Month: May 2019

Trump Freaks Out on Twitter, While Fox News Has Been Boycotting it for 6 Months

Posted by on May 11, 2019 at 1:10 pm. 2 Comments :

This is all perfectly normal. No reason to get excited or to worry about the fate of the nation. Just because the President of the United States spent two hours Saturday morning posting sixty-two (that’s 62!) retweets of mostly ultra-rightist douchebags piling up worshipful praise for their Dear Leader, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump

This happens all the time. Although usually in countries where the dictators in charge mandate wholehearted support and unconditional love. That’s rapidly becoming the standard for the U.S. under Trump who repeatedly refers to himself as “your favorite president.” Never mind that he is the most despised president in modern times with poll numbers that have never reached fifty percent. He openly pines for the sort of devotion that his idols (Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.) receive.

Trump regards brutal tyrants as his models of strong leadership. No, really. He seeks to emulate them with public remarks that advocate shooting asylum seekers. He congratulated Duterte of the Philippines for personally murdering drug dealers. He goaded his rally-goers into assaulting protesters, and promised to pay their legal fees. He has eliminated the daily White House press briefings, revoked press passes of reporters that aren’t sufficiently obedient, and routinely uses the Stalinist phrasing of “enemy of the people” to describe the media as a whole.

So the sixty-two rage-tweets that gushed from Trump like explosive diarrhea are now part of the official presidential record. They include twenty-nine tweets about the Russia/Mueller affair. Other hot topics include the tariffs on China, the border, and even a bunch about – don’t laugh – Hillary Clinton’s emails! He also threw in some jabs at Joe Biden and a few pompous exaltations of himself. Nineteen of the retweets mentioned Don Jr. This accounting of the tweet topics tells you what Trump is most afraid of.

Trump has also been consumed with abusing his power by exploiting his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents. That’s another character flaw that Trump shares with authoritarian dictators. He aimed his prosecutorial wrath at Joe Biden, John Kerry, and James Comey. Those are in addition to his similar previous attacks on Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and various other Democrats and FBI officials.

In the meantime, Fox News is continuing a boycott of Twitter that they began last November. Their stated reason at the time had something to with how Twitter handled a protest at the home of Tucker Carlson. But Twitter apologized and suspended the account of the user that triggered Fox’s complaint. And six months later they still haven’t posted a single tweet.

Perhaps Fox News is satisfied with the job that Trump is doing promoting their programs and hosts. Trump spends much of his day watching watching Fox News and live-tweeting what he sees. It’s hard to tell if Trump is serving as President of the United States, or president of Fox’s marketing and PR division. In addition to posting videos by his favorite Foxies (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, etc), Trump randomly posts demands that his cult followers watch the network’s programs. See? Not at all unusual.

Trump has three times the number of Twitter followers that Fox News has, although most of those are probably Russians or bots. So maybe Fox thinks they get better PR by letting Trump handle it than doing it themselves. Trump is clearly able to commit an extraordinary amount of time and effort to it. And now that Trump fans like Alex Jones have been booted from Twitter, he can (and does) take up their cause and advance their crackpot conspiracy theories. So Fox News can relax and let the President handle their Twitter promos. At least until Trump gets banned for his obvious and dangerous hostility and hate speech.

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

Wagging the Dog? Trump and Fox News are Prepping America for a Contrived War with Iran

Posted by on May 10, 2019 at 2:05 pm. 4 Comments :

A quick glance at Donald Trump’s Twitter feed Friday morning reveals that the current level of his psychotic anxiety is exceeding any that he has suffered since his inauguration. He posted twenty-five tweets or retweets in a span of two hours. And nine of those were related to just one subject: the disastrous tariffs that he imposed on China.

Donald Trump Revolt

Trump is still deliberately lying about how tariffs work. He insists that they produce revenue that goes straight from China into the U.S. treasury. The truth – which he has been told repeatedly – is that tariffs are charged to the importer (the U.S. company) and then passed on to American citizens. But he is frantically trying to make excuses for the harm he’s doing to American businesses and consumers, as well as to the stock market that lost more than 500 points since his renewed tariff threats.

