Propaganda

CPAC: Conservative Political Action Cult Disciples Ask ‘What Are Our Marching Orders?’

Posted by on February 28, 2021 at 2:08 pm. 3 Comments :

As a testament to the efficiency and competency of Donald Trump and his ultra-rightist brigades, the website for the Conservative Political Action cult (CPAC) has been down for hours, and still is at the time of this writing. And this is on the big day when Trump is delivering his first “Post-Presidential Losers Address.” Metaphors abound.

Donald Trump Rally, Sieg Heil

Why anyone is looking forward to Trump’s speech is a complete mystery. Anyone who has been watching him for the past few years knows exactly what he’s going to say. He will touch on the only four speaking elements he knows: Lying, whining, insulting, and bragging.

Prior to the Trump keynote, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union that stages this affair, delivered his own remarks. The interview that followed began with the moderator asking what he said was the question uppermost on the minds of the conference attendees:

Moderator: I went around the lobby this morning asking people what they wanted me to ask you. And person after person said “Ask Matt what are our marching orders.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that these glassy-eyed devotees of Trump are pensively pacing the halls of the Hyatt wondering what in hell they should be doing and pleading for some authority figure to provide the guidance they require to function.

Schlapp responded with a quote by Pope Paul II, who said “Be not afraid.” And then said that “they’re trying to make you afraid,” Schlapp warned. “They’re trying to make you afraid that you’ll lose your job if you have a MAGA hat.” He went on to criticize violent demonstrations and assaults on police without mentioning the Trump Insurrection at the Capitol or the cops who were killed and injured there by Trump supporters. And then he closed by saying that…

“We have to start – each one of us – saying that this is the truth. And we are gonna keep saying that. And if all of us do it together, guess what? they can’t can’t shut half of us up. They simply can’t. If red states are joined by people of goodwill who love the country, they will not cancel America.”

In other words, keep on repeating the lies we’ve mapped out like a mantra until it is indelibly engraved on your otherwise useless grey matter. Keep telling yourself that Trump won by a landslide; that the election was stolen; that Trump is an infallible beacon of virtue; that Democrats are sex-trafficking baby eaters. And your desires will be fulfilled on March 4th when Trump is inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States – unless he isn’t and we have to think up some other idiotic conspiracy theory.

The results of the annual CPAC straw poll were also released and they contained some interesting revelations. For instance, when asked “Would you like to see Donald Trump run again for president in 2024?” only 64% of the respondents said “Yes.” Another 15% said “No,” and 17% were unsure. That’s a pretty awful number for a pool of devoted Trumpists, 87% of whom strongly approved of his job as president.

Also surprising was the response to the question “If the Republican primary were held today, who would you vote for?” Only 55% chose Trump. Florida governor Ron DeSantis got 21% (the conference is being held in Florida). No one else got above 4%.

If Trump’s support is this shaky among this crowd, it’s impossible for him and his shills to keep pretending that he’s the presumptive nominee for 2024, much less the future of the crumbling Republican Party. And of course, none of this takes into consideration the prospect that it will be difficult for him to campaign from prison.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Trump-Fluffing CPAC Cancels Fox News Despite Its ‘America Uncanceled’ Theme

Posted by on February 27, 2021 at 12:45 pm. 9 Comments :

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is underway in Orlando, Florida with a familiar assembly of asininnies on parade. Among them are thirty-six Republican members of the House of Representatives and ten GOP senators. These dutiful congressional swamp dwellers claimed that their absence from work was due to a “public health emergency.” And what better description is there of CPAC (aka the COVID Political Affliction Conference)?

Donald Trump Hugs Flag

This year’s event is particularly grotesque with panels scheduled to discuss “How Judges and Media Refused to Look at the Evidence [of voter fraud],” “The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up,” and “How Government, Big Tech, and Media are Colluding to Deprive Us of Our Humanity,” They are diving head first into the Big Lie that Donald Trump and his political and press co-conspirators propagated about what he called a “stolen” election, despite having no evidence of it. It’s what led to the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, and, by all appearances, they are yearning for more of the same.

