This is a quick update to the story about Sean Hannity making an appearance with Donald Trump at Monday night’s cult rally in Missouri. Fox News finally issued a statement on Hannity’s violation of Fox’s policy. But it was a weak attempt to sweep the whole matter under the rug and fails to hold Hannity (or Jeanine Pirro, who also stumped with Trump) accountable.
“FOX News does not condone any talent participating in campaign events. We have an extraordinary team of journalists helming our coverage tonight and we are extremely proud of their work. This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.”
So this was merely “an unfortunate distraction” rather than an egregious breach of journalistic principles? And it merited only this powder-puff, wrist slapping that was more complimentary and prideful than punitive. What’s more, Hannity posted a brazenly dishonest tweet (which he later deleted but is preserved here) that incredulously claimed that his stage show was unplanned:
Yeah right. He was literally featured in the White House press release saying that he would be a “special guest.” at the rally. Is he trying to tell us that he was the only person who didn’t know that Trump would call on him (and Pirro) to speak? Maybe his dimwitted audience on Fox News will fall for that. But the rest of us are laughing our butts off.
UPDATE: A reporter from CNN asked some of Hannity’s colleagues about this and they are “outraged” that he stumped for Trump and that the company won’t do anything about it.
On last Saturday, Donald Trump, Jr posted a tweet that took CNN to task for declining to run a blatantly racist campaign ad for Daddy Trump. Lil’ Donnie wrote that “CNN refused to run this ad… I guess they only run fake news and won’t talk about real threats that don’t suit their agenda.”
Needless to say, the “real threats” to which he was referring were phony assertions that a “caravan” of poor and frightened Central American refugees were amassing to “invade” the United States to take your jobs and rape your daughters. But what Lil’ Trump was complaining about was the alleged media bias by CNN for refusing to accommodate the Racist-in-Chief by running the repulsive video. And his outrage was unambiguously expressed by condemning CNN as “fake” news with a presumably leftist agenda. But what will Trumpkin say now that Fox News has also banned the ad from both the Fox News and Fox Business networks? The announcement of this decision by Fox said that:
“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network.”
This statement is something less than satisfying because it doesn’t bother to say what the “further review” uncovered that made the ad too objectionable to run. Also, Fox didn’t pull the ad until it had already aired fourteen times. But at least they eventually did the right thing and protected their audience from – well, from the rancid bigotry that their regular hosts disseminate every day anyway.
Trump was asked by reporters on Monday morning about the offensive ad and lied that he didn’t know anything about it. He literally tweeted it himself. Is he suffering from dementia? [Don’t bother answering that]. Elaborating, he said that:
“We have a lot of ads. They certainly are effective, based on the numbers that we’re seeing. … A lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive.”
So Trump is apparently conceding that he has a lot of offensive ads. But that’s alright as long as they are “effective” based on some uncorroborated (and probably fictitious) numbers. Then he goes on to play the child’s game of Rubber and Glue by calling the reporter’s questions offensive, without explaining why. Meanwhile, his child still hasn’t commented on the fact that their State TV affiliate (aka Fox News) banned the racist ad just like CNN did. I guess that news didn’t fit his wingnut, conspiracy theory agenda.
Trump’s national campaign tour in support of his Republican Nationalist Party is reaching a fever pitch as we approach the last few days before the election. In a late breaking press release, Trump has announced that he will have two special guests joining him at his cult rally in Missouri: Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
Of course Limbaugh and Hannity are not exactly a match for Oprah and Obama. But there are other contradictions in this turn of events that deserve attention. For instance, a few years ago Limbaugh soured on the GOP and promised to never carry water for the party again. Apparently he got over it.
A bigger problem is Hannity’s addition to this reality show lineup. That’s the same Hannity who Trump calls before beddy-bye every night. And this isn’t the first time that Hannity has unethically stumped for Trump. He was even admonished by his bosses at Fox News for it. If you can believe it, Fox News has some journalistic standards that are obviously rather low, but they exist. Or so we thought. Back in 2016 Fox rebuked Hannity for appearing in a Trump campaign video. This is what News Corpse published at the time:
Hannity taped a tribute to Donald Trump that appears in a new web ad. Curiously, he is identified only as “Sean Hannity, TV personality.” Not only did they leave out his Fox News affiliation, but they reduced him to the status of Kim Kardashian or Ryan Seacrest. In the clip Hannity unequivocally states his support for Trump and outlines his reasons why.