The Trump administration appears to be manufacturing international controversy at a time when his approval ratings are sinking and his legal jeopardy is exploding. These negative trends were triggered by the release of the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia and his obstruction of justice. Subsequent to that release, Democrats in Congress have escalated their investigations into Trump’s criminality. Their issuance of lawful subpoenas has resulted in a presidential tantrum wherein he has declared that he will refuse to cooperate in defiance of the law. That is setting up what many are calling a constitutional crisis.

However, Trump is also engaging in a foreign policy adventure that is ultimately far more troubling and dangerous. On Friday his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, made some comments that are unambiguously hostile toward Iran. Fox News reported these comments (video below) complete with the overtones of doom that they imply:

“Secretary of State Pompeo says that any attack on U.S, interests by Iran, or U.S. citizens, will be met with a swift and decisive US response. The Secretary says in a statement that ‘We do not seek war. But Iran’s 40 years of killing American soldiers, attacking American facilities and taking American hostages is a constant reminder that we must defend ourselves.'” […]

“Citing an unspecified threat, the administration set up a deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group for the Persian Gulf. Four B-52 bombers have also landed in the region.”

It hardly seems necessary to say that “any attack on U.S, interests” would not be tolerated. That goes for Canada as much as it does for Iran. So why did Pompeo feel it was necessary to make such a pointless and obvious comment at this time?

The Fox News reporter spoke of “an unspecified threat” as provoking this action. But any prelude to war should be predicated on something more substantial than “an unspecified threat.” At least George Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, pretended to have a vial of Iraqi anthrax as evidence to declare a phony war. What’s more, Congress has to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force before the President can march American soldiers off to war.

What makes these circumstance even more disturbing today than they were in 2003 is that Trump has demonstrated that he doesn’t give a fig about the Constitution or any other democratic principle. He denigrates the First Amendment by constantly referring to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He’s trying to burn down the wall between church and state, while erecting a wall on the southern border to deny asylum seekers refuge. He orchestrated the horrendous policy of separating families and imprisoning children in cages. He sought to ban immigrants based on their religion. And his claims of executive privilege to prevent investigators from getting his tax returns or talking to his associates are brazenly illegal.

Trump’s mental health has long been the subject of speculation as fitting the description of a malignant narcissist. Everything is about him and his perceived awesomeness. No lie is too over the top. And his frothing paranoia stirs incessant fears of “witch hunts” and conspiracies and harassment. And all of that leads to a twisted temperament that is likely to become unhinged as the law catches up with him. That’s when psychologists say that a patient like Trump can be most dangerous.

Consequently, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that Trump might contrive crises if he believes it will help him escape accountability for his crimes. They might involve trade disputes with China. Or caravans of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, invading America from the south. Or nuclear standoffs with North Korea. Or even a fabricated war with Iran that arises out of nowhere, for no reason, but demands an immediate and deadly response.

This is a time that Americans need to be vigilant and steadfast to deny Trump any possibility of entangling the country in yet another pointless war that only serves the interests of a self-serving, authoritarian regime. Trump has laid to rest the old comforting platitude that “it can’t happen here.” It can. But only if the American people allow it.

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

Trump’s Rambling, Lie-Riddled Rant About Mueller and Russia Exposes His Panic and Fear

Posted by on May 9, 2019 at 12:44 pm. 2 Comments :

On Thursday morning Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference to announce an initiative related to drug pricing disclosures. But as often occurs at any Trump affair, it wandered off topic and wound up miles from reality. Trump’s rambling discourse (video below) was further evidence of his severely declining mental state that is stressed by anxiety, consumed by paranoia, and fraught with hostility toward his perceived enemies.

Trump Fear

The diversions littered throughout this spectacle included utterly false claims that Trump had provided Puerto Rico Rico with $91 billion dollars in aid following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. It was only $11 billion. He also repeated his frequently told lie that tariffs on China are paid by China. They are actually paid by by American companies who pass those costs on to American consumers.

Trump defended his son, Don Jr, who was just subpoenaed by the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, by saying that special counsel Robert Mueller had exonerated him. He didn’t. And Trump recklessly accused former Secretary of State, John Kerry, of having violated the Logan Act, and called for his prosecution. That’s just another example of Trump using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents, the way dictators are known to do.