However, the speakers roster at CPAC is exhibiting a peculiar weakness in one respect. The cable “news” network that was most responsible for propping up Trump has been conspicuously downsized. Last lear CPAC featured Fox All Stars such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Dana Perino, Katie Pavlich, and Mark Levin. But this year they the list is reduced to Sara Carter, Pete Hegseth, Larry Kudlow, Dan Bongino, Lawrence, Jones, and Jason Chaffetz. How many of those names will be recognizable to anyone but the most devoted Fox cultist?

This is likely due to the fact that Trump himself has turned against Fox. he has deemed Fox News “dead,” “unwatchable,” and “totally fake.” He even vowed to “wreck Fox News” for being insufficiently worshipful. So with Trump delivering the closing night keynote address, it simply wouldn’t do to have the network prominently represented at this affair. Never mind the Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation, is one of the conference’s main sponsors, or that Fox News will still air much of the event live.

Will the conference attendees notice that there is no sign of Fox luminaries like Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Lou Dobbs, who was literally canceled a few weeks ago?

Perhaps the snubbing of Fox has something to do with the billion dollar defamation lawsuits filed by voting technology companies Dominion and Smartmatic that named Fox, as well as Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, and Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Or maybe shunning Fox News was to be expected since many of Trump’s glassy-eyed cult followers have been changing channels to even more extremist fringe outfits like Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN).

The bottom line is that Fox News is clearly on the outs with Trump and the Trump loyalists at CPAC. But that hasn’t changed the editorial dishonesty or the rabidly biased propaganda emanating from the network’s Trumpian personalities. In fact, Fox has been moving even farther to the right in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding caused by fleeing viewers and sinking ratings. It’s a downward spiral that is sure to follow Trump in a descent into irrelevancy.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

President Who? Fox News and Mitch McConnell Still Don’t Acknowledge that Trump Lost

Posted by on February 26, 2021 at 8:41 am. 2 Comments :

Last November Joe Biden decisively won the presidential. He drew over eight million more votes than the loser Donald Trump, and a sweeping electoral college victory of 306 to 232. But despite that conclusive result, Trump spent months spewing incendiary allegations of an allegedly “stolen” election. His tirades were unarguably responsible for the deadly riots that occurred at the Capitol on January 6th.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Now, even after widespread condemnation of Trump and his insurrectionist brigades, even after Biden’s inauguration, Trump and his Republican cult disciples continue to pretend that Biden is an illegitimate president and that Trump is the rightful head of state. And naturally, Fox News is enabling that delusional hero worship. Sean Hannity, tucker Carlson, and other Fox hosts routinely refer to “President” Trump, while dismissively calling the actual president “Biden” or simply “Joe.” It’s a deliberate attempt to belittle President Biden, while feeding their audience’s fantasy that Trump remains on what they must believe is his throne.

Case in point: On Thursday Fox’s chief political “news” anchor, Bret Baier, interviewed the Senate’s Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and engaged in this bizarre exchange:

McConnell: There’s no incumbent. And fun for you all to cover.
Baier: If the President was the Party’s nominee, would you support him?
McConnell: The nominee of the Party? Absolutely!

First of all, notice that McConnell, without challenge, said that in the 2024 presidential election there would be “no incumbent.” That would only be true if Biden chooses not to run for reelection. But there’s no way that McConnell know that now.

More to the point, notice that Baier’s question addresses whether McConnell would support “the President” if he were the Party’s nominee. Well, the President is Joe Biden. While etiquette would permit the use of “President Trump,” the meaning of “the President” is always the one currently in office. So was Baier asking if McConnell would support Biden if he decided to run as a Republican? Of course not. Baier was just casually – and dishonestly – referring to Trump as the current president. And McConnell didn’t blink in replying as if he thought the same thing.

This isn’t a trivial rhetorical glitch. They are both pretending that Trump is still president and that Biden is a villainous usurper. It is the same sort of purposeful deceit that produced the violence in D.C. by Trumpian loyalists seeking to restore him to his rightful place by any means necessary.