“One of the reasons I’m supporting Donald Trump this year is number one, he’s going to put originalists on the Supreme Court. People that believe in fidelity to the Constitution, separation of powers, co-equal branches of government. He’s a guy that will vet refugees to keep Americans safe. And of course he’s gonna build that wall. He says he’s gonna have Mexico pay for it. That’s fine, as long as we secure the country and, of course, we don’t want people competing for jobs. He said he will eliminate Obamacare, make us energy-independent, and as somebody who’s been a marksman since I’m 11 years old, protecting our Second Amendment rights are paramount to me.”
This list of right-wing tripe is typical of the propaganda that Fox and Hannity regularly dispense. Nothing in it varies from the conservative politics that dominate the network. What’s unusual is that Hannity delivers his testimonial in an official Trump advertisement. Along with fellow asshats like Ted Nugent, Hannity plants a wet kiss full on the mouth of his hallowed hero. Unfortunately, he failed to get permission from his Fox bosses before contributing his services. That reckless disobedience resulted in Fox News taking swift disciplinary action:
“We were not aware of Sean Hannity participating in a promotional video and he will not be doing anything along these lines for the remainder of the election season.”
Well, that ought teach him. While distancing themselves from Hannity’s impropriety, Fox firmly forbade him from further misconduct. And that appears to be the extent of his punishment. He wasn’t suspended. His pay wasn’t docked. There doesn’t even seem to be a demand to remove his segment from Trump’s ad. What’s more, they gave him permission to continue his partisan antics after the election.
This absence of consequences isn’t the least bit peculiar. Why would Fox News punish Hannity for doing in an ad what he does everyday on his program?
Everything written at that time applies perfectly today. Hannity is still a Trump-fluffing shill, and Fox News still doesn’t care about upholding any journalistic principles. Nothing changes for these dishonest, unethical propagandists who are now working for the State. Pathetic.
UPDATE: Both Fox News and Hannity made statements that he was only going to Missouri to interview Trump and would not campaign on stage with him. They lied. Not only did Hannity speak at the rally, but so did Fox’s Jeanine Pirro. More proof that Fox News is the State TV affiliate of the Trump White House.
UPDATE II: Fox News finally commented on this with a weak, meaningless statement saying only that it “does not condone any talent participating in campaign events” and that it “was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.” Addressed how? Fox doesn’t say. Hannity also posted a thoroughly dishonest tweet (which he later deleted, but is preserved here) saying that his appearance “was NOT planned.” Yeah right. It was literally featured in the White House press release saying that he would be a “special guest.” Is he trying to tell us that he was the only person who didn’t know that Trump would call on him (and Pirro) to speak?
Trying to analyze the presidency of Donald Trump gets harder with each passing day. The primary difficulty is attempting to discern whether Trump is lying or stupid or suffering from senile dementia. The unarguable signs of one or more of all three of these Trump deficiencies are evident in nearly everything he says. Although, in the end, it hardly matters which one stands out at any given time because they are all alarming and unacceptable traits in an American president.
Case in point: On Sunday morning Trump awoke and took to his twitter machine to communicate directly with his Deplorable cult disciples. He re-tweeted some twenty previous tweets from last week, including the most flagrantly racist campaign ad ever produced. And mired in that muck of mainly endorsements of Republican Nationalist Party candidates was this display of Trump fluffing his own ego:
New Fox Poll shows a “40% Approval Rating by African Americans for President Trump, a record for Republicans.” Thank you, a great honor!
Any conscious observer would recognize right off the bat that there is something terribly wrong with this tweet. Trump’s actual approval rating among African-Americans is in single digits. A recent Washington Post poll put the number at three percent. Even a Trump-friendly Fox News poll last month reported that all non-white respondents combined totalled only Twenty-nine percent approval.
However, an even more troubling part of this tweet is Trump’s assertion that the forty percent approval among African-Americans came from a Fox News poll. The only problem with that is that no such poll exists. So this is Trump either lying, being too dumb to understand simple news reporting, or sinking into a blissful dementia.
