Trump’s Shameless Hucksterism Proves that He’s Working for Fox News, Not America

Posted by on May 13, 2019 at 2:07 pm. 1 Comments :

As Donald Trump’s presidency sinks further into the muck of his criminality and perversion of justice, he is becoming ever more reliant on his State TV operation, Fox News. Media Matters has documented that he has spent almost the entire year cowering in the safety of his Fox bunker with eleven out of twelve of his nationally televised interviews at the blatantly rightist propaganda network.

Donald Trump Fox News

Fox News serves a distinct purpose for Trump. They are there to prop up every proposal, commentary, and attack that he throws out from Twitter, his cult rallies, or his ego-salving visits with his Fox friends. Regardless of the obvious falsity of whatever he is peddling, Fox treats it as if it’s gospel. Likewise, the network will steadfastly defend Trump from any and all criticism. They will malign Democrats, Republicans, or anyone else who dares to disagree with Dear Leader.

For his part, Trump is greatly appreciative for that blind, unflinching support. He is also dependent on it. Which may explain why he is constantly returning the favor by exalting Fox News and their stable of Trump-fluffers. In the past year he has posted dozens of tweets exhorting his Deplorables to watch Fox.

For the record, News Corpse has compiled some of the prime examples of this naked hucksterism. Keep in mind that this list does not include the innumerable instances when Trump simply cited something complimentary that was said about him by Fox’s slobbering hosts or quoted some sycophantic guest. These are just a few of the times that Trump explicitly directed his disciples to tune-in to his State TV network and enjoy the televised knob-polishing (The dates link to Trump’s tweets, for those with stomachs strong enough to visit his Twitter page):

  • May 13, 2019 – Thank you @foxandfriends, great show this morning and congratulations on your number one (by far) rating. Well deserved!
  • May 10, 2019 – V.P. Mike Pence will be interviewed on @foxandfriends at 7:30 A.M. Enjoy!
  • May 8, 2019 – Just landed in Panama City Beach, Florida for a rally beginning at 8:00 P.M. Eastern. Will be live on @FoxNews! #MAGA
  • Apr 27, 2019 – Just arrived in Green Bay, Wisconsin for a #MAGA Rally. Big crowds – join me at 8:00 P.M. Eastern, live on @FoxNews!
  • Apr 22, 2019 – Just spoke to @LouDobbs. Will be doing a very interesting show tonight at 7:00 P.M. Eastern on @FoxBusiness!
  • Apr 25, 2019 – I will be interviewed by @seanhannity tonight at 9:00 PM on @FoxNews. Enjoy!
  • Apr 23, 2019 – Thanks Rush! @FoxNews
  • Apr 23, 2019 – Sorry to say but @foxandfriends is by far the best of the morning political shows on television. It rightfully has BY FAR the highest ratings
  • Apr 20, 2019 – Check out @MarkLevinShow: Life, Liberty & Levin on @FoxNews now (7pm)!
  • Apr 18, 2019 – Attorney General William Barr’s Press Conference today at 9:30 AM ET. Watch on @FoxNews @OANN
  • Mar 28, 2017 – Watch @foxandfriends now on Podesta and Russia!
  • Mar 25, 2017 – Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M.
  • Mar 8, 2019 – Thank you @foxandfriends. Great show!
  • Feb 28, 2019 – I will be interviewed by @seanhannity at 9:00 P.M. on @FoxNews. Enjoy!
  • Feb 28, 2019 – Everyone MUST watch the opening to @TuckerCarlson – A Classic!
  • Feb 18, 2019 – Great analysis by @foxandfriends!
  • Jan 12, 2019 – I will be interviewed by Jeanine Pirro at 9:00 P.M. on @FoxNews. Watch @JesseBWatters before and @greggutfeld after. All terrific people.
  • Jan 10, 2019 – Will be interviewed at the Border by @seanhannity on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00. Enjoy!
  • Jun 15, 2018 – Wow, the highest rated (by far) morning show, @foxandfriends, is on the Front Lawn of the White House. Maybe I’ll have to take an unannounced trip down to see them? (He did)
  • Jun 2, 2018 – Real @FoxNews is doing great, Fake News CNN is dead!

Trump has often said that he doesn’t have time to watch TV. But the stark evidence of his tube addiction is impossible to ignore. And the extreme bias he shows in favor of the network that is most adulatory to him can only be explained as a symptom of his increasingly severe malignant narcissism. And while Donald Trump is temporary pimple on America’s ass, Fox News is a danger that was here before him and will persist after he’s gone.

