Trump Tweets Fake Poll Data From Fox News with Approval Numbers that are Actually Disapproval

Posted by on April 11, 2019 at 10:37 am. 2 Comments :

It’s a glorious day of celebration for Donald Trump as he triumphantly tweets the results of a new poll from Georgetown University. His tweet proclaims with glee “Great news! #MAGA.” And below that thrilling exclamation is a graphic that Trump copied straight from Fox News.

Fox News, Poll, Trump

There must be unbridled joy right about now in the White House because these numbers are higher than almost any that Trump has ever received from any poll, including the wildly biased Rasmussen. So a little bragging by Trump for achieving a fifty-five percent approval rating would seem to be in order. There’s just one little problem.

The graphic that Trump is so proudly regurgitating from Fox News’ Lou Dobbs is terribly wrong. The poll from Georgetown actually has Trump with a forty-three percent approval rating. That’s more in line with the current average of polls by RealClear Politics (43.1%). And it’s only that high because it includes Rasmussen’s phony numbers. The fifty-five percent was actually the disapproval rating for Trump.

The rest of the poll was hardly positive for for the pitiful President. It shows that fifty-seven percent of voters overall say the country is on the wrong track. And while men polled say they will vote Republican by a margin of nine percent, twice as many women (18%), who are more reliable voters, say they will vote Democratic.

Fox News issued a brief correction (a minute into this clip) that talked more about what the graphic got right than about their massive mistake. And they never mention Trump’s dismal forty-three percent approval:

“It’s been a quiet start to the day for President Trump, though he did send out a tweet this morning from the Lou Dobbs show last night on Fox Business. That tweet featured a poll that was not entirely accurate, which Fox Business would like to correct.

“According to a poll from Georgetown University, 58 percent of respondents approved of the president’s handling of the economy. That portion of the graphic was right. However, the graphic also showed that 55 percent of the respondents approve of the president, that number is not correct. The 55 percent number was those who have an unfavorable impression of President Trump.”

This is another example of how Fox News distorts reality and disseminates lies with the help of their number one fan, Donald Trump. And six hours later, Trump’s fake poll tweet is still on his Twitter page. It’s almost like Fox produces these lies for Trump to post, and then leaves them there purposefully to continue their disinformation campaign. They would never do that, would they?

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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Attorney General William Barr Parrots Trump’s ‘Spying’ Lie, Triggers a Cable News Freak Out

Posted by on April 10, 2019 at 12:16 pm. 7 Comments :

The frequent exhibitions of narcissism and paranoia by Donald Trump have become a such a common occurrence that they are at risk of becoming passe. His frantic outbursts are getting more intense and irrational everyday, as witnessed by a bizarre Obama Derangement fit on Tuesday. But the risk that others in his sphere of influence are being infected by the same disease is all too real and dangerous.

Donald Trump, Deep State

On Wednesday morning Trump’s newly confirmed plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, testified in the Senate about his mischaracterizations of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. And if there were any doubt that Barr would serve as Trump’s obedient lackey and shield from legal jeopardy, that was eliminated entirely by his profoundly smarmy puppet act.

There were numerous occasions when Barr simply refused to respond to questions for no other reason than that he didn’t feel like it. That included questions concerning his own conclusions about the Mueller report that he conveyed in his enfeebled four page “summary” to Congress of the 300+ page report. But perhaps the most troubling part of Barr’s obsequious testimony was when he brazenly adopted Trump’s own delusional rhetoric regarding the Mueller probe that he has repeatedly maligned as a “witch hunt.” Barr was asked about whether he would be reviewing allegations that Mueller and the FBI improperly “spied” on Trump:

“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. […] I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”

