Month: April 2019

To Sarah Sanders: If Congress is Too Dumb to Understand Trump’s Taxes, Releasing Them Can’t Hurt

Posted by on April 14, 2019 at 12:20 pm. 5 Comments :

Donald Trump’s media relations have been a case study in both a totalitarian hostility toward the free press and a narcissist’s obsession for attention and adulation. He has repeatedly referred to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people,” while lashing out personally at journalists and networks that he doesn’t think are sufficiently adoring.

Donald Trump

Trump’s White House has all but abandoned the daily press briefings that every other president in modern times has held. But he continues to send his press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, out to the same TV news networks that he maligns. While there she does nothing but disseminate flagrant lies, packaged propaganda, and irrational defenses of her bosses many offensive utterances. Case in point: Sanders went on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace to try to shore another bad week for Trump. When the subject turned to the President’s stubborn refusal to release his tax returns, Sanders let this bull fly (video below):

“Frankly, Chris, I don’t think Congress – particularly not this group of congressmen and women – are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be.”

Seriously? Trump’s first responses to this question were promises that he would release his taxes and would be happy and proud to do so. That later shifted to a lie about being audited, which he said prevented him from releasing his returns. It doesn’t. Most recently he has just declared that he isn’t going to do it under any circumstances. Which should cause any thoughtful citizen to wonder why he’s lied for so long and what terrible things he is trying to hide?

But for Sanders to make such a vicious ad hominem attack on the entire institution of Congress only escalates the suspicions that Americans should have. After all, it is the job of Congress to conduct oversight on matters like this, and many members have professional experience and training in economics. The insult by Sanders is just a lame attempt to avoid the real issues that concern Trump’s corruption and nefarious business relations that may include Russians.

If Sanders thinks Congress is too dumb to comprehend Trump’s taxes, why does the White House she represents think they are capable of developing a new healthcare plan; or ratifying international treaties; or passing Trump’s Tax Scam; or regulating everything from energy to banks to defense policy? Her scattershot slander only reinforces this administration’s aversion to the American ideal of democratic self-rule. According to Trump World, we’re all too stupid to be allowed any such privilege.

However, if Sanders really believes what she’s saying, then why would she have any objection to Trump’s taxes being released right now? After all, Congress won’t be able to understand them, so what’s the harm? In reality, this is just another example of projection by Trump and company. This is a man so inept that he bankrupted four casinos. He is the one who is so painfully idiotic that he can’t comprehend even simple matters, particularly about the economy. Take for instance his Sunday morning tweet about the Federal Reserve Board:

None of that is true. It’s pure fantasy to suggest that the Dow would be 10,000 points higher, even if the Fed did what Trump wants. But they can’t do it because lowering interests rates when the economy is already overheated would result in inflation and a massive stock selloff as investors sell equities and shift into bonds. What’s more, if a recession should result (a real probability), there would be no way to mitigate its harm by lowering interest rates further. It’s a recipe for a depression. But that’s where this administration is determined to take us. They just hope it occurs after a Democrat is elected next year so they have someone else to blame.

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

Trump Whines that Congress Has NO RIGHT to See Mueller Report that He Said Exonerates Him

Posted by on April 13, 2019 at 12:35 pm. NO Comments :

The smouldering fear that Donald Trump has been emanting for the past several months is escalating to a five-alarm fire. He is becoming ever more frantic about the legal jeopardy he faces if the report by special counsel Robert Mueller actually sees the light of day. Consequently, he is lashing out with renewed ferocity at Mueller, Congress, and the American people who overwhelmingly (87%) want the report released.

Donald Trump, Robert Mueller

In an unusually light fit of Saturday morning rage-tweeting (he’s golfing), Trump reiterated his adoration for Kim Jong Un, whose leadership Trump praised for its potential to make North Korea “one of the most successful nations of the World!” It’s interesting that he has such confidence in this murderous, communist dictator, while he’s maligning American Democrats as “treasonous” and “socialists” who will destroy the nation.

