Propaganda

Trump’s Bizarre Reasons for Accusing His White House Counsel McGahn of Lying Under Oath

Posted by on June 14, 2019 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

One of the unique characteristics of Donald Trump’s criminal behavior is that, unlike most other criminals, he actually ends up admitting his wrongdoing in public and insisting that there’s nothing wrong with it. That was surprisingly well demonstrated on Thursday when he told George Stephanopoulos that he would happily accept and disseminate dirt on his political opponents, which is against the law.

Donald Trump

And one of the reasons that Trump is so comfortable making such public confessions is that he knows he has Fox News (aka State TV) to clean up after him. That’s what took place on Friday morning when the President did another call-in interview with the devoted Trump-fluffers on Fox and Friends. It was easily predictable that Trump would book this segment following a gaffe that was essentially an admission of treason.

However, even that brownnosing do-over was stepped on by Trump himself with the release of another clip from the Stephanopoulos interview. In this discussion Trump launched into a familiar and tedious denial that he ever sought to have special counsel Robert Mueller fired. That’s a claim that has been refuted by several of his close aides, including his White House Counsel, Don McGahn. Stephanopoulos noted that McGahn had testified to Mueller that Trump did ask him to talk to the Justice Department and make it clear to them that Mueller “had to go.” Which led to this incriminating exchange (video below):

Trump: I don’t care what he said. It doesn’t matter. That was to show everyone what a good counsel he was.
Stephanopoulos: But why would he lie under oath to Robert Mueller?
Trump: Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer. Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen, including you, including the media, that Robert Mueller was conflicted.

First of all, when Stephanopoulos asked why McGahn would lie under oath, Trump didn’t reject that premise. In fact, he attempted to justify it. So Trump is accusing his White House counsel of committing criminal perjury. It will interesting to see if Attorney General William Barr will now open an investigation into that and issue an indictment for McGahn. (Don’t hold your breath). Because either McGahn is guilty of perjury, or Trump is lying about it.

Secondly, Trump’s first explanation for McGahn’s alleged perjury is that McGahn was seeking to “make himself look like a good lawyer.” How? By lying under oath? How does it burnish his credibility to implicate Trump in a scheme to fire Mueller? Trump is apparently conceding that testimony linking Trump to obstruction of justice is the honorable thing to do. Of course it is. Telling the truth would surely cast a positive glow on McGahn or any other witness. But accusing McGahn of doing the right thing is an odd defense from Trump’s perspective.

Finally, Trump’s other explanation for McGahn’s testimony is that McGahn, and “anybody that would listen,” were deluged with complaints by Trump that Mueller was conflicted. That assertion has always been a deliberate lie on Trump’s part. But his admission here that he has been inundating everyone around him with that allegation could itself be construed as obstruction of justice. He’s trying to materially harm the investigation by falsely impugning the integrity of the special counsel.

So Trump is providing a perverse set of arguments in his defense. On one hand, Trump thinks that his White House counsel is a perjurer for having told the truth about him. On the other, Trump is obstructing justice by lying about Mueller. And if you’re having trouble figuring that out, or why Trump would be asserting such a preposterous defense, it just means that you’re a normal, logical person. Unlike the sociopathic narcissist currently residing in the White House.

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

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

Posted by on June 13, 2019 at 4:49 pm. 3 Comments :

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

Fox News, Sean Hannity

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

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

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

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

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

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

WTHolyF? Fox News Hysterically Whines that CNN and MSNBC ‘All Seem to Be Opinion Shows’

Posted by on June 11, 2019 at 2:26 pm. 4 Comments :

Well, we are through the looking glass, folks. Of course, that’s been said so many times in the Era of Donald Trump that most of us have built up an immunity to it. But on this occasion there is real concern that the fantasy (nightmare) weavers at Fox News have abandoned any pretense of reality.

Donald Trump Fox News

In a segment on Monday night’s episode Stuart Varney’s Fox Business program, the host interviewed Fox News’ media correspondent, and host of MediaBuzz, Howard Kurtz. The discussion was a particularly obtuse analysis of the editorial positions on MSNBC and CNN. It began with Varney calling out his competition for “Anti-Trump coverage” that is “wall to wall on those two networks.” And that led to this bizarre exchange with Kurtz (video below):

Varney: What’s your judgment, Howard, when two all news networks carry one single editorial message, which is resist Trump for everything and get him out? I mean, you’re a media guy. You can’t be that pleased that two major networks are going so consistently down that opinion road.
Kurtz: I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think there are some fair reporters at both networks. But certainly when you turn on the primetime shows, and it’s getting increasingly hard during the day, they all seem to be opinion shows. I mean, you know, you’ve got these panels that are six to one anti-Trump. I mean, there’s no secret about it. That’s the way they’re being programmed.