It should also be noted that McConnell’s expression of support for Trump were he the GOP nominee in 2024 is an astonishing admission that there are absolutely no consequences for the treasonous behavior of Trump. And that’s not just the opinion of disgruntled Democrats. After voting to acquit Trump in the Senate Impeachment hearing, McConnell actually admitted that Trump was guilty because “He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored.” McConnell elaborated saying that…

“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

That’s the guy for whom McConnell just declared his support. And the support for Trump by McConnell, along with a frightful majority of Weak-minded, obedient, Trump-obsessed Republicans, almost ensures more of the hostilities that Trump incited. It forgives his transgressions and enables his most dangerous followers among the racist, seditionist, anti-democratic hordes who continue to articulate threats to civil society.

And that’s what’s wrong with today’s Republican Party. It’s a personality driven cult. It is totally devoid of principle or ethics. It is addicted to the lies and propaganda of Fox News. It is wholly devoted to the maintenance of power. And nothing – not the interests of the people, or the welfare of the nation, or sustaining the Constitution and democracy – nothing else matters to them.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Fox News Idiot Tucker Carlson: QAnon Doesn’t Exist Because He Can’t Find a Website

Posted by on February 24, 2021 at 12:52 pm. 6 Comments :

It isn’t necessary to scratch more than the surface to reveal the utter stupidity of most of the cretins on Fox News. But Tucker Carlson makes it even easier than the others by putting his moronic outbursts on public display with an extra heaping of pride.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Q Shaman

On Tuesday night Carlson devoted a significant part of his nightly White Nationalist Hour to the premise that the conspiracy crackpots known as QAnon don’t actually exist (video below). Carlson said that he did the research and arrived at the conclusion that the whole thing was a figment of the media’s imagination. And the basis for that conclusions was that…

“We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which, in the end, we learned is not even a website, If it’s out there, we could not find it.”

Well then, that settles it. Right? Carlson’s journalistic prowess surely can’t be disputed. He went even further to claim that…

“We checked [GOP Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed because we have heard she traffics in disinformation, CNN told us, but nothing there. Next, we called our many friends in the tight-knit intel community. Could Vladimir Putin be putting this stuff out there? The Proud Boys? Alex Jones? Who is lying to America in ways that are certain to make us hate each other and certain to destroy our core institutions? Well, none of the above, actually. It wasn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene. It was cable news. It was politicians talking on TV. They’re the ones spreading disinformation to Americans. Maybe they are from QAnon.”

First of all, It isn’t unusual that a “movement” fronted by an anonymous character who makes bizarre allegations about Democrats being sex-trafficking baby eaters doesn’t have a website. But if Carlson had trouble finding them online, he either wasn’t trying very hard, or he’s borderline comatose. The fabled “Q” has been dropping his nonsense on dedicated wingnut web forums like 4chan for the past few years.

What’s more, Carlson is actually defending the likes of Vladimir Putin, the Proud Boys, and Alex Jones, as truthtellers. He mocks the very idea that they might be making up their preposterous horror stories. And he sarcastically puts down the media as being less credible than those notorious liars.

As for QAnon Rep. Greene, Carlson might not have found her tweets on the subject because she has spent the past several weeks deleting them. But anyone who was actually looking could find them. And here’s a thread of several videos of Greene talking up QAnon.

Something that Carlson fails to mention is that his Messiah, Donald Trump, has explicitly recognized the existence of QAnon. He even noted with pride his gratitude that “they like me very much, which I appreciate.” Is Carlson contradicting Trump now?

