Month: December 2017

Fox News Escalates the War on Christmas With a Fake and Hypocritical Attack on Hillary Clinton

Posted by on December 7, 2017 at 2:28 pm. 2 Comments :

The eternal struggle over the embattled Christmas holiday continues. At least on Fox News where it originated and prospers. And as the alleged birthday of Christ approaches, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends take up their battle stations to fight once more against the forces of evil who want to destroy Christmas.

Fox News Christmas

On Thursday morning Fox and Friends suited up to face a fearsome enemy of Christmas. They aired a segment (video below) about a tree ornament that featured Hillary Clinton. The bit began with co-hosts Pete Hegseth and Ainsley Earhardt introducing a Fox News reporter who valiantly sluethed this affront to the baby Jesus:

Hegseth: This Christmas season deck the halls with Hillary Clinton. A Christmas tree topper, complete with angel wings, is turning heads online, and on this couch in my brain this morning.
Earhardt: Here with a response, blowing up social media, is Fox News Headlines 24/7 reporter Carly Shimlus.
Shimkus: People are calling this “Resistmas.” Have you heard of this? Christmas is now politically charged as well? Other people on Twitter not so sure about the whole Resistmas thing. Jack [Posobiec]on Twitter says “The Left has replaced Christmas with ‘Resistmas’ as their worship of themselves continues.”

For those unfamiliar with “Jack,” Fox News just featured a tweet by a notorious alt-right, white nationalist. Why they picked him out the all the possible Twitter commenters on this subject is obvious. Just like their Messiah, Donald Trump, they have a deeply held affinity for overt racists.

Back to the segment. The Fox News Klan were clearly disturbed by what they called the “politically charged” Christmas tree ornament. But there are a couple of big problems with that reaction. First of all, the ornament was not made or sold by Hillary Clinton or anyone associated with her in any way.

Secondly, If politicizing Christmas is so offensive, why don’t they ever complain when Trump does it? After all, he incessantly yowls about “bringing Christmas back” in a transparent attempt to exploit it as a political cudgel. Christmas, of course, has never been away. But that, like all other facts, is irrelevant to Trump and his glassy-eyed disciples. The only use Trump has for Christmas is as a means of firing up the goofballs who go to his rallies and for distracting the media from his myriad scandals.

However, the most galling part of this ludicrous segment is the flagrant hypocrisy. It took about two minutes to find Donald Trump’s blatantly political Christmas tree ornament. This ornament is not being offered by some third party profiteer. It’s actually being sold on his own website. And the message has nothing to do with Christmas, Jesus, or any other theme of the holiday season. It hypes his crass commercial slogan “Make America Great Again.” Because that’s just so Christmasy. According to the website, this tacky trinket will help his deplorables to “Get in the Christmas spirit.”

Donald Trump Christmas

The MAGA Christmas tree ornament is now selling for $45.00. That’s a substantial discount from the original price advertised in a Trump campaign donation email last year, when it cost donors $149.00. Apparently it wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves.

This is another example of Fox News going into hysterics over something pitifully lame and entirely meaningless. And in the process they lash out at their standard enemies (Clinton, Obama, Soros, Pelosi, etc.), while ignoring the far more offensive activities of their Dear Leader Donald Trump, who can do no wrong. It may seem like trivial fluff given the abundance of important issues that currently face our nation: Middle East turmoil, North Korea, terrorism, tax reform, climate change, sexual abuse, natural disasters, etc. And let’s not forget Trump’s treasonous connections to Russia and the special counsel investigating him.

But that’s the point. Fox News is using this to divert the attention of their viewers from those matters to petty concerns like Christmas tree ornaments. And what’s really sad is that they do it so very badly, but their audience is too stupid to notice.

