Trump Threatens to ‘Look Into’ Social Media Bias of Diamond and Silk, James Woods, and Infowars

Posted by on May 3, 2019 at 8:36 pm. 2 Comments :

With all of the problems that Donald Trump is dealing with now (Mueller, Barr, Venezuela, the border, Putin, Kim) it’s odd that he would take time to push the ludicrous conspiracy theory that conservatives are being discriminated against on social media. All of the evidence shows unequivocally that there is no such bias. It’s just the infantile and self-serving whining of Trump and other right-wingers who can’t accept that they are not universally beloved by zillions.

Diamond and Silk, Fox News

The phony charge of anti-conservative treatment by websites like Twitter and Facebook is nothing new. It has been alleged by Republican politicians, Fox News hosts, and paranoid wingnuts for years. First among them is the modern minstrel duo, Diamond and Silk. They even testified before Congress for a hearing on the imaginary bias. So it is not surprising to see the Fox News “personalities” on Trump’s Twitter feed getting a boost from the President who spends countless hours watching Fox News:

Reading Trump’s praise for a couple of superfans doesn’t really deserve much attention. What’s troubling about this tweet is Trump’s threat to look into how they “have been treated so horribly by Facebook.” Exactly what authority does he think he has to “look into” that? And if that weren’t bad enough, Trump expressed the same concerns for whackjob James Woods and Infowars “correspondent” Paul Joseph Watson.

These are people whose social media contributions often exacerbate the most virulent racism that appears on the Internet. They are purposefully divisive and aren’t shy about inciting potential violence. So while Trump continues to complain that he is being misrepresented with regard to his comments about the deadly right-wing riots in Charlottesville, he nevertheless promotes people with exactly the same repugnant views. These are the cretins that he feels so compelled to defend with tweets like this, currently pinned to the top of his feed:

Indeed we do have freedom of speech, not that Trump actually gives a damn. If he did he wouldn’t repeatedly refer to the free press in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” And if his interpretation of free speech includes “monitoring” what citizens are freely posting online, his notions about the First Amendment are closer to those of his BFF Vladimir Putin than they are to anything in the Constitution. Maybe he would like it if Fox News was held to his standards of forced balance?

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

UPDATE: On Saturday morning Trump extended his tweetstorm defending social media’s most dangerous and provocative wingnuts. His bonkers retweeting included three more posts of Infowars content. He has truly bought into the deranged conspiracy world.

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

Fox News Shills Parrot Trump’s False and Peculiar ‘Praise’ of a New York Times Campaign ‘Spy’ Story

Posted by on May 3, 2019 at 1:00 pm. 1 Comments :

For most his presidency, Donald Trump has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for failing to understand the simplest matters that unfold in current events. Either that or he is deliberately distorting reality to conform to his preconceived delusions. This is evident in everything from his confused grasp of the economy, to his embarrassing belief that stealth fighters are actually invisible.

Fox News, Spying on Trump

On Friday morning Trump took another step into the cognitive void. He posted a tweet that offered backhanded praise to the New York Times for an article about the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russia. But his comprehension of the Times article was indicative of a diseased mind:

It was thoughtful of Trump to suggest that the Times should get a Pulitzer Prize. Especially since they already got one this year for “an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.” But Trump’s tweet missed the whole point of the story. He also missed the headline, which his tweet falsely quoted as “Details effort to spy on Trump Campaign.” The actual headline was “F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016.”

Notice that what Trump called a “spy,” the Times referred to as an “investigator.” And that’s precisely how Fox News helpfully sought to elaborate on Trump’s glitchy characterization. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends did a segment on the story by the Times that led with a gleeful Steve Doocy completely misrepresenting it (video below):

“So it’s a big story in the New York Times. Remember a couple of years ago when Donald Trump said the government was spying on him? Turns out the New York Times, in this morning’s edition, right here on the front, we’re gonna show you the headline, ‘FBI Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet with Trump Aide in 2016.'”