What makes Carlson’s QAnon denialism all the more ludicrous is that he has spent many televised hours acknowledging its existence himself, and even defending it. So obviously this tirade is pure bullpucky, staged to ensure that his dimwitted viewers remain ill-informed and rabid with misplaced anger. That way he and Fox News can continue to profit off of their lies while sowing division and anti-democratic propaganda.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

GASLIGHTING: Fox News Shill Denies Video Evidence of White Supremacist Insurrection

Posted by on February 23, 2021 at 10:20 am. 4 Comments :

On the eve of the Senate’s “Joint Committee Hearing Examining the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Fox News host and shameless purveyor of flagrant lies, Tucker Carlson, sought to preemptively dismiss the notion that there was any attack at all. Never mind that there were at least five people killed, many more injured, and that the nation witnessed it all live on television.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, QAnon

Carlson’s insurrection denialism reflects how Fox News is covering the issue across the board. When they aren’t pretending that nothing happened, they are blaming Democrats for it and praising the criminals as patriots. Fox News didn’t even air much the hearings live, as legitimate news networks MSNBC and CNN did.

Donald Trump managed to get off the hook because his cowardly GOP confederates in the Senate refused to convict him on the obvious evidence of his guilt. Although most of the Republican senators acknowledged Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric as inciteful, they acquitted him on the phony technicality that a president can’t be impeached after he’s left office. For the record, that isn’t true. It’s also irrelevant since Trump was impeached while he was still president.

The subject of the Trump Insurrection came up during the confirmation hearing for President Biden’s Attorney General nominee, Merrick Garland. When asked about how he would handle the matter, Garland said that…

“If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”

That rational commentary infuriated Carlson, which he saw as an attack on his precious white nationalist comrades. Rather than concede the clearly observable fact that the Trumpian hordes who invaded Congress were a racist mob dressed in Nazi regalia and carrying Confederate flags, Carlson lashed out at Garland in an unhinged rant:

“Merrick Garland has a lot of reasonable friends who say that he is a smart and moderate person. But that was not a moderate statement. It was dishonest, completely dishonest. Dishonest enough that you should be worried about it. There’s no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. That’s a lie. And contrary to what you’ve been hearing, there’s no evidence this was a – quote – armed insurrection.”

Really? So all of the video showing rioters attacking Capitol Police with clubs, knives, mace, and some carrying guns, was all digitally enhanced? Carlson is asking his audience to ignore the evidence of their own eyes. And, sadly, they will probably do so.

Carlson then interviewed Julie Kelly, who is with “American Greatness,” a far-right, Trumpian blog. She tried to spin the charges against some of those arrested for their violent assault on Congress as minor infractions. The problem is that her presentation – and that of Carlson and Fox News – relies on pretending that we all didn’t see the videos of armed Trump Insurrectionists beating cops, breaking windows, and marauding through the halls of Congress yelling about killing Nancy Pelosi and hanging Mike Pence.

This is the sort of distortion of reality that led to the violence in Washington, D.C., in the first place. Trump’s Big Lie about the election being stolen and the need to “fight like hell” inflamed his cult followers to the point of engaging in a deadly rampage. Now Carlson’s perpetuation of this dangerously dishonest narrative is likely have the same tragic result. And it’s why Carlson’s continued presence on Fox News is an imminent threat to national security and an affront to the Preamble of the Constitution that seeks to “insure domestic tranquility.”

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Congress Asks Cable Companies Why They Carry Disinformation By Fox News, Newsmax, Etc.

Posted by on February 22, 2021 at 11:50 am. 2 Comments :

The deliberate mission of right-wing “news” operations to deceive the public has been an ongoing threat to American democracy. Their aim has been to spread disinformation in order to advance the interests of far-right agendas and politicians. And they have demonstrated a total lack of concern as to the destructive consequences of their purposefully dishonest propaganda.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Lies

The efforts by conservative outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, and their confederates on talk radio, has contributed to a culture of rightist hostility. They seek to sow discord by propagating conspiracy theories which have resulted in tangible harm to the American people.

That harm includes exacerbating the contagion and fatalities of COVID-19 by flagrantly lying about its severity and even portraying it as a hoax. Likewise, these conservative outlets have disseminated Donald Trump’s Big Lie that Joe Biden stole the election and is thus an illegitimate president. Those repeatedly debunked allegations resulted in the deadly assault on Congress on January 6th by Trump’s Insurrectionists.

