Pete Hegseth’s Lawyer: His Misconduct Was Due to Stress, So Let’s Make Him Secretary of Defense

Posted by on December 27, 2024 at 4:07 pm. 1 Comments :

The Cabinet of Donald Trump is shaping up to be an even more frightening version of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with all of the twists and turns of that psychological horror story populated by inmates of an asylum.

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Pete Hegseth with Drunk Emoji

If Trump gets the Republicans in Congress to capitulate to his commands, the U.S. government will be run by incompetents and sycophantic flunkies who have little to no experience for the jobs they are tasked to perform. They include Kash Patel at the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard heading Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, in charge of healthcare, and a madhouse of MAGA minions who have scant relationships with the lives of average Americans.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

Featured in this cast of circus psychos is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth has zero experience managing anything on the scale of the Pentagon. But he has had a presence on Fox News where Trump found and recruited him. He also has a history of managerial failure, excessive drinking, and alleged sexual assault. Which makes him an ideal candidate for a job in the Trump administration. They have so much in common.

On Friday morning Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, was interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN. It was a revealing discussion during which Parlatore offered up a peculiar defense of his client in the following exchange…

Parlatore: The FBI background check is really going to strip away the false allegations and focus on just what the evidence is. And the evidence is he didn’t do any of these things that he’s been accused of.
Brown: But he’s also openly admitted he’s a changed man from several years ago. So how does that square? If you’re saying he didn’t do any of it, but he’s a changed man?
Parlatore: I’m saying he didn’t commit any of the misconduct they’re alleging. The sexual assault, totally false. All of this stuff at CVA (Concerned Veterans for America) where they said that he was climbing on the stage at a strip club. Yeah that happened, but it was somebody else. […] The fact that earlier in his life when he was a young recent combat veteran who came home and dealt with the demons by drinking too much, that’s not uncommon.

In order for Parlatore’s denials to be valid, you would have to dismiss the testimony of the woman who filed the police report against him, as well as all of Hegseth’s colleagues and coworkers who witnessed his shenanigans at the strip club, and suffered through his mismanagement of organizations like the CVA, that he brought to near bankruptcy.

The core argument that Parlatore is making is that Hegseth behaved badly because of the stress he encountered during his military deployment. He goes on to say that Hegseth overcame his problems because “that which drove him to drink is not driving him anymore.” Perhaps that’s because he’s been a weekend host on a Fox “News” program for the past eight years. So the stress of combat wasn’t affecting his behavior.

However, if his duties in the military were sufficiently stressful to result in years of drunken depravity, how might the stress produced by running the entire Pentagon – with an $850 billion budget and the responsibility of millions of soldiers and civilians, none of which he has any experience with – affect his ability to cope emotionally and to refrain from the deviancy of his past? Surely there’s no stress involved in any of that, right?

Parlatore also claimed that Hegseth’s excessive drinking wasn’t a “drinking problem.” Which is reminiscent of the Tom Waits lyric “I don’t have a drinking problem. Except when I can’t get a drink.” Although he did promise to abstain if he were to be confirmed. Which suggests that he is still drinking, but is willing to stop if he’s handed the nuclear codes. That should not fill any senator with confidence that Hegseth would be up to the job. The question is: Will Republicans vote to confirm him anyway?

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MAGA Republicans Killed the Intel Agency that Monitors Disinformation From Russia, China, Etc.

Posted by on December 26, 2024 at 1:47 pm. 2 Comments :

The week before Christmas, the razor-thin Republican majority in Congress tried three times to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government from shutting down. They finally succeeded on the third try after purging the bill of funding for a variety of programs that are critical to the welfare of the American people and to national security.

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Trump Lies

While passing the stripped-down version of the legislation was necessary to avoid falling off a fiscal cliff, the deliberate malfeasance of the GOP leaders in the House of Representatives must not be overlooked or dismissed as standard operating procedure. Even though it was standard for the incompetents who comprise the MAGA caucus in Congress.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

One of the programs that was excised from the CR that is not getting much attention was the funding for a State Department Agency responsible for monitoring foreign disinformation. Al Jazeera reports that…

“A leading United States government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department has said, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.

