Another ‘Twitter Files’ Doc Dump Fails to Make Its Government Censorship Case: COVID Edition

Posted by Mark NC on December 27, 2022 at 12:22 pm. 4 Comments :

Since his $44 billion fiasco to take over Twitter, Elon Musk has demonstrated just how idiotic a wealthy narcissist can be. He has fumbled every step of the way, antagonizing the most critical components of success in social media: users and advertisers.

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Among his many missteps, Musk dispatched a crew of crackpots on a mission to malign Twitter’s prior management and to contrive a conspiracy theory that they were colluding with the government to bring down Donald Trump and censor conservative opinions. But after ten releases of what he calls the “Twitter Files” (which are actually improperly disclosed private communications by Twitter staffers), Musk has not only failed to prove his allegations, he has effectively proven that Twitter’s previous content moderation practices were entirely appropriate and fairly considered.

The tenth episode of the “Twitter Files” fairy tales focuses on how Twitter conducted content moderation with regard to the COVID pandemic and the misinformation that erupted from rightist virus deniers. As usual, the contention by Musk’s designated toady, David Zweig, is that the U.S. government applied untoward pressure on Twitter to suppress the opinions of pro-COVID nutcases and anti-vaxxers. He began with the explicit claim that…

“The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.”

Nowhere in the subsequent 41 tweet discharge did Zweig support that claim. To the contrary, he repeatedly posted emails that showed Twitter’s Trust and Safety staff acting appropriately. In tweet #9 Zweig noted that…

“In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. [Alex] Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month.”

Zweig’s apparent purpose here was to associate Biden’s remarks with Twitter’s actions. But he offers nothing to support that inference. Biden was quite right that the COVID deniers, led by Trump and hacks like Berenson (who is not a doctor or scientist) were indeed inflating the mortality rate of the pandemic. Zweig followed that up by saying that…

“[Twitter exec Lauren] Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.”

Once again, Zweig is making an unsupported connection between the rational opinions of the Biden administration and the actions by Twitter. It isn’t the least bit surprising that public health officials would want social media to help reduce the harm of a deadly pandemic. Which is all that Culbertson was saying. However, in the very next tweet Zweig contradicts his government overlord allegations by conceding that Twitter didn’t “capitulate” to the Biden team. In other words, there was no evidence of government/Twitter censorship collusion.

A few tweets later Zweig attempted to provide an example of government censorship, but once again, his example was utterly devoid of any relevant substance…

“Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.”

Setting aside Zweig’s biased and baseless view of the political affiliations of Twitter’s staff, his “Exhibit A” was based on a thoroughly biased source. Kulldorff was an advocate of herd immunity (allowing people to get infected, which would lead to more fatalities) and was affiliated with ultra-rightist think tanks. He opposed proven mitigation efforts such as masking and social distancing, and claimed that vaccines caused more harm than good. Zweig continued praising the quack doctor saying that…

“But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines.”

Apparently Zweig thinks that opinions, just by being in line with unnamed other countries, makes them scientifically valid and equivalent to the determinations of U.S. experts who, by the way, consider valid science from experts worldwide. Then Zweig wrapped up his tweetstorm by concluding that…

“Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was ‘The Science'”

Once again, Zweig failed to establish any “political leanings of senior staff” or the presence of any “govt pressure.” But he does seem to be dismissing the value of “prioritizing mitigation over other concerns.” What “other concerns” might he be thinking about? Corporate profits? Political exploitation? For the record, “prioritizing mitigation” means curtailing the spread of the virus and saving lives. Which are objectives that neither Zweig, nor Musk, nor Trump, seemed to care very much about.

Finally, Zweig asked “What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter?” By which he means more dissemination of misinformation. And it’s pretty clear that it would have looked a lot worse to those who were lucky enough to survive.

MORE ON “TWITTER FILES”:

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Is Trump’s Rabid Rant Accusing the FBI of ‘Changing the Election Results’ Proof He’s Nuts?

Posted by Mark NC on December 24, 2022 at 11:31 am. 5 Comments :

The mental state of Donald Trump has been questionable for decades. He has been diagnosed by professionals as a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. He is a pathological liar. He has delusions of grandeur so extreme that he views himself as the sole savior of America and the world.

