REALLY? Trump Proposes Allowing the US Government (and China?) to ‘Police’ Americans on TikTok

Posted by on January 21, 2025 at 2:11 pm. NO Comments :

On Monday, January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn into office as the 47th president of the United States of America. It was a day that will live in infamy because he’s also the first convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to occupy the White House.

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Fox News, Maria Bartiromo, Donald Trump

Trump lived up to his criminal inclinations by issuing a tsunami of execrable executive orders, including one that granted pardons to the more than 1,500 January 6th insurrections who stormed the Capitol, assaulted police officers, and threatened members of Congress, in order to help Trump undermine democracy. His inauguration address, and subsequent speech to his cult followers, were testimony to his tyrannical aspirations, and were riddled with lies.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Inauguration Day Rants Affirm that He is a Wannabe Dictator and a Pathological Liar

Further evidence of Trump’s anti-American leanings were revealed during his executive disorder signing ceremony in the Oval Office. There were innumerable comments that exposed his malice and ignorance. But when he was presented with the order to delay the banning of TikTok – as required by law – he volunteered a statement that confirms his aversion to the Constitution…

Passed in Congress, it gives the president the right to make a deal or to close it. And we have 90 days to make that decision. But I could see making a deal where the U.S. gets 50% of TikTok. Polices it a little bit, or a lot. Depends on them.

There’s a lot of derp to unravel in that drivel. Let’s start with the fact that the law does not “give the president the right to make a deal or to close it.” The law requires that TikTok be sold or blocked from U.S. users. There is a 90 period within which a challenge may be filed, but that’s a legal challenge, not the prerogative of the president.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the law that allows the U.S. government to own 50% of the social media app. That would be blatantly improper and illegal. This was previously spelled out when Trump first floated his proposal for “saving” TikTok from the evil American “communists” who seek to prohibit the app run by “friendly” Chinese communists….

Trump seems to think that the U.S. government can be a business partner with a Chinese social media company that is suspected of improperly utilizing data collected from American users. That is wrong on many levels. First of all, it puts the U.S. in the position of collaborating with China to “spy” on American citizens. Secondly, it makes the U.S. government a profit partner in an otherwise private business. And thirdly, it violates the First Amendment by putting the U.S. government in a position to moderate (i.e. approve and/or censor) the speech of U.S. citizens.

The last item in that analysis has now been affirmed by Trump who says that it would be okay if his unlawful joint venture with China “Polices it a little bit, or a lot.” That could not be a more flagrant breach of the First Amendment. It puts the U.S. government in the position of censoring free speech. Even worse, it could also give China the same power over the speech of Americans. But Trump wasn’t through parading his recklessness and ignorance. He also said that…

“I may not do the deal or I may do the deal. TikTok is worthless. Worthless, if I don’t approve it. […] If I do the deal it’s worth maybe a trillion dollars. […] If I do the deal for the United States, then I think we should get half.”

True to form, Trump is making up preposterous numbers to validate his delusional thinking. For one thing, TikTok has value that transcends its U.S. user base. In fact, TikTok has about a billion users worldwide. About 170 million of them (17%) are in the U.S. So while the loss of that audience would be significant, TikTok would still have 83% of its current users.

Also, what the heck does Trump mean by “we should get half.” Who is “we”? What part of the U.S. government would the ownership of TikTok fall into? Would it be run by the White House? The Treasury Department? The Agency for Global Media that oversees the Voice of America? Who knows? And Trump doesn’t say. Also, where does the money go?

These are just some of the questions raised by Trump’s nonsensical meanderings. And finally, it’s notable that Trump’s current support for TikTok is a flagrant flip-flop from his prior position…

As Trump tries to take credit for "saving" TikTok, remember he was the instigator of the ban & bragged about it 2 years ago. The bill he advocated was introduced by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). Democrats opposed it."Right about everything"? More like right-wing about everything.

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T21:06:04.990Z

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Trump’s Inauguration Day Rants Affirm that He is a Wannabe Dictator and a Pathological Liar

Posted by on January 20, 2025 at 2:48 pm. 5 Comments :

Just in case there is still any cognitively functioning person who hasn’t been convinced that convicted felon Donald Trump aspires to rule as an authoritarian tyrant, dedicated to manufacturing false narratives about himself, disparaging his opponents in the most infantile manner, and accumulating wealth via dishonest scams, someone has come forward to settle the debate once and for all.