“The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.”

If anyone is wondering why Republicans would oppose an agency that is intended to keep track of nefarious foreign operatives spreading lies about matters of national security, just ask the old question that is posed whenever something untoward occurs in government: “Who benefits.”

In this case it is fairly clear that Donald Trump is among the prime beneficiaries of the shuttering of the GEC. He has received an incalculable amount of help from Russian disinformation and propaganda in all three of his campaigns for president. That includes promotion of his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” from him, as well as their pushing disparaging lies about President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris in order to sabotage their electoral prospects.

What’s more, Trump has long been a staunch advocate of Russia and his hero, Vladimir Putin. While he frequently insults American leaders in the most vile terms, he has never said anything derogatory about Putin. He doesn’t want to cut off the flow of support he gets from Vlad. Which is why he wouldn’t want a government agency pointing out all of the dishonest propaganda that emanates from Russian sources. And his MAGA minions in Congress cooperated by defunding the agency.

It’s notable that Fox News covered this story with their typical heaping of right-wing bias. Their headline declared that the “State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ accused of censoring Americans shuts its doors.” However, the “accusations” referenced in Fox’s headline all happen to be from extremist MAGA Republicans, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk, who was quoted in the article saying that the GEC is the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation.”

These are the cheerleaders of “America First.” Well, make that “Blame America First.” Like Trump, they routinely shoot down the United States, particularly when it is in conflict with Russia or China. And they have both ideological and financial reasons for doing so. Trump and Musk are heavily invested in China’s economy. The last thing they want is an agency exposing the malevolence of their political and business partners.

When the Trump administration is officially sworn in, it will have people in place to further their fealty to their foreign propaganda outlets. Most notably, Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has zero experience in intelligence, but is notoriously close to Russian operatives. And there is also Trump’s choice to run the CIA, John Ratcliffe, who worked with Trump and Russian intel to smear Hillary Clinton. And then there’s Kari Lake, Trump’s nominee to run Voice of America, promising to turn it into America’s propaganda network.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump’s allies in Congress would seek to obstruct American efforts to expose Russian and Chinese disinformation. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it should worry everyone. Trump’s affinity for foreign dictators is well known. And now Congress is helping him to cover up how his foreign pals are continuing to help him by giving them a free hand to spread propaganda. Hopefully independent media watchdogs will be up to countering their efforts, because in Trump world they will be rooting for them.

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Donald Trump Celebrates Christmas with a Flurry of Fawning Tributes to Himself – As Usual

Posted by on December 25, 2024 at 12:57 pm. NO Comments :

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Especially if you’re Donald Trump and you can fill it with the glory and adulation that you feel you so richly deserve. Which is precisely what he did for most of the morning on this Christmas day.

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Trump Christmas Tree

Trump’s yuletide greeting this year actually represents a bit of a departure from his standard holiday wishes for his perceived enemies to suffer eternal damnation, such as his message last year when he spread the joy of the season by…

Saying This: “Merry Christmas to all, including…the THUGS we have inside our Country [who] are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

It just makes the heart tingle, doesn’t it? But Trump took a different path this year. Instead of reaching out to Satan for help corralling his adversaries in Hades, he chose to pay homage to himself with 33 posts on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social that either exalted himself or disparaged his foes.

Out of those 33 hostile posts only one delivered to his cult disciples the message that he claims was prohibited prior to his recovering it: Merry Christmas. However, Trump’s greeting was something less than genuine considering that he couldn’t be bothered with a fresh salutation, so he merely reposted an old greeting from 2018.

Among the other 32 posts, Trump bragged about his fake “Patriot Award” from Fox News, took a childish swipe at Obama, lauded his phony border wall that Mexico didn’t pay for, furthered his threat to annex the Panama Canal, linked to an article praising his “ultimate virtue,” hyped his deplorable, unqualified Cabinet nominees Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, affirmed his plans for a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants/refugees, and insulted Biden as “President in Name Only.”

SEE ALSO: Some Democrats are Planning to Boycott the Inauguration of Trump. Here’s a Better Idea!

