Month: November 2019

Trump’s Twitter Frenzy Reveals His Sick Obsessions and Dangerous Incompetence

Posted by on November 10, 2019 at 11:35 am. 1 Comments :

Impeachment Is Coming! And Donald Trump is getting noticeably more nervous. His poll numbers are tanking, even among Republicans. Next week marks the beginning of the public phase of the impeachment inquiry with witness that are expected to provide further incriminating testimony. And many of these witnesses have first hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Trump regime and personal relationships with his closest advisors. For Trump and his gooey sycophants, it is not gonna be pretty.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

To the extent that someone with severe mental infirmities is capable, Trump is aware of the political and legal peril he is facing. And that awareness is manifesting itself in his favorite mode of communication, Twitter. Saturday’s Trump Twitter feed was fraught with fury and panic as he struggled to crawl out from under the rubble of his collapsing presidency. An analysis of the tweetery is both revealing and frightening. Here, by the numbers, are Trump’s Twitter tales for one day in the life of a drowning man.

  • Trump achieved what appears to be a record in the sheer volume of tweets with 82 for one day.
  • Of those, 58 were retweets.
  • 38 were blatantly self-defensive retorts to the impeachment inquiry.
  • Fox News appeared in 16 of the tweets.
  • 10 tweets bragged about his appearance at the LSU/ALA football game.
  • 8 more were shameless (and phony) self-promotions (books, polls, etc.).
  • GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin was retweeted 8 times with anti-impeachment arguments.
  • Gregg Jarrett of Fox News was also retweeted 8 times with various Trump-fluffing remarks.
  • And Trump retweeted himself 9 times.

The most prominent obsession evident in this tweetstorm is that 38 (65%) of Trump’s tweets were desperate attempts to shield himself from the ongoing impeachment inquiry. He has said in the past that impeachment would a good thing politically for him and his Republican Nationalist Party. Obviously, he didn’t believe that nonsense himself. His singular focus on this subject exposes just how terrified he is.

The 58 retweets (70%) suggest that Trump can’t keep up with the avalanche of bad news for him. So he needs to lean on the tweets of others, some of which are several weeks old. He even retweeted a month old comment by John Bolton, the National Security Advisor that he unceremoniously fired. And of course Fox News was a frequent guest in Trump’s Twitter ravings.

It’s also clear that Trump was bitterly hurt by reports of sports fans booing him at the World Series and the UFC fighting event. So he tried to make up for it by repeatedly posting videos of cheering crowds in bright red Alabama, where booing was expressly prohibited. Many of those videos were retweets from the Breitbart website, which isn’t exactly a reliable source.

What’s especially notable in this record is that there wasn’t a single tweet about any substantive issue that affects the American people. Not even about subjects he often clings to, including immigration, Syria, the economy, trade with China, jobs, etc. It was an 82 tweet cavalcade of corpulent conceit. Proving that if it isn’t about Trump, it isn’t worthy of his attention.

There are so many reasons why Trump is an imminent danger to the United States. He is a patently incompetent manager. He maligns treasured American principles on a daily basis. His attacks on the free press as “the enemy of the people” is a de facto attack on the Constitution. He disparages the nation’s intelligence community, and favors Russia over our own agencies. He behaves like a petulant infant, casting insults and reckless accusations at anyone who dares to challenge him. He mocks the settled science of climate change.

And now we can add to these threats his psychopathic narcissism that is so abundantly displayed in his tweets and other public comments. His unstable obsession with himself, and his glaring incompetence, is indisputable proof that he is a danger to America and the world. And the sooner he is impeached and removed from office, the sooner the world can exhale and experience some relief from the nightmare circus we have been suffering through.

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

WTF? Fox News Hack Says Ukraine Isn’t a ‘Sexy’ Enough Scandal to Impeach Trump

Posted by on November 9, 2019 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

Just when you thought that The Onion had not really taken over Fox News and replaced their vile Trump-fluffing with biting satire, a segment is aired that is so mind-numbingly idiotic that it could only be regarded as comedy. Except that it isn’t.