However, the most strikingly deranged portion of this babbling tirade was Trump’s surreal portrayal of what happened in the aftermath of the release of the redacted version of Mueller’s report. He began by misrepresenting the special counsel’s team as being comprised of “seventeen or eighteen very angry Democrats who hated Donald Trump.” It was actually led by Mueller, a lifelong Republican, who was appointed by a Republican Acting Attorney General, who was appointed by Trump.

Following that, Trump claimed that no one was ever more transparent than he has been. This is despite his recent declaration that he is suppressing, via executive privilege, the entire Mueller report, denying Congress the right to interview anyone associated with the affair, and opposing all attempts to have witnesses testify before Congress, including those served lawful subpoenas.

Trump further misrepresented what took place by claiming that Mueller was unfit to conduct the investigation because of “conflicts” he had with Trump. Those alleged conflicts were fabrications from the diseased mind of a paranoid president. He first stated that he and Mueller had some sort of bad business relationship. And it went downhill from there:

Trump: Mueller’s no friend of mine. I had conflicts with him. We had a business dispute. We had somebody that is in love with James Comey. He like James Comey. They were very good friends. Supposedly best friends. Maybe not, but supposedly best friends. You look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey. And with all of that and other things – he wanted the FBI job. I don’t know if anybody knows that.

First of all, the business dispute Trump refers to was a minor incident when Mueller resigned his membership at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, because he no longer lived in the area and wasn’t using it. That hardly qualifies as a business dispute.

Secondly, Trump’s assertion that Mueller was “in love” with Comey is laughable. Especially after Trump confessed that he was in love with Kim Jong Un. What’s more, there is absolutely no evidence that Mueller and Comey had anything other than a work relationship. They were not even casual friends. Comey testified before Congress that he had dinner once with Mueller, but had never been to his home, didn’t have his phone number, and didn’t know the names of his kids. Trump has told this lie before, embellishing it with claims that there were hundreds of pictures of them “hugging and kissing.” No one has ever found a single one.

Trump did interview Mueller for FBI director, which shouldn’t surprise anyone since he previously held that job for twelve years. But if Trump is insinuating a conspiracy, then Rod Rosenstein must have been in on it, because he picked Mueller to lead the special counsel probe. If there was a conspiracy, it didn’t work very well because Rosenstein later stood quietly behind Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, as he brazenly lied about the contents of Mueller’s report. But here’s where this really gets weird:

Trump: Here’s what happened. The report comes back, it’s perfect it’s beautiful. There’s no collusion. Nobody even talks about collusion. You know, I haven’t heard the word Russia in a long time [he talked to Putin six days ago]. There’s no more talk about Russia What happened to Russia. The Russia witch hunt – they don’t talk because it was so on collusion. Which by the way is by far, that’s the big deal.

Let’s just set aside the fact that everyone is talking about Russia. Now Trump is ecstatic about what he claims is the result of the investigation that he also claims was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” He describes as “perfect” and “beautiful” a report that he insists was the work of an allegedly conflicted and embittered enemy who hates him.

It appears that Trump can’t keep his rattled attention focused long enough to decide whether he is the victim of an evil cabal, or the joyful winner of “total exoneration.” All of this is on public display every time he steps in front of a camera. And for some reason, the press is still reluctant to say what is so glaringly obvious: Donald Trump is totally nuts and unfit to serve.

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

Fox News Pitifully Spins Trump’s Billion Dollar Losses as ‘Impressive’ – No, Really!

Posted by on May 8, 2019 at 11:54 am. 3 Comments :

Most of the time watching Fox News is a chore that is fraught with frustration due to their brazen and shameless dissemination of lies and unrelenting Trump-fluffing. The network was always a right-wing purveyor of propaganda aimed at advancing a conservative agenda and maligning liberals and Democrats. But in the Era of Trump Fox has devolved into something more akin to Alex Jones conspiracy theorizing and even challenges The Onion for pure, lunatic satire.

