Month: September 2019

Trump Backs E-Cigarette Ban After 6th Vaping Death, Still No Gun Reforms After 313 Deaths

Posted by on September 11, 2019 at 1:33 pm. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday morning Trump invited the press – you know, the “enemy of the people” – into the White House to make an announcement about his new initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes. He is apparently very concerned about a recent report that a sixth person has died from lung disease associated with vaping.

Donald Trump, Yosemite Sam, Guns

This is a legitimate problem that potentially affects millions of people, including children, who have taken up the habit. And there hasn’t been enough research to establish the safety of this relatively new product. However, there is something peculiar about the rapid response with which Trump is moving to limit access to e-cigarettes. If six deaths ever from vaping is a serious enough crisis to push through a virtual prohibition on an otherwise legal product, why isn’t 313 deaths this year alone enough of a crisis to enact common sense gun reforms?

Many conservatives and Trump Republicans make the argument that restrictions on access to assault-style guns won’t prevent people from acquiring them. But they seem to believe that similar restrictions will be effective on e-cigarette smokers. That’s a contradiction they cannot explain away. At the same time, they are driven to action by a half dozen vaping-related deaths, but fight tooth and nail to protect their right to own military weapons intended solely to mutilate the human body, despite being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people at schools, churches, and malls.

During his brief visit with the press (video below), Trump revealed that he is “looking at vaping strongly” because “it’s very dangerous” and that “children have died.” Of course, all of that is true many times over for guns and mass shootings. He also asserted that “we’re going to have some very strong rules and regulations.” Which he is vigorously obstructing with regard to guns and accessories like large capacity magazines. He elaborated saying that…

“Vaping is becoming a big business as I understand it, like a giant business in a short period of time. We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth be so affected. And that’s how the First Lady got involved. She’s got a son — together that is a beautiful young man, and she feels very, very strongly about it. She’s seen it. We’re both reading it. A lot of people are reading it. But people are dying.”

First of all, it’s curious that Trump has noticed that Melania has a son, as if he has nothing to do with it. But more to the point, Trump’s observation that “people are dying” from vaping seems especially callous when he can’t make the same connection to the far more numerous fatalities caused by easy access to killing machines that have no justifiable purpose for anyone other than soldiers and police officers.

It’s hard to dismiss the likelihood that Trump’s reluctance to take any action on guns is due to his alliance with – and/or fear of – the National Rifle Association. He has repeatedly made hollow, insincere gestures toward reform efforts, only to abandon them after talking to his pals at the NRA. And it’s fair to say that Big Tobacco has a firmer grip on Trump and the GOP than Big E-Cig. Since the e-cigarette industry doesn’t have anything comparable to the NRA lobbying on their behalf, they will end up being regulated in short order. And Americans will continue to be mowed down by assault weapons thanks to the self-serving, cold-blooded, depravity of Trump and his Re[publican Nationalist Party.

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

John Bolton Texts Fox News Live to Say He Resigned, Contradicting Another Trump Lie

Posted by on September 10, 2019 at 12:12 pm. 3 Comments :

The administration of Donald Trump continues to be a hot mess. Having already achieved a record number of departures of White House top staff, Trump has just parted ways with his fourth National Security Advisor, John Bolton. Sources say that Trump and Bolton argued about the President’s foiled scheme to bring the Taliban to Camp David.

Donald Trump, John Bolton

The break up with Bolton leaves Trump’s national security team littered with “acting” heads, including National Security Advisor, Homeland Security Secretary, Director of National Intelligence, and Chief of Staff. These are all critical posts that have a particular significance during these times of international turmoil. Trump is awkwardly juggling relations with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and many more foreign hot spots that threaten American interests. But the nation under Trump’s “leadership” lacks competent management in the jobs that oversee those crucial areas of statecraft.

Trump announced Bolton’s dismissal in his usual way – via Twitter saying “I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation.” It isn’t surprising that Trump and Bolton disagreed. That was apparent even before Bolton was hired, and anyone paying attention knew it. But Trump’s staffing decisions are based on the shallowest criteria, such as how they look on Fox News.