Seriously? That’s a media analyst on Fox News, the network that is best known today as “State TV” due to its unflinchingly adoring coverage of Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party. Fox News has dedicated it’s primetime block to three of the most biased Trump-fluffers on television (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson), Hannity even shows up to speak at Trump’s cult rallies.

As for panels that are partisanly skewed, Fox doesn’t leave that to just their primetimers. They begin with “Fox and Friends” in the morning. Then “Outnumbered” is aptly named with four (and sometimes five) right-wingers out of five co-hosts. And in the afternoon they have “The Five,” which is another four to one conservative pile-on. So Fox News actually designs their shows to have multiple wingnuts ganging up on a lonely alleged liberal. Neither MSNBC or CNN has such a program.

Kurtz did criticize Trump for advocating a boycott of CNN’s parent company, AT&T, in order to punish CNN. And even Varney acknowledged that MSNBC was doing well in the ratings prior to the release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. Kurtz agreed and made the point that MSNBC’s viewers might have fallen off due their disappointment that Mueller wasn’t more aggressive in his indictment of Trump. That’s actually a pretty good explanation for MSNBC’s recent ratings slump, although it’s still the second highest rated cable news network.

However, for Kurtz to stare into the camera and complain about the partisan tilt of MSNBC and CNN is hypocrisy on an Olympian scale. At least both CNN and NBC have actual news divisions that break stories and win awards. But for him to do that without even the slightest acknowledgement of Fox’s extreme political prejudices, marks him as the same sort of propagandist as Varney, Hannity, and the rest of Fox’s flunkies. If it wasn’t such a serious breach of journalistic ethics, it would make a hilarious sketch for Saturday Night Live.

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

This Is Impeachable: Trump is Now Governing By Secret Initiatives with Foreign Leaders

Posted by on June 11, 2019 at 12:20 pm. 4 Comments :

There is already an abundance of evidence that Donald Trump has broken numerous laws that warrant, at the very least, an impeachment inquiry. They include over 127 communications with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign, at least ten instances of obstruction of justice, multiple cases of financial and tax fraud, and much more. Many of these criminal breaches were spelled out in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. And even Fox News has stated unequivocally that there is evidence of both collusion and obstruction.

Donald Trump

Nevertheless, it seems that Trump commits new crimes everyday. And the startling part of that is that he often admits on television. Which is precisely what happened on Tuesday morning during one of his now infamous helicopter press conferences. There were many absurdities and lies during this live mental breakdown, but on a couple of occasions Trump actually incriminated himself as something of a dictator and/or traitor.

Both of these confessions involved Trump revealing that he has been secretly engaging in foreign policy affairs and making agreements that have not been vetted, ratified, or even seen by Congress. What’s more, he still refuses to disclose the substance of these agreements to anyone. Take for instance his declaration of a secretly negotiated agreement with Mexico. In a dramatic moment, Trump pulled a single piece of paper from his pocket and said…

“That’s the agreement that everybody says I don’t have. [Reporter asks to see it] No, because I’m gonna let Mexico do the announcement at the right time. But here’s the agreement. It’s a very simple agreement.

First of all, there’s a reason everybody says he doesn’t have an agreement. It’s because Mexico said so, along with multi-sourced reporting that the terms Trump is celebrating were actually negotiated months ago. It’s also highly suspicious that Trump just happened to be carrying this alleged agreement with him on his way to his helicopter. not to mention that one piece of paper hardly represents what would have to be a complex treaty.

The second item was Trump’s disclosure that he had just received another love letter from Kim Jong Un. This time he didn’t produce a paper prop as proof of the correspondence, but he was clearly moved:

“I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un. I can’t show you the letter obviously. But it was a very personal, very warm, very nice letter. I appreciate it. And I’ll say it again, I think that North Korea has tremendous potential…under his leadership.”