First of all, can anyone explain why Fox put that MAGA sign in the graphic, other than as a free advertisement? More to the point, Doocy went on to describe the story as involving Trump’s foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, who the FBI was indeed investigating to ascertain his links to Russia. Doocy even acknowledge that, although he repeated Trump’s rhetoric about spying, which is not what happened. But co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed and then went full conspiracy crackpot by accusing the FBI of “covering their tracks” due some to imaginary exposé that Kilmeade wouldn’t reveal.

In reality, this was part of an investigation that had already begun. It was initiated after an Australian diplomat told the FBI about a meeting he had with Papadopoulos in a London bar. Papadopoulos revealed that he had access to damaging information about Hillary Clinton obtained by Russian hackers. That meeting took place in May of 2016. The meeting referenced in the New York Times story took place in September of 2016, several months later. So, since the investigation was already in progress, what exactly were Trump and Fox News so excited about? The Times story merely affirms prior reporting that Trump’s campaign had unsavory associations with Russia that were worthy of scrutiny.

Trump has been whining incessantly about what he calls a “Witch Hunt” and a “hoax” for much of the past two years. But his contention that he was the subject of spying is ludicrous. When law enforcement assigns officers to engage in surveillance it is routine and legal investigative work, not spying. And in Trump’s case, it was all conducted with strict oversight and lawful warrants issued by independent judges. Nevertheless, Trump managed to twist the Times’ story into something it wasn’t, and then declared some sort of deranged victory.

This is just another sorry attempt by Trump – with Fox’s help – to malign the FBI and American intelligence agencies. That’s something that he has been working hard at because he knows what he is guilty of and, therefore, needs to discredit the police agencies who are protecting the nation from criminals. Criminals like Donald Trump, who also tweeted that he spoke with Vladimir Putin Friday morning. His tweet indicated that they spoke about the “Russian Hoax.”

So now Trump is talking to our enemies about his attacks on American law enforcement? Is he still colluding with Putin to coordinate their stories that there was “no collusion, no obstruction”? Doesn’t he realize that Putin is a subject of the investigation by the FBI, and it’s entirely inappropriate for him to discuss the case with Putin? And given all of that, do we really need any more reasons to impeach Trump?

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


If Facebook Bans Alex Jones and Farrakhan, as ‘Dangerous’, What About Fox News and Trump?

Posted by on May 2, 2019 at 3:07 pm. 4 Comments :

For many years there have been repulsive hate mongers littering the social media platforms used by millions of Americans. They spread their ludicrous rumors and lies in order to divide the nation, advance their ultra-conservative agendas, and pad their wallets. On Thursday some of these miscreants suffered a setback that, while welcome, was long overdue.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

The reigning shrine of social media, Facebook, announced that it is removing the accounts of several of the worst offenders in the hierarchy of hatred. While this doesn’t completely prevent them from continuing to infect our society with their loathsome ideas, at least it denies them one of the most popular vehicles for promoting themselves and recruiting followers. Consequently, this is good news:

“In an effort to contain misinformation and extremism that have spread across the platforms, Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, have banned Alex Jones, Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen under their policies against dangerous individuals and organizations. They also banned the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements.”

Good riddance. The online world will be better for their absence in it. But this round of exclusions won’t entirely solve the problem. There are many others online who trafic in the same despicable and dangerous activities. In fact, one of them is considered by many to be a legitimate news enterprise.

Fox News has proven itself to be just as careless with facts as people like Alex Jones, and just as devoted to intolerance as Farrakhan. It was Fox News host Sean Hannity who promoted the absurd and debunked conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was murdered by agents of Hillary Clinton. Although Fox News removed some of that content from their website, Hannity never retracted his slanderous lies nor apologized. But that’s not all.