Not surprisingly, Bolton had a different view of how his separation came about. Contrary to Trump’s claim that he asked Bolton to resign, Bolton says – also via Twitter – that he made the offer first. And just to drive the point home, Bolton live-tweeted Fox News where his pal and former colleague, Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends, read the tweet on the air:

https://twitter.com/LisPower1/status/1171458331216502785

So Bolton, a former Fox News contributor, hasn’t been unemployed for an hour and he’s already angling for his old job at back at Fox. But the more important question going forward is which Trump-fluffing Fox News shill will Trump name as the next National Security Advisor? There are several prospects in the the Fox family who would meet Trump’s low standards for work in his White House: 1) Be willing to lie unflinchingly for Trump; and … well, that’s pretty much it.

One candidate could be Walid Phares, a longtime right-wing pundit and advisor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Phares distinguished himself as an Islamophobe and a crackpot conspiracy theorist with claims that tied President Obama and Hillary Clinton to the Muslim Brotherhood. Another candidate could be retired Gen. Jack Keane who makes frequent appearances on Fox defending Trump blindly for whatever the atrocity of the day happens to be.

However, a more likely candidate would be this favorite of Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who was a presenter on the recently shuttered NRA-TV before becoming a full-fledged Fox contributor who sometimes fills in for Hannity. Bongino has already caught Trump’s eye with a book that makes wild assertions about the “Deep State” spying on Trump. The President has tweeted about or retweeted Bongino 84 times. Typically they are just factless tributes to Trump’s imaginary awesomeness and virginal innocence, such as…

So we can expect the next National Security Advisor to be a worshipful member of the Trump cult. And he will join a team of hacks who have never been confirmed by the Senate because, according to Trump, “I like ‘acting’ because I can move so quickly.” In other words, he likes “acting” because he can just pull sycophantic, unqualified names out of his arse without having to get the constitutionally mandated consensus of the Senate. And sadly, in these troubled times that’s what America has to suffer though with our wannabe dictator in the White House.

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

America First? Trump’s Attacks on the Media are Both Ignorant and Anti-American

Posted by on September 9, 2019 at 1:58 pm. 3 Comments :

Another day, another malicious assault on the Constitution and its First Amendment protections for a free press. Donald Trump is continuing to march toward a totalitarian state where he controls the media. And in his latest manic outburst on the subject he goes further than ever to lie about and threaten both journalists and American workers employed by the media that he so desperately hates.

Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Shepard Smith, Anderson Cooper

Trump’s noxious tweetstorm began with a gleeful nod to the news that an “activist investor” has acquired a bundle of AT&T stock:

“Great news that an activist investor is now involved with AT&T. As the owner of VERY LOW RATINGS @CNN, perhaps they will now put a stop to all of the Fake News emanating from its non-credible “anchors.” Also, I hear that, because of its bad ratings, it is losing a fortune…..”

Trump’s celebration of this investment is a typically shallow analysis considering the investor purchased a share of AT&T that is only a little more than one percent of its outstanding shares. That isn’t gong give him any real leverage, and he’ll have no role in board or management decisions. What’s more, shareholders have absolutely zero influence over the editorial content of a news network, nor should they. So Trump is wandering around in a fantasy world that he clearly knows nothing about.

Trump also knows nothing about the state of the cable news business. His hatred for CNN notwithstanding, the network is enjoying the highest ratings and revenue in its history. This is an example of Trump expressing the delusions in his diseased brain as if they had some correlation to reality. But what’s worse about this Twitter tantrum is that Trump is maligning an American company before the whole world. That is recklessly inappropriate for the President of the United States, and a betrayal of the thousands of American workers at CNN and AT&T.

In addition, Trump repeated the flagrant lie that foreign leaders have asked him “Why does the Media hate the U.S. sooo much?” Perhaps Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un might have asked him that, but they probably also ask why he doesn’t arrest and/or assassinate them. After all, he has openly yearned for those powers himself. For the record, the media doesn’t hate America, and they don’t even hate Trump. They hate lies, corruption, treason, and ignorance. It isn’t their fault that Trump exemplifies all of those abhorrent traits. But Trump wasn’t through ranting:

Once again, MSNBC’s ratings and revenue are growing rapidly. Trump may wish that news networks that tell the truth about him were failing, but the opposite is true. Meanwhile, at Fox News their ratings are still impressive, but their revenue is in a steep decline because advertisers don’t want to be associated with the Trump-fluffing, white supremacist dogma that is the hallmark of Fox. And if Trump is tiring of negative stories about him, he might try doing something positive for once. Or at least stop doing so many things that are objectively stupid, destructive, racist, and/or corrupt.