This is the sort of mushy romance that Trump previously revealed when he said last year that he and Kim “fell in love.” But why can’t he show it to reporters – and the American people? After all, he is merely our representative, not a king. If he is getting letters from hostile foreign leaders, they are part of the public record of the Office of the President, not his personal stash.

By admitting that he is conducting these negotiations in secret, and committing the nation to agreements that haven’t been seen by anyone but him, Trump is confessing to yet another set of impeachable offenses. He doesn’t have the authority to negotiate in that capacity, nor to obligate the nation to the terms of an undisclosed agreement. Congress needs to put an end to this tyrannical behavior. And the only way to do that is by including these offenses in the Articles of Impeachment that they should already be drafting.

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

Asshattery: Hannity Lashes Out at Mueller and the Report Trump Said ‘Totally Exonerates’ Him

Posted by on June 7, 2019 at 11:12 am. 6 Comments :

There’s a point at which it is impossible to ignore that Donald Trump and his sycophantic bootlickers at Fox News are anything but irredeemably deranged. That point actually came long ago, but they keep reaffirming it every day with new and more absurd diatribes intended to sanitize Trump’s criminal presidency. It’s a futile exercise in shameless hackery that can only be pursued if one has zero self respect or integrity.

Fox News Sean Hannity

So naturally, Sean Hannity jumps in with both feet to demonstrate how devoid of reason the right’s defenses of Trump can be when they really put their diseased minds to it. On Thursday night he complained bitterly about Nancy Pelosi saying that she didn’t want to impeach Trump, she wanted him in prison. Hannity portrayed that as the sort of comment made in “banana republics.” Apparently he forgot that Trump leads his cult rallies in chants of “lock her up” every time hillary Clinton’s name is mentioned.

Then Hannity devoted most of the rest of his Fox News Trump-Fluffing Hour to the premise that Robert Mueller (a decorated war hero and life-long Republican public servant) is actually the leader of an evil liberal cabal bent on orchestrating a coup against the impeccably virtuous Trump regime. Never mind that Trump has been implicated in numerous criminal activities that extend from his private businesses to his presidential campaign to his inauguration and to his hopelessly corrupt administration. Not to mention his many conspicuous attempts to obstruct justice.

The whole of Hannity’s argument is that the report issued by special counsel Robert Mueller somehow proves that he set out from the start to frame Trump. Which is a pretty startling charge considering that Trump himself described the report as “complete and total exoneration“ and that Mueller “acted honorably.” But Hannity wasn’t having any of that (video below):

“We start tonight with a massive development out of the Mueller partisan witch hunt. Tonight more evidence has emerged that Bob Mueller’s 448 page report was nothing but pure, political garbage garbage full of errors put there purposely. […] He and his merry band of all Democratic donors, no Republican donors, all Trump haters – that means they lied in that report.”

Most of Hannity’s loopy rambling was based on the ludicrous and unsupported musings of conspiracy crackpot John Solomon. He was unable to comprehend that a Russian operative identified in the Mueller report might also have met with U.S. intelligence agents without that meaning he was a actually an American agent himself. In fact, U.S. intelligence agents actually make a point of encountering foreign agents as part of their investigative and surveillance duties. But that didn’t stop Hannity from making this the basis for his unhinged rant. And his preposterous attacks on Mueller just escalated as he went on. For instance:

“What this ends up being is outright deception, outright lying by Mueller, and of course his Democratic donor friends that he appointed.”

“Everything Mueller said in 9 1/2 minutes was false, it was phony, it was fake, it was innuendo, and Attorney General Barr pretty much bailed him out.”

“The pattern is clear. What we see now time and time again. The special counsel manipulates information to unjustly impugn a duly elected president of the United States.”

So Hannity is convinced that Mueller, who was appointed by a Republican Assistant Attorney General, who was himself appointed by Trump, is a Democratic plant tasked with spreading lies to destroy Trump. What an amazingly devious plot. How did Democrats get these Republicans – and even Trump – to participate in this Machiavellian scheme? But Hannity wasn’t through. He still needed to reinforce Trump’s whiny defense tactics by shamelessly parroting them:

“There was no collusion. There was no obstruction on the Trump campaign’s part. There was no conspiracy. All the Trump haters on Mueller’s team, well they just reverted to plan B. That’s a 448 page smear campaign. They created a document definitely intended to fuel even more lies, more conspiracy theories from Democrats and, of course, their allies in the abusively biased and corrupt media mob. It was a political hit job from the beginning through and through. And the President was right, it always was a witch hunt. And as far as Mueller was concerned, mission accomplished.”