Fox News Friends

Wednesday morning Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends, demonstrated why they have earned the ridicule of intelligent news consumers everywhere. They did a segment on the breaking news from the New York Times that Trump had suffered massive financial losses in the 1980s and 1990s. The story documented losses that totalled over a billion dollars. This is consistent with many of the stories that detail Trump’s business incompetence that includes going bankrupt at least six times, even with casinos.

In response to the story in the Times, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes stiffened their spines to construct a defense that is so ludicrous it’s hard to believe they allowed it to get on the air (video below). Co-host Brian Kilmeade led off with a series of inane excuses for Trump’s failures. He tried to set the stage with dumbfuckery like this: “[Trump] lost a lot of money over the course of 10 years, if you consider a billion dollars a lot of money.” And he insisted that there was “nothing about this article that should surprise anybody.” Which is true if you’re aware of Trump’s past fiscal fiascos. But then he unleashed this explanation for why Trump’s losses were so spectacular::

“There might be an incentive to go buy that building, to buy that casino, because I’ll take a loss this year in order that on my tax returns because I wanna buy for a rainy day. […] For me, I can’t imagine having that much much money, spending that much money and being in debt. For him it makes sense.”

Of course. It makes perfect sense. That’s what all billionaires do. They buy so many failing properties that they lose their entire fortunes. And because U.S. institutions won’t have anything to do with them, they are forced to turn to foreign banks and Russian mobsters to be rescued. Just ask Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, the Walton family, or – – – oh wait. Never mind. They never did any of that, or lost those sums of money. But Kilmeade wasn’t through. He then offered some examples of Trump’s business prowess:

“In 1987 he spent $29 million on a yacht. The market crashed the next day. So no problem. He held on to it. He bought a shuttle operation. It didn’t do too well. But he held onto it.”

Sure. No problem. Except that Trump had to beg for help from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to take that yacht off his hands after creditors initiated default proceedings. He didn’t hold on to it, contrary to Kilmeade’s deliberate lie. Alwaleed also bought Trump out of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan as it was falling into bankruptcy under Trump. And he didn’t hold onto that shuttle operation either. It folded and was sold off at a steep loss.

This is the sort of flagrant dishonesty that Fox News employs to keep their viewers stupid and devoted to the Trump Cult. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt summed it up for the segment by confidently asserting that:

“If anything, you read this and you’re like ‘Wow, it’s pretty impressive, all the things that he’s done in his life.’ It’s beyond what most of us could ever achieve.”

Well, that’s true. Most of us will never become lawless, self-absorbed, grifters who live to rip off everyone they come into contact with, and then lie about everything they claim to have accomplished. But only Fox News can twist the reality of Trump’s total lack of ethics and business acumen as “impressive.” And only Fox News viewers are willfully blind enough to accept it as the truth.

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

POLL: Fox News Viewers are Hopelessly Gaslit Victims of Trump’s Propaganda

Posted by on May 7, 2019 at 12:45 pm. 2 Comments :

The recent release of the redacted version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller has resulted in a couple of the worst weeks to date for Donald Trump. And that’s despite the fact that much of the most damaging material is still undisclosed. He is being barraged by legal experts who affirm that the report contains ample evidence of crimes and obstruction of justice that warrant consideration of initiating impeachment hearings.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

The public’s view of these matters leans decidedly toward a consensus that Trump is dishonest and likely guilty of criminal offenses. They may be related to the hundreds of contacts by him and his campaign with Russian operatives, or his suppression of documents and testimony that points to his guilt. But there is one notable constituency that is oblivious to the reality of Trump’s wrongdoing: Fox News viewers.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll breaks out the opinions of voters by their cable news preferences. And the disparity between those who watch Fox News and those who watch other networks is profound:

These results reveal that Fox News viewers have totally bought into the propaganda that Trump and his fluffers in the right-wing press feverishly disseminate. They are the victims of deliberate lies that don’t remotely resemble reality. This is evident by the extreme differences among the Fox News viewers with their fellow citizens. If the pro-Trump numbers were just a little higher, that might indicate some measure of media bias. But when the numbers are so radically far apart, that can only be the result of cult-like indoctrination.