Donald Trump, Pervert

On Friday’s episode of “The Five” (a title that seems to be derived from the combined IQ of it’s right-wing panelists), co-host Jesse Watters delivered a commentary (video below) that purported to be his defense of Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukrainian President Zelensky. To be sure, there are few coherent arguments that excuse Trump for unlawfully withholding military aid unless Zelensky dug up dirt on Joe Biden. Especially after Trump admitted it. But Watters went above and beyond his everyday bootlicking duty to unload a laughably idiotic tirade that not only utterly failed to exonerate Trump, it also insulted every American in the process. He began…

“Leave it to the Democrats to make impeachment boring. This is about a transcript of a phone call with a country no one cares about. These are about transcripts from a deposition that we can’t even watch on television. And what do the transcripts say? It’s from the Under-Secretary of Affairs for Energy Policy at the EU. These aren’t household names. They aren’t heavy hitters. Wake me up when the big dogs testify in public.”

So right off the bat Watters reveals that in order for an impeachment inquiry to be credible, it has to stimulate him. Because “boring” (to him) violations of the Constitution should be ignored and those committing such crimes should be given a free pass. And his assertion that Ukraine is “a country no one cares about” exposes just how dysfunctional his puny little mind is.

What’s more, Watters seems to think that only TV-worthy crimes, committed by “household names,” should be prosecuted. For the record, none of the witnesses was an “Under-Secretary of Affairs for Energy Policy at the EU.” And most objective persons would regard the actual witnesses (National Security Council Russia advisor Fiona Hill, NSC Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sonderland, Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch) as pretty heavy hitters. So maybe Watters should wake the f**k up. He continued…

“The other thing is, no one can find Ukraine on the map. If you ask the American people anything about Ukraine they don’t know a thing about it. Americans care about a few countries. They care about Saudi Arabia. They care about Israel. They care about Russia, China and Mexico. That’s it. Ukraine doesn’t rise to the level of a country that people care about.”

Here Watters is making the argument that Americans are so stupid that they can’t be bothered with all of the trivialities about which he claims they are ignorant. That should endear him to the nation. However, it’s a safe bet that Trump couldn’t find Ukraine (or the U.S.) on map either, unless he marked it with a sharpie beforehand. And Watters’ list of the countries that Americans care about depicts them all as slack-jawed yokels. Perhaps Watters is just referring to himself and the Trump voters he knows best. And he continued…

“We’re talking about a military aid package to a country that, I guess needs help, but that a lot of people don’t care that much about. If you turn on television you see a reporter standing in Congress saying someone was hearing something from someone else who was concerned about a military aid package. It’s obsolutely (sic) not registering in the American people’s frame because it’s not a sexy scandal.”

Watters must not regard the members of Congress as “a lot of people,” since they cared enough about Ukraine to allocate $390 million for their defense against the aggressions of Russia. As to whether or not this scandal is registering with the American people, most polls show that they favor impeaching Trump and removing him from office.

Worst of all is Watters bizarre assertion that a scandal must be “sexy” in order for the American people to have any interest in it. That probably exposes the perversions of Watters himself, rather than any insight into the American populace. Watters must think that if it doesn’t involve a Democrat getting a blow job it doesn’t qualify as a scandal. It is also another insult to Americans that he already said are stupid.

But if it’s a sexy scandal that Watters wants, he need look no further than Trump’s predatory sexual harassment and assault of more than forty women. But for some reason, and contrary to Watters’ premise, this nauseating “sex” scandal isn’t getting all that much attention – yet. Maybe Watters should bring it up on his program, if he can stop drooling long enough.

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

CHOPPER TALK: Corrupt Donald Trump Tells Flagrant Lies About Pretty Much Everything

Posted by on November 8, 2019 at 12:46 pm. 4 Comments :

Our Reality TV president just released the latest episode of his long-running soap opera “Chopper Talk” (or more accurately “Whopper Talk”) wherein Donald Trump swaggers pompously before an assemblage of reporters as he ostensibly responds to questions with “answers” that, more often than not, ignore the reporter’s inquiry. His strained and frequently incoherent responses range from awkward deflections to outright lies. It’s a circus of self-serving propaganda that has no journalistic value whatsoever.

Donald Trump, Chopper Talk

There are many reasons that the press needs to stop covering these slack-jawed sideshows live. They provide almost nothing useful for viewers. Even worse, as Media Matters reports, is that Fox news continues to air all of Trump’s cult rallies live. CNN has cut back almost entirely, airing only ten minutes this year. MSNBC aired none of them.