Mission accomplished, indeed. Hannity truly served his purpose as Trump’s valiant martinet, maligning all those who dared to criticize Trump or attack him with the truth that he so despises. It’s a wonder how Hannity gets through these drooling harangues without bursting a vein in his forehead. But he does it in service to his master and Dear Leader who, despite holding the most powerful job in the world, is a pitiful victim of a bunch of snowflake Democrats and liberals. So sad.

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

Still Not Presidential: Trump’s D-Day TelePrompTer Spiel Marred By Disgraceful Political Rant

Posted by on June 6, 2019 at 11:24 am. 6 Comments :

On the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, Donald Trump delivered a well-crafted speech paying tribute to both the fallen heroes and our wartime allies. He particularly distinguished himself by not wandering off-script and into one of his notoriously deranged, self-serving, and hostile tirades directed at his perceived political foes. And right on cue, much of the press covering the event remarked with some measure of astonishment that Trump might have finally become “presidential” and grown into the job.

Donald Trump, Presidenty

Really? How many times does this have to happen? On several occasions during his tumultuous presidency, Trump has managed stick to the words prepared for him by his professional speech writers. And each time he completes that feat the media fawns over him and his allegedly newfound respectability. But without exception Trump has disappointed them by reverting to his normal boorish self, usually within a few hours.

This time was apparently no different. Shortly after Trump delivered his premasticated oratory, Fox News released a clip of an interview he did with one of their primetime Trump-fluffers, Laura Ingraham. She sat with him for this insolent banter at the Normandy American Cemetery. Ingraham initiated the inappropriate dialog with a blatantly political question about whether he would mind if special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress. Trump mustered up his trademark loathsomeness and offered this reply (video below):

“He made such a fool out of himself because, what people don’t report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong.”

First of all, Trump is confused because there has not been any “testimony” by Mueller. And let’s just set aside the fact that Trump is now staunchly opposed to Mueller testifying about the report that he says exonerates him. Because all innocent people want to suppress what they contend is proof of their innocence, don’t they? Also, it’s unseemly for Trump (a five time draft dodger) to be attacking Mueller (a decorated war hero) on this occasion, and at this place.

The meat that goes along with this whine is Trump’s assertion that Mueller “made a fool out of himself” because of some mysterious letter that allegedly admitted he was wrong about something that Trump fails to identify. The only plausible letter that Trump could be referencing is one that Mueller put out after his press conference on the completion of his investigation. But that letter merely affirmed his position on the relevence of a Justice Departemnt memo regarding whether a president could be indicted while still on office. The letter didn’t change anything about what Mueller said in either his press conference, or in the report itself. He stood by his conclusions that his office “would not reach a determination…about whether the President committed a crime” and that “if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

Of course, Trump wasn’t through embarrassing himself and America. For the second time in a week he breached diplomatic protocol by devolving into rank politics while overseas. His comments about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (complete with a new, infantile nickname) were bizarrely unprovoked and insulting:

“But Nancy Pelosi, I call her Nervous Nancy, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, okay She’s a disaster. Let her do what she wants, you know what? I think they’re in big trouble.”

So while the press is all starry-eyed about Trump’s prefab speech, it’s important to remember that Trump will always be Trump. It’s a painful exercise to have to endure the media’s affinity for staged rhetoric when we know that Trump doesn’t mean a word of it, or even understands what he’s reading. And he can be counted on to revert to his customarily vile character before even a single day goes by. Just has he has done this time as well.

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

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1136653145369526272

State TV (aka Fox News) Whines that US Media Isn’t Doing Enough Trump Fluffing

Posted by on June 5, 2019 at 12:50 pm. 5 Comments :

For the past week Donald Trump has been reaffirming his role as America’s Ambassador of International Embarrassment. On this brief junket he has managed to insult the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle), feud with the Mayor of London, call for a boycott of an American company in order to punish CNN (an unconstitutional, impeachable offense), Breach diplomatic protocol by attacking Joe Biden from foreign soil, and send orders back home to a former staffer (and current Fox News executive) to unlawfully defy a congressional subpoena.