Barr is taking up the mantle of Trump, and his thoroughly dishonest defenders on Fox News, who have been ranting for months that Mueller and others in law enforcement were corrupt and even treasonous. They’ve been smearing Mueller for doing his job, which was to examine the abundant evidence of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential intended to benefit Trump and harm Hillary Clinton. And there is nothing ambiguous about Barr’s partisan intentions. He is literally using the same charged language that Trump himself uses to vilify his critics. Trump has been fuming non-stop about his perceived enemies “spying” on him. He has posted thirty-six tweets making that utterly false assertion. For example, here’s one from more than a year ago that incorporates the full range of conspiracies in his twisted imagination:

Barr was given an opportunity to review his words by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who warned that “the word ‘spying’ could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out.” Barr responded by by saying that “I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance.” Of course, there was zero evidence that any surveillance was unauthorized, and Barr conceded that fact. What’s more, the investigations could not be remotely portrayed as spying. They were counterintelligence operations aimed at Russia’s activities. The FBI couldn’t help it if people associated with Trump kept showing up.

Sen.Schatz, however, was right on point with respect to the reaction in the cable news universe. It began almost immediately with Fox News launching furious attacks on the law enforcement community based on Barr’s weasley testimony. Although the full frontal assault won’t come until primetime when Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson will bellow out their prepared diatribes. But Trump wasn’t waiting for them. He already pounced with this batty outburst:

“This was an illegal witch hunt, and everybody knew it. And they knew it too. And they got caught. And what they did was treason. What they did was terrible. What they did was against our Constitution and everything we stand for.”

So Trump is already getting his money’s worth from Barr. The Attorney General’s parroting of Trump’s paranoid lingo could only have been a deliberate attempt to advance the propaganda that the White House was hoping for when they put Barr in charge of the Justice Department. And there will surely be more lies to come when Barr’s heavily redacted version of the Mueller report is released in the next week or so. Count on any incriminating findings to be left on the cutting room floor.

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

The only way the American people will find out what really happened is when Democrats in Congress are successful in subpoenaing the full report, which they are already preparing to do. Then the real fun begins, and Trump-fluffers like Barr won’t be able to do anything about it. That’s when we’ll see the real freak outs by Fox News as they try to spin Trump’s crimes into victories for MAGA.


Trump Suffers Severe Obama Derangement Fit, Incoherently Babbles that ‘Obama Had Child Separation’

Posted by on April 9, 2019 at 3:11 pm. 3 Comments :

The rapid and public decline in Donald Trump’s mental state is a frightening display of the fragility of his mind and cognitive infirmity. Many professionals in the psychiatric field have observed Trump’s swindling awareness of reality and concluded that he is unfit to manage a Burger King, much less serve as president.

Donald Trump Zombie

On Tuesday Trump validated the diagnoses of his mental failure during a press avail with President Sisi of Egypt. When reporters asked Trump about his administration’s policy of separating immigrant families, he launched into an utterly deranged tirade denying his own policy and lashing out at President Obama over and over again:

https://twitter.com/NightlyPolitics/status/1115668909137379329

“Obama separated the children, by the way. Just so you understand, President Obama separated the children. Those cages that were shown, I think they were very inappropriate. They were built by President Obama’s administration. Not by Trump. President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it. You know it. We all know it. I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation.”

That’s about as solid an exhibition of total insanity as you’re likely to see unfold on live TV. Trump name-checked Obama five times in that short paragraph, as if possessed by rabid anti-Obama demons. And each time he associated Obama with a practice of child separation that was demonstrably false. The Obama administration only held children when they crossed the border alone, or when their parents were accused of felonies. It was the Trump administration that created the policy of separating families of asylum seekers, and they even admitted that it was done as a “deterrent.” Nearly a year ago News Corpse wrote this:

“‘If you don’t want your child separated,’ said Attorney General Jeff Sessions, ‘then don’t bring them across the border illegally.’ Of course, these asylum seekers are not breaking any laws. And speaking about family separation, Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, said ‘A big name of the game is deterrence [and] it could be a tough deterrent.’ In both cases they are advocating cruelty and human rights abuse as a deterrent for a civil border violation.”