However, there is one thing that comes from these loopy press avails. They allow a pathological liar to disgorge uninterrupted rants that sound very much like the schizophrenic on the street corner shouting epithets at passing cars. And in Friday’s instalment (video below) Trump was in rare form, excreting nonsense like a haywire word-salad shooter. Just a few of Trump’s fact-challenged falsehoods include…

“Adam Schiff is a corrupt politician. He’s corrupt. He made up a speech, and he put my voice in it.”

FALSE: Schiff merely paraphrased Trump and prefaced his remarks by saying explicitly that they were the “essence” of what Trump said, not a verbatim quote.

“Everyone of those people testified absolutely fine for me. […] You know I don’t even know most of these people. Many of these people I’ve never even heard of.”

FALSE: Most of the people Trump is talking about were appointed by him or by those he appointed. This is a common tactic that he uses to pretend he doesn’t know anyone who criticizes him. What Trump wants you to believe is that he never heard of his National Security Council Russia advisor Fiona Hill, his NSC Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman, his Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sonderland, his Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, his Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and his Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. If he really doesn’t know these high-level White House staffers, that’s just more proof that he’s unfit to serve.

“We are winning so big. My polls are the highest they’ve ever been. I’m leading in all of the swing states.”

FALSE: Trump’s poll numbers are as low as ever. They have hovered around 40 percent since his inauguration, and still do. And he is notably losing in many of the swing states.

And then there’s this: Trump unleashes a bizarre and incoherent rant that meanders from one subject to another without ever approaching reality. But he does manage to threaten to sue the whistleblower’s attorney of treason (which is ludicrous because you can’t sue for treason).

“The whistleblower, I call him the fake whistleblower. He gave a fake report of my phone call. And when I released that call, all of a sudden everybody disappeared. The whistleblower disappeared. What ever happened to the second whistleblower? Why isn’t the first whistleblower gonna testify anymore? You know why? Because everything he wrote in that report almost was a lie. Because he made a phony phone call. My phone call was perfect. He made it sound bad. That’s why I had to release. So the whistleblower is a disgrace to our country. And the whistleblower because of that should be revealed. And his lawyer, who said the worst things possible two years ago, he should be sued. And maybe for treason.

HUH? The whistleblower hasn’t disappeared. His/her identity is still under wraps, despite the efforts of right-wing media, including Fox News, who have offered up a name of someone they can’t confirm is really the whistleblower. And Trump’s “transcript” of his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky actually confirms the account by the whistleblower, making him/her irrelevant. But Trump’s reckless charges of treason demonstrate why truth tellers in government need the protection of whistleblower status.

The only benefit that can be derived from these demented outbursts is that they are further evidence that Trump is a severely disturbed psychotic who presents a clear and present danger to the nation. The media has a responsibility to refrain from airing his ravings live. They have nothing to lose by reviewing the video and airing it twenty minutes later with added context and fact-checking. And if they don’t take that simple step they are aiding and abetting Trump’s deranged campaign of propaganda and lies. That is dangerous and contrary to the mission of the free press and ethical journalism.

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

Why is Trump So Scared? Bill Barr Refused to Lie that He Did Nothing Illegal Re:Ukraine

Posted by on November 7, 2019 at 12:46 pm. 3 Comments :

The spectacle of watching the President of the United States whine like a petulant child never gets any easier to bear. Yet this is what the American people are being forced to contend with on a daily basis. Donald Trump spends much of his day tweeting about how victimized he is by those meanies in the press and even his own administration. This is the person who occupies what is commonly called the most powerful office in the world. But he can’t stop griping like a toddler who wants to stay up past his bedtime.

Donald Trump Sweating

It’s usually pretty easy to determine what is most offending Trump by the frequency of his exasperated tweets. And on Thursday morning the irritation that chafed the paper-thin skin of the President was typical of his snowflakey sensitivities. He fired of a multi-tweet tirade aimed at a frequent foe: the Washington Post. They published an article that revealed that Trump had asked his Attorney Genuflect, Bill Barr, to hold a press conference and announce that Trump had done nothing illegal in his dealings with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Trump’s tweetery groused plaintively that…

“Years ago, when Media was legitimate, people known as ‘Fact Checkers’ would always call to check and see if a story was accurate. Nowadays they don’t use ‘Fact Checkers’ anymore, they just write whatever they want!”
[Just because fact-checkers find that you’re lying doesn’t mean they don’t exist]