Trump also retweeted his disgusting video associating Rep. Ilhan Omar with the terrorists of 9/11, despite the fact that he had already pinned to the top of his Twitter page. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied that enough of his Deplorables would see it and be incited to make more racist attacks and death threats.

In addition to those Twidiocies, Trump returned to his obsession over the investigation into his nefarious associations with Russia and obstruction of justice. It’s clear by the content and tone of his ranting that he is riddled with fear. And that all-consuming dread has driven him to a new level of panic and outrage:

There’s a lot of psychoses to unpack in that short spasm of bullpucky. First of all, there are no “Radical Left Democrats” in Congress. Secondly, the Democrats who are there were elected in a Blue Wave by citizens who specifically sent them to Washington to hold Trump accountable. Third, the cost of the investigation was more than paid for by the asset forfeitures assessed against Paul Manafort, Trump’s convicted campaign chairman. Fourth, there is zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, the DNC, or the FBI, who Trump is once again insulting as criminals. And fifth, Trump is signaling that he has ordered his stooge in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, to launch an illegal persecution of his political foes.

But that’s not all. The language in Trump’s tweet was deliberate and highly disturbing. He is now saying that Congress has no right to examine the Mueller report. In his previous statements on this subject he has said that he had no problem with the report being released. He even said that Mueller had acted “honorably.” And why not? He insists that the report “totally exonerates” him. Of course, Trump is nothing if not contradictory. He has also bitterly condemned the report that he hasn’t even read.

Something must have changed that made Trump go from “Let it come out, let people see it,” to it was “a hoax from day one” by “13 angry, Trump hating Dems” and “a total waste of time.” And whatever changed more recently must have been even more troubling, because this is the first time that Trump has asserted that the Congress – and by extension the American people – have no right to see the report.

Trump continues to maintain that hasn’t read the Mueller report. That’s believable because there’s credible doubt that he can read. At least he’s known to be averse to it and has his aides summarize most documents for him with short paragraphs and lots of pictures. But he has never said that he hasn’t received a briefing on the contents of the Mueller report. So he may know what’s in it, and that may be what’s driving his fear. Because his public comments, and these panicky tweets that seek to deny the rights of the people, indicate that he’s desperately worried about something. And from all of the evidence that’s already public, he should be.

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

What White Nationalists? Tucker Carlson of Fox News Acts Like the Mob Denying There’s a Mafia

Posted by on April 12, 2019 at 2:25 pm. 1 Comments :

In the early and mid 20th century, there were organized crime syndicates that terrorized much of the country with extortion, robbery, and murder as tactics to gain control of businesses, communities, and wealth. It was a well-orchestrated collective of ruthless criminals who would go to any lengths to achieve their nefarious goals.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

One of the favorite methods that the Mafia used to avoid accountability was to simply insist that there was no such thing as the Mafia. They would assert that they were legitimate businessmen engaging in legal free enterprise. Never mind all the bodies washing up along the shores of the Hudson River, or the storefronts that were engulfed in flames with resistant shopkeepers inside, or the cops driving Cadillacs they couldn’t reasonably explain how they paid for.

That’s the same tactic that Fox News is employing to pretend that there isn’t any such thing as white nationalism in America. And the host of Fox’s primetime White Nationalist Hour is the alt-right’s poster boy, Tucker Carlson. So it should come as no surprise that he spent much of his Thursday night program gaslighting his audience into believing that white nationalism was merely a hollow insult that lefties threw around, but that no such thing really existed in any significant numbers. Carlson asserted that nobody, including himself, even knows what the term means:

“You’ll notice that none of these dumb people pause, even for a second, to explain what a white nationalist is. You probably still don’t know. And, honestly, neither do we. And that’s because there are so very few of them in this country. There are probably about as many legitimate white nationalists in America as there are Russian spies. You could live your entire life here without running into a white nationalist.”