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This messianic psychosis is evident in everything Trump does and says, particularly when referring to himself. That is hardly the behavior of a “very stable genius.” It is a neurosis that poses great risks to America’s future should he be elevated again to any position of power. And the sanity and patriotism of anyone who would vote for him should be similarly regarded as deranged. Especially after Trump recently dined with a couple of unabashed Hitler lovers and called for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s deteriorating psychological sickness continues to be displayed in a disturbingly public manner on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, where he posts daily evidence of his mania. More often than not, Trump is in a rage over his having lost the 2020 presidential election, and is consumed by wholly unfounded fantasies that the the election was “rigged and stolen” from him.

That was the topic once again on Friday as Trump unleashed a barrage of pseudo-tweets lamenting what he said was a “massive campaign fraud in the 2020 Election.” And true to form, his tirade was littered with lies. He began…

“The FBI has just confirmed that it has paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to Twitter, … but what they didn’t say was that it was for the purpose of changing the Election results, pushing Biden over ‘Trump.’ Wow!”

The reason that the FBI didn’t say anything about purposefully “changing the Election results” to hurt “Trump” (which for some inexplicable reason he puts in quotes) might have been because that never happened. What Trump is referring to in his badly deviated perception of reality is a disclosure in some recently revealed emails between Twitter staffers that acknowledged receipt of payment by the FBI for work they did to supply the agency with information that it requested. It was a routine and legally mandated payment that Trump, Elon Musk, and Fox News distorted as a political stunt to discredit the FBI.

Notice that Trump has wildly elaborated on the lies exhorted by Musk and Fox News. What began as false allegations that the FBI paid to suppress a bogus story that was tied to a Russian disinformation campaign, Trump turned into a plot to change the election results. That was Trump’s invention and was never even asserted in the “Twitter Files” document dump. But Trump was just getting started. He went on to whine that…

“The FBI used Twitter and Facebook to bludgeon the 2020 Election to Biden. Nothing Negative could be said about him, especially as it related to Hunter’s Laptop From Hell, and ONLY Negative could be said about me. They were illegally after ‘Trump’ at a level of ferocity, hate and yes, desperation, that has never been seen in our Country before. Other Media companies were involved also. The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%. TRUMP WON, BIG!”

As usual Trump, in his hyperbolic hysteria, characterizes all of his bizarre claims as atrocities that have “never been seen in our Country before.” And he is, as always, the whining target of unending paranoid “ferocity [and] hate.” Here he escalates his baseless accusation to assert that “Millions of votes switched,” and comes up with a figure of 17% that he pulled straight of his asinine imagination. From there Trump launches into an all-caps harangue saying that…

“SO, WE CAUGHT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, THROUGH THE USE OF THE FBI & OTHER AGENCIES, CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY CHEATING ON THE 2020 Presidential Election, AND COMPLETELY & ILLEGALLY CHANGING ITS RESULT.”

Needless to say, no one was “CAUGHT” and no “CHEATING” was proved “CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY.” Trump has had more than two years and sixty court cases to provide such proof, but neither he nor his legal toadies have ever managed to produce a shred of it. Trump closed this Trumper Tantrum reiterating the lie that…

“The Government of the United States changed our Election Result, and it just doesn’t get any worse than that. Just look at the damage that’s been done to our Country, and the World, in the last two years — It’s incalculable. TRUMP WON!!!”

It’s worth remembering that the FBI that Trump is accusing of switching votes was run by his hand-picked director, Chris Wray, who reported to his hand-picked Attorney General, Bill Barr. And if we are to believe Trump’s crackpot conspiracy theorizing, we also need to acknowledge that all of it happened while he was occupying the White House, but was either ignorant of the corruption in his administration, or incapable of handling it. Why would even Republicans want that kind of incompetent in charge of anything again?

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Trump Responds to the January 6th Committee Report By Flagrantly Lying About What it Says

Posted by Mark NC on December 23, 2022 at 11:38 am. 1 Comments :

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection incited by Donald Trump has released its final report after months of hearings with hundreds of witnesses and millions of documents. It is an exhaustively detailed and well documented examination of the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol by his cult followers, and of the violence that occurred there at his urging.

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Naturally, Trump has issued a response to the report on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. And it will surprise no one to learn that his response reflects his shameless, albeit predictable, distortion of reality.