So in a bizarre way, Trump is criticizing Obama for being tougher on immigrants than he is. Even though Obama didn’t do what Trump claimed and Trump now denies doing it himself. What makes this especially demented is that Trump also praises the policy that he says isn’t his:

“Now I’ll tell you something, once you don’t have it, that’s why you see many more people coming. They’re coming like it’s a picnic because ‘Let’s go to Disneyland.’ President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it.”

So in Trump’s analysis, the policy works because fewer immigrants come to the U.S. when it’s in place. So is he for or against it now? And obviously it was in place or else how would he know that it worked? Trump also contradicts himself with ludicrous visions of a migration amusement park. It’s just a good old time for these families who are fleeing poverty and violence by walking hundreds of miles with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I’m surprised Disneyland hasn’t already built their Asylum Land attraction.

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

The evidence that Trump is a very sick man just continues to pile up. And his condition seems to be worsening more quickly every day. He can’t manage to get through any public statement without misstating where his father was from or some absurd ravings about windmill cancer. And the video of these latest remarks is almost too painful to watch.


The Collusionists: Fox News Wants To Know ‘Why Are They Even Allowed On Television Anymore’?

Posted by on April 9, 2019 at 1:14 pm. 3 Comments :

There’s one thing that Donald Trump can look forward to every day. That’s the morning broadcast of his favorite Fox News program Fox and Friends. The easily predictable three hours of Trump-fluffing and Democrat bashing makes it possible for him to face the day despite his multiplying political and legal woes.

Fox News, Dan Bongino

On Tuesday morning’s episode, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were joined by a frequent guest, Dan Bongino. He is the male version of Fox’s senior harpie, Jeanine Pirro. And in this segment he surely didn’t disappoint the President with his bombastic brown nosing and rabid conspiratorial crackpottery. In a discussion about Trump’s nefarious associations with Russia and the pending release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller, Bongino unleashed a rancid rant (video below) that was impressive in how he kept the drool from smearing his notes:

“This is what I cannot believe about these two discredited conspiracy theorist hacks. Number one, why are they even allowed on television anymore – Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, and Eric Swalwell for that matter? And I’m being serious. They have lied to people over and over about collusion in plain sight and evidence they have never, ever produced. There is no evidence of collusion.

“There is evidence of collusion – this is the gall of these three – the evidence of collusion between the Clinton campaign and Russian sources is right in front of everybody’s face.”

Well, that was jam packed with delusion and dishonesty. First of all, representatives Schiff, Nadler, and Swalwell have presented piles of evidence that Trump conspired with Russia and then obstructed the investigation into his activities. In fact, all of America saw him meeting with Russians in the Oval Office, and his son and campaign chairman met with other Russians in Trump Tower. Trump also admitted on television that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of “the Russia thing.”

Bongino’s deflection to accuse Hillary Clinton of collusion is a familiar Republican trope. But it is wholly fabricated from bits of data that contain zero evidence of wrongdoing. They assert that because her campaign partly paid for the infamous Steele dossier, that she was connected to Russian operatives. She wasn’t. Even Christopher Steele’s sources were Russian dissidents who were not connected to the Kremlin.

Most disturbing is Bongino’s loony claim that members of Congress should be prohibited from appearing on TV. His justification for that is his assertion that they lied about Trump’s adventures with Russians. But Bongino can’t cite a single thing they said that wasn’t true.

What makes this fairly hysterical is that Bongino is setting a standard for television appearances that would prevent Trump from ever being on. After all, he has been documented to have lied more than 9,000 times since his inauguration. And that prohibition would also have to extend to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, and most of the rest of the Trump Nationalist Party. And let’s not leave out serial liar, Dan Bongino.

So, all things considered, Bongino may have a good point. Let’s add up all times that people have deliberately lied on TV and make that the basis for whether they can continue to be booked on news programs. The only problem with that is that it would let Fox “News” off the hook since they have nothing to do with news.