So let’s be clear. This is white nationalist Carlson denying that there is any such thing as white nationalism. Never mind all his blustering about the supremacy of European white culture, his lamenting of how oppressed white men are in America, and his hostility toward anyone else as “dirty and divisive.” Those comments have resulted in a mass exodus of his advertisers, despite his high ratings.

To be sure, Carlson is not alone. His Fox News colleagues, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, all agree with him. What’s more, Donald Trump has fully adopted this racist philosophy as well as the dishonest technique of pretending it doesn’t exist. Asked by reporters whether he thought white nationalists were a growing threat after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump said “I don’t really. I think it’s a very small group of people.”

So the circle is complete. The President of the United States is proclaiming to the world that white nationalism is fake news. And he got that news for his State TV partners at Fox. But for the record, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented that “The number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high – 1,020 – in 2018 … a 30 percent increase roughly coinciding with Trump’s campaign and presidency.” Nevertheless, according to Trump and Fox News, it’s no big deal and hardly merits a sideways glance. Got it? And there’s no such thing as the Mafia either.

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

How Crazy Sick is Trump? He Now Says ‘I Know Nothing About WikiLeaks’ or Julian Assange

Posted by on April 11, 2019 at 4:24 pm. 3 Comments :

Sometimes there just really isn’t anything more to say about Donald Trump’s rapidly declining mental state than what he says himself. With each new day day he demonstrates the severity his cognitive infirmities. Much of the evidence is implicit in his incessant lying. At other times he just utters blatant absurdities that have no relationship to reality.

Donald Trump, Julian Assange

On Thursday Trump managed to unleash a statement that is difficult to define in terms of its psychological maladjustment. It is both a lie and and a ludicrous assertion that no sensible person could hear without collapsing in hysterics. Because after spending years lauding Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, Trump now says that “I know nothing about WikiLeaks, it’s not my thing.” What a convenient dismissal just hours after Assange was placed under arrest and charged with multiple felonies.

Um…Okay. We’ll just ignore all of those references you made to it during the 2016 campaign. And never mind all of these tweets that are still on your Twitter feed:

Nearly every one of those tweets is an attack on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. Which only provides additional evidence that Trump was colluding with WikiLeaks – who was in bed with Russia – during the campaign in order to win the election by cheating, lying, theft, and foreign interference.

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

Trump’s attempt to gaslight the nation by pretending to have no knowledge of WikiLeaks now is pathetic, disturbing, and eminently Trumpian. The whole world witnessed his affection for Assange and company. And anyone who believes his current denial is desperately in need of intense psychological therapy. What a sorry state our country is in when so many people can be lured into such ignorance and cult-style faith in an obvious charlatan.

Trump Tweets Fake Poll Data From Fox News with Approval Numbers that are Actually Disapproval

Posted by on April 11, 2019 at 10:37 am. 2 Comments :

It’s a glorious day of celebration for Donald Trump as he triumphantly tweets the results of a new poll from Georgetown University. His tweet proclaims with glee “Great news! #MAGA.” And below that thrilling exclamation is a graphic that Trump copied straight from Fox News.

Fox News, Poll, Trump

There must be unbridled joy right about now in the White House because these numbers are higher than almost any that Trump has ever received from any poll, including the wildly biased Rasmussen. So a little bragging by Trump for achieving a fifty-five percent approval rating would seem to be in order. There’s just one little problem.

The graphic that Trump is so proudly regurgitating from Fox News’ Lou Dobbs is terribly wrong. The poll from Georgetown actually has Trump with a forty-three percent approval rating. That’s more in line with the current average of polls by RealClear Politics (43.1%). And it’s only that high because it includes Rasmussen’s phony numbers. The fifty-five percent was actually the disapproval rating for Trump.

The rest of the poll was hardly positive for for the pitiful President. It shows that fifty-seven percent of voters overall say the country is on the wrong track. And while men polled say they will vote Republican by a margin of nine percent, twice as many women (18%), who are more reliable voters, say they will vote Democratic.