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

Sean Hannity Affirms That The Trump Cult Has Officially Replaced the Republican Party

Posted by on December 6, 2017 at 3:16 pm. 1 Comments :

The ascension of Donald Trump has heralded a new era of political absurdities. His unpredictable rise in the Republican Party came with unusually hostile pronouncements directed at GOP regulars. The objects of his contempt included John McCain, George W. Bush, and Mitch McConnell, to name a few. As an example of the schizophrenic nature of his fractured loyalties, Trump argued publicly with the Republican National Committee during the campaign, then named it’s chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff (briefly).

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

However, Trump’s true allegiance was always to his own self-interest. And the best gauge of where he stood at any moment was the cast of characters at Fox News. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, his personal pals, and fellow sexual predators, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, and the premiere suck-up of the century, Sean Hannity, were (and are) his closest advisers. The relationship between Trump and his shadow cabinet of Foxies is excruciatingly tight.

So it may not come as a surprise to hear Hannity lash out at the party for which he has been a devoted toady for the last twenty years. With his infatuation for Trump growing by the day, Hannity has completely abandoned his long-held political commitments in favor of a new faithfulness to the emerging Trump Cult. And in the spirit of that betrayal, Hannity prostrated himself to the Pope of Trumpism, Steve Bannon, to declare and affirm that the Republican Party is dead:

“Here’s my view on the Republican Party. It is a dead party. They are morally corrupt, they are weak. They are ineffective, they’re vision-less, and they have no identity.”

Who can argue with that? Hannity went on to lament that he was “heartbroken” by what he said was the failure of trust by the GOP turning on Trump. It was behavior that he called “total and complete bullshit.” What precisely he is talking about is a mystery, considering the GOP’s blind obedience to Trump’s every delusional whim. They are a party that has stood by him despite his “pussy-grabbing” confession of sexual assaults, his denouncement of fellow party icons, his embrace of racist white nationalists, his admiration for brutal and oppressive tyrants like Vladimir Putin, and his infantile taunting of nuclear-powered foreign adversaries.

For a well known Republican bootlicker like Hannity to publicly renounce his party in favor of a reality TV game show host turned wannabe dictator should be profoundly disturbing to Republican politicians and voters. They are being thrown over for a faker who has manged to sell a shitload of snake oil to a pitifully ignorant minority of gullible Americans. But the Trump Cult movement is about as thick as a hair’s breadth. As soon as he wanders off to his golf resort retirement, or is paraded into a prison cell, the true believers will disperse and deny they ever supported him.

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

It isn’t certain that after Trump’s downfall his former disciples will re-embrace the GOP. Consequently, Trumpitis may be a fatal disease that ushers the party to its inevitable demise. And if the rest of us live through these difficult days until Trump shuffles off the stage, the damage he does to the right-wing may turn out to be blessing. If only the wait wasn’t so painful and dangerous.

Remember: 16 of Time’s ‘Silence Breakers’ Were Talking About Sexual Predator Donald Trump

Posted by on December 6, 2017 at 11:28 am. 3 Comments :

Time Magazine has released its highly anticipated Person of the Year issue. It’s an annual award to the person’s who had the biggest effect on the news. Their choice this year is a particularly appropriate selection considering the impact that women survivors of sexual harassment and abuse have had for the past several months.

Donald Trump MeToo

The “Silence Breakers” are an accumulation of a still growing community of brave women who are holding men accountable for inexcusable behavior and, in some cases, crimes. By featuring these women on the magazine’s storied cover Time had to bypass another newsmaker, Donald Trump. This will undoubtedly infuriate him as he thinks the selection is an honor and that only he is worthy of it.

However, coming in second for Person of the Year is especially profound considering that the chosen designees have a direct association with the pitiful runner-up. In fact, many of them owe their selection to Trump. After all, it is the President who is at the top of the list of sexual predators about whom the Silence Breakers are breaking their silence. Watch this video from Brave New Films that features sixteen of Trump’s victims describing his abuse in their own words:

The sweet part of relegating Trump to second place status is knowing how much that will gnaw at him. It’s another example of him being a loser who is universally despised (except for a small number of glassy-eyed cultists). But piercing his overblown ego isn’t sufficient reparation. Allowing Trump to remain in the White House tells all Americans, particularly women and girls, that they are not valued, respected, or taken seriously. If Trump isn’t impeached for obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia, financial corruption, undermining the free press, or being a pathological liar and malignant narcissist, then his sexual depravity and criminality should be more than reason enough.

