Sean Hannity Forces a Fox News Lockdown on Opinions About the Rosenstein/Trump Affair

On Friday the New York Times published a bizarre story about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The article alleged that Rosenstein had floated a suggestion to secretly record Donald Trump to gather evidence of his mental infirmity. There was reportedly further discussion of invoking the 25th Amendment to declare the President incompetent and remove him from office. That hardly seems like an allegation that needs any additional proof.

Fox News Sean Hannity

As noted yesterday, the article was peculiar because…

“…the only other beneficiary of it would be the White House. It gives Trump an excuse to fire Rosenstein and appoint someone in his place who would put the brakes on the investigation of special counsel, Robert Mueller. But it would be somewhat hypocritical for Trump to do that on the basis of a story from a news source that he considers fake and failing. Consequently, he might need some support from his cheering section (and shadow cabinet) at State TV, also known as Fox News.”

It looked like Trump was getting the support he would need to fire Rosenstein from a bevy of Fox News hacks. They included Laura Ingraham, Gregg Jarrett, and Jeanine Pirro. But all was not as tightly synchronized as one would expect of the Fox propaganda machine. Later that evening when Sean Hannity’s program came on, he had a decidedly different take on the matter. He looked squarely into the camera and delivered a personal message to Trump saying “Under zero circumstances should the president fire anybody. The president needs to know it is all a setup.” Hannity asserted that the whole thing might be an insidious attempt by the “deep state” to bait Trump into firing Rosenstein and then initiating impeachment proceedings against him for doing so.

Despite the absurdly Machiavellian flavor of that conspiracy theory, it appears to have taken hold and altered the Fox News playbook for this issue. Ingraham deleted her tweet without any explanation. And Pirro posted a subsequent tweet adopting Hannity’s framing. She even went a little further to speculate that Rosenstein was the Times’ anonymous source. Tucker Carlson was already on board having opined that it was former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who leaked the memos to the Times since he “has every incentive to want to see the president impeached.”

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

So now we have achieved the full hive-mind harmony that is required of a socio-political cult. This unanimity of viewpoint makes it possible for the borg Family to advance their robo-mission unencumbered by independent thought. And surprisingly, the leader of the Family has remained silent. Trump has not addressed the Times’ article directly since it’s publication. He did make a sideways reference at a rally that simply accused his Department of Justice of having a “lingering stench.” Which is something that, were he more self aware, he would realize was emanating from himself. But for the time being, Rosenstein’s job is safe due to the paranoid musings of Trump’s State TV (aka Fox News).

Amen: Fox News Shill Recites Bible Verse that Perfectly Describes the End Times with Trump

This week in Washington, D.C., the ultra-conservative Family Research Council held its annual Values Voters Summit. Although it’s difficult these days to discern precisely what these sanctimonious blowhards regard as “values” considering their unwavering support for a philandering president on his third marriage, who breaks up families and puts the babies in cages, who is openly bigoted, who brags about sexually assaulting women, and whose policies harm the most vulnerable Americans.

Donald Trump Messiah

Among the speakers at this Christianist revival meeting were Republican heavyweights Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Sebastian Gorka, Ben Carson, and Mike Pompeo. Donald Trump made it last year, but skipped this year’s summit in favor of holding his own cult rallies in Las Vegas and Missouri. But that didn’t dampen the spirits of the attendees who were treated to some stemwinding political sermons.

One of the most most noteworthy was the address by Sandy Rios, a director of the American Family Association and a Fox News contributor. For part of her speech she chose to enlighten the audience with a passage from the Bible’s Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy. Her intention was to malign liberals and Democrats as heathens and sinners. However, the words had a familiar ring that she was too tone deaf to hear (video below):

“In the last days perilous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters. I just want you to think of each of these things without me even elaborating. Boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers. Can we say ‘Judge Kavanaugh’? Without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors. Shall we say ‘deep state’? headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

Can she hear herself? There is no one in public life who fits that description better than Donald Trump. As a malignant narcissist, he is a diagnosed lover of himself. He’s an alleged billionaire who continues to illegally enrich himself via his office. As an Olympic-grade boaster he has no challengers. His ego is totally unrestrained. He’s a blasphemer who said that he doesn’t need to ask God for forgiveness. Every single one of the critiques in that verse fit Trump like a glove. And not the least among them the charge of slanderer, i.e. liar. And do we even have to mention the part about being a traitor?

The fact that Rios could read through that paragraph and not see the resemblance to the president she reveres is proof positive of the effect that cult worship has on these evangelical fakers. They simply don’t care about Trump’s obvious moral failings so long as he promises to strip women of their reproductive freedoms and deport everyone with brownish skin. And it’s that disregard for the values they claim to uphold that exposes them as purely political operatives. A church that is so closely associated with shame is not serving its faith by letting these hypocrites get away with this – let’s say blasphemy.

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