Trump went on to bash the media in general as “an arm of the Democrat Party.” without providing any proof whatsoever. But that’s been his modus operandi for years. And coming from someone who leans so heavily on his State TV network (aka Fox News), it’s starkly hypocritical. His intent is to drag down the reputation of the press to prevent people from taking it seriously when they report what he’s actually doing and saying. He actually admitted that to Leslie Stahl when she asked why he attacks the press. “You know why I do it?” he replied. “I do it to discredit you all, and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

Everyone needs to remember that whenever they hear him criticize the media. By his own admission he isn’t doing it to correct the record or to stand up for the practice of journalism. He’s doing it to brainwash anyone dimwitted enough to fall for his deliberately deceitful disparagement of honest reporting. Sadly, there are way too many Deplorables who are happy to wallow in the filth that Trump spews, even after they’ve been told – by him – exactly what he’s doing.

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

Trump Lies Too Much to Take His Word that There Was Ever a Taliban Meeting

Posted by on September 8, 2019 at 10:56 am. 12 Comments :

Our Reality TV President has done more to debase the presidency of the United States than anyone could ever have imagined. Donald Trump’s pathological lying, infantile insults, willful ignorance, blatant self-dealing, mental infirmity, disrespect for the law and the Constitution, and bizarre affinity for foreign dictators, cannot be dismissed as mere character flaws. They are dangerously and deliberately anti-American.

Donald Trump

Among Trump’s multitude of personal and presidential improprieties are his official proclamations via Twitter. They represent an unprecedented devaluing of governmental discourse. It’s a cartoon version of diplomacy. And Trump’s latest Twitter pronouncement may truly have blasted through the bottom of the barrel and excavated a rough passage to China.

There is so much wrong with this tweet it’s hard to comprehend that it wasn’t the work of comedians on acid. And while many of Trump’s Twitter outbursts seem astonishingly stupid, this one really deserves further examination. So let’s break it down, shall we?

Disclosing Peace Talks with Terrorists
The first problem with this tweet is that it exists at all. No sane leader would even contemplate disclosing on Twitter that there was a secret meeting being planned with the same terrorists who harbored the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Nor would the cancelation of such a clandestine meeting be tweeted along with petulant threats to make future talks even more difficult.

Invitation Without Pre-conditions or Concessions
Trump’s tweet revealed that he intended to reward these still unrepentant terrorists with a meeting at a presidential retreat on U.S. soil, despite the fact that they have not conceded a single thing to earn it. To the contrary, they still celebrate 9/11 as a proud victory in their struggle to impose a radical form of islamic rule. They continue to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and it’s religious and imperialistic principles. And since the Taliban haven’t agreed to anything prior to the meeting, an agreement that fails to restrict their governance of Afghanistan appears all the more likely. Especially since Trump is such an awful negotiator that he already said publicly that he wants to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan. He needs a deal more than than they do, which can only result in a bad deal for the U.S.

Staining the Anniversary of 9/11
Trump also managed to show callous disrespect for the victims of 9/11, their families, and all Americans by scheduling a meeting with bin Laden’s protectors for the week of the anniversary of 9/11. The memory of that horrific event is still an open wound that millions of Americans recall in stark and painful detail. Apparently that isn’t the case for Trump.

Canceling the Meeting Because Terrorists Committed an Act of Terror
This is a mind-boggling admission by Trump. Peace talks are always held between two warring factions. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that one side or the other engages in violence prior to the completion of any peace treaty. That’s the whole reason for the talks. But Trump is pretending that a recent car bombing in Kabul is his excuse for calling off the meeting. What was he expecting? He never demanded anything, including a cease fire.

Trump Wants to Know: “How Many More Decades Are They Willing to Fight?”
It’s hard to imagine that Trump thinks this is a serious question. The Taliban, and their comrades in Al Qaeda, have already been fighting for many decades that go back to before the U.S ever set foot in Afghanistan. He should ask his friends in Russia. It’s further evidence that they are committed to a long term battle that Trump is showing he doesn’t have the stomach for. Most Americans certainly do not want this war to continue, but as President, it’s foolish and dangerous to show your cards to the enemy.

What Peace Talks?
It’s notable that there has been no confirmation from the Taliban that any meeting was ever actually scheduled. There is no indication that they traveled to the U.S., or were preparing to do so. There is no indication that they have had to alter such plans. They have not issued any statements criticizing Trump for abandoning the peace effort. Just total silence from the Taliban.

