Month: August 2020

Trump Desperately Pushes a Phony, Racist Narrative of Rampant Violence.

Posted by on August 31, 2020 at 2:21 pm. 4 Comments :

Psychotic delusions are tricky to interpret. For instance, it’s hard to tell if Donald Trump truly believes that he is a beloved national leader who is a shoo-in for reelection, or if he realizes that he’s toast but doesn’t want to suffer the humiliation of admitting it publicly. Either way it is confirmation of an acute mental infirmity.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Consequently, in response to the clear evidence of his floundering campaign, Trump is angling to shape an electoral narrative that he thinks will give him some advantage. But he is painfully incapable of articulating a second term agenda. Obviously the topics that matter most to the American people – the economy, jobs, racial equality, climate change, healthcare, and the still surging coronavirus pandemic – are not working for him. He is losing in every national poll, as well as in most of the crucial swing states. and he wasn’t helped by his “American Carnage II” convention.

The position that Trump seems to have settled on is patently absurd. He is seeking to convince voters that the streets of America are awash in blood and that it is the fault of Democrats. Trump is calling this cataclysm “Biden’s America.” Never mind that it is actually – literally – happening in Trump’s America. His argument is that if he’s reelected all of this turmoil that he has created will magically go away, as if it were a deadly virus (oh wait…).

In order to get that narrative to take hold, Trump has been furiously posting tweets that portray the nation as embroiled in a raging and constant conflagration of bloodshed and savagery. On Sunday he unleashed an avalanche of horror stories on Twitter. More than half (58 out of 110) of his tweets were about allegedly rampant violence and Black Lives Matter “mobs” that he says are running wild in the streets. It’s an unambiguously racist campaign aimed at dividing the nation and firing up his white nationalist base.

According to FiveThirtyEight Trump has become “singularly obsessed with the topic” of crime, and HuffPost reveals that in July the vast majority of his campaign dealt in some way with public safety. He speaks in utterly bizarre hyperboles, like a five year old who has no realistic comprehension of the world around him. For instance he said Monday that “If I didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now.” Really? The whole city of 100,000 would have disappeared from the face of the Earth?

There is, however, a small problem with this campaign theme. Crime in America is trending down. And the crime that occurs is taking place in both Democratic and Republican cities. So try as he might, Trump cannot blame lawlessness on Democrats, and certainly not on Joe Biden. However, Biden can, and does, make a rational argument for Trump’s culpability (videos below):

“I look at this violence and I see lives and communities and the dreams of small businesses being destroyed. And the opportunity for real problems on the issue of race and police reform and justice being put to the test. Donald Trump looks at this violence and he sees a political lifeline.”

Biden went on to note the absurdity of Trump running on the claim that “Quote ‘You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.'” (video below)…

“And what is their proof? The violence we are seeing in Donald Trump’s America. These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future. These are images of Donald Trump’s America today. He keeps telling you, if only he was president it wouldn’t happen. If he was president. He keeps telling you if he was president you’d feel safe. Well, he is president, whether he knows it or not. And it is happening.”

“It’s getting worse. You know why. Because Donald Trump adds fuel to every fire. Because he refuses to even acknowledge that there’s a racial justice problem in America. Because he won’t stand up to any form of violence. He has no problem with right-wing militias, white supremacists, and vigilantes with assault weapons”

On a side note, the infantile, lying, cretins running the Trump campaign clipped the part of Biden’s speech where he said that “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” and made it look like that’s his own opinion of himself when, in fact, he was quoting Trump. It has already been tagged as “manipulated media“ by Twitter. That’s actually the second Trump video so labeled just today. The other video showed Biden supposedly sleeping prior to a TV interview. But the real video was an interview of Harry Belafonte.

That’s the kind of dishonesty and craven lack of ethics that we have to look forward to for the next couple of months. But hang in there, and continue to do the hard work necessary to achieve a landslide victory and to send Trump back to civilian life and, hopefully, to prison.

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

Fear and Loathing in Trump’s America: A Tweetstorm of Lies and Desperation

Posted by on August 30, 2020 at 1:51 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another episode of Donald Trump’s Sunday Morning Tweetstorm. The rest of America is enduring the hardships of a deadly pandemic made worse by Trump’s negligence and incompetence. They are suffering through the Trump Recession, replete with record bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and unemployment. And they are watching scenes of civil unrest incited by Trump’s craving for violence to justify his neo-fascist aspirations.

