Month: April 2019

Trump’s Pitiful Ignorance of Fiscal Policy is Driving His Dangerous Assault on America’s Economy

Posted by on April 30, 2019 at 2:34 pm. 2 Comments :

The risks posed by the unprecedented incompetence of Donald Trump are more apparent with each passing day. He has damaged our nation’s relationships with decades-long allies, while cozying up to hostile enemies. He has maligned Americans in politics and the press as corrupt, dishonest, and even treasonous. His agenda is one of tearing down the accomplishments of his predecessors and replacing them with empty rhetoric or worse, policies that significantly harm the American people.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

Trump was frighteningly unprepared for the presidency and he hasn’t bothered to study up for the job since assuming it. One of the areas where Trump has the least amount of knowledge is the economy. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he would not allow his stupidity to get in the way of his boneheaded initiatives. His notion that we should ignore the numbers and “feel” the market is just as dumb as it sounds. And the tendency on his part to plow right ahead despite having no clue what he’s doing was evident in his tweets Tuesday morning:

For starters, Trump should not be using China as a model for U.S. fiscal policy. China is a holy mess right now. And with regard to his claim that the Fed has “incessantly lifted interest rates,” he is either lying or comatose. Rates currently stand at a historical low of 2.5 percent, and they have been there since last December. Nevertheless, Trump believes that Interest rates should be cut, something that isn’t done if the economy is expected to be strong. That’s when interests rates usually are hiked as a hedge against inflation, and a cushion in the event of a downturn or recession.

The Fed is currently in a holding pattern. That is generally an indication that they anticipate weakness going forward. To the extent that cutting rates would provide a boost to the economy, Trump is way off base. They might temporarily boost the stock market, but the stock market and the economy are two different things. Besides, the last thing we want is a market that “goes up like a rocket.” That sort of volatility, more often than not, results in a crash landing.

Let’s face it, the only thing Trump cares about is appearances. He wants a facade of economic strength going into the next election cycle. He admitted as much in his tweet with his ludicrous suggestion that lower rates would “make our National Debt start to look small.” Setting aside the fact that that doesn’t make any sense at all, it is also very different than having a national debt that actually is small.

It was Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party that shoved through a tax bill that added trillions to the debt while shifting the tax burden from corporations and the wealthy to working families and the poor. And Trump is still committed to addressing the new debt that he created by cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. That’s an agenda that is overwhelming opposed by broad majorities of the American people. Let’s be sure that they find out about that before it’s too late.

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

Fox News Scolds Bernie Sanders for ‘Praising Dictators’ – Ignores Trump ‘Falling in Love’ With Them

Posted by on April 29, 2019 at 2:57 pm. 2 Comments :

As the Democratic primary season ramps up, we can expect it to be hectored by cranky Republicans and Fox News shills who are desperate to shift attention from their candidate, Donald Trump. More often than not, Trump is his own worst enemy for incessantly posting embarrassing tweets the run the gamut of political pontification from infantile to incoherent.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

Consequently, Fox News takes seriously its role in misdirecting their glassy-eyed, Trumpified audience away from his babbling and boorishness, and toward what they consider shocking and harmful revelations about the Democrats who want his job. A frequent target of Fox News is Bernie Sanders, whose lefty views are ripe for attack by the rightists at Fox. Never mind that those views are also favored by majorities of the American people. But that isn’t something that Fox News cares about.

The featured article on the Fox News website Monday morning had an incendiary headline stating that “Socialist Dem 2020 hopeful could be haunted by past praise for dictators.” That eye popping allegation appeared below a picture of Bernie Sanders flanked by inset photos of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the current Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega. Clearly Fox was insinuating that Sanders was a supporter of these two repressive tyrants.

In reality, Fox was going back thirty years to twist some out of context comments by Sanders that don’t represent anything he believes today. For instance, Sanders related some memories of his youth that involved impressions he had of Castro:

“I remember, for some reason or another, being very excited when [former Cuban dictator] Fidel Castro made the revolution in Cuba,” he said, while speaking at the University of Vermont in 1986. “I was a kid … and it just seemed right and appropriate that poor people were rising up against rather ugly rich people.”

