Day: 3/2/2019

Trump’s 2 Hour CPAC Freak Out (Only on Fox News) Exceeds Even His Own Standards for Lunacy

Posted by on March 2, 2019 at 5:03 pm. 4 Comments :

Just when you thought you could never use the preface “Just when you thought” again when referring to Donald Trump, he makes an appearance at the Wingnut-Palooza festival, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Scheduled for a fifty minute address, the long-winded, rambling President spoke for a little over two hours.

Donald Trump

The entire speech was lousy with lies, insults, and imaginary recitations of events that obviously never took place outside the confines of his diseased mind. He revisited Hillary Clinton’s emails, his inauguration crowd size, and some totally incomprehensible blathering about tariffs that goes back to the eighteen hundreds. He even took some time out to hump the American flag.

It would be a monumental waste of time to do an analysis of the whole brain dump that Trump unloaded. But there are a few moments that set the tone for an afternoon of utter idiocy. Let’s begin with Trump’s descent into the sort of profanity that right-wingers would roast any Democrat for engaging in. Having something to do with the Reagan administration forty years ago, he said that:

Don’t bother trying to figure out what he’s talking about. Just move on to the next part where Trump exhibits his fear of the future that holds puts him in extreme legal jeopardy. He predictably attacked special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “Witch Hunt,” and asserted falsely that one of Mueller’s team was running the Clinton Foundation (that he calls the Hillary Clinton foundation). He also said that another team member “has perhaps the worst reputation of any human being I have ever seen.” Seriously, that’s as specific as he got. Then he repeated one of his favorite lies that former FBI Director James Comey and Mueller are best friends. In the real world they are at best acquaintances. They had dinner once and have never visited each other’s homes.

But perhaps the most offensive portion of today’s Trump tirades was when he tried to emulate the McCarthyist rhetoric that insinuated that America’s enemies infiltrated the government and the Congress:

“We have people in Congress right now that hate our country. And you know that. And we can name every one of them if they want.”

So now Trump has a list of America-haters that he can (but won’t) make public. If the list has any accuracy at all, his name will be at the top of it. After all, he’s the one that openly expresses his love for Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and any other foreign dictator he has met. And somehow Trump wandered off at the end into an immigration rant that questioned how these members of Congress did in “their country.” What countries he’s talking about remains a mystery.

This CPAC speech is officially Trump’s longest to date. For two hours, he managed to entertain the Deplorables at the conference. But the good news is that the damage was limited to the convo attendees and to what’s left of the audience at Fox News. Fox proved their devotion to the President by being the only cable news network that aired the speech live and uninterrupted. They have truly earned their reputation as State TV. But unfortunately for them and Trump, their audience is rapidly shrinking in the face of strong competition from MSNBC, led by the top rated program on cable news, the Rachel Maddow Show. And that, at least, is good news.

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

Rachel Maddow Stomps Sean Hannity with 4th Straight Monthly Win vs State TV (aka Fox News)

Posted by on March 2, 2019 at 10:40 am. 3 Comments :

A couple of years ago Fox News was regarded as an invincible monolith on cable news that no other network could challenge. It was a fallacy created by their catering to a hard-core right-wing constituency that behaved like mesmerized cult worshipers, but it had the effect of corralling the whole demographic into a plurality of viewers while the other networks divided the rest of the audience.

Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, Fox News

However, that tactic has lost its potency. Ever since the midterm election in early November, the Rachel Maddow Show has dominated her time period and helped to boost the ratings of her MSNBC colleagues. For four straight months Maddow has beaten the previous time period champ, Sean Hannity, by significant margins.

For the month of February Maddow’s ratings improved by nine percent over the prior year. She was the most-watched cable news program among adults 25-54. She won all but three nights in the entire month. Meanwhile, Fox News has been struggling to keep people tuned in. Tucker Carlson was down four percent year-over-year in total viewers. Laura Ingraham was down six percent. And Hannity was off seven percent. In the coveted advertiser demo of 25-54 year olds, Hannity has lost nearly a quarter (23%) of his audience. In fact, the whole Fox News primetime roster is down in the demo by twenty percent.

The dominance of Maddow’s program has increased over time. And on February 27 (the day following the House Oversight Committee’s hearing with testimony by Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen), she had the highest rating ever for her show. This performance has resulted in MSNBC achieving ratings records overall. From Morning Joe in the AM, to Nicolle Wallace in the afternoon, to primetime, MSNBC has enjoyed double digit growth.

In addition to Fox’s ratings woes, they are also suffering an exodus of advertisers. Some of that is due to their declining ratings, but most of it is because advertisers just don’t want to be associated with programs that advocate bigotry and promote violence. It’s gotten so bad that the ad sales folks at Fox are afraid to even try selling these shows to advertisers. Consequently, Trump has had to be enlisted in a campaign to rescue the failing network’s biggest “stars.” And it’s a two-way street with Fox hosts like Hannity and Jeanine Pirro showing up at Trump’s cult rallies.

Television ratings can be fluid and swerve back and forth between various networks and programs. But the rise of MSNBC has defied the predictions of most analysts. And their sustained dominance over many months has been particularly surprising. This is no fluke. And it is not likely a coincidence that this success has occurred as Democrats have increased their presence in Washington, and the legal peril for Trump has exploded.

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

As Trump’s prospects continue to decline, more people will tune in to MSNBC for the real news that Fox ignores and suppresses. And as more people become informed, Trump’s fortunes will wither even more. It’s beautiful downward spiral for a criminal president and his TV sycophants.