While Trump ignores most of the damning evidence of his blatantly unlawful and grossly unethical conduct, and treasonous dereliction of duty, in the 845 page report, he does fixate on a couple of issues that have been a standard part of his post-insurrection harangues for more than two years. And true to form, he lies brazenly about matters that are easily verified. In his post he wrote that…

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the ‘Peacefully and Patrioticly’ [sic] words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!”

Let’s just set aside Trump’s infantile nickname for what he calls the “Unselect Committee,” and his tedious rant about non-existent election fraud. His assertion that the Committee “fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C.” can easily be refuted just by reading the report. Of course, reading may be too difficult a task for the notoriously illiterate former reality TV game show host. The Committee report actually does address the question of Trump’s alleged recommendation to deploy troops saying that…

“Some have suggested that President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th. The Select Committee found no evidence of this. In fact, President Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller directly refuted this when he testified under oath. […] Miller: No. Yeah. That’s correct. There was no direct—there was no order from the President.”

So not only is Trump lying about Speaker Pelosi, he is trying to suppress his own failure to act while the seat of American democracy was under attack. This is just his attempt to shift responsibility for the violence at the Capitol to Pelosi. He expects people to believe, without evidence, that he made a recommendation to deploy troops to defend the Capitol. From his own supporters? Although, there is a scenario under which that might make sense. The Committee report also noted that…

“An email sent by [Trump’s] Chief of Staff [Mark] Meadows on January 5th explicitly noted that the DC Guard would be on hand to ‘protect pro Trump people.'”

In Trump’s mind there was no risk of harm to the Capitol, or to members of Congress, or even to his Vice-President, Mike Pence. He was only concerned about the insurrectionists that he was leading, albeit from behind.

Additionally, Trump’s assertion that the Committee report neglected to “show the ‘Peacefully and Patrioticly’ [sic] words I used,” is also demonstrably false. The Committee report says that…

“Trump used the phrase scripted for him by his White House speechwriters, ‘peacefully and patriotically’ once, about 20 minutes into his speech. Then he spent the next 50-or-so minutes amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own Vice President and Republican Members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight. ‘And we fight. We fight like hell’ the President said to a crowd that had already ‘spent the day chanting, ‘Fight for Trump!'”

Once again, Trump is being deliberately dishonest about the contents of the Committee report. Not only does it mention the words he used, it puts them in the proper context so that their insincerity is apparent.

If Trump were truly interested in peaceful protest, he wouldn’t have used language that incited violence, such as when he said “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And he wouldn’t have waited three hours before putting out a statement asking his insurrectionists to stand down. But even in that statement he praised the rioters and told them that he “loved” them.

This is all standard Trumpian speak that serves only to exalt Trump and advance his lies and his lust for power. His glassy-eyed disciples will devour it whole and unquestioningly. His toadies on Fox News and other wingnut media will spread it without noting the obvious falsehoods. But his days are numbered as the law closes in on him, and as he continues to humiliate himself with pathetic and impotent defenses like those above.

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

Posted by Mark NC on December 22, 2022 at 12:00 pm. 5 Comments :

for more than two years Donald Trump has been sobbing about the 2020 presidential election that he pretends to believe was “rigged and stolen” from him. Never mind that he hasn’t been able to produce a shred of evidence of it more than sixty court cases. And for all of that time his official Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) has supported his “Big Lie” even when such support resulted in a violent insurrection in Washington, D.C., that Trump incited, and for which he may soon be indicted.

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As a result of Fox News serving the seditious aspirations of Trump, the network is being sued for more than a billion dollars by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation. They allege that Fox News knowingly aired false stories that Dominion purposefully designed their voting machines to switch votes for Trump to Joe Biden.

Critical to the success of a defamation suit is the plaintiff’s ability to prove that the defendant knew, or should have known, that their defamatory statements were false and were made with malicious intent. And Dominion is apparently meeting that criteria according to reports of testimony given during deposition.

Specifically, testimony provided under oath reveals that Fox News Senior Trump-Fluffer Sean Hannity knew that Trump’s claims of election fraud were untrue, even a he was reporting on and endorsing them. When Hannity was asked by Dominion’s lawyer about Trump’s unfounded claims, he replied that “I did not believe it for one second.”