There is, however, some evidence that stupidity is the cause of this particular mental failure. There was a segment on Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends (video below), wherein contributor Deroy Murdock cited a poll that did put Trump’s African-American approval at forty percent. The program blasted a full screen graphic of this “news” to introduce the Murdock interview. But right at the bottom of the graphic was an attribution of the polling data to Rasmussen Reports, the notoriously right-leaning survey outfit that exists only to give conservatives some positive poll results when reputable pollsters have none. Murdock repeated the number in the interview, but neither he nor co-host Pete Hegseth bothered to identify the utterly non-credible source.
So apparently Trump was engaged in his customary practice of watching hours and hours of Fox News and happened to see this bogus story on how much African-Americans adore him. Then he had to immediately share this falsehood with his (many fake) Twitter followers. It’s cute that he feels “honored” by the imaginary approval that he thinks he has among a demographic group that almost universally despises him and his racist agenda. But it’s disturbing that he continues to have such an acutely distorted perception of the nation he is supposedly leading.
Apparently the crybaby gene is a dominant component of genetics. It was obviously passed on from Donald Trump to his pampered offspring who do nothing but complain about the awful fate they have suffered by being the spawn of a fake billionaire con man. The latest evidence of that genetic flaw trickling down in the Trump family is a sniveling tweet by Donnie Jr.
Last Wednesday Trump posted a disgusting video on his Twitter account that accused Democrats of supporting the free access of a Mexican murderer, and others like him, to enter and reside in the U.S. It was the most brazen appeal to racism in a campaign ad since the infamous Willie Horton ad – a creation of the late Roger Ailes of Fox News. Trump received near universal condemnation for having posted the ad, even from many Republicans sickened by its barefaced bigotry.
Subsequently, a similarly repulsive ad was submitted by Trump’s campaign to CNN. The network properly declined to run it. And that act of integrity triggered Donnie Jr to run to his Twitter box and post this:
CNN has made it abundantly clear in its editorial coverage that this ad is racist. When presented with an opportunity to be paid to take a version of this ad, we declined. Those are the facts. ?
First of all, what mental sickness would cause someone to ask people to “enjoy” that clip of a nauseating killer? But more to the point, for the Trumpette to describe the contents of this ad as “real threats” demonstrates how far removed he is from reality. The main thrust of the ad is advance Trump’s fear mongering with regard to the refugees marching in Central America. It closes with a message to “Stop the Caravan” by voting Republican. But the “caravan” is at least a month away and is populated by frightened refugees – mostly women and children – fleeing violence and poverty. There is no proof that any villainous stereotypes like the one in Trump’s video are among the migrants.
What’s more, the murderer featured in the ad was actually released from custody by Trump’s pal, and pardoned felon, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And he later re-entered the U.S. during the Bush administration. So if anything, this ad should be advocating voting for Democrats who had nothing to do with this sleazeball.
CNN appropriately declined to run the ad and said so in a direct response to Trump Jr. They called out the obvious and abhorrent racism in the ad and noted that they would not take dirty money to air it. Which raises the question as to whether Fox News was solicited to run this ad. If they were and refused, then why isn’t Donnie Jr whining about that? And if the ad wasn’t taken to Fox, then was this just a publicity stunt to malign CNN?
Of course there is still the possibility that Fox News took the ad and is planning to run it prior to election day. Which would be entirely consistent with their racist editorial policy. Their hosts spew bigotry like this all day long, and they do it for free. Why wouldn’t they pocket some of Trump’s cash and profit from spreading more hatred and division?
You can tell an election is just around the corner by the blooming stench of Republican lies and the contempt for anyone that is less than wholly obedient to their vile doctrine. And one of the best indicators of the spreading desperation on the right is Donald Trump’s overflowing flop sweat in the form of ever more shrieking hyperbole and sheer panic.
So now it isn’t enough for Trump to recklessly malign the media as “the enemy of the people.” That nasty screed has already put the lives and safety of journalists at risk. One of Trump’s fanboys recently sent mail bombs to members of the press, along with other critics of the President. And Trump’s State TV media mouthpiece (aka Fox News) recently defended him by saying that all he wants is for the media to “report stories the way he wants them reported.” The implication being that if the media complies with that fascist demand, he will refrain from calling them the enemy.
Now, however, Trump is trying to turn the tables on those who correctly hold him accountable for the upsurge in political hostilities. Trump was asked a question by Karen Travers of ABC News as he prepared to leave the White House to attend yet another of his ego-gratifying cult rallies. Travers wanted to know if Trump thought his rhetoric could provoke violence (video below). Trump replied:
“You’re creating violence by your questions. You are creating, you. And also a lot of reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth. The fake news is creating violence.”
