On Tuesday Donald Trump insisted that a meeting between himself and congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer be televised. That turned out to be a bad move for the President who behaved like a petulant child demanding that he get funds for his idiotic, useless border wall or he would shut down the government. He actually agreed to accept full responsibility for what Pelosi termed “the Trump Shutdown.”
In addition to the whining from Trump about Congress not submitting to his divine will, he repeated a flagrant lie that has been part of his stump speeches for months now. Trump wants to convince people that his wall is already being built and is near completion in some areas. That, of course, is pure fiction. He has never had funds allocated to it, and there has been no construction whatsoever. But he keeps saying this because he knows his glassy-eyed cult followers will believe whatever he says.
On this occasion, however, Some of the ordinarily loyal Trump-fluffers in the conservative media are falling off the wagon. Most notably, Laura Ingraham of Fox News, who addressed the subject on her program and told her Republican guests that…
“I must have missed the wall being built. What wall? That’s not a wall. Stop saying it’s a wall. There’s no wall … you gotta stop saying that.”
Trump: "A lot of wall has been built."
Laura Ingraham: "I must have missed the wall being built… That's not a wall. Stop saying it's a wall. There's no wall… I know it's bad cause he made the promise but they're not building the wall so you gotta stop saying that." pic.twitter.com/N7r7Qkg6ZB— Contemptor (@TheContemptor) December 12, 2018
Coming from a primetime Fox News shill, that was rather surprising. Ingraham didn’t mince words either. And it was all the more significant since one of her guests was Steve Scalise, the third highest ranking Republican in the House. Of course, most of her other remarks during the segment were straight out of the Trump playbook (build the wall; stop the caravan; immigrants are criminals, drug dealers and disease carriers). But on the question of Trump lying that “A lot of wall has been built … big sections of wall,” she was spot on and uncharacteristically honest.
Ingraham was joined by another right-wing blowhard who usually shovels Trump propaganda by the barrel. Ann Coulter wondered whether Trump thinks his supporters are dumb in a tweet that called out his border wall lie:
Even a Washington Post reporter knows that not 1 inch of Trump's wall has been built. Does Trump think his supporters are dumber than a WaPo reporter? https://t.co/iCbior7yFp
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 11, 2018
Let’s just leave that business about what Trump thinks of his followers alone. It’s too easy. The important part of Coulter’s tweet is that she is not falling for Trump’s gaslighting of America with false claims that “People do not yet realize how much of the Wall … has already been built.” Coulter even posted a link to the Washington Post fact-checker who covered this issue earlier this year. Although, like Ingraham, Coulter swung back to her customary wingnut position. On the same episode of Ingraham’s show she unleashed a nauseatingly racist tirade against Democrats:
“We’re gonna be seeing a lot of these disputes in the Democratic Party base because they all hate one another. I mean you have the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers. The only thing that keeps the Democratic base together is for them to keep focusing on white men are the ones keeping you down. You must hate white men. It’s the one thing they have in common.”
On Ingraham's Fox News show, Ann Coulter describes her version of the Dem party
"I mean you have the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers … you must hate white men. It's the one thing they have in common" pic.twitter.com/xGWe0wH2uP
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) December 12, 2018
So while these devoted sycophants for Trump can be relied on to spew hatred and lies on behalf of their Dear Leader, it’s nice to see that once in awhile they can recognize the inconvenient truth that Trump is a bald-faced liar. Although they have the luxury of knowing that Trump isn’t going to tweet nasty epithets at them, or make up infantile nicknames, the way he does if Maxine Waters or Hillary Clinton says the exact same thing.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.