Fox News Host and Trump-Fluffer Wants the U.S. to Be More Like the Terrorists

Posted by on January 7, 2020 at 12:56 pm. 1 Comments :

The White House narrative on Iran is falling apart. Donald Trump claims that he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani due to intelligence that indicated he represented an “imminent threat” to the U.S. But reports from the Pentagon do not confirm the charge and officials say that any evidence is “razor thin.”

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, when asked to substantiate the allegation, Trump’s press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said that she couldn’t. She merely repeated the baseless speculation that American lives were saved. She also complained that people wouldn’t simply trust Trump and take his word about the whole affair. That, of course, is the wholly warranted result of his having lied non-stop throughout his presidency. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also failed when asked to provide confirmation that Iran was plotting attacks on the U.S. In fact, he resorted to a completely different “justification” that relied solely on past events.

Now the propagandists of Trump World are trying to spin his threat to destroy cultural sites as appropriate and lawful military targeting. Never mind that it is an explicit violation of both U.S. and international law. On Fox News Tuesday morning, Pete Hegseth of Fox and Friends sought to demonize rational Trump critics as treasonous saying that “I think with friends like these Democrats, who needs the Iranians” (video below). He went on to complain that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “out of her mind” for tweeting correctly that Trump had proposed committing war crimes. And then he unleashed this grotesque commentary:

“I don’t care about Iranian cultural sites, and I’ll tell you why. If they could, if Iran could, if you understand the Islamic Republic of Iran, of Islamists, if the could, if they had the power, they would destroy every single one of our cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it.”

This is a bizarre argument even if you ignore his stuttering introduction. Hegseth is saying that it’s acceptable to behave like terrorists because terrorists behave that way. He is, in effect, advocating that the U.S. adopt the tactics of terrorists. What’s next? Would Hegseth approve of Americans beheading prisoners of war? Would he favor sending suicide bombers into the lobbies of hotels where Muslims were guests? Would he support flying planes into skyscrapers in Tehran? After all, the terrorists do that, so why shouldn’t we?

The question is, did that disgusting illogic come from Trump, or did Hegseth plant it in Trump’s befuddled head? Because the President said pretty much the same thing on Monday:

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

This is representative of Trump’s total absence of morality. He and his cult followers believe that they can commit any crime they like with impunity. And they will also tell any lie to support their atrocities. For instance, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Monday that Democrats were “mourning the loss” of Soleimani. She was challenged repeatedly to provide a single example of that reckless and hateful assertion, but went into hiding rather than respond.

This tendency to endorse such repugnant acts shows how far Trump and his regime have diverged from any semblance of civil society. It marks them as aspiring terrorists themselves because, if they approve of these tactics, what separates them from the heathens they pretend to oppose? They believe that any act, no matter how heinous, is justified if your enemy would do it. But the American people, whose principles are in tact, would surely disagree and admonish Trump that “It doesn’t work that way.”

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

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HEY FOX NEWS: Opposing Trump’s Derangement Is Not Support for Iran’s Terrorism

Posted by on January 6, 2020 at 3:14 pm. 5 Comments :

The debate over Donald Trump’s order to assassinate a top Iranian military commander is beginning to take on the familiar tones of the Bush administration’s dishonest and unlawful invasion of Iraq nearly twenty years ago. Following the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani there has arisen a cry from the Trump camp for an unquestioning embrace of the mission that still has not been justified or defined.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was rooted in deliberate falsehoods about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. His national security team would not provide any proof of the claim, but insisted that the American people get on board and support the President on blind trust. Bush famously admonished rational skeptics that “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

This is precisely how the Trump administration is framing its assault on Soleimani and his subsequent threats against Iran. Those threats include outright declarations of Trump’s intention to commit war crimes by targeting “cultural sites” with “disproportionate” force. And Trump is getting plenty of help from his State TV Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. The memo must have gone out over the weekend to portray all of Trump’s critics as unpatriotic and supporters of Iranian terrorism.