Setting aside the reference to Castro, that’s actually consistent with Sanders’ lifelong advocacy for the poor and working classes. And at the time, many Americans were hopeful that Castro’s revolution against the totalitarian Batista regime would bring freedom and fairness to all Cubans. The same was true for the remarks Sanders made about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. They were being illegally attacked by the Contras, a band of American sponsored terrorists who were the beneficiaries of the criminal Iran-Contra operation run by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North. Sadly, in both cases, the hopes for democratic reforms were betrayed by leaders who made themselves into tyrants.

What’s most peculiar (and epically hypocritical) is how Fox is chastising Sanders for an alleged affinity to dictators. Sanders never actually praised them without simultaneously offering significant criticisms. And he was adamantly opposed to their authoritarian tendencies.

However, Fox failed to mention the much more obvious (and current) infatuations that Trump has with murderous tyrants around the world. He literally slobbered all over North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, saying that they “fell in love.” Earlier this month Trump asked “Why shouldn’t I like him?” And he praised him as “honorable” and a “real Leader.” This is a man who has killed thousands of his own people. Yet Trump even expressed a note of jealousy saying that he wants to be worshipped by Americans the way Kim is by North Koreans.

Trump has also made numerous adoring commentaries about his BFF, Vladimir Putin. He often affirms that they have a “great relationship.” He says that Putin is a “strong leader” who he “respects.” He takes Putin’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community about the Russian hacking and election interference. He advances the interests of Russia on nearly every issue. To this day Trump has never said a negative thing about Putin.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Trump has also been complimentary toward brutal tyrants like Xi Jinping of China, Duterte of the Philippines, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan of Turkey, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad Bin Salman, to name a few.

Meanwhile, Trump is constantly maligning Americans – politicians, journalists, FBI agents, celebrities, and his own cabinet and staffers – as corrupt, dishonest, sleazy, and even treasonous. He says worse things about Saturday Night Live than he does about white nationalists or neo-Nazis. But to Fox News, some vague, decades-old distortions of remarks by Sanders are breaking news and worthy of leading their reporting. Expect more of this atrocious bastardization of journalism by Fox and their ilk as the election cycle proceeds.

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

While Trump Was Lying to His Deplorable Disciples, the WHCA Was Telling the Truth About Him

Posted by on April 28, 2019 at 11:24 am. 2 Comments :

If there is one thing that has been unambiguously affirmed about Donald Trump, it’s that he is a rank coward (with an emphasis on “rank”). It goes back at least to his youth when he evaded the Vietnam draft with five deferments, including one for alleged bone spurs that no doctor has ever confirmed. It is glaringly obvious in his panicky tweetstorms maligning special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. And it has been evident in his avoidance of credible journalists in favor of the Trump-fluffers on Fox News.

Donald Trump

So naturally Trump made the courageous decision to skip – for the third consecutive year – the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (WHCA), a charity event to raise funds for college scholarships. He also issued a decree forbidding any of his staff to attend the affair or any of the after-parties. Trump is a quivering pile of jello when it comes to being the subject of humor, despite his painfully lame attempts to ridicule everyone he thinks isn’t sufficiently worshipful. His skin is so thin that it needs a coat of orange primer before he can go out in a light breeze.

Instead, Trump scheduled a competing event in Wisconsin. It was just another of his tedious cult rallies wherein he repeats the same old talking points and infantile insults he has been sputtering for years. This one was no different. He lied about his critics, invented atrocities by Democrats that never occurred, bragged about imaginary accomplishments, and railed against the press as “the enemy of the people.” You know, same old same old.

Meanwhile, at the WHCA, the guest keynote speaker was historian Ron Chernow. He was selected by the organizers as an alternative to the comedians who traditionally host the event. Trump tweeted last year that he approved of this change and hinted that he might attend. But he chickened out again anyway. Which may be for the best because Chernow was nearly as biting a commentator as any of the recent comedian hosts. Here are a few excerpts from his speech (full video below):

On his replacement of the traditional comedian speaker: “As Will Rogers once observed, ‘People are taking their comedians seriously and their politicians as a joke.’ That certainly describes our topsy-turvy moment.”

