Day: 2/8/2019

Trump Wallows in Wacky Conspiracy Theories About Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff

Posted by on February 8, 2019 at 2:37 pm. 1 Comments :

In another Twitter outburst that has become commonplace with our Tweeter-in-Chief, Donald Trump has taken off on a wildly deranged line of attack aimed at Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He’s doing everything he can to disparage and discredit him, because those are the only tools he has left. It isn’t surprising that Trump would seek to smear Schiff considering that he has the authority to uncover a broad array of the crimes that Trump would prefer remain hidden.

Donald Trump

Ever since the November election when Democrats became the majority party in the House of Representatives, Trump has exhibited an increasingly fearful demeanor. During the previous Congress, Trump had the luxury of having a Republican chairing this committee, Devin Nunes, who was a reliable accomplice in his obstruction of justice. Now, for the first time, Trump is facing an honest investigatory environment and real accountability. As a result, he has resorted to infantile name calling (i.e. Adam Schitt) and the dissemination of lies and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

In the Friday morning tweetstorm, Trump went after Schiff over a silly article written by John Solomon for TheHill. Solomon is a notoriously right-wing partisan who frequently disgorges his nonsense on Fox News. What he stumbled on as the basis for this article was the fact that Schiff attended a security conference in Aspen and happened to bump into Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Christopher Steele of the “Steele Dossier” fame. So Trump tweeted this:

The first thing that Trump got wrong here is that Schiff and Simpson did not “spend time together.” Even Solomon’s article notes that the encounter was “brief and social in nature.” In other words, they ran into each other briefly at an event with several hundred other attendees, and had no substantive discussion. Of course, that didn’t stop Solomon, and subsequently Trump, from implying that something more nefarious had occurred. But there was no evidence to support that other than conjecture and insinuation.

The second problem with Trump’s tweet is his assertion that the dossier had been discredited. To the contrary, nothing in the dossier has ever been proved to be false. However, much of it has been verified as true. So Trump’s blathering is just more of the sort of sketchy behavior engaged in by people who know they are guilty. And if he thinks that such assaults are going to dissuade Schiff or his congressional colleagues from pursuing the truth, then Trump is even dumber than we previously thought.

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

Here We Go Again: Donald Trump Keeps Thanking a Biased Pollster for Fake Survey Results

Posted by on February 8, 2019 at 1:25 pm. 1 Comments :

One of the surest signs of mental illness is when someone incoherently repeats nonsense with no comprehensible purpose other than to make noise. Donald Trump has exhibited this behavior for months with his frequently repeated falsehoods about everything from his precious vanity wall to his all-consuming fear of accountability for the criminal activity being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Donald Trump

In addition to these incessant ramblings, Trump has also been celebrating polling results on Twitter by the notoriously right-wing shills at Rasmussen Reports. And on Friday morning he did so once again with exactly the same commentary as his previous tweets on the subject. And once again, Trump’s satisfaction with the poll is misplaced considering it shows him with a forty-one percent “Strongly Disapprove” rating, and only thirty-eight percent “Strongly Approve.” Nevertheless, Trump tweeted out this:

And if that looks familiar it’s because last month he tweeted out this:

And if that looks familiar it’s because before that he tweeted out this:

And if those look familiar it’s because this seems to be a common obsession with him. To brag about a rating that only puts you at even illustrates just how desperate Trump is for anything upbeat he can promote to mitigate the tsunami of bleakness that surrounds him. But to rest his gloating on a poll by Rasmussen, the most disreputably partisan pollster in America, just makes him seem all the more pathetic. And yet, Trump frequently alerts his Twitter cult followers when Rasmussen spikes a bit. Never mind that the numbers always take a dive shortly thereafter. Here are some more recent examples:

Trump’s characterization of Rasmussen as an accurate pollster is wildly off the mark. The survey experts at FiveThrityEight give Rasmussen a C+ rating. They rank ABC/Washington Post at A-Plus. And in every case, the numbers celebrated by Trump above declined in the days following his boast. There’s no reason to think that they won’t do the same tomorrow.

For the record, the RealClearPolitics average poll of polls has Trump with a 42.2 percent approval, and 54.4 disapproval. And that’s including Rasmussen’s outlier numbers in the average. But if Trump wants to believe that he’s loved by a nation that clearly despises him and his policies, and if he wants to convince his Deplorables of the same reality distortion, well, that’s his prerogative. It’s only going to make their eventual collision with the truth all the more painful.

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

LATE ADDITIONS: Trump continues to post these same nonsense tweets even though the numbers go right back down in the days that follow. He’s done it dozens of times.