That’s about as clear a confirmation of deliberately defamatory speech as any court will ever hear. And unfortunately for Fox News, it isn’t the only example of it in this case. In September, a Fox News producer sent out a memo warning that the network must stop “pulling conspiracy theories from dark corners of the Web to justify then-President Donald Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen from him.” And Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott made similar warnings about Trump’s “Big Lie” purveyors and election deniers saying that “We can’t give the crazies an inch.”

SEE THIS: Fox News Producer Warned Network to Stop Putting Hosts on Air to Spew Election Conspiracy Lies

The Dominion trial, which is scheduled to commence next April, is still just in its preliminary phase, conducting depositions and discovery. They have yet to present this evidence to a jury. And we still don’t know how much more evidence has been obtained, or will be obtained, through the acquisition of documents and depositions. But suffice to say that at this point Fox News must be extraordinarily nervous.

If the pretrial particulars continue to unfold as they have been thus far, look for Fox News to beg for a settlement. Dominion, however, has said that they won’t settle for anything that doesn’t include a confession of guilt by Fox News and an unqualified apology and retraction.

However, even if Fox News concedes to Dominion’s demands and they settle, Fox still has to deal with another election related billion dollar lawsuit by Smartmatic. And a judge in that case has already issued an opinion that “actual malice” is evident in statements by Fox’s Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson. So 2023 looks to be a, let’s say “interesting” year for Fox News.

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Fox News Spreads Blatant Lie that the ‘FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story’

Posted by Mark NC on December 21, 2022 at 1:51 pm. 1 Comments :

For the past couple of weeks Elon Musk has been dispatching his flagrantly biased and incurious yellow journalists to propagate obvious falsehoods about Twitter’s previous management. His intent has been to discredit them as disreputable Trump haters and submissive servants of clandestine FBI handlers.

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After seven tediously long document dumps of what were private, internal communications, Musk and Company pitifully failed to prove their predetermined conclusions, or whatever they imagined was their point. To the contrary, these much ballyhooed excretions of mostly random and irrelevant emails actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team acted responsibly to protect the website – and the nation – from documented propaganda and disinformation by Russia and other hostile foreign actors.

Musk’s minions only succeeded in showing that Twitter’s staff was not biased against Trump. In fact, they were decidedly fair in their analysis and decisions. But that didn’t stop the right-wingnut echo chamber from latching onto Musk’s muckrakers, especially Donald Trump…

The latest batch from the “Twitter Files” trash heap (Part 7) continued in the tradition of the previous six. This episode’s author, Michael Shellenberger, promised that he would “present evidence” that the FBI sought to “discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden.” Not only did he present no such evidence, he actually presented evidence of the opposite. Such as one email wherein “Twitter debunked false claims” of foreign influence. And another wherein “Twitter’s [Yoel] Roth has pushed back against the FBI.”

Despite that demonstration of fairness and good judgement, Fox News ran with a particularly deviated narrative. The headline for their “reporting” said that the “FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story.”

You have to go through a LOT of hoops to conclude that the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The email in question says Twitter collected $3,415,323 since Oct. 2019 to process legal requests made by the FBI. pic.twitter.com/i0yTCEDcCD

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 21, 2022

To the surprise of no one who has watched Fox News for more than a few minutes, that headline – and the accompanying story – was just plain untrue. What Fox News used to craft their false framing was one of Shellenberger’s points where he claimed that “The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.” He elaborated with a quote from an unnamed Twitter staffer who reported that “we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019.”

Fox News is deliberately misinterpreting that as the FBI paying Twitter to get them to suppress a story about Hunter Biden. In reality, the FBI is reimbursing Twitter for the time they spent working on requests for information by the FBI. That is a legally mandated payment that requires that “a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information … shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary.”

As if that weren’t enough, there isn’t even any connection in the emails that were released between the FBI reimbursements and any story about Hunter Biden. Musk and Fox News just totally manufactured that.

Furthermore, the reports that the FBI “demanded” certain actions be taken by Twitter, and that Twitter obediently complied, are also untrue. And, once again, the facts were tucked away in Musk’s own document dump that disclosed that the FBI’s requests could not be remotely characterized as demands. They were merely notices about “accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.” (emphasis added)

This is the sort of manipulation that Fox News engages in on a daily (hourly) basis. They have no regard for the truth. They are only interested in disseminating distortions that advance their ultra-conservative agenda. It’s how they can take mundane irrelevancies and magnify them into explosive pseudo-scandals.