It simply is not normal for 69 percent of the viewers of one network to say they aren’t worried about Russian interference in the U.S. election, when less that 50 percent of the viewers of all other networks feel the same way. It’s extraordinary that 50 percent of Fox viewers falsely believe that the Mueller report cleared Trump, when everyone else believes that by less than 25 percent. And how can 61 percent of Fox News viewers say that Trump has been honest about Russia, when less than 30 percent of the rest of the nation says that?

These numbers, of course, are reflected in the overall approval of Trump as president. And once again, 73 percent of Fox News viewers are blindly adoring of Trump, while significant majorities of all other respondents vehemently disapprove. What this tells us is that the Fox News audience is living in an alternate world. They are hypnotically devoted to Trump regardless of what he says or does. They even obediently agree with him when he contradicts himself.

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

And for that reason – along with many others – it is absurd for Democrats to consider gracing Fox News with their presence. It’s ludicrous to lend their credibility to a network that hasn’t earned it. And it makes no sense whatsoever to support a brazenly biased channel that exists – from its inception – to malign them, and whose viewers overwhelmingly despise them.

Trump’s Flagrant Breach of His Constitutional Duties Requires Immediate Consideration of Impeachment

Posted by on May 6, 2019 at 3:28 pm. 2 Comments :

There has been a great deal of analysis of Donald Trump’s presidency that raises serious questions as to his honesty, integrity, and even patriotism. And the recent completion of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has provided even more evidence that Trump has acted in ways that warrant criminal charges. The broad array of experts who concur with this is staggering.

Donald Trump Impeach

A letter just released, with several hundred former Justice Department officials signing on to it, asserts that Trump would already have been indicted with the available evidence if he weren’t President. And even the senior legal analyst on Fox News said that there is ample proof that Trump colluded with Russia and obstructed justice. He further called Trump’s behavior “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

Nevertheless, there is still no consensus for impeaching Trump among the members of Congress whose job it is to consider it. That may be due to institutional timity or political anxiety, but it is not because there isn’t sufficient legal cause that is already in the public record. That includes the fact that there were hundreds of undisclosed contacts between the Trump team and Russian operatives, which they lied about when disclosed. And the Mueller report itemized at least ten instances of obstruction of justice. Additionally, Trump has personally engaged in witness tampering and intimidation.

Most recently, Trump is taking his boldest steps yet to prevent the truth from being revealed. He tweeted that he now thinks that Mueller should not be allowed to testify before Congress. And he has stated that he will indiscriminately reject every subpoena for testimony or documents from the oversight committees of jurisdiction. That bullheaded posture was rebuked effectively by Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor with thirty years experience and Army JAG officer (video below):

“Article 3 of the Articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon was that he was not complying with lawfully issued congressional subpoenas, President Trump has one upped that. He has announced that he will comply with exactly zero subpoenas issued by Congress. Now he hasn’t said that ‘I will look at each one and evaluate whether there might be a viable privilege that I can assert.’ No. He just said flat out ‘No, I aint doin’ it. I’m not complying with any. So I don’t really care about your constitutional oversight responsibilities.'”

And if he wasn’t clear enough, Kirschner went on to describe what should happen if Trump continues to evade justice:

“Circumspection is great, but this timidity that we’ve been experiencing is really gonna kill any chance of holding this criminal president accountable. I think witnesses should be lined up outside of Congress’ door. And they should be called to testify, one after another after another. And if they don’t testify because the President has muzzled them in some way, then I think Congress should go for all three enforcement mechanisms: Their inherent contempt power, civil enforcement, and criminal contempt.”

That’s exactly right. And it should apply to everyone in the administration – including Trump – who seeks to obstruct the lawful process that Congress is obligated to conduct under the Constitution. The America people (49%) are already largely on board. And the evidence disclosed in testimony during the hearings would likely convince a solid majority that Trump is guilty of the high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment. So let’s get this train rolling. With Trump threatening to persecute his political opponents, and his hostile moves toward Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran, there is no time waste.

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

Trump’s Fear of Mueller’s Testimony is Exposed in Frantic, Lie-Riddled Tweets

Posted by on May 5, 2019 at 12:43 pm. 5 Comments :

There is nothing more pitiful than a criminal who is caught red-handed in the commission of his crimes and tries impotently to convince everyone that he’s innocent. That’s the sorry state in which Donald Trump has found himself as he unleashed his regularly scheduled Sunday Morning Tweetstorm.

Donald Trump Robert Mueller

The flurry of panic-stricken whining from Trump included a some embarrassing missives aimed at a variety of trivial targets, mostly intended to act as distractions. They included a swipe at the Kentuky (sic) Derby wherein the President, who famously cheated in order to win, came to the defense of a horse that cheated and was subsequently disqualified. He also announced his nomination of Mark Morgan to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump had fired Morgan in the first few days of his administration because he was an Obama appointee. But now he’s been rehired after sucking up to Trump at least forty-nine times on Fox News. And Trump also made the painfully idiotic claim (again) that China was paying the United States for tariffs. Any first-year economics student knows that tariffs are paid by the importer (the U.S. company) and passed on to American consumers.

But without question the dumbest outburst of his morning rant was a pair of tweets attacking special counsel Robert Mueller:

Let’s examine the Olympic-grade derp in these remarks one at a time:

  1. The $35,000,000 spent was less than most other independent counsel investigations. And it was more than paid for by the asset forfeitures of Paul Manafort alone. He is the Trump campaign chairman who was convicted for crimes charged by the Mueller team.
  2. Trump keeps wandering around the allegation that 18, or 17, or 13 “Trump Hating Angry Democrats” were persecuting him. Never mind that Mueller is a life-long Republican who was appointed by Republican Rod Rosenstein, who was appointed by Trump while serving under Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And for the record, there are more like 65,000,000 angry Democrats.
  3. The 400 page report by Mueller never said that there was “NO COLLUSION.”
  4. The Democrats want Mueller to testify because Trump’s sycophantic Attorney General, William Barr, has refused to release the full report. and that’s after issuing a deliberately misleading four page summary, and lying to Congress about the contents of the report and his conversations with Mueller.
  5. Democrats are not looking for a redo. They are trying to get the facts about the first “do,” which both Barr and Trump are actively trying to suppress. And so is Fox News.
  6. There is no evidence whatsoever of any crimes by what Trump calls “the other side” (i.e. Hillary Clinton, the FBI) But there is ample evidence of Trump’s crimes. Even Fox News’ senior legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, has said that evidence exists of collusion.
  7. The Mueller report was clear that there were at least ten instances of Trump obstructing justice. And the Fox News analyst agreed saying that Trump’s conduct was “Unlawful, Defenseless and Condemnable.”

Trump concluded by pleading that Mueller shouldn’t testify before Congress. That, of course, is not Trump’s call. In fact, it’s another instance of attempting to obstruct justice. But it’s also an indication of a severe mental infirmity since Trump keeps insisting that Mueller’s report was a “total exoneration” of him. He even said that Mueller “acted honorably.” If that’s true, shouldn’t Trump want Mueller to testify publicly and clear his name?

There’s a reason that Trump is so frightened by the prospect of Mueller testifying. Trump knows exactly what he did. He knows that he’s guilty. And he knows that the more public disclosure and transparency there is, the worse it is for him and his desperate efforts to avoid accountability.

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

Trump tries to pretend that he’s been cooperative throughout the investigation. But that’s a lie that is easily refuted. After all, Trump refused to be interviewed by Mueller. He’s working hard to keep others from being interviewed, including his former White House counsel, Don McGahn. And now he’s trying to intimidate those interested in finding the truth with these ludicrous demands to prevent Mueller’s testimony. This isn’t the behavior of an innocent man. It’s the desperation of a coward caught in the web of his own crimes and lies.

Fox News: Lying or Stupid? Hosts Falsely Claim that Trump is Second in Donations By Women

Posted by on May 4, 2019 at 11:27 am. 2 Comments :

When America is suffering through a presidency that has achieved the rare milestone of having told more than 10,000 lies since it began, it may not be an earth shattering revelation that this president’s media mouthpiece traffics just as flagrantly in deliberate falsehoods. But, sadly, that’s what we are enduring in the era of Donald Trump and Fox News.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

The latest example of this occured on Saturday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show. and a significant source of data for his executive decision making. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes raised the subject of the 2020 race for the White House and sought to reveal some financial statistics that they thought would help boost Trump’s prospects in the upcoming election. Their typically partisan and shallow discussion resulted in this exchange (video below):

Jedediah Bila: In 2020, donations for the first quarter in 2019 – Gillibrand, $1,271,135. Kamala Harris, $3,661,680. And third is President Trump at $1,473,830.
Ed Henry: So he’s number two for female donations.
Bila: Right. These are women donations. So everyone that’s out there on the left making the talking point that women are anti-Trump, or Trump is anti-woman, have to remember that the chief issue that drives women to the polls is the same thing that drives everyone to polls. And that is jobs and the economy.
Pete Hegseth: Also, a lot of women, they are our culture warriors. They see what is happening in our schools, in our churches and elsewhere, and they look at this President’s willingness to focus on patriotism.

Let’s set aside Hegseth’s tangential and condescending remarks and the fact that Trump is a notorious abuser of women. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that Fox News got everything about their story horribly wrong. To begin with, the data Fox was citing was from the campaign finance research website, Open Secrets. However, the Open Secrets report was about the “gender distribution” of the donations. In other words, it was studying the percentage of the donations that were from women, not the total receipts. And that’s how the table they posted was sorted.

So contrary to Fox’s claim, Trump was not the second biggest recipient of donations from women. He was not even close. The study they were citing actually just noted that he ranked third in the percentage of female donors. All it took was a glance to see that Trump was actually sixth in terms of total female donations. And that’s despite the fact that many of the female donors were divided among four Democratic women (Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, and Warren) who were less well known than the current president. Trump’s total take from women even ranked lower than Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker.

It took a prodigious amount of ignorance, carelessness, and/or dishonesty for the Foxies to screw up this simple story so badly. But those are “skills” that they work on every day. Don’t expect Fox News to acknowledge this error, or to offer a retraction or apology. They knew what they were doing and they’re proud of their efforts to mislead their already pitifully ill-informed audience. It’s what they were created to do.

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

Trump Threatens to ‘Look Into’ Social Media Bias of Diamond and Silk, James Woods, and Infowars

Posted by on May 3, 2019 at 8:36 pm. 2 Comments :

With all of the problems that Donald Trump is dealing with now (Mueller, Barr, Venezuela, the border, Putin, Kim) it’s odd that he would take time to push the ludicrous conspiracy theory that conservatives are being discriminated against on social media. All of the evidence shows unequivocally that there is no such bias. It’s just the infantile and self-serving whining of Trump and other right-wingers who can’t accept that they are not universally beloved by zillions.

Diamond and Silk, Fox News

The phony charge of anti-conservative treatment by websites like Twitter and Facebook is nothing new. It has been alleged by Republican politicians, Fox News hosts, and paranoid wingnuts for years. First among them is the modern minstrel duo, Diamond and Silk. They even testified before Congress for a hearing on the imaginary bias. So it is not surprising to see the Fox News “personalities” on Trump’s Twitter feed getting a boost from the President who spends countless hours watching Fox News:

Reading Trump’s praise for a couple of superfans doesn’t really deserve much attention. What’s troubling about this tweet is Trump’s threat to look into how they “have been treated so horribly by Facebook.” Exactly what authority does he think he has to “look into” that? And if that weren’t bad enough, Trump expressed the same concerns for whackjob James Woods and Infowars “correspondent” Paul Joseph Watson.

These are people whose social media contributions often exacerbate the most virulent racism that appears on the Internet. They are purposefully divisive and aren’t shy about inciting potential violence. So while Trump continues to complain that he is being misrepresented with regard to his comments about the deadly right-wing riots in Charlottesville, he nevertheless promotes people with exactly the same repugnant views. These are the cretins that he feels so compelled to defend with tweets like this, currently pinned to the top of his feed:

Indeed we do have freedom of speech, not that Trump actually gives a damn. If he did he wouldn’t repeatedly refer to the free press in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” And if his interpretation of free speech includes “monitoring” what citizens are freely posting online, his notions about the First Amendment are closer to those of his BFF Vladimir Putin than they are to anything in the Constitution. Maybe he would like it if Fox News was held to his standards of forced balance?

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

UPDATE: On Saturday morning Trump extended his tweetstorm defending social media’s most dangerous and provocative wingnuts. His bonkers retweeting included three more posts of Infowars content. He has truly bought into the deranged conspiracy world.

Fox News Shills Parrot Trump’s False and Peculiar ‘Praise’ of a New York Times Campaign ‘Spy’ Story

Posted by on May 3, 2019 at 1:00 pm. 1 Comments :

For most his presidency, Donald Trump has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for failing to understand the simplest matters that unfold in current events. Either that or he is deliberately distorting reality to conform to his preconceived delusions. This is evident in everything from his confused grasp of the economy, to his embarrassing belief that stealth fighters are actually invisible.

Fox News, Spying on Trump

On Friday morning Trump took another step into the cognitive void. He posted a tweet that offered backhanded praise to the New York Times for an article about the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russia. But his comprehension of the Times article was indicative of a diseased mind:

It was thoughtful of Trump to suggest that the Times should get a Pulitzer Prize. Especially since they already got one this year for “an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.” But Trump’s tweet missed the whole point of the story. He also missed the headline, which his tweet falsely quoted as “Details effort to spy on Trump Campaign.” The actual headline was “F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016.”

Notice that what Trump called a “spy,” the Times referred to as an “investigator.” And that’s precisely how Fox News helpfully sought to elaborate on Trump’s glitchy characterization. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends did a segment on the story by the Times that led with a gleeful Steve Doocy completely misrepresenting it (video below):

“So it’s a big story in the New York Times. Remember a couple of years ago when Donald Trump said the government was spying on him? Turns out the New York Times, in this morning’s edition, right here on the front, we’re gonna show you the headline, ‘FBI Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet with Trump Aide in 2016.'”

First of all, can anyone explain why Fox put that MAGA sign in the graphic, other than as a free advertisement? More to the point, Doocy went on to describe the story as involving Trump’s foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, who the FBI was indeed investigating to ascertain his links to Russia. Doocy even acknowledge that, although he repeated Trump’s rhetoric about spying, which is not what happened. But co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed and then went full conspiracy crackpot by accusing the FBI of “covering their tracks” due some to imaginary exposé that Kilmeade wouldn’t reveal.

In reality, this was part of an investigation that had already begun. It was initiated after an Australian diplomat told the FBI about a meeting he had with Papadopoulos in a London bar. Papadopoulos revealed that he had access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton obtained by Russian hackers. That meeting took place in May of 2016. The meeting referenced in the New York Times story took place in September of 2016, several months later. So, since the investigation was already in progress, what exactly were Trump and Fox News so excited about? The Times story merely affirms prior reporting that Trump’s campaign had unsavory associations with Russia that were worthy of scrutiny.

Trump has been whining incessantly about what he calls a “Witch Hunt” and a “hoax” for much of the past two years. But his contention that he was the subject of spying is ludicrous. When law enforcement assigns officers to engage in surveillance it is routine and legal investigative work, not spying. And in Trump’s case, it was all conducted with strict oversight and lawful warrants issued by independent judges. Nevertheless, Trump managed to twist the Times’ story into something it wasn’t, and then declared some sort of deranged victory.

This is just another sorry attempt by Trump – with Fox’s help – to malign the FBI and American intelligence agencies. That’s something that he has been working hard at because he knows what he is guilty of and, therefore, needs to discredit the police agencies who are protecting the nation from criminals. Criminals like Donald Trump, who also tweeted that he spoke with Vladimir Putin Friday morning. His tweet indicated that they spoke about the “Russian Hoax.”

So now Trump is talking to our enemies about his attacks on American law enforcement? Is he still colluding with Putin to coordinate their stories that there was “no collusion, no obstruction”? Doesn’t he realize that Putin is a subject of the investigation by the FBI, and it’s entirely inappropriate for him to discuss the case with Putin? And given all of that, do we really need any more reasons to impeach Trump?

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