This just in: A new Quinnipiac poll shows that 70% think that “Congress should investigate accusations of sexual harassment against President Trump.”

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

America’s Most Hated President is Pushing a Despised Congress to Pass an Unpopular Tax Bill

Posted by on December 5, 2017 at 12:48 pm. NO Comments :

We all need to let this sink in. The Republican-controlled Congress is frantically trying to get a tax bill to Donald Trump’s desk before he is impeached. The bill itself is a redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich and corporations. It will balloon the national debt and cause millions to lose their health insurance. But all of this is being pursued under extraordinarily peculiar circumstances.

Paul Ryan

What we are witnessing is a spectacle headlined by the least popular president in modern times. His approval ratings would need to improve substantially to reach the gutter. Gallup has him at a death-defying thirty-five percent. That’s just two points off of his all-time low of thirty-three percent earlier this week. He’s been mired in the low thirties for months. He has never risen above the forty-six percent he achieved at his inauguration.

The Congress is faring even worse. They are currently suffering an approval rating of only thirteen percent. That’s down by more than half from the already awful rating they had at the beginning of this session. Considering the fact that they have passed no significant legislation at all since then, it isn’t hard to understand the decline. All they have done is tried (and failed) three times to kill the popular ObamaCare program and find ways to defend Trump’s ignorance and divisiveness.

So Congress is going all in on a tax “reform” bill that promises to boost the economy, create millions of jobs, and cut taxes for everybody, without raising the debt. All of that has proven to be outright lies. The wealthy will be the only beneficiaries of this bill, while most middle class Americans will see tax increases. And the deficit will rise by more than a trillion dollars. Not surprisingly, this bill has garnered little support among the public. A paltry twenty-nine percent of voters support the GOP Tax Scam. More than half (56%) oppose it.

So what we have here is the most hated President in modern times pushing a despised Congress to pass a bitterly unpopular tax bill. It’s a thoroughly Republican project that got zero votes from Democrats. Nevertheless, the GOP is pulling out all the stops to force this garbage down the country’s throat whether they like it or not (they don’t).

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

And throughout the process we are being told lies by representatives who have lost any pretense of decency. They are even going so far as to support a child molester for the senate in Alabama to insure they have the votes they need for this abhorrent legislation. Let’s hope the American people remember this betrayal by their so-called representatives and vote them out of office next November. Then we can get on with the business of impeaching the traitor in the White House.

Fox News Issues Rare (And Obnoxious) Correction To Fake Story About MSNBC

Posted by on December 5, 2017 at 8:42 am. NO Comments :

Sunday morning’s episode of Donald Trump’s favorite cable news show, Fox and Friends, contained a flagrant error intended to smear their competition at MSNBC. Co-host Pete Hegseth reported that MSNBC failed to cover the verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial. This story has been a staple of Fox News propaganda aimed at demonizing undocumented immigrants. The not guilty verdict became a rallying cry at Fox News to their millions of racist viewers who believe that all immigrants are criminals.

Fox News Friends

There was just one problem. MSNBC did cover the story when it broke and for two days thereafter. The false reporting by Hegseth was uncorrected for at least twelve hours despite the network being informed of the error. Hegseth’s assertion that “MSNBC did not cover the verdict one time” was first broadcast and then disseminated tens of thousands of times across the Internet. And uncorrected references are still being retweeted.

On Monday Fox News finally got around to issuing a retraction, but not without taking a sarcastic swipe at the network they were lying about. This is what they tweeted from the Fox and Friends Twitter account:

Make no mistake, the reference to “2 minutes and 15 seconds” in a “48 hour span” was intended to belittle the coverage that MSNBC provided. In reality that is sufficient time to report the salient details of the story during time periods when viewers are awake to see it. But Fox News was more interested in mocking MSNBC than they were in sincerely correcting their dishonest reporting.