On why Trump didn’t attend: “On Tuesday, the President let it be known he wanted members of his administration to stay away from this dinner. At first, I was puzzled by this news. But then I learned a rumor was circulating in Washington that I was going to be reading aloud from the redacted portions of the Mueller report and everything was explained.”

On Trump’s criticism of George Washington’s branding failure: “As best I can tell, Washington committed, only made one major blunder as president. He failed to put his name on Mount Vernon and thereby bungled an early opportunity at branding. Clearly deficient in the art of the deal, the poor man had to settle for the lowly title of Father Of His Country. A very sad story.”

On immigration and Trump’s absurd comment that “the country is full”: “Our founders were highly literate people. And perhaps none more so than one Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant who arrived, thank God, before the country was full. Frankly, I don’t know why they let the guy in. Clearly somebody had slipped up at the southern border.”

On Trump’s notorious and pathological lying: “I applaud any president who aspires to the Nobel prize for peace. But we don’t want one in the running for the Nobel prize for fiction.”

With regard to the last item, Chernow noted that “The thing that worries me most is the sustained assault on truth.” And that is something that should worry all Americans. Along with the assault on women, LGBTQs, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, the working class, the environment, our international allies, the media, education, reason, and reality.

The contrast between the intelligent, insightful speech by Chernow, to the boorish, lie-riddled, harangue by Trump is testimony to the depths to which Trump has dragged down oratory and our nation as a whole. It’s troubling that there is anyone who still regards Trump as a statesman, rather than a charlatan who is conspicuously ripping off the dupes who flock around him. And hopefully this long national nightmare will end soon and democracy – and sanity – will prevail.

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

Trump’s Reelection Campaign is Stealing Millions of his Donors’ Dollars for His Legal Bills

Posted by on April 27, 2019 at 3:14 pm. 2 Comments :

Within hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration, he did something that was peculiar and unprecedented. He announced the establishment of his reelection committee for 2020. At the time, no one could figure out why he would do that so far in advance of the next presidential election. But his reasons are now apparent, and they affirm his status as Grifter-in-Chief.

Donald Trump

When a campaign committee is formed it can immediately begin raising funds and making expenditures. Since January of 2017, Trump has pulled in more than $60 million dollars, just to his campaign committee, which doesn’t count what’s been raised by the Republican Party and pro-Trump PACS. Some of that money has already been been spent on his frequent cult rallies. He’s done about sixty of those to date. Remember, this is the candidate who said that:

“I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice. I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”

That was one of his very earliest lies to the American people. He then created a marketing machine that peddled hokey red baseball caps, t-shirts, and anything else he could scribble his name and slogans onto. He also mined donations from a vast email list by appealing to the fear and ignorance of his Deplorable supporters who he taunted with threats of invasions from south of the border and promises of tax cuts for all. Which were just more lies.

Now ABC News is reporting that Trump’s campaign committee has spent an extraordinary amount of money on his own legal fees. And since this is a president who is drowning in criminal complaints, investigations, and even civil lawsuits by women he’s assaulted, his lawyers are among the busiest in the nation. According to ABC News:

“Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees, according to ABC News’ analysis of campaign finance records through last month, with record-breaking quarterly expenditures doled out in the last three months of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

ABC also reveals that Trump’s campaign has been paying the legal bills for others in his inner circle, such as his son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Even his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had some bills paid prior to his cooperation with the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller. Of course, much of the expenditures were explicitly for matters related to Trump’s conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice.

Generally these sort of legal bills are paid by separate legal defense funds, which Trump also has set up for himself. But it’s much easier to raise money from his cult followers than from the big money donors who contribute to dedicated defense funds. Trump’s defense fund has raised less a million dollars, and spent only half of that.

You have to wonder whether Trump’s supporters know that fully fourteen percent of the money they are donating to help him get reelected is going directly into the pockets of shady lawyers like Rudy Giuliani? Would his glassy-eyed disciples even care?

What Trump has created with his reelection committee is just another vehicle for him to fleece the dupes who buy into his scams. He knew that when he started it two years ago. He is no better than the evangelical hucksters who ply their gullible devotees for bribes to God to get into heaven. And he can’t even promise that these donations are going to get him reelected, or even keep him out of prison.