Donald Trump, Twitter

This Sunday’s Tweetstorm is jam-packed with Trumpian assholery. Beginning before sunrise at 5:49 AM, and for two hours and fifteen minutes after, Trump unleashed an avalanche of triggered tweets. There were 89 by 8:04 AM, when he had to quit in order to make his tee time (Really! He went from this to his golf resort). That’s one tweet every 1.5 minutes. Many of those 89 tweets were retweets (69) of sycophants and random Twitter trolls. [UPDATE: By day’s end Trump had tweeted a grand total of 110 times. Most of the later tweets were about Portland/violence or infantile attacks on Biden]

The most prominent subject for this morning’s Twitter tantrum was violence in the streets, particularly in Portland, Oregon. These tweets accounted for 41% (37) of the total tweets. Trump’s thinly disguised message to his cult disciples was that violence is good for his campaign so feel free to go out and stir some up. His Senior White House Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, literally said just that this week on Fox News. Trump himself praised the actual instigators, who came armed for confrontation with peaceful protesters, as…

Coming in second in Trump’s Tweet tirade (at 30%) was a parade of polling posts that purported to place Trump in the lead against Joe Biden. However, the 27 retweets were all from “PollWatch2020,” an unverified Twitter account and right-wing propaganda mill. The only polls they cited as sources for their data were the Trafalgar Group and the Democracy Institute. Both are rabidly partisan servants of conservative candidates and issues. Trafalgar has a C- rating by the analysts at FiveThirtyEight. And Democracy Institute isn’t even rated because they are considered to be a “fake” pollster. This blast of bullpucky is refuted by virtually every other poll available from credible survey organizations.

In addition to these putrid postings, Trump also retweeted an article from the Babylon Bee headlined “Biden: ‘If You Thought The Republican Convention Was Good, Just Wait ‘Til We Have Our Convention!” The purpose of this posting was to ridicule Biden for allegedly not knowing that the Democratic convention was held the previous week. However, the Babylon Bee is a wholly fictional, satirical website. It isn’t known if Trump was aware of that or not. However, it’s clear that many of his cult followers didn’t know. They replied to his tweet with laughter at what an idiot Biden must be. Who wants to tell them they are the idiots?

Trump also posted three tweets that falsely reported fatalities due to the coronavirus. All three tweets cited the conspiracy crackpot website, Gateway Pundit, run by Jim Hoft, the “stupidest man on the Internet” (seriously, Google the phrase). They made the claim that there have only been about 9,000 deaths. That number is drawn from the website of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) where it says that only 6% of the reported fatalities were due “solely” to COVID-19. Most of the deaths had comorbidity factors like pneumonia.

Of course, the presence of contributing factors doesn’t mean that COVID-19 wasn’t the cause of death. But that’s the asinine assertion by Hoft. And now Trump has joined in that idiocy with these retweets, one of which was by Jenna Ellis, the Senior Legal Adviser to the Trump campaign and personal attorney to Trump. [UPDATE: The original tweet making this false claim was removed by Twitter for having violated the rules regarding spreading misinformation. But the Ellis retweet by Trump is still live]

The upshot of this cavalcade of dishonesty and hostility on Trump’s Twitter feed is that Trump is determined to inflame tensions and encourage hateful and hurtful confrontations. He has cheered on violent agitators as “great patriots.” He has maligned Democratic leaders as supportive of atrocities. And he is affirming the position that Conway made with regard to such violence as being beneficial to his reelection campaign. It’s despicable and dangerous and it needs to stop.

Unfortunately, we cannot rely on Trump to abandon these abhorrent tactics. Se we need to be cognizant of his nefarious scheme and resist giving in to his cynicism and purposeful destruction of civil society. If we are to prevail, we need to keep justice in our heads, peace in our hearts, and our eyes on the prize. The only blood will be on the hands of Trump and his racist, hate mongering Republican accomplices.

