Month: March 2016

Donald Trump Caught Cheating At Fox News Debate – Fox Covers It Up

Posted by on March 5, 2016 at 8:01 pm. 6 Comments :

At the Republican debate on Fox News last week, Donald Trump proved that he is an ignoramus and a liar. And now we learn that he is also a cheater. What happened will not surprise anyone who has observed Trump’s acute sociopathic tendencies, but it is nevertheless indicative of his aversion to civility and decency.

Fox News Donald Trump

CNN’s Dylan Byers reports that during the debate Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, came out unto the stage to consult with him. That is an explicit violation of debate rules. And to make matters worse, when a network staffer told Lewandowski that he had to leave, Lewandowski defiantly refused.

This is the sort of behavior that one would expect from a privileged, elitist, wannabe dictator who doesn’t believe that any rules apply to him. And it also reveals that Trump is too stupid to participate in a debate without getting help from his handlers. Even with that help Trump made numerous mistakes and told easily debunked lies. For example, he affirmed that as president he would try to order the military to commit war crimes, something that he has said before. The following morning his campaign released a statement contradicting Trump saying that he would adhere to all domestic and international laws. Then Trump gave a speech later that day reiterating his pro-war crimes stance.

The fact that Trump has to cheat, and do so openly even after being told to stop, foretells an ominous future should he ascend to the White House. It exposes his proclivity for ignoring legal standards of conduct. It marks him as someone who would not hesitate to violate the law in order to get his way.

The sad thing about this is that Trump’s supporters are so dazzled by his gold-plated persona that they will probably like him more because of this. They will regard it as a sign of strength. But they should think twice (which mistakenly presumes that they have thought once already). Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples are the same Tea Party know-nothings that go bonkers when they hear about President Obama’s executive orders (of which he has issued fewer than any president in the last century). They are the same wingnuts who complain without foundation that he disregards the Constitution. They are convinced that he violates the law pretty much any day that he wakes up.

Consequently, it would be an epic feat of hypocrisy to approve of Trump’s shady dealings. It would also be dangerous from the standpoint of their own political agenda. Since Trump has no political convictions, his lawlessness could be put to use doing something that the righties detest.

Breaking the agreed upon rules of a civilized debate does not indicate strength. To the contrary, it indicates fear of being constrained to fair play. It indicates an inner sense of inferiority that you can’t compete on a level playing field. It is the definition of weakness.

Fox News doesn’t fare any better in this scandalette. After failing to stop Trump from consulting with his campaign manager, Fox told the other debate participants that they could have similar consultations. In other words, Fox just said that everybody can cheat and ignore the rules that were previously agreed upon for sound reasons. That’s a huge cop-out. Part of the purpose of these debates is to be able to judge the candidate’s ability to think on their feet.

So what could Fox have done differently? They could have sent Trump home for the night. They could have banned him from the next debate. They at least could have disclosed to the audience what had occurred. If a pitcher throws a spitball, the umpires don’t tell the other team’s pitchers that they can throw spitballs too. The violation is disclosed and the violator is sent to the lockers. Fox decided to expand the cheating and lie to the viewers by keeping all of it secret.

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

It seems that every day we learn something new about Fox News and the Republican Party that reveals more about their hypocrisy, larceny, and total lack of ethics. Donald Trump is the perfect Fox News candidate because they are both averse to honesty and principles. That’s probably why they created him in the first place.

CNN Catches Donald Trump Stiffing The Veterans He Pretends To Love

Posted by on March 4, 2016 at 12:57 pm. 6 Comments :

Remember when Donald Trump was too chicken to face Fox News host Megyn Kelly in a Republican debate, so instead of participating in the last debate before the Iowa caucus he cobbled together a phony veterans benefit and pretended to raise money for the wounded warriors he professed to “love all over the place?” Well, a funny thing happened.

Donald Trump

CNN decided to look into the distribution of the reported six million dollars that was raised to see if any of the twenty-two charities Trump listed as recipients had actually received any donations (video below). Their report revealed that, more than a month later, only about $800,000 of the six million dollars had found its way to the intended veteran beneficiaries.