Nevertheless, getting a retraction from Fox News is so rare we might want to just be grateful for the effort no matter how grossly disingenuous. However, after acknowledging that MSNBC covered the Steinle verdict, they deleted the story and the video evidence of their lies. A copy of the clip can be seen here. What’s more, they have still not issued a correction on the air at Fox and Friends where the false report originated. To the contrary, Fox and Friends hosted Trump shill Kellyanne Conway Monday morning who actually brought up the fake MSNBC criticism (on Fox News video here at about 6:45). She repeated the lie that:

“MSNBC didn’t even cover the Kate Steinle murder verdict. Not a single moment according to your own graphic.”

None of the “Curvy Couch” potatoes bothered to inform her that what she was referencing was already determined to be untrue. That’s because it serves the interest of Fox News to allow bullshit to be freely disseminated. It’s especially repulsive considering the big deal they made out of a recent reporting error by ABC’s Brian Ross. Ross was suspended without pay for four weeks. At Fox News their lie was allowed to roam free and no one was punished. And that’s the real difference between professional journalism and Fox’s deliberately malicious fake news.

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

Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Being Sued For Defaming A Woman He Harassed – What About Trump?

Posted by on December 4, 2017 at 3:21 pm. 1 Comments :

When Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly they had already paid out about $45 million dollars to settle charges of sexual harassment and abuse against the blowhard host. Actually, they didn’t fire him until the network’s advertisers fled because they didn’t want to be associated with his revolting deviancy. But the result was the same as Fox News had to part ways with their biggest star.

Bill O'Reilly Donald Trump

Ever since O’Reilly was cast off, he has been proclaiming his innocence and disparaging his accusers as politically motivated liars. Now one of them is fighting back with a lawsuit alleging defamation and breach of contract. The Daily Beast reports that:

“A brand-new federal lawsuit filed Monday in the Southern District of New York claims O’Reilly and Fox have repeatedly defamed ex-Fox News producer Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, and violated the confidentiality terms of their 2002 settlement agreement with her, by making public statements that portrayed her and other O’Reilly accusers as liars and extortionists motivated by politics and greed.”

This is an excellent example of O’Reilly opening his fat mouth and disgorging comments that boomerang back to smack in the face. If he had the intelligence and character to comply with the terms of his own non-disparagement contract there would be no grounds for this lawsuit. But he couldn’t help himself. He had to lash out and call his accusers liars to salve his wounded ego. And he did so expecting that his victims would stay quiet because of the non-disclosure agreements they were forced to sign.

As it turns out, that assumption on O’Reilly’s part was ill-considered. He is now facing a credible complaint that could result in many of his accusers being released from any contractual promise of confidentiality. And he isn’t the only one.

Donald Trump has been accused of sexual harassment by at least sixteen women (See this moving video featuring Trump’s accusers in their own words). He settled some of those complaints with NDAs that imposed silence on the part of his victims. But one of them is challenging the agreement because Trump has spoken of the offenses and called his accusers liars. According to the Huffington Post:

“Summer Zervos, who accused Trump of sexually harassing her, is suing the president for defamation after he repeatedly called her allegations a ‘hoax’ and claimed his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired her to slander him.”

The legal arguments for both of these lawsuits is that it’s fundamentally unfair for the victims to be muzzled by contract while the abuser is free to defame them. And that’s a point that was made by Bernstein’s lawyer who expanded the scope of reparations to include all such victims:

“They should release all victims from their NDAs and let the truth out. It is cowardly to publicly attack these women knowing they have been subjected to contractual provisions requiring absolute silence.”

Indeed. Men like Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump are inherently cowards. They hide behind their power and position in order to take advantage of others. But given the recent revelations about sexual harassment in politics, media, and entertainment, they may not be able to get away with it anymore. At least hopefully they won’t. And the worst abuser of them all, who must not be allowed to escape accountability, currently resides in the White House – temporarily.