  • Fox News contributor Wayne Allyn Root called for the GOP to hire “attack dogs … that have killed people” to counter liberals and Democrats.
  • Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends accused former FBI director James Comey of releasing top secret materials. Doocy later retracted that charge because it wasn’t true.
  • Fox News contributor Gen. Tony Thomas accused the New York Times of allowing a terrorist leader to escape. Fox’s Pete Hegseth later elaborated on the accusation. The Times responding by proving that the charge was false.
  • Many of Fox’s hosts and guests have peddled the lie that Hillary Clinton sold U.S. uranium to Russia. That nonsense was utterly demolished by everyone with knowledge of the facts, including Shepard Smith of Fox News.

It’s often hard to tell the difference between the crackpottery of Infowars and the nearly identical conspiracies fostered by Fox News. Fox News has actually cited Infowars as a source in their reporting of a Clinton smear alleging that Google was suppressing stories about the “Clinton body count.”

But there’s another culprit whose presence on Facebook should be questioned for violating their terms of service. Donald Trump is the indisputable leader in hate speech. His relentless references to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people” puts the safety and lives of journalists at risk. His frequent use of incendiary and racist language incites hate crimes around the country. The same is true for his characterization of Latino asylum seekers as “rapists,” “murders,” and “invaders.”

It certainly doesn’t help matters when Trump validates white nationalists as “very fine people.” Especially when he does so while talking about the one who committed murder in Charlottesville. What’s more, Trump has appeared on Jones’ Infowars program praising his “amazing” reputation. And an Infowars “correspondent” was actually granted a press pass by Trump’s White House.

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

None of this is new for Trump. He has been using dangerously inflammatory rhetoric since the beginning of his campaign for the presidency. That includes how he has spoken reverentially about murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and others. And it even goes back further to his birther attacks on President Obama’s citizenship. So it seems fair to question whether Trump and Fox News should be considered “dangerous figures” by Facebook’s standards, and warrant being banned as well. How are they different than the cretins that Facebook just cut loose?


Fox News Host Shines a Light on The Dishonest Trump-Fluffing of AG Barr and the Fox ‘Opinion People’

Posted by on May 1, 2019 at 2:58 pm. NO Comments :

The highly anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Attorney General William Barr provided all the sparks and melodrama that was advertised. While the Republican members of the committee wasted their time flattering Barr and calling for ridiculously unwarranted investigations of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democrats effectively revealed just how devoutly wedded to Donald Trump the Attorney General is.

Fox News, Chris Wallace

Barr was unashamedly protecting Trump from any potentially negative perceptions he might have earned due to his flagrantly unlawful activity and obstruction of justice. Barr refused to concede some obvious failures on his part to be an objective servant of the American people, rather than a personal criminal lawyer for Trump.

Even so, Barr couldn’t remember whether or not Trump ever asked him to open an investigation into Trump’s political opponents or critics. He admitted that he didn’t review the evidence in the Mueller report before deciding that Trump was innocent. He denied that directing someone to change their testimony (as Trump did to White House Counsel Don McGahn) was witness tampering and obstruction of justice. He defended his use of the loaded, Trumpian term of “spying” during his previous congressional testimony. He couldn’t even say whether the President’s actions were consistent with his oath of office. So Barr is not just another Trump lawyer, he’s as bad at it as the rest of Trump’s legal team.

Many of these revelations were discussed immediately after the hearing by Fox News anchors Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace. Smith delivered a remarkably straightforward recap of the proceedings with all of the brutal – for Trump – truths included. He then turned to Wallace, whose assessment was equally candid, but also included some peremptory criticisms of his Fox News colleagues. He began by addressing the letter from Mueller to Barr after Barr’s bastardization of the special counsel’s report (video below):

“I know there are some people who don’t think this March 27 letter is a big deal, and some opinion people who appear on this network who might be pushing a political agenda. But we have to deal in facts. And the fact is that this letter from the special counsel … was a clear indication that [Mueller] was upset, very upset, with the letter that had been sent out by the Attorney General.”