UPDATE: Trump posted a few more self-exalting messages on Christmas day, including this rambling excretion of bullpucky that is spine-chilling proof of his dangerously demented mind and cognitive decline.

Despite Trump’s annual festival of spitting venom, News Corpse would like to continue its holiday tradition by presenting a musical gift that is truly inclusive and welcoming. This is for all of those who are not huddled around a dead tree today, buried in colorfully wrapped packages. It’s for the cynics who won’t accept the notion that the birth of a messenger of peace and love is an excuse to exchange material goods or fruitcakes that nobody likes.

It is for the forsaken and forlorn, the outcasts and rebels and nonbelievers who are puzzled by the greed and commercialism that permeates the season. And yes, it’s for those who still believe that peace and goodwill are morally superior to profit and oppression. So we leave you with Miles Davis and Bob Dorough performing the heartwarming traditional Christmas ballad Blue Xmas. And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

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Steve Bannon is Right? Matt Gaetz Should Return to Congress and Expose All the Sexual Depravity

Posted by on December 24, 2024 at 1:23 pm. 1 Comments :

In the few short weeks since the election, Donald Trump has been working at breakneck speed to assemble his Cabinet. His haste and aversion to properly vetting his nominees serves as an object lesson in incompetence. Already three of his first choices have been bumped from consideration. And several others are teetering on the ledge of political exile.

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Matt Gaetz

The most high profile of Trump’s losers has to be Matt Gaetz, his first pick to be Attorney General. It was a profoundly bold move for Trump to nominate someone whose only prior experience in criminal law was having been a criminal. At least Gaetz and Trump have criminality and sexual deviancy in common. They also share an obsession with exploiting the media to grab attention for themselves…

SEE THIS: Matt Gaetz is Taking His Moral Decrepitude to One America News Network

When Gaetz dropped out of the running for Attorney General, he likely thought that he would avoid the embarrassment produced by the House Ethics Committee releasing its report on his misconduct in Congress. The report concluded that Gaetz had violated “standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.” And this was Trump’s top choice to be Attorney General? What does that say about the rest of his nominees?

Unfortunately for Gaetz, he not only resigned his seat in Congress, and was axed as Trump’s AG nominee, but the Ethics Committee released the report anyway. Under ordinary circumstances, a decent person with a smidgen of self-respect would scurry away to his ignominious obscurity. But decency is not a trait that is associated with Trump or his MAGA minions. Consequently, Gaetz has spent the last few days whining about how unfairly he was treated considering the abundance of deviants that he claims are present among his former colleagues.

Now Gaetz also has a key supporter backing up his allegations. Trump whisperer Steve Bannon went on his podcast with a hearty endorsement and a suggestion, proclaiming that…

“I’m strongly urging Matt Gaetz to return to Congress and on its first day next year, take a page from that old song ‘The Harper Valley PTA’ and expose all the hypocrites in the House who have used tax money to cover up their sexual depravity.”

Hear, hear! Gaetz should take Bannon’s advice and reclaim his seat in the House. From there he can point his bony finger at his fellow perverts and see to it that they are held to the same standards of accountability that he is. He would be doing a sort of penance for his own misconduct by ridding the People’s House of sleazeballs like himself. In fact, after asserting that he knows of such slime in the House, if he doesn’t expose them he is protecting them and is an accomplice in their continuing malfeasance. And is anyone surprised that Gaetz knows these pervs personally?

In the same program, Bannon proposed that Trump get behind an effort to have Gaetz become the next Speaker of House. That’s another great idea by Bannon that would make Gaetz, now known for his sex and drug crimes, the face of Republicans in Congress. And also a wholly inept legislator who would doom the GOP’s agenda to failure.

Needless to say, this would all be great news – for Democrats. So good that it might just be too good to hope for. Although, Gaetz himself posted a comment endorsing the idea, suggesting that he might indeed return and “File a privileged motion to expose every ‘me too’ settlement paid using public funds (even of former members).” And on behalf of all Democrats, I say “Go for it, Matt!” Let’s clean the House up from filth like you. It’s a safe bet that most of them will be Republicans anyway.