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


Fox News Downplays the Chaos as Senior Trump Aide Says ‘He Just Wants to Separate Families’

Posted by on April 8, 2019 at 3:17 pm. 1 Comments :

As Donald Trump begins another week of disastrous White House failures, his State TV division (aka Fox News) struggles to turn mountains of presidential manure into a sweet smelling garden of blooming propaganda. The week begins with Trump bellowing “You’re fired!” at his Secretary of Homeland Security for not being sufficiently cruel. But that bit of reality TV melodrama isn’t playing particularly well.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

The “Witch Hunt” that Trump is still obsessively whining about continues to be uppermost on his mind and in his tweets. Which makes the ousting of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen a convenient distraction. She is said to have been pushed out by Trump and his flying monkey sidekick, Stephen Miller. Insiders report that Nielsen was resisting some of Trump’s latest demands to violate the law with regard to asylum seekers and the babies he thinks are MS-13 members.

If this characterization is accurate, Nielsen doesn’t get any credit for finally exhibiting some signs of human empathy after a year and a half of emulating the evil headmistress of a Dickensian orphanage. But it does introduce a new wrinkle into what may be the most nauseating plank in Trump’s platform. His reasons for casting her overboard certify just how repulsive this president can be. And members of his own team are telling tales out of school. Here is what some have confided to CNN about Trump’s family separation policy:

“Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster. ‘He just wants to separate families,’ said a senior administration official. […] ‘At the end of the day,’ a senior administration official said, ‘the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws.'”

And there you have it. Trump just wants to separate families. Just like he wants to kill healthcare for millions of Americans, and cut taxes for the wealthy at the expense of working people, and bomb innocent civilians in Yemen, and promote the interests of neo-Nazis, and cozy up to murderous dictators in Russia, and North Korea, and allow the planet to become uninhabitable by driving it to a climate apocalypse.

In the meantime, Fox News is predictably ignoring these signs of the Antichrist in favor of propping up the aspiring tyrant they created, and in many ways, control. Their Monday morning programs were filled with orchestrated rhetoric asserting that the kids in cages that have shocked and saddened most of the nation were actually props employed by smugglers. Lis Power of Media Matters documented several of these scripted rhetorical fallacies here and here and here and here and here. There are simply too many of these nearly identical versions of the same falsehoods to be coincidental.

Clearly Fox News is working hard to undermine any criticism that Trump might suffer for his heartless assault on children and families. And these poor souls were already suffering so badly from poverty and violence in their home countries that they risked their lives to find safety and solace in the land of the allegedly free. Unfortunately, they chose a time when our president was a loathsome cretin who seems to have a bright orange streak of sadism. Hopefully, those of us who still cherish the principles are country propounds will prevail and we will return to being the beacon of light and that has inspired immigrants for over two hundred years.

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


Self-Abuse? Trump Promised to Release His Taxes, Now Calls Requests ‘An Abuse of Power’

Posted by on April 7, 2019 at 11:36 am. 3 Comments :

The still simmering controversy over whether or not Donald Trump should release his tax returns is emblematic of the march toward Idiocracy by the Trump administration, his cult following, and his State TV affiliate, Fox News. The arguments made by the tax suppressors are an affront to logic and democracy. In other words, quintessentially Trumpian.

Donald Trump

The first and foremost point to be made is that Trump himself promised to release his tax returns prior to the election saying that “I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely. And I would love to do that.” He never delivered on that promise of transparency that every presidential candidate for the past forty years has complied with.

Trump’s original breach of his pledge was an invented excuse that he couldn’t release his taxes because he was being audited. Let’s set aside the fact that there is no evidence of any such audit taking place. More to the point, the IRS does not prohibit – or even care – if a taxpayer chooses to release their own tax returns during an audit. And it wouldn’t affect the audit in any way. After all, the IRS already has that data, so there wouldn’t be any surprise disclosure. How could a public release change anything?