Wallace noted that Mueller’s letter was intended to express his view that Barr was misleading and confusing the public. It would have been extraordinarily uncommon if Mueller had simply expressed those views in a personal phone call to Barr. But his decision to go further by documenting them in writing demonstrates how seriously he felt that Barr had crossed ethical lines. Mueller’s letter clearly stated that he wanted Barr to correct the record publicly.”

“He felt the Attorney General’s letter was inaccurate. He says in the conversation he was talking about media coverage. But that’s not what it says in the letter. He says in the letter that you didn’t reflect what we found in the report … Those aren’t opinions. That’s not political agenda. Those are the facts.”

Wallace is making it abundantly clear that he is concerned about how Fox’s “opinion people” are likely to distort reality when they get their turn in primetime. He’s being deliberate in his remarks to emphasize that what he’s presenting are the facts, as opposed to what shills like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are expected to say later on.

It’s amazing that a so-called “news” network can operate this way. They have people they identify as journalists openly maligning their network confederates as disreputable purveyors of rumors, distortions, and lies. There would seem to be no point to watch a program hosted by State TV mouthpieces who spew fantasy fiction that the network’s straight news reporters refute.

Yet that’s the business model of Fox News. And millions of dimwitted Deplorables tune in every night to be lied to by shameless Trump PR flacks posing as journalists. It’s the behavior of cult members who obediently believe only what the cult leaders permit them to believe. However, with the reporting by Smith and Wallace, some of these poor souls might come into contact with some actual truth. That could result in their being released from the spell of the Fox News charlatans. Or it might cause them to suffer an aneurysm that turns half of the brain into mush. Well, the half that wasn’t already mush.

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


Trump’s Pitiful Ignorance of Fiscal Policy is Driving His Dangerous Assault on America’s Economy

Posted by on April 30, 2019 at 2:34 pm. 2 Comments :

The risks posed by the unprecedented incompetence of Donald Trump are more apparent with each passing day. He has damaged our nation’s relationships with decades-long allies, while cozying up to hostile enemies. He has maligned Americans in politics and the press as corrupt, dishonest, and even treasonous. His agenda is one of tearing down the accomplishments of his predecessors and replacing them with empty rhetoric or worse, policies that significantly harm the American people.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

Trump was frighteningly unprepared for the presidency and he hasn’t bothered to study up for the job since assuming it. One of the areas where Trump has the least amount of knowledge is the economy. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he would not allow his stupidity to get in the way of his boneheaded initiatives. His notion that we should ignore the numbers and “feel” the market is just as dumb as it sounds. And the tendency on his part to plow right ahead despite having no clue what he’s doing was evident in his tweets Tuesday morning:

For starters, Trump should not be using China as a model for U.S. fiscal policy. China is a holy mess right now. And with regard to his claim that the Fed has “incessantly lifted interest rates,” he is either lying or comatose. Rates currently stand at a historical low of 2.5 percent, and they have been there since last December. Nevertheless, Trump believes that Interest rates should be cut, something that isn’t done if the economy is expected to be strong. That’s when interests rates usually are hiked as a hedge against inflation, and a cushion in the event of a downturn or recession.

The Fed is currently in a holding pattern. That is generally an indication that they anticipate weakness going forward. To the extent that cutting rates would provide a boost to the economy, Trump is way off base. They might temporarily boost the stock market, but the stock market and the economy are two different things. Besides, the last thing we want is a market that “goes up like a rocket.” That sort of volatility, more often than not, results in a crash landing.

Let’s face it, the only thing Trump cares about is appearances. He wants a facade of economic strength going into the next election cycle. He admitted as much in his tweet with his ludicrous suggestion that lower rates would “make our National Debt start to look small.” Setting aside the fact that that doesn’t make any sense at all, it is also very different than having a national debt that actually is small.

It was Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party that shoved through a tax bill that added trillions to the debt while shifting the tax burden from corporations and the wealthy to working families and the poor. And Trump is still committed to addressing the new debt that he created by cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. That’s an agenda that is overwhelming opposed by broad majorities of the American people. Let’s be sure that they find out about that before it’s too late.