That is a patently insane comment that undermines the whole concept of a free press. Trump is explicitly saying that he regards the mere act of asking questions to be an act of provocation. And he is unambiguously accusing the press of inciting violence for just doing their job. What’s more, he is attributing that alleged violence to the press “not writing the truth.” Although he doesn’t offer any examples to support the charge. The reality is that he simply regards anything that is critical of him to be false. And he is so perturbed by his deranged perception of truth that he lashes out with a straight-up mob-style ultimatum:
“The people who support Trump, and the people who support us, which is a lot of people – most people, many people – those people know when a story is true and they know when a story is false. And I’ll tell you what, if the media would write correctly, and write accurately, and write fairly, you’d have a lot less violence in the country.”
First of all, Trump is overtly lying about his support. He lost the election by more than three million votes. And ever since then he has struggled to get his approval ratings into the low forties. He has never had “most people” supporting him.
More to the point, Trump is making a not-so-subtle threat that there will be less violence if the media would just bend to his will. If they would stop writing stories that criticized him, documented his failures, or accurately presented his own words, then they would have nothing further to fear. It’s from the old Mafia Protection Racket school of persuasion. And it’s thoroughly Trumpian.
Asked about new @ABC News/WaPo poll finding 49% believe he encourages politically motivated violence with the way he speaks, Pres. Trump tells @karentravers, "You're creating violence by your question…A lot of the reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth." pic.twitter.com/pm4YI4VTao
As the midterm election gets closer, the deranged conspiracy theories of Fox News Trump-fluffers get more perverse and mired in absurdity. Donald Trump is the point man in this mission with his increasingly offensive, racist, and dishonest ravings from the podium at his cult rallies. But his minions at State TV (aka Fox News) are dutifully backing him up (when they aren’t occasionally repudiating him) with ludicrous fictions aimed at their willfully ignorant audience.
On Friday’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes hosted one of their own, “Judge” Jeanine Pirro, the Executive Harpy of Fox’s Libtard Attack Squad. Pirro came prepared with her unique brand of partisan tripe. The panel was discussing the “caravan” of migrants fleeing the violence and poverty in their home countries. However, on Fox News these refugees were portrayed as invaders intent on storming the U.S. borders to rape and pillage innocent Americans. It’s the same noxious bigotry that Trump has been prattling about for weeks as he attempts to exploit the fear and prejudices of his glassy-eyed disciples. But Pirro took it a step further (video below):
“I wanna know who’s in that caravan? Are there pedophiles? Are there career criminals? Are there people who think they can beat their wives without consequence? We don’t know, and that’s the whole issue.”
Indeed. That is the whole issue. We definitely need to know if there are menacing cretins infiltrating the caravaners that mean to harm our families and neighbors. Are there pedophiles like Roy Moore and Strom Thurmond? Are there wife abusers like former Trump staffer Rob Porter? Are there criminals like Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Tom Price, and Donald Trump himself? In short, is the entire caravan made up of members of Trump’s Republican Nationalist Party? Because we surely don’t want to allow any of those thugs into the country. They would just being more crime, disease, and probably some Russian subversives to undermine our democracy.
These are good questions that Pirro is raising, and we need to get the answers. But she wasn’t through with her prescient observations. She had some constructive opinions about how to protect us from these foreign threats. And her solutions were tightly intertwined with her infatuation for Trump:
“So the President, by taking a hard line saying look, you can only now seek asylum at ports of entry, and then dealing with the birthright citizenship issue, which has been like an anchor on our necks, is recognizing that this is an issue that we need to address.”
That’s an interesting set of proposals. Except for the fact that the invading refugees have always intended to present themselves to border officials at legal ports of entry to request asylum. And Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship is actually an assault on the U.S. Constitution that he swore to preserve and protect. But other than that, it’s super-keen. Hopefully Fox News will follow up on these questions and get to the bottom of the controversy over the GOP invaders threatening to destroy America. And if they don’t, the people need to take action by voting in massive numbers on November 6.
Following the attempted mail bombings of at least fourteen critics of the President, there has been renewed focus on Donald Trump’s reckless rhetoric, particularly with regard to the press. The brazen hostility that Trump lobs at the media was bound to incite the sort of violence that now threatens every journalist in the country – and the world for that matter. Placing a target on your critics as “enemies” escalates common disagreements to outright war.