The threats posed by these factories of falsehoods are now coming under scrutiny by Congress. The Communications and Technology Subcommittee has announced that they will hold a hearing on Wednesday, February 24, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Their announcement stated that…

“‘The prolonged severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attack on our Capitol on January 6 have driven home a frightening reality: the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,’ said [Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank] Pallone and [Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike] Doyle. ‘Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.'”

The Committee sent letters to cable operators such Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, and Verizon, asking about their role in “the spread of dangerous misinformation.” According to the New York Times the Committee sought to know…

‘What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?’ […and…] ‘Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date? If so, why?'”

It’s about time this problem has been addressed by Congress. Although their inference that Fox News, et al, ever had any “devotion to journalistic integrity” teeters on the absurd. Some of these news distorters have already been named in billion dollar lawsuits for defamation. The Biden Communications Office has called into question their White House press credentials. And even a member of the Murdoch family has castigated the family business as a provider of “disinformation” and “toxic politics.”

While it’s easy to point out the offenses to journalism by these organizations, it’s much harder to craft a constitutional remedy. Nobody wants to inhibit free speech or freedom of the press. Some version of an updated “Fairness Doctrine” could be drafted if there is a way to make it applicable to cable and digital entities.

However there are free market solutions that can be implemented without the involvement of Congress. Consumers can let their cable and/or streaming providers know that they are not willing to pay for services that spread dangerous lies and encourage violence. Most of the money made by programmers like Fox News comes from cable access fees, not advertising. But advertisers could also be targeted in public preference campaigns. For more information, see UnFox My Cable Box.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Fox News Trump-Fluffer Accuses Biden of Plotting the ‘Take Down of America’

Posted by on February 21, 2021 at 3:17 pm. 4 Comments :

Joe Biden has only been president for one month. In that short span of time he has accomplished much, including drafting a COVID relief bill (that Republicans oppose); undoing Donald Trump’s efforts to sabotage Obamacare; rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization; introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill; all while battling on behalf of working people to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

Jeanine Pirro Fox News

Meanwhile, Fox News is working overtime to malign Biden’s achievements by inventing controversies that strain credulity. They are so bereft of legitimate criticisms that they are attacking the romance in Jill and Joe Biden’s marriage, and the grooming of their dogs. That’s a state of desperation that is truly transcendent.

Among the most prominent scandal mongers is Fox’s “Judge” Jeanine Pirro. On Saturday night she delivered an opening monologue that chastised Biden for an array of offenses that exist only in her perverted mind. She contrived nightmarish scenarios of “a daily caravan of 3,000 untested, unvaccinated illegals … being released into our towns, cities, and villages.” That’s a flagrant lie. Any immigrants granted entry into the U.S. have been tested affirmed negative. Pirro also whined that “Joe Biden says we won’t be in the clear on COVID until Christmas. And he wants us double mask. I don’t know about you, but I can’t breathe with one mask.” Her diatribe went on, saying that…

“It has been one month since Joe Biden has assumed the role of commander-in-chief. In that one month we have gone from President Trump’s policy of “America First” to Biden’s new policy, “America Last.”

Notice that Pirro places the prefix of “President” before Trump’s name, but not Biden’s. This is her way of perpetuating the Big Lie that Biden stole the election and that Trump is still president. Then she introduces what she thinks is the clever bastardization of Trump’s slogan “America First,” which he stole from early 1900’s American fascists. She continued…

“The end of an empire occurs when the leader of a country decides to make his country last. When he believes his country is not so great, And when his actions and policies make it clear he intends to make his country last. After a magnificent run of over 200 years with America the world’s number one superpower, we are left with a leader who believes in globalism, open borders, world equity in vaccines, even before all Americans are vaccinated.”

Pirro apparently doesn’t regard the storming of Congress by violent, anti-democratic hordes to be indicative of the end of an empire. But she does believe in rattling off a bunch of policies (globalism, open borders, etc.) that Biden has never supported. And she still isn’t through…

“We are watching in real time the take down of America, attributable to Joe Biden’s “America Last” policy.”