Now Trump is whining about efforts by Democrats in Congress to acquire his tax returns as part of their constitutional oversight responsibilities. And his complaint is typically broiled in hyperbole. He is accusing Democrats of “a gross abuse of power.” In fact, they are performing their duties in conjunction with all applicable laws. And there is a glaring need to probe Trump’s finances given all of the evidence of corruption in his businesses and political activities.

What’s more, Trump is exacerbating the suspicions that surround him by being so evasive and adamant that his taxes remain secret. There is a distinct odor of criminality and consciousness of guilt. What is he struggling so hard to conceal? His “acting” chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was on Fox News Sunday morning and participated in this exchange with anchor Bill Hemmer:

Hemmer: To be clear, you believe Democrats will never see the President’s tax returns?
Mulvaney: Oh no, never. Nor should they. Keep in mind that that’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the President could’ve given his tax returns, they knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway.

To be clear, Trump told voters that he would “absolutely” release his taxes, he lied, and a minority of voters elected him anyway via the fatally flawed Electoral College. And it’s the American people, not just the Democrats in Congress, that Trump is most worried about, prompting his obsession with preventing them from seeing the shady dealings in his tax returns.

Trump frequently takes both sides of any issue he addresses. That’s mostly because he doesn’t understand anything and forgets what lies he told previously, or finds a new lie more advantageous at the moment. For instance, his initial assertion that he welcomed the release of the full report by special counsel Robert Mueller, and later dismissing it as an illegal hoax. But for him to call requests for his taxes a “gross abuse of power,” after vowing to release them himself, suggests that he was engaging in a perverse act of self-abuse when he made his initial promise. Democrats now are only asking that he keep his word. Which, based on his prior record, may be way too much to hope for.

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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Signs of Dementia? Trump Bashes the Mueller Report He Hasn’t Read But Says Exonerates Him

Posted by on April 6, 2019 at 12:05 pm. 2 Comments :

One of the things that Donald Trump is most fixated on is his insistence that he is superior in every way to anyone on any matter. (see the video below) He has the best words, knows more about war than his generals, and gets the biggest crowds. That’s a textbook symptom of Malignant Narcissism, which many psychiatric professionals are convinced he suffers from. And those experts are worried that he’s getting worse every day.

Donald Trump

On this particular day Trump is providing ample evidence that his mental condition is seriously deteriorating. But he will be pleased to hear that he’s more nuts than any president in American history. In his regularly scheduled Saturday tweetstorm, the President fired off a flurry of utterly inane and contradictory tweets that should make all Americans concerned. The subject was a familiar one: The Russia Witch Hunt Hoax. He simply can’t control his outbursts about this, and for good reason. The more we learn, the more it’s apparent that Trump is guilty of both conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Even the senior legal analyst at Fox News agrees with House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff, that there is evidence of Trump’s collusion and obstruction.

In his latest rage-tweeting fit, Trump was tightly focused on the credibility of special counsel Robert Mueller and what he might have concluded in his final report. Even though he has a biased Attorney General that he planted in the Justice Department, Trump is obviously still frightened and desperate. But his complaints are a hodge-podge of whining, self-vindication, and insults.

The most striking part of this Twitter rant is that Trump is flailing in all directions at once. He admits that he hasn’t read the report, but also asserts that it exonerated hm. And while he’s basking in what he considers a decree of innocence, he also maligns the Mueller, the author of the alleged decree. What follows are the five tweets (so far) that Trump posted with the intention of clearing himself, but only making things worse:


Really? A hoax that has already produced hundreds of indictments, several guilty verdicts, and the disclosure of dozens of contacts between Trump and his associates that they all lied about prior to eventually admitting it.


Indeed, no one outside the top ranks of William Barr’s office have read the report. So no one can credibly assert that they know the conclusions of a 400 page report based on a biased four page summary.


First of all, the asset forfeitures from just Paul Manafort alone more than pay for the entire investigation. And if Trump is so concerned about what the Democrats think, why doesn’t he just release the full report that he says proves his innocence?