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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Trump’s Lies About China Paying Tariffs Gets Fact-Checked Live – On Fox News!

Posted by on May 12, 2019 at 11:00 am. 5 Comments :

America is currently suffering through a historically unique period wherein it is being misled on a daily basis by both it’s president and the State TV network (aka Fox News) that is propping him up. Donald Trump has been documented to have told more than 10,000 lies since his inauguration. And the pace of those falsehoods is increasing as he gets ever more desperate due to the unfolding web of criminality that he is frantically trying to cover up.

Donald Trump

The risk this poses for the country is significant. Trump doesn’t care how dishonest his impotent rants are, so long as they provide a distraction from his impending legal jeopardy. And he doesn’t even care if they introduce threats of war or other serious harm to the nation – and the world. Representative of that reckless disregard for the welfare millions is an entirely manufactured economic crisis that Trump has latched onto with fanatical fury. His shameless ignorance of economic and fiscal affairs is the real crisis that America faces.

Last week Trump threatened China with increased tariffs if they didn’t capitulate to demands that Trump seems obsessed with but refuses to specify. He tweeted repeatedly that China would suffer if they didn’t comply, throwing the stock market into a tizzy that produced a 600 point drop. Trump believes (or pretends to) that the tariffs he seeks to impose would be paid by China. Probably around the same time that Mexico pays for his idiotic border/vanity wall. He even said that the tariffs would be more financially advantageous than actual trade with China.

Every economist with a pulse knows that tariffs are not paid by countries. They are paid by the importing businesses (i.e. U.S. companies), and those costs are generally passed on to U.S. consumers. It’s a de facto tax that would burden every American family. Nevertheless, Trump tweeted or retweeted his ignorant assertions twenty-six times just in the past week. He is apparently impervious to the facts and logic associated with this (or any) issue.

On Sunday morning Trump’s stubbornness was brought into the spotlight by his favorite “news” network Fox News. His Director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, was interviewed by Chris Wallace, when the subject of tariffs came up. Kudlow tried to obediently tow the Trump line, but his embarrassing failure to do so resulted in this exchange (video below):

Wallace: It’s not China that pays tariffs. It’s the American importers, the American companies that pay what is, in effect, a tax increase, and oftentimes passes it on to U.S. consumers.
Kudlow: Fair enough. In fact, both sides will pay. Both sides will pay in these things.
Wallace: But the tariffs on goods coming into the country, the Chinese aren’t paying.
Kudlow: No but the Chinese will suffer GDP losses and so forth, with respect to a diminishing export market and goods that they may need…
Wallace: I understand that. But the President says that China pays the tariffs. They may suffer consequences, but it’s U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers who pay, correct?
Kudlow: Yes, to some extent. I don’t disagree with that. Again, both sides will suffer on this.

First of all, as Wallace pointed out, whether or not China suffers GDP losses is a completely different question than who pays the tariffs. And Trump said explicitly that China’s “massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.” That’s a lie that even Kudlow couldn’t support. Trump also said that “Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker.” Which Kudlow unequivocally contradicted by saying that “both sides will suffer on this.”

That last comment should ring in the ears of all Americans. Trump’s chief economic advisor admitted on national television that Trump is causing the U.S. to suffer. Many Americans already know that. Particularly the farmers who have already been hurt so badly by Trump’s tariffs that he had to promise them a bailout paid for by every other American.

And you can add to the list of sufferers all of those impacted by Trump’s sabotage of ObamaCare; those dealing with the effects of natural disasters, especially in Puerto Rico; those whose wages have been stagnant for years as Trump’s Republican Nationalist Party opposed increasing the minimum wage; and those residing on a planet that is rapidly deteriorating due to deliberate abuse in pursuit of profit. When it comes to making other people suffer, Donald Trump can finally take credit for really being the best at something.

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


Trump Freaks Out on Twitter, While Fox News Has Been Boycotting it for 6 Months

Posted by on May 11, 2019 at 1:10 pm. 2 Comments :

This is all perfectly normal. No reason to get excited or to worry about the fate of the nation. Just because the President of the United States spent two hours Saturday morning posting sixty-two (that’s 62!) retweets of mostly ultra-rightist douchebags piling up worshipful praise for their Dear Leader, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump

This happens all the time. Although usually in countries where the dictators in charge mandate wholehearted support and unconditional love. That’s rapidly becoming the standard for the U.S. under Trump who repeatedly refers to himself as “your favorite president.” Never mind that he is the most despised president in modern times with poll numbers that have never reached fifty percent. He openly pines for the sort of devotion that his idols (Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.) receive.