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Trump-Humping Hack Wants to Ban Everyone But Peter Doocy of Fox News From White House Press Room

Posted by on December 23, 2024 at 3:32 pm. NO Comments :

The MAGA media mob is growing more aggressively authoritarian with each passing day. The prospect of Donald Trump reoccupying the White House has them bursting with confidence that their Project 2025 plot to infest the U.S. government with unabridged neo-fascism can proceed unchallenged.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Leading their agenda for the Trump regime is an effort to purge the White House press corps of any and all reputable journalists and others who are not fully indoctrinated Trump cultists. They are determined to banish reporters who might cause trouble by actually reporting the truth about Trump and his administration’s corruption and malfeasance. And they aren’t shy about their nefarious intentions…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Secretary Plans to Turn the WH Briefing Room Into a Pro-Trump Propaganda Mill

Among those seeking to Trump-itize the White House press corps is long-time Trump flunky, Hugh Hewitt. On a recent episode of his podcast, Hewitt floated this preposterous suggestion that is staunchly aligned with the approach to the press that is favored by the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un…

“With the exception of Peter Doocy, I would ban everyone from the White House press room who has been there for the past four years because they are obviously of no use to the country. They didn’t tell us the number one thing, which is that he’s not competent. Why in the world would Trump let them in? […] ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, those five brands are broken beyond broken after this expose. Is there any way you could trust anything that they say?

REALLY? Hewitt thinks that only the most partisan hack in the press room, Peter Doocy of Fox News, should remain there, and everyone else be cast out? That would make for a pretty dull daily press briefing with only Doocy asking questions of Trump’s predictably dishonest press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Although they could fill the empty seats with Trump-approved asses such as Hewitt, Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, etc. That way they would be assured of fielding only friendly questions, to which they would still provide non-answers that were mostly lies and smears.

What’s more, Hewitt is so appalled by the media that he can’t understand how anyone “could trust anything that they say.” So his solution is to limit the media outlets to the one that was found to have lied so horribly that they were forced to pay a settlement of nearly a billion dollars.

SEE ALSO: Fox News is Still Pushing the Lie that the 2020 Election Was Stolen that Cost Them $787 Million

The specific complaint that triggered Hewitt’s rant was his view that the media – except for Doocy – didn’t properly cover what he believes was President Biden’s diminished mental capacity. But even if you give him a pass on that brazenly biased perspective, he’s leaving out something that would be just as relevant. And that’s the obviously diminished mental capacity of Trump. Here’s how the Daily Show presented it by using Fox News attacks on Biden, but showing Trump video instead…

These cretins don’t have any appreciation for the traditional purpose of the Press Room, which is to provide journalists with access to the president and his staff in order to inform the public, not to become a partisan propaganda mill where only those who have sworn allegiance to Trump can participate. But that’s precisely what Hewitt wants. And it’s also what the Trump media team want. The only problem they face is that it isn’t what the American people want. But if they pursue this strategy, they will find out soon enough.

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Trump Picks His ‘Apprentice’ Producer, Mark Burnett, for Diplomatic Post – To Buy His Silence?

Posted by on December 22, 2024 at 2:15 pm. 2 Comments :

The administration of Donald Trump is shaping up to be an epically inept roster of political toadies and personal suck-ups who lack any shred of relevant experience for the jobs they have been tasked to perform. The single criteria that Trump appears to require of his nominees is blind obedience to, and adoration of, Dear Leader Trump.

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Donald Trump TV Set

In the few weeks since the election, Trump has turned the White House into a garbage heap for blithering incompetents with a flurry of nominations that guarantee failure on an unprecedented level in critical governmental agencies, including the departments of State, Justice, Health, Homeland Security, Intelligence, and more. They are a motley crew of crackpots who bear no resemblance whatsoever to the citizenry they supposedly there to serve.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

On Saturday Trump posted on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that he is nominating Mark Burnett to be his Special Envoy to the United Kingdom. Note, that is not the same as the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., for which Trump has chosen billionaire donor Warren Stephens. The “Special Envoy” post is a brand new title made up by Trump for Burnett.