That, of course, could not be farther from the truth. It is not only possible, but necessary for free thinkers to raise questions about Trump’s actions. After all, he has refused to provide any evidence of his implausible contention that Iran was plotting attacks on the United States. And his resume of flagrant lying about all things great and small make him wholly unbelievable as a source for anything more significant than the weather (and he has blatantly lied about that as well).

That, however, isn’t what you’ll from Fox as their sycophantic shills campaign to canonize the Liar-in-Chief. It was evident early on with Trump’s favorite morning program, Fox and Friends, where co-host Ainsley Earhardt engaged in friendly banter with co-host Steve Doocy and squealed giddily that…

Earhardt: I find it so interesting that people are critical of the president’s decisions, of our intelligence community’s decisions, our general’s decisions.
Doocy: They want details.
Earhardt: Well, they can’t have it. They can’t have it. Everything can’t be made public.

That’s an astonishing commentary from the folks who have been lambasting the intelligence community as dishonest and corrupt and anti-Trump “Deep State” traitors, for the past three years. Nor have they been especially respectful of generals, three of whom Trump has fired from senior White House posts, while maligning them fools and insisting that he knows more than all of them.

Earhardt is also arguing that Trump should be permitted to withhold the intelligence that would justify his actions. That’s a bizarre position from someone supposedly in the “news” business whose job is to investigate and report on the government and the politicians who occupy it. Not that there have ever been any actual reporters on Fox News. They are there for one purpose only: to advance the propaganda of the Trump administration and, more broadly, the conservative agenda.

The notion that the media should accept and defend Trump’s secrecy was further articulated later in the day on Fox by commentator Katie Pavlich. During a debate with Democratic consultant Richard Fowler, who argued that the American people should be shown the intelligence that informed Trump’s decision, Pavlich shot back, “You’re not entitled to seeing it because people like you don’t believe in intelligence.”

Once again, this is coming from someone who has been a staunch critic of the intelligence community for years. And she’s directing this thinly veiled personal insult at “people like” Fowler, whose support for America’s intelligence agencies is well documented. What’s more, it’s absurd to suggest that disagreeing with Trump is also disagreeing with the intelligence community. There is absolutely zero evidence that intelligence was the basis for anything that Trump has done. If it was, there is surely some portion of it that he could make public.

The gist of the Fox News position is that anyone who doesn’t devotedly follow Trump and blindly believe whatever he says without question, is unpatriotic. They contend that requiring Trump to explain himself and his decisions is tantamount to sacrilege. They fail to comprehend that true patriotism requires politicians to continually justify themselves, particularly if they are known to be pathological liars.

Americans are not supposed to be regarded as, or treated like, sheep led by aspiring dictators who cannot be challenged or questioned. But according to the Fox Doctrine, Trump must be worshiped as a prophet sent by God to lead the nation into a dystopian future. That’s not how America works. Even if Trump’s lackeys appear on Fox and accuse his critics of “hero worship” of Soleimani, simply because they won’t submit to Trump’s holy version of reality. Which is what Kellyanne Conway did this morning:

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


Trump-Fluffing Fox News ‘Judge’ is Profoundly Ignorant of Impeachment and the Constitution

Posted by on January 5, 2020 at 12:18 pm. 6 Comments :

Donald Trump is giving the world a close-up look at what happens when a reality TV game show host is foolishly put in charge of a government that he is wholly unprepared to manage. Apparently being a pathological liar, and sleazy wannabe playboy, who ran bankrupt casinos and fraudulent charities was not particularly good experience for leading a nation.

Donald Trump, Jeanine Pirro

Among the hallmarks of Trump’s tenure is his narrow-sighted attachment to television shills who lavished him with undo praise and adoration. That resulted in numerous people from Fox News getting jobs in the Trump White House. In addition, Trump assembled his favorite Fox News hosts into a “shadow” cabinet from which he received – and often took – advice on anything from foreign affairs to healthcare to economics and more.