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

Babbling Incoherently, Trump Promises Unspecified ‘Other Things’ in 2nd Term

Posted by on August 29, 2020 at 10:59 am. 8 Comments :

In his Republican Nationalist Confederation acceptance speech, Trump rattled off an array of objectives that were nothing but rehashes of what he’s been saying for nearly four years. Things like cutting taxes and regulations, defending the 2nd Amendment, and building the border wall. There was nothing new and nothing that he’s made any progress on. It was political boilerplate with no substance or commitment.

Donald Trump Angry

In the past few weeks Trump has been asked a question that is commonly asked of presidential candidates: What is your agenda for the next four years should you win? Trump has been asked this question at least four times, including by friendly “interviewers” like Sean Hannity of Fox News and the “Curvy Couch” of Fox and Friends, but has failed to give a comprehensible answer. You might think that after flopping once or twice, Trump would have an aide write up a response for him. But not Trump. On Thursday Peter Baker of the New York Times published his account of Trump’s answer to that question. And it makes even less sense than all the others that preceded it:

Holy shih tzu! Trump is descending even further into an acute state of mental infirmity, and the American people are noticing. He is not only unable to articulate an agenda, he is unable to complete a coherent sentence. Which may explain his bizarre nomination acceptance speech Thursday night. It was mish mosh of lies, boasts, and slanderous assaults of Joe Biden and Democrats generally. But not a single punch landed. That’s partially because it was all retreads of his past rants and so transparently false. CNN fact checker Daniel Dale documented at least twenty lies Trump told during his marathon 70 minute speech. That’s an average of one lie every three and half minutes.

Among the most loathsome untruths was Trump’s dismissal of the horror that America is suffering through due to his negligent and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has a perverse habit of downplaying human tragedies. For seven months he has pretended that the coronavirus was as trivial as the flu and completely under control. 180,000 deaths later it is still taking 1,000 lives every day.

So he is being true to form by beginning his speech with shameless bragging that “the casualties and damage [from Hurricane Laura] were far less than thought possible only 24 hours ago.” He doesn’t say what he considered possible, but there are six dead and estimates of total economic costs “in the neighborhood of $20 billion.” Hallelujah! What a success.

Trump’s speech was a meandering mess that checked off political boxes while ignoring the real world hardships Americans face. He demonstrated his priorities by mentioning COVID-19 only five times, but slandering Joe Biden 41 times. that included the ominous and hyperbolic assertion that Biden “will be the destroyer of American Greatness.” Trump also said that “For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses, and told them he felt their pain.” Trump emphasized “kisses” in an attempt to insinuate some sort of sexual aberration.

That’s an unbelievably brain dead attack considering that there have been no credible complaints of sexual misconduct by Biden in those 47 years. Conversely, there are dozens of credible allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Trump.

These are the kinds of vicious rhetorical bombs that Trump is going to be throwing for the remainder of this campaign. He has nothing positive to run on. He cannot defend his mangling of the pandemic response or the economic catastrophe that it produced. All of the obvious failures for which he is responsible will weigh heavily on his campaign. But in the midst of all of that, he still can’t tell voters what he would do if reelected. He can only mumble unintelligibly and whine about what a victim he is.

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

Trump’s RNC Speech Flops in the Ratings, Loses to Biden

Posted by on August 28, 2020 at 12:40 pm. 2 Comments :

Our reality TV game show host president has made it clear over the years that the most important thing to him are his television ratings. He cites them to validate the usefulness of his phony Coronavirus Task Force briefings. In his ego-soaked ignorance, he considers them to be “the real polls.” But now he’s going to have to live with the yardstick for success that he created.

Donald Trump

The overnight Nielsen ratings for Trump’s nomination acceptance speech at the Republican Nationalist Confederation were an unmitigated flop. Despite his illegally using the White House for his political campaign, and cramming a couple of thousand cheering sycophants into a small space with no face masks, Trump still managed to underperform. As reported by CNN…

“President Trump’s Thursday night convention speech making the case for his reelection was lower-rated than his challenger Joe Biden’s speech one week ago, according to overnight Nielsen ratings.

“About 23.8 million viewers watched coverage of Trump’s RNC address across thirteen cable and broadcast networks, down from 24.6 million viewers who watched Biden’s DNC address on twelve of those same networks.”