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

Trump Repeatedly Claims Hillary Clinton Lied To The FBI, But That’s a Lie

Posted by on December 4, 2017 at 1:19 pm. 1 Comments :

You can always tell when Donald Trump is frightened out of his gourd. He rattles off baseless assertions that attack his critics in a transparent attempt to deflect from what he fears. It’s a rather pathetic display of character weakness and an inability to face reality.

Hillary Clinton

On Monday morning Trump demonstrated this when responding to questions on the White House lawn (video below). He was asked about the recent guilty plea by his disgraced National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. And despite Flynn’s confession that he lied to the FBI, Trump expressed his disappointment and support for the felon:

“Well, I feel badly for Gen. Flynn. I feel very badly. He’s led a very strong life. […] I will say this: Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. I think it’s a shame.”

First of all, how do you live a very “strong” life? This is Trump exhibiting his severely limited vocabulary. It was either “strong” or “tremendous” or in a pinch, “huge.” Believe me. And Trump also proves that the Republican pretension of personal responsibility is a sham. How did the FBI destroy Flynn’s life? Wasn’t it Flynn who who destroyed his own life by his criminal dishonesty with regard to associations with Russian operatives? The FBI only held him accountable, which is their job.

But Trump wasn’t finished trying to divert attention from his own problems. He thought he could point a stubby, short finger of blame toward his arch nemesis, Hillary Clinton. The accusation that Clinton lied to the FBI “many times” is a wholly fabricated falsehood for which Trump has not even bothered to provide proof. And he’s been making this phony charge for several days. If Trump has evidence of a Clinton lie to the FBI, why doesn’t he say what it is? And why doesn’t he, or one of his sycophantic congressional lapdogs, send a request to investigate to the FBI director that he appointed?

Clearly there is no truth to Trump’s wild assertions. He’s just spraying blame wherever he can and hoping people stop noticing the disgusting deeds he’s perpetrating on the nation. For instance, this morning he also threw his wholehearted support behind the pedophile senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore. He reversed an Obama-era designation to protect endangered land in Utah. He escalated provocative military exercises in South Korea. And he’s celebrating a senate vote to advance a tax bill that redistributes wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and corporations.

It’s been a busy week for the President. And with his former aide cooperating with the special counsel investigation against him, Trump is accelerating his frantic efforts to shift the public discourse. Unfortunately for him, it isn’t working. Except on Fox News where there never is heard a discouraging word for Trump anyway.

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

Trump Says Reporters Should Be Punished For Inaccurate Stories – OK, Let’s Start With Fox News

Posted by on December 3, 2017 at 3:07 pm. 8 Comments :

On Friday ABC News correspondent Brian Ross misreported a story about confessed liar, and Donald Trump’s disgraced National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. Ross said that his sources told him that Flynn was prepared to testify that candidate Trump told him to contact the Russians. As it turned out it was during the transition, not during the campaign, that Trump told Flynn to hook up with Vladimir.

ABC News corrected the story, but the mistake cost Ross four weeks of pay and a suspension from duty. Naturally, Trump and his right-wing media mouthpieces wiggled their tails and began blasting out accusations of “fake news.” Never mind that the reaction to the error actually affirms the veracity of the so-called mainstream media. They acknowledged the mistake and punished the reporter. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Even Trump recognized that ABC deserved praise for their professionalism. He tweeted:

Setting aside Trump’s infantile and false characterization of the “Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt,” his suggestion that more networks demonstrate this sort of integrity is on point. And the network that spews more lies than any other is, of course, Trump’s favorite: Fox News. It is a nearly non-stop, 24/7, fiction factory that invents slanderous stories about Democrats and liberals, while fantasizing about Trump’s Messianic reign and defending him from every criticism.