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

Fox News Emails Sound Like ‘White Supremacist Chat Room’ – Have They Ever Watched Fox News?

Posted by on April 26, 2019 at 12:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump spoke at the annual convention for the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday. Despite the organization’s unrepentant support for terrorists and felons and spousal abusers having unfettered access to guns, Trump felt it was necessary to help prop up their sagging approval ratings (and his own) with hias Deplorable base.

Fox News, KKK

These are the same sort of cretins who attended the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, VA, that Trump also defended as “very fine people.” In the aftermath of those repugnant remarks, Fox News struggled mightily to protect Trump from the fallout for having praised neo-Nazis. And apparently, they are still doing it. Trump is also still defending those remarks with new distortions of reality.

Friday morning it was revealed that an internal email exchange between some Fox News reporters devolved into a flagrantly pro-Trump brainstorming session. They were discussing how to respond to charges made by Joe Biden in his campaign announcement wherein he reminded people of Trump’s affection for torch-carrying racists.

The fact that they were brainstorming Trump defenses is bad enough. That isn’t the job of legitimate reporters. But their rationalization of such hatred makes matters worse. So much so that even one of the reporters in the email chain got fed up with what he was reading. After Fox’s Doug McKelway implied that Biden was lying, he drew this response from Fox News Radio’s Jon Decker:

“I really don’t understand the point you are making. Jarrod Kuhn was one of those individuals in Charlottesville holding a tiki torch while the mob chanted “Jews will not replace us. […] Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room.”

While it’s admirable that Decker had the courage to forthrightly renounce McKelway and his other colleagues, there is a bigger problem that is left unchanged. It isn’t just that email thread that sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room.” It’s much of the programming on the air at Fox News. Tucker Carlson has become the voice of America’s white nationalists with nearly every show advancing their rhetoric and agenda. Laura Ingraham frequently launches brazenly racist diatribes, particularly against minority celebrities and sports figures. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends take every opportunity to smear politicians of color.

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

So if an email exchange sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room,” the Fox News Channel sounds like the Aryan Broadcasting Network. More of Fox’s reporters need to take a lesson from Decker and call out their racist confederates. The network is already suffering an exodus of advertisers who don’t want to be associated with such hate speech. Now the anchors and guests need to step up and denounce the racist culture that permeates Fox News. Will they have the courage to do publicly what Decker did in an email that he thought was private?

Fox News Senior Legal Analyst: Trump’s Obstruction is ‘Unlawful, Defenseless and Condemnable’

Posted by on April 25, 2019 at 2:34 pm. 5 Comments :

Ever since special counsel Robert Mueller began investigating the President, Donald Trump has been adamant that there has been “no collusion, no obstruction,” and no other illegal or unethical activity on his part. Trump made sure to drive that point home to his Deplorable followers on Twitter nearly every day. And backing him up all the way on this was his State TV affiliate, Fox News.

Donald Trump, Andrew Napolitano

But now the bottom appears to be falling out of Trump’s defense strategy. In recent weeks a few lonely voices on Fox News have displayed some measure of independence and honesty. They are still a minority, and they are often castigated by their own network colleagues, but they are there and they are beginning to be more outspoken.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is one of those expressing views that are decidedly un-Foxian. Last month Napolitano told Fox host Neil Cavuto that he agreed with the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, that there is evidence in the public record of Trump engaging in both conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice. He previously said that Trump’s firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was obstruction of justice. And now Napolitano is going even further with some hard and detailed facts:

“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump — from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn’s chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI’s investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.”

These remarks might not get much attention were they made by Rep. Schiff, or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. They would be be dismissed by right-wingers as partisan and political. But those criticisms cannot be credibly leveled against Napolitano who is a devoted conservative and a long-time fixture on Fox News. And he wasn’t done:

“The president’s job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

That’s the sort of unambiguous statement of guilt (and from a judge no less) that you might expect from a partisan Democrat. But coming from a conservative legal expert on Fox News, it’s damn near conviction. It’s certainly justification for proceeding with impeachment hearings.