Trump regards brutal tyrants as his models of strong leadership. No, really. He seeks to emulate them with public remarks that advocate shooting asylum seekers. He congratulated Duterte of the Philippines for personally murdering drug dealers. He goaded his rally-goers into assaulting protesters, and promised to pay their legal fees. He has eliminated the daily White House press briefings, revoked press passes of reporters that aren’t sufficiently obedient, and routinely uses the Stalinist phrasing of “enemy of the people” to describe the media as a whole.

So the sixty-two rage-tweets that gushed from Trump like explosive diarrhea are now part of the official presidential record. They include twenty-nine tweets about the Russia/Mueller affair. Other hot topics include the tariffs on China, the border, and even a bunch about – don’t laugh – Hillary Clinton’s emails! He also threw in some jabs at Joe Biden and a few pompous exaltations of himself. Nineteen of the retweets mentioned Don Jr. This accounting of the tweet topics tells you what Trump is most afraid of.

Trump has also been consumed with abusing his power by exploiting his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents. That’s another character flaw that Trump shares with authoritarian dictators. He aimed his prosecutorial wrath at Joe Biden, John Kerry, and James Comey. Those are in addition to his similar previous attacks on Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and various other Democrats and FBI officials.

In the meantime, Fox News is continuing a boycott of Twitter that they began last November. Their stated reason at the time had something to with how Twitter handled a protest at the home of Tucker Carlson. But Twitter apologized and suspended the account of the user that triggered Fox’s complaint. And six months later they still haven’t posted a single tweet.

Perhaps Fox News is satisfied with the job that Trump is doing promoting their programs and hosts. Trump spends much of his day watching watching Fox News and live-tweeting what he sees. It’s hard to tell if Trump is serving as President of the United States, or president of Fox’s marketing and PR division. In addition to posting videos by his favorite Foxies (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, etc), Trump randomly posts demands that his cult followers watch the network’s programs. See? Not at all unusual.

Trump has three times the number of Twitter followers that Fox News has, although most of those are probably Russians or bots. So maybe Fox thinks they get better PR by letting Trump handle it than doing it themselves. Trump is clearly able to commit an extraordinary amount of time and effort to it. And now that Trump fans like Alex Jones have been booted from Twitter, he can (and does) take up their cause and advance their crackpot conspiracy theories. So Fox News can relax and let the President handle their Twitter promos. At least until Trump gets banned for his obvious and dangerous hostility and hate speech.

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


Wagging the Dog? Trump and Fox News are Prepping America for a Contrived War with Iran

Posted by on May 10, 2019 at 2:05 pm. 4 Comments :

A quick glance at Donald Trump’s Twitter feed Friday morning reveals that the current level of his psychotic anxiety is exceeding any that he has suffered since his inauguration. He posted twenty-five tweets or retweets in a span of two hours. And nine of those were related to just one subject: the disastrous tariffs that he imposed on China.

Donald Trump Revolt

Trump is still deliberately lying about how tariffs work. He insists that they produce revenue that goes straight from China into the U.S. treasury. The truth – which he has been told repeatedly – is that tariffs are charged to the importer (the U.S. company) and then passed on to American citizens. But he is frantically trying to make excuses for the harm he’s doing to American businesses and consumers, as well as to the stock market that lost more than 500 points since his renewed tariff threats.

The Trump administration appears to be manufacturing international controversy at a time when his approval ratings are sinking and his legal jeopardy is exploding. These negative trends were triggered by the release of the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia and his obstruction of justice. Subsequent to that release, Democrats in Congress have escalated their investigations into Trump’s criminality. Their issuance of lawful subpoenas has resulted in a presidential tantrum wherein he has declared that he will refuse to cooperate in defiance of the law. That is setting up what many are calling a constitutional crisis.