CNN was initially told by the Trump campaign that the information about the funds was on his website, but after extensive searching that turned out not to be true. So CNN’s Drew Griffin called all of the listed charities to ascertain whether they had received any donations. Only seven organizations reported receiving any money. Griffin reported that…

“We have been asking, other news organizations have been asking, where’s the accounting of this? It’s a big dollar amount but it’s not high math when you’re dealing with hundred thousand dollar checks and six million dollars in donations. It should be easy to do. Charity Navigator, one of the groups that follows charities, says the money should have been disbursed by now. We continue to ask, but get no answers.”

This may be one of the reasons that several veterans groups announced that they would refuse to take any of Trump’s money before the bogus telethon began. Many people regarded the event as a political stunt that insulted America’s veterans by using them as campaign props.

What’s more, of the alleged six million dollars raised, four million came from four of Trump’s wealthy pals making one million dollar donations each. That’s two-thirds of the total that Trump raised with four phone calls that he could have made at any time, but never bothered. He only reached out to these donors when he needed an excuse to ditch the Fox News debate and the fearsome Megyn Kelly.

It remains to be seen where the rest of the money is and when or whether it will be disbursed. This delay further affirms that Trump is as insincere an advocate of veterans issues as he is about virtually everything else to which he shamelessly panders. It makes the release of his tax returns even more crucial as he has been accused of not being as charitable as he claims and is evading the disclosure of that by not releasing those returns.

Trump has never been regarded as a philanthropist. In fact, he is rather infamous for being the least charitable billionaire in the United States. With his purported billions of dollars he could easily have made a donation for the whole six million all by himself and disbursed it overnight by cutting a few checks. The fact that he hasn’t tells us just how much he really cares about veterans. To him they are merely another issue to exploit in order to get his way.

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

Yes, Donald Trump Did Make An Ass Of Himself At The Debate – Again

Posted by on March 4, 2016 at 9:01 am. 3 Comments :

In case you missed the latest Republican debate on Fox News, here is a recap of some the lowlights provided by the GOP front-runner, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump GOP

Moderator Chris Wallace opened with a question referencing Mitt Romney’s brutal takedown of Trump earlier that day: “[Mitt Romney] challenged you to answer with substance, not insults. How do you answer Mitt Romney, sir?” Not surprisingly, Trump responded with an insult: “Well look, he was a failed candidate, he should have beaten president Obama very easy.”

Trump was asked about his failure to disavow the support of David Duke, the KKK and other white supremacists. He came clean saying “I totally disavow the Klu Klux Klan. I totally disavow David Duke. I’ve been doing it now for two weeks, this is your — you’re probably about the 18th person that’s asked me the question. It was very clear.” That’s funny, because his previous reason for not doing so was that he didn’t hear the question due to a “very bad earpiece.” He has apparently abandoned that lie. And white supremacists continue to back his candidacy for reasons that are obvious to anyone who listens to him.

On the subject of how badly the discourse in the Republican campaign had deteriorated into infantile insults, Trump elected to sink even further saying “[Marco Rubio] referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee.” Something tells me that he is going handle this the same way he is handling his tax returns – by refusing to provide evidence (thank God). And something also tells me that he is just as dishonest about both subjects. His bellicose bullying is clearly overcompensating for shortcoming.

Rubio hit Trump again on his record as a businessman who failed repeatedly and had the benefit of a generous inheritance. Trump continued to evade the issue, changing the subject to the “small” loan of a million dollars that he received from his father. Someone needs to ask him directly how much he received from his father’s estate when he died. Published reports put the amount as high as $200 million.

Trump gave a long, and nearly incoherent, answer when asked when he will start having his clothing lines manufactured in the U.S. He eventually said that he wouldn’t do it because it wasn’t financially feasible because China, Japan, and Mexico “make it impossible for clothing-makers in this country to do clothing in this country.” Of course, the truth is that there are many domestic clothing manufacturers and Rubio made that point by noting that all of the clothes on his website are made in the U.S.