Napolitano also took Attorney General William Barr to task for wrongly defining obstruction of justice as only being applicable when it is successful or when there is an underlying crime committed by the obstructor. That’s nonsense and not rooted in the law. It is still obstruction if one attempts to interfere with the the judicial process and fails. If you try to rob a bank and don’t pull it off, you are going to jail. Likewise, it’s still obstruction if one attempts to interfere with a case that involves someone else. If you lie to the police about a crime you know you’re cousin committed, you are going to jail.

Barr’s absurd misinterpretation is a blatant attempt to cover for Trump and could be considered obstruction of justice itself. And it’s so egregiously conspicuous that even a Fox News legal analyst can see it and felt compelled to react. When this sort of blowback comes from the network that Trump regards as his own media division, it can’t be long before the damn breaks and others on Fox, along with Republicans who can no longer pretend that Trump isn’t an un-American charlatan, conclude that it’s time to put country before party – or before the naked emperor routine that Trump is trying to pull off.

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

UPDATE: Here’s video of Napolitano’s remarks. It is really worth watching.

UPDATE II: And naturally, Big Baby Trump lashed out at Napolitano in a pair of tweets that also slammed Shepard Smith, while praising Trump-fluffer Alan Dershowitz’s utterly imbecilic argument that there can be no obstruction of justice without a conviction of an underlying crime. No reputable lawyer believes that.

Big Baby Trump ‘Welcomes’ Joe Biden to a Race that Will Be Dominated By Trump’s Fear

Posted by on April 25, 2019 at 11:57 am. NO Comments :

As might be expected, Donald Trump demonstrated today that he has still not progressed emotionally from the stage of a chollicky infant. In response to Joe Biden’s announcement that he is entering the primaries for the Democratic nomination for president, Trump lashed out with a sarcastic welcome that featured a recycled nickname that he previously gave to NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Sleepy” Joe Biden.

Donald Trump

Trump’s tweet was typically boorish and devoid of either wit or substance. It was just another one of his ad hominem harangues that he thinks are so clever, that his cult followers lap up, but that prove nothing except for how shallow and hateful he is:

For Trump to demean the intelligence of Biden, or anyone else, is truly peak irony. This is a man who thinks winter is an argument against climate change; who thinks that stealth bombers are really invisible; who doesn’t know that tariffs are paid by consumers, not countries; who says he’ll take any attempt to impeach him to the Supreme Court. And the irony continued with Trump’s assertions that it’s the Democrats who are “nasty, sick, and demented.”

However, the race that Trump is welcoming Biden into is one that will be dominated by Trump’s own fears and desperation. Immediately after the release of the redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump declared that he had been “totally exonerated.” But ever since he has been castigating Mueller and the report as a hoax that was corrupt and illegal. And despite his lame attempts to cover it up, he clearly knows that he has been exposed as having committed crimes and for obstructing justice. Which is why he also tweeted these anxiety-riddled thoughts today:

So now Trump is calling his former White House counsel, Don McGahn, a liar. Is that another example of his hiring “the best people’? Also, Trump never fires anyone himself. He always gets some other patsy to do it for him. And as for the claim that he “respectfully allowed [Mueller] to finish his work,” that was only after he called him a “conflicted, corrupt, illegal, disreputable Trump Hater,” who was on a “Witch Hunt”? That’s Trump’s idea of respectful.

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

And we can expect more of the same as the 2020 presidential election gets into gear. Trump will continue to act like a big baby, continue to lie, and continue to malign his opponents and critics with baseless and childish insults. If America is lucky, Trump will be impeached or resign before we all have to go through more of that.

Snowflake Trump is Morbidly Afraid of MSNBC, CNN, While Democrats Hold Town Halls on Fox News

Posted by on April 24, 2019 at 1:57 pm. 2 Comments :

In the week since the redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller was released, Donald Trump has clearly demonstrated what he really thinks of it. Although he said that it “totally exonerated” him, his actions belie his words. He has done nothing but criticize it and try desperately to discredit it and its authors. That’s not what an innocent person does to a report that he believes vindicates him.

Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Shepard Smith, Anderson Cooper

Trump’s reaction affirms his overall state of mind, which is an all-consuming fear of what his future holds. He knows what he did and is terrified that everyone else is going to find out. Consequently, he has receded into his bunker and refuses to deal with anyone other than loyal subjects, cult rally attendees, and of course, Fox News.