And that may be the most revealing part of this whole affair. Why is anyone taking Trump’s word that there were any peace talks scheduled in the first place? This is the President who has spent the last week insisting that his inclusion of Alabama among the states at risk during Hurricane Dorian was correct, despite documented evidence that it wasn’t. He went so far as to summon the Fox News White House correspondent to the Oval Office for a spanking because everyone at Fox wasn’t obediently regurgitating his lies. He’s the President who has told more than 12,000 lies just since his inauguration.

Consequently, it would be foolish to assume that any peace talks were actually scheduled with the Taliban. Trump could easily have made it up the way he made up what he said was the question he was asked most at the G7 meetings in France a couple of weeks ago. Or the way he made up the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Or the way that he made up that China pays the tariffs, not American importers and consumers. Or the way he made up untold numbers of other purposeful fallacies intend to deceive the American people. So until there is proof that peace talks at Camp David were actually scheduled between Trump and the Taliban, no one should believe they were. His tweet is just not good enough.

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

Wannabe Dictator Trump Proposes Banning Reporters He Doesn’t Like From the White House

Posted by on September 7, 2019 at 1:00 pm. 3 Comments :

The legacy that Donald Trump has said he wants to follow him when his presidency is over is that he exposed the “massive dishonesty in the Fake News.” He’s as likely to be remembered for that farcical delusion as for being the first man to walk on the moon. But history will undoubtedly record him as one of the most antagonistic presidents toward the Constitution’s protection of a free press.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

As if to secure that title for posterity, Trump tweeted on Saturday morning what amounts to threat aimed at a news enterprise that he has long despised – The Washington Post. Trump’s festering hatred for the Post stems from his paranoid aversion to any media that has the audacity to tell the truth about him because he knows what that will lead to. He said that…

In that missive Trump achieved an impressively manic Level Four Fury by packing the adjectives “nasty, lightweight, disgusting,” and “fake,” all into one tweet. But worst of all, he proposed that the Post reporters be banned from White House grounds simply for doing their job. That’s typical of Trump’s raging authoritarian tendencies, wherein he believes that he has the right to pick and choose who is allowed to be a journalist.

He’s tried this twice before in recent weeks when he attempted to revoke the White House credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta and Playboy columnist Brian Karem. In both cases Trump lost in court and the journalists’ credentials where restored. This obviously gnaws at Trump who has openly yearned for the sort of tyrannical control of the press that his pal Vladimir Putin enjoys.

What Trump was reacting to was a Washington Post article by Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker that accurately described Trump’s wasted summer of embarrassment and failure. The headline read “Trump’s lost summer: Aides claim victory, but others see incompetence and intolerance.” The article was well sourced throughout and painted a clear picture of…

“…what some Trump advisers and allies characterize as a lost summer defined by self-inflicted controversies and squandered opportunities. […] The two months between Independence Day and Labor Day offered a fresh and vivid portrait of the president as seen by Trump’s critics — incompetent, indecisive, intolerant and ineffective.”

Trump included in his tweet a link to an op-ed by his press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, in the wingnut Washington Examiner. She tried to counter the Post’s article with examples of positive news stories about Trump that she said the Post ignored. The only problem with that was that the Post actually did cover those stories at the time. It’s astonishing that an alleged “press secretary” could write such a poorly researched op-ed, or that anyone would publish it. As for the Post, their executive editor, Marty Baron, defended his reporters and blasted Trump saying that:

“The president’s statement fits into a pattern of seeking to denigrate and intimidate the press. It’s unwarranted and dangerous, and it represents a threat to a free press in this country.”

That’s the Trump Media Doctrine in a nutshell. His paranoia and fragile ego drive him to attack the press with unsubstantiated charges of fakery and the infamous Stalinist rhetoric that “the media is the enemy of the people.” His hostility toward unfettered journalism even extends to friendly media like Fox News who Trump recently lambasted as “not working for us anymore,” and ordered his cult followers to “start looking for a new news outlet.” And on Friday he summoned Fox’s White House correspondent, John Roberts, to the Oval Office for an official spanking because he wasn’t worshipful enough.

So there is no one in the media who is safe. Trump will viciously assault his critics. And he will callously abandon his friends. He demands unwavering loyalty and the pure exaltation of Dear Leader. In order to avoid his wrath you must hate those whom he hates. And you must defend him at all times, no matter how foolish or contrary to American principles. And unfortunately, there are those in both the right-wing media and the Republican Nationalist Party who are all too willing to comply with those political terms of enslavement.