“The story in the Amazon Washington Post, of course picked up by Fake News CNN, saying ‘President Trump asked for AG Barr to host a news conference clearing him on Ukraine,’ is totally untrue and just another FAKE NEWS story with anonymous sources that don’t exist….”
[Just because you don’t like what they say doesn’t mean sources don’t exist either]

….The LameStream Media, which is The Enemy of the People, is working overtime with made up stories in order to drive dissension and distrust!
[Just because Stalin used to decry the media as “the enemy of the people” doesn’t mean Trump is a fascist – oh, wait…]

Bill Barr did not decline my request to talk about Ukraine. The story was a Fake Washington Post con job with an ‘anonymous’ source that doesn’t exist. Just read the Transcript. The Justice Department already ruled that the call was good. We don’t have freedom of the press!
[Just because the “transcript” affirmed your guilt doesn’t mean you can continue to lie about the Justice Department ruling that your call was “good.” They didn’t. And WaPo is exercising freedom of the press. You are threatening it]

The degenerate Washington Post MADE UP the story about me asking Bill Barr to hold a news conference. Never happened, and there were no sources!
[Just because you are a well-documented degenerate doesn’t mean everyone else is]

The Amazon Washington Post and three lowlife reporters, Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, and Carol Leonnig, wrote another Fake News story, without any sources (pure fiction), about Bill Barr & myself. We both deny this story, which they knew before they wrote it. A garbage newspaper!
[Just because you have been a low life grifter and charlatan your whole life doesn’t mean you can malign respected journalists you don’t even know]

Of course, Trump’s documented extortion of Zelensky has been confirmed by the testimony of several witnesses, including Trump himself, who admitted on national television that he asked Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. So what could have rattled Trump so much that he unleashed this tweetstorm attacking the Washington Post over an issue that goes back several weeks?

WaPo’s story touches several nerves that are famously tender for Trump. He is triggered by anything brushing up against him in these areas. Consequently, his fear impulse goes off because…

  • …he can’t allow any allegation of his guilt to persist.
  • …he can’t let stand the assertion that Barr refused a direct order to defend him.
  • …he must crush any impression that he isn’t the master of everything and everyone around him.
  • …by attacking the story he can imply that Barr actually did declare that he’s innocent.
  • …to him, Barr’s refusal would be the same as a conviction.
  • …any suggestion of his guilt gnaws at him like a flesh-eating virus.
  • …everyone in the Trump regime must have the same criminal intent – and exposure to legal jeopardy – as he does.

However, Trump’s obsession is absurdly misplaced. He really has nothing to gain by pretending that his request of Barr didn’t occur. As for Barr, by complying he would have only cemented his reputation as a bootlicking Trump-fluffer. After all, no one outside of Trump’s cadre of Deplorables would have believed him anyway. Barr is just another of Trump’s sycophantic minions who the world recognizes as wholly biased and untrustworthy.

Take for example, Sen. Lindsey Graham (video below), whose latest glassy-eyed defense of Trump has devolved into the claim that Trump couldn’t have engaged in an illegal quid pro quo because he’s too incompetent. And therefore Graham commits to remaining ignorant by refusing to read the transcripts of testimony. WOW! With friends like these, who needs enemas?

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

Fox News Bosses Told Hannity and Other Trump-Fluffers Not to Identify Whistleblower

Posted by on November 6, 2019 at 3:03 pm. 3 Comments :

The right-wing media machine has been chomping at the bit to expose the identity of the intelligence community whistleblower. He/she has been at risk since filing a complaint with the Inspector General regarding Donald Trump’s “quid pro quo” phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. That complaint led to Trump being pressured to release a “summary memo” of the phone call, that he falsely asserts is a verbatim transcript.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

Ever since the complaint was filed, Trump has been rattled and fearful due to the obvious legal jeopardy that it puts him in. He has repeatedly tweeted “READ THE TRANSCRIPT” in an effort to exonerate himself. Nevermind that even his edited memo incriminates him further. Trump’s desperate objections have wandered into deranged territory. And subsequent to the whistleblower’s complaint, additional witnesses and evidence has emerged that make his/her account moot.

Nevertheless, Trump and his propagandist media continue to demand that the whistleblower’s identity be revealed and that he/she testify in person before Congress. That would violate the security measures that the whistleblower statutes were designed to protect. And it would subject the whistleblower to potential harm. Consequently, Fox News found it necessary to advise their on-air “personalities” to refrain from reporting the alleged name of the whistleblower that has been floating around in wingnut media circles. CNN acquired a copy of the Fox News memo and reported that…

“…on October 31, a Fox executive sent an email to staffers that said the network had not ‘independently confirmed [the] name or identification of the anonymous whistleblower.’ A copy of the email was obtained by CNN Business.