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Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

That someone just happens to be Donald Trump. In a not particularly uncommon development, Trump is confessing to his own most contemptible compulsions. And the confessions took place during his inauguration address that he delivered to his elitist benefactors in the Capitol Rotunda, and the subsequent speech he gave to the foot soldiers of his MAGA cult. This should come as no surprise, because almost every time Trump opens his mouth, he emits maliciousness and lies.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Conference is the Best Evidence Yet that He is Positively, Irreparably Insane

Trump’s inauguration redress was riddled with rancid rhetoric that diverted entirely from reality. For example, he babbled that…

“The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.”
The rebalancing will result in his vicious and violent weaponization of the Justice Department aimed at Democrats and reputable Republicans.

“My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Trump is exalting himself in messianic terms as god’s savior of one particular country that he favors for some reason.

“Under the orders I signed today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.”
While drug cartels are certainly bad, they are not terrorist organizations that, by definition, use violence to alter governments. Drug cartels are only interested in making money. Which is something that they have in common with Trump.

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens. For this purpose, we are establishing the External Revenue Service, to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our treasury, coming from foreign sources.”
Tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. They are paid by domestic importers who pass the costs on as de facto taxes to American consumers.

“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”
Trump doesn’t provide any evidence of his claims of “restricted free speech” or “government censorship.” But he has threatened to revoke the licenses of all TV news networks.

There was plenty more where that came from, including Trump’s bizarre promise to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which he has no legal authority to do. And his threat to take back the Panama Canal from Panama, which would require a hostile military invasion of a friendly neighbor.

Trump moved on from that scene to the Capital One Arena, where his patient and obedient flock of MAGA disciples were waiting to hear from him after he canceled their tickets to the inaugural address, leaving them, literally, in the cold. His speech to this crowd was littered with a litany of lies especially crafted for these gullible rubes. CNN’s Daniel Dale recounted a few of them…

“In his unscripted speech, he returned to his lie-a-minute style. He said the 2020 election was ‘totally rigged.’ We know that’s a lie. He said his opponent tried to rig it this time. That’s more nonsense. He said that California Democrats tried to cheat and that he thinks he would have won the state this time if it were not rigged. Well, it was a free and fair election in that state as well. He lost by more than three million votes. […]

“On immigration he spoke of the jails of every country in the world being emptied into this country. He has never provided any evidence for his claims that foreign countries were deliberately emptying prisons to send people here as migrants. […]

“And then he turned to January 6th. He spoke at length about, he said the committee deleted all evidence, almost everything. It simply did not. That did not happen. […] And he repeated his claim that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had ‘admitted’ that she rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6, 2021. First of all, there is no basis for the claim that Trump even made her such an offer. It wouldn’t even have made sense considering that he, the president. is the commander of the D.C. National Guard. The Speaker of the House has no authority to deploy them or thwart a deployment. And second of all, she never admitted that such an offer was made. She has steadfastly rejected that.”

This was a predictably inauspicious beginning for the Trump 2.0 occupation of the White House. And while his words were worrisome, to put it mildly, the actions to follow will be astronomically worse. That is, unless we stand up to him and resist his tyranny en masse. We cannot accept his plans to slash Social Security, sabotage healthcare, suppress civil and voting rights, make the U.S. an international pariah, and smooth the path for illegalities by his wealthy comrades and violent StormTrumpers.

It’s up to us to preserve democracy. Trump is not guaranteed four more years. Democrats could regain majorities in Congress in 2026. And by then, it’s pretty safe to assume that he will have done some more things that are impeachable.

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Trump’s Plan to ‘Save’ TikTok is an Illegal, Unconstitutional, Anti-American Grifting Scheme

Posted by on January 19, 2025 at 1:50 pm. 3 Comments :

Any objective observer of Donald Trump has noticed that there are a few predictable constants that are evident in his demeanor and his governing style. They include his capacity for lying without shame, his egotistical exaltations of himself, and his compulsion to malign his critics with unwarranted and infantile insults.

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Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

Another one of Trump’s true constants is his extraordinary ability to manufacture chaos over any subject and on a moment’s notice. It’s a skill that is useful for someone who is perpetually in need of phony controversies to deflect from his frequent inadequacies and grossly abhorrent and unpopular policy proposals. Or sometimes just to draw attention away from some offense to his tender sensitivities.

FOR INSTANCE: Snowflake Trump Blasts Seth Meyers and Threatens Comcast Because Jokes Hurt His Tender Fee Fees

The controversy surrounding the fate of TikTok has recently taken the center point on the media stage. While there is wide latitude for diverse opinions about whether it should be permitted to operate in the United States while owned by a company that is tightly tied to China, there are positions that can exceed the boundaries of propriety and even threaten national security.

Leave it to Trump to take a position that totally ignores those rational concerns and, instead, manages to wrap itself in the best interests of only Trump himself. On his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump posted his views that include his desire for Americans “to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday.” As if there were no other media platforms that will be presenting it. He was also worried about the financial prospects for the social media app, which he exaggerated is “worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe trillions.”

More to the point, Trump offered his proposal for “saving” TikTok from the evil American “communists” who seek to prohibit the app run by friendly Chinese communists. He posted that…

“I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark! I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”

To be clear, the only reason that Trump is now concerned about TikTok staying dark is that he recently discovered that he’s getting millions of views of his TikTok videos. However, Trump’s claim that he will issue an executive order delaying the law’s prohibitions is a blatant violation of the law. An executive order cannot override a statute passed by Congress without some urgent national security justification. Watching his inauguration simply doesn’t measure up to that standard. But he was just getting started. Trump continued…

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. […] Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose.”

Trump seems to think that the U.S. government can be a business partner with a Chinese social media company that is suspected of improperly utilizing data collected from American users. That is wrong on many levels. First of all, it puts the U.S. in the position of collaborating with China to “spy” on American citizens. Secondly, it makes the U.S. government a profit partner in an otherwise private business. And thirdly, it violates the First Amendment by putting the U.S. government in a position to moderate (i.e. approve and/or censor) the speech of U.S. citizens.

The U.S. government has no place in such a “partnership” with a Chinese business. Or any other business for that matter. If Trump goes through with this proposal, it must be challenged and rejected by the courts. He doesn’t have the right to structure illegal and unconstitutional business ventures just because they suit him personally. And it’s notable that even that determination on his part was a flagrant flip-flop from his prior position on TikTok…

As Trump tries to take credit for "saving" TikTok, remember he was the instigator of the ban & bragged about it 2 years ago. The bill he advocated was introduced by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). Democrats opposed it."Right about everything"? More like right-wing about everything.

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T21:06:04.990Z

Whatever happens to TikTok, it should be based on the law. And if the law isn’t clear enough to protect the interests of the American people, it should be amended. The rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok also need to be considered. But sanctioning a single company for abusing that data is not a rational solution. All the companies that do so should be barred from that practice, including Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, etc.

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Fox News Gushes Over Trump’s ‘Hot’ Nominees – Trashes Liberals as ‘Fat, Out of Shape Losers’

Posted by on January 18, 2025 at 12:35 pm. 1 Comments :

It has been ten years since Donald Trump began his political career by riding down a gold-plated escalator from his Manhattan penthouse, and promising to represent the forgotten people of America by catering to the whims of the wealthy and corporations, and punishing immigrants and minorities who he maligned as criminals.

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Trump in Bed, Eating, Sad

In the decade that has transpired, some people may have forgotten what Trump did for a living prior to his occupation in the White House. He was not a real estate developer, or a dealmaker, or a marketer. For most of that time he was the host of a reality TV game show, “The Apprentice,” where he pretended to be a successful businessman despite his actual record of multiple failures and bankruptcies. And to this day he leans on that past and those who helped him craft his fake identity.

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

The superficiality of Trump’s long occupation as a television performer has been evident in everything he has done as a politician. Appearances were always paramount over substance. It’s why he was so obsessed about crowd size, and lying about having lost the 2020 election to President Biden. It’s why he chose White House staffers who looked good on TV, but had little to no experience in the jobs they were hired to do. That shallowness also continues to this day and dominates his hiring for Trump 2.0.

Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, is also on the job of plastering superficial facades on him and his new brood of bootlickers. That was brilliantly demonstrated by Fox’s resident wannabe schlock-jock, Greg Gutfeld. In a segment on Friday’s episode of “The Five,” Gutfeld sought to extol the “hotness” of Trump’s toadies, while insulting Democrats as dawgs. He began by comparing Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, to Trump’s nominee for the post…

“Mayorkas to Kristi. You’re going from a garden gnome to Kristi Noem. I mean, she’s so hot that shooting a dog isn’t a deal breaker. And I’m telling you this, you look at this crop of nominees and the party, there’s something there, man. They’re all in great shape. You’ve got to look at people who preserve and maintain what’s important in their lives. If they’re going to do that with their physical self, they’re going to do that in other areas. This is why like a lot of liberals are just fat, out of shape losers, because they don’t believe in structure, discipline.”

Notice that Gutfeld is unfavorably comparing a man who has spent his life in law enforcement and national security, to a small state governor who murders her pets and gets away with it. And Gutfeld absurdly believes that people whose egos demand most of their attention will somehow be more attentive to the less glamorous matters of state.

The rest of Gutfeld’s rant was devoted to praising Trump for hiring critical staffers based on their looks. He makes broad generalizations about the alleged attractiveness of Trump’s nominees, and equally unfair and insulting assessments of Biden’s team. Never mind that Trump’s picks are dreadfully unqualified for the jobs he’s proposing to give them.

For example, alcoholic sexual abuser, Pete Hegseth, conspiracy crackpot and anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Russian asset, Tulsi Gabbard, and QAnon kook, Kash Patel. None have the experience, knowledge, or skills to manage massive bureaucracies of government, many of which deal with matters of life and death.

If they look good on TV, which is where Trump found most of them, they meet his prerequisites. Which may be why seventeen (so far) of his nominees are current or former Fox News squawking heads.

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

What Gutfeld is conveniently ignoring are the physical attributes of the captain of this cabal of catwalkers (or is that cat eaters?). He doesn’t bother to compare the alluring and intelligent Kamala Harris to the stomach-churning hideousness of Trump. In fact, Dear Leader Trump is hardly a beacon of beauty. He’s a shuffling, wrinkled, orange-glazed, geezer, who is morbidly obese, with resting scowl-face. But sure, he’s in great shape – for a putrefied ham that’s been out on the porch for several weeks.

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Trump Accuses the FBI of ‘Corruption’ for Closing the DEI Office that He Promised to Eliminate

Posted by on January 17, 2025 at 1:56 pm. NO Comments :

Psychological academics are going to have a field day researching and analyzing the myriad maladies that have plagued Donald Trump. His malignant narcissism, pathological lying, and delusions of grandeur will be just the appetizer in the bonkers banquet that Trump will serve up for history.

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Donald Trump, MAGA

Trump is a bundle of raw nerves that are sparking wildly. Nothing triggers him like atrocities that he has previously embraced, or blessings that he previously condemned. He rambles incoherently on subjects ranging from Hannibal Lecter to being devoured by sharks. He is obsessed with authoritarian aspirations inspired by his heroes, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. And he is a treasure trove of hyperactive hypocrisies.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Conference is the Best Evidence Yet that He is Positively, Irreparably Insane

Trump provided a convenient example of his neuroses Friday morning in a post to his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. He was suffering another hissy fit over something that he considered to be an intolerable offense to humanity. So he furiously typed out – or more likely dictated – his dyspeptic diatribe saying that…

“We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office—Never should have been opened and, if it was, should have closed long ago. Why is it that they’re closing one day before the Inauguration of a new Administration? The reason is, CORRUPTION!”

It must be comforting to the current staff at the FBI that Trump regards them as corrupt. And they were already probably worried about his nominee to lead the Bureau, Kash Patel, who has zero experience managing a large law enforcement agency, and has declared that he would abuse his power to go after an enemies list of Trump critics.

What Trump was referring to in his post was a report that the Office of Diversity within the FBI would be shutting down prior to his inauguration. As reported by Mediaite…

“’In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), effective by December 2024,’ The FBI said in a statement to Fox News”

Notice that Trump was mistaken, as usual, about the office being shut down “one day before the Inauguration.” The article that he himself cited stated that the closure was announced a month ago. What’s more, Trump’s “demand” to preserve records was a meaningless outburst since all such government documents are routinely retained.

More troubling is Trump’s accusation that the FBI was plotting some sort of nefarious scheme connected to the Bureau’s office tasked with the “corrupt” responsibility of insuring equal opportunity and non-discrimination for all employees and applicants. What an awful objective for any civic enterprise to be undertaking. Trump and his MAGA minions have long opposed DEI (Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion), and have endeavored to eliminate all traces of it.

MORE HERE: Trump Insults America and its Justice Institutions as ‘SCUM’ Just Weeks Before His Inauguration

Nevertheless, it was that mission on the FBI’s part that infuriated Trump. And he wasn’t going to take it lying down. He labeled it “CORRUPTION,” that the Bureau would dare to shut the office down now. Never mind that that is precisely what Trump himself had promised to do during his campaign when he said nearly a year ago that on day one of his administration all “staff, offices, and initiatives” connected to the “un-American policy will be immediately terminated.” Mediaite elaborated saying that…

“Trump has previously signaled that he would seek to ban DEI in both the federal government and the private sector, labelling the programs ‘anti-white racism.’

“‘I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed,’ the former president told Time magazine in May.

So to summarize, Trump is upset that the FBI’s equal opportunity office, that he said was anti-white racism, did exactly what he wanted them to do, which was corrupt, and they did it on the eve of his inauguration, that he seems to think was last December, and therefore, they must be ordered to retain documents that always retain anyway.

Okay. Got it! And this is the “stable genius” that the MAGA cult elected and who on Monday will be taking the oath of office that he has previously breached. Buckle up America.

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FOX NEWS HOST: ‘It Makes Me CRAZY that the Left is Mad at Musk’ – For Bankrolling Herr Trump?

Posted by on January 16, 2025 at 2:29 pm. 1 Comments :

For nearly a decade, Fox News has assumed the role of the Ministry of Propaganda for Donald Trump. Their program hosts and guests have been uniformly worshipful of the convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and aspiring authoritarian, who has become the internationally recognized brand of cable’s premiere disinformation network.

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Fox News Sad

Fox’s devotion to Dear Leader Trump drives their editorial ideology. So much so that they continue to fawn over and lie about Trump despite having had to pay a $787 million settlement for defamation as a result of their brazenly dishonest parroting of Trump’s 2020 election denials and outright lies. Which they continue to do to this day.

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

On Thursday morning Fox Business host Gerri Willis was a guest on Fox’s “Outnumbered.” The discussion covered some of the controversy over the seizure of the American government by tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. With regard to the latter, Willis was inexplicably confounded as to why Democrats would have any problem with Musk’s utterly inappropriate role as an unelected, virtual shadow president…

“The whole idea that the left is mad at Elon Musk makes me crazy because he’s the one who developed their favorite product in the world: the electric car. So how can you be mad at him?”

REALLY? Willis has to be one of the dimmest bulbs in the Fox News marquee. First of all, Musk didn’t develop the electric car. He bought Tesla from the more intelligent and creative people who did develop it. Secondly, Tesla is not the “favorite product” of progressives. In fact, they have led the exodus of buyers who stopped patronizing Musk’s auto business.

More to the point, Willis is pitifully dense if she can’t grasp why Democrats would oppose Musk after he completely betrayed the environmental movement by buying the presidency for Trump, a climate change denier who thinks that it is a hoax perpetrated by China. And climate change is only the tip of the iceberg of Trump policies that Musk endorses that are anathema to progressives.

Coincidently – or perhaps not – President Biden addressed the same subject in his Oval Office farewell address to the nation Wednesday night. He issued a passionate wake up call to Americans, alerting them to the danger of the emerging Trump oligarchy…

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We’ve seen the consequences all across America and we’ve seen it before.

“More than a century ago, the Americans stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn’t punish the wealthy, just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had to. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal and helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation in the world has ever seen.”

President Biden delivers a prescient warning that "an oligarchy is taking shape in America."

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T10:59:34.484Z

What actually makes Willis and and others at Fox News “crazy” is that the American people can see through their bullpucky. And we aren’t going to lay back and allow the new robber barons to enslave us. Even if they did once pretend to be interested in preserving the planet, but only because of their lust for more wealth.

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Has Hell Frozen Over? Newsmax Host Shoots Down Trump’s Defense Secretary Nominee, Pete Hegseth

Posted by on January 15, 2025 at 2:57 pm. 2 Comments :

The parade of nominees for Donald Trump’s reoccupation of the White House is in progress on Capitol Hill. Confirmation hearings are being held by the Republican controlled Senate that is almost certainly going to rubber stamp every last one of Trump’s choices to serve in his Politburo…er…Cabinet. And once in place they will swear their allegiance to Trump, rather than to the Constitution.

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Pete Hegseth with Drunk Emoji

Among those being questioned by the senators is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense. He is a standout among the roster of Trump’s ultra-loyalist, but dangerously unqualified nominees for being particularly unfit for the post to which he aspires. Not only has he never had any experience managing anything on the scale of the Pentagon, his personal history is one replete with sexual misconduct, drunkenness, financial mismanagement, and general ethical and moral bankruptcy.

SEE THIS: Fox News Buries Reports of Trump’s Unsavory, Unqualified Defense Secretary Pick, Pete Hegseth

Despite Hegseth’s dreadful resume, he is being lauded by MAGA World and fawned over by GOP politicians and press. However, there is one notable exception to this lock-step march to Grandmaster of the Military. Greg Kelly, a host on the Trump-fluffing Newsmax network, has come out in opposition to Hegseth. And he has some pretty well thought out reasons. Media Matters reports his reservations delivered on his primetime program. He prefaced his commentary saying that…

“I love President Trump, but he has sometimes gotten it wrong when it comes to the military. Who remembers General Milley? General Milley was Donald Trump’s pick for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And what happened? He turned around and called him fascist to the core and basically waged a coup against Donald Trump while he was in office.”

For the record, there was no coup against Trump, and all Milley did was tell the truth about him. But Kelly was just getting started. He also noted that one of Trump’s defense secretaries during his first term, Mark Esper, was “a bad call, a guy who was totally beholden to the swamp and turned around and called him a threat to democracy.” And then there was “General Mattis [another Defense Secretary]. He turned on President Trump big time.”

Maybe there were good reasons that all of these faithful, heroic, military officers were repulsed by Trump once they got to know him. Kelly then offered some detailed arguments against Hegeth’s nomination…

“I think the regulations suggest that since he paid money in a confidential settlement to a woman who accused him of assault — I — it’s akin to blackmail. And when you’re when you pay blackmail, I don’t think you’re eligible. […] We have all kinds of regulations that say if you’re vulnerable to blackmail, you shouldn’t be in a high level national security position. And that’s what his own attorney has called it – blackmail and extortion.

[And that…]

“[Hegseth] went on The Megyn Kelly Show and he made a case that he didn’t have a problem drinking.” [And also that] “he told [Fox News host] Will Cain in 2021 that, yeah, he had a problem.”

MORE HERE: Pete Hegseth’s Fox News Co-Host Admits He Had a Drinking Problem, But It’s Now ‘Under Control’

Kelly’s arguments for nixing Hegseth are compelling and ought to taken seriously by the senators considering his confirmation. His vulnerability to blackmail and/or extortion would create an existential threat to the nation’s national security. Add that to his moral vacancy and glaring inexperience, and you have a portrait of someone who should never be in charge of the U.S. military.

The question is, will enough senators have the integrity and patriotism to vote “NO”? Or will the Republican majority kowtow to Dear Leader Trump out of cultish devotion and/or fear?

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Snowflake Trump Blasts Seth Meyers and Threatens Comcast Because Jokes Hurt His Tender Fee Fees

Posted by on January 14, 2025 at 1:29 pm. 3 Comments :

With just six days until Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States – although only the first who is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist – you might think that he has a lot of important things on his mind. Well, you might think that if you had never heard of Trump or witnessed the clown show buffoonery that is emblematic of his public persona.

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Seth Myers and Donald Trump baby

The past week has featured some historically profound events in the lead up to Trump’s reoccupation of the White House. They include his aggression toward American allies (Greenland, Canada, Mexico) that he is threatening to invade and/or annex, the preparations for the confirmation hearings of his extraordinarily unqualified Cabinet nominees, and the legal quagmires surrounding his treasonous behavior surrounding the last presidential inauguration in 2021.

SEE THIS: WHINE, WHINE, WHINE! Convicted Felon Trump Clings to Fox News Legal Hacks at Sentencing Hearing

Despite these pressing issues, what is apparently keeping Trump up at night are the jokes told by late night comedy hosts, such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers. This has always been a major complaint of Trump’s for as long as he has been a public figure. And his hostility toward the comics is expressed in his typically infantile manner, hurling insults and baseless accusations.

Late Monday night – or actually very early Tuesday morning – Trump was awake and posting diatribes aimed at Seth Meyers for some unspecified mockery that clearly gnawed at Trump’s massive yet fragile ego. At 1:24 AM, Trump posted on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, how outraged he was at being the butt of Meyers’ jokes…

“How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people – Remember, they also run MSDNC. I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast. These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these ‘in kind’ contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”

Notice that Trump never reveals specifically what he is upset about. But his anger encompasses the corporate parent of NBC, Comcast, that is owned and run by notoriously conservative media moguls. Or in Trump’s words, “Scum.”

Trump says that he “got stuck watching” Meyers, as if it were a pit of quicksand he stumbled into, and was unable to escape. So he hate-watched the whole thing with a sneer, just waiting until he was freed and able to release his anger online. He was involuntarily glued to this “dumb and untalented” “moron” for the duration. And he ended up threatening that Comcast “should pay a BIG price for this!”

Of course, Trump can’t possibly see the irony in his threats over allegations that Meyers comedy constitutes “‘in kind’ contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party.” He has no problem with what Fox News airs – not as comedy, but as allegedly serious news – or recognizes that that is an in-kind contribution to Republicans broadly, and himself in particular.

So what is Trump so riled up about in the wee hours of the morning? His post appeared just minutes prior to Meyers’ program ending. So it was clear in his senile memory. Meyers delivered one of his regular “Closer Look” segments that delves into current events. And this one began with a well deserved swipe at Trump…

“We know very little about what Trump’s second term will be like given that he has no fixed principles, or core beliefs, or coherent ideas, or constructive solutions, or plans, or proposals, or policies, or values, or thoughts of any kind. He watches TV and then he scream-posts about what he just saw on TV. He’s basically an intellectual Roomba. He goes in one direction until he bumps into something and then he just goes off into another direction.

Meyers also addressed the ideological civil war in MAGA Land. Particularly between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, who are at each others throats. Bannon has threatened Musk saying that…

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. He will not have a blue pass to the White House, He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person. He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.”

OUCH! I guess we’ll know how this Mothra vs. Godzilla smackdown concludes by next week. The conflict between these MAGA monsters centers around H-1B visas that Musk relies on, and that Bannon castigates as invitations to foreigners to take jobs from Americans. And after pointing out the debate between Trump’s henchmen, Meyers played a video compilation of Trump taking every side on the same issue. Hence the Roomba reference.

It remains a mystery how Trump’s cult followers can regard him as a strongman when he is so easily flustered by a funnyman. But that is nothing new. Trump has always been a whiner who complains that he’s a victim, despite his life of wealth and privilege. And we can expect more of that when he returns to the White House for however long his term will last.

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GOOD NEWS: Rachel Maddow Will Return to Airing 5 Days a Week for the First 100 Days of Trump 2.0

Posted by on January 13, 2025 at 1:36 pm. NO Comments :

The tsunami of unsettling reports that have saturated the media in recent weeks has cast a pall on the newborn year of 2025. They include the unfolding consequences of the last November’s election, the persistent news of deadly conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and of course, the catastrophic wildfires that have ravaged several neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

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Rachel Maddow

Amidst all of those harrowing happenings the nation has also had to contend with the dystopian soap opera surrounding the reoccupation of the White House by Donald Trump. His toxic tendencies and temper tantrums have lived up to the worst predictions made prior to his unwelcome ascendancy. He has even managed to combine separate awful affairs to merge into mega-monstrosities.

SEE THIS: Trump Lashes Out Manically at Firefighters and Jack Smith in a Rabid Late-Night Freakout

So it comes with some relief to learn that there will be some respite in the storm of psychobabble that consumes America’s airwaves. MSNBC has just announced that Rachel Maddow, who has been on the air weekly for the past several months, is returning to a five-day-a-week schedule…

“MSNBC fans are about to get a bigger dose of its marquee host: For the first 100 days of Trump’s second presidency, ‘The Rachel Maddow Show,’ will revert to its former five-night-a-week schedule.”

It is significant to note that this is a temporary change that will be in place for the first 100 days of Trump’s second term in office. Those will be particularly volatile days in the words of Trump himself, who has promised that “all hell will break loose.” He has said that there will a hundred or more executive orders from day one, a day on which he is also planning the biggest mass deportation in history.

Consequently, Maddow will have her hands full for the duration of her extended broadcasts. And it’s safe to predict that not much of the rest of the media will be covering the issues as thoroughly and honestly as she will. Alex Wagner, who has been airing on Tuesday through Friday, will take to the road for special reports on “Trumpland: The First 100 Days,” before returning to her anchor desk in May.

For a sneak preview of Maddow’s priorities for her program, what follows are some of her answers in an interview about the schedule change.

Question: What’s it going to be like covering Trump in 2025 vs. 2017? Have you learned any lessons from his first administration?
Answer: In the first Trump term, one of the things that we learned was this idea of watching what they do, not what they say. Trump is a real master of shifting the news cycle toward himself and away from himself as best suits his purposes, simply by saying really transgressive and shocking things all the time. […]

We’re already seeing the freneticism of the Trump news cycle taking over, even during the transition. We’re seeing the unpredictable cadence of the way news breaks as opposed to a more competent rational administration. So we’ll see; we’re trying to be ready for anything.

Question: There seems to be an exhaustion factor about Trump news. Do you agree, and if so, is it understandable, unhealthy, or both?
Answer: Everybody sort of implicitly knows that pretending something isn’t happening does not ensure that the thing doesn’t actually happen; there’s a sort of head-in-the-sand wish casting that’s happening with a lot of people checking out of the news, thinking ‘If I don’t hear about it, if I don’t look at it, then maybe it’s not happening.’ But people know that’s not actually the way to stop it from happening.”

Question: Trump has long attacked the press as the enemy…How do you deal with that?
Answer: As long as we’re still here, our job is pretty clear: Follow the facts, don’t be intimidated, tell true stories, help people understand the world. And I’m going to keep doing that […] Americans broadly know that we need a free press. We don’t need just state TV; we don’t need to have the government control the media, as happens in authoritarian countries. You want a free and independent and even oppositional press if you want a healthy country, and I think the country recognizes that. All of us in the business recognize that.

It will be refreshing to get Maddow’s insights on a more frequent basis while Trump and his MAGA media minions seek to deflect and distort what they are doing. And hopefully she will have some influence on her peers that results in better journalism all around. Especially while so many lies are proliferating on social media platforms that have abandoned fact-checking and thus, their responsibility to the their readers, their nation, and the world.

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Trump Lashes Out Manically at Firefighters and Jack Smith in a Rabid Late-Night Freakout

Posted by on January 12, 2025 at 12:57 pm. NO Comments :

With everything that is currently going on in the nation and the world, it is interesting to know what is keeping Donald Trump up at night. Well “interesting” may be an overstatement. But it is a revealing peak into the madness that infects America’s president-elect as he prepares to reoccupy the White House.

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Trump in Bed, Eating, Sad

Due to Trump’s rapidly deteriorating mental state, we can rest assured that he will always make his manic midnight obsessions known, whether anyone actually wants to know or not. And in doing so he inevitably displays the depth of his acute dementia.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Conference is the Best Evidence Yet that He is Positively, Irreparably Insane

Very late Saturday night, or actually very early Sunday morning, Trump was still awake and agonizing over what he believes are the hot topics of day. And true to form, the matters that cluttered his cartoon brain were predictably how infuriated he is with the miserable state of his extraordinarily privileged existence. In a pair of posts on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump vacillated between his two most infamous mindsets, venomous fury and petulant whining.

Let’s begin by examining the post expressing his fury over what he thinks are the most important aspects of the tragic fires in Los Angeles. And no, it has nothing to do with the suffering of the victims or the sacrifices of the first responders and other members of the community. Nope. To Trump it was more important to cast undeserved blame on political foes…

“The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”

Notice that Trump seems to think that politicians are responsible for putting out fires. But his criticism falls flatly on the heroic firefighters who are risking their lives, working 24/7, to save lives and property. He also seems to be more concerned about the “magnificent houses” than the people. As for his fear mongering that “there is death all over the place,” that was typical of his practice of reckless exaggeration.

To be sure, the 14 confirmed fatalities is awful for those involved and their families. But so were the 230 deaths from Hurricane Helene that ravaged Florida and much of the South last September. However, Trump never bothered to hurl insults at the Republican leadership of those states, or the first responders either. He also never threatened to withhold critical aid from the red state victims of a natural disaster, unlike what he and his MAGA minions have done with California. All he has done since the L.A. fires began has been to exploit the suffering for political gain. Something “The Daily Show” couldn’t help take notice of…

SEE ALSO: THE DAILY SHOW: Trump Gives Us a Reminder of What His Leadership Looks Like in Times of Crisis

Trump’s other late-night nonsense was his reaction to having been sentenced for his 34 felony convictions in New York. And even though he received no jail time or financial penalty, he still whined like an infant about what he said was “very unfair” treatment. Which is actually correct. Had it been fair, he would have been in prison long ago, like any other guilty perpetrator. But in his mind Mr. Macho Man is always the victim…

“Deranged Jack Smith was fired today by the DOJ. He is a disgrace to himself, his family, and his Country. After spending over $100,000,000 on the Witch Hunt against TRUMP, he left town empty handed!”

That brief tirade was littered with a surprising quantity of lies. First of all, Jack Smith was not fired. He resigned, just as he said would several weeks ago. Secondly, far from disgraceful, he maintained his composure and dignity throughout a difficult process, while Trump relentlessly attacked him with childish insults. Third, his prosecution was costly, but only about half of what Trump is dishonestly saying. And most that expense was caused by Trump’s manipulation of the legal system to cause endless delays. Finally, if Trump thinks that Smith “left town empty handed,” why is he still whining and threatening to appeal?

Although he tries to cover it up with false bravado, Trump is clearly riddled with severe anxiety at becoming the first American president who has been convicted of dozens of felonies and adjudicated a rapist. But his assault on the first responders, and representatives of California’s citizens, is a far worse example of a total lack of character by Trump. And while his outbursts are repulsive, they are not surprising.

We have all seen Trump’s perverse behavior for way too many years now. And sadly, there will still be more to come. So it is now the duty of all patriots to stay strong and focused on resisting Trump’s anti-American, totalitarian aspirations. We simply don’t have the luxury of being discouraged or depressed. We must continue to fight for democracy and the Constitution. They are worth it.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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