Once again, a forced invasion of the Capitol by murderous cretins proudly bearing flags representing the Confederacy and the Trump Cult is a far more literal “take down of America” than Biden’s agenda advancing the rights and welfare of working people.

Pirro utterly failed to make any case for her accusations. It was simply a spittle-inflected barrage of invectives and purposeful lies. And it was emblematic of what Fox News does every day to disparage the majority of the American people who value the progressive ideals embodied in the Constitution.

Last November the American people made it clear that they favor inclusion over prejudice, unity over division, and freedom over authoritarianism. And nothing that Pirro and Fox News says or does will change that.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

PRIORITIES: While Texas Freezes, Lindsey Graham Stumps for Trump’s Useless Border Wall

Posted by on February 20, 2021 at 10:43 am. 6 Comments :

The Republican Party long ago distinguished itself as a haven for cravenly selfish elitists whose primary purpose is to lower taxes on the rich, eliminate regulations that save lives, suppress minorities, and advance the agenda of extremist evangelicals. This week the GOP had some outstanding opportunities to affirm their commitment to that mission.

Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Without question, the biggest story of the week was the devastating winter storm that bombarded Texas and much of the eastern United States. What we learned from that ongoing catastrophe was that Republicans were more interested in politicizing the tragedy than in doing anything constructive to help their suffering constituents.

For instance, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott rushed to Fox News to deflect blame for the failures of his administration to out of state Democrats and the “Green New Deal,” which has not been enacted into law anywhere, especially Texas. Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz jetted off to the sunny climes of Cancun, Mexico, with his family, rather than stay at home and do his job during troubled times. Humiliated by such a callous abandonment of his duty to his state, he frantically returned and immediately got to work making excuses on Fox News, where he blamed his minor children for his own poor decisions.

On Saturday, the GOP’s Senior Trump-fluffing Senator, Lindsey Graham demonstrated the same lack of human decency. After spending time with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Lindsey boarded a plane for the southern border where he could raise an issue that is topmost on the minds almost nobody: Trump’s idiotic, useless, and vain border wall. Graham’s cross-country jaunt to serve as Trump’s mouthpiece resulted in a propaganda video wherein he asserted that…

“The Biden Administration apparently has decided to stop plugging this hole here. As a result the Border Patrol is now gonna try to have a camera and people sitting up on that hill to watch them as they flow in. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put this section of the wall together? What good comes from allowing this hole to continue to exist? This wall is here for a purpose. To keep people from coming into our country illegally,”

For the record, what Graham is referring to is a thirty foot space along a double-tracked portion of the wall on a border that is 2,000 miles long. The other track at this point is complete, so if the wall is capable of preventing entry (it isn’t), it would already be doing that. Also, notice all of “them” who are flowing into the country in this video. Frightening, isn’t it?

This is what Graham dropped everything to do. Does it help the people of Texas who are freezing and dying? Does it further efforts to combat the coronavirus? Does it even address the issue of immigration, for which Joe Biden and the Democrats just introduced a comprehensive bill that Graham could be working on? Of course not. It’s ironic that, while Graham is obsessed with a wall (that Mexico was supposed to pay for) to prevent people from Mexico getting into the U.S., Ted Cruz couldn’t get out of the U.S. and into Mexico fast enough.

This is so emblematic of the Republican Party. They have a perverse set of priorities that seem to be perpetually at odds with what the American people actually want and need. And when they aren’t trying to distract the public with politically partisan culture war demagoguery, they are lashing out with vicious attacks that have no basis in fact or reality. Take for example this crackpottery by Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly who, unable to substantively criticize President Biden, he goes after one of his dogs:

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

OH NO: Hannity Can’t Find Joe Biden, Maybe Because Fox News Refuses to Cover Him

Posted by on February 19, 2021 at 2:30 pm. 13 Comments :