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Despite all of this evidence of his foreign fiasco, the fact that Trump has once again proven to be an incompetent, self-absorbed, loudmouth who is allergic to telling the truth, hasn’t stalled the devotional bootlicking of Fox News. On Wednesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends were primed to report on Trump’s “triumphant” mission to the United Kingdom. So in pursuit of that goal they invited their ultra-rightist media shill, Joe Concha, to opine on how Trump was maligned at the hands of the U.S. press corps. The premise that Fox tried vainly to peddle was that, while Trump was hammered here at home, he was beloved in the U.K. That phony propaganda resulted in this absurd exchange (video below):

Co-host Brian Kilmeade: “This state visit to the U.K. earning glowing reviews – get this – in Britain. But back here in the U.S. – or whatever planet we’re on – the American media is telling a whole different story.”
Concha: (on the British press): “They’re on the ground. They know how London works. They know the people. And they’re portraying this thing a lot more positively, as you just showed, than the U.S. media who’s concentrating almost solely on these protests. […] That’s the problem. We’re getting way too many opinions based solely on speculation and how people perceive things instead of what people see on their screens.”

Kilmeade’s assertion that the British press was unanimously “glowing” was based on a few headlines that he featured in a graphic. The only problem is that not one of them actually praise Trump. In fact, they were merely Trump paying tribute to the Queen:

  • Donald Trump praises ‘eternal friendship’ at state banquet (BBC)
  • Trump hails ‘common values’ uniting UK and US (Financial Times)
  • Donald Trump state banquet speech: US President says Queen embodies ‘patriotism that beats proudly in every British heart’ (Evening Standard)
  • ‘Treasured Friendship’ Trump in tribute to ‘great, great’ Queen who inspired UK to win WW2 (The Sun)

Meanwhile, those same news sources also ran with these headlines that Fox News ignored:

  • Anti-Trump protesters mix humour with expletives {BBC)
  • Trump sends mixed messages on US-UK trade deal (Financial Times)
  • Protesters cry ‘Nazi’ as Donald Trump attends D-Day event (Evening Standard)
  • Donald Trump sparks massive NHS row as he says health service must be on the table (The Sun)

So Fox News is blatantly disinforming their viewers about the coverage of Trump by the British media. It is, in fact, nearly identical to the coverage in the U.S. And if it’s negative, that’s only because he’s such a predictable screw-up.

But what’s truly bizarre is Concha’s complaint that there are “way too many opinions” in the U.S. press. And he’s saying that, unironically, on Fox News. What’s more, his criticism that coverage is “based solely on speculation and how people perceive things” is downright laughable considering he’s saying it to Kilmeade who, just the day before, told viewers that “boos” from the crowd when Ivanka Trump and John Bolton walked by were for Bolton. How Kilmeade divined that was unexplained.

This is the sort of feverishly pro-Trump hackery that is the hallmark of Fox News. They are so determined to exalt Dear Leader at every opportunity that they utterly abandon reason and reality. And above all, they continue to push the notion that the media would be so much better if only it slobbered over Trump the way they do. Yet somehow they they still believe that they should be taken seriously as a news network.

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

Wannabe Dictator Trump Calls For Boycott of AT&T to ‘Do Something’ About CNN

Posted by on June 3, 2019 at 12:26 pm. 2 Comments :

The last time Trump left the country he breached diplomatic protocol in Japan with an infantile political attack on Joe Biden. At the same time, he took sides with Kim Jong Un, the murderous tyrant with whom he “fell in love.” And now Trump is travelling abroad again, but this time, as he prepared to depart for the U.K., he managed to embarrass America before he even left by insulting the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Having arrived in England, Trump sought to escalate his diplomatic incompetence with another attack on the U.S. media. That in itself is to be expected from the president who hates the freedoms protected by the First Amendment and regards the press as “the enemy of the people.” However, this time he is attacking American institutions from foreign soil and attempting to bully them into obedience to his will.

These comments are despicable on many levels. First of all, he is admitting that the only news source he is comfortable watching is the Trump-fluffing sycophants of Fox News. And when away from home, he desperately needs Fox to stroke his fragile ego. Furthermore, he fails to document he what describes as “all negative” with any examples. Suffice to say that any criticism of him was enough to get him to change the channel to less objectionable programming like cooking or golf.

Trump is also displaying his utter ignorance of the television business. CNN is not only enjoying their highest ratings in years, they are more profitable than ever. But no one will be surprised that Trump is either stupid or lying. That’s the new normal for the Era of Trump.