This is the method of measuring that Trump has insisted best reflects where the American people stand. He’s wrong! But since he’s made such a big deal of it, it would be unfair not to give it due consideration. Two million more people watched Biden, who Trump has maligned with infantile nicknames such as “sleepy” and “slow.” And the Democratic convention also beat the Republicans for the total four days combined. So where does that leave Trump now?

Even on Fox News immediately following Trump’s 70 minute harangue, Chris Wallace told the Trump cultists watching that the speech was “surprisingly flat,” “far too long,” and lacked substance. Yet somehow, in Trump’s delusional fantasy world, he posted a tweet that contradicted reality:

Seriously, where does he get this stuff? Are his aides purposefully lying to him? Are these his own original lies? Or is he suffering from an acute case of self-deception? Regardless, he is passing these blatant falsehoods on to his worshipful cult disciples who will believe whatever he says.

However, the American people aren’t fooled by any of this. Trump’s approval ratings have not improved since the convention began. In fact, Trump’s favorite pollster, the wildly biased Rasmussen, actually shows him dropping five points. And if that’s the story from the most pro-Trump pollster, guess where the rest of the surveys are going to wind up.

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

UPDATE: Naturally, Trump couldn’t keep his yap shut about this. But who would have expected him to completely defy reality by tweeting…

Well, actually everyone would have expected that. Trump lies like the rest of us breathe. But while it’s not surprising, it’s still shocking and disgusting.

Kellyanne Conway on Fox News Embraces Violence as a Political Plus for Trump

Posted by on August 27, 2020 at 2:18 pm. 6 Comments :

The predominant strategy of Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection has been to grossly mischaracterize Joe Biden as a wild-eyed socialist bent on destroying America. That’s a preposterous accusation that voters have already rejected. But it hasn’t dampened Trump’s zealous crusade to smear Biden and bring down his favorable ratings to the lows where Trump has been languishing throughout his presidency.

Kellyanne Conway, Fox News

On Thursday morning Trump’s (soon to be former) Senior White House Counselor and Director of Alternative Facts, Kellyanne Conway, held court with the Trump administration’s Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) to articulate what has become a familiar theme this election season. Trump and his Republican confederates have been furiously assaulting Democrats and citizen protesters as anarchists and vandals, despite the fact that most of the demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful, and much of the violence was actually perpetrated by right-wing StormTrumpers. Conway told the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends that inciting violence is now a key component of the Trump electoral strategy:

Really? Conway is expressly admitting that violence in the streets is a political advantage for the Trump campaign. Which might explain why his supporters are engaging in violence everywhere they go. It isn’t a spontaneous response to events on the ground. It’s a pre-planned tactic to advance Trump’s floundering electoral prospects. And Fox News is a partner in this heinous scheme. Wednesday night Tucker Carlson actually defended the Trump-supporting shooter of demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin:

Trump and company nevertheless insist that the unrest seen in many cities, due to the unthinkably numerous incidents of police brutality and murder of Black citizens, is what will occur across the country if Biden is elected. What they are are too dense to notice is that this is what is occurring right now in Trump’s America. Trump is making the ludicrous argument that if you don’t like what’s going on now, then vote for Trump on whose watch this all took place.

The absurdity of this “logic” is apparent to anyone with a functioning brain. That, of course, leaves out Trump’s cult followers who are already irredeemably lost in a perverse, reality TV simulation of the real world. And to those misfits, Conway’s confession that more violence will help Trump get reelected is an unambiguous call to arms. She is deliberately fueling the sort of incidents that just got two innocent people killed in Kenosha.

And make no mistake, Trump is the instigator behind all of this. He supports it and will contribute to it with the intention of exacerbating further tensions and tragedies. The problem for Trump is that he has very little left in his electoral arsenal. He cannot rehabilitate his repugnant public image. He cannot restore confidence after his negligent and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. And he can’t brag about the economy after leading the nation into recession.

So Trump is leaning on an array of dirty dealings: character assassination of Biden and other Democrats; cheating by vote suppression and assaults on election integrity; assistance from his Russian pal Vladimir Putin and networks of right-wing Internet bots; and setting cities aflame to foment fear borne of ignorance and racism. That’s how Trump is befouling democracy in 2020. And he doesn’t care about the consequences. So the rest of us need to care all the more.

UPDATE: Joe Biden addressed this issue today. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN he quoted Conway’s remarks saying that Trump is “rooting for violence.”

