Happy New Year to America and the world. We are now embarking on a new decade whose beginnings will likely be tumultuous, maddening, and occasionally hilarious. By the end of 2020 we will hopefully have a new president preparing to move into the White House. Maybe sooner if Republicans decide to put country before party and decency before dishonesty, decadence, and corruption.
The past year was a wild ride with an unprecedented number of scandals emanating from the White House. The sheer quantity of political atrocities would be mind boggling if it wasn’t so predictable with an ignorant, childish, narcissist leading the way to perdition. And this uncommonly aberrant year concluded with Trump’s impeachment for “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.” This marks him forever as the first reality TV show host (and only the third president) to have been impeached. That’s not exactly how he thought it would end when he tweeted his all-caps New Year’s message a year ago:
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2019
This year Trump tweeted a more diffident and compact “HAPPY NEW YEAR,” but he also posted a ten minute video of himself at Mar-A-Lago adding to his year-end compilation of lies (video below if you have the stomach for it). But don’t expect the Twitter patter of Trump’s sheepishness to last. With both the Senate’s impeachment hearing and a national election on the horizon, Trump’s surly mood will undoubtedly return with the gusto of starving MAGAts in a bucket of KFC extra crispy.
One thing Trump will can rely on is that Fox News will be there in 2020 to shield him from criticism and to smear his foes, just as they were in 2019. It was a banner year for the Trump-fluffing network as they insured that their audience would remain ill-informed and blindly loyal to Dear Leader Trump. This was done by coordinating closely with the White House to manufacture flagrantly dishonest stories that bore no resemblance to either reality or journalism. What follows are few of the more notable examples of how Fox News poisons the political environment while sucking up to their malignant messiah:
- Fox News airs a graphic obituary announcement for still living Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg
- Sean Hannity argues that the American people should never be allowed to see the Mueller Report
- Jesse Watters says Trump “owns” the 4th of July, so he can do whatever he wants with it
- Fox and Friends help Trump to promote his Doral golf resort to host the G7 summit
- Fox’s Stuart Varney laughably says that Trump has never lied to the American people.
- Ed Henry says that he has seen Trump’s “new” border wall – that doesn’t exist.
- Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt thinks that Trump extorting foreign leaders is just “The Art of the Deal”
- Trump whined that “Fox News doesn’t deliver for us anymore” after they published a poll he didn’t like.
- On Fox’s The Five the hosts dismissed the Ukraine scandal as not “sexy enough”
- In a bizarre defense of Trump, Tucker Carlson called him a “A full-blown BS artist”
This is the sort blatant puffery that is generally observed in the propaganda ministries of totalitarian regimes. Fox News long ago abandoned any pretense of being a neutral news provider. They are as much a part of Trump’s administration as Kellyanne Conway, Mick Mulvaney, and Ivanka. And that will surely continue into the new year as they attempt to deceive their glassy-eyed viewers with ever more outlandish fiction that exalts Trump and spellbinds the cult that surrounds him.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2020