Despite the obvious danger imposed by provoking the mentally unstable malcontents who populate Trump’s cult rallies, he continues to inflame the division, hatred, and fear that inevitably leads to tragedy. And naturally, the sycophantic trolls at Fox News are on 24/7 standby to shield him from any loose barbs aimed in his direction. At the head of that class are the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. And they take their jobs seriously.
While there was a brief interlude last week wherein it appeared that some of the Fox Friendlies recognized that it wasn’t a very good idea to portray the free press as enemies of the state, it didn’t last long. Co-host Brian Kilmeade explicitly rebuked Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the people.” But at roughly the same time Trump was confessing that the network was his personal Pravda. Then, on Thursday morning, the tide receded again to reveal the network’s customary bias, as demonstrated in this show of empathy, by co-host Ainsley Earhardt, for the beleaguered leader of the free world (video below):
“How frustrating would it be when you’re the president of the United States and every single time you turn on the TV, on most of the channels, they’re misconstruing what you say? And you know your heart, and you know your words, and you know your voice. And you watch other people report on what you say and it’s completely different than what you mean.”
Heaven’s to Betsy. How can Trump ever be expected to withstand the onslaught of those ever-so-scary reporters constantly telling the American people what he actually says and does? After all, he’s just a weak, unprotected political head of the most powerful nation on Earth. He is forced to characterize the press as mortal enemies in his speeches and tweets because “It’s my only form of fighting back.” But the Fox News crew gets it. And Earhardt poignantly expresses the grief that must be roiling our Victim-in-Chief:
“That has to be frustrating. And that’s why he’s saying it’s fake news. And he’s saying if you don’t want to be called the enemy, then get the story right. Be accurate. And report the story the way I want it reported.”
See? That’s all Trump wants. Just report the news the way he wants it reported and he’ll stop maligning you as traitorous vermin worthy of extermination. Just regurgitate his propaganda the way that State TV (aka Fox News) does and he’ll call off his hit men and allow you to peacefully compose the adoring fluff pieces that he deserves. Is that too much to ask?
Remember, even though Trump lies virtually every time he opens his mouth, it isn’t because he wants to. Like he told Jonathan Karl of ABC News Thursday, “I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth.” So we just have to be patient. When Trump can tell the truth, he will. And when the press starts reporting the way wants them to, he’ll refrain from telling his Deplorables to threaten and assault them. That’s fair, isn’t it?
On @foxandfriends, @AinsleyEarhardt defends Trump's attacks on the media by making a case that all he's doing is making a reasonable request for journalists to "report on the story the way I want it reported." pic.twitter.com/T7Hvizv3Fh
For most of the past two years Donald Trump has been bellowing like a banshee stuck in a time loop that made him repeat the same tedious whining continuously: witch hunt, Witch Hunt, WITCH HUNT! It’s been a mantra that he hopes the recitation of which will cause his recurring nightmares of treason and prison to subside. But despite his commitment to constant verbal regurgitation of the phrase, he has not found any comfort or relief.
Trump is a trembling wreck whose every public comment is drenched with the fear that consumes him. He is a non-stop fountain of complaints, criticisms, and most of all, whining (Although he also brags about being the “most fabulous whiner”). But there has been a curious change in his recent behavior.
Taking a look back at Trump’s Twitter feed reveals something that requires some explanation. Back in May, Trump tweeted twenty times about what calls the “Witch Hunt.” Of course, he’s referring to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller of his unsavory connections to Russia, obstruction of justice, and other assorted crimes. Mueller has already found numerous “witches” who have been indicted, convicted, and/or pleaded guilty. Trump’s tweets continued in June with twenty-seven more. Then there were twenty in July and twenty-five August.
However, that was the end of the Witch Hunt Tweetstorming. In September Trump tweeted about the Witch Hunt only five times. And in October it was down to one single Witch Hunt tweet. And that one was more about his dissatisfaction with his own Justice Department than with Mueller’s Russia probe. What could have caused this frightened retreat from a refrain that he was singing so incessantly
Well, Politico is now reporting a possible cause of Trump’s backing off his Witch Hunt obsession. And it’s a blockbuster, if true. They are asserting that Mueller may have already subpoenaed Trump to appear before a Grand Jury:
“Since mid-August, [Mueller] may have been locked in proceedings with Trump and his lawyers over a grand jury subpoena – in secret litigation that could tell us by December whether the president will testify before Mueller’s grand jury.”