The worst part of this Twitter tirade, though, is Trump’s gleeful assault on an American business. He doesn’t care who he hurts so long as he can get vengeance for whatever slight he thinks he’s the victim of. That’s typical of his inherent weakness and narcissism. But make no mistake, his petulant whining is aimed at more than 250,000 employees of an American company. It is totally unprecedented for an U.S. president to call for a boycott of an U.S. company with tens of thousands of American workers. And his malicious smear is even worse coming from overseas.

And as if all of that weren’t bad enough, Trump’s attack is based on his displeasure with how the free press is doing their job. What he thinks is negative reporting is really just a factual representation of what he actually does and says. The media can’t help it if his words and actions are glaringly dumb and harmful. And what exactly does Trump think that AT&T should do? He insists that they should be “forced to make big changes at CNN.” But forcing the press to behave in a manner that is acceptable to political leaders is what we would expect from the fascist regimes that control their media. Which is what Trump is advocating and yearning for.

What’s more, while he whines that the world “gets a false picture of USA” from CNN, the world has actually made a deliberate choice. Fox News used to be carried in the U.K. but they discontinued their service two years ago because nobody was watching it A company spokeswoman said that…

“Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

So Trump wants to boycott AT&T, hurt American workers, and dishonor the Constitution, all in an effort to bully the media into slobbering over him the way Fox News does. Never mind that the Brits have already rejected the lies and propaganda that is the hallmark of Fox’s deceitful brand of “journalism.” Like his pals Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, Trump wants to coerce the press into acting like his own personal PR agency. And the sentiments in these tweets are direct attacks on the free press, as well as free markets. They are are antithetical to long held and cherished American principles. But then, so is almost everything Trump does and says.

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

Dazed and Confused: Trump Can’t Keep His Mueller Stories – or Anything Else – Straight

Posted by on May 30, 2019 at 12:03 pm. 3 Comments :

Since Donald Trump ordered the White House Press Office to stop doing daily press briefings nearly three months ago, the only media access to the President has been his impromptu harangues on the White House lawn in front of the whirring blades of his helicopter. And there has been a noticeable deterioration of his mental faculties in each one of these reality TV style spiels. The latest on Thursday morning is a real display of his paranoid dementia.

Donald Trump Zombie

Trump addressed several subjects including his insistence that Russia didn’t help him get elected. In his typically narcissistic fashion he told the assembled press “You know who got me elected? I got me elected.” He also briefly touched on the matter of his potential impeachment. In doing so he demonstrated that he has no idea how it works. He doesn’t know what “high crimes and misdemeanors” means. And he he wonders how the courts could allow it. Of course every high school civics student knows that impeachment is entirely within the jurisdiction of Congress and the courts have nothing to with it.

However, perhaps the most ludicrous exchanges occurred when Trump was lashing out at special counsel Robert Mueller. The recent public statement by Mueller affirmed that his investigation had found evidence of criminal activities and obstruction of justice by Trump (even Fox News said so), but that no indictments were filed due to an old and questionable policy memo at the Department of Justice. This predictably triggered Trump’s worst instincts to attack Mueller and his work (video below):

“He was conflicted. Look, Robert Mueller should have never been chosen because he wanted the FBI job and he didn’t get it, and the next day he was picked as special counsel. So you tell somebody ‘I’m sorry, you can’t have the job.’ and then after you say that he’s gonna make a ruling on you? It doesn’t work that way. Plus we had a business dispute. Plus his relationship with Comey was extraordinary.”

None of this is new in the armory of Trump’s assault rhetoric. It has all been used before by Trump so many times that he seems to be stuck in an endless and tedious tape loop. But he is also contradicting himself with regards to his opinion of Mueller. It was just two months ago that Trump told reporters that he believed that Mueller had “acted honorably” following the completion of the probe. He even gloated that “The Mueller report was great. It could not have been better.” That moment of confidence, however, was short lived.

Now Trump is back to maligning Mueller as “conflicted” for reasons that totally reside in his warped imagination. Mueller was not seeking to return to the FBI. He met with Trump only as a courtesy and to provide consultation. Mueller also did not have a “business dispute” with Trump. Although there was a minor incident when Mueller resigned his membership at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, because he no longer lived in the area and wasn’t using it. And Mueller has never been a close friend of James Comey. In fact, they were not even casual friends. Comey testified before Congress that he had dinner once with Mueller, but had never been to his home, didn’t have his phone number, and didn’t know the names of his kids.