Burnett joins a diplomatic team of losers from Trump’s past who he is rewarding for their loyalty, including failed senatorial candidate, Herschel Walker (Bahamas), his son-in-law’s felon father, Charles Kushner (France), and his son Don Jr’s ex-fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle (Greece). His nominees not only portend serious harm for America’s international relations interests, they are an insult to our allies who will host the phony diplomats.

However, Burnett may have some additional “qualifications” that made him just too compelling for Trump to pass up. Burnett was the producer of Trump’s reality TV game show, “The Apprentice.” He may bear more responsibility for burdening the nation (and the world) with Trump than any other single person. That’s because it was Burnett who manufactured the myth that Trump is a successful businessman, when in fact, he has a long record of bankruptcies and other financial fiascoes.

What’s more, there are reports of video outtakes from “The Apprentice” wherein Trump is heard to be using racial epithets and manipulating the outcome of the game to prevent Black contestants from winning. These reports are coming from the show’s participants and insiders, not Trump critics.

Trump surely wouldn’t want any of that to come out. And handing Burnett a plum spot in one of the world’s most desirable locales could be a way to compensate him for covering up Trump’s bigotry. Although there are others engaging in the conspiratorial cover up as well, including Jeff Bezos, whose company now owns the tapes from the show. Bezos, whose space and cloud computing companies rely on government funding, dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week.

There’s nothing suspicious about any of this, is there? And Trump never does anything wrong. So since he is such a huge advocate of transparency, he’ll probably release the Apprentice cast and crew from any non-disclosure agreements they were forced to sign. Right? RIGHT?

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Grifter-in-Chief Trump Puts His Truth Social Stock into a Phony Trust Controlled by His Son

Posted by on December 21, 2024 at 12:57 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump, is notorious for his unprecedented and brazenly corrupt behavior both in and out of office. He remains the only president in modern times to refuse to divest his personal business holdings or to release his tax returns.

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Donald Trump, Twitter

Among the most obvious vehicles for Trump’s financial shenanigans is his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. Its stock has managed to maintain a preposterously high value despite losing millions of dollars and having a miniscule user base that seems to shrink every month. Nevertheless, it constitutes the largest share of Trump’s net worth.

This week, a new SEC filing by the company revealed that Trump has transferred his majority share holdings to a revocable trust in an attempt to deceive the public that he is separating himself from financial interest in the enterprise. But like virtually everything else that Trump engages in, it is a thinly disguised scam structured to unscrupulously enrich himself. As reported by USA Today…

“Trump transferred 114.75 million shares, or 53% of Trump Media & Technology Group’s outstanding stock, to the revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to securities filings released Thursday evening. […]

Trump Media, which had a net loss of $19.2 million and earned $1 million in revenue in the latest quarter, is valued at over $7 billion. Trump’s stake in the company was valued at roughly $4 billion based on the stock’s last closing price of $34.71.”

The trust into which Trump transferred his shares cites Trump as its sole beneficiary. What’s more, it is fully controlled by his son, Donald Trump Jr., and there is nothing preventing Trump from intervening in its management. Being “revocable” means that Trump can change the terms, remove the trustee, or scrap it entirely, if it satisfies some greedy motivation on his part.

There are a couple of serious problems with the way Trump is handling this (and all of his other assets, for that matter). First and foremost, he can use the stock as means to collect funds (bribes?) from wealthy pals and corporations seeking favors from the his administration. Even more troubling is that he can do the same with foreign businesses and governments, including those hostile to the United States such as Russia, China, and North Korea, all of whom Trump idolizes and brags about having close relationships with.

Furthermore, Trump can violate his pledge not sell to shares in the company in order to cash in on his scam, while pretending that it was the trust, not him, who sold. That could put billions of dollars into his own pocket at the expense of all the other shareholders, who would see the stock value collapse if Trump – or his phony trust – sells out.