The stench of desperation at Fox News is thick enough to choke an elephant. Try as they might, they can’t seem to construct a plausible dystopian nightmare centered on the budding presidency of Joe Biden. It doesn’t help their cause that in Biden’s first month in office he’s already racked up an impressive array of achievements.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, Joe Biden

Among the first four weeks of work Biden has drafted a COVID relief bill (that Republicans are blocking). He’s restoring Obamacare to the state prior to Trump’s sabotage of it. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization. He’s introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And he’s addressing income inequality with plans to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

No wonder the Debbie and Donnie Downers at Fox News are in a panic. They have nothing to rage about. Some of their recent misfires include blaming the Texas storm catastrophe on the Green New Deal, which has not been enacted into law; celebrating Donald Trump’s allegedly enduring popularity as represented by “spontaneous” rallies that were planned long in advance; and mocking the marriage of Jill and Joe Biden for being too romantic. Seriously, that’s all they’ve got.

One other tool in their propaganda workshop is to manipulate their editorial decisions to erase Joe Biden from the news cycle. To date Fox News has not aired a single White House press briefing, which the Biden team has returned to doing daily. Nor have they aired a single press conference by the White House COVID-19 Response Team. Recall that Fox News aired every similar meeting during the Trump administration, live and uninterrupted, along with his campaign rallies and staged photo-ops. The only coverage Biden is getting on Fox news are stories they can tarnish with negativity and lies.

Friday morning, Fox was the only national news network that failed to carry Biden’s first major foreign policy address before the Munich Security Conference (video below). He articulated the triumphant theme that “America is back.” It was a substantive discussion of critical national security issues including NATO, the coronavirus, China trade, Russian espionage, climate change, Iran nuclear pact, and the winter storm wreaking havoc on Texas and much of the eastern United States. But none of that was deemed newsworthy by Fox.

This banishment of all things Biden by Fox News is a deliberate attempt to disappear the new president. They have made an editorial decision to pretend that Biden doesn’t exist or is doing nothing. It’s the impression they intend to burn into the weak minds of their viewers. And at the forefront of this effort is Sean Hannity, who is himself pretending that he doesn’t know where Biden is:

“Where is our commander-in-chief? You know, that new guy? Oh, that’s right! This morning, he decided to take a snow day. The guy ultimately in charge of FEMA and all of the country’s emergency resources and federal agences (sic)? Yeah, he took a day off in the middle of this natural disaster. Where’s the feigned phony, selective liberal outrage on this? […] To be fair, it’s not even really totally clear that Joe even fully understands what’s going on in Texas.”

First of all, if Hannity can’t find Biden it’s just because he’s only watching Fox News where Biden has been cloaked in invisibility. It’s also interesting that Hannity is admitting that he can’t find any “phony liberal outrage.” But that’s because none of the liberal outrage is phony. It’s all entirely authentic and warranted. More to the point, and contrary to his infantile insult, it’s Hannity who doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on in Texas.

The basis for Hannity’s perversion of reality is a repot that the White House Communications Office “called a lid” on Thursday morning. Hannity, due to either dishonesty or ignorance, interpreted that as Biden taking the day off. But a “lid” isn’t a work holiday. It only means that there wouldn’t be any press avails for the rest of the day. Everyone, including the President, is still working. In fact, on the same day Hannity said was a “snow day” Biden phoned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and he also approved emergency declarations in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

It’s ironic that Hannity would choose to take this time to take Biden to task for being AWOL on Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz (Q-TX) was just chastised for jetting off to Cancun while his constituents were back home freezing and dying. Humiliated, Cruz returned to Texas, but rather than getting to work on behalf of the people he purports to represent, he immediately rushed to do an interview on Fox News with – that’s right – Sean Hannity.