However, Trump is also engaging in a foreign policy adventure that is ultimately far more troubling and dangerous. On Friday his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, made some comments that are unambiguously hostile toward Iran. Fox News reported these comments (video below) complete with the overtones of doom that they imply:

“Secretary of State Pompeo says that any attack on U.S, interests by Iran, or U.S. citizens, will be met with a swift and decisive US response. The Secretary says in a statement that ‘We do not seek war. But Iran’s 40 years of killing American soldiers, attacking American facilities and taking American hostages is a constant reminder that we must defend ourselves.'” […]

“Citing an unspecified threat, the administration set up a deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group for the Persian Gulf. Four B-52 bombers have also landed in the region.”

It hardly seems necessary to say that “any attack on U.S, interests” would not be tolerated. That goes for Canada as much as it does for Iran. So why did Pompeo feel it was necessary to make such a pointless and obvious comment at this time?

The Fox News reporter spoke of “an unspecified threat” as provoking this action. But any prelude to war should be predicated on something more substantial than “an unspecified threat.” At least George Bush’s Secretary of State, Colin Powell, pretended to have a vial of Iraqi anthrax as evidence to declare a phony war. What’s more, Congress has to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force before the President can march American soldiers off to war.

What makes these circumstance even more disturbing today than they were in 2003 is that Trump has demonstrated that he doesn’t give a fig about the Constitution or any other democratic principle. He denigrates the First Amendment by constantly referring to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He’s trying to burn down the wall between church and state, while erecting a wall on the southern border to deny asylum seekers refuge. He orchestrated the horrendous policy of separating families and imprisoning children in cages. He sought to ban immigrants based on their religion. And his claims of executive privilege to prevent investigators from getting his tax returns or talking to his associates are brazenly illegal.

Trump’s mental health has long been the subject of speculation as fitting the description of a malignant narcissist. Everything is about him and his perceived awesomeness. No lie is too over the top. And his frothing paranoia stirs incessant fears of “witch hunts” and conspiracies and harassment. And all of that leads to a twisted temperament that is likely to become unhinged as the law catches up with him. That’s when psychologists say that a patient like Trump can be most dangerous.

Consequently, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that Trump might contrive crises if he believes it will help him escape accountability for his crimes. They might involve trade disputes with China. Or caravans of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, invading America from the south. Or nuclear standoffs with North Korea. Or even a fabricated war with Iran that arises out of nowhere, for no reason, but demands an immediate and deadly response.

This is a time that Americans need to be vigilant and steadfast to deny Trump any possibility of entangling the country in yet another pointless war that only serves the interests of a self-serving, authoritarian regime. Trump has laid to rest the old comforting platitude that “it can’t happen here.” It can. But only if the American people allow it.

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


Trump’s Rambling, Lie-Riddled Rant About Mueller and Russia Exposes His Panic and Fear

Posted by on May 9, 2019 at 12:44 pm. 2 Comments :

On Thursday morning Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference to announce an initiative related to drug pricing disclosures. But as often occurs at any Trump affair, it wandered off topic and wound up miles from reality. Trump’s rambling discourse (video below) was further evidence of his severely declining mental state that is stressed by anxiety, consumed by paranoia, and fraught with hostility toward his perceived enemies.

Trump Fear

The diversions littered throughout this spectacle included utterly false claims that Trump had provided Puerto Rico Rico with $91 billion dollars in aid following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. It was only $11 billion. He also repeated his frequently told lie that tariffs on China are paid by China. They are actually paid by by American companies who pass those costs on to American consumers.

Trump defended his son, Don Jr, who was just subpoenaed by the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, by saying that special counsel Robert Mueller had exonerated him. He didn’t. And Trump recklessly accused former Secretary of State, John Kerry, of having violated the Logan Act, and called for his prosecution. That’s just another example of Trump using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents, the way dictators are known to do.

However, the most strikingly deranged portion of this babbling tirade was Trump’s surreal portrayal of what happened in the aftermath of the release of the redacted version of Mueller’s report. He began by misrepresenting the special counsel’s team as being comprised of “seventeen or eighteen very angry Democrats who hated Donald Trump.” It was actually led by Mueller, a lifelong Republican, who was appointed by a Republican Acting Attorney General, who was appointed by Trump.

Following that, Trump claimed that no one was ever more transparent than he has been. This is despite his recent declaration that he is suppressing, via executive privilege, the entire Mueller report, denying Congress the right to interview anyone associated with the affair, and opposing all attempts to have witnesses testify before Congress, including those served lawful subpoenas.