Trump was asked if he would authorize of The New York Times to release the tapes from an interview that included off-the-record remarks. He declined saying that “I have too much respect for that process to say ‘just release everything.’ I would not do that.” He seems not to grasp the concept. Being off-the-record is purely a concession to the interviewee. It is not a process or a promise to the journalist. If he releases the reporter from the agreement, the reporter would be thrilled to publish the material. Trump is obviously trying to blame his refusal to release the material on an imaginary “process” because he’s afraid of what it will reveal about him.

Trump was asked about his flip-flopping, including the time he said that he would have invaded Afghanistan, which he said that he would not do the day before. His explanation was that “Well, on Afghanistan, I did mean Iraq.” The only problem with that is that the full statement he made opposing the Afghanistan invasion was this: “We’ve made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place. That thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave. Just as I said that Iraq was going to collapse after we leave.” He could not plausibly have meant Iraq instead of Afghanistan if he included Iraq in the comment as another example of invasions he opposed.

And then there was this bizarre exchange with co-moderator Bret Baier:

Baier: Mr. Trump, just yesterday, almost 100 foreign policy experts signed on to an open letter refusing to support you, saying your embracing expansive use of torture is inexcusable. […] So what would you do, as commander-in-chief, if the U.S. military refused to carry out those orders? […] the military will refuse because they’ve been trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders.
Trump: They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me.
Baier: But they’re illegal.
Trump: Well, look, you know, when a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center, and his family gets sent back to where they were going — and I think most of you know where they went — and, by the way, it wasn’t Iraq — but they went back to a certain territory, they knew what was happening. The wives knew exactly what was happening. They left two days early, with respect to the World Trade Center, and they went back to where they went, and they watched their husbands on television flying into the World Trade Center.

First of all, Trump is revisiting a lie he has told before about the wives of the 9/11 hijackers. Only two of the terrorists were married, and their wives never came to the U.S. in the first place, so they never flew back to that “certain territory.” Secondly, Trump completely dodged the question as to how he would coerce the military to commit war crimes, which is what he is proposing when he says that he would bomb the families of terrorists. Soldiers are actually duty-bound to refuse to follow unlawful orders.

And this is current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president. As frightening as is the prospect of such an ignorant, dishonest, wannabe dictator becoming president, it is even scarier that there is a sizable faction of Republican voters who support him. This affirms my theory that Trump is just a symptom, his followers are the disease.

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

Mitt Romney Scorches Donald Trump – Heads Explode At Fox News

Posted by on March 3, 2016 at 11:13 am. 7 Comments :

This morning there was an unprecedented attack by a former Republican presidential candidate on a current front-runner for the GOP nomination. Mitt Romney’s speech was a well constructed and impassioned plea to Republican voters to reject Donald Trump, whom Romney called a phony and a fraud. Romney’s speech covered a panoply of Trump’s abhorrent remarks and disastrous proposals. Video of Romney’s address is below, along with some select quotations. But first…

Mitt Romney Donald Trump

The response by Fox News immediately following Romney’s speech was swift and decidedly hostile to Romney. Fox host Jon Scott impaneled three guests to discuss the uncommonly harsh criticism of Trump. All three of them bashed Romney and predicted that the ensuing controversy would benefit Trump. It was a lock-step, unified condemnation of Romney in defense of Trump that didn’t bother to address a single substantive point from the address.

The post-speech analysis on Fox was followed by the regularly scheduled program, Outnumbered. And guess what? The reaction was identical to the three panelists who preceded them. Guest co-host Eric Bolling got the ball rolling by complaining that if Romney were sincere about his critique he should have come out with this speech sooner. Having failed to do that everything he said should be dismissed now. The rest of the cast of co-hosts generally agreed that because Romney lost the election in 2012 his electoral advice should be forever after ignored. But co-host Andrea Tantaros had the most cutting rebuke when she implored voters to tell Romney to “take it and shove it.”