But Trump wasn’t through. He still needed to repeat the same lies a few more times to make sure his gaslighting would take hold among his cult disciples.

“I think he is a totally conflicted person. I think Mueller is a true never-Trumper. He’s somebody who dislikes Donald Trump. He’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that eh wanted very badly. And then he was appointed. And despite that, and despite $40 million dollars, eighteen Trump haters, including people who worked for Hillary clinton, and some of the worst human beings on Earth, they got nothing. It’s pretty amazing.”

What’s “pretty amazing” is that Trump thinks that the career law enforcement professionals that Mueller recruited from the FBI and the Justice Department are “some of the worst human beings on Earth.” That puts them in the same league – in Trump’s mind – as child molesters, drug traffickers, and terrorists. And despite the obvious insanity of these remarks, Trump’s supporters in his administration, in Congress, and in the general public, still don’t think he’s nuts. Which leads once again to the perennial question: WTF is gonna take?

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

Fox News Spanks Guests for Citing ‘Doctored’ Pelosi Video, Fails to Mention Trump Tweeted It

Posted by on May 24, 2019 at 12:09 pm. 3 Comments :

The massive disinformation factory that we know as Fox News manufactures countless lies and propaganda messages on behalf of their benefactor in the White house, Donald Trump. It is a daily (hourly) chronicle of fake news and fluff pieces devoted to exalting Dear Leader and maligning his critics. But every now and then even they go too far and require a stern finger-wagging.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

For some utterly unexplainable reason Fox News regards the minstrel show duo, Diamond and Silk, as legitimate political analysts. Fox regularly features these allegedly comic dunces in segments that pretend that their opinions and laughable presentations aren’t really as humiliating as they appear. And on Friday morning they outdid themselves with their holy-roller style rhetoric that proved nothing but what shallow losers they are (video below).

As part of their spiel, Demean and Sulk lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the process they referenced a badly edited video that made Pelosi appear to be intoxicated. The video has been repudiated by every legitimate news enterprise, and even some illegitimate ones like Fox News. In fact, after the D&S segment, Steve Doocy, co-host of Fox and Friends, read a denunciation of the video:

“During the Diamond and Silk segment they mentioned Nancy Pelosi. I think they … I was unfamiliar with what they were talking about. I’m looking at foxnews.com, there’s a story:

“‘Manipulated videos of Nancy Pelosi edited to falsely depict her as drunk spread on social media. And according to a report from the Washington Post, experts believe the original video was slowed down to 75% from the original and that her pitch was also manipulated in order to present her under the influence.’

“Not a real video. It’s doctored.”

It stretches the bounds of probability that Doocy was actually unfamiliar with the video since it has been a viral story for two days now. But at least he took the time to acknowledge that the comments by D&S were untrue. Even though he tainted the “correction” in the eyes of Fox viewers by attributing it to the Washington Post, which they all regard as “fake news.”

What Doocy left out entirely is that Donald Trump also featured the phony video in a tweet that he captioned in all caps, “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE” So Trump not only helped to spread these repulsive lies, he elaborated on them in his own words. But for some reason this didn’t warrant a mention on Fox and Friends during a segment that explicitly chastised the use of it.

The actual Diamond and Silk segment could have been a Saturday Night Live routine without any rewriting. The main spokesperson (I think it was Silk, but does anyone really know?) slandered Pelosi saying that “She can’t even form a complete sentence without looking perplexed and confused.” And that “We’re all questioning her mental capacity. She always look like she’s a non-functioning alcoholic. She slur her words.” And that “She is deteriorating like a snowflake.”

Among other things, D&S asserted that Pelosi had “lost control of the House.” Never mind that she has presided over a remarkably productive session with over 150 bills passed. They went on to whine about the investigations of Trump’s unsavory associations with Russia and obstruction of justice. They insisted, parroting Trump, that it’s Democrats who should be investigated.

It’s political discourse like this that has earned Fox News (aka State TV) its reputation as a low brow disseminator of pseudo-news for the cognitively impaired. And what’s really sad is that Fox’s own anchors and hosts aren’t any more respectable as journalists than these two frightwig models.

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