Trump further misrepresented what took place by claiming that Mueller was unfit to conduct the investigation because of “conflicts” he had with Trump. Those alleged conflicts were fabrications from the diseased mind of a paranoid president. He first stated that he and Mueller had some sort of bad business relationship. And it went downhill from there:

Trump: Mueller’s no friend of mine. I had conflicts with him. We had a business dispute. We had somebody that is in love with James Comey. He like James Comey. They were very good friends. Supposedly best friends. Maybe not, but supposedly best friends. You look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey. And with all of that and other things – he wanted the FBI job. I don’t know if anybody knows that.

First of all, the business dispute Trump refers to was a minor incident when Mueller resigned his membership at Trump’s National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, because he no longer lived in the area and wasn’t using it. That hardly qualifies as a business dispute.

Secondly, Trump’s assertion that Mueller was “in love” with Comey is laughable. Especially after Trump confessed that he was in love with Kim Jong Un. What’s more, there is absolutely no evidence that Mueller and Comey had anything other than a work relationship. They were not even casual friends. Comey testified before Congress that he had dinner once with Mueller, but had never been to his home, didn’t have his phone number, and didn’t know the names of his kids. Trump has told this lie before, embellishing it with claims that there were hundreds of pictures of them “hugging and kissing.” No one has ever found a single one.

Trump did interview Mueller for FBI director, which shouldn’t surprise anyone since he previously held that job for twelve years. But if Trump is insinuating a conspiracy, then Rod Rosenstein must have been in on it, because he picked Mueller to lead the special counsel probe. If there was a conspiracy, it didn’t work very well because Rosenstein later stood quietly behind Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, as he brazenly lied about the contents of Mueller’s report. But here’s where this really gets weird:

Trump: Here’s what happened. The report comes back, it’s perfect it’s beautiful. There’s no collusion. Nobody even talks about collusion. You know, I haven’t heard the word Russia in a long time [he talked to Putin six days ago]. There’s no more talk about Russia What happened to Russia. The Russia witch hunt – they don’t talk because it was so on collusion. Which by the way is by far, that’s the big deal.

Let’s just set aside the fact that everyone is talking about Russia. Now Trump is ecstatic about what he claims is the result of the investigation that he also claims was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.” He describes as “perfect” and “beautiful” a report that he insists was the work of an allegedly conflicted and embittered enemy who hates him.

It appears that Trump can’t keep his rattled attention focused long enough to decide whether he is the victim of an evil cabal, or the joyful winner of “total exoneration.” All of this is on public display every time he steps in front of a camera. And for some reason, the press is still reluctant to say what is so glaringly obvious: Donald Trump is totally nuts and unfit to serve.

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


Fox News Pitifully Spins Trump’s Billion Dollar Losses as ‘Impressive’ – No, Really!

Posted by on May 8, 2019 at 11:54 am. 3 Comments :

Most of the time watching Fox News is a chore that is fraught with frustration due to their brazen and shameless dissemination of lies and unrelenting Trump-fluffing. The network was always a right-wing purveyor of propaganda aimed at advancing a conservative agenda and maligning liberals and Democrats. But in the Era of Trump Fox has devolved into something more akin to Alex Jones conspiracy theorizing and even challenges The Onion for pure, lunatic satire.

Fox News Friends

Wednesday morning Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends, demonstrated why they have earned the ridicule of intelligent news consumers everywhere. They did a segment on the breaking news from the New York Times that Trump had suffered massive financial losses in the 1980s and 1990s. The story documented losses that totalled over a billion dollars. This is consistent with many of the stories that detail Trump’s business incompetence that includes going bankrupt at least six times, even with casinos.

In response to the story in the Times, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes stiffened their spines to construct a defense that is so ludicrous it’s hard to believe they allowed it to get on the air (video below). Co-host Brian Kilmeade led off with a series of inane excuses for Trump’s failures. He tried to set the stage with dumbfuckery like this: “[Trump] lost a lot of money over the course of 10 years, if you consider a billion dollars a lot of money.” And he insisted that there was “nothing about this article that should surprise anybody.” Which is true if you’re aware of Trump’s past fiscal fiascos. But then he unleashed this explanation for why Trump’s losses were so spectacular::

“There might be an incentive to go buy that building, to buy that casino, because I’ll take a loss this year in order that on my tax returns because I wanna buy for a rainy day. […] For me, I can’t imagine having that much much money, spending that much money and being in debt. For him it makes sense.”