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


Fox News Scolds Bernie Sanders for ‘Praising Dictators’ – Ignores Trump ‘Falling in Love’ With Them

Posted by on April 29, 2019 at 2:57 pm. 2 Comments :

As the Democratic primary season ramps up, we can expect it to be hectored by cranky Republicans and Fox News shills who are desperate to shift attention from their candidate, Donald Trump. More often than not, Trump is his own worst enemy for incessantly posting embarrassing tweets the run the gamut of political pontification from infantile to incoherent.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

Consequently, Fox News takes seriously its role in misdirecting their glassy-eyed, Trumpified audience away from his babbling and boorishness, and toward what they consider shocking and harmful revelations about the Democrats who want his job. A frequent target of Fox News is Bernie Sanders, whose lefty views are ripe for attack by the rightists at Fox. Never mind that those views are also favored by majorities of the American people. But that isn’t something that Fox News cares about.

The featured article on the Fox News website Monday morning had an incendiary headline stating that “Socialist Dem 2020 hopeful could be haunted by past praise for dictators.” That eye popping allegation appeared below a picture of Bernie Sanders flanked by inset photos of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the current Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega. Clearly Fox was insinuating that Sanders was a supporter of these two repressive tyrants.

In reality, Fox was going back thirty years to twist some out of context comments by Sanders that don’t represent anything he believes today. For instance, Sanders related some memories of his youth that involved impressions he had of Castro:

“I remember, for some reason or another, being very excited when [former Cuban dictator] Fidel Castro made the revolution in Cuba,” he said, while speaking at the University of Vermont in 1986. “I was a kid … and it just seemed right and appropriate that poor people were rising up against rather ugly rich people.”

Setting aside the reference to Castro, that’s actually consistent with Sanders’ lifelong advocacy for the poor and working classes. And at the time, many Americans were hopeful that Castro’s revolution against the totalitarian Batista regime would bring freedom and fairness to all Cubans. The same was true for the remarks Sanders made about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. They were being illegally attacked by the Contras, a band of American sponsored terrorists who were the beneficiaries of the criminal Iran-Contra operation run by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North. Sadly, in both cases, the hopes for democratic reforms were betrayed by leaders who made themselves into tyrants.

What’s most peculiar (and epically hypocritical) is how Fox is chastising Sanders for an alleged affinity to dictators. Sanders never actually praised them without simultaneously offering significant criticisms. And he was adamantly opposed to their authoritarian tendencies.

However, Fox failed to mention the much more obvious (and current) infatuations that Trump has with murderous tyrants around the world. He literally slobbered all over North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, saying that they “fell in love.” Earlier this month Trump asked “Why shouldn’t I like him?” And he praised him as “honorable” and a “real Leader.” This is a man who has killed thousands of his own people. Yet Trump even expressed a note of jealousy saying that he wants to be worshipped by Americans the way Kim is by North Koreans.

Trump has also made numerous adoring commentaries about his BFF, Vladimir Putin. He often affirms that they have a “great relationship.” He says that Putin is a “strong leader” who he “respects.” He takes Putin’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community about the Russian hacking and election interference. He advances the interests of Russia on nearly every issue. To this day Trump has never said a negative thing about Putin.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Trump has also been complimentary toward brutal tyrants like Xi Jinping of China, Duterte of the Philippines, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan of Turkey, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad Bin Salman, to name a few.

Meanwhile, Trump is constantly maligning Americans – politicians, journalists, FBI agents, celebrities, and his own cabinet and staffers – as corrupt, dishonest, sleazy, and even treasonous. He says worse things about Saturday Night Live than he does about white nationalists or neo-Nazis. But to Fox News, some vague, decades-old distortions of remarks by Sanders are breaking news and worthy of leading their reporting. Expect more of this atrocious bastardization of journalism by Fox and their ilk as the election cycle proceeds.