This strategy of hiding under the Lincoln Bedroom bed reveals that Trump and his Deplorables still languish in a fantasy world where they believe that he is a pillar of strength. There has been relentless criticism of the Democratic Party’s decision not to allow Fox News to host a Democratic primary debate. The StormTrumpers say that Democrats must be afraid of Fox. To the contrary. They are aware that Fox News is an overtly hostile environment that only exists to denigrate them.

Nevertheless, several Democratic candidates for president have either already agreed, or are holding talks, to appear on a Fox News hosted town hall. There are big differences between town halls that are aimed a broad audience, and primary debates that are more narrowly intended for voters of that particular party. And every survey shows that there aren’t very many Democrats watching Fox News.

The list of Democrats looking at Fox town halls includes Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, John Delaney, and Michael Bennet. They would follow Bernie Sanders, who already did one and was immediately castigated by Trump for doing so. That’s a clue to what the others should expect.

What’s interesting about this is that while Republicans are quick to attack Democrats for avoiding Fox News (which obviously isn’t true), the same Republicans never bother to note that Trump is petrified of MSNBC and CNN. He has never permitted these networks to interview him as president. Trump’s abject fear is palpable. It’s why he constantly maligns the media in Stalist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He will not allow himself to be in a situation where he can’t control the dialog.

So Trump and his GOP cohorts in politics and punditry should STFU about Democrats going on Fox News. At least until Trump appears in a town hall hosted by Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, or even “Morning Psycho” Joe Scarborough. Or maybe Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, or Jake Tapper.

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

But don’t hold your breath. Trump won’t even sit for an interview with Fox’s Shepard Smith, Bret Baier, or Chris Wallace. That pleasure (?) is reserved exclusively for Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. These are Trump’s safe spaces where he knows he won’t be challenged or met with anything other than adoring sycophancy. And the contrast between the relationship between Democrats and Fox News, to Trump’s panic-stricken dread of MSNBC or CNN, shows who the real snowflake is.

Morning Psycho? Trump’s Latest Twitter Rampage Reveals Just How Scared He is of Impeachment

Posted by on April 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm. NO Comments :

The signs are becoming more difficult to ignore with each passing day. Donald Trump is losing all control of his mental faculties. This isn’t a new revelation. Those who have been paying close attention to Trump’s deranged behavior, his memory lapses, his reversion to infantilism, and his incoherent tirades, recognized the indicators of psychological infirmity long ago.

Donald Trump

This week Trump has gone farther over the edge than ever before. On Monday he posted a record twenty-four tweets – mostly retweeting Fox News and other sycophantic Trump-fluffers – all with the purpose of exalting himself and salving his fragile ego. And then on Tuesday he unleashed another thirteen tweets (so far) that were even more symptomatic of an unsound mind. The kind of mind that twisted “Morning Joe” Scarborough’s name into “Morning Psycho.” Which, after reading his latest tweetstorm, it’s clear that it applies better to Trump himself.

These tweets also included a swipe at Paul Krugman of the News New York Times for something that Trump never defined. Although he did accuse Krugman of being “obsessed with hatred” just a before saying he was “stupid.” Then he wondered if the Times would apologize to him again, which is weird because they have never apologized to him before. This is a fantasy he’s engaged in several times in the past.

Trump also tweeted his plans to hold a rally rather than attend the annual charity event for the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA). He’s skipping this event for the third time due to his abject fear of jokes about him. And then there was this:

So Trump thinks that the Republican agenda is “working” when more than half the country is going insane? That’s a standard that proves that he truly hates this country and most of the people in it. And it’s not the first time he’s said so, either. He also pined for the “old days” when he says president’s were “immune from criticism.” Yeah, right. But then those presidents didn’t conspire with Russia, use the presidency to enrich themselves, lie over 9,000 times, malign others with infantile insults, and attack the free press. Then he whined about Twitter discriminating against him by deleting his followers (who were mainly Russian bots). And naturally, he threw in some promos for State TV (aka Fox News).