Hannity, not surprisingly, spent much of the segment excusing Cruz’s insensitive and tone-deaf Mexican vacation jaunt. He didn’t say a word about Cruz’s “snow day” or “taking the day off.” (Actually, it was four days). It was an Olympian exercise in hypocrisy that could win gold medals. And it’s more evidence that Hannity, and the rest of his confederates on Fox News, simply cannot be taken seriously.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

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

Fox News Gets Spanked for Shamelessly Lying About ‘Spontaneous’ Trump Rally

Posted by on February 16, 2021 at 3:27 pm. 4 Comments :

The sagging fortunes of America’s Biggest Loser, and former reality TV game show host, Donald Trump, continue to swirl down the drain. Not only did voters decisively reject him last November, but his approval ratings have fallen precipitously ever since. He never hit 50% in four years. While President Joe Biden in his first month has been enjoying a post-election honeymoon with a soaring 62% approval.

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Donald Trump Circling the Drain

All of this puts Fox News in an awkward position. They are desperately struggling to frame current events in a manner that is a sharp diversion from reality. The result is a flurry of bizarre stories about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being responsible for the Capitol Hill riots instigated by Trump; or Lindsey Graham threatening to impeach Vice-President Kamala Harris; or Republicans trying to disassociate themselves from QAnon. Needless to say, none of that is working.

For his Part, Sean Hannity is taking up the call to float some more preposterous notions of how the nation still madly adores their deposed Dear Leader Trump. Hannity led off a segment on his Monday night program by attacking Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his lambasting of Trump as “disgraceful” and “responsible” for inciting the January 6th assault on Congress (video below). He put McConnell on notice, slamming him as “sanctimonious” and “way out of touch” with the GOP base. Elaborating, Hannity said…

“Let’s make one thing clear. The seven Republican senators that voted to convict Donald Trump, and other Republicans who have turned their backs on the former president are way out of touch with the base of their own party. A record 75 million Americans turned out for Donald Trump in November and they support him to this very day. […] A few hours ago, spontaneously, thousands of people in Palm Beach lined up in support of the former president as his motorcade traveled through Florida.

Let’s break down this heap of nonsense. First of all, While the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump might have been out of touch with the radical GOP base, they were steadily aligned with the majority of the American people. What’s more, if the other Republican senators weren’t such cowardly hypocrites, they would have voted to convict Trump as well.

Secondly, Hannity is parroting Trump’s brag about having gotten 75 million votes (it was 74 million). But they are both conveniently forgetting that Biden got 81 million votes. So whatever point he is trying to make about Trump’s alleged popularity, it is still significantly below that of Biden.

However, lying to his viewers is standard operating procedure for Sean Hannity. So it will come as no surprise that he highlighted a video that was posted on Twitter by a former Trump staffer. It showed crowds of Trump cultists lining the streets of Palm Beach as Trump drove by on his way home after golfing. Hannity described this show of support as “spontaneous.”

Later in the same program Hannity interviewed Don Trump Jr. and made the same claim. “Did you see?” Hannity asked. “Thousands of people out of nowhere. Nobody organized it that I could see. Certainly nobody associated with your father that I know of. Do you?” To which Donnie replied “No. This is totally organic. This shows that the American people are with Donald Trump.”

However, it was not the least bit organic. In fact, it had been planned for over a week. The evidence of that was deliciously revealed by CNN’s Brianna Keilar:

This is just another example of how disreputable Hannity and all of his Fox News confederates are. They can’t be relied upon to tell the truth, even on the small things. So naturally the big things are just going to be smothered in even bigger lies. Such as the the one about the election being stolen, which led to five people being killed, and many more injured, by Trump’s Seditionist Brigades.

Hannity polished off his segment with some equally absurd outrages concerning Mitch McConnell, demanding that he “give a speech on the Senate floor and hold [Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters] accountable for their incitement of insurrection.” Huh?

Hannity also claimed that he has “a long and growing list of Democrats who should now qualify for impeachment and impeachment trial. You can start with Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and work your way through the list.” Really?

He closed with an unusually honest commentary, so long as he was directing it at himself and Fox News: “Journalism in this country is dead and buried. We are in the middle of an information crisis in this country. And media is not coming back to life anytime soon.” Actually, with Fox News now floundering in third place behind CNN and MSNBC, I may be a little more optimistic than Hannity.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

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