Fox News issued a brief correction (a minute into this clip) that talked more about what the graphic got right than about their massive mistake. And they never mention Trump’s dismal forty-three percent approval:

“It’s been a quiet start to the day for President Trump, though he did send out a tweet this morning from the Lou Dobbs show last night on Fox Business. That tweet featured a poll that was not entirely accurate, which Fox Business would like to correct.

“According to a poll from Georgetown University, 58 percent of respondents approved of the president’s handling of the economy. That portion of the graphic was right. However, the graphic also showed that 55 percent of the respondents approve of the president, that number is not correct. The 55 percent number was those who have an unfavorable impression of President Trump.”

This is another example of how Fox News distorts reality and disseminates lies with the help of their number one fan, Donald Trump. And six hours later, Trump’s fake poll tweet is still on his Twitter page. It’s almost like Fox produces these lies for Trump to post, and then leaves them there purposefully to continue their disinformation campaign. They would never do that, would they?

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

Attorney General William Barr Parrots Trump’s ‘Spying’ Lie, Triggers a Cable News Freak Out

Posted by on April 10, 2019 at 12:16 pm. 7 Comments :

The frequent exhibitions of narcissism and paranoia by Donald Trump have become a such a common occurrence that they are at risk of becoming passe. His frantic outbursts are getting more intense and irrational everyday, as witnessed by a bizarre Obama Derangement fit on Tuesday. But the risk that others in his sphere of influence are being infected by the same disease is all too real and dangerous.

Donald Trump, Deep State

On Wednesday morning Trump’s newly confirmed plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, testified in the Senate about his mischaracterizations of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. And if there were any doubt that Barr would serve as Trump’s obedient lackey and shield from legal jeopardy, that was eliminated entirely by his profoundly smarmy puppet act.

There were numerous occasions when Barr simply refused to respond to questions for no other reason than that he didn’t feel like it. That included questions concerning his own conclusions about the Mueller report that he conveyed in his enfeebled four page “summary” to Congress of the 300+ page report. But perhaps the most troubling part of Barr’s obsequious testimony was when he brazenly adopted Trump’s own delusional rhetoric regarding the Mueller probe that he has repeatedly maligned as a “witch hunt.” Barr was asked about whether he would be reviewing allegations that Mueller and the FBI improperly “spied” on Trump:

“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. […] I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”

Barr is taking up the mantle of Trump, and his thoroughly dishonest defenders on Fox News, who have been ranting for months that Mueller and others in law enforcement were corrupt and even treasonous. They’ve been smearing Mueller for doing his job, which was to examine the abundant evidence of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential intended to benefit Trump and harm Hillary Clinton. And there is nothing ambiguous about Barr’s partisan intentions. He is literally using the same charged language that Trump himself uses to vilify his critics. Trump has been fuming non-stop about his perceived enemies “spying” on him. He has posted thirty-six tweets making that utterly false assertion. For example, here’s one from more than a year ago that incorporates the full range of conspiracies in his twisted imagination:

Barr was given an opportunity to review his words by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who warned that “the word ‘spying’ could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out.” Barr responded by by saying that “I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance.” Of course, there was zero evidence that any surveillance was unauthorized, and Barr conceded that fact. What’s more, the investigations could not be remotely portrayed as spying. They were counterintelligence operations aimed at Russia’s activities. The FBI couldn’t help it if people associated with Trump kept showing up.

Sen.Schatz, however, was right on point with respect to the reaction in the cable news universe. It began almost immediately with Fox News launching furious attacks on the law enforcement community based on Barr’s weasley testimony. Although the full frontal assault won’t come until primetime when Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson will bellow out their prepared diatribes. But Trump wasn’t waiting for them. He already pounced with this batty outburst:

“This was an illegal witch hunt, and everybody knew it. And they knew it too. And they got caught. And what they did was treason. What they did was terrible. What they did was against our Constitution and everything we stand for.”

