Month: June 2019

State TV (aka Fox News) Whines that US Media Isn’t Doing Enough Trump Fluffing

Posted by on June 5, 2019 at 12:50 pm. 5 Comments :

For the past week Donald Trump has been reaffirming his role as America’s Ambassador of International Embarrassment. On this brief junket he has managed to insult the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle), feud with the Mayor of London, call for a boycott of an American company in order to punish CNN (an unconstitutional, impeachable offense), Breach diplomatic protocol by attacking Joe Biden from foreign soil, and send orders back home to a former staffer (and current Fox News executive) to unlawfully defy a congressional subpoena.

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Despite all of this evidence of his foreign fiasco, the fact that Trump has once again proven to be an incompetent, self-absorbed, loudmouth who is allergic to telling the truth, hasn’t stalled the devotional bootlicking of Fox News. On Wednesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends were primed to report on Trump’s “triumphant” mission to the United Kingdom. So in pursuit of that goal they invited their ultra-rightist media shill, Joe Concha, to opine on how Trump was maligned at the hands of the U.S. press corps. The premise that Fox tried vainly to peddle was that, while Trump was hammered here at home, he was beloved in the U.K. That phony propaganda resulted in this absurd exchange (video below):

Co-host Brian Kilmeade: “This state visit to the U.K. earning glowing reviews – get this – in Britain. But back here in the U.S. – or whatever planet we’re on – the American media is telling a whole different story.”
Concha: (on the British press): “They’re on the ground. They know how London works. They know the people. And they’re portraying this thing a lot more positively, as you just showed, than the U.S. media who’s concentrating almost solely on these protests. […] That’s the problem. We’re getting way too many opinions based solely on speculation and how people perceive things instead of what people see on their screens.”

Kilmeade’s assertion that the British press was unanimously “glowing” was based on a few headlines that he featured in a graphic. The only problem is that not one of them actually praise Trump. In fact, they were merely Trump paying tribute to the Queen:

  • Donald Trump praises ‘eternal friendship’ at state banquet (BBC)
  • Trump hails ‘common values’ uniting UK and US (Financial Times)
  • Donald Trump state banquet speech: US President says Queen embodies ‘patriotism that beats proudly in every British heart’ (Evening Standard)
  • ‘Treasured Friendship’ Trump in tribute to ‘great, great’ Queen who inspired UK to win WW2 (The Sun)

Meanwhile, those same news sources also ran with these headlines that Fox News ignored:

  • Anti-Trump protesters mix humour with expletives {BBC)
  • Trump sends mixed messages on US-UK trade deal (Financial Times)
  • Protesters cry ‘Nazi’ as Donald Trump attends D-Day event (Evening Standard)
  • Donald Trump sparks massive NHS row as he says health service must be on the table (The Sun)

So Fox News is blatantly disinforming their viewers about the coverage of Trump by the British media. It is, in fact, nearly identical to the coverage in the U.S. And if it’s negative, that’s only because he’s such a predictable screw-up.

But what’s truly bizarre is Concha’s complaint that there are “way too many opinions” in the U.S. press. And he’s saying that, unironically, on Fox News. What’s more, his criticism that coverage is “based solely on speculation and how people perceive things” is downright laughable considering he’s saying it to Kilmeade who, just the day before, told viewers that “boos” from the crowd when Ivanka Trump and John Bolton walked by were for Bolton. How Kilmeade divined that was unexplained.

This is the sort of feverishly pro-Trump hackery that is the hallmark of Fox News. They are so determined to exalt Dear Leader at every opportunity that they utterly abandon reason and reality. And above all, they continue to push the notion that the media would be so much better if only it slobbered over Trump the way they do. Yet somehow they they still believe that they should be taken seriously as a news network.

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

Trump Orders Fox News VP Hope Hicks to Break the Law By Withholding Docs From Congress

Posted by on June 4, 2019 at 12:22 pm. 4 Comments :

One of the most brazenly dishonest claims emanating from Donald Trump was expressed recently in this tweet saying that “there has NEVER been a President who has been more transparent.” Of course, the truth is that Trump has been extraordinarily resistant to allowing full and unfettered investigations into his activities as President, as a candidate, and as a private businessman.

Hope Hicks

Trump famously refused to grant special counsel Robert Mueller an interview. He declined to answer questions in written form. And most recently he decreed that he will fight any and all requests for information coming from Congress, and will oppose any attempts to subpoena documents or testimony. He has already seen to it that senior administration officials have put themselves in legal jeopardy by failing to comply with lawful subpoenas. They include White House counsel Don McGahn, Attorney General William Barr, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

However, now Trump has taken another unprecedented step into the realm of pure totalitarianism to which he clearly aspires. He sent a letter to former White House aides Annie Donaldson and Hope Hicks advising them to break the law as well by ignoring document subpoenas. These women are no longer in the employ of the President and their compliance is not covered by assertions of executive privilege. Donaldson was the deputy White House Counsel under McGahn. But Hicks, who served as Trump’s Communications Director, has a unique problem.

Hope Hicks is currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer for the Fox Corporation, which is the parent company of Fox News. That means that Trump is actually ordering an employee of Fox to disobey a congressional subpoena. Any other corporation would have a hard time justifying adherence to such a request. Particularly a news enterprise that is supposed to be independent of political associations.

The question of Fox’s political independence, of course, is a joke. There has never been a news enterprise more closely tied to an American president than Fox News is to Donald Trump. They were responsible for his election. And ever since they have showered him and his agenda with praise, while viciously attacking his critics. The top figures on the network (Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, etc.) have appeared at his cult rallies and given him private advice on both politics and policy.

Nevertheless, it is troubling that Trump is in a position to bark orders at executives of Fox News. This surpasses the ethical depravity of his recent call for a boycott of AT&T in order to punish CNN. If Fox obeys Trump’s commands they are complicit in his efforts to cover up his crimes. What’s more, they are derelict in their duty to cover the news by endorsing the President’s attempts to suppress it. They are, in effect, making themselves accomplices to obstruction of justice.

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

Fox News has not commented on Trump’s illegal demands on Hicks to withhold information that Congress has constitutional authority to request. But they have previously defended Trump when he ordered former staffers to disobey subpoenas. So why would Fox change their opinion now? Well, for one thing, the others were not employed by Fox. Will that matter to a network whose political partisanship is so obvious? We’ll see. But don’t expect Fox News to the honorable thing. It’s not in their blood.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Calls For Boycott of AT&T to ‘Do Something’ About CNN

Posted by on June 3, 2019 at 12:26 pm. 2 Comments :

The last time Trump left the country he breached diplomatic protocol in Japan with an infantile political attack on Joe Biden. At the same time, he took sides with Kim Jong Un, the murderous tyrant with whom he “fell in love.” And now Trump is travelling abroad again, but this time, as he prepared to depart for the U.K., he managed to embarrass America before he even left by insulting the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Having arrived in England, Trump sought to escalate his diplomatic incompetence with another attack on the U.S. media. That in itself is to be expected from the president who hates the freedoms protected by the First Amendment and regards the press as “the enemy of the people.” However, this time he is attacking American institutions from foreign soil and attempting to bully them into obedience to his will.

These comments are despicable on many levels. First of all, he is admitting that the only news source he is comfortable watching is the Trump-fluffing sycophants of Fox News. And when away from home, he desperately needs Fox to stroke his fragile ego. Furthermore, he fails to document he what describes as “all negative” with any examples. Suffice to say that any criticism of him was enough to get him to change the channel to less objectionable programming like cooking or golf.

Trump is also displaying his utter ignorance of the television business. CNN is not only enjoying their highest ratings in years, they are more profitable than ever. But no one will be surprised that Trump is either stupid or lying. That’s the new normal for the Era of Trump.

The worst part of this Twitter tirade, though, is Trump’s gleeful assault on an American business. He doesn’t care who he hurts so long as he can get vengeance for whatever slight he thinks he’s the victim of. That’s typical of his inherent weakness and narcissism. But make no mistake, his petulant whining is aimed at more than 250,000 employees of an American company. It is totally unprecedented for an U.S. president to call for a boycott of an U.S. company with tens of thousands of American workers. And his malicious smear is even worse coming from overseas.

And as if all of that weren’t bad enough, Trump’s attack is based on his displeasure with how the free press is doing their job. What he thinks is negative reporting is really just a factual representation of what he actually does and says. The media can’t help it if his words and actions are glaringly dumb and harmful. And what exactly does Trump think that AT&T should do? He insists that they should be “forced to make big changes at CNN.” But forcing the press to behave in a manner that is acceptable to political leaders is what we would expect from the fascist regimes that control their media. Which is what Trump is advocating and yearning for.

What’s more, while he whines that the world “gets a false picture of USA” from CNN, the world has actually made a deliberate choice. Fox News used to be carried in the U.K. but they discontinued their service two years ago because nobody was watching it A company spokeswoman said that…

“Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

So Trump wants to boycott AT&T, hurt American workers, and dishonor the Constitution, all in an effort to bully the media into slobbering over him the way Fox News does. Never mind that the Brits have already rejected the lies and propaganda that is the hallmark of Fox’s deceitful brand of “journalism.” Like his pals Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, Trump wants to coerce the press into acting like his own personal PR agency. And the sentiments in these tweets are direct attacks on the free press, as well as free markets. They are are antithetical to long held and cherished American principles. But then, so is almost everything Trump does and says.

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

WEIRD: Trump ‘Liked’ Some Wonderfully Anti-Trump Tweets on His Twitter Page

Posted by on June 3, 2019 at 9:09 am. 1 Comments :

This is too strange not to mention. While Trump is posting rancid tirades, infantile insults, and flagrant lies on Twitter, he (or perhaps a rogue aide) is also “Liking“ some very obvious anti-Trump tweets (see pix below).

Donald Trump

The appearance of these liked tweets is, to say the least, peculiar. They include one that features a quote from George Orwell’s 1994: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” This Like has already been been undone, but it’s meaning is unmistakable. Last week Trump tweeted a denial that he had ever the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was “nasty”. Never mind that he was captured on video saying it.

Still on his list of Liked tweets is one that says “Please, after several typos he’s just not presidential material.” It’s hard to argue with that, but why did Trump Like it? And then there’s one that features a picture of Trump with a recent denial that he had anything to do with Russia, but that actually admitted that Russia helped him win the election. And finally, he Liked a tweet that says “for one so self-possessed, you aren’t very self-aware. You’ve hurt the GOP as much as anybody.”

Is this more evidence that Trump is losing what’s left of his already deficient mental faculties? Does he fail to grasp the meaning of these tweets? Is there a mole on the Trump social media team? Who knows. And who cares? It’s not like his other tweets are overflowing with intelligence or meaning. But still…

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

Donald Trump, Twitter Likes

Despite Preposterous Denials, Trump Has a History of Calling People (Particularly Women) ‘Nasty’

Posted by on June 2, 2019 at 12:59 pm. 5 Comments :

Whenever Donald Trump embarks on some foreign escapade, the prospects for his creating an international incident are impossible to ignore. Case in point, he just returned from Japan where he launched a political attack on Joe Biden, a potential election opponent, in violation of the diplomatic maxim that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” Even worse, he cited his murderous friend and dictator, Kim Jong Un, to reinforce the infantile insult he aimed at Biden’s intelligence.

Donald Trump, Nasty

That was last week, This is now. Trump is heading next to the U.K. And he has outdone himself by embarrassing America before he even got there. In an interview with a British newspaper Trump responded to a question about some critical remarks that Duchess Meghan Markle made about him in 2016. Claiming ignorance (which is believable), Trump replied “No, I didn’t know that she was nasty.”

It’s bad enough that Trump would malign an American member of British royalty in comments to the English press, but Trump only made matters worse by later denying that he ever said what he is on video saying. He really does believe that his glassy-eyed disciples will obey his edicts to ignore their own eyes and ears and listen only to what he tells them. He tweeted that…

Never mind the video evidence of his childish trash talk. Trump has his own version of reality cultivated from decades of self-delusion and narcissistic indulgence. And it’s especially comical that Trump thinks he’s entitled to an apology from the press that correctly reported precisely what he said. His behavior is completely in line with his past where his tendency to disparage women as “nasty” has been demonstrated over and over again. For instance:

Clearly Trump is comfortable characterizing strong, independent women as “nasty” just for daring to challenge his chauvinistic misogynism. That’s a sign of a pitifully weak man who is afraid of honest encounters with people who obviously have more intelligence and integrity. But just for the sake of balance, it should be noted that Trump has also cast the same insult at some of his sycophantic male suck-ups:

This is the humiliation that America is currently having to endure for the sin of allowing this cretin to get anywhere near the White House. His petulant antics would shame a twelve year old. But Trump is apparently impervious to shame. It’s that unique immunity that allows him to lie, cheat, insult, whine, and generally behave in a manner that really can only be described as pretty damn nasty.

LATE ADDITION: This is on surprise. Trump has now added House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the list of women he says are “nasty.”

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

Nitwit Trump Sycophants Celebrate Poll that Shows His Disapproval at 52 Percent

Posted by on June 1, 2019 at 12:38 pm. 5 Comments :

Every now and then the catastrophic failure that is emblematic of Donald Trump’s presidency is revealed in the bizarre behavior of its own bewitched disciples. The StormTrumpers are an extraordinarily blind following of cultists who are oblivious to any bad news concerning their misanthropic Messiah.

Donald Trump drinking

That single-minded devotion and self-delusion explains how a pretend billionaire fooled millions into believing that he is a man of the people; how an adulterous, serial sexual offender convinced evangelicals that he is a saintly servant of God; how a notorious liar and cheat is worthy of their trust; and how a treasonous admirer of brutal, authoritarian tyrants is seen by his fanatics as an icon of liberty.

It also explains the reaction from TrumpWorld to a new poll released by Harvard CAPS/Harris. The results of this survey show that Trump has an approval rating of 48 percent and a disapproval of 52 percent. Having a majority of voters with a negative view is hardly anything to brag about. Except, that is, to Trump and his confederacy of bootlickers. Never mind that the poll’s methodology is not widely respected as it consists of a static panel of online respondents.

Still, 48 percent is a high water mark for a loser president who has never cracked 50 percent. But it still means that most Americans are put off by the president who thinks that he’s everyone’s favorite, even if he does say so himself (here and here and here and here and here and here and here). It’s also notable that this poll is an outlier that exceeds the average of recent polls which is currently about 43 percent.

Nevertheless, the Trump Brigades are out in full force cheering about these pathetic numbers. They have managed to shut their eyes to the other findings in the poll that show that only 39 percent of voters say the country is on the right track. Or that only 37 percent say they would definitely or probably vote for Trump in 2020. These intrusions of reality are dutifully ignored by the likes of these fawning suck-ups:

  • Official Team Trump
  • Matt Wolking, Deputy Director of Communications for Trump’s 2020 campaign.
  • Kimberly Guilfoyle, Senior Adviser for Trump’s 2020 campaign (and Don Jr’s girlfriend).
  • Charlie Kirk, President of the rightist group Turning Point USA.
  • Bill Mitchell, right-wing radio yakker.
  • The Daily Caller, website founded by Fox News host and white nationalist Tucker Carlson.
  • Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, aka Stupidest Man on the Internet.
  • Infowars.

All of the above and more tweeted gleefully that the this poll marked “the highest point in two years” for Trump. And they genuinely believe that it’s a real accomplishment to poll underwater two years into your presidency. That kind of psychosis is apparently contagious as it replicates the same strain that Trump is suffering from. Although Trump’s symptoms are far worse. Just last week he was ragging on the “fake news” and bragging that “my poll numbers are very good. […] If you people would give straight news I’d be at 70. I’d be maybe at 75.”

Yeah, right. At this point it might be best to just humor him. He could blow an artery. After all, a couple of months ago Trump tweeted the results of a poll reported by Fox News that showed with a 55 percent approval rating. Unfortunately, Fox mixed up the numbers. That was his disapproval rating. Fox actually corrected the mistake on the air, but Trump’s tweet is still live.

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