FOR INSTANCE: Fox News Lies: Falsely Accuses Michele Obama of ‘Pressuring’ Twitter to Ban Trump

UPDATE: The FBI responds: “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements. […] As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. […] It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

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Trump Renews Whining that Mike Pence is a Deep State Traitor for Not Overturning the Election

Posted by Mark NC on December 20, 2022 at 2:29 pm. 8 Comments :

It’s only Tuesday, and yet this has already been been a terrible week for Donald Trump. It’s week that follows several wherein he has been brutally and deservedly chastised for having dined with racists and anti-Semites, and for calling for the “termination” fo the Constitution, and for hawking his ridiculous NFT trading cards.

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As if that weren’t enough, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection that Trump incited has issued criminal referrals to the Justice Department citing at least four charges that they recommend be brought against him. Needless to say, he didn’t take that well.

True to form, Trump is lashing out wildly in every direction. He is attacking every perceived foe in his twisted mind, including the January 6th Committee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, the FBI (that was headed by his appointees), Hunter Biden, and the ever present and nefarious “Deep State,” that is supposedly populated by Democrats and Republicans conspiring to destroy Trump.

In a typically unhinged harangue Tuesday morning, Trump unleashed his rage at those responsible for what he still calls the “rigged and stolen” presidential election of 2020. Although now that Congress is about to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act, he is now focusing on that aspect, and the role that he believes his former vice-president, Mike Pence, had in betraying him and his tyrannical aspirations.

In a series of posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump laid out his laments over Pence choosing not to violate the Constitution by failing to certify the election results. Trump whined that…

“They said the Vice President has ‘absolutely no choice,’ it was carved in ‘steel,’ but if he has no choice, why are they changing the law saying he has no choice?”

And that…

“it is because the Vice President did have a choice, and looking back at it now, the 2020 Voting Fraud was far greater than anyone thought possible, with even our Government, through the FBI, changing the results of the Election by millions and millions of votes.”

And that…

“John Eastman and others were correct in stating that the Vice President of the United States had the right to do what should have been done. […] The whole thing is one big Scam!”

And that there was a…

“highly successful effort made by the FBI in illegally changing the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Trump’s infamously ignorant grasp of government and laws is evident here as he demonstrates his failure to understand the Constitution’s directive regarding the vice-president’s largely ceremonial role in certifying the Electoral College count. Trump thinks that because a bipartisan majority of members of Congress seek to clarify some of the archaic language in the original Electoral Count Act of 1887, that the old law permits the vice-president to unilaterally discard any of those votes that he chooses.

That, of course, is absurd. And cleaning up the language is just being done in order to prevent future corrupt leaders like Trump from trying to misinterpret the law in order to assume dictatorial control of the government.

What’s more, Trump is alleging – without any factual basis – that the FBI played some sort of role in “changing the results of the Election by millions and millions of votes.” As usual, Trump doesn’t provide a shred of evidence to support his allegations. However he does manage to get his toadies in Congress to go along with him. James Comer, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee said this on the subject…

“We need to halt everything with the FBI. All funding. Until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who gave them the authority to do it.”

Rep. James Comer calls for defunding the FBI pic.twitter.com/oacTjjUQnl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 20, 2022

So now Republicans are openly advocating to defund the police. Someone needs to ask them how an unfunded FBI will investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or the election “fraud” that put Joe Biden in the White House. How will the FBI probe the FBI’s corruption on behalf of the “Deep State” cabal in the FBI? It’s all so very peculiar. Which, in the MAGA mind, is proof that it must all be true. And now according to Trump, it’s all Mike Pence’s fault.

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Crybaby Trump Throws a Tantrum in Response to the House Select Committee’s Criminal Referrals

Posted by Mark NC on December 19, 2022 at 5:09 pm. 12 Comments :

It was a long time coming, but the House Select Committee investigating Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021, has finally completed its work. And the first order of business was to issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Trump’s well documented crimes.

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The Committee is recommending that charges be brought against Trump for obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and incitement, rebellion or insurrection. It’s a historic and unprecedented action taken in response to the historic and unprecedented acts of a rogue president. And Trump predictably lashed out at the Committee (that he was too chicken to testify before) with all the determination of a bratty six year old denied a toy that he wanted. On his pitifully floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump said that…

“The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!”