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

Trump Approval Drops After Two Days of the Republican Nationalist Convention

Posted by on August 26, 2020 at 2:12 pm. 4 Comments :

What Donald Trump promised would be an optimistic and hopeful celebration of Republican leadership has predictably turned into a dystopian nightmare exalting an aspiring totalitarian dictator. The dark and hostile themes articulated by one speaker after another were unflinchingly foreboding and resolutely reverential of Trump and only Trump.

Donald Trump

This steadfast devotion to the Cult of Trump was intended to jump start his floundering reelection campaign. Joe Biden has been consistently beating Trump in both national and swing state polling for months. So the nasty tone set by Trump and his convention plotters was chosen in an attempt to boost his approval and to smear Biden in such a way as to bring him down to Trump’s level. They sent out their heavy artillery including four members of the Trump family (Eric, Don Jr, Tiffany, and Melania). They were fortified by notorious Trump-fluffers like Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Jim Jordan, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, and the screeching stylings of former Fox News host, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

However, early indicators show that this strategy is working about as well as everything else Trump has tried to do in his presidency (i.e. utter failure). One week ago Trump proudly tweeted that he had reached a peak approval rating of 51% as surveyed by the disreputable right-wing pollster, Rasmussen Reports. Rasmussen is without a doubt Trump’s favorite pollster and the only one who has ever shown Trump with a majority approval rating.

Now, after two days of RNC ranting, and worshipful characterizations of Trump as Messiah, Rasmussen has him at 47% approve, 51% disapprove. That’s a four point drop (and an eight point negative swing) that occurred in just the two days since the convention began. Additionally, Rasmussen has Trump with a 36% strongly approve rating, and 44% strongly disapprove. UPDATE: Another day, another drop for Trump as his approval on the Rasmussen poll goes down to 46%.

To repeat, Rasmussen is the most Trump-friendly pollster on the planet. For comparison, other recent polls show Trump with considerably worse numbers. RealClearPolitics’ average “poll of polls” has Trump in the red 10.6%. And his performance in the crucial swing states is particularly dismal. Biden is leading in six of the seven states considered as battlegrounds (Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, and North Carolina). North Carolina is the only state where Biden is not ahead, but he is either tied or close. Biden is also challenging Trump in traditionally red states like Texas and Arizona.

Trump’s decline this week so far does not bode well for the remaining days of the convention, Ordinarily, a candidate could look forward to a game changing speech at the conclusion of the convention, But Trump has already played that card by casting himself in prominent roles every day. He even included official duties (the granting of clemency and a swearing in ceremony for new citizens) in his convention events, which many legal experts contend is a violation of federal law.

Consequently, the final two days hold little suspense. Firebrands like Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and a parade of d-list members of Congress will be speaking. The remaining star power consists of Mike Pence, who is scheduled to give one of his always tranquillizing addresses on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, Trump will close the show with what will likely be a sequel to his infamous “American Carnage” inaugural horror story.

How any of that can be expected to move the polling needle is a mystery. But that’s all that the Trump camp has in store. Unless, of course, he surprises us with Hillary’s lost emails, a check from Mexico for the border wall, or a coronavirus vaccine he whipped up in the White House guest bathroom. Stay tuned.

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

WOW! Trump Praises CNN’s Convention Coverage While His Cult Bashes Fox News

Posted by on August 25, 2020 at 12:46 pm. 3 Comments :

It has long been established that Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist whose sociopathic obsessions produce a total lack of concern for anything or anyone other than himself. That sort of sickness can manifest in peculiar ways. Not only will such a person viciously castigate friends and enemies alike when sufficient adoration is not forthcoming, he might also embrace bitter foes should they offer a random compliment.

Donald Trump, CNN

On Tuesday morning Trump had a hell-freezes-over moment. He tweeted praise for CNN, the network he rarely mentions without adding the derogatory prefix, “fake news.” His description of them in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people” is almost robotically attached to every reference he makes. But on the morning following the first day of the Dystopian Republican National Abomination, Trump took to his Twitter machine and posted this:

Legitimate news networks don’t ordinarily get praised for reporting the news. But in Trump’s world the only thing that’s relevant is if he perceives the report to be beneficial to him. Consequently, he’s appreciative of CNN for airing what he believes was two hours of a joyous celebration of Trump. Never mind that the program was neither joyous nor beneficial. In fact, the convention that Trump promised would be overwhelmingly optimistic and hopeful was more like a nightmarish devolution into fear mongering.