“The executive further advised production staffers to ‘NOT fulfill any video or graphic requests’ related to the whistleblower’s identity.”

Among the hosts on Fox that were given these instructions was Sean Hannity. CNN reported that Hannity claimed to have “confirmed independently” the identity of the whistleblower, but declined, so far, to name the person on air. “But you know what?” Hannity said, “I will play the game for a little bit.” Then he pretended to not be afraid of being sued by the whistleblower’s attorney.

CNN’s report also included a paragraph that should be required in every article about Fox News:

“Much of Fox effectively operates as a messaging arm of the White House. Its opinion hosts have defended the President at nearly every turn, and the network employs a stable of pro-Trump contributors who appear throughout the day to offer commentary. Fox’s news anchors and journalists also frequently cover the day’s news from angles beneficial to the Trump White House.”

Well said. But Fox’s admonition to it’s personnel is not likely to be sufficient protection for the whistleblower. Hannity and others on the network have defied their bosses before, with little or no consequences. And people like Sen. Rand Paul are also claiming to know the whistleblower’s identity and threatening to release it. The StormTrumpers are fully prepared to violate the whistleblower statute without concern for the his/her welfare, or for the principle of confidential reporting of wrongdoing in the government.

Their intention is to scare off any other potential whistleblowers who discover criminal or unethical behavior. Which is a pretty good indicator that there is more illegal activity that has yet to be revealed. Hopefully, the patriots in government will stand strong and do what’s right despite these threats. They are a lifeline to keeping government honest and holding wrongdoers accountable.

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

Fox and Friends Makes a Damn Good Argument to Vote for Democrats – No, Really!

Posted by on November 6, 2019 at 11:35 am. 5 Comments :

The pressure is on at the White House as evidence incriminating Donald Trump continues to pile up. The impeachment inquiry is entering a new, more public phase that is exposing facts that are unarguably tying Trump and his cohorts to unlawful activities. And it’s causing him to lash out in ever more incoherent ways. Even his support among Republicans has begun a disastrous freefall.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Strange

Of course, whatever affects Trump also has a symbiotic reaction at the Fox News Channel, the network whose mission is to protect and defend Trump and the conservative wackosphere from all enemies, foreign and domesticated. But the weight of the pressure currently being applied by Congress and the Constitution may be overwhelming Fox’s capacity to respond as programmed. This is creating some bizarre departures from their expected behaviors.

On Wednesday morning, the day after Trump’s Republican Nationalist Party suffered severe electoral defeats in Kentucky and Virginia, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends engaged in an exchange that began uneventfully with a typically pro-GOP tirade by Ainsley Earhardt. However, it quickly veered off into something that was uncharacteristically (gasp) liberal! It went something like this (video below):

Earhardt: I don’t understand how that message … how she [Elizabeth Warren] is doing so well with that message. That message is saying “You have more than I do. I’m jealous of yours. I wanna take some of what you have.”
Steve Doocy: But if you don’t have anything, that’s a very potent message, believe me.
Earhardt: But that’s not the American way. The American way is to work your tail off. Keep working. Say yes, say yes. Work weekends, work nights, work your way to the top.
Doocy: I get that. But if you have worked really hard and you still don’t have anything … I mean, I’ve been to the Bernie Sanders rallies where there are a lot of people who need help. You know, they didn’t have health care. They have problems with college tuition. And things like that. So for the Democratic message … “Look, you don’t have anything. The government is going to make sure that the most successful people pay extra so you can get a hand up.” That is very powerful. That’s why you look at the number of people with that point of view, you add up all the people that support that, it’s a big number.

WOW! Doocy gave a pretty good summation of Democratic principles that favor providing for the basic needs of all Americans. He seemed to recognized the appeal of programs that insure that no American goes hungry, or is unable to get medical care, or is burdened by undue debts for education, in the richest nation in the world. He even acknowledged that those benefiting from such programs do work hard and are not shiftless layabouts seeking to take advantage of the system.