So Trump is already getting his money’s worth from Barr. The Attorney General’s parroting of Trump’s paranoid lingo could only have been a deliberate attempt to advance the propaganda that the White House was hoping for when they put Barr in charge of the Justice Department. And there will surely be more lies to come when Barr’s heavily redacted version of the Mueller report is released in the next week or so. Count on any incriminating findings to be left on the cutting room floor.

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

The only way the American people will find out what really happened is when Democrats in Congress are successful in subpoenaing the full report, which they are already preparing to do. Then the real fun begins, and Trump-fluffers like Barr won’t be able to do anything about it. That’s when we’ll see the real freak outs by Fox News as they try to spin Trump’s crimes into victories for MAGA.

Trump Suffers Severe Obama Derangement Fit, Incoherently Babbles that ‘Obama Had Child Separation’

Posted by on April 9, 2019 at 3:11 pm. 3 Comments :

The rapid and public decline in Donald Trump’s mental state is a frightening display of the fragility of his mind and cognitive infirmity. Many professionals in the psychiatric field have observed Trump’s swindling awareness of reality and concluded that he is unfit to manage a Burger King, much less serve as president.

Donald Trump Zombie

On Tuesday Trump validated the diagnoses of his mental failure during a press avail with President Sisi of Egypt. When reporters asked Trump about his administration’s policy of separating immigrant families, he launched into an utterly deranged tirade denying his own policy and lashing out at President Obama over and over again:

https://twitter.com/NightlyPolitics/status/1115668909137379329

“Obama separated the children, by the way. Just so you understand, President Obama separated the children. Those cages that were shown, I think they were very inappropriate. They were built by President Obama’s administration. Not by Trump. President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it. You know it. We all know it. I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation.”

That’s about as solid an exhibition of total insanity as you’re likely to see unfold on live TV. Trump name-checked Obama five times in that short paragraph, as if possessed by rabid anti-Obama demons. And each time he associated Obama with a practice of child separation that was demonstrably false. The Obama administration only held children when they crossed the border alone, or when their parents were accused of felonies. It was the Trump administration that created the policy of separating families of asylum seekers, and they even admitted that it was done as a “deterrent.” Nearly a year ago News Corpse wrote this:

“‘If you don’t want your child separated,’ said Attorney General Jeff Sessions, ‘then don’t bring them across the border illegally.’ Of course, these asylum seekers are not breaking any laws. And speaking about family separation, Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said ‘A big name of the game is deterrence [and] it could be a tough deterrent.’ In both cases they are advocating cruelty and human rights abuse as a deterrent for a civil border violation.”

So in a bizarre way, Trump is criticizing Obama for being tougher on immigrants than he is. Even though Obama didn’t do what Trump claimed and Trump now denies doing it himself. What makes this especially demented is that Trump also praises the policy that he says isn’t his:

“Now I’ll tell you something, once you don’t have it, that’s why you see many more people coming. They’re coming like it’s a picnic because ‘Let’s go to Disneyland.’ President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it.”

So in Trump’s analysis, the policy works because fewer immigrants come to the U.S. when it’s in place. So is he for or against it now? And obviously it was in place or else how would he know that it worked? Trump also contradicts himself with ludicrous visions of a migration amusement park. It’s just a good old time for these families who are fleeing poverty and violence by walking hundreds of miles with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I’m surprised Disneyland hasn’t already built their Asylum Land attraction.

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

The evidence that Trump is a very sick man just continues to pile up. And his condition seems to be worsening more quickly every day. He can’t manage to get through any public statement without misstating where his father was from or some absurd ravings about windmill cancer. And the video of these latest remarks is almost too painful to watch.

The Collusionists: Fox News Wants To Know ‘Why Are They Even Allowed On Television Anymore’?

Posted by on April 9, 2019 at 1:14 pm. 3 Comments :

There’s one thing that Donald Trump can look forward to every day. That’s the morning broadcast of his favorite Fox News program Fox and Friends. The easily predictable three hours of Trump-fluffing and Democrat bashing makes it possible for him to face the day despite his multiplying political and legal woes.