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

Trump Summons Fox News White House Correspondent to Oval Woodshed for a Spanking

Posted by on September 6, 2019 at 11:25 am. 10 Comments :

There is little in the current news cycle that is less important than Donald Trump’s absurd and pointless lies about Alabama being in the path of Hurricane Dorian. For the record, Alabama was ruled out as being at risk two days before Trump issued his warning to residents of that state. But despite the facts that were confirmed by the National Weather Service’s Hurricane Center, Trump has elevated this nonsense to ridiculously atmospheric heights.

Donald Trump

There is a case to be made that Trump’s lying is significant because it might have unnecessarily rattled Alabamians or even shifted resources to areas where they weren’t needed. But more troubling is that it puts Trump’s severe mental instability on display. He could have just said that a mistake was made and this story would have slipped quietly away. Instead he turned his egotistical aversion to ever being challenged up to twelve – that’s twelve pile-on tweets insisting that he was correct, contrary to reality.

The latest of these demented tweets came on Friday morning when he accused the media of being fixated on the story he has been obsessively ranting about. “They went Crazy,” he tweeted, “hoping against hope that I made a mistake (which I didn’t).” Well, yes he did, and all the evidence affirms it. He went on to whine about not getting an apology that he doesn’t deserve, including for “the Witch Hunt, or SpyGate!” Nevermind that the Mueller probe (aka “witch hunt” in Trump’s cartoon brain) produced abundant evidence of Trump’s illegal activities, and “SpyGate” was a figment of his imagination.

However, the most deplorable action on Trump’s part during this vacuous waste of time occurred on Thursday when, as reported by CNN, Trump ordered the Fox News White House correspondent, John Roberts, to appear before him in his chambers. Trump was very unhappy with the reporting by Roberts and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. This was not the first time that Trump has lashed out at Fox for not being being sufficiently adoring. Just last week he even ordered his cult followers to “start looking for new news outlet.” But this may be the first time that he has reprimanded a Fox reporter in the oval Office.

In an email by Roberts that was provided to CNN, he said that Trump “insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm.” Roberts wrote that Trump was “looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong” when he falsely claimed on Sunday that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian. By that time it was already known that Dorian had turned sharply to the north and east. But that didn’t stop Trump from lobbying Roberts with outdated information and charts. Even in those old projections there was only a 5-10 percent chance of a slight brushing of a sliver of Alabama, while Trump had said that there was 95 percent probability of landfall in Alabama.

CNN also reported that Trump “voiced his displeasure about Fox News anchor Shepard Smith’s skeptical reporting about the Alabama map,” and asked Roberts “to hit back at Shepard Smith.” This would be regarded as wholly inappropriate for any president to say to any journalist, but this is Trump and Fox News, so all pretensions to credibility are irrelevant. What Trump was fuming about was Smith’s commentary (video below) on the Alabama non-controversy wherein he said that…

Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable. This week’s edition, the President’s ongoing claim that Alabama was at risk from hurricane Dorian. It wasn’t. Maybe he got some bad info, somebody maybe he made a mistake. Maybe he was confused. We don’t know. But he was wrong. Everybody makes mistakes. Instead the next day, the president blamed the media for his own inaccurate warning and started to rewrite history on the matter. […]

Why would the president of the United States do this? He decries fake news that isn’t and disseminates fake news that is. Think China pays the tariffs. The wall is going up. Historic inauguration crowd. Russia probe is a witch hunt. You need an ID to buy cereal. Noise from windmills causes cancer. It’s endless.

Indeed, it does seem to be endless as Trump prolongs this spectacle into the weekend. And along with trying to bully his friends at Fox News, Trump ordered his Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown, to issue a flagrantly false work of propaganda that backed up Trump’s ever-expanding web of lies. And not surprisingly, Trump’s BFF, Sean Hannity, took to the air to criticize the “psychotic jackasses in the media mob” who he said were misreporting that Trump lied, even though they merely reported the actual events as they occurred.

The only reason this preposterous story persists is that Trump can’t keep his narcissistic mouth shut for thirty seconds. His deranged insistence that he be perceived as right in all matters at all times forces him to defend even the most trivial blather that oozes from his pie hole on an all too frequent basis. And this time he even tried to browbeat a friendly Foxie into complicity with his dishonest drivel. The fact that it didn’t work may be a sign of trouble ahead for Trump. We can only hope.