So in a way, Trump was right. Broadcasting more of this convention would be “good for our country.” But only because the more people saw, the more likely they would be to vote for Joe Biden.

Trump wasn’t the only one to notice the disparity in coverage from one network to another. His cult disciples were keenly aware that Fox News was repeatedly cutting away from the prerecorded speeches to feature the babbling of their anchors and analysts instead. The Trumpians didn’t like that one bit and they let it be known on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1298178874522533888


https://twitter.com/alexsalvinews/status/1298077746958962689

The comment by Brad Parscale is notable because he is the senior advisor (and recently demoted chairman) to Trump’s reelection campaign. But the criticism of Hannity was especially delightful. Hannity actually cut away from the convention to whine about other networks possibly cutting away from the convention, even while the other networks were airing the convention that Hannity was talking over.

It’s entirely possibly that some of the segments that Fox News declined to air were purposefully excised from their broadcast to avoid hurting Trump. The convention speeches were mostly prerecorded. So Fox News knew the content and tone before they went to air. It’s possible, therefore, that they may have seen the Guilfoyle harangue and chose not to subject their audience to what later became the most mocked address of the night. However, it’s also possible that another reason entered into Fox’s decision to erase Guilfoyle. She was, after all, fired by Fox News in 2018 for alleged sexual misconduct.

Trump’s sudden affection for CNN is unlikely to last for more than a day or two, if that. He will soon flip back to his predictable hostility as soon as anyone on CNN is even modestly critical. Meanwhile, Trump’s love/hate relationship with Fox News will continue as usual with him slobbering over sycophantic admirers like Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, and vehemently berating those who fail to worship him with unflinching devotion.

In the meantime, we’ll see if this attempt to work the refs results in changes of coverage for the remaining three days of the convention. But Trump really needs to be careful what he wishes for. By adding more coverage he will only be assuring that more people will witness the repugnance of his alleged personality and the blind reverence of the Republican cult. Which would be, once again, good for America to see.

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

AND THEN THERE’S THIS …

Trump Turns the RNC Into Another Lie-Riddled Cult Rally

Posted by on August 24, 2020 at 2:40 pm. 15 Comments :

On Monday morning the Republican National Convention got off to rocky start. It was preceded by a week of bad news including the arrest of Trump’s White House advisor Steve Bannon for fraud, tapes of Trump’s sister calling him “cruel” and a “liar,” a federal court ordering Trump to hand over his taxes, and the resignation of his senior White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway. Not to mention the continuing tragedy of ever escalating illness and death due to the Trump Virus.

Donald Trump, Republican, GOP

The early morning schedule for the convention was dominated by the roll call to tabulate the delegate votes to renominate Trump for 2020. That tedious affair had some competition as Congress was concurrently holding a hearing to interrogate Trump’s new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. CNN and MSNBC aired the hearing, while in the Trump-friendly Fox News bunker they stuck to the terminally boring RNC roll call. Naturally, this infuriated Trump who tweeted his objections.

Shortly there after, it was Trump’s turn to take the stage. He is scheduled to appear on all four days of this ego-stroking, reality TV production. And today’s outing provided a glimpse into what the remaining three days will hold. What Trump had promised would be a convention filled with optimism and positivity, is already parroting the “American Carnage” the typifies Trump’s public addresses.

As anyone not in coma for the past four years would have expected, Trump went on a wild-eyed rampage against his stock crew of perceived villains, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Democrats in general. He lied brazenly about imaginary achievements, voting by mail (which Trump now contends will give you the coronavirus), the economy that is in recession, and the free press that he despises. CNN fact checker, Daniel Dale, noted that “There is way, way more dishonesty in this first convention speech by Trump than in every Democratic convention speech combined.”