Here Trump is trying again to shift blame to Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she had no impact on what Mueller concluded. And he takes another swipe at the team of investigators that he says cleared him.


What must never happen again is for America to elect a president who was so obviously tied to Russian agents and oligarchs for his political and financial benefit.

The spectacle of Trump being so fiercely critical of an investigative team that he claims proved his innocence is more than curious. It’s alarming from the perspective of his mental health. He is a man who both viciously condemns Mueller and pays tribute to him as having “acted honorably.” He’s like a Nobel prize winner who insults the Nobel committee as corrupt idiots for awarding him the prize. And having someone with that degree of mental illness running the country is absurd and dangerous.

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

And for your entertainment (?) pleasure, here are “24 Things Nobody Does Better Than Trump (According To Trump).”


Diamond and Silk Embarrass Themselves and Fox News (Again) with Their Ignorant Views and Demeanor

Posted by on April 5, 2019 at 4:16 pm. 6 Comments :

With all of the smarmy characters who populate Fox News, it is often difficult to focus on who stands out the most for their flagrant idiocy and boorishness. Is it Sean Hannity, personal friend and shadow chief of staff to Donald Trump? Is it the leader of Fox’s White Nationalist Brigade, Tucker Carlson? Do the Fox and Friends crew have an advantage due to the number of blowhards concentrated in one program?

Diamond and Silk, Fox News

No doubt about it, the competition is fierce. But there are a couple of less prominent players who ceaselessly strive to outperform the the big shots at Fox News. The unintentional comedy duo of Diamond and Silk bring their “A” game every time they make an appearance. So long as the “A” stands for “asinine.” They are favorites of Trump who retweets them at every opportunity. And they outdid themselves on Friday morning while visiting the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends.

The segment started off with a slur directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who noted that the battle over climate change was not dissimilar to the civil rights battles of the past. Both involved people struggling to change the entrenched attitudes in society and government that were suppressing necessary change. But Diamond and Silk didn’t see it quite that way. they immediately lashed out at AOC saying…

“Listen, you have to realize that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s reckless, she’s clueless, and she have a vacuous mindset. First of all, civil rights have nothing to do with climate change. First of all.”

OK. First of all, reckless, clueless, and vacuous are registered trademarks of Diamond and Silk Industries. But more to the point, that isn’t what AOC said. She wasn’t comparing the substance of the issues. She was comparing the struggles to educate people and effect change. However, although AOC wasn’t addressing it, there are areas where civil rights and climate change do intersect. Just ask anyone who lives in a low income community where government often places its biggest polluting industries. But Diamond (who does most of the talking while Silk nods and interjects “That’s right,” every few seconds) continued:

And then second of all, her Green New Deal is a green new scam that we must stay away from. Now, I know that she’s worried about climate change, but she need to talk to Mother Nature. Because with the Earth rotating at 1,000 miles per hour, OK, 365 days of the year, we subject to feel climate changing a little bit. But not to the tune where we have to dismantle everything and start the Earth back over again. It’s a absolutely no for us.”

It appears that she is defining climate change as the temperature variations between night and day. That’s the generous explanation for these crackpot comments. In reality, she’s just foaming at the mouth and spitting out irrelevancies that have no real meaning. They certainly aren’t descriptive of anything resembling the science of Earth’s climate. She closed this subject by somehow segueing to an accusation that Democrats are the party that opposes civil rights. Never mind that the Klan and other hate groups have universally endorsed Trump and his GOP.

Later in the segment the hosts played a clip of Beto O’Rourke pointing out the racist overtones that have been embedded in Trump’s policies and are central to his speeches. This spurred the Fox duo to declare that O’Rourke’s remarks reminded them of a slave owner because he supports humane immigration reform. Don’t even bother trying to figure that one out.