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

Whining on Fox News: Fact-Checking Trump Will ‘Reveal Him to Be Stupid, Uninformed, or a Liar’

Posted by on September 5, 2019 at 11:40 am. 4 Comments :

From the outset of Donald Trump’s presidency he has regarded the media as his most dangerous foe. That’s why he he repeatedly refers to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He even explicitly tweeted on Wednesday that his “real opponent” is not the Democratic Party, but the press. It’s his innate hatred of any institution that is governed by facts and honesty that drives this dangerous and anti-constitutional hostility.

Donald Trump

Trump is right in a perverse way. He really does need to fear the press due to his unabashed and pathological lying. To date he has racked up more than 12,000 lies since his inauguration. Every fact-checker who tracks Trump’s pitiful record of falsehoods has compiled volumes of evidence that he simply doesn’t care about accuracy or truth. And his lies can range from easily verifiable nonsense like who pays for tariffs (which got shot down by Fox News), to his ludicrous battle to defend saying that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian (it wasn’t). Trump will lie about matters big and small because his internal morality doesn’t recognize the difference between truth and lies. He’s focused solely on whatever benefits him at the moment.

So it was not surprising to see Geraldo Rivera at his regular perch on Fox and Friends running defense for Trump. These relentless presidential bootlickers are as predictable as flies on bullshit, which is a pretty apt simile. During a segment that started out examining Trump’s diverting funds from the military to his vanity border wall, Geraldo took a detour to shield Trump from criticism about his lying ways, but belly-flopped painfully in the process:

“This is all clear to me what is happening is that this president gets the worst press of any president in the history of the republic. Everything he says and does is cross-checked and scrutinized to reveal him to be stupid, uninformed, or a liar, you know, it is very frustrating to see how other news networks obsess about any misstep or misstatement the president makes.”

Geraldo’s assessment of which president got the worst press might be disputed by Presidents Clinton, or Nixon, or even Lincoln. But to the extent that there is negative news about Trump, it’s entirely his own fault. After all, Trump is the worst president of any in the history of the republic. He’s the first to never have positive approval ratings (they never broke above 46 percent). And his inexperience, ignorance, and incompetence is exposed nearly every day in on his Twitter feed and his useless, impromptu “chopper talk” press avails. It would be easy for Trump to avoid bad press. Just stop doing idiotic, racist, and often illegal things.

More to the point, Geraldo is complaining because “Everything [Trump] says and does is cross-checked.” Oh my Gawd! What a horrible thing to do to a public servant who is pretending to lead the free world. What’s worse is that Geraldo actually admits that such scrutiny will result in Trump being revealed to be “stupid, uninformed, or a liar.” And that, as it happens, is the truth. So what Geraldo is upset about is that the true nature of Trump’s inadequacies will become apparent to everyone should he be held to reasonable standards of review. Which is the job of the press. But Geraldo isn’t seeking the truth. He’s seeking the suppression of it. Which is the job of Fox News.

Trump is upset about the very same thing as Geraldo. He doesn’t really care whether the media is honest or not. He’s only interested in making sure that his flagrant fabrications aren’t discovered and reported. And if they are, he will attempt to discredit the press so that no one – or at least his Deplorable cult followers – will believe them. He actually admitted that to Leslie Stahl when she asked why he attacks the press. “You know why I do it?” he replied. “I do it to discredit you all, and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” So as Stahl suggested, “Put that in your head for a minute.”

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

The President’s ‘Experts’ on Any Subject are Mainly Trump-Fluffing Fox News Hacks

Posted by on September 4, 2019 at 1:50 pm. 2 Comments :

There is no question that Donald Trump has ushered in an era of presidential firsts: The first president to welcome and encourage Russian election help; the first to enrich himself by patronizing his own properties; the first to brag about committing sexual assault; the first to tell more than 12,000 lies; the first to engage in childish name-calling; the first to never have a positive favorable polling; the first to malign the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people;” the first to express more loyalty to foreign dictators than to our allies and even our own intelligence community; the first to rip babies from their parents and lock them in cages; the first to … oh hell, this could go on forever.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Another first that Trump has achieved concerns his inner circle of advisors and White House staff. The President of the United States is uniquely positioned to have access to the most experienced and intelligent people in the world. The issues that any president faces require that level of advice and counsel, whether it is about economics, diplomacy, legislation, healthcare, the military, and so much more. But Trump has assembled a confederacy of dunces in his Cabinet who know little about the departments they have been appointed to manage. Rick Perry knows nothing about energy. Ben Carson never spent five minutes studying urban planning. Betsy DeVos has no education background whatsoever. And the rest of the Cabinet is similarly incompetent.