Of course. It makes perfect sense. That’s what all billionaires do. They buy so many failing properties that they lose their entire fortunes. And because U.S. institutions won’t have anything to do with them, they are forced to turn to foreign banks and Russian mobsters to be rescued. Just ask Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, the Walton family, or – – – oh wait. Never mind. They never did any of that, or lost those sums of money. But Kilmeade wasn’t through. He then offered some examples of Trump’s business prowess:

“In 1987 he spent $29 million on a yacht. The market crashed the next day. So no problem. He held on to it. He bought a shuttle operation. It didn’t do too well. But he held onto it.”

Sure. No problem. Except that Trump had to beg for help from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to take that yacht off his hands after creditors initiated default proceedings. He didn’t hold on to it, contrary to Kilmeade’s deliberate lie. Alwaleed also bought Trump out of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan as it was falling into bankruptcy under Trump. And he didn’t hold onto that shuttle operation either. It folded and was sold off at a steep loss.

This is the sort of flagrant dishonesty that Fox News employs to keep their viewers stupid and devoted to the Trump Cult. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt summed it up for the segment by confidently asserting that:

“If anything, you read this and you’re like ‘Wow, it’s pretty impressive, all the things that he’s done in his life.’ It’s beyond what most of us could ever achieve.”

Well, that’s true. Most of us will never become lawless, self-absorbed, grifters who live to rip off everyone they come into contact with, and then lie about everything they claim to have accomplished. But only Fox News can twist the reality of Trump’s total lack of ethics and business acumen as “impressive.” And only Fox News viewers are willfully blind enough to accept it as the truth.

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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POLL: Fox News Viewers are Hopelessly Gaslit Victims of Trump’s Propaganda

Posted by on May 7, 2019 at 12:45 pm. 2 Comments :

The recent release of the redacted version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller has resulted in a couple of the worst weeks to date for Donald Trump. And that’s despite the fact that much of the most damaging material is still undisclosed. He is being barraged by legal experts who affirm that the report contains ample evidence of crimes and obstruction of justice that warrant consideration of initiating impeachment hearings.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

The public’s view of these matters leans decidedly toward a consensus that Trump is dishonest and likely guilty of criminal offenses. They may be related to the hundreds of contacts by him and his campaign with Russian operatives, or his suppression of documents and testimony that points to his guilt. But there is one notable constituency that is oblivious to the reality of Trump’s wrongdoing: Fox News viewers.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll breaks out the opinions of voters by their cable news preferences. And the disparity between those who watch Fox News and those who watch other networks is profound:

These results reveal that Fox News viewers have totally bought into the propaganda that Trump and his fluffers in the right-wing press feverishly disseminate. They are the victims of deliberate lies that don’t remotely resemble reality. This is evident by the extreme differences among the Fox News viewers with their fellow citizens. If the pro-Trump numbers were just a little higher, that might indicate some measure of media bias. But when the numbers are so radically far apart, that can only be the result of cult-like indoctrination.

It simply is not normal for 69 percent of the viewers of one network to say they aren’t worried about Russian interference in the U.S. election, when less that 50 percent of the viewers of all other networks feel the same way. It’s extraordinary that 50 percent of Fox viewers falsely believe that the Mueller report cleared Trump, when everyone else believes that by less than 25 percent. And how can 61 percent of Fox News viewers say that Trump has been honest about Russia, when less than 30 percent of the rest of the nation says that?

These numbers, of course, are reflected in the overall approval of Trump as president. And once again, 73 percent of Fox News viewers are blindly adoring of Trump, while significant majorities of all other respondents vehemently disapprove. What this tells us is that the Fox News audience is living in an alternate world. They are hypnotically devoted to Trump regardless of what he says or does. They even obediently agree with him when he contradicts himself.

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

And for that reason – along with many others – it is absurd for Democrats to consider gracing Fox News with their presence. It’s ludicrous to lend their credibility to a network that hasn’t earned it. And it makes no sense whatsoever to support a brazenly biased channel that exists – from its inception – to malign them, and whose viewers overwhelmingly despise them.


Trump’s Flagrant Breach of His Constitutional Duties Requires Immediate Consideration of Impeachment

Posted by on May 6, 2019 at 3:28 pm. 2 Comments :

There has been a great deal of analysis of Donald Trump’s presidency that raises serious questions as to his honesty, integrity, and even patriotism. And the recent completion of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has provided even more evidence that Trump has acted in ways that warrant criminal charges. The broad array of experts who concur with this is staggering.