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

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

While Trump Was Lying to His Deplorable Disciples, the WHCA Was Telling the Truth About Him

Posted by on April 28, 2019 at 11:24 am. 2 Comments :

If there is one thing that has been unambiguously affirmed about Donald Trump, it’s that he is a rank coward (with an emphasis on “rank”). It goes back at least to his youth when he evaded the Vietnam draft with five deferments, including one for alleged bone spurs that no doctor has ever confirmed. It is glaringly obvious in his panicky tweetstorms maligning special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. And it has been evident in his avoidance of credible journalists in favor of the Trump-fluffers on Fox News.

Donald Trump

So naturally Trump made the courageous decision to skip – for the third consecutive year – the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (WHCA), a charity event to raise funds for college scholarships. He also issued a decree forbidding any of his staff to attend the affair or any of the after-parties. Trump is a quivering pile of jello when it comes to being the subject of humor, despite his painfully lame attempts to ridicule everyone he thinks isn’t sufficiently worshipful. His skin is so thin that it needs a coat of orange primer before he can go out in a light breeze.

Instead, Trump scheduled a competing event in Wisconsin. It was just another of his tedious cult rallies wherein he repeats the same old talking points and infantile insults he has been sputtering for years. This one was no different. He lied about his critics, invented atrocities by Democrats that never occurred, bragged about imaginary accomplishments, and railed against the press as “the enemy of the people.” You know, same old same old.

Meanwhile, at the WHCA, the guest keynote speaker was historian Ron Chernow. He was selected by the organizers as an alternative to the comedians who traditionally host the event. Trump tweeted last year that he approved of this change and hinted that he might attend. But he chickened out again anyway. Which may be for the best because Chernow was nearly as biting a commentator as any of the recent comedian hosts. Here are a few excerpts from his speech (full video below):

On his replacement of the traditional comedian speaker: “As Will Rogers once observed, ‘People are taking their comedians seriously and their politicians as a joke.’ That certainly describes our topsy-turvy moment.”

On why Trump didn’t attend: “On Tuesday, the President let it be known he wanted members of his administration to stay away from this dinner. At first, I was puzzled by this news. But then I learned a rumor was circulating in Washington that I was going to be reading aloud from the redacted portions of the Mueller report and everything was explained.”

On Trump’s criticism of George Washington’s branding failure: “As best I can tell, Washington committed, only made one major blunder as president. He failed to put his name on Mount Vernon and thereby bungled an early opportunity at branding. Clearly deficient in the art of the deal, the poor man had to settle for the lowly title of Father Of His Country. A very sad story.”

On immigration and Trump’s absurd comment that “the country is full”: “Our founders were highly literate people. And perhaps none more so than one Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant who arrived, thank God, before the country was full. Frankly, I don’t know why they let the guy in. Clearly somebody had slipped up at the southern border.”

On Trump’s notorious and pathological lying: “I applaud any president who aspires to the Nobel prize for peace. But we don’t want one in the running for the Nobel prize for fiction.”

With regard to the last item, Chernow noted that “The thing that worries me most is the sustained assault on truth.” And that is something that should worry all Americans. Along with the assault on women, LGBTQs, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, the working class, the environment, our international allies, the media, education, reason, and reality.

The contrast between the intelligent, insightful speech by Chernow, to the boorish, lie-riddled, harangue by Trump is testimony to the depths to which Trump has dragged down oratory and our nation as a whole. It’s troubling that there is anyone who still regards Trump as a statesman, rather than a charlatan who is conspicuously ripping off the dupes who flock around him. And hopefully this long national nightmare will end soon and democracy – and sanity – will prevail.

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


Trump’s Reelection Campaign is Stealing Millions of his Donors’ Dollars for His Legal Bills

Posted by on April 27, 2019 at 3:14 pm. 2 Comments :

Within hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration, he did something that was peculiar and unprecedented. He announced the establishment of his reelection committee for 2020. At the time, no one could figure out why he would do that so far in advance of the next presidential election. But his reasons are now apparent, and they affirm his status as Grifter-in-Chief.

