All Foxed Up: The Humiliating Attempt By Fox News to Credit Trump for Obama’s Economy

It’s no secret that Fox News is the official PR division of Donald Trump’s administration. They relentlessly defend the President from any and all criticism and attack his political opponents in the most vile and dishonest terms. Fox News is worse than state-run TV. They are fully involved co-conspirators to the criminal enterprise operating out of the White House.

Fox News

Another example of just how far Fox News will go to fluff Trump occurred on his favorite TV show, Fox and Friends. This episode featured a feverishly biased “economist” who managed to get through an entire interview without citing a single economic fact. The segment began with co-host Pete Hegseth introducing a thoroughly false premise (video below):

“Under President Trump the U.S. economy continues to surge. Last month alone saw 40,000 new manufacturing jobs. Big number. And that’s just one example. But a familiar face is trying to steal President Trump’s credit.”

Hegseth’s opening was hardly fair and balanced (a slogan that Fox doesn’t use anymore). Besides cherry-picking data regarding the state of the economy, he states as a matter of fact that credit is being stolen from Trump. And the thief is, predictably, an unemployed black man. Then he plays a clip of President Obama:

“As we took these actions we saw the U.S. economy grow consistently. We saw the longest streak of job creation in American history, by far. A streak that still continues, by the way. Thanks Obama.”

Upon completion of the clip Hegseth abandons any editorial independence and asks “Shouldn’t we be thanking President Trump?” That question was thrown to University of Maryland Professor Peter Morici, who unhesitatingly agrees with Hegseth that Trump deserves all the credit for the current state of the economy. His scholarly justification for that assessment is that:

“President Obama reads from a very simple textbook of economics. All the problems in the world are caused by Republicans and when Republicans are in they cause nothing but problems.”

What’s missing from that economic analysis is anything remotely related to economics. It’s a brazenly political insult that completely avoids any factual basis. In other words, Morici has done his job as a Fox News analyst perfectly. Never get bogged down with facts when smear tactics are available.

Morici went on to concede that “during the Obama administration they created jobs, for sure,” but then he falsely asserted that it was at a slow pace. He compared Obama’s record to that of Ronald Reagan. Which makes you wonder why he didn’t bother to compare it to Trump’s. Perhaps because in the past ten months of Trump’s presidency job growth has significantly slowed. In fact, it has been the slowest ten months in over five years.

Hegseth interrupted Morici to provide additional ammunition for the argument that Trump is the savior of the American economy. He cited the thirty percent growth of the stack market (but left out that it more than doubled during the Obama years). He noted that GDP had grown in a couple of quarters by three precent (which also happened during Obama’s administration). And he praised Trump for the 4.1 percent unemployment rate (a figure that was an extension of Obama’s jobs policies).

What both Hegseth and Morici ignored is that there isn’t any Trump economy. He has done literally nothing that might have impacted any economic metrics. There has been no legislation passed relating to jobs, budget, debt, or anything else economy related. Consequently, the nation is still running on the programs put in place during Obama’s administration. The only thing that Republicans can cite as evidence of their impact is a vague claim to a “mood” in the country that has allegedly advanced the economy. So their whole argument is based on a feeling. How cute.

Morici’s closing argument was rooted firmly in typical “trickle-down” economics that have been proven repeatedly to be a right-wing hoax. And he had the gall to assert that after eight years of record growth, a continuation of the Obama plan would reduce America’s economy to that of North Korea’s. Of course, he never bothered to substantiate that bit of ultra-nonsense. And then he rattled of some of the Trumpian things he said help the economy, including tax cuts, infrastructure spending, immigration reform, and cutting entitlements. None of which have been implemented.

So in the end, Morici and Hegseth relied solely on emotional irrelevancies and their political biases to celebrate Trump’s successes that don’t exist. And somehow from that they conclude that Obama was the one stealing credit. But at least they can rest easily that their audience will believe whatever unfounded crap they dish out. That’s the benefit of having Fox News around to spread propaganda to the gullible yokels who are dumb enough to watch.

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

Is He Bragging or Confessing? Donald Trump Rants that ‘We Have a Rigged System’

When Donald Trump showed up in Pensacola, Florida on Friday, he arrived wrapped in a lie. After insisting that he would not campaign for the pedophile GOP candidate for senate in Alabama, Trump held a big rally a few miles away in the same media market as Mobile. Then he exhorts this crowd of supposed Floridians to vote for Roy Moore.

Donald Trump

And that lie was only the beginning, The speech was jam-packed with provable falsehoods that were too numerous to bother with. It’s just his standard mode of operation. He lies about everything, whether it’s important or not. And he especially lies about things that affect his ego-soaked impression of himself. For instance, he bragged that the auditorium was filled to the rafters when almost half of it was empty.

However, perhaps the most striking remarks Trump made were in reference to what he views as the sorry state of America. That’s a subject he has been obsessed with ever since he launched his campaign declaring that “This country is a hell hole.” He relentlessly disparages every institution that Americans value, including law enforcement, education, the military, freedom of speech and of the press, etc. And he continued on that theme of America bashing in Pensacola saying that:

“It’s being proven we have a rigged system. Doesn’t happen so easy. But this system, there will be a lot of changes. This a rigged, this is a rigged system. This is a sick system from the inside. And, you know, there’s no country like our country, but we have a lot of sickness in some of our institutions. […] Terrible, terrible.”

To be clear, Trump has been president for ten months. No one is more “inside” than he is. He frequently (and falsely) brags that he has done more than any president before him in history. If he’s talking about more damage, or more treasonous collusion with Russia, or more sexual abuse, most Americans would agree with him. Unfortunately, our delusional, narcissistic, wannabe dictator actually seems to believe his own bullshit.

Which makes it all the puzzling that he can make comments like those above. If he is the massively successful leader he pretends to be, then how could the system that he has been in charge of for nearly a year be so sick? There really is only one explanation for this outburst. Trump is clandestinely trying to absolve himself by secretly confessing to being the failure that everyone else already sees. It’s a pathetic attempt to grasp at salvation that he will never realize.

What’s really sad is that his glassy-eyed disciples don’t see that he is an Olympic-grade loser. Even when he literally admits. They continue to cheer and march in lock-step adoration of their Dear Leader who has conned them so completely they can’t tell lies from reality anymore. That’s what enables them to support a pedophile for the senate; or to support taunting an unstable nuclear-powered tyrant in North Korea; or to support policies that are demonstrably against their own best interests. All of which suggests that Trump is right (in the most wrong way) that the system is rigged and sick. What he doesn’t say is that he is the cause.

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