For instance, Sunday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends set out to smear their competition at MSNBC. Co-host Pete Hegseth began a segment that accused the network of suppressing news about the acquittal of the defendant in the Kate Steinle murder case. Hegseth said that:

“In the days following the acquittal of the illegal immigrant responsible for Kate Steinle’s death, the media has now had a mixed response in their coverage, unsurprisingly. But one network has completely ignored it. MSNBC did not cover the verdict one time on Friday or on Saturday.”

Oh really? Apparently the Foxies don’t get out of their bubble very much. MSNBC did, in fact, report this story beginning on Thursday when it broke. Their coverage continued on Friday. It would be fair to say that it lost the “breaking” aspect after that, especially since that’s when the news of Flynn’s guilty plea was announced. Ironically, it was Fox News that is actually guilty of downplaying a bombshell report. Their primetime programs barely glanced at the Flynn story, while furiously hyping the Steinle verdict.

[Update: A tweet was posted to the Fox and Friends Twitter account acknowledging that MSNBC did cover the Steinle verdict. They subsequently deleted the story and the video, but a copy of the clip can be seen here. They have not issued an on-air retraction on Fox and Friends.]

Fox News

The examples of Fox News deliberately disseminating false information are too numerous to list here. But the fact-checkers at PolitiFact have compiled the data and found that Fox News broadcasts contain at least sixty percent false content. Think about that. Significantly more than half of what you see on Fox News are lies.

Which is why I am in complete agreement with Donald Trump with regard to more networks suspending reporters whose work is found to be inaccurate. Because if Fox News were held to that standard they would go dark for the next couple of years. And that would truly Make America Great Again.

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

Trump Lies On Top Of Lies That He’s Now Lying That He Lied About

Posted by on December 3, 2017 at 11:16 am. 2 Comments :

Confused? That’s exactly the point. Donald Trump is weaving a web of deliberate falsehoods in order to build up a tolerance to official dishonesty so that his gushing output of lies are dismissed as inconsequential and ordinary. But there is nothing ordinary about Trump’s pathological behavior and aversion to truth and decency.

Donald Trump Lies

In another morning tweetstorm, the Liar-in-Chief knocked off a series of embarrassingly ludicrous messages aimed at shoring up the faith of his glassy-eyed disciples. They included swings at the FBI and Hillary Clinton and special counsel Robert Mueller and, of course, the media. The one thing shared in common was a sense of desperation so thick it could stop a bazooka blast. Trump is clearly frightened out of (what passes for) his wits.

Among these tweets was one in particular that represents his brazen assault on verifiable facts. In response to the crushing news that his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is now cooperating with Mueller, Trump pounded out this absurdity:

This is one of the easiest Trump lies to refute. That’s because he’s on video saying exactly what he is now tweeting that he never said (video below):

“When I decided to just do it [fire FBI Directer James Comey] I said to myself, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”

So he told NBC’s Lester Holt that he fired Comey specifically because of the Russia investigation at the FBI. An investigation that Comey refused to halt at Trump’s insistence. Flynn, of course, was at the heart of the investigation. And we know now that he lied to the FBI to cover up the involvement of himself and others in the Trump campaign and administration, possibly including Trump.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn because he lied to Vice-President Mike Pence and the FBI. That was a new revelation. It was the first time that Trump acknowledged knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI. And if he knew that when he fired him, that is a confession to obstruction of justice.

Comey testified under oath before Congress that Trump asked him to stop the investigation. Now Trump is calling Comey a liar. But if you look at the record of both men in public life, it’s clear that Trump is the one that it is impossible to believe. He currently has racked up over 1,600 lies just since his inauguration. And this latest tweet is a new lie wherein he is lying about his previous lies. And what’s really sad – and somewhat frightening – is that there are still people who believe him.

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

Collusion Delusion: Trump Says He’s ‘Very Happy’ About the Flynn Guilty Plea (Video)

Posted by on December 2, 2017 at 11:18 am. 1 Comments :

Well, it took twenty-four hours for Donald Trump to think of something to say about his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. That’s twenty-three hours more than it takes him to comment on kneeling NFL players or how unfunny SNL is. And the extra time didn’t have any effect on his tendency to lie and exalt himself.