One of Trump’s frequent legal advisers is Fox’s “Judge” Jeanine Pirro, a disgraced jurist (with a felon spouse) and a failed politician who landed a gig at State TV where she regularly delivers bizarre exaltations of Dear Leader. On Saturday night Pirro launched into a preposterous argument opposing Trump’s impeachment. As she commonly does, she employed legal arguments that exist nowhere in jurisprudence and make no sense whatsoever.

Pirro attempted to address House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to delay transmittal of the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate until GOP leader Mitch McConnell sets procedures that allow for a fair hearing with witnesses and document production. Pirro ranted that (video below) …

“I’ll tell you what I would do. I would tell Mitch McConnell that he ought to automatically dismiss it. There’s got to be a default. There’s got to be — if you’re entitled to a speedy trial, if you’re entitled to be able to — if there’s a statute of limitations, it’s passed. This thing — there should be a default judgment, overdone for non-prosecution. What is McConnell waiting for?”

Pirro must have received her law degree from Trump University. She doesn’t seem to realize that impeaching the president is not the same as a criminal prosecution. There is no provision for a speedy trial. There is no statute of limitations. If there were it certainly wouldn’t be applicable after only one month. What’s more, there no such thing as a default judgment with regard to impeachment. And there is no such thing as “overdone for non-prosecution.” with regard to anything in the law. Pirro is just making things up that she thinks sound lawyerly.

This is what happens when you rely on television “lawyers” for legal advice. Trump’s actual legal team is comprised of people he saw praising him on Fox News: Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow. And he often cites Gregg Jarrett and Mark Levin, as legal “experts,” despite the fact that they are professional Fox News flunkies who don’t do any legal work at all.

This embarrassingly shallow pool of intellect is representative of the whole Trump administration. Most of the people on his staff, and members of his cabinet, are people he recruited after seeing them on Fox. It’s one of the reasons the country is now on the verge of war with Iran. Trump’s judgment is abysmal to begin with. And it just makes matters worse that he is making incompetent and self-serving decisions on the basis of terrible advice from unqualified, bootlicking advisers. What could go wrong?

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


Despite Desperate Denials, Support for Impeaching and Removing Trump is Growing

Posted by on January 4, 2020 at 11:34 am. 9 Comments :

It has never been more clear that Donald Trump will lie about anything. After launching an attack that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force, Trump and his team claimed that Soleimani was plotting a “major” attack on Americans. Of course, he provided no evidence of that, despite how implausible it seems. Why would Iran suddenly want to provoke an armed conflict with the United States?

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

Naturally, Trump did, as always, have Fox news to cover for him. They are his Ministry of Propaganda who will eagerly and obediently affirm his lies. But regardless of how determined they are to construct a fantasy world wherein Trump is an infallible hero, the American people are not that easily fooled. A new poll by FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos has more bad news for Trump:

“A majority (57 percent) of Americans said they think Trump committed an impeachable offense. Fifty-two percent said they think Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine or his refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry constitute enough evidence to remove him from office.”

Once again, a significant majority of voters have expressed their desire to see Trump impeached and removed from office. This is not a new development. Many other polls have shown the same thing over an extended period of time. However, this poll is proof that one of Trump’s most frequent assertions about impeachment is patently false. As recently as last month Trump declared that “Impeachment has backfired thoroughly on the Democrats.” As usual, he provided nothing to support that claim. He just expects his glassy-eyed disciples to believe whatever he tells them. And, sadly, many will.

This poll not only demonstrates that the public favors Trump’s impeachment, it also shows that this sentiment is growing, not backfiring as Trump says. The poll also reveals that most Americans want the Senate to conduct a fair impeachment hearing with witnesses and document production. During the House hearings Trump whined bitterly about wanting witnesses to testify, while simultaneously prohibiting them from doing so. Now he is opposed to such testimony and is pressuring GOP leader Mitch McConnell to decline to have hearings at all.