Fox News, Dan Bongino

On Tuesday morning’s episode, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were joined by a frequent guest, Dan Bongino. He is the male version of Fox’s senior harpie, Jeanine Pirro. And in this segment he surely didn’t disappoint the President with his bombastic brown nosing and rabid conspiratorial crackpottery. In a discussion about Trump’s nefarious associations with Russia and the pending release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller, Bongino unleashed a rancid rant (video below) that was impressive in how he kept the drool from smearing his notes:

“This is what I cannot believe about these two discredited conspiracy theorist hacks. Number one, why are they even allowed on television anymore – Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, and Eric Swalwell for that matter? And I’m being serious. They have lied to people over and over about collusion in plain sight and evidence they have never, ever produced. There is no evidence of collusion.

“There is evidence of collusion – this is the gall of these three – the evidence of collusion between the Clinton campaign and Russian sources is right in front of everybody’s face.”

Well, that was jam packed with delusion and dishonesty. First of all, representatives Schiff, Nadler, and Swalwell have presented piles of evidence that Trump conspired with Russia and then obstructed the investigation into his activities. In fact, all of America saw him meeting with Russians in the Oval Office, and his son and campaign chairman met with other Russians in Trump Tower. Trump also admitted on television that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of “the Russia thing.”

Bongino’s deflection to accuse Hillary Clinton of collusion is a familiar Republican trope. But it is wholly fabricated from bits of data that contain zero evidence of wrongdoing. They assert that because her campaign partly paid for the infamous Steele dossier, that she was connected to Russian operatives. She wasn’t. Even Christopher Steele’s sources were Russian dissidents who were not connected to the Kremlin.

Most disturbing is Bongino’s loony claim that members of Congress should be prohibited from appearing on TV. His justification for that is his assertion that they lied about Trump’s adventures with Russians. But Bongino can’t cite a single thing they said that wasn’t true.

What makes this fairly hysterical is that Bongino is setting a standard for television appearances that would prevent Trump from ever being on. After all, he has been documented to have lied more than 9,000 times since his inauguration. And that prohibition would also have to extend to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, and most of the rest of the Trump Nationalist Party. And let’s not leave out serial liar, Dan Bongino.

So, all things considered, Bongino may have a good point. Let’s add up all times that people have deliberately lied on TV and make that the basis for whether they can continue to be booked on news programs. The only problem with that is that it would let Fox “News” off the hook since they have nothing to do with news.

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

Fox News Downplays the Chaos as Senior Trump Aide Says ‘He Just Wants to Separate Families’

Posted by on April 8, 2019 at 3:17 pm. 1 Comments :

As Donald Trump begins another week of disastrous White House failures, his State TV division (aka Fox News) struggles to turn mountains of presidential manure into a sweet smelling garden of blooming propaganda. The week begins with Trump bellowing “You’re fired!” at his Secretary of Homeland Security for not being sufficiently cruel. But that bit of reality TV melodrama isn’t playing particularly well.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

The “Witch Hunt” that Trump is still obsessively whining about continues to be uppermost on his mind and in his tweets. Which makes the ousting of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen a convenient distraction. She is said to have been pushed out by Trump and his flying monkey sidekick, Stephen Miller. Insiders report that Nielsen was resisting some of Trump’s latest demands to violate the law with regard to asylum seekers and the babies he thinks are MS-13 members.

If this characterization is accurate, Nielsen doesn’t get any credit for finally exhibiting some signs of human empathy after a year and a half of emulating the evil headmistress of a Dickensian orphanage. But it does introduce a new wrinkle into what may be the most nauseating plank in Trump’s platform. His reasons for casting her overboard certify just how repulsive this president can be. And members of his own team are telling tales out of school. Here is what some have confided to CNN about Trump’s family separation policy:

“Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster. ‘He just wants to separate families,’ said a senior administration official. […] ‘At the end of the day,’ a senior administration official said, ‘the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws.'”

