the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted. They were right. In retrospect, the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy given the facts that have since emerged about that election. No honest person can deny it.”

Carlson has the advantage of not having to comply with any standard of honest personage. After all, his own Fox News lawyers defended him (successfully) in a defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” would take him seriously.

For the record, more than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes ranging from trespassing to seditious conspiracy. And nearly 500 of them have pleaded guilty, including the notorious “QAnon Shaman” who Carlson went out of his way to defend. What’s more, many of those who confessed fingered Trump as their leader and inspiration.

In addition to his blatantly dishonest mangling of the facts, Carlson also took the opportunity to assist Dominion Voting Systems in their lawsuit against Fox News by reiterating the lie that the 2020 election was rigged. He refers to “facts that have since emerged about that election,” but, like Trump and everyone else, was unable to cite any of those alleged facts.

Carlson’s characterization of the insurrectionists as “orderly and meek” was proven false by some of the video that he aired. Never mind his absurd assertion that “the video does not support the claim that January 6th was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.” In actual fact, the StormTrumpers can be seen breaking into the Capitol and violently assaulting police officers, more than 140 of whom were injured.

Carlson attempts to support his claims by carefully selecting video where there was nothing untoward occurring. But that’s a ridiculous argument. There is plenty of video of President Kennedy riding in a car in Dallas where he is smiling and waving to the crowd. So, by Carlson’s logic, he was never assassinated.

Of course, the expected response by insurrection inciter, Donald Trump, was posted to his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, shortly after Carlson’s program aired. And it was just as psychotic as you might imagine…

“Congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history. The New Surveillance Footage of the January 6th Events sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened. The Unselect Committee was a giant SCAM, and has now unequivocally been stamped as CRIMINAL FABRICATORS OF THIS MOST IMPORTANT DAY. Pelosi & McConnell failed on security. The Police story is sad and difficult to watch. ‘Trump’ and most others are totally innocent, LET THEM GO FREE, NOW!”

Literally everything in that rant was false. It was not a “scoop.” Carlson is not a “reporter.” There was no credible new “light” shed. The House Select Committee that investigated the insurrection was neither a “SCAM,” nor criminally “stamped.” Yet Trump still persists in repeating his intention to free the perpetrators if he – gawd forbid – returns to the White House.

RELATED: Trump Promises to Halt the Prosecutions of the January 6th Mob He Incited to Attack Congress

After slobbering all over Carlson, Trump turned his drool to McCarthy. about whom he said that “Great courage shown […] in releasing the surveillance footage to Tucker Carlson.” He elaborated saying that ” A whole new, and completely opposite, picture has now been indelibly painted.” Which was, of course, the whole purpose of McCarthy’s gift to Carlson. He wanted to give Carlson a head start on creating a fake narrative – and also to restore Trump’s love for him as he embarks on his role as House Speaker.

McCarthy providing these videos to a devoted, Putin-loving, propagandist like Carlson was an act of naked partisanship and, worse, a betrayal of democratic principles. And Carlson’s predictable treatment of the information he received affirms his rank dishonesty, and that of the network that employs him.

RELATED: GOOD LUCK: Democratic Leaders Call On Rupert Murdoch to Stop Fox News From Spreading Lies

UPDATE: Trump had another outburst over Carlson’s garbage report. And he truly went off the rails saying “LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB. THANK YOU TO TUCKER CARLSON AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY FOR WHAT YOU BOTH HAVE DONE. NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE!!!” Meanwhile Carlson’s Fox News colleagues are completely ignoring his alleged “BOMBSHELL” report.

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Fox News Attacks Biden for Joining the March to Honor the 58th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

Posted by on March 6, 2023 at 3:49 pm. 2 Comments :

It must getting awfully difficult for Fox News to manufacture new outrages involving President Biden. Day after day of inventing pseudo-scandals where there isn’t a hint of misconduct or controversary is clearly over-taxing the feeble minded propagandists at Fox News.

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Fox News, Joe Biden, Fake News

Following a weekend that featured Donald Trump speaking before the Conference of Political Ass Clowns (CPAC) also posed a challenge for Fox News in trying to surpass the Olympic-grade gormlessness of Trump and his flunkies, including Don Jr, Kari Lake, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell. And they couldn’t possibly come up with anything more asinine than Trump’s own preposterous proposal to award Pulitzer prizes to Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and other Fox hacks.

RELATED: Trump Pitches Perverse Proposal to Give Pulitzer Prizes to the Loud Boys (Only) of Fox News

Consequently, the stable geniuses at Fox came up with a story line that smacks of racism and disrespect for the troubled history of civil rights in America. Pretending to cover a march in Selma, Alabama commemorating the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Fox published a story on their website titled, “Biden urged to ‘choose more worthy allies’ after marching with Sharpton in Selma.”

The article ignored entirely the importance of the event being observed, focusing instead on some pitifully weak criticisms that rested on irrelevant assertions of guilt by association. It began…

“President Biden is being urged to “choose more worthy allies” after marching with the Rev. Al Sharpton in Selma Alabama on Sunday. Biden marked the 58th anniversary of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday,” where activists chanted for voting rights as they crossed the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.” […]

“Biden shared the stage in Selma with Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. William Barber II, Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala, and Martin Luther King III.”