Trump is obviously afraid of a reality that places him in political peril. so he concocts an alternative version of it that better matches his narcissistic world view. And he passes that along to his cult followers who are just as anxious as he is to latch unto some comforting falsehoods. It would be a pathetic state of affairs for any individual. But when that individual is the President of United States it’s downright dangerous.

The situation currently unfolding with Iran is an excellent example of how Trump’s pathological dishonesty impacts world affairs. Not only do the American people doubt everything Trump says, so do nations that would otherwise form alliances with the U.S. to combat terrorism. Trump’s lying results in forcing America to drift alone in a sea of uncertainty and disrepute. The sooner we are rid of him, the better.

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


Trump-Fluffers at Fox News Begin War Mongering Before Soleimani’s Body is Cold

Posted by on January 3, 2020 at 12:48 pm. 8 Comments :

On the second day of the new year Donald Trump launched a new conflict in the Middle East, this time with the region’s largest military, Iran. Contrary to his frequent promises to withdraw the United States from the Middle East, Trump’s assault is likely to result in another prolonged war that will be costly in both lives and dollars.

Donald Trump

No American will mourn the demise of General Qasem Soleimani. He was the leading purveyor of Iran’s international terrorism and was responsible for hundreds fatalities among both Americans and civilians in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. But the mission to assassinate Iran’s second highest military leader in Iraq was nevertheless a provocative act that could lead to further unnecessary tragedies for the U.S. and the region.

This is particularly apparent since Trump has no coherent strategy, policy, or end game. He failed to consult members of Congress as the law requires and, therefore, had no legal authorization for the attack. And in a flurry of syrupy, worshipful retweets, Trump included one by disgraced pundit Dinesh D’Souza that shamefully implied that had Trump told Congress they would have told Iran. To date, the only one who has disclosed state secrets to hostile foreign nations is Trump when he speaks to Putin.

In fact, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that he discussed this attack with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in advance. So Trump informed Russia, but not Congress. It’s also notable that, by targeting an individual, as opposed to military assets, Trump possibly violated international laws against assassination.

Trump’s initial justification for the attack is that it was executed in order to prevent imminent future attacks on Americans. However, he provided no evidence of any such threat. It sounds very much like the false assertions of the Bush administration alleging nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Also familiar is the statement by Pompeo, who baselessly claimed that “We have every expectation that people not only in Iraq, but in Iran, will view the American action last night as giving them freedom.” That recalls Dick Cheney’s preposterous assertion that “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators [in Iraq].”

Immediately following Trump’s attack, Fox News predictably leaped to his defense with a vigor that can only be described as gleeful. Although he was on vacation, Sean Hannity called into his own program to insist that Iran had “put American lives in jeopardy and the president very quickly acted,” and that it was “a huge victory and total leadership by the president.” But Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends was representative of the Fox position when he rebutted Geraldo Rivera’s criticism of the attack by gloating that “I will cheer this on. I am elated.”

Make no mistake. This is the host of a popular Fox News program expressing his elation about a potential war that would result in untold casualties of Americans for a purpose that no one in the Trump administration has been able to define.

If you’re looking for a plausible reason for why Trump would take this action at this time, look no further than the news that broke earlier the same day. The release of newly unredacted emails from Trump’s national security personnel that state unequivocally that Trump knew his withholding of military aid to Ukraine was illegal. The discovery of this provides additional urgency for the Senate to agree to call witnesses and to introduce documents when it takes up Trump’s impeachment.

Trump knows this, and it escalates his fear that impeachment could result in his removal from office. So in order to deflect from the growing political peril he is enduring, Trump appears to have taken the course of action that he once falsely accused President Obama of considering: Start a war with Iran:

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


Fox News Hack Defends Trump for Making 2019 the ‘Darkest Year Yet for Journalists’

Posted by on January 2, 2020 at 3:53 pm. 11 Comments :

After three years of bootlicking fealty to Donald Trump, there are very few people who would dispute that Fox News is serving as the Ministry of Propaganda for the Trump regime. There has never been a “news” organization more tightly aligned with a political leader and party than Fox News. They even regularly exchange personnel who seamlessly work for both the network and the White House. Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and others are card-carrying members of Trump’s “Shadow Cabinet.”

