UH-OH. Someone better check in on Donald Trump. If he gets wind of this news he’s likely to suffer what doctors call an MSHE (Massive Spontaneous Head Explosion).
The preliminary Nielsen Ratings for Joe Biden’s inaugural swearing in ceremony significantly surpassed those of Trump’s. And that’s despite the challenges facing this inaugural. With the constraints put on it by the COVID-19 pandemic that prohibits large gatherings of groups, and the security issues created by Trump’s Seditionist Brigades, Biden still managed to crush Trump in the contest that matters to him more than anything else: TV ratings. Variety reports that…
“The inauguration of President Joe Biden won significantly more viewers than President Donald Trump’s 2017 ceremony, per early Nielsen figures.
“Approximately 39.87 million people watched the half-hour swearing-in ceremony over the nation’s six major TV-news outlets, according to Nielsen, compared with an average of 30.6 million viewers for the 2017 event.”
UPDATE: To make matters worse from Trump’s perspective, CNN, the network he repeatedly maligned as “fake news,” drew the biggest audience. Fox News came in dead last, declining a whopping 77% from their 2017 inauguration coverage.
Trump should actually be used to this by now. And not just because he lost to Biden by more than seven million votes in the 2020 presidential election. He previously lost to Biden in the ratings for their party convention acceptance speeches:
“President Trump’s Thursday night convention speech making the case for his reelection was lower-rated than his challenger Joe Biden’s speech one week ago, according to overnight Nielsen ratings.
“About 23.8 million viewers watched coverage of Trump’s RNC address across thirteen cable and broadcast networks, down from 24.6 million viewers who watched Biden’s DNC address on twelve of those same networks.”
“Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. time slot on NBC. Across the entire runtime, the Biden town hall averaged 12.3 million viewers. In terms of the fast national 18-49 demographic, Biden is comfortably on top with a 2.6 rating to Trump’s 1.7.”
This will probably hurt Trump nearly as much as losing the election. After all, the old reality TV game show host has always regarded television ratings as “the real polls.” And yet, somehow he always manages to come up short there as well.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
The not-so-old adage that “elections have consequences” has proven once again to be an insightful admonition to those who would defy democracy and the indefatigable will of the American people. Donald Trump found this out the hard way by narrowing his appeal to an impotent minority of racists and far-right extremists, rather than seeking to broaden his base by reaching out to the reality-based community.
Among the consequences that Trump will suffer, in addition to his humiliating electoral defeat, are a rapid undoing of his worst policy initiatives (i.e. climate change, immigration, healthcare, etc.), the expulsion of his most despicable appointees throughout his administration (i.e. Justice, Defense, Intelligence, EPA, etc.), and an avalanche of of both criminal and civil lawsuits (tax/financial, sexual harassment/assault, defamation, etc.). Trump may have less time available for golf and television as a private citizen than he did as the alleged “president.”
Joe Biden’s inauguration speech was surprisingly well received considering his reputation for something less than soaring oratory. Even Chris Wallace of Fox News said that it was “the best inaugural address I ever heard.” But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Fox News has turned over new leaf. Sean Hannity watched the same address and described our new president as “the weak, the frail, the cognitively struggling Biden.” Clearly Hannity was viewing it through his manure-caked eyeglasses.
While Biden touched an many subjects of great importance to the American people (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, international relations, and his commitment to national unity), he included some specific passages that foretold a renewed respect for the free press. Gone is Trump’s Stalinist yowl that “the media is the enemy of the people.” In Biden’s inaugural address he correctly observed that “We face an attack on democracy and on truth.” Then he pointedly made these profound remarks:
“Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And, we must reject a culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
“Manipulated” and “manufactured” facts are another way of saying “alternative” facts (h/t Kellyanne Conway). It’s also a nod to what Fox news has done throughout Trump’s occupation of the White House.
“There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders – leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation – to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”
This is another shout out to Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News), where “Lies told for power and for profit” is embedded in their corporate mission statement.
“But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do.”
Here Biden is being generous by lumping Fox News in with legitimate sources of news. Even Fox doesn’t call what they do “news.” It is literally a part of their entertainment division. And it isn’t going to get any better in the post-Trump era. They have already announced programming changes that shift more airtime to their ultra-conservative opinion hosts.
For his part, Joe Biden is making good on his promise to restore truth and decency to the White House press corps and its relationship with the media. Early on in his term Trump abandoned daily press briefings. He went weeks without holding any. And when he did, they were filled with lies and self-serving blather. His press secretaries were a confederacy of dishonest spinners (Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany) whose flair for flagrant falsehoods was famous.
Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, held her first press briefing on Inauguration Day. She told reporters that her goal was to “bring transparency and truth back to the American government.” Elaborating, she said that…
“I have deep respect for a free and independent press in our democracy and for the role that all of you play. As I noted earlier, there will be moments when we disagree and there will certainly be days we disagree for extensive parts of the briefing even perhaps. But we have a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”
That’s a refreshing upgrade from the bellicose bundle of belligerence that stained Trump’s hostile and childish tantrum throwing tirades whenever he engaged the press. It’s a return to the more productive encounters that provide opportunities for political leaders to communicate with the public, while simultaneously allowing journalists to confront those leaders on the public’s behalf. And if both the President and the press pursue those as their goals, the nation can only be better off for it.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
The inauguration address by Joe Biden was a striking departure from the last inaugural address that focused morbidly on “American Carnage.” Who could have imagined how prescient that dark portrait of a broken nation was at the time Donald Trump painted it? If he was successful at anything, it was at achieving – temporarily – the dystopian vision he embraced even onto the very last minutes of his term.
Pres. Biden, on the other hand, delivered a speech(video below) that contained the sort of soaring rhetoric that his critics assert he is incapable of. He began with a triumphant nod to the failed Trump Insurrection that took place just two weeks ago, saying that “Democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.” And Biden closed saying that “Together we shall write an American story of hope, not fear. Of unity, not division.”
The dominant theme of Biden’s speech, like his campaign, was unity. It’s a word that he used eleven times in the unusually brief address. He was clear-eyed about the challenges that our nation faces, and he recognized that…
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy, unity. Unity.”
Likewise, Biden was well aware of the idealistic tone of his theme, saying that…
“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.”
However, those obstacles haven’t dulled Biden’s optimism. Just as he has throughout his career in public life, Biden put his faith in the human hunger for harmony, imploring that…
“History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”
On Laura Ingraham’s Hour of Sour, she began the program with her baseless assertion that “Team Biden Turns Against America.” The segment led off with her ludicrous claim that the “left” believes that “America is an inherently evil country.” She came to that conclusion after seeing National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C. to prevent more violence like that caused by Trump’s Seditionist Brigades. Ingraham charged that the frightful military presence was the work of Democrats, despite the fact that they were ordered to deploy by Republican run Departments of Defense and Justice.
Even worse was Tucker Carlson’s White Nationalist Hour on Fox News. On Monday Carlson spent an hour trying to incite more violence. And Tuesday’s program was devoted to the proposition that the “Democratic Party is planning a war on half of America.” He babbled feverishly that…
“If you’re one of the many in our professional class who has made hating Donald Trump the very center of your life, this has got to be a pretty good day for you. You won. Your party now has control of everything. By tomorrow afternoon Donald Trump will be gone for good. You got exactly what you wanted. You should be thrilled about that. You should be celebrating. But they’re not celebrating. That’s the remarkable thing. No one in the Democratic Party seems happy tonight.”
If Carlson hasn’t seen the ecstatic celebrations of Democrats across the nation/world, he must be having severe delusions from having had to go cold turkey on Trump tweets for the past couple of weeks. More likely, Carlson is just being his abnormal, arrogant, and irrationally hostile self. Rather than observing the reality of tens of millions of Democrats rapt in joy, Carlson imagines that they are attacking Trump voters, saying that “These 74 million are, in fact, terrorists.”
To be sure, there are Democrats who rightfully believe that Trump and other Republicans who violated the law should face justice. It’s what Trump called “law and order,” but which he and his cult disciples now repudiate. That, however, is not an indictment of everyone who voted for Trump. That is a figment of Carlson’s diseased imagination.
Pres. Biden’s goal of unity is an honorable and worthwhile one. The nation needs healing. But healing can only occur when the wounds are treated and protected from further infection. That comes in the form of accountability. “Without accountability,” says Republican Rick Wilson in USA Today, “unity will be an illusion, an invitation to further, deeper, more dangerous division. With accountability, the nation has a genuine chance to come together and move forward.” And that means accountability for Trump as well as as his Sedition Caucus in Congress and media accomplices.
Returning to Biden’s speech, he covered some of what needs to be addressed with regard to the trust Americans will have for their politicians and the press going forward. It’s a critical issue that must not be swept aside in the quest for unity. It is, in fact, a requirement for unity:
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated, and even manufactured. […] There is truth and there are lies, lies told for power and for profit.”