Robert Mueller Trump

In a tweet posted Saturday morning, Trump presented a version of events that contradicts reality. That’s typical of the President whose grip on reality is tenuous under the best of circumstances. But when he’s pressured by events that are likely to lead to his impeachment, he becomes even more unhinged. He tweeted that:

Let’s break that down. First of all, it’s important to recall that Trump resisted firing Flynn long after he knew of his offenses. U.S. Attorney Sally Yates went to the White House to personally notify them of Flynn’s problematic associations with Russia and other foreign operatives. So obviously Trump rushed into action and fired Yates.

Trump’s tweet also asserts that his reason for firing Flynn (who technically resigned) was because he lied to Vice-President Pence and the FBI. In fact, the only reason Trump ever gave for the firing was Flynn’s lies to Pence. If Trump is now confessing that he knew at the time that Flynn had lied to the FBI, that’s a brand new revelation. It seems unlikely that he would have that information because special counsel Robert Mueller wouldn’t share that sort of data with other subjects of an ongoing investigation. Also, if Trump knew then that Flynn lied to the FBI, how could he ask FBI Director James Comey to drop the case? Trump is either lying or he interfered in some manner with Mueller’s probe. Either way it’s obstruction of justice.

[UPDATE: A report citing anonymous sources is now alleging that Trump’s tweet was authored by his lawyer John Dowd. Since there’s no official statement from the White House, and Trump hasn’t updated his tweet, it’s impossible to ascertain whether this is accurate or just a desperate attempt to walk back a tweet that effectively confesses obstruction of justice. However, it hardly seems much better if Trump’s lawyer is the author because he should regarded as being intimately familiar with Trump’s affairs. What’s more, since there was no indication that the tweet might have been written by someone other than Trump, it raises the question as to whether any other tweets attributed to him were also written by someone else.]

Finally, Trump’s assertion that Flynn broke no laws and had nothing to hide is about as shallow an assessment as it’s possible to contrive. If there wasn’t any criminal activity, then why did Flynn lie? Clearly he was attempting to cover something up and hoping to get away with it. Trump’s failure to discern this illustrates how blind he is to what is obvious to everyone else. Or, once again, he’s lying. But there is a measure of self-delusion that can’t be ignored. Take for instance these comments Trump made to the press Saturday morning (video below):

Question: Mr. President, are you concerned about what Michael Flynn might tell the special counsel?
Trump: No, I’m not. And what has been shown is no collusion. No collusion. There’s been absolutely no collusion so we’re very happy.

Notice Trump’s triple repetition of the phrase “no collusion.” That’s typical of his speaking style, particularly when he is consumed by anxiety and in the throes of a panic. He feels the need to reinforce his message with the sledgehammer approach to public communications. But more to the point, Trump is projecting his fantastical notion of there being no legal jeopardy for himself simply because Flynn copped a plea. The whole point of plea bargaining is to charge a defendant with a lesser crime in exchange for information that leads to a more prominent offender. If Mueller didn’t get actionable data, he would not have let Flynn off so lightly. This concept is not entirely foreign to Trump. Remember when he tweeted this:

Well, now Flynn has accepted a limited immunity of sorts in exchange for his cooperation with the special counsel. And the fact that he had to plead guilty is proof that the investigation is anything but a witch hunt.

So while much of the right-wing media is pretending that Mueller doesn’t have anything on Trump because of the relatively soft bargain with Flynn, the truth is it’s that softness that proves that Mueller did get valuable info that could lead directly to Trump, his inner circle, and his family. Mueller is no pushover who can be conned by weasels like Flynn. It’s safe to say that Trump is in his crosshairs, and that accounts for Trump’s noticeably nervous behavior. And despite his inability to grasp this reality, it’s just gonna get worse.

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