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Other than Fox News, Trump has been relentlessly hostile to the press from the beginning of his presidency. He routinely refers to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people,” and dismisses any less than adoring coverage as “fake news.” Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York times took note of this in a year-end column that accurately described 2019 as the “darkest year yet for journalists“ He elaborated…

“On Twitter, President Trump deployed the phrase ‘fake news’ 273 times this year — 50 percent more often than he did in 2018. He demanded ‘retribution’ over a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch, declared that Washington Post reporters ‘shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House,’ and accused The New York Times of ‘Treason.’ […]

Mr. Trump’s vilification of the news media is a hallmark of his tenure and a jagged break from the norms of his predecessors: Once a global champion of the free press, the presidency has become an inspiration to autocrats and dictators who ape Mr. Trump’s cry of ‘fake news.'”

Trump has terminated the daily press briefings that were a decades-long part of White House operations. He replaced them with his “Chopper Talk” harangues on the lawn of the White House where he’ll berate reporters and lie unashamedly while dodging their questions. And his constant assaults on the press creates an environment of imminent risk to the lives of reporters. Trump even whined to Vladimir Putin that he would like to “get rid of them,” expressing his envy of Putin’s ability to assassinate journalists who offend him. That’s the sort of loathsome rhetoric that caused the Committee to Protect Journalists to issue a long and detailed condemnation of Trump as “an unprecedented threat,” and went on to say…

“Donald Trump, through his words and actions as a candidate for president of the United States, has consistently betrayed First Amendment values. […] A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States.”

In response to the article in the New York Times (a frequent victim of Trump’s attacks), right-wing media hack Joe Concha appeared on Fox News to defend Trump’s malicious behavior (video below). However, he proffered a badly mangled argument that Trump was justified in criticizing the press because they were so critical of him. The problem with that is that no one was suggesting that Trump couldn’t offer his own criticisms. But there is a difference between pointing out what he believes are inaccuracies, and accusing reporters of treason.

Likewise, Concha argued that Trump couldn’t be considered a threat to journalists because he speaks to them directly from time to time. Once again, that doesn’t excuse what he’s actually saying in those encounters. If you threaten reporters with cancellation of their credentials, or with prosecution and imprisonment, you cannot simultaneously claim you’re not a threat because you spoke to them.

Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy eagerly agreed with Concha’s premise, saying that Trump often approaches reporters at Mar-A-Lago and takes questions. What Doocy didn’t acknowledge is that those avails are always designed to give Trump the advantage. He takes only the questions he wants, and pretends he didn’t hear the others. And if his answers are insufficient, or totally irrelevant, he refuses follow-ups or any effort to clarify.

The problem with what Concha and Doocy are saying is that they regard Trump’s insults and threats as legitimate critiques of the media. They ignore Trump’s menacing outbursts that cast journalists as criminals and traitors. And they don’t seem to comprehend that labeling everything you disagree agree with as “Fake” isn’t a coherent rebuttal. It’s a flagrant attempt to demean an honorable profession, and the only one protected by the Constitution.

Trump’s purpose is to destroy the public’s confidence in the only institution they can rely on to keep them informed and hold the powerful accountable. In this way Trump hopes to get away with his criminal, amoral, and disloyal, activities. And Joe Concha and Fox News are right there to back him up.

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

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The Bottom 10: A Year of Derp from Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News

Posted by on January 1, 2020 at 2:54 pm. 4 Comments :

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.

Donald Trump New Year 2020

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:

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:

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.


The Best/Worst Donald Trump Advice of 2019: Read The Transcript!

Posted by on December 31, 2019 at 3:05 pm. 5 Comments :

It’s New Year’s Eve and Donald Trump is doing what he does most of the rest of the year: Lounging at his golf resort, watching Fox News, and posting asinine lies on Twitter. It’s a lazy lifestyle of ego gratification that he has adopted since becoming president and rarely wavers from it.