“We know that on August 16th (the day after Giuliani said he was almost finished with his memorandum, remember), a sealed grand jury case was initiated in the D.C. federal district court before Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell. We know that on September 19, Chief Judge Howell issued a ruling and 5 days later one of the parties appealed to the D.C. Circuit. And thanks to Politico’s reporting, we know that the special counsel’s office is involved (because the reporter overheard a conversation in the clerk’s office). We can further deduce that the special counsel prevailed in the district court below, and that the presumptive grand jury witness has frantically appealed that order and sought special treatment from the judges of the D.C. Circuit.”
The circumstances surrounding these events suggest that a particularly important witness is the subject of thest court proceedings. Whether or not it is Trump it’s too soon to confirm. But it is more than speculation. And the timing coincides with Trump’s reduced Witch Hunt tweeting. That would make sense because if negotiations like this were taking place, even Trump wouldn’t be stupid enough to foul it up with deranged outbursts on Twitter. Would he?
Plus there’s another peculiar affair that was reported on Tuesday. Some nefarious pro-Trump shills appear to be trying to smear Mueller with phony charges of sexual misconduct. But it’s blowing up in their faces. Note also that Trump’s attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, have been mysteriously out of the public eye. And if Giuliani isn’t shoving his way in front of a TV camera, something serious has to be going on.
Time will tell if this story pans out. And the period following the midterm election would be the perfect time for these legal disclosures to take place. Mueller, the consummate professional, would not have interfered with the election within the sixty days that is traditionally a quiet period for these sort of proceedings. But after the election he’s free to make whatever disclosures are appropriate. And that is probably what is giving Trump the frights this Halloween.
Stephen Colbert did a pretty good (and funny) summary of Wohl’s incompetent role in this:
Donald Trump is losing his grip on the most reliable lap dogs that State TV has to serve up. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends have long been Trump’s goto toadies. Even before he was a candidate for president, he had his own weekly segment on the program called “Mondays with Trump.” And ever since it has been the Fox News show that he has appeared on most frequently when he needed some ego stroking or damage control.
The hosts of Fox and Friends rarely have any disagreement with Trump. But on Tuesday’s program there was a surprising rift on a matter that Trump holds dear. His frequent references to the media in language he stole from Joseph Stalin as “the enemy of the people” has become almost as ubiquitous in his public pronouncements as “Make America Great Again, “Lock Her Up,” or “Build the Wall.” So this exchange between co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade is bound to rattle his dentures (video below):
Doocy: So there he is talking about his term, “enemy of the people.” Kilmeade: I really wish he would lose that term. It doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t push back on the media that he wants to push on…The press isn’t the enemy of the people.
Kilmeade added that “that broad statement does a lot of damage.” And Doocy joined in saying that Trump “probably feels like they are not doing him any favors, and so he doesn’t like them,” but “are they the enemy of the people? I don’t think so, either.” So even though Doocy tried to soften the blow, they both firmly rejected Trump’s favorite hateful characterization of the press that he despises so much. In fact, Doocy’s soft-serve actually makes the criticism even more harsh because it implies that Trump has only been saying that about the media to punish them for not being more adoring. Which, of course, is true.
“When he points at the press in the back of the room and calls them the enemy of the people, that is wrong,” MacCallum said in a Women Rule podcast interview earlier this fall. “And it exacerbates the situation.” When asked her perspective on the president’s calling the media “fake news,” the host added: “I find it disturbing. I think it’s a mistake.”
Lately Trump himself has tried to walk back his neo-fascist approach to the free press. He now says that he never meant the phrase to apply to all of the media, just the “fake” media. That, however, is typical Trumpian bullshit. Because he also says that the fake media is the largest percentage of the media. How large? According to Trump, “A big chunk, okay? … ‘80%.’”
Consequently, Trump can’t pretend that he’s just singling out a few bad apples. He still wants to malign the whole field of journalism, especially when it doesn’t sufficiently suck up to him. But now he is losing the support of the most glassy-eyed disciples in the Church of Trump. That’s gotta hurt the big Narcissist-in-Chief. Where does he go if he can’t go to Fox News?