But most of all, Trump went completely off the rails with delusional depictions of the state of the pandemic in America (video below). From the start, Trump has tried to downplay the horrific consequences that have burdened the lives of millions of people in the United States. He has belittled the suffering of the those most vulnerable. He has given false assurances to younger victims. And he has actually bragged that the death toll that is nearing 180,000 is something to be proud of. And not only is Trump proud, he has the audacity to criticize Joe Biden for deferring to scientists and doctors:

“Most of the country is right now doing very, very well. They’ve done an incredible job. And to have a man sitting on television the other day say ‘oh I’d shut it down. I’d shut it down.’ Like it’s easy. And oh, by the way, when you shut it down – and we did the exact right thing. We shut it down, then we reopened. And that’s what we’re doing now. We’re well into it. If we didn’t shut it down at that point we would have had millions of people dead. Millions of people.”

If you’re trying to make sense of any of that, stop. You might hurt your brain. Clearly, we are not “doing very, very well” right now. To the contrary, we are still seeing more than 1,000 deaths a day, and more than 50,000 new cases reported. What’s more, Trump never shut the country down. Not for a single day. Some governors took action to mitigate the spread, and they were attacked for it by Trump. And Trump is still dishonestly comparing the current death toll to estimates if nothing were done at all.

Following that tirade, Trump went into a rant blaming governors for all the of problems. You know, the problems he’s now saying never occurred because everything went so well. Apparently he was lying about that. The problems did occur, it’s just that, in his cartoon brain, none of it was his fault. Because it isn’t like he’s the one person who has the authority to manage a national crisis.

Sadly, the media appears to have learned nothing about how Trump takes advantage of them to promote himself. While CNN cut away after twenty minutes, MSNBC and Fox News carried the whole freakout live. Trump’s incoherent, stream-of-unconsciousness babbling on the first day of the GOP convention may look familiar. It’s precisely what he did for many months when he could jaunt around the country to perform at his ego-stroking cult rallies. And it’s what he did when assuming the starring role at his phony coronavirus Task Force briefings.

In short, it’s what he always does to exalt himself before his glassy-eyed disciples to soak up the adoration that he craves. And now he’ll do it for the next three days at the RNC, despite the fact that these displays of narcissistic indulgence and hostility only bring his already abysmal approval ratings down even more. And for that, I suppose Democrats should thank him. If it just weren’t so nauseating to watch.

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

Fear Factor: Now Trump Says Voting Will Give You the Coronavirus

Posted by on August 23, 2020 at 1:16 pm. 6 Comments :

Donald Trump is terrified! He knows he is losing badly to Joe Biden, despite his frantic and impotent efforts to characterize Biden as a puppet of scary, radical leftists, and/or as a mentally deficient socialist. And if you can’t beat a mentally deficient socialist puppet, you might as well give up. In many ways it seems like that is exactly what Trump has done.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump is demonstrating a measure of desperation that is unprecedented in American politics. He has resorted to bizarre, dystopian horror stories about how Democrats are plotting to “terminate” their opponents and that he is “the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos.” Which is true in reverse.

But even those preposterous assertions weren’t enough to satisfy Trump’s lust for a nightmarish vision of a future wherein he is the loser. So on Sunday morning he tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1297575466061053957

Oops. Apparently Trump’s tweet so profoundly offensive that Twitter flagged it for “violating our Civic Integrity Policy for making misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from participation in voting.” On his Twitter feed you have to click through the warning to see Trump’s tweet. For convenience, and in anticipation of Trump deleting the tweet, here is what Trump tweeted:

“So now the Democrats are using Mail Drop Boxes, which are a voter security disaster. Among other things, they make it possible for a person to vote multiple times. Also, who controls them, are they placed in Republican or Democrat areas? They are not Covid sanitized. A big fraud!”

Literally every word of that is false and/or ridiculous. To start with, there is no evidence of security issues with mail drop boxes that have been in use for decades. Trump fails to cite any source for his claim that they are a “disaster.” Secondly, it is impossible to “vote multiple times” because every ballot is checked for authenticity and duplication. Third, Trump’s inquiry as to “who controls” the drop boxes could be answered if he spent ten seconds on research. They are controlled by the local election authority, which is non-partisan and serves administrations of both parties.

Finally, Trump introduced a new and comically ludicrous concern about the drop boxes being “Covid sanitized.” This seems dreadfully insensitive coming from the person most responsible for the tragic loss of more than 175,000 American lives. It is Trump who failed utterly to control the spread of the coronavirus, and still mocks the use of masks and other safety guidelines, while promoting untested and dangerous therapies.