The remainder of the article found some tenuous fault with Biden for “choosing” to participate in a memorial march with Revs. Sharpton and Jackson, who Fox asserted were anti-Semitic based on remarks made forty years ago.

The first problem with Fox’s framing is that they could not find any evidence of antisemitism by either of the Reverends in this century. And those that occurred decades ago were disavowed and apologized for. The second problem with Fox’s contrivance was that Biden didn’t choose the participants in this event. And surely icons of the civil rights movement like Sharpton and Jackson would be expected to participate.

What Biden was responsible for were his remarks at the event. He gave a stirring speech that promoted the advancement of civil rights and voting rights (full text here, and video below). These were topics that Fox News studiously neglected. Biden said in part…

“I come here in commemoration — not for show — Selma is a reckoning. The right to vote — the right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything is possible. Without it — without that right, nothing is possible. And this fundamental right remains under assault. The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years. Since the 2020 election, a wave of states and dozens — dozens of anti-voting laws fueled by the Big Lie, and the election deniers now elected to office.” […]

“In January, I signed the Electoral Count Reform Act to protect the will of the people and the people transferring the — and the peaceful transfer of power. But we know that we must get the votes in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. I’ve made it clear I will not let a filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote and the right of any other right that flow from there.”

It wasn’t just Fox News who failed to honor this anniversary. After all, they literally regard equity as evil. However, the leaders of the Republican Party that Fox speaks for were also noticeably absent. That’s because they have no interest in showing respect for this part of the nation’s history. In fact, they even regard the teaching of it – i.e. Critical Race Theory – as an affront to their perverse notion of patriotism, even though they admit that they don’t know it means. And not surprisingly, this racially offensive fish stinks from the head…

RELATED: Trump on ‘The Blacks’: His Critical Race Theory Op-Ed Advocates Compulsory Ignorance

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Trump Pitches Perverse Proposal to Give Pulitzer Prizes to the Loud Boys (Only) of Fox News

Posted by on March 5, 2023 at 10:23 am. 4 Comments :

Donald Trump’s speech at the “Conference for the Party of Ass Clowns” (CPAC) on Saturday was everything that a glassy-eyed Trump cult follower could have wanted. He touched on all of his greatest fits from his “Big Lie” that the 2024 election was “stollen” (his spelling) from him, to the unfinished vanity wall on the southern border, to the wind turbine bird holocaust.

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Donald Trump Fox News

Along with his standard lies, self-exaltation, and infantile insults, Trump reiterated his nightmarish narrative of a dystopian future marked by world war, rampant crime and drug addiction, communist oppression, and invasions by “thugs, Marxist radicals, and dangerous refugees,” from “shithole” countries. It was reminiscent of his brutally bleak 2016 “American Carnage” inaugural address, and his more recent apocalyptic announcement for the 2024 GOP nomination for president. It was everything that Trump promised it would be in his preview prior to Saturday…

SEE THIS: Trump Teases His Uplifting CPAC Speech Celebrating ‘The Fact That Our Country is Going to HELL’

Among the most malodorous moments of his malevolent monologue was the part where he whined about the Pulitzer prizes awarded to the Washington Post and the New York Times for their accurate reporting on his unsavory associations with Russia. Trump raged that…

“We’re trying to get the Pulitzer Prize taken away. They got Pulitzer prizes. We’re suing. You know what the prize says? ‘For its concise and accurate reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia event…’ And they have it actually totally wrong.

“Actually, Mark Levin should get a prize. And Gregg Jarrett should get a prize. And even it’s not his deal, Sean Hannity should get a prize. And frankly Jesse should get a prize. And you know who should get a prize? Tucker should get a prize.”

Trump has been yammering about this for almost a year. However, in December he did indeed file an utterly impotent and frivolous lawsuit against the Pulitzer board demanding that they revoke the awards they gave to WaPo and the Times. The Board responded with a statement that said essentially, “No friggin’ way!” They noted that they had conducted an independent review after receiving Trump’s complaint and that the review found that “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

RELATED: Trump Sues the Pulitzer Prize Board for Honoring Accurate Stories of His Russian Collusion

As if Trump’s comical commandment for revocation of the awards wasn’t sufficiently humiliating, his nominees for who should get the awards instead included Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, and Gregg Jarrett. Never mind that these hacks were just exposed as flagrant liars and promulgators of pure propaganda. Their rancid partisanship, ethical vacancy, and rank dishonesty was revealed in their own words in documents produced in the billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems.

SEE THIS: In Dominion v Fox News, Network Cries ‘We Can’t Make People Think We’ve Turned Against Trump’

Also notable in Trump’s praise of his Fox News fluffers was that it included only the alleged men on the network. Apparently Trump doesn’t think that Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo, or Jeanine Pirro, are deserving of Pulitzer prizes, despite their equally sycophantic subservience to Trump. That’s not especially noteworthy considering his long history of misogyny and abusive treatment of women.

Fortunately, Trump’s puerile perspective will not travel far. CPAC is suffering from “Trump Fatigue Syndrome.” Attendance is way down, and many conference regulars of the past are skipping the affair this year. Those that showed up are especially fringy and unabashedly Trumpian (i.e. Donald Trump Jr, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan, and the MyPillow Guy, Mike Lindell).

For a taste of Trump’s Conservative Political Action Cult address, see this Twitter thread.

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