There’s a surprisingly large amount of bullshittery in that brief statement. Let’s explore it…

The charges are not “fake.” They are very real and histoically profound.
The Committee was not “highly partisan.” There were two conservative Republicans on the panel.
It was a Select Committee, not as Trump calls it in his infantile manner, the “Unselect Committee.”
The charges have never been “submitted, prosecuted, and tried” before in any court.
Trump survived conviction, but he cannot by any stretch of the imagination honestly say that he “WON convincingly.”
A congressional impeachment is not the same as a court trial and thus there was no “Double Jeopardy.”

Poor Donald Trump is struggling desperately to absolve himself of his obvious guilt with a pathetically ignorant comment that totally avoids facts and rational analysis. He wishes the charges were “fake” so that he could go on pretending that there is no imminent legal peril in his near future. And no matter how much he tries, he can’t shake the fact that the Congress of the United States has found that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him for multiple crimes.

Consequently, Trump fires up his imagination to create a false recollection of what has taken place since the insurrection that he incited. Contrary to his lies, the House voted to impeach Trump by a 232–197 vote, with all 222 Democrats voting to impeach, joined by ten Republicans. In the Senate Trump survived due to the two-thirds requirement for conviction. The final vote was a majority of 57 guilty to 43 not guilty, including seven Republicans, but short of the two-thirds threshold.

Failing to make a coherent legal case for his innocence, Trump took a detour to rely on the devotion of his cult followers, as if that has any relevance under the law. And he repeated another couple of lies that he has been telling for nearly two years, saying that…

“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Americans know that I pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan 6, and that I went on television and told everyone to go home.”

Not exactly. Setting aside the overt threat in Trump’s comment, the truth is that Americans know that he never pushed for any troops on January 6th to protect the Capitol – from his own supporters. That doesn’t even make sense unless he expected his cult followers to riot. And he didn’t go on TV for almost three hours after the assault was in progress and many people, including law enforcement, were injured. When he did make a statement, he told the rioters that he loved them.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Lame Address to His Terrorist Coup Plotters: “Go Home, We love you.”

Furthermore, Trump is still showing support for the traitors who stormed Congress, promising to halt their prosecutions or pardon them, if he returns to the White House.

Trump posted several other comments on his website that were equally riddled with flagrant falsehoods and devoid of any substance. He raged about “Radical Left Democrats (Communists),” and non-existent election fraud, and “the Massive number of CRIMES committed by JOE & HUNTER BIDEN” that reside only in his twisted mind.

Trump also posted a video clip of Nazis being sentenced from the film “Nuremberg” with Alec Baldwin. But somehow he didn’t get that most Americans will associate Hitler’s henchmen in the clip with him and his cadre of traitors. That’s how oblivious he is to reality in his current state of derangement.

UPDATE: Trump Responds to the January 6th Committee Report By Flagrantly Lying About What it Says

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Fox News Fanboy Tucker Carlson Oozes His Perverse Trump Love at Right-Wing Cult Festival

Posted by Mark NC on December 18, 2022 at 11:01 am. 3 Comments :

For more than six years Fox News has served as the de facto Ministry of Propaganda for Donald Trump and his Republican Party. Their hosts and guests have marched in lock-step to the beat of Trump’s dystopian drum, even after he incited a violent insurrection in Washington, D.C., or stole and lied about hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, or called for the “termination” of the Constitution. And that only scratches the surface of his overtly illegal and anti-American offenses.

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The devotion to Dear Leader Trump has been unshakable at Fox News no matter how hostile he becomes toward the principles of America or the values of its citizens. And the competition for the most adoring Trump-fluffer at Fox has been fierce with the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, and Jesse Watters among the slobbering contenders.

This weekend, however, Fox’s Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, moved into a leading position. He spoke at the devoutly Trump worshipping affair, Americafest, put on by the ultra-conservative Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Arizona. The roster for this event was a rogues’ gallery of right-wingers that included four Fox News hosts and five GOP members of Congress, along with crackpots like Mike Lindell, Steve Bannon, and Trump spawn, Donnie Jr.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at #AmericaFest next Monday! pic.twitter.com/Z5CZUSafay

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) December 12, 2022

In his address to the Trump cultists in the audience, Carlson literally professed his love for Trump, who he says “completely changed my view of everything.” It was an extended sonnet of his sickly sentiment toward the twice-impeached wannabe dictator. You have to wonder how he managed to discretely wipe the drool from his mouth. The infatuation began after he was asked a straightforward that he never actually answered (video below)…

Question: Who do you plan to support, Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis?
Carlson: Well, as you’ve noticed, my endorsement means a lot to the American people. […] Donald Trump completely changed my view of everything. Donald Trump is why I left Washington. And he did it in a really simple way by asking questions that no one around him could answer.