The question is: What might be responsible for this eruption of inanity? It has all occurred less than a week after the release of the redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller. Despite the redactions, there was a surprising amount of evidence of Trump violating the law and obstructing justice. The proof that this evidence exists is in Trump’s own response to the report. At first he insisted that it “totally exonerated” him. But ever since he has lambasted it as a “hoax” perpetrated by “Angry Democrats.” Clearly he is disturbed by the report and feels a need to discredit it. That isn’t something an innocent person does to a document he believes vindicates him.

Trump is also facing new threats arising from congressional oversight. His former White House counsel, Don McGahn, is being subpoenaed to testify. His taxes and other financial records are also being subpoenaed from his banks and accountants. Trump has been frantically trying to keep all of this hidden for years. But those efforts appear to have been exhausted.

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

Now Trump is in a panic because he knows the awful truth about him is about to become public. And the fear that is oozing out of every pore of his thin-skin is manifesting on his Twitter feed. Twitter is his nanny and he’s clinging to it for dear life as he tries to console himself, distract the nation, purge the demons that are feasting on his dread of facing reality, He thinks that these outbursts will calm the anxiety that, by all appearances, is eating him alive. But in all likelihood it will just get even more intense, until he is utterly consumed by it. And that’s actually the best case scenario.

Trump ‘Congratulates’ CNN for Having Low Ratings, Even Though His Are Much Worse

Posted by on April 22, 2019 at 2:05 pm. NO Comments :

Having a healthy ego is a requirement for anyone who aspires to be President of the United States. But there has never been a president with the kind of psychotically twisted self-image as Donald Trump. He has explicitly declared himself as the best in the world at whatever subject he happens to be babbling about at the time. Whether it’s taxes or war or energy or finance or women, Trump is adamant that he knows more than anybody else (see the video below). It’s rather impressive that he can be so self-aggrandizing and so wrong at the same time.

Donald Trump, Loser

So naturally Trump is obsessed with rankings and ratings and other measures of ability that he can exploit to make himself feel like he isn’t the miserable failure that he knows he is deep inside. And since he regards Fox News as an extension of himself, the cable TV ratings are a big part of Trump’s notion of self-worth. That’s why when he saw some ratings data (from the Daily Caller, the ultra-rightist website run by Fox News host Tucker Carlson) that noted the poor performance of CNN, he leaped at the chance to sarcastically congratulate the network as if these results were specifically heralding him.

Of course, anyone who follows the cable news business already knows that CNN has been lagging behind both Fox News and MSNBC. So it’s hard to figure out why Trump got so excited. But more interesting is the fact that Trump’s joy seems to ignore an important part of reality: Trump’s approval is even worse than CNN’s ratings. In fact, as disclosed in a recent poll, the American people trust CNN more than they do Trump or Fox News:

“Attacks on the ‘fake news’ media have been a staple of President Donald Trump’s messaging as both a presidential candidate and commander in chief, but new polling from Morning Consult/The Hollywood Reporter suggests that when it comes to credibility, that rhetoric really only resonates with Republicans.”

This poll shows that a majority of 53 percent regard CNN as “credible.” The same goes for another target of Trump’s, the New York Times. And all three broadcast networks came in higher than 60 percent. Fox News was below all of them at 52 percent. And that’s with 70 percent of Republicans believing it’s credible (a number that affirms the cult nature of their relationship with both Fox and Trump). Numerous other polls have been conducted on the question of trust, and in every single case the American people said that they trust the media more than they do Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump’s own ratings have achieved a dubious distinction as being lower than any president in history. So Trump is right about being the best – at least at being hated. Even the disreputable, right-wing, pro_Trump pollster, Rasmussen, has Trump down five points (to 47%) since the release of the redacted Mueller report less than a week ago. The more reliable Reuters poll shows that Trump has declined to a dismal 37 percent.

So to shore up his faltering standing with the public, Trump has spent Monday morning frantically posting clips of Fox News slobbering all over him. No less than five such clips were tweeted featuring crackpots like Lou Dobbs and Mark Levin. It’s the only way he can manage to salve his wounded and fragile ego. He is a man consumed by fear. And every tweet wherein he lambastes special counsel Robert Mueller, and the “witch hunt,” and the “Angry Democrats,” and the media, just reinforces his guilt and his desperation to suppress it.

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