Trump Lies

True to form, Trump was busy tapping out tweets on Tuesday morning to insult Democrats, praise Putin, and insist on his innocence with quotes from some Fox News flunkies. And stuffed into the mix was one of Trump’s favorite phrases that he thinks is an effective argument for his impeachment defense. And as it turns out, it’s actually the most useful suggestion that Trump has given to the nation for the whole year. Therefore News Corpse has chosen it as…

The Best/Worst Donald Trump Advice of 2019: Read the Transcript!

Everyone really should read the summary memo that Trump falsely calls a “transcript.” The memo that Trump himself released reveals with crystal clarity that Trump extorted President Zelensky of Ukraine. Trump asked Zelensky to interfere in the U.S. election by trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. And he conditioned critical U.S. military aid on Zelensky’s cooperation. What the memo says that Trump said, in response to Zelensky’s inquiry about the aid, was…

“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 then 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 … so if you can look into it.”

So yes, please take Trump’s advice and read the “transcript.” It’s one of the most precise confessions that Trump has made to his criminal behavior. And if that isn’t enough, there is also Trump’s explicit admission that he wanted Zelensky to probe the Bidens, which he made on national television. Yet somehow, Trump still had the audacity to spend much of the year denying that he asked for that obvious quid pro quo. In fact, he tweeted that there was no such request at least 43 times this year.

Trump’s Twitter timeline was awash with flagrantly dishonest declarations of his innocence that he usually couched in attacks on others. He tweeted about the whistleblower 119 times this year; he swore that there was “no collusion” 153 times; he called his critics “crazy” 209 times; and he whined impotently about impeachment a whopping 589 times. That’s nearly twice every day.

Trump is particularly obsessed with the whistleblower whose whereabouts he repeatedly asks for. He accuses the whistleblower of having gotten everything wrong in his report to the Inspector General. That claim was chosen by PolitiFact as their “Lie of the Year“ for 2019. But worst of all, in a post-Christmas tweet, Trump retweeted a shady account that allegedly named the whistleblower. Of course, that cannot be substantiated, but the harm is done to that person whether or not he/she is involved.

What’s more, the post that Trump retweeted was extraordinarily suspicious. The name on the account changed at least four times. And with each new name, the previous one was deleted. But all of the accounts had the exact same tweet content, were created at the same time, and linked to known Russian propaganda sources.

It’s a year-end enigma that just drips with criminal, if not treasonous, intrigue. But it Trump is confidant that everything will be resolved if you would only “read the transcript!” Even if none of his own willfully ignorant cult followers will:

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


Fox News Hits Record High Ratings of a Measly 0.8% of American Viewers in 2019

Posted by on December 30, 2019 at 3:07 pm. 2 Comments :

If there’s one thing we can learn from 2019 it’s that hostile, melodramatic lies can boost the profits of a flagrantly biased organ of propaganda like Fox News. The right-wing network abandoned all pretense of journalistic integrity (what little it had) in order to sign on to the Donald Trump White House’s perverse distortions of reality.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

The reward for Fox News was the undying devotion of an audience of willfully blind cult followers who agreed to believe only what they saw on Fox and heard from Dear Leader Trump. And their loyalty helped propel Fox News to the number one cable news network for the year.

Fox News – and their number one viewer, Donald Trump – surely celebrated this achievement. But as the year comes to a close it’s important to place this statistic in perspective. The numbers that produced this “victory” represent about 2.5 million viewers per night, or about 0.8% of the television audience on the United States. That’s not exactly a commanding presence of disinformed boob-tubers with eyes glazed over and chanting wingnut slogans.

Of course, any contribution to the thinly populated MAGA cult is troubling and can have negative consequences. But knowing that they are safely confined within the walled off world of Fox News makes their impact nearly irrelevant. The bigger problem with Fox is when they manage to persuade other news organizations that they have any credibility and use that to further spread their fabrications and slander.