Donald Trump

When a campaign committee is formed it can immediately begin raising funds and making expenditures. Since January of 2017, Trump has pulled in more than $60 million dollars, just to his campaign committee, which doesn’t count what’s been raised by the Republican Party and pro-Trump PACS. Some of that money has already been been spent on his frequent cult rallies. He’s done about sixty of those to date. Remember, this is the candidate who said that:

“I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice. I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”

That was one of his very earliest lies to the American people. He then created a marketing machine that peddled hokey red baseball caps, t-shirts, and anything else he could scribble his name and slogans onto. He also mined donations from a vast email list by appealing to the fear and ignorance of his Deplorable supporters who he taunted with threats of invasions from south of the border and promises of tax cuts for all. Which were just more lies.

Now ABC News is reporting that Trump’s campaign committee has spent an extraordinary amount of money on his own legal fees. And since this is a president who is drowning in criminal complaints, investigations, and even civil lawsuits by women he’s assaulted, his lawyers are among the busiest in the nation. According to ABC News:

“Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his re-election campaign has spent more than $8 million in legal fees, according to ABC News’ analysis of campaign finance records through last month, with record-breaking quarterly expenditures doled out in the last three months of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

ABC also reveals that Trump’s campaign has been paying the legal bills for others in his inner circle, such as his son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Even his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had some bills paid prior to his cooperation with the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller. Of course, much of the expenditures were explicitly for matters related to Trump’s conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice.

Generally these sort of legal bills are paid by separate legal defense funds, which Trump also has set up for himself. But it’s much easier to raise money from his cult followers than from the big money donors who contribute to dedicated defense funds. Trump’s defense fund has raised less a million dollars, and spent only half of that.

You have to wonder whether Trump’s supporters know that fully fourteen percent of the money they are donating to help him get reelected is going directly into the pockets of shady lawyers like Rudy Giuliani? Would his glassy-eyed disciples even care?

What Trump has created with his reelection committee is just another vehicle for him to fleece the dupes who buy into his scams. He knew that when he started it two years ago. He is no better than the evangelical hucksters who ply their gullible devotees for bribes to God to get into heaven. And he can’t even promise that these donations are going to get him reelected, or even keep him out of prison.

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


Fox News Emails Sound Like ‘White Supremacist Chat Room’ – Have They Ever Watched Fox News?

Posted by on April 26, 2019 at 12:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump spoke at the annual convention for the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday. Despite the organization’s unrepentant support for terrorists and felons and spousal abusers having unfettered access to guns, Trump felt it was necessary to help prop up their sagging approval ratings (and his own) with hias Deplorable base.

Fox News, KKK

These are the same sort of cretins who attended the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, VA, that Trump also defended as “very fine people.” In the aftermath of those repugnant remarks, Fox News struggled mightily to protect Trump from the fallout for having praised neo-Nazis. And apparently, they are still doing it. Trump is also still defending those remarks with new distortions of reality.

Friday morning it was revealed that an internal email exchange between some Fox News reporters devolved into a flagrantly pro-Trump brainstorming session. They were discussing how to respond to charges made by Joe Biden in his campaign announcement wherein he reminded people of Trump’s affection for torch-carrying racists.

The fact that they were brainstorming Trump defenses is bad enough. That isn’t the job of legitimate reporters. But their rationalization of such hatred makes matters worse. So much so that even one of the reporters in the email chain got fed up with what he was reading. After Fox’s Doug McKelway implied that Biden was lying, he drew this response from Fox News Radio’s Jon Decker:

“I really don’t understand the point you are making. Jarrod Kuhn was one of those individuals in Charlottesville holding a tiki torch while the mob chanted “Jews will not replace us. […] Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room.”