After Outnumbered, Fox News continued their Romney-bashing with another panel of two contributors who both dismissed Romney as ineffective and irrelevant. The consistency of the stance against Romney was so thorough that, by all appearances, it could only have been planned in advance. There was clearly a directive sent down to the newsroom from the ivory tower office of Roger Ailes to trash Romney and defend Trump. Nothing else could explain the uniformity of thought by so many Fox personalities. And it is that type of uniformity that Fox News has always sought to ensure in order to manipulate the cultish disciples that watch the network.

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

Update: Romney predicted in his speech that Trump would respond “with every imaginable low road insult.” He called that one right. When Trump spoke at a rally in Portland Maine, he was obsessed with Romney’s 2012 loss and ignored every substantive issue that Romney raised. Then Trump proceeded with his robo-speech extolling his greatness and his promise to build a wall. And, of course, every cable news net covered live in its entirety despite the absence of any news value.

Here is the video of Romney’s speech, followed by some select quotes from the transcript that capture the tone of Romney’s warnings about a Trump presidency.

If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession. […] even as Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.

But wait, you say, isn’t he a huge business success that knows what he’s talking about? No he isn’t and no, he doesn’t. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. […] A business genius he is not.

Trump’s bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies. Insulting all Muslims will keep many of them from fully engaging with us in the urgent fight against ISIS.

[T]his is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity. […] There is dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War while John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.

Dishonesty is Trump’s hallmark: He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq. Wrong, he spoke in favor of invading Iraq. He said he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11. Wrong, he saw no such thing. He imagined it. His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader. His imagination must not be married to real power.

Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics. [..] Now imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does. Will you welcome that?

The audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play a hundred thousand times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media.
There are a number of people who claim that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. There is indeed evidence of that. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign, and on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row.

We will only really know if he is the real deal or a phony if he releases his tax returns and the tape of his interview with the New York Times. I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns. I predict that he doesn’t give much if anything to the disabled and to our veterans. I predict that he told the New York Times that his immigration talk is just that: talk.

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.

Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

Not a bad rant for a Republican, conservative, establishment, one-percenter.

Fox News Admits That The Media Is Rooting For Donald Trump

Posted by on March 2, 2016 at 7:30 pm. 2 Comments :

Yesterday News Corpse published an article on The Trump Effect that laid out how the media has a profit motive to keep Donald Trump in the race. The article included a quote from the CEO of CBS who confessed that, with regard to Trump, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” In other words, their lust for profit has a higher priority than their love of country.

Donald Trump News

So what happened on Fox News last night could not have happened at better time. On the Kelly File, host Megyn Kelly did a segment with the Fox News media correspondent and host of Fox’s MediaBuzz, Howard Kurtz. The discussion began with Kelly asserting that “a lot of the media, they love Trump.” That’s an understatement, particularly after exploring the Trump Effect and the profound financial incentive the media has to extend his place in the limelight. They are doing everything they can to keep his face in front of voters and maintain his electoral viability. Which led to this revealing exchange:

Kurtz: Now Cruz has made this argument in recent days, and Marco Rubio as well, that the media has focused so much attention on Donald Trump. They love Donald Trump. They’re rooting for Donald Trump. At least until the fall.
Kelly: But they do. If you look at the numbers even on the nightly newscast — the time they devoted just in the past night — last night to Donald Trump vs the other two, it was six minutes Trump, I think seven seconds, Rubio. I mean, the disparity was remarkable.
Kurtz: There’s a clear imbalance. And we’ve all had banners awaiting Trump news conference, which shows how he can hijack the news cycle. But a lot of that attention has been negative.

Kelly had finally admitted something that has been true for more than half a year – that the coverage of Trump by the media has been wildly out of proportion to the rest of the candidates of both parties. While Kurtz only mentioned that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had complained about this, last December Bernie Sanders told Chris Cuomo of CNN about a study that showed that Trump received 81 minutes of airtime on ABC News in 2015 while Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds.

The response by Kurtz to Kelly’s revelation, however, was painfully oblivious to reality. First of all, he tried to blame Trump for the imbalance by accusing him of “hijacking the news cycle.” Which makes you wonder if Kurtz knows the definition of “hijack.” Trump did not storm the studio and force the news producers at gunpoint to put him on the air. They did that all of their own accord. It was more of a gift from the press than a hijacking by Trump. If the media didn’t want to put him on then he wouldn’t be on, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Just ask Bernie Sanders.