However, none of that really matters because Trump doesn’t turn to them for guidance on any issue anyway. Instead, he consults his “Shadow Cabinet,” the presenters and contributors of Fox News. In many cases Trump has actually tapped Fox hosts for White House jobs. But even when he hasn’t, he still relies on their advice which he gets from his many hours of watching Fox News instead of doing any actual work.

The result of Trump’s addiction to Fox is that he is getting the most shallow, inappropriate, and dangerous advice available from people who have never studied the subjects on which they pontificate on TV. A quick examination of Trump’s Twitter feed revealed that every single person he quoted in the past five days was a TV talker. For instance:

  • Businessman Sam Zell, on CNBC
  • Activist Charlie Kirk on Trish Regan’s Fox News show
  • Lawyer Alan Dershowitz on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show
  • Host Lou Dobbs of Fox Business
  • Host Steve Hilton of Fox News
  • Evangelical Robert Jeffress on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show
  • Attorney Joe DiGenova on Fox News
  • Former GOP congressman Jason Chaffetz on Fox News
  • Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal on Fox News
  • Legal analyst Gregg Jarrett on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show
  • Sen. Lindsey Graham on Fox News
  • James Trusty on Fox News
  • Rep. Pete King on Fox News
  • Bryan Dean Wright on Fox and Friends

That’s just the past five days. He didn’t quote a single expert from any professional or academic source. And these are in addition to dozens of videos posted by Trump of Fox News personalities and contributors like Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity, and Tim Fitton of the ultra rightist Judicial Watch. Their political tips contain such useful insights as this one from Lou Dobbs:

Remember, that’s the ranting of a host on an alleged “news” network who is accusing all Democrats of hating America. A more plausible assessment would be that the only way to truly love America is to hate Trump. After all, he’s the one who is constantly tearing down the cherished institutions of the country, from the Constitution, to the the media, to law enforcement, to the military, and more. He’s the one who is trying to destroy America’s natural resources, preserves, air, water, and climate. And he’s the one who is siding with our enemies abroad and the wealthy elites domestically at the expense of the majority of the people.

For the Commander-in-Chief to rely on such a pitifully ignorant cadre of television shills should worry every citizen. But they shouldn’t be surprised. Trump’s prior job was hosting a TV game show, and that’s what he believes reflects a reality that exists only in his diseased brain. He still thinks he’s doing a reality TV show and he doesn’t know that Fox News is an entertainment network. And that delusional departure from sanity is not just a curious quirk.It has the potential to cause great harm if he isn’t stopped – and soon.

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

Trump Interrupts His Empty Schedule to Whine About the Mueller Report, Witch Hunt

Posted by on September 3, 2019 at 3:03 pm. 4 Comments :

With Hurricane Dorian closing in on the Atlantic coast, and mass shooting victims still recovering in Texas, and an economy that’s teetering on the brink of recession, any other president would be exceedingly busy on this post-Labor Day Tuesday. But Donald Trump is apparently so idle that he’s spending his day hate-tweeting the mayor of London and threatening to escalate the trade war with China.

Donald Trump, Witch Hunt

Having already played several rounds of golf while pretending to be “monitoring” the hurricane, Trump has little else to do but watch Fox News and post incoherent tweets. It’s not like he’d actually do any presidential work. And among the Twitter tantrums he posted Tuesday was one that seems foolishly unnecessary from his perspective:

Why would Trump want to reignite an issue that has been dormant in the news cycle for several weeks? What he robotically refers to as a “Witch Hunt” has caused significant damage to his polling status. Even his favorite pollster, the ultra-biased Rasmussen, recently put him near his lows for the year. That’s primarily because very few other Americans think that it’s a Witch Hunt. In fact, most polls show that voters favor an impeachment inquiry and hold special counsel Robert Mueller in high esteem. Mueller’s congressional testimony confirmed that Trump had “welcomed and encouraged” Russian help during his campaign, and that he committed numerous acts of obstruction of justice to cover that up. Even the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News said so.

And yet, Trump is now tweeting about the Mueller Report and a witch Hunt that might otherwise have not been at the forefront of the public’s mind. But for the reminder of his “No Collusion, No Obstruction” mantra, some folks might have forgotten. But now, thanks to Trump it’s top of the news again.

Trump’s tweet appears to have been triggered by the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report about former FBI Director James Comey. However, Trump has been flagrantly lying about that for weeks. Not only did it not reveal “a giant and illegal SCAM,” it actually found that there was no violation of any law whatsoever.