And there you have it. Trump just wants to separate families. Just like he wants to kill healthcare for millions of Americans, and cut taxes for the wealthy at the expense of working people, and bomb innocent civilians in Yemen, and promote the interests of neo-Nazis, and cozy up to murderous dictators in Russia, and North Korea, and allow the planet to become uninhabitable by driving it to a climate apocalypse.

In the meantime, Fox News is predictably ignoring these signs of the Antichrist in favor of propping up the aspiring tyrant they created, and in many ways, control. Their Monday morning programs were filled with orchestrated rhetoric asserting that the kids in cages that have shocked and saddened most of the nation were actually props employed by smugglers. Lis Power of Media Matters documented several of these scripted rhetorical fallacies here and here and here and here and here. There are simply too many of these nearly identical versions of the same falsehoods to be coincidental.

Clearly Fox News is working hard to undermine any criticism that Trump might suffer for his heartless assault on children and families. And these poor souls were already suffering so badly from poverty and violence in their home countries that they risked their lives to find safety and solace in the land of the allegedly free. Unfortunately, they chose a time when our president was a loathsome cretin who seems to have a bright orange streak of sadism. Hopefully, those of us who still cherish the principles are country propounds will prevail and we will return to being the beacon of light and that has inspired immigrants for over two hundred years.

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

Self-Abuse? Trump Promised to Release His Taxes, Now Calls Requests ‘An Abuse of Power’

Posted by on April 7, 2019 at 11:36 am. 3 Comments :

The still simmering controversy over whether or not Donald Trump should release his tax returns is emblematic of the march toward Idiocracy by the Trump administration, his cult following, and his State TV affiliate, Fox News. The arguments made by the tax suppressors are an affront to logic and democracy. In other words, quintessentially Trumpian.

Donald Trump

The first and foremost point to be made is that Trump himself promised to release his tax returns prior to the election saying that “I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely. And I would love to do that.” He never delivered on that promise of transparency that every presidential candidate for the past forty years has complied with.

Trump’s original breach of his pledge was an invented excuse that he couldn’t release his taxes because he was being audited. Let’s set aside the fact that there is no evidence of any such audit taking place. More to the point, the IRS does not prohibit – or even care – if a taxpayer chooses to release their own tax returns during an audit. And it wouldn’t affect the audit in any way. After all, the IRS already has that data, so there wouldn’t be any surprise disclosure. How could a public release change anything?

Now Trump is whining about efforts by Democrats in Congress to acquire his tax returns as part of their constitutional oversight responsibilities. And his complaint is typically broiled in hyperbole. He is accusing Democrats of “a gross abuse of power.” In fact, they are performing their duties in conjunction with all applicable laws. And there is a glaring need to probe Trump’s finances given all of the evidence of corruption in his businesses and political activities.

What’s more, Trump is exacerbating the suspicions that surround him by being so evasive and adamant that his taxes remain secret. There is a distinct odor of criminality and consciousness of guilt. What is he struggling so hard to conceal? His “acting” chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was on Fox News Sunday morning and participated in this exchange with anchor Bill Hemmer:

Hemmer: To be clear, you believe Democrats will never see the President’s tax returns?
Mulvaney: Oh no, never. Nor should they. Keep in mind that that’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the President could’ve given his tax returns, they knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.

To be clear, Trump told voters that he would “absolutely” release his taxes, he lied, and a minority of voters elected him anyway via the fatally flawed Electoral College. And it’s the American people, not just the Democrats in Congress, that Trump is most worried about, prompting his obsession with preventing them from seeing the shady dealings in his tax returns.

Trump frequently takes both sides of any issue he addresses. That’s mostly because he doesn’t understand anything and forgets what lies he told previously, or finds a new lie more advantageous at the moment. For instance, his initial assertion that he welcomed the release of the full report by special counsel Robert Mueller, and later dismissing it as an illegal hoax. But for him to call requests for his taxes a “gross abuse of power,” after vowing to release them himself, suggests that he was engaging in a perverse act of self-abuse when he made his initial promise. Democrats now are only asking that he keep his word. Which, based on his prior record, may be way too much to hope for.

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