The people Doocy is talking about are indeed a large group. And their numbers grow exponentially by adding their families, friends, and other compassionate citizens, who care about the less fortunate among us. They are also many of the same people that Trump tries to attract. He calls them the “forgotten Americans,” and they populate his cult rallies. However, the difference between the Democratic solutions and Trump’s is that Democrats think the wealthy should pay more to fill the gap, as Doocy noted, Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP think the wealthy should pay less (in taxes), and the poor should pay more, by giving up benefits like food stamps, housing assistance, college loan aid, and access to health care.

To be sure, whatever caused that glitch in the Fox News system that resulted in them going haywire with concern for others, it will be temporary. Rest assured that there are already people huddling in the executive suites plotting how to correct the malfunction. But in the meantime it was interesting to hear a perspective on the network that wasn’t dripping with rancor, racism, and animosity toward Americans who need a little bit of help from time to time. So enjoy it while it lasts, but don’t get used to it.

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

HOLY CREEP! Trump Admits to Using the U.S. Military Budget to Bribe Voters

Posted by on November 5, 2019 at 11:55 am. 5 Comments :

The degree to which Donald Trump lacks any hint of self-awareness is mind boggling. He shamelessly boasts about having record-breaking support among Republicans when that support is actually in decline. He demands that the whistleblower testify while, in the same breath, insists that nobody should testify. He pretends that he’s not worried about being impeached, but can’t stop talking – or tweeting – about it.

Donald Trump, Prison

Now, as Trump is being shredded by an avalanche of evidence that he extorted Ukrainian President Zelensky in order to get dirt on Joe Biden, Trump is simultaneously engaging in a another flagrant case of bribery. This one centers around the off-year elections that are now being held in several states. Trump has been consumed with campaigning in the past few weeks, focusing on those states. Both his tweets and his cult rallies have been centered around the election calendar. But in a disturbing Tuesday tweet Trump literally confessed to a bribery scheme to get votes:

This is one of the most brazen admissions of criminal electioneering ever. It begins with Trump reminding the people of Virgina of his “genorosity” with federal dollars. That, of course, isn’t true. Trump has even diverted military funds to building his vanity border wall, which won’t help Virginia in the slightest. And then Trump holds the promise of future spending in the state over their heads. He is plainly trying to frighten Virginia voters with threats that federal allocations will dry up if they don’t vote for him. And we know that Trump is not shy about abusing his power to punish those he doesn’t deem sufficietly worshipful.

This tweet cannot be interpreted as anything other than a bribe. He is trying to appeal to Virginians who are reliant on federal funds for jobs and the economic boost that military facilities bring to localities. That is illegal on its face. It is also a breach of national security as it directs the allocations of military funding based on Trump’s political whims, rather than the needs of the nation’s armed forces. In that respect, Trump is violating his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

For Trump to openly admit to this criminal activity is both shocking and predictable. His capacity for breaking the law and bragging about it is unheard of in American politics. And the saddest part of it all is that he so often gets away with it. As the current impeachment inquiry progresses, hopefully Trump will finally be held accountable for at least a few of his crimes. Were there any realistic administration of justice, Trump would never get out of prison.

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

Trump’s Dementia Kicks In, Whining that the Whistleblower Must and Must Not Testify

Posted by on November 4, 2019 at 11:28 am. 4 Comments :

This is the latest chapter of the Trump Impeachment Saga: The Walls are Closing In. And as they do Trump becomes ever more deranged and incoherent. He knows that his support, even among Republicans, is rapidly deteriorating. He knows that he has no comprehensible response to the charges against him. He’s scared witless of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. And he’s reduced to behaving like a cowardly victim of the gathering hordes of enemies his paranoia imagines are surrounding him.

Trump Fear

It’s a pathetic spectacle that is plain to see by most Americans (who favor his impeachment and removal from office), as well as our allies and foes around the world. And he’s getting noticeably worse as more evidence and witnesses become available to the public. Trump is on a downward spiral that is manifesting in everything he does and says.

On Monday morning Trump provided a profoundly disturbing example of his mental decline. Within his regularly scheduled tweetstorm, he ranted about what he’s now calling a “Witch Hunt Hoax.” That used to be the investigation into his unsavory connections to Russia, but has now been rebranded for the Ukraine affair. Among the tweets he posted were these bizarre comments:

“…all you have to do is read the transcript of the call, you do not need Never Trumpers or other witnesses to say what it means or says. It is plainly and very well stated for all to see.

“There is no reason to call witnesses to analyze my words and meaning.”

