Day: 5/17/2021

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton Baselessly Accuses the Associated Press of Colluding with Hamas

Posted by on May 17, 2021 at 5:17 pm. 7 Comments :

There has been a measure of devolution observable in the United States Congress. Some of its newer members on the Republican side are adherents to preposterous conspiracy theories and have a disturbing aversion to facts and/or truth-telling. Names that rise to the top of that list include Lauren Boebert (who recently blamed President Biden for a shortage of Chick-fil-A dipping sauce), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who is a committed devotee of QAnon).

Tom Cotton

Another Republican conspiracy crackpot is Sen. Tom Cotton. On Monday Cotton took the Senate floor to do his best Tucker Carlson impersonation. That’s a talent that consists mainly of asking a bunch of stupid questions without providing any answers, but making sure that whatever is being insinuated will stick in the gullible minds of his target audience.

Cotton’s topic was the Israeli bombing of a building in Gaza that housed offices of the Associated Press, and also, allegedly, a Hamas military facility. The bombing was highly controversial and was covered by the media in detail. However, the press missed some of the questions that Cotton raised, mainly because they were really stupid questions:

“Whys is the Associated Press sharing a building with Hamas? Surely these intrepid reporters knew who their neighbors were. Did they knowingly allow themselves to be used as human shields by U.S. designated terrorist organization? Did the AP pull punches and decline to report for years on Hamas’ misdeeds? I submit that the AP has some uncomfortable questions to answer.”

Let’s take this from the top. Whether the AP was sharing a building with Hamas is not an established fact. Cotton has no evidence of it, nor does U.S. intelligence (at least as far as they’re admitting). Israel says they have evidence but have delayed releasing it while they are preoccupied with the ongoing conflict. So Cotton’s first question is based on an assumption for which he has no facts.

Cotton goes on to make a back-handed compliment suggesting that the “intrepid reporters” at AP would know all of their neighbors. Again, there is nothing to support that assertion. And there is no reason to assume that the AP had investigated every other tenant in the building. What’s more, if Hamas occupied an office there, they would likely have kept it secret and wouldn’t have been running around with Hamas armbands or other identifying insignia.

From there Cotton makes a repulsive charge that the AP might have been allowing themselves to be used as human shields. WTHF? It is profoundly irresponsible and reckless to make such a charge without irrefutable proof. He is, in effect, accusing journalists of engaging in terrorism.

Finally, Cotton implies that because of the alleged proximity of a Hamas office, the AP would deliberately distort their reporting to benefit Hamas. Again, Cotton is making a horrific accusation without a shred of evidence. He doesn’t even supply any AP stories that he thinks might have soft-peddled Hamas. He’s just taking wild swings in the dark.

This is the sort of thing you would expect from a disreputable cretin like Tucker Carlson. But for a U.S. senator to be flinging unsupported allegations as serious as these from the Senate floor is a grotesque abuse of his position.

Unfortunately, that is what we have come to expect from a Republican Party that still believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that his victory was stolen from him by a massive cabal of Democrats, Republicans, journalists, election officials, voting machine manufacturers, Venezuelans, Germans, and Ukrainians. So if anyone should have to answer some uncomfortable question it’s Cotton and his GOP confederates who actually did support the domestic terrorists who invaded Congress on January sixth.

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

UH-OH: Former Trump Communications Director Blasts GOP as ‘Morally Reprehensible’

Posted by on May 17, 2021 at 12:58 pm. 1 Comments :

Among the many failures that Donald Trump presided over was the ethical wasteland that characterized so much of his administration. Trump has amassed a record for lying that will never be approached by future presidents. And in four years he has had an unprecedented number associates indicted, convicted, or otherwise fall under legal scrutiny. Most recently it’s his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

With his humiliating loss for reelection to President Joe Biden, Trump sought to pad his own disgraceful resume with a frenzy of delusional allegations about the election being “stolen” from him. Those wholly unsupported assertions led to riots in Washington, D.C. by his insurrectionist cult followers. And to its everlasting shame, the pitifully compliant Republican Party fell in line, for the most part, backing up Trump’s reckless alternative reality.

There are, however, some rare exceptions. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have courageously called out Trump’s dishonest defamation of democracy. And now another truth-teller has come forward. Alyssa Farah was Trump’s White House Communications Director. She resigned shortly after the January 6th insurrection. And on Monday morning she was interviewed by Mehdi Hasan on the NBC streaming network, Peacock (video below):

Hasan: What has happened to your party. Your party has gotten more extreme, not less.
Farah: The GOP is careening down what I would say is both a strategically unwise path, but also a morally reprehensible one. Just to be completely candid with you.

Liz Chaney did the right thing. We shouldn’t be commending people for simply telling the facts. Facts matter. We need to tell the truth. She did the right thing. But that shouldn’t be brave or heroic. That should just be what our leaders do.

But unfortunately, here’s the problem the GOP is facing: This isn’t going away. Voters have not forgotten about January 6th. The Republican Party has a number of problems. We need addition, not subtraction, to be able to win back the principles that we actually care about. But right now there’s this decision that we care more about loyalty to the former president. Care more about trying to gloss over what happened with the election and then January 6th.

And my unsolicited advice to my fellow Republicans would be: the truth tends to come to the top. It’s better to address it now, to come to grips with what went wrong and accept it. Because we’re gonna be dealing with this going into the midterms. We’re gonna be dealing with it going into 2024.

Farah hit the nail on it’s head with phrase “morally reprehensible.” That could apply to almost everything Trump did in office. Recall his caging of children and separating them from their parents. And his overt racism and acceptance of support from racist hate groups. And his infantile insults directed at critics in politics and the press. And especially his negligent mishandling of the COVID pandemic. As for Farah’s remarks about Trump’s demands for loyalty, that could be observed in Lindsey Graham’s reverential devotion to Trump, despite the abuse he’s taken.

Farah does not fit the profile of a typical never-Trumper. She is the daughter of Joseph Farah, the founder and publisher of the rabidly right-wing conspiracy rag, World Net Daily. She wrote for WND for a couple of years, then went on to work for Laura Ingraham’s radio show and congressional Republicans Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. She also served as press secretary to Vice-President Mike Pence before being promoted to the White House press office.

It is difficult to reconcile the penitence of people like Farah who were perfectly happy to tolerate the atrocities of the Trump presidency. But if progressives are going to make the argument that Republicans and Trumpists were wrong, then we have to be able to accept it when our arguments succeed. And just because we can appreciate when a hardcore right-winger sees the light, it doesn’t mean they are forgiven for all past sins. It just means that their contribution to bringing out the truth is welcome.

When a committed conservative Republicans like Farah and Cheney are willing to talk openly about Trump’s despicable personality flaws, it might be fair to assume that a corner has been turned. Perhaps the field is safe for other Republicans to speak honestly about Trump. Of course, that will only make Trump even more enraged and unhinged. But the more of that that the American people see, the better our chances of getting past this aberration in our political lives. Time will tell if Farah is just a harmless leak, or the harbinger of the dam being about to burst.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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