What’s most puzzling is that Fox News invites these members of their “news” contributor staff to offer an analysis of issues they obviously know nothing about. That’s something that Fox does frequently whether the topic is climate change or immigration or economics or national security. Somehow Diamond and Silk have impressed Fox’s editors and producers as experts on virtually every subject. So they are featured on multiple shows where they do their tired clown act that consists almost entirely of personal slurs and amens as if they were insult comics who became holy roller evangelists.

It’s old news that Fox is the home of bigoted hate mongers and right-wing propagandists. But it’s still somewhat surprising that they have allowed these two cringeworthy Trump-fluffers to overtake so much of their airtime. It’s a concession that they have given up any pretense as being an informational enterprise and are now openly embracing their role as a lowbrow entertainment medium. Which will make things even easier for their production staff. They never really cared much for doing research or fact-checking. And now they can dispense with it altogether.

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


Bernie Sanders Tells The Daily Show that He ‘Knows Fox News’ – Then Proves that He Doesn’t

Posted by on April 5, 2019 at 11:19 am. 5 Comments :

The upcoming 2020 election is going to be at least a twenty ring circus. And the media will be serving as the Master of Ceremonies. Prominently featured in this extravaganza will be Fox News, who will make it their business to defend Donald Trump at every turn, while viciously and dishonestly attacking his critics.

Bernie Sanders, Fox News

The Democratic National Committee made a wise decision not to let Fox News host any of their primary debates. Seeing as how Fox relentlessly maligns Democrats in the most despicable terms, it never made sense to consider them as debate partners. And on top of their constant smear campaigns, Fox’s audience is irredeemably hostile to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

So it was disconcerting to learn that Bernie Sanders has agreed to participate in a town hall on Fox News. There is absolutely no conceivable benefit to be realized by helping Fox News to belittle him, his ideas, and his (for the time being) party. Sanders appeared on The Daily Show Thursday night to defend his decision (video below). It didn’t go particularly well. The segment began with Trevor Noah asking why Sanders would go on Fox News after the DNC so righteously denounced them. He replied:

Trust me, I know Fox News. I know who they are and I know the role that they are playing. On the other hand, during the last campaign I did a town meeting with a fellow named Bret Baier who did it pretty fairly. He did it straightforwardly, and believe me, we went over the ground rules before and they kept their word. So to me it is important to distinguish Fox News from the many millions of people who watch Fox News.

Okay. Here’s the first problem. If Sanders really knew who Fox News is and what role they play, he wouldn’t be impressed with Baier’s pretense of fairness. No one thinks that whoever hosts the Fox town hall is going to bare his teeth and bark at Sanders like Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro would. But those characters would use the program as source material for their smear campaigns immediately afterward. Meanwhile, Fox News would use Sanders’ appearance to pretend they are fair and balanced and to leech credibility from him that they can’t earn on their own. And then Sanders continued:

I think it is important to talk to those people and say, ‘You know what? I know many of you voted for Donald Trump, but he lied to you. He told you, for example, he was going to provide healthcare to all people. Now he wants to throw thirty million people off the healthcare they have. He told you he was going to tax reform that would not benefit the wealthy. Eighty-three percent of the benefits go to the top one percent. So I think it is important to talk to Trump supporters and explain to them to what degree he has betrayed the working class of this country and lie during his campaign in terms of what he would do.

That’s a common sense response to the dishonest and regressive agenda that Trump and the GOP have forced onto the American people. Unfortunately, Fox News viewers have an unnatural aversion to common sense. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them that Trump is lying, they won’t believe you. It’s the Primary Directive of cult management to insist that everyone but the cult is lying to you. Sanders would be wasting his time because the Fox audience will have predetermined that he is the liar and he’s only there to malign their messiah who is incapable of uttering a false word.