“The Whistleblower gave false information & dealt with corrupt politician Schiff. He must be brought forward to testify.”

So Trump is adamant that there need not be any testimony by anyone regarding his extortion of Ukrainian President Zelensky while seeking dirt on Joe Biden. But he’s just as adamant that the testimony take place. How his diseased brain synchronizes those contradictions is a mystery. He has been repeatedly insisting that people “read the transcript.” Of course, many people have already done this and were thus persuaded that Trump is obviously guilty of pressuring Zelensky and demanding a quid pro quo. The “transcript” (which was really just a memo summarizing the phone call) explicitly referenced Trump’s request for “a favor” that he directly associated with an improper probe of the Biden’s.

Furthermore, Trump doesn’t feel that it’s necessary for others to analyze his words. Well, except for his GOP defenders and Fox News. He posts endless videos from those “analysts” on Twitter. And he maligns anyone who dares to find any critical messaging as “Never-Trumpers,” despite having no evidence whatsoever that they were political opponents. What’s more, Trump declared that the whistleblower should not be permitted to provide written answers to the investigators. Although that was perfectly permissible for himself when he answered questions for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s tweetery about the “transcripts” has also recently swerved into lunatic territory with allegations that Rep. Schiff (to whom Trump has applied the anti-Semitic nickname, “Shifty”) would “change the words that were said to suit the Dems purposes.” Nevermind that they were all prepared by committee staff that included Republican members, and their accuracy would be easy to confirm. Trump also tweeted a confession that his actions constituted a quid pro quo, but which he falsely claimed wasn’t impeachable.

Don’t hurt yourself trying to figure out how any of Trump’s tirades make sense. They don’t. They are blatant machinations designed to confuse and frustrate those delving into his criminal activities. And they have been constructed by a mind that has lost all connections to reality. His comments on Twitter and his “Chopper Talk” press avails are increasingly incomprehensible. We are watching a developing paranoid psychosis in real time and on public platforms. And it isn’t pretty.

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

Fox News Poll Proves that Trump Voters are Willing Captives of a Cult

Posted by on November 3, 2019 at 11:23 am. 14 Comments :

In the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump has been crowing about what he says is unprecedented unity within the Republican Party. He couldn’t be more wrong. Trump repeatedly cites a 95% approval rating for him by GOP voters. That’s a false stat for which he never bothers to provide a source. Most other polls put it in the low 80s at best, and it’s heading down. Even Trump’s favorite, ultra-biased pollster, Rasmussen, is showing him near his lows for the year.

Donald Trump, MAGA

However, there is an argument that Trump can make regarding the devotion of his dwindling cadre of supporters. They are enraptured by their Dear Leader to a degree unseen since the Manson Family. And a new poll by Fox News confirms that the worshipful adoration of Trump’s glassy-eyed followers is a powerful force, albeit only effective on a small minority of the electorate. The Fox News poll reveals that a majority 53% of voters want Trump to be impeached. And 49% want him impeached and removed from office. But the most notable figures in this poll address the subset of Trump supporters:

“Among those opposing impeachment, 57 percent say nothing could change their mind, while 34 percent say new evidence could make them support impeachment. […and…] over half of Republicans (53 percent) say it is generally okay for the president to ask foreign leaders for help in going after his rivals.”

So a majority of those who are currently against impeaching the President won’t change their minds regardless of the evidence. That means even if a “smocking“ gun is found that incriminates him for treason, they will still back Trump. These are the people that Trump was talking about when he said that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any support.

This is not the sort of movement that is generally associated with a political campaign. It is the defining characteristics of a cult. Trump’s followers don’t care whether he broke the law, or breached his oath of office, or violated the Constitution. They don’t even care about his policies that are demonstrably worse for them than for the public at large. They only care about genuflecting before “The Chosen One” (as he calls himself).

The poll has other bad news for Trump that is also ignored by his faithful Deplorables. It found that he is underwater on immigration (40% approve, 57% disapprove), foreign policy (37-56), and health care (35-53). He has a slim 3-point margin (49-46) on the economy. What’s more, Trump is shown to be losing to the top four Democrats included in the survey: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton. Although why Fox polled Clinton is a mystery, or perhaps wishful thinking.