While it’s admirable that Decker had the courage to forthrightly renounce McKelway and his other colleagues, there is a bigger problem that is left unchanged. It isn’t just that email thread that sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room.” It’s much of the programming on the air at Fox News. Tucker Carlson has become the voice of America’s white nationalists with nearly every show advancing their rhetoric and agenda. Laura Ingraham frequently launches brazenly racist diatribes, particularly against minority celebrities and sports figures. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends take every opportunity to smear politicians of color.

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

So if an email exchange sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room,” the Fox News Channel sounds like the Aryan Broadcasting Network. More of Fox’s reporters need to take a lesson from Decker and call out their racist confederates. The network is already suffering an exodus of advertisers who don’t want to be associated with such hate speech. Now the anchors and guests need to step up and denounce the racist culture that permeates Fox News. Will they have the courage to do publicly what Decker did in an email that he thought was private?


Fox News Senior Legal Analyst: Trump’s Obstruction is ‘Unlawful, Defenseless and Condemnable’

Posted by on April 25, 2019 at 2:34 pm. 5 Comments :

Ever since special counsel Robert Mueller began investigating the President, Donald Trump has been adamant that there has been “no collusion, no obstruction,” and no other illegal or unethical activity on his part. Trump made sure to drive that point home to his Deplorable followers on Twitter nearly every day. And backing him up all the way on this was his State TV affiliate, Fox News.

Donald Trump, Andrew Napolitano

But now the bottom appears to be falling out of Trump’s defense strategy. In recent weeks a few lonely voices on Fox News have displayed some measure of independence and honesty. They are still a minority, and they are often castigated by their own network colleagues, but they are there and they are beginning to be more outspoken.

Judge Andrew Napolitano is one of those expressing views that are decidedly un-Foxian. Last month Napolitano told Fox host Neil Cavuto that he agreed with the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, that there is evidence in the public record of Trump engaging in both conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice. He previously said that Trump’s firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was obstruction of justice. And now Napolitano is going even further with some hard and detailed facts:

“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump — from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn’s chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI’s investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.”

These remarks might not get much attention were they made by Rep. Schiff, or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. They would be be dismissed by right-wingers as partisan and political. But those criticisms cannot be credibly leveled against Napolitano who is a devoted conservative and a long-time fixture on Fox News. And he wasn’t done:

“The president’s job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

That’s the sort of unambiguous statement of guilt (and from a judge no less) that you might expect from a partisan Democrat. But coming from a conservative legal expert on Fox News, it’s damn near conviction. It’s certainly justification for proceeding with impeachment hearings.

Napolitano also took Attorney General William Barr to task for wrongly defining obstruction of justice as only being applicable when it is successful or when there is an underlying crime committed by the obstructor. That’s nonsense and not rooted in the law. It is still obstruction if one attempts to interfere with the the judicial process and fails. If you try to rob a bank and don’t pull it off, you are going to jail. Likewise, it’s still obstruction if one attempts to interfere with a case that involves someone else. If you lie to the police about a crime you know you’re cousin committed, you are going to jail.

Barr’s absurd misinterpretation is a blatant attempt to cover for Trump and could be considered obstruction of justice itself. And it’s so egregiously conspicuous that even a Fox News legal analyst can see it and felt compelled to react. When this sort of blowback comes from the network that Trump regards as his own media division, it can’t be long before the damn breaks and others on Fox, along with Republicans who can no longer pretend that Trump isn’t an un-American charlatan, conclude that it’s time to put country before party – or before the naked emperor routine that Trump is trying to pull off.

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

UPDATE: Here’s video of Napolitano’s remarks. It is really worth watching.
https://youtu.be/wC-JGIXIv0Q

UPDATE II: And naturally, Big Baby Trump lashed out at Napolitano in a pair of tweets that also slammed Shepard Smith, while praising Trump-fluffer Alan Dershowitz’s utterly imbecilic argument that there can be no obstruction of justice without a conviction of an underlying crime. No reputable lawyer believes that.