Trump also used this tweet to the beseech the House of Representatives to “get back to work on drug prices, healthcare, [and] infrastructure.” Which is funny because the Democratically-controlled House has already passed bills on those matters (and many others, 200+ in all), but the Republican-controlled Senate has failed to act on a single one. So it’s Trump’s pal Mitch McConnell who needs the kick in the pants.

In the end, Trump has managed to get everything wrong in this tweet, but still performed a public service. Because while there are always issues competing for the attention of the American mind, the matter of Trump’s unsavory association with Vladimir Putin, and the assault on our democratic election, should never be swept under the rug with all of the other Trump atrocities. That rug is already too lumpy to walk on. And thanks to Trump’s boredom and his inability to keep his mouth shut for two minutes, this important issue is once again in the headlines.

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

Trump’s Latest ‘Lamestream Media’ Tweet is a Digest of Deranged Dumbfuckery

Posted by on September 2, 2019 at 11:58 am. 4 Comments :

Happy Labor Day, America. On this day paying homage to the hard working people of the nation, Donald Trump posted fourteen tweets lavishing undeserved praise on himself. As usual, he can’t spend five minutes on any subject other than how awesome and successful he is. Nevermind that he is despised by a majority of voters and his record is overflowing with failure.

Donald Trump, Phone, Pacifier

Most of the tweets make demonstrably false and misleading claims about glorious economic successes that exist only in his diseased brain. Things like unemployment and stock market performance were already greatly improved during the Obama administration, and there were only slight advances since then. In all cases Trump’s record lags the positive direction established by Obama. Surprisingly, he also bragged about his polling which is horrendous by any standard. He trails all of the top Democrats by double digits national and in the battleground states. And many of the tweets were simply cribbed from stuff he was watching on Fox News.

One tweet in particular was worthy of notice due to its impressive amount of unsustainable and idiotic assertions. Trump really managed to cram a tweetstorm’s worth of derp into this one painfully stupid tweet:

Let’s take a few minutes to break that sucker down. First of all, Trump is borrowing a phrase from one of the great dimwits of the 21st century, Sarah Palin, who coined (or took credit for) the “lamestream media” catchphrase. She’s not exactly the sort of intellectual that any credible person would quote. Although she may be a step up for Trump.

Next Trump asserts that the media “has gone totally CRAZY.” But how could it have just gone crazy when he’s accused it having done that dozens of times before. Did he forget, or is he just exhibiting more signs of dementia? Not to mention that Trump calls everybody crazy. Here’s a collection of a dozen times he’s used this as an all-purpose insult.

Then Trump whines that the media gets to “write whatever they want,” because he just hates that First Amendment (and much of the rest of the Constitution) with such ferocity. Then repeats another of his frequent complaints that the media doesn’t have the sources it claims for its stories, or that they make them up. That’s a peculiar criticism that he is never able to prove, and the media’s sources have often been found within his inner circle. What’s more, no one uses anonymous sources more than Trump, who is constantly claiming that “some people say” some ludicrous things that support his lies.

The notion that the media doesn’t do any fact checking is hysterical. While Trump has been president, the fact checking industry has gone through the roof. The Washington Post has compiled a compendium of more than 12,000 lies and misstatements by Trump since his inauguration. Daniel Dale is a dedicated fact checker for CNN. PolitiFact continues to monitor Trump’s comments, 70 percent of which have been deemed “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.” And those are just a few of the better known fact checkers. Almost every journalistic enterprise does their own fact checking. Trump doesn’t really believe that there isn’t any fact checking, he just doesn’t like the results that reveal the extent of his dishonesty.

As for the media “looking for the ‘kill,'” and making good news look bad, that really isn’t necessary. Trump is entirely capable of making himself look horrible without any help. Take for example his frighteningly comical assertion that he has never heard of a Category 5 Hurricane, even though there have been four just during his presidency.

Finally, Trump lashes out at the press that he routinely attacks in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He has now determined that they are beyond fake and have advanced to corrupt. Once again, he doesn’t provide any examples of what he insists is the media’s corruption. He just expects his Deplorables to buy whatever he says because he said it. That is the definition of a cult.

Trump’s Twitter feed is always full of crackpot conspiracies, ludicrous lies, and ego-soaked exaltations of himself. That’s true for the fourteen tweets he fired off this Labor Day. But he deserves some special credit for being able to stuff so much grade A stupidity into this composition in only 280 characters.

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