Shepard Smith Suddenly Signs Off at Fox News the Day After Bill Barr met with Rupert Murdoch

The most jarring news in the media world today is that Shepard Smith of Fox News announced on the air that he was anchoring his last broadcast at the network. No one had anticipated his departure and there had been no speculation about it. His colleagues were dumbstruck and issued their own emotional reactions.

Fox News, Shepard Smith, Donald Trump

Smith was out of place at Fox News. He was frequently reporting the actual facts of a story even while his primetime colleagues (Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson) were deliberately lying and even maligning his work and his honor. Carlson engaged in an on-air feud with Smith just last month after his guest, Trump flunky Joe diGenova, called Smith a fool for daring to report honestly. However, despite the open hostility, Smith bravely endured in a losing war to inform Fox’s viewers. One of his recent valiant efforts involved setting the record straight on the Russia probe and the Mueller report. And on another occasion Smith brutally, yet subtly, roasted Fox News while accepting a First Amendment Award.

It cannot be ignored that Smith announced his departure (video below) the day after Donald Trump’s shill Attorney General, William Barr, had a private meeting with the overlord of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch. That confab was originally suspicious because it occurred the day after Fox News released a poll showing that a majority of voters favored Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. Trump, who has long despised Smith, naturally expressed his disappointment with Fox tweeting falsely that “I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews Poll. Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. […] @FoxNews doesn’t deliver for US anymore.” And then Barr traveled to Murdoch’s lair to kiss his ring.

However, this new development makes it all even more suspicious. There is no way of knowing at this time if that meeting had anything to do with Smith leaving Fox News. His on-air farewell was nothing but grateful and gracious. But it is extraordinarily rare for a figure so closely tied with a broadcaster (Smith was at Fox from day one) to leave without any notice. Normally one would announce they are going off to pursue other opportunities, and that their last day would be a week or a month away. But Smith is already gone. And in his goodbye he noted that there is an agreement with Fox that he will not work as a journalist anywhere else for some unspecified period of time.

There is already speculation that Smith was forced out. And of course, there is already speculation that that speculation is false. But get real. If Smith wasn’t forced out overtly by his bosses who were through tolerating his independence, then he was forced out covertly by the way he was treated. In the matter of his feud with Carlson, it was Smith who management reprimanded.

No doubt Smith’s departure will bring great joy to Trump. And he will surely tweet something nasty about it before long. But Fox News has lost one of its only connections to ethical journalism. And it could not have come at a worse time. Trump is suffering a hysterical meltdown as Congress gets closer to his inevitable impeachment, but which he insanely has taken to calling a “coup.”. Just last night he delivered what may be the most disgusting performance of his short residency in Washington.

What’s left at Fox News will be an increasingly sycophantic cadre of true believers who literally describe their Dear Leader in terms generally reserved for kings or gods. As Trump’s megalomaniania, paranoia, and malignant narcissism become more severe, his martinets at Fox News will become more unbearably worshipful. So as we heartily wish good luck to Shep, we nervously wish it also for ourselves.

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

Is This the Most Disgusting, Embarrassing, Dishonest Trump Performance EVER?

Okay, okay. Trying to single out the most disgusting performance by Donald Trump is a job too big for any mortal. There’s just too much material that covers too much nauseating ground. It ranges from serious matters like the caging (and deaths) of children, to his loathsome mockery of the disabled, to embarrassing scenes of ignorance like his belief that stealth fighters are actually invisible.

Donald Trump Zombie

That said, Trump held another of his Cult Revival Meetings on Thursday in Minneapolis where he ventured into territory that no sane person would dare to go. He attacked with lies the children of his political foes. He gushed over his Trump-fluffing Fox News sycophants. He devolved into infantile profanity saying that Joe Biden was only a good Vice-President because he “kissed Obama’s ass.” And the rest of the hour-plus public tantrum was replete with lies and hate. But nothing could have been as vomit-inducing as Trump acting out an entirely fake orgasm scene between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page:

It’s still not remotely comprehensible that this deviant creature is currently the “president” of our great nation. He is constantly demeaning the office of the presidency with displays of immaturity, ignorance, and conceit. And that’s the good news. Because he is simultaneously creating conditions for a more hostile, dangerous, bankrupt, and unlivably filthy world.

One of the more repulsive side issues stemming from the video above is that Trump is doing something that he has been whining about for weeks. During a House Intelligence Committee hearing, Chairman Adam Schiff delivered an opening statement that included a brief paraphrasing of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ever since, Trump has berated Schiff with completely false allegations that he invented that dialog and presented it as if Trump had said it himself. That’s an outright lie. Schiff prefaced those remarks by saying clearly that Trump’s phone call “reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character, and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates.”

Nevertheless, Trump’s hysteria reached fever pitch as he repeatedly demanded that Schiff resign or be impeached (which isn’t a thing in Congress) for the imaginary offense that exists only in Trump’s diseased brain. But in the video above Trump was actually doing what he falsely charged Schiff with. He invented a dialog between Strzok and Page and presented it to his glassy-eyed disciples as if it were real. And what makes this dishonesty and hypocrisy even worse is that in the same speech he repeated his false charge against Schiff, saying that “He had to make up a fake conversation and deliver it to the United States Congress and the American people. It was a total fraud.”

The closer Congress gets to impeaching Trump, the more severe his symptoms of Hysterical Impeachment Syndrome are getting. His lies are further stretching the boundaries of reality. He’s lashing out at Fox News (aka State TV). And his cult worshiping followers are bowing down to him as if to a king or a god. And the frightening part is that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

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