It has been established by numerous surveys that Fox News viewers are unalterably devoted to their conservative dogma, and since the advent of Trump, their loyalties are reserved for him exclusively. If Trump says that he’s already building a border wall (he hasn’t), they believe it. If he says that their taxes were lowered (they’re higher), they feel richer just listening to him. If he says that his healthcare plan (which doesn’t exist) is better and cheaper, they will rise from their Lazy-Boys and declare that they’ve been miraculously healed by his touch. They even believe that Trump was “totally exonerated” by a four page summary of the Mueller report that explicitly says there was no exoneration. Because that’s what Trump told them. And even Fox News can’t shake them from their slobbering devotion.

That’s not an audience that Sanders can have any effect on. He’s wasting his time speaking to them. They will only watch to gather reasons to hate him and the “socialist” Democratic Party more than ever. And the post-town hall analyses by Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, will inform their own hostile reactions for days to come. Hopefully no other Democrats will follow in the misguided footsteps of Sanders by subjugating themselves to Fox News.

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


Just Like Trump: Fed Board Nominee Herman Cain is a Sexual Harasser Made Famous By Fox News

Posted by on April 4, 2019 at 3:35 pm. 2 Comments :

Apparently Donald Trump hasn’t been ridiculed enough yet for being an ignorant, propaganda mongering, reality TV sloganeer, who is mindlessly attached to his State TV brain trust at Fox News. Fox is a network whose mission is to advance the interests of corporations and the wealthy, along with an agenda of hatred and division. In other words, the social and political platform of Trump’s Republican Nationalist Party.

Donald Trump, Herman Cain

To that end, Trump is reported to be moving forward with his expected nomination of former pizza chain executive, Herman Cain, to the Federal Reserve Board. In many ways he’s the perfect nominee for Trump. He has no relevant experience in the work performed by the Fed. But he shares an embrace of incoherent right-wing myths that have been roundly repudiated by knowledgeable economists. And the two biggest reasons that Trump is tagging him for this post are his ignorance of macroeconomics and his prominent exposure on Fox News.

However, there’s another factor that may be boosting Cain’s profile with Trump. He was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment during his failed bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. And if you think that isn’t part of Trump’s recruiting criteria, just remember his support for the GOP Alabama senate candidate, Roy Moore. And his fervent advocacy of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And his close friendship with Bill O’Reilly. And his partnership with former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. And his hiring of former Fox News president Bill Shine. Does there seem to be a pattern developing here?

When the sexual harassment controversies began to engulf Cain, Trump was right there to provide immoral support. He defended Cain by maligning the women accusing him of being fame seekers:

“They probably do love their names splashed across the front pages. And frankly, that’s not a good situation and I don’t think it’s a fair situation. And I think Herman should take very, very strong action, even if he has to bring a major lawsuit against the women.”

Of course. Because what do women love more than exposing themselves and their families to media circuses obsessed with their private sexual lives? Trump seems to think that this sort of intrusive scrutiny is every little girl’s dream. He also thinks that Cain was the victim of a now familiar conspiracy that he called “a very ugly witch hunt.”

Trump, of course, is himself the subject of accusations from at least sixteen women who assert that he harassed, and even assaulted them. And he has similarly defended himself by making spurious charges against his victims. But he has never taken the advice he gave to Cain by suing his accusers. Although he swore that “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.” Perhaps he doesn’t have enough lawyers to handle that as well as the problems emerging from his conspiracy with Russia and the subsequent obstruction of justice.

It’s curious that Trump would choose now to wade into these waters that are so perilous to his own reputation (or lack thereof). He has taken to mocking Joe Biden over allegations of inappropriate touching. On that subject Trump posted a disgusting video meme on Twitter intending to hurt Biden. But as these things often go, it was far more hurtful to Trump because it reminds people of his own bad behavior as well as affirms his grossly infantile approach to serious subjects.

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

Still, he does have Fox News trying to shield him from criticism and attacking his critics. Which they are doing with devotion, but they’re getting worse at it every day. And now they need to figure out how they will put a happy face on Trump’s nomination of a sexually harassing, failed politician, with zero credentials for the job he’s being tapped to perform. That won’t be easy, but they have lots of experience doing it.