Donald Trump Impeach

A letter just released, with several hundred former Justice Department officials signing on to it, asserts that Trump would already have been indicted with the available evidence if he weren’t President. And even the senior legal analyst on Fox News said that there is ample proof that Trump colluded with Russia and obstructed justice. He further called Trump’s behavior “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

Nevertheless, there is still no consensus for impeaching Trump among the members of Congress whose job it is to consider it. That may be due to institutional timity or political anxiety, but it is not because there isn’t sufficient legal cause that is already in the public record. That includes the fact that there were hundreds of undisclosed contacts between the Trump team and Russian operatives, which they lied about when disclosed. And the Mueller report itemized at least ten instances of obstruction of justice. Additionally, Trump has personally engaged in witness tampering and intimidation.

Most recently, Trump is taking his boldest steps yet to prevent the truth from being revealed. He tweeted that he now thinks that Mueller should not be allowed to testify before Congress. And he has stated that he will indiscriminately reject every subpoena for testimony or documents from the oversight committees of jurisdiction. That bullheaded posture was rebuked effectively by Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor with thirty years experience and Army JAG officer (video below):

“Article 3 of the Articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon was that he was not complying with lawfully issued congressional subpoenas, President Trump has one upped that. He has announced that he will comply with exactly zero subpoenas issued by Congress. Now he hasn’t said that ‘I will look at each one and evaluate whether there might be a viable privilege that I can assert.’ No. He just said flat out ‘No, I aint doin’ it. I’m not complying with any. So I don’t really care about your constitutional oversight responsibilities.'”

And if he wasn’t clear enough, Kirschner went on to describe what should happen if Trump continues to evade justice:

“Circumspection is great, but this timidity that we’ve been experiencing is really gonna kill any chance of holding this criminal president accountable. I think witnesses should be lined up outside of Congress’ door. And they should be called to testify, one after another after another. And if they don’t testify because the President has muzzled them in some way, then I think Congress should go for all three enforcement mechanisms: Their inherent contempt power, civil enforcement, and criminal contempt.”

That’s exactly right. And it should apply to everyone in the administration – including Trump – who seeks to obstruct the lawful process that Congress is obligated to conduct under the Constitution. The America people (49%) are already largely on board. And the evidence disclosed in testimony during the hearings would likely convince a solid majority that Trump is guilty of the high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment. So let’s get this train rolling. With Trump threatening to persecute his political opponents, and his hostile moves toward Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran, there is no time waste.

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


Trump’s Fear of Mueller’s Testimony is Exposed in Frantic, Lie-Riddled Tweets

Posted by on May 5, 2019 at 12:43 pm. 5 Comments :

There is nothing more pitiful than a criminal who is caught red-handed in the commission of his crimes and tries impotently to convince everyone that he’s innocent. That’s the sorry state in which Donald Trump has found himself as he unleashed his regularly scheduled Sunday Morning Tweetstorm.

Donald Trump Robert Mueller

The flurry of panic-stricken whining from Trump included a some embarrassing missives aimed at a variety of trivial targets, mostly intended to act as distractions. They included a swipe at the Kentuky (sic) Derby wherein the President, who famously cheated in order to win, came to the defense of a horse that cheated and was subsequently disqualified. He also announced his nomination of Mark Morgan to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump had fired Morgan in the first few days of his administration because he was an Obama appointee. But now he’s been rehired after sucking up to Trump at least forty-nine times on Fox News. And Trump also made the painfully idiotic claim (again) that China was paying the United States for tariffs. Any first-year economics student knows that tariffs are paid by the importer (the U.S. company) and passed on to American consumers.

But without question the dumbest outburst of his morning rant was a pair of tweets attacking special counsel Robert Mueller:

Let’s examine the Olympic-grade derp in these remarks one at a time:

  1. The $35,000,000 spent was less than most other independent counsel investigations. And it was more than paid for by the asset forfeitures of Paul Manafort alone. He is the Trump campaign chairman who was convicted for crimes charged by the Mueller team.
  2. Trump keeps wandering around the allegation that 18, or 17, or 13 “Trump Hating Angry Democrats” were persecuting him. Never mind that Mueller is a life-long Republican who was appointed by Republican Rod Rosenstein, who was appointed by Trump while serving under Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And for the record, there are more like 65,000,000 angry Democrats.
  3. The 400 page report by Mueller never said that there was “NO COLLUSION.”
  4. The Democrats want Mueller to testify because Trump’s sycophantic Attorney General, William Barr, has refused to release the full report. and that’s after issuing a deliberately misleading four page summary, and lying to Congress about the contents of the report and his conversations with Mueller.
  5. Democrats are not looking for a redo. They are trying to get the facts about the first “do,” which both Barr and Trump are actively trying to suppress. And so is Fox News.
  6. There is no evidence whatsoever of any crimes by what Trump calls “the other side” (i.e. Hillary Clinton, the FBI) But there is ample evidence of Trump’s crimes. Even Fox News’ senior legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, has said that evidence exists of collusion.
  7. The Mueller report was clear that there were at least ten instances of Trump obstructing justice. And the Fox News analyst agreed saying that Trump’s conduct was “Unlawful, Defenseless and Condemnable.”

Trump concluded by pleading that Mueller shouldn’t testify before Congress. That, of course, is not Trump’s call. In fact, it’s another instance of attempting to obstruct justice. But it’s also an indication of a severe mental infirmity since Trump keeps insisting that Mueller’s report was a “total exoneration” of him. He even said that Mueller “acted honorably.” If that’s true, shouldn’t Trump want Mueller to testify publicly and clear his name?

There’s a reason that Trump is so frightened by the prospect of Mueller testifying. Trump knows exactly what he did. He knows that he’s guilty. And he knows that the more public disclosure and transparency there is, the worse it is for him and his desperate efforts to avoid accountability.

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

Trump tries to pretend that he’s been cooperative throughout the investigation. But that’s a lie that is easily refuted. After all, Trump refused to be interviewed by Mueller. He’s working hard to keep others from being interviewed, including his former White House counsel, Don McGahn. And now he’s trying to intimidate those interested in finding the truth with these ludicrous demands to prevent Mueller’s testimony. This isn’t the behavior of an innocent man. It’s the desperation of a coward caught in the web of his own crimes and lies.


Fox News: Lying or Stupid? Hosts Falsely Claim that Trump is Second in Donations By Women

Posted by on May 4, 2019 at 11:27 am. 2 Comments :

When America is suffering through a presidency that has achieved the rare milestone of having told more than 10,000 lies since it began, it may not be an earth shattering revelation that this president’s media mouthpiece traffics just as flagrantly in deliberate falsehoods. But, sadly, that’s what we are enduring in the era of Donald Trump and Fox News.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

The latest example of this occured on Saturday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show. and a significant source of data for his executive decision making. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes raised the subject of the 2020 race for the White House and sought to reveal some financial statistics that they thought would help boost Trump’s prospects in the upcoming election. Their typically partisan and shallow discussion resulted in this exchange (video below):

Jedediah Bila: In 2020, donations for the first quarter in 2019 – Gillibrand, $1,271,135. Kamala Harris, $3,661,680. And third is President Trump at $1,473,830.
Ed Henry: So he’s number two for female donations.
Bila: Right. These are women donations. So everyone that’s out there on the left making the talking point that women are anti-Trump, or Trump is anti-woman, have to remember that the chief issue that drives women to the polls is the same thing that drives everyone to polls. And that is jobs and the economy.
Pete Hegseth: Also, a lot of women, they are our culture warriors. They see what is happening in our schools, in our churches and elsewhere, and they look at this President’s willingness to focus on patriotism.

Let’s set aside Hegseth’s tangential and condescending remarks and the fact that Trump is a notorious abuser of women. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that Fox News got everything about their story horribly wrong. To begin with, the data Fox was citing was from the campaign finance research website, Open Secrets. However, the Open Secrets report was about the “gender distribution” of the donations. In other words, it was studying the percentage of the donations that were from women, not the total receipts. And that’s how the table they posted was sorted.

So contrary to Fox’s claim, Trump was not the second biggest recipient of donations from women. He was not even close. The study they were citing actually just noted that he ranked third in the percentage of female donors. All it took was a glance to see that Trump was actually sixth in terms of total female donations. And that’s despite the fact that many of the female donors were divided among four Democratic women (Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, and Warren) who were less well known than the current president. Trump’s total take from women even ranked lower than Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker.

It took a prodigious amount of ignorance, carelessness, and/or dishonesty for the Foxies to screw up this simple story so badly. But those are “skills” that they work on every day. Don’t expect Fox News to acknowledge this error, or to offer a retraction or apology. They knew what they were doing and they’re proud of their efforts to mislead their already pitifully ill-informed audience. It’s what they were created to do.

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