Trump’s refusal to divest of his assets, or place them in legitimate blind trusts, is a pretty good indication that he intends to repeat the unethical misdeeds of his previous administration, wherein he was reported to have earned as much as $160 million dollars from foreign sources – predominantly the Middle East and China. And the misuse of this bogus trust only affirms his determination to profit off of his sleazy business activities. Such as…

And then there’s this…

LOSER Trump’s Truth Social is Well on its Way to Becoming His Next Bankruptcy
TMTG reported its earning for the second quarter of 2024. And it was not a pretty sight. As reported by Investor’s Business Daily, “Trump Media reported net sales of $836,000, down 30% vs. a year earlier. Operating costs soared to $19.5 million vs. $4.9 million a year earlier.”

Trump’s Truth Social is Shedding Users Like a Miserable Childless Woman’s Mangy Cat
The Donald Trump-controlled Truth Social platform recorded its third straight month of declining traffic. Truth Social attracted 2,112,000 unique visitors, down 38% compared to June 2023 when the site generated 3,407,000 unique visitors. It was the platform’s second worst traffic performance since June 2022 when Truth Social had only 1,891,000 unique visitors.

Trump Crime Syndicate: Investors Arrested for Insider Trading in Failing Truth Social Scam
Trump’s associates in his truthless, anti-social media venture were arrested and charged with insider trading. Reports indicate that “the three individuals together made more than $22 million in illegal profits.”

Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch
Advertisers are afraid of their ads being juxtaposed with hate speech and other noxious content. Consequently, the only advertisers who are willing to shell out are sketchy scammers, conspiracy theorists, and junk peddlers.

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Trump’s Press Secretary Plans to Turn the WH Briefing Room Into a Pro-Trump Propaganda Mill

Posted by on December 20, 2024 at 2:10 pm. NO Comments :

From the earliest days of Donald Trump’s political life he has had a love/hate relationship with the press. He loved when it brought him the attention that he craved. But he hated when it failed to exalt him as Gawd’s gift to humanity.

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Donald Trump Angry

Trump’s malignant narcissism is evident in nearly every public utterance he makes. And the common thread that weaves through all of his inbred hostilities is his abhorrence of the media that he regular refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” Just since the recent election, Trump has taken to threatening the national news networks with revocation of their broadcast licenses (which don’t exist), and the nomination of his devoted cult disciple, Kash Patel, who shares his animosity toward the press…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Free Press? His FBI Flunky Kash Patel Threatens to ‘Come After the People in the Media’

One of Trump’s primary goals for his reoccupation of the White House is to remake its relationship with the media. To that end, he dispatched his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to deliver a message via his Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News), regarding the restructuring of the White House Press Briefing Room. Leavitt openly explained precisely how she intends to poison the process by which the press informs the public about presidential affairs.

“I hope the legacy media will take a step back and realize that the American people haven’t listened to their lies. Trust in the legacy media is at an all-time low. And Trump ran in an untraditional media lane on the campaign trail. Big part of the reason he won. Because he sat down with podcasters and social influencers and new voices that the American people are clearly listening to. And as Trump’s press secretary, we’re gonna find new ways to bring those voices into the briefing room as well. Which I think will be a very effective way to continue to get the president’s message out to the American people.”

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https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1869937440485704102/

Leavitt is right that trust in the media is low. Although a big part of the reason for that is Trump’s constant whining about any criticism of him as “fake news.” Another reason is that much of the press has been too timid to call out Trump’s blatant lies and his inability to speak coherently on any subject. The result is that he gets to filibuster interviews with deceit, deflection, and gibberish. None of that inspires trust.

However, Leavitt is wrong to propose that the White House Press Room should open its doors to the sort of “podcasters and and social influencers” who kissed Trump’s – let’s say ring – during his campaign. The Press Room is not supposed to be an outlet for partisan propaganda. It is there to provide journalists with access to the president and his staff in order to inform the public.

Leavitt’s vision – and Trump’s – is to turn the Press Room into a propaganda mill where only those who have sworn allegiance to Trump will be able to ask questions that they know will illicit positive responses that glorify Dear Leader. That’s the recipe for fascism that is cooked up by the totalitarian dictators who Trump reveres and seeks to emulate.

If the press ever hopes to raise the level of trust that they receive from the public, they need to reject this new perversion of press relations with the White House. They need to condemn it as a farce that violates the Constitution’s First Amendment protecting freedom of the press. And they need to resist Trump’s efforts to subjugate them to the servitude of his ego. Will they rise to the occasion? Stay tuned.

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UH-OH: Even Fox News Calls Out the Unelected Billionaire ‘Calling the Shots’ in Place of Trump

Posted by on December 19, 2024 at 2:31 pm. NO Comments :

After weeks of tense negotiations, Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives agreed on a bipartisan bill to fund the government and avoid a devastating shutdown that would cause severe harm to millions of Americans. So naturally, that effort was sabotaged by the two most divisive and destructive dimwits in American politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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Fox News Sad

The torpedoing of the Continuing Resolution was aided and abetted by the spine-deprived GOP Speaker of the House, MAGA Mike Johnson, who obediently nixed his own bill at the behest of his puppet masters. As a result, he will maintain his record of having presided over the most unproductive Congress in modern times.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

The spectacle of a couple of billionaires bullying Congress into abandoning its obligation to the Constitution and the people is a nauseating devolution of the great expectations for American democracy. It most resembles the melodramatic inanities of reality TV wherein pathetic contestants vie for supremacy by playing idiotic games. And in this season it appears that the Celebrity Apprentice will be Trump, who is now noticeably subservient to his financial benefactor, Musk.

This swapping of roles is not something that has been observed only by Democrats and other Trump critics. On Thursday morning Stuart Varney of Fox News delivered a commentary that could have been composed by Bernie Sanders. He said in part…

“Think about this: Nobody voted for Elon Musk. But with the support of Donald Trump he called the shots on shutting down the government, and he’s calling the shots on trimming the fat in government. In fact, he has influence on just about every aspect of policy, including who should take which job in the Cabinet.

“We have never seen anything like this before. No previous administration has allowed an unelected outsider this degree of power. Of course it’s all a function of Musk’s relationship with the president-elect. They’ve been inseparable for months. He practically lives at Mar-a-Lago. And they seem to be in agreement on everything. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the richest man in the world, and threw over $200 million into Trump’s campaign.”

What Varney is describing is the undermining of democracy by an unelected, foreign-born, oligarch with the resources to buy a weak narcissist who is desperately trying to stay out of prison and retain some measure of perceived power. Musk is not constitutionally able to be president, so he’s settling for the next best thing: controlling the president. That relationship, however, could make things complicated for Trump’s former significant other. And that isn’t Melania…

What was once the Republican Party is now fully indoctrinated into the Musk/Trump Cult. Some GOP members of Congress are even suggesting that Musk be elected Speaker of the House. So if the GOP is not satisfied with the level of idiocy that is presently in place, they have options. A competent Speaker must be someone with extensive knowledge of how the House operates. Musk doesn’t have a clue. So while Johnson has proven to be a disaster, Musk would be even worse.

While the rules of the House do not require the Speaker to be an elected member, there are other concerns that are being neglected. For instance, the Speaker is second in the presidential line of succession, after the vice-president. But the Constitution would not permit Musk to be promoted to the presidency. So the job would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate. And if Democrats were to regain the majority in 2026, that would be Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. If not, it would be 91 year old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

In the meantime, the nation is being run by billionaires who couldn’t care less about the government shutting down because it won’t affect them in the slightest. And what they do care about – getting richer, lowering their own taxes, and eliminating pesky regulations that protect the environment, workers, and America’s middle and lower income families – would be theirs for the taking. Congratulations MAGA. This is what you voted for. I hope you like being subservient to the oligarchs.

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GOP Oversight Chair Excuses Trump’s Corruption Unless Bank Records Prove It – Well, Guess What?

Posted by on December 18, 2024 at 2:05 pm. 2 Comments :

As Donald Trump prepares to reoccupy the White House, every American that hasn’t been indoctrinated into the MAGA cult is aware that he is setting new precedents as the first president to be a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist, who has advocated terminating the Constitution, and incarcerating his political foes.

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That’s not exactly a record that would instill pride in either the officeholder or the people he purports to represent. To the contrary, it’s a resume of shame that would, and does, produce nausea in patriotic citizens. It would also spur responsible public officials to keep a tight rein on a leader who is as disposed to criminality as Trump has been.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Refusal to Sign the Required Ethics Agreement is His Virtual Promise to Violate It

On Wednesday morning the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, was interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN. Comer is the prime antagonist in the long-running persecution of President Biden and his family. After years of sensationalized probes that failed to produce a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing, Comer is now dismissing any inquiry into Dear Leader Trump’s blatantly unlawful enterprises, as he affirms in the following exchange..

Brown: Do you have any concern if [Trump] doesn’t divest about present future President Trump using public office to enrich himself and his family? I mean, if he doesn’t divest, would that concern you?
Comer: I think the most important thing is transparency. And with respect to tax records, I come from a banking background. Tax records don’t mean anything. If you want to know whether someone’s doing something corrupt or not, get their bank records because bank records don’t lie. People cheat on their taxes all the time. Most important thing is the bank records. And I think as long as President Trump is transparent, I think the American people will give him a pass on honest business activity. But if it ever comes out that they’ve got secret deals or whatever, then that that could potentially be a problem, obviously.”

It’s interesting that Comer warns against using Trump’s tax records because “People cheat on their taxes all the time.” Is he implying that Trump cheats and, therefore, his tax records should be ignored?

More to the point, Comer asserts that nothing Trump does should be investigated because he’s such a pure paragon of transparency, and that his bank records would confirm that. However, in 2020 the New York Times reported that Trump had a secret bank account in China that he failed to reveal in his official financial disclosure forms. The Times discovered the account in his tax returns that they got from an undisclosed source because Trump repeatedly refused to make them public like every other president in modern times…

“President Donald Trump’s tax records show he has pursued expansive business projects in China for years and even maintains a Chinese bank account, The New York Times reported […] An analysis of Trump’s tax records by the Times shows that the President holds a previously unreported bank account in China that was not included on his public financial disclosures.”

So according to the criteria specified by Comer, there should be immediate hearings into Trump’s finances by Comer’s Oversight Committee. Trump has obviously not been as transparent as Comer implied. And that’s been the case for many years. Here are a couple other examples of Trump’s deceit with regard to his finances…

NOPE! Eric Trump Lies that Daddy Gave All Foreign Money Made at His Hotels to the Treasury
As reported by NPR last year… “Documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee show extravagant spending from foreign leaders at former President Donald Trump’s luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., which the committee says could have violated his oath of office by distorting U.S. foreign policy for personal financial gain.

“Government officials from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and the People’s Republic of China collectively spent over $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel during his presidency.”

[And…]

Trump earned as much as $160 million dollars from foreign sources while president. A more expansive investigation by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that… “Throughout his time in office, President Trump, his family and his Republican allies repeatedly assured the public that his refusal to divest from his businesses wouldn’t lead to any conflicts of interest […] When it came to foreign conflicts of interest, Trump and his company pledged to pause foreign business. They did not.”

Not surprisingly, the most frequent contributors to Trump’s coffers were from the Middle East and China.

Lest anyone think that Trump’s fiscal malfeasance is all in the past, take a look at his latest vehicle for enriching himself via shady self-dealing…

The Grifter-In-Chief: Will Donald Trump Divest From His Bribery Platform, Truth Social?
“Surely he is not planning to divest from any of the businesses that he didn’t divest from last time. […] Trump’s Truth Social, via its parent corporation, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. It is therefore available for any crooked scheme-ster to shovel shiploads of cash into, enriching the other shareholders, of which Trump is the biggest.

No one should expect Trump to change his nefarious ways now. And Comer’s hypocrisy amounts to the willful wearing of blinders in the hopes of avoiding observing Trump’s illegal activities. But he knows. And so does everyone else whose eyes – and minds – are not glued shut. The only question that remains is whether others in Congress or the press will seek to bring him to justice.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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