Following that absurd portrayal of events, Kurtz then attempted to conflate two completely different issues. By veering off to say that “a lot of that attention has been negative,” he was changing the subject from the free airtime that Trump got to the amount of time spent discussing him. But that isn’t the problem that was raised by observing how much time Trump got every time he gave a stump speech. The cable news networks seem to cut to him live whenever he holds a rally. And, of course, they don’t do that for anyone else. That’s the problem, and Kurtz appeared not to want to acknowledge it.

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

The most striking part of this whole segment, though, was how both Kelly and Kurtz spoke about the media as if it were a detached entity that had nothing to do with them. However, the truth is that Fox New is the network that is most responsible for the coverage imbalance that they both concede exists. No network gives Trump more airtime than Fox News. And on Fox, no candidate receives as much airtime as Trump. So it was a bit disorienting to hear these two pretend that the Trump Effect was just some vague theory that was floating around and impacted all of the media equally. They may have come closer to representing reality by admitting that the media roots for Trump, but they continue to lie about their decidedly prominent role in the cheering section.

The Trump Effect: Bad For America, But ‘Damn Good’ For The Media

Posted by on March 1, 2016 at 9:15 pm. 7 Comments :

Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, was speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, when he decided to reveal one of the sad truths of modern media that is well known to insiders. It’s something that is representative of the core principles (or lack thereof) of a once noble profession that has been co-opted by greed and the corporate craving for power. With reference to the campaign of Donald Trump, Moonves was caught bragging about the cash cash cow he was unashamedly milking.

Moonves: Who would have thought that this circus would come to town. It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. That’s all I got to say. So what can I say? The money’s rolling in, this is fun.

Donald Trump

Make no mistake, this is an admission by Moonves that his lust for profit is a higher priority than his love of country. Worse still, this pursuit of wealth, in Moonves’ view, is actually fun, even as it’s harmful to the rest of the nation and his fellow citizens. That is a form treason. Yet Moonves admits that despite Trump’s campaign being divisive, hostile, racist, ignorant, and detrimental to the well being of the United States, he gladly welcomes the damage it will do so long as CBS rakes in more cash.

And CBS isn’t alone in harboring these traitorous ambitions. The whole of the corporate media industry is guilty of the same self-interest. It’s why even MSNBC airs Trump’s stump speeches live in their entirety when they don’t do it for any other candidate. And it’s the result of the consolidation within the business that has thrust the profit motive over patriotism. These new multinational conglomerates have no incentive to be loyal to any nation, or to any anything other than their next quarterly earnings report. The one exception to this may be Fox News, whose owners and management are just as committed to pushing right-wing propaganda as they are to enriching their themselves.

The profit incentive for the media has a toxic effect on democracy. It produces reporting that is driven by motives other than honestly informing the public. What Moonves is putting on display for all to see is the damage that can be done when a news enterprise can be justifiably suspected of distorting their stories in order to fatten their wallets. Moonves was literally rooting for Trump specifically because his brand of melodramatic demagoguery draws more eyeballs to the advertising the network is now selling for inflated rates.

Moonves: I’ve never seen anything like this and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry, it’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going. […] “I’m not taking any sides, I’m just saying for us, economically, Donald Trump’s place in this election is a good thing.

With cheerleading like that, how can anyone watch this campaign coverage and be confidant that they are being told the truth. Clearly, the media has a profit motive to keep Trump in the race, and even boost his chances of securing the Republican nomination in order to keep the register ringing straight through to November and beyond. The other candidates are being deep-sixed because they can’t pull in the big bucks the way The Donald does.

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

This isn’t democracy. There may not be a word for what this is. We could call it a capitalocracy to illustrate the fact that the worst elements of capitalism are what determines who our leaders will be. We may as well stop having elections and just give prospective candidates their own TV shows and the one with the highest Nielsen ratings becomes president. Oh wait a minute. That’s pretty much how Donald Trump got to where he is today.