Now we’re supposed to take Trump’s alleged concern about infected drop boxes seriously? For the record, the drop boxes are well maintained and kept clean, and ballots may be inserted without ever touching the box. But more to the point, the only people who would believe this bullpucky are Trump’s own cult followers. Democrats will dismiss it and cast their votes eagerly, whether by mail or in person. But the Trumpists will more likely be scared off. And if they believe that the drop boxes are contaminated, they why wouldn’t they think the same thing about in-person polling places. Trump is so stupid that he doesn’t realize he’s scaring away his own voters.

Trump has a single purpose with this tweet. He is trying to frighten the American people. He is seeking to foment fear in order to suppress the vote.. He’s seen all of the national polls – as well as those in the crucial swing states – and there is no escaping the fact that his prospects for reelection are dismal. So the only course he has left is to dissuade people from voting. And he’ll do that by directing the Postal Service to interrupt delivery of ballots. Or by deflating confidence by insisting that the election will be rigged. Or by posting “police” at polling places to intimidate voters. And now by claiming that a completely safe alternative voting procedure could result in the transmission of a deadly virus.

There is a word for that. It’s “terrorism,” the definition of which is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” So Trump is now officially, by definition, a terrorist. And like any other terrorist, he must not be negotiated with. He must defeated utterly and irreversibly. And he must be brought to justice. And, ironically, the first step toward that end is to VOTE! If you don’t, the terrorists win.

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

WTF? Bill Barr Told Rupert Murdoch to ‘Muzzle’ a Fox News Trump Critic

Posted by on August 22, 2020 at 2:48 pm. 4 Comments :

The creeping fascism of the Donald Trump regime continues to unfurl as the criminal accomplices in his cabinet carry out his nefarious agenda. Chief among them is Attorney Genuflect, Bill Barr, who doesn’t even bother anymore to disguise his desecration of the Justice Department into a pseudo-legal cabal that works solely as Trump’s personal defense team.

Donald Trump, Bill Barr

A new book by CNN’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, is set to be released next week, and excerpts are starting to make the rounds. “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth“, has already created quite a stir with revelations about how insiders at Fox News privately admit that they think Trump is “crazy,” even while they exalt him worshipfully on the air.

The toxic, codependent relationship between Trump and Fox News has been the source of incalculable damage to American media and democracy. It is an unprecedented political/press partnership that benefits both. Fox News gets an audience with cult-like devotion that they can brainwash with blatant scare tactics and the darkly unifying force of racism. While Trump gets an aggressive assault team to attack his critics and political opponents, and a constant defense for his unending stream of unsavory conduct and outright crimes. It’s a marriage whose foundation rests on lies and ignorance.

Another excerpt from the book was just published by The Guardian. This one describes a meeting that took place last October between Barr and Fox News Overlord, Rupert Murdoch. News Corpse speculated at the time that the meeting resulted in the resignation of Fox host Shepard Smith, which was announced the next day. But Stelter’s book reports that there was another topic of discussion on their agenda:

“The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network. […] Trump ‘was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.'”

Just to be clear, intimidating and manipulating the media is not a part of the Attorney General’s job. In fact, it isn’t a part of any government official’s job. It is a totalitarian tactic to control speech and clampdown on the free press. And this sort of suppression of the constitutional rights of journalists is part and parcel of the Trump Doctrine that has designated the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”

Napolitano, the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News, has been known to criticize Trump. And for that heresy he was entirely excluded from Fox’s coverage of Trump’s impeachment. A few notable examples of his well-reasoned critiques include…

Napolitano has a right to his opinions, and quite often he agrees with Trump. But none of that is relevant here. It was grossly inappropriate for Trump to seek to censor a legal news commentator. And it only makes matters worse that Trump recruited his attorney general to deliver that message. And Barr, of course, should never have agreed to take the assignment. It’s not only improper, and a violation of the Constitution, it has absolutely nothing to with his duties at the Department of Justice.

It is, however, consistent with Trump’s flagrant disrespect for the law, his relentless abuse of power, and his frighteningly obvious tyrannical aspirations. And it’s further proof that neither Trump nor Barr are fit to serve in any position of government authority. They have both proven that they are utterly untrustworthy and the sooner they are deposed, the better for America.

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