These are among the most profound thoughts of any presidential inauguration speech. Hopefully they will be heeded and applied to both Democrats and Republicans – as well as the media itself – as we recover from the lie-riddled landscape left by Trump and his abomination of an administration.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
On the last full day of Donald Trump’s disastrous misadventures as the “president” of the States he tried so mightily to disunite, his “Friends” at Fox News went the extra mile to suck up to him in the most nauseating manner.
It’s one thing to defend his innumerable failures, or to attack his righteous critics, but what Ainsley Earhardt said on Tuesday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends sunk to a new low, which is a pretty remarkable feat for the “Curvy Couch” potatoes. In a segment wherein Earhardt sought to pay tribute to Trump’s alleged work ethic, she said that…
“They’ll criticize President Trump but no one can argue, he is a worker. He doesn’t drink alcohol, he stays up late at night, he watches every show, he’s working — he got to work immediately. And now Joe Biden is saying he’s gonna get to work on immigration on the first day in office. Some are criticizing him, like Sen. Cotton, for focusing on this issue instead of the pandemic.”
Ainsley Earhardt: "They'll criticize President Trump but no one can argue, he is a worker. He doesn't drink alcohol, he stays up late at night, he watches every show, he's working — he got to work immediately." pic.twitter.com/1FcS8gCW5f
Where to begin with this lunatic rhapsody? How about the fact that Trump is the most notoriously lazy White House occupant in modern times. He has accomplished almost nothing in four years. He didn’t build a wall that Mexico paid for. He never delivered the healthcare plan he promised every two weeks. He forgot that every week was infrastructure week. The only significant legislation that he had a hand in passing was to give the wealthy undeserved tax cuts, and shifting the burden to average Americans. And worst of all, he did nothing about the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has taken the lives of 400,000 Americans.
Earhardt may be impressed that Trump doesn’t drink alcohol. But she didn’t bother to mention his dependency on pharmaceuticals like Adderall. She also thinks his insomnia is something to be praised. Who cares if he’s up all night if all he is doing is tweeting out insults, lies, and other assorted nonsense?
Worst of all is Earhardt’s asinine appreciation for the fact that Trump “watches every show.” REALLY? What exactly does she think is praiseworthy about that? Trump is reported to watch as much as eight hours of television every day. And most of that is Fox News or some other Trump-fluffing outlet that satisfies his elephantine ego. Someone needs to break it to Ainsley that that is not working.
Notice that Earhardt doesn’t cite a single issue with which Trump’s supposedly hard work produced any success. There’s a good reason for that. However, she does mention criticism from wingnut Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. But even that is flagrantly false. While Biden does plan to send Congress a comprehensive immigration bill – an important goal that has stumped three previous administrations – it is not an issue that Biden has focused on to the exclusion of everything else.
In particular, Biden has stated several times that the COVID-19 pandemic is his top priority. He has already developed a plan for combatting the virus, for accelerating the vaccine distribution, and for providing economic stimulus and relief to the long-suffering American people who Trump ignored and fatally misled for so many months.
In short, Earhardt’s commentary was pitifully wrong in every respect. Which is surely why she remains a regular on the network that has no use for facts, logic, compassion, or fairness or balance either. She is right at home with confederates like Tucker Carlson, who is striving to incite more violence. And she is comfortable on a network that would promote other shameless propagandists like herself. It’s what Fox News was founded to do.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
On January 6th, a savage horde of treasonous Trump cult disciples assaulted the Congress of the United States in an attempt to install Trump as the leader of a white nationalist dictatorship. They battered down doors, broke windows, stole and destroyed property, and called for the execution of Democratic – and even some Republican – representatives. They failed … this time.
Not satisfied with having ransacked the seat of American democracy, killing at least five people, and sullying the reputation of the nation, Fox News assigned their Senior White Supremacist, Tucker Carlson, the task of reassembling Trump’s Traitors for another attempt at their seditionist uprising. He not only declined to condemn the vicious, anti-American insurrectionists, he explicitly encouraged them. This is further evidence that Fox news is actually getting worse in the post-Trump era. Even James Murdoch (son of Fox News boss, Rupert) recognizes the “toxic lies” and “disinformation” propagated by Fox.
On Carlson’s Monday hate-fest (video below), he maligned the National Guard troops assigned to protect the city from further violence by the fascist brigades of Trumpism. He characterized their deployment as a “military occupation,” and, in a fit of utter lunacy, implied that their presence was the result of “Republicans hav[ing] spent years ignoring the leftward drift of our officer corps.” Carlson’s rant was rife with rancid rhetoric such as…
“No matter what they are telling you, those 26,000 federal troops are not there for your safety. Instead, unmistakably, the Democratic Party is using those troops to send the rest of us a message about power. We are in charge now. We run this nation from Honolulