Month: August 2019

With 34 Dead, Fox News Focuses on the Real Problem: Democrats Using Naughty Words

Posted by on August 5, 2019 at 4:47 pm. 1 Comments :

The United States just suffered through an extraordinarily painful week that saw its citizens being slaughtered by gun violence from California to Texas to Ohio. These were the 249th, 250th, and 251st mass shootings in year that is only 217 days old. The nation is sick with grief and fear. And the situation wasn’t helped much by a presidential address wherein Donald Trump promised nothing and shifted blame.

Fox News, Donald Trump Profanity

As the sorrowful stories of the victims and their families flow out, the media is generally engaged in expressions of sympathy and efforts to keep the public informed as details about the incidents and perpetrators continue to unfold. Well, most of the media. But over on the Fox News website Monday afternoon, the headline story was a curious and callous exploration of what Fox apparently thinks deserves top billing during this crisis. The headline reads: “2020 Dems unleash profane attacks on Trump, Republicans over mass shootings.”

That’s right. Fox News is headlining the use of naughty words by Democrats who were reacting to tragedies in a manner that most people would consider human. But to Fox this was more worrisome than anything else related to the horrific events of the past week, or any other news story.

The examples of egregious expletives included Sen. Cory Booker saying that Trump’s White House speech was “Such a bulls—t soup of ineffective words.” And then there was Rep. Tim Ryan saying that “Mitch McConnell needs to get off his a– and do something,” and that “Republicans need to get their s— together and stop pandering to the NRA.” Finally, Fox News caught Beto O’Rourke admonishing the press for not recognizing Trump’s complicity in inciting violence by telling them that “You know the s— he’s been saying. […] Members of the press, what the f—?”

The article does at least note that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 back in February, but that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell has refused to bring it up for a vote. Trump also ignored this in his morning speech. However, the article’s obsession with the potty mouthed Democrats failed to criticize Trump, who has distinguished himself as the most vulgar person to ever serve as an American president.

Apparently uncensored expressions of outrage and pain when Americans are massacred in the streets is intolerable to the folks at Fox News. But it’s fine with them if the President lashes out with profanities mainly intended as childish insults aimed at his critics and opponents. For the record, this segment from MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber contains a brief video compilation of Trump’s X-rated rhetoric:

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

Trump to the Media: Flatter Me More or the Killing ‘Will Only Get Worse’

Posted by on August 5, 2019 at 11:41 am. 4 Comments :

On the first Monday since the tragic slaughter of at least twenty-nine innocent people (and dozens more wounded) in another weekend of gun violence, Donald Trump made an address to the nation that offered some prayers and consolation, but continued to avoid the real causes of these horrors, or any practical solutions. It was another meaningless exercise in platitudes and propaganda.

Donald Trump heil

In the ten minute TelePrompter speech, Trump was typically devoid of compassion or anything that might be recognized as human empathy. However, he did manage to shift blame for the massacres to everything from video games to mental health, and – in a spectacular departure from rationality – to immigration. That last excuse was simply his insertion of a “poison pill” to kill any congressional solution to the problem of mass shootings.

There were a few morsels of routine speechifying thrown into the address. Such as Trump’s call for a unified front against hate, saying that “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy.” That was a good start, but he was still too chicken to identify white nationalist terrorism as a prime factor in these horrible crimes. Even though the FBI did so recently. Trump also spoke to another of his deflections, and defenses of the NRA, saying that “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.” Actually, it’s people who pull the triggers of guns they should never have been able to possess.

But perhaps the most troubling remarks from the President came by way of Twitter, where he posted yet another dangerous, anti-Constitutional attack on the free press:

Trump is blatantly and pathetically trying to shift blame for the “anger and rage” that he himself incites. He’s essentially threatening the press to be more flattering toward him or more innocent people will die. It’s a play aimed at gaining authoritarian control of the media so that he can use it to exalt himself. You know, like Fox News.

But let’s be clear: What Trump is really whining about is that the media reports what he actually says and does. To the extent that their reporting results in anger and rage, it’s because Trump’s incompetence, hostility, and criminality, are impossible to react to in any other way. Unless, that is, one is blinded by cult worship and infected with Trumpism.

After all, the media didn’t call Mexicans rapists; tell elected representatives of color to “go back” where they came from; malign African nations as “shithole countries”; joke about shooting migrants; offer to pay the legal fees of rally goers who assaulted protesters; portray refugees as invaders; praise neo-Nazis as “fine people”; or retweet well known white supremacists. And let’s not forget that it wasn’t the media that colluded with Russia to steal a presidential election or obstruct justice to cover up those crimes.

It’s notable that Trump’s disingenuous plea for unity and political bipartisanship occurs just a week after he tweeted a meme declaring that “Democrats are “the true enemy of the people.” That’s a reprehensible charge that he has been making about the media for years. Also within the past week, Trump announced that he was directing his Justice Department to explore declaring Antifa a terrorist group. Never mind that he has never proposed that for the white nationalists who, unlike the shadowy, disassociated anti-fascists, are well organized and responsible for murdering innocent people.

Trump’s speech was littered with falsehoods. Even worse, there were indicators of mental infirmity that should frighten every American. For instance, despite reading from a TelePrompter, he asked for God’s blessings for “those who perished in Toledo” (it was Dayton). That’s reminiscent of the consolation he offered last year to the fire-ravaged victims of Pleasure, California (it was Paradise, CA). He apparently has trouble remembering the names of the places he’s supposed to be consoling in real time.

However, there is one thing that Trump actually got right in his speech when he said that “Hate warps the mind, devours the heart, and ravages the soul.” And, ironically, he will forever serve as a powerful and cautionary example of the truth of that statement.

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

Trump Won’t Condemn White Nationalist Domestic Terrorists for Fear of Offending His Base

Posted by on August 4, 2019 at 12:02 pm. 6 Comments :

The casualties are piling up as gun violence in America continues unabated. And it is impossible to tolerate any longer the right-wing mantra of “thoughts and prayers” while they do absolutely nothing constructive to solve the problem. To the contrary, Republicans in Congress work affirmatively to obstruct common sense solutions that the American people want in unprecedented majorities.

Donald Trump

This isn’t about mental health. It’s not about video games or prayer in school. It’s about easy access to weapons of war and the flagrant racism and hate speech of Donald Trump and his ilk. There have been more mass shootings (250) in 2019 than there have days (219). And while Democrats have passed bills in the House of Representatives, Republicans, and particularly GOP leader Mitch McConnell, have refused to even allow a vote on any of those bills.

For his part, Donald Trump remains aloof and unable to tear himself away from his golf game, or Fox News, long enough to address this crisis with any measure of the seriousness it demands. A real president would deliver an Oval Office speech condemning the white nationalists who are responsible for the majority of fatalities related terrorism in the U.S. That’s a conclusion that even the Trump-appointed FBI director affirmed. It would be nice if we had a real president.

But Trump himself will not even acknowledge that there is a problem with right-wing violence. In fact, he literally downplays any significant occurrence of it. Following the slaughter at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump dismissed the growing threat of white nationalism saying that “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”

The words “white nationalist terrorism” have never passed through Trump’s lips. And this is despite his being one of the most vocal critics of President Obama for not using the inaccurate and inflammatory phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump even called for Obama to resign on Twitter asking…

Trump has made it a hallmark of his presidency to maliciously portray refugees as criminals and terrorists “invading” our country. Never mind that his exclusionary view of “our” country ignores the fact that it is populated, and was built, by refugees. Yet he demands that they “go back where they came from,” even they happen to be U.S. citizens and elected representatives in Congress. The rhetoric of “invasion,” and “criminal,” and “go back,” is exactly the same language that appears in the manifestos of these racist murderers.

It’s also the same language that is used by Fox News. Tucker Carlson’s White Nationalist Hour frequently bemoans the “darkening” of America. He has said that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier.” His colleague Laura Ingraham worries that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore [due to] massive demographic changes … that most of us don’t like.” And in the wake of two tragic massacres, Fox sought to blame ISIS or video games rather than the clearly guilty movement of alt-right bigotry.

There’s a reason that Trump won’t go after these domestic terrorists. He is scared. He’s a shivering wisp of a man who is afraid of offending his base. He’s afraid that the attendance at his cult rallies will decline. He’s terrified of losing support from the neo-Nazis who comprise the most activist faction of his hateful crusade. And Republicans in Congress won’t act either because they are afraid of offending Trump.

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

Trump is so unashamedly beholden to his cretinous disciples that he recently joked about shooting migrants. And considering the clarity that Trump gives to his hate speech, no one should be surprised when his followers take up the call. When they do, don’t expect Trump to denounce them. But the rest of the nation needs to come together and condemn Trump’s hatred and incitement to violence. We need to hold him accountable for the pain and grief he purposefully encourages. And if he can’t “finally mention the words [white nationalist terrorism], he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

America’s Laziest President: Trump Admits to Delegating His Job to the Media That He Hates

Posted by on August 3, 2019 at 11:16 am. 2 Comments :

The first two and a half years of Donald Trump’s presidency has been marked by his spectacularly underdeveloped work ethic. The only things he has demonstrated an interest in are his devotion to golf, tweeting, holding cult rallies, and watching Fox News. He has done virtually nothing else. Consequently, he has racked up a record of unparalleled failure, unable to achieve the vast majority of his campaign promises.

Donald Trump

[UPDATE: The sloth-like behavior of Trump is horrifically magnified on days like this when it’s being reported that as many as twenty people were slaughtered in an El Paso, Texas mall. The gunman is being described as a Trump-supporting, 21 year old white male, who has posted virulently hateful screeds against immigrants on social media.

Trump took three hours to react with a typically useless offering of “thoughts and prayers.” Then only twelve minutes later he was tweeting about a UFC fighter who idolizes Trump. That was followed by three posts about a MAGA-loving black “pastor.” And true to form, nothing was said about any potential solution to this epidemic of gun violence. Meanwhile, Fox News was baselessly speculating about an ISIS connection to the shooter.]

Among the presidential duties that Trump has neglected are the appointments to key White House positions. His nominees comprise an assembly of dimwits, donors, and utterly unqualified bootlickers. That played out in an epic disintegration of Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. From the start there was bipartisan recognition that Ratcliffe was a political plant with no relevant experience for the job that Trump wanted him to fill. The only reason he got the nod was because Trump had just seen him on TV smearing special counsel Robert Mueller.

In less than a week Trump threw Ratcliffe overboard, but not without making some of the most asinine and transparently false excuses for another embarrassing misstep by a president known for being unable to walk a straight line. During a segment of Trump’s Reality TV show, “Lying on the White House Lawn,” Trump replied to a reporter’s question about the state of his vetting process saying that “I like when you vet.” He continued (video below):

“I think the White House has a great vetting process. You vet for me. When I give a name, I give it out to the press, and you vet for me. A lot of times you do a very good job. Not always. I mean if you take a look at it, the vetting process for the White House is very good.

But you’re part of the vetting process, you know. I give out a name to the press and they vet for me. We save a lot of money that way. But in the case of John, I really believe that he was being treated very harshly and very unfairly.”

This is totally deranged on so many levels. First of all, it isn’t the job of the media to vet critical national security personnel. They can analyze a president’s nominee and do background checks, but the commander-in-chief should be making these decisions. The fact that Trump is comfortable letting others vet for him is baltant dereliction of duty. It can hardly be called a “great vetting process.” Where else is Trump abdicating his responsibilities, and to whom?

What’s more, Trump is delegating this profoundly vital task to the media that he often maligns as “the enemy of the people.” But for some reason he now regards them as competent to evaluate one of the most pivotal positions in the U.S. government. What sane leader would assign such a task to people that he routinely disparages as being dishonest, corrupt, and even treasonous?

Then, after handing off the vetting process to the media that he hates, Trump accuses them of harshly mistreating his nominee. Never mind that he doesn’t offer any examples of that alleged mistreatment. Trump just wants you to take his word for it that the press was out to get him. But even after condemning the media’s vetting of Ratcliffe, Trump still takes their advice and nixes the nomination.

Finally, Trump fails to mention during any of this rant that the real reason Ratcliffe went down was because Republican senators told Trump that the nomination of this unqualified hack would likely not be confirmed. So while Trump sought to blame the media for doing what he says he asked them to do, he is really just covering up for the senate GOP and his own incompetence. And sadly, Trump is even incompetent at that.

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

SRSLY? Trump-Bot on Fox News Says ‘I Don’t Remember Us Electing an Angry President’

Posted by on August 2, 2019 at 1:12 pm. 6 Comments :

A few weeks ago Donald Trump whined about his State TV network (aka Fox News) hosting a couple of town halls with Democratic presidential candidates, saying that “Something strange is going on at Fox, folks.” It might have been a little strange, except for the fact that Fox predictably used the appearances to disparage them in every segment that followed.

Donald Trump

However, Trump is probably over that momentary episode of angst now that he can see Fox faithfully fulfilling its mission to exalt him and brazenly lie on his behalf. Fox’s overt adoration of Trump was displayed in yet another staged “interview” of one of their stable of Trump-fluffing contributors. This time it was frequent Fox shill, and disgraced, ousted GOP House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. In a segment about the recently broadcast Democratic debates, Fox called on Gingrich to provide his relentlessly partisan analysis. And his opinion of where the Democrats are going wrong couldn’t have been more asinine (video below):

Gingrich: It was amazing the level of anger you got out of Bernie Sanders and Sen. Warren. I mean, these are really angry people and it was kind of amazing to watch them. It’s the opposite of how people normally win the presidency. You watch Barack Obama with a big smile. You watch Ronald Reagan with a big smile. I don’t remember us electing an angry president literally in my lifetime.

Newt Gingrich is either suffering from a severe case of selective amnesia, or he is deliberately peddling some of the most ludicrous lies ever told on Fox News. First of all, while Sanders and Warren (and all decent human beings) are often noticeably upset with the abhorrent words and deeds of Trump, they were also hopeful and positive and bearing bright smiles.

More to the point, while Gingrich’s “amazement” that Democrats are “really angry” fails to put their mood in context to the horror of Trumpism, his inability to recall the election of an angry president is downright delusional. Donald Trump is America’s ranking rage-aholic. He has a temperament range that runs from outrage to fury. The only time that he isn’t in the midst of a frothing tirade is when he’s stroking his own bloated ego.

Trump uses his anger mainly to malign his critics. He routinely taunts them as “stupid, ugly,” or other similarly infantile insults. His rants are purposely intended to incite hatred, division, and distrust among otherwise united citizens. And yet he has the audacity to charge that “The rage filled Democrat Party is trying to tear America apart.” He recently retweeted a meme that said that “Democrats are the true enemies of America.” Nah, he aint angry at all, is he?

So Gingrich can’t remember the election of an angry president even though the current one that he obediently reveres is a seething cauldron of bile and hostility. And despite Gingrich’s blindness to Trump’s acid acrimony, Trump himself regards it as an asset:

To put it mildly, Gingrich and Fox News are such glassy-eyed disciples of Trumpism that they have lost all connection to reality. In the very segment where Gingrich claims Democrats are angry, Fox runs runs video of them smiling at the debate. And Fox also had a chyron that affirmed Trump’s anger that read “Trump Tears Into ‘Radical’ 2020 Democrats In Ohio.” Which was portrayed as a show of strength.

Another example of this dementia inducing adulation took place on Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt sought to gaslight (or more accurately, “Foxlight”) her viewers with a comparison of Trump to Joe Biden. She said that “They’re both rust belt people though. They’re both, like, blue collar workers that have money, but blue collar.”

WHUT? To be fair, no ever ever accused these “Curvy Couch” potatoes of being Mensa members. But Earhardt has to know that Trump was born to a wealthy father in New York City, while Biden was a middle-class kid from Scranton, PA. This purposeful lie, as well as the ones by Gingrich, can only be taken as deliberate attempts to mislead the easily confused Fox News audience who seemingly yearn to be lied to. And the profiteers and propagandists at Fox know enough to give the Deplorables what they want.

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

Trump’s Base: FBI Cites Right-Wing Conspiracy Groups Like QAnon as Domestic Terrorists

Posted by on August 1, 2019 at 2:00 pm. NO Comments :

The incidence of racial hatred and violence has done nothing but increase during the administration of Donald Trump. In fact, the relationship between hate crimes and Trump is so tightly correlated that one study shows an increase in violence of 226 percent just in the counties where Trump has held a recent rally. And his ramping up of racist remarks aimed at congressional women of color surely isn’t helping.

Trump Charlotsville

Not surprisingly, the response to this flagrant bigotry from Trump’s Deplorables has been an outpouring of support. Polls show that Republican approval for Trump actually went up after his racist tirades. But within his own FBI, a new report is placing the blame for violence instigated by hate groups where it truly belongs:

“The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat […] It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.”

Other non-partisan organizations have found similar evidence of this sort of violent activity, but this is the first time that it has been affirmed by the FBI with specific citations of the bad actors:

“The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement).”

“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts.”

The report forecasts that “conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.” And FBI Director Christopher Wray (a Trump appointee) warned that “a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”

What the report leaves out is the link between these violent groups and Donald Trump. QAnon is built around a clandestine cabal of cultists who believe that Trump is heading up a secret society whose mission is to expose a child sex trafficking ring masterminded by Hillary Clinton. No really! And Trump has also been closely affiliated with conspiracy crackpots like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones of Infowars. However, the ability of law enforcement to reign in these organizations was greatly curtailed when, according to the Department of Homeland Security, “nearly all, if not all, the intelligence analysts focusing on domestic extremist groups” were eliminated under the Trump administration.

The publication of this report at this particular time has its own set of peculiarities. Most notable is the fact that Trump himself addressed the matter of domestic terrorism just last week, but from the completely opposite direction:

Bear in mind that there is no such thing as Antifa. There is no organization by that name, nor are there any acknowledged members. There are, however, people who are intensely anti-fascist, and they sometimes express that opposition with physical force aimed at the organizers and attendees of neo-Nazi rallies.

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

You have to wonder why Trump chose to speak out for the first time on this subject five days before the release of an FBI report on violence by white nationalists. Did he get a heads up from the FBI? Was he attempting to sandbag the FBI’s study with his own phony narrative? Whatever the reason, the effect of Trump’s tweet was to excuse the documented brutality on the part of the people who make up his base of support. And you can be sure that Trump will never make a similar denouncement of the “gutless Radical [Right] Wack Jobs” who populate his rallies and on whose votes he relies.