The bragging rights for Fox News have always been the result of their having corralled all of the nation’s conservative TV news audience into their single channel pen. Meanwhile, all the other news networks are splitting up the rest of the viewers, which dilutes their total audience. But in 2019, just the combined numbers for MSNBC (1.75 million) and CNN (972,000) exceed the total for Fox News. So anyone who tries to argue that Fox’s numbers are proof of a conservative majority in the country are engaging in the same sort of dishonesty that is the hallmark of Fox News.

While Fox’s average numbers did earn them the top spot for the year, that doesn’t mean that they resided there the whole time with every program. In fact, Rachel Maddow beat her time period competition, Sean Hannity, for the entire first quarter of the year. She also won the months of September, October, and November. And both “Deadline: White House with Nicole Wallace” and “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” won their time periods for the year outright.

The real ratings disaster for the year was, once again, Donald Trump. He remains the most unpopular president since modern polling began. Even his favorite pollster, the disreputable and biased Rasmussen Reports, has him underwater with only 46% approving. And a recent Fox News poll showed that a majority of Americans (53%) have an unfavorable view of his job performance. In addition to that, a solid majority of 54% in the Fox poll said that Trump should be impeached, with 50% saying that he should also be removed from office. So whatever influence Fox News purports to have by snagging 0.8% of the television audience, it isn’t having much effect on the views of the American people. And that’s something Trump will surely post an angry tweet about before long.

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


Even Lindsey Graham is Spooked By Trump Shill Rudy Giuliani’s Russian Propaganda

Posted by on December 29, 2019 at 2:20 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has recently been gallivanting around the globe in an effort to dig up dirt on a potential Trump election opponent, Joe Biden. In a normal world (remember that?), that’s not the job of a lawyer who is supposedly defending Trump on charges related to his impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Then again, Giuliani is bumbling his way through criminal allegations of his own and threatening to sue Fox News, so perhaps he doesn’t have sufficient time to devote to his Client-in-Chief.

The fact of the matter is that neither Giuliani, nor Trump’s apologists in politics or the press, have bothered to address the substance of the charges against him. They are all attacking the process or pointing fingers at people who have nothing to do with why Trump was impeached. And much of their focus has been on preposterous and thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories concocted by Russian operatives. Consequently, when Giuliani returned to Washington, he wasn’t exactly greeted with open arms. According to the Daily Beast:

“In the weeks leading up to their impeachment trial, senators on Capitol Hill are actively avoiding meeting with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — partly because they fear he might try to pass off Russian conspiracy theories as fact, according to interviews with more than half a dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides. […] various lawmakers, as well as administration officials and national security brass, have privately expressed concerns about Giuliani’s latest Ukraine jaunt, given that the Trump lawyer’s efforts are what helped create this Ukraine scandal and get the president impeached in the first place.”

Indeed, Giuliani may have been the acorn that grew into the mighty oak of Trump’s criminality. At the very least, Giuliani was watering the seedling every time he appeared on Fox News making statements that further incriminated Trump. The Daily Beast interviewed several Senate sources from both parties who indicated an aversion to dealing with Giuliani, whose credibility they said was suspect. Even White House sources were reticent to deal with Giuliani for fear of being caught up in his crackpot schemes. But surprisingly, one of Trump’s most devoted fluffers, Lindsey Graham, is also putting distance between himself and Trump’s lawyer:

“My advice to Giuliani would be to share what he got from Ukraine with the IC [intelligence community] to make sure it’s not Russia propaganda. I’m very suspicious of what the Russians are up to all over the world.”

That’s right. Trump’s sentinel in the Senate can’t be sure whether Trump’s attorney is a Russian asset. If Graham doesn’t trust Giuliani, then why should anyone else? Particularly those in the media who keep inviting him on to disseminate the propaganda of hostile foreign adversaries. There appears to be a consensus that Giuliani is – as John Bolton said – “a hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up.” And yet, Trump himself is totally reliant on Giuliani and his unique brand of lunacy. It must true what they say about birds of feather.

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