Trump spent much of Sunday morning tweeting about his pathetic victimhood. Which is a peculiar position for someone who occupies what is often called the most powerful office on Earth. Much of his whining featured praise for the One America News Network (OANN), a channel so tiny that Nielsen doesn’t track their ratings. This must be part of his campaign to drive his followers away from Fox News, which he said “doesn’t deliver for US anymore,” and declared that “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet.”

So the cult is shopping around for a network that will be more complimentary and obedient. It’s hard to imagine that Fox News wasn’t sufficiently fulfilling that objective. But then, Fox is having problems of its own as their ratings have sharply declined lately. That’s more likely due to viewers tiring of the bias and lies, than to Trump’s temper tantrums. But he certainly isn’t doing Fox any good. Which just happens to be quite good for the rest of us.

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

The Trump Sycophant ‘Softball Question of the Year’ Award Goes to Fox News – Again

Posted by on November 2, 2019 at 12:26 pm. 1 Comments :

Donald Trump is turkey-neck deep in an impeachment inquiry that is accumulating evidence faster than it can be processed. At any other time in history, this much proof of criminal behavior and obstruction of justice would have been more than sufficient to shame the president from ever showing his face in public. He would have been humiliated as well prosecuted, and would have jumped ship long ago.

Donald Trump Fox News

However, in these peculiar times we have a president who is buttressed by a propaganda network that lavishes him with undying praise, defends him from any and all criticism, and maligns his political foes as schemers, liars, and even traitors. The worshipful devotion of Fox News to Trump and his regime is unprecedented. Many of their former employees are now on the White House payroll. Likewise, many former White House staff are now working for Fox.

Making matters worse, Trump’s current Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham (who is a certified “Deep State” conspiracy kook), has never held a single press conference. She has literally moved the media functions of the White House into the Fox News studio, which is the only place she ever appears before the public. This, of course, is fine with Fox because it gives them exclusive coverage of the Trump administration’s official disinformation. They are also the only network that still airs Trump’s lie and hate filled cult rallies in full and uninterrupted as they happen.

In an especially slobbering segment on Friday (video below), Grisham was “interviewed” by Fox’s Bill Hemmer. Naturally, the subject of impeachment came up and Hemmer forged valiantly into the fray with what is undoubtedly the softest ball thrown at a presidential spokesperson this year – maybe ever. It is truly impressive how Grisham managed to muddle through this wet kiss interrogation that began with Hemmer asking…

It seems as if you have concluded [impeachment] is a foregone conclusion. And if the president believes that as well, how has he described his feelings to you about that potential reality?

Feelings? Seriously? Hemmer is hammering Grisham by demanding that she dig deep and reveal Li’l Donnie’s unspoken feelings about becoming just the third president ever to be impeached. As if Trump has any “unspoken” feelings. And if he does, the last person to disclose them honestly is his designated disseminator of deception. Grisham responded with a flurry of robo-talking points:

He has described his feelings to the American people. You just have to look at his Twitter feed to show. This is a sham and a kangaroo court. This has been unjust and unfair. The president did absolutely nothing wrong. We released the transcript weeks ago for everybody to see. There was no quid pro quo. The Ukrainian government themselves has said they felt absolutely no pressure. Aid was eventually released to the Ukraine.

Someone needs to reprogram Grisham. She is stuck on auto-spew, and even so, is digging Trump into a deeper abyss of political and legal jeopardy. Her reference to the “transcript” (which was really just a summary memo of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky) works against Trump’s interests. Although Trump has also been obsessed with what he is lately saying is an exact, verbatim transcription of the phone call. It isn’t, and it says so on the first page. Nevertheless, Trump has repeatedly tweeted exhortations to “READ THE TRANSCRIPT!” One has to wonder if he has read it, because it indisputably incriminates him. For instance, after Zelensky raises the issue of U.S. military aid, Trump replies…

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

That’s a textbook quid pro quo. Trump talks about getting some information related to a debunked conspiracy theory about a computer server that belonged to the Democratic National Committee. But he quickly segues from that to explicit requests for dirt on Joe Biden:

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with [Rudy Giuliani and] the Attorney General [William barr] would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

That sounds horrible to a lot of people, but not for the reasons Trump is thinking. Trump recently suggested that he would like to have a nationally televised “fireside chat” wherein he would read the “transcript” to the American people. That’s a great idea, because we would then have him saying in his own voice the words that warrant his impeachment. Then Grisham could return to Fox News where they could ask her how he feels about making an ass of himself and being booted from 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.