Questions like “Are stealth bombers really invisible?” And “How many birds do windmills kill?” And “Can you inject bleach to cure COVID?” And “Why don’t we nuke hurricanes?” And “Why shouldn’t I believe Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies?” And “Who needs elections when you should just install me as President-for-Life?” Carlson actually provided his own examples of Trump’s ignorant queries…

“[Trump] showed up and said things like, ‘Why do have a border?’ Shut up! Or my personal favorite, he says, ‘What’s the point of NATO?’ I wouldn’t have known any of that until Trump showed up and started asking these kind of like simple autistic questions like ‘Why are we doing this that way?’ And sort of exposed the whole thing. And I’m so grateful to have seen that.”

So Carlson is bragging that Trump is his mentor who informs him about all of the important bullcrap that a good propagandist needs to know. Especially about ways to advance Putin’s agenda by weakening the United States and its alliances around the world. But then Carlson sinks into his flagrant fixation on the “animal joy” he derives from the object of his depraved affection…

“Also I should also add, since why not, I actually love Donald Trump as a guy. I think he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever talked to in my life. I think he’s got this unbelievable life force to him. But talking to Trump is one of the great animal joys of life because he exudes this sort of animal joy. Trump is like totally charming and engaging, and fun, and interesting. And the last thing I’ll say about Trump that I really love is that his insights into people, which are always expressed in this like – Trump expresses in this way that’s like totally original.”

Get a friggen’ room, Tuckums. This is Olympic-grade sucking up. But it’s no wonder that Carlson is so enamored of Trump. He has a disturbing affinity for narcissistic totalitarians who seek to rule as tyrants. For instance, in addition to his consuming kinship with Putin, the strongman-smitten Carlson embraces Victor Orbán of Hungary. So it’s apparent that Carlson’s obsession with neo-fascism runs deeper than just his passion for Trump. It’s in his oh-so-pure, white supremacist blood.

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Tucker was asked if he supports Desantis or Trump in 2024. He didn’t say, but spent almost all of his 9 minute answer giggling and fanboying Trump. A few highlights here: “He’s this unbelievable life force. Talking to Trump is one of the great animal joys of life.” pic.twitter.com/DoeokViaBC

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 18, 2022

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Breaking on Fox News: Democrats Put Forward Bill to Bar Trump From Holding Public Office Again

Posted by Mark NC on December 16, 2022 at 12:44 pm. 4 Comments :

The media has of late been abusing the word “Breaking” to describe anything that they happen to be reporting on at that moment, whether or not it is particularly important or has any significance to the public. Every story is being treated as if it’s a 9.0 earthquake, even if it’s just 9 year old eating cookies.

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However, the “Breaking” descriptor in the headline of this article is entirely appropriate. Not because of the news about the Democratic legislation to bar Trump from holding office again, but because it is being covered by Fox News in manner that is relatively accurate and fair. That’s a breaking scoop on any day.

The article on the Fox News website (not on their cable network) reports that Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced legislation that would bar Donald Trump from reoccupying the White House. According to Fox News…

“Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., one of the House Democrats who led the second impeachment effort against Trump, introduced legislation Thursday with 40 Democratic co-sponsors that would invoke Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from returning to the White House, or holding any other office.

“The amendment states, ‘No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.'”

Fox News goes on to note that the amendment was “adopted in the 1860s to prevent former Confederates from occupying positions in the federal government after the Civil War,” and that Democrats believe that “it should be applied to Trump, who they allege incited an insurrection against the United States on Jan. 6, 2021.” All of which is true. Fox quotes Cicilline saying that…

“Donald Trump very clearly engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 with the intention of overturning the lawful and fair results of the 2020 election. You don’t get to lead a government you tried to destroy.”

This is a surprisingly unbiased account of the facts. And that justifies it being regarded as a “breaking” news story. In the past Fox News would have framed it as “radical liberal Democrats in Congress pervert the Constitution to stifle Trump!”

It’s likely that Fox News is softening their editorial adulation of Trump in favor of Trump-wannabe, Ron DeSantis. Also, in the wake of the midterm election last month, wherein his endorsed candidates suffered historic losses, Fox may be looking for a more electorally viable alternative to this year’s biggest loser.

Ever since the GOP’s midterm debacle, Trump seems to have descended into an abyss of depression as he hunkers down in his Mar-a-Lago bunker. That has led to behavior that can only be described as bizarre and desperate. Including…

Look for Fox News to continue winding down their fixation on Trump, but not their ultra-rightist agenda and propaganda. Simultaneously, look for Trump to become ever more maniacal and mentally unstable as his electoral and legal tribulations mount. Which will accelerate Fox’s dissociation, Trump’s animosity toward Fox, and the unstoppable downward spiral. In other words … Good times ahead!

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Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce Fails Pitifully in Portraying Poor Trump as a Put Upon Victim

Posted by Mark NC on December 13, 2022 at 10:40 am. 2 Comments :

From its outset, Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” Soap Opera purported to expose the social media platform’s content moderation staff as biased against Donald Trump. However, after four episodes it utterly failed to achieve its own blatantly biased objective. Now the fifth and latest installment flops in a similarly humiliating manner.

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Episode five was a 46 tweet spray by conservative author Bari Weiss that sought to disparage the decision makers at Twitter. She accused them of being predisposed to banning Trump merely due to “the risk of further incitement of violence” that he represented following his January 6th insurrection. However, the messages that were cited actually show a team that was conscientious of the complexity of the situation and committed to fully and fairly deliberating the choices available to them.

As has been the established practice by the previous installments, Weiss posted a slew of screenshots of private internal communications that failed to advance her premise. Then she closed with a rather muddled observation that only illustrates how poorly she understands the concepts of free speech and public discourse.

Musk introduced episode five saying that “Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules.” That admission, aside from disparaging the free speech of hundreds of Twitter employees, is an inadvertent validation of Twitter’s team because it shows that they had not prejudged Trump. Weiss elaborated on that in several of her tweet quotes. For instance, these three tweets contradict the whole premise that Twitter insiders were bent on banning Trump from the start…

4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate.

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.

12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.

That is not the discourse of a biased cabal of Trump haters intent on banishing the coup-plotting, sore loser. To the contrary, it’s evidence of a diversity of opinion and a commitment to an open dialogue. And most of the rest of Weiss’ tweet storm was more of the same. However, when she got near the end she summed up her harangue with a couple of tweets that show how little sense she makes…

43. Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.

44. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.

So Wiess is lamenting the wholly contrived “concerns” that Twitter censored and blacklisted news, and was intent on banning Trump. Then she claims that those concerns “aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company,” but they are about “the power of a handful of people at a private company.” How exactly are those two things different? It’s like saying that the sky isn’t blue, it’s actually blue.

What’s more, Weiss appears to be oblivious to the fact that lots of private companies “influence the public discourse and democracy.” The media, for instance, and virtually every major corporation that has vested interests in how their industries are regulated. Does she think that oil or banking or pharmaceutical companies (to name just a few) don’t try to exert such influence?

In fact, Twitter itself is trying to exert such influence by releasing these messages that were sent by people who had an expectation of privacy when they were communicating amongst themselves. In at least one case a Twitter employee was driven from his home due to threats as a result of Musk’s inappropriate exposure of these people’s identities.

In addition to his callous recklessness, Musk is being flagrantly hypocritical by pretending that he’s interested in free speech or transparency. The inescapable fact is that he’s releasing this limited batch of pre-selected messages through his hand-picked, right-wing biased puppets. Meanwhile, he’s refusing to make all of the messages available to the news media and the public so that everyone can see everything that was discussed and all of the relevant context.

In other words, Musk is limiting what the public can know, and he is delegating his power to “a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.” Go figure.

What’s worse is that increasingly those people are repugnant cretins who promote racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism, such as most of those whose Twitter accounts Musk has restored, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kanye West, Project Veritas, Roger Stone, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, and especially Donald Trump.

MORE ON “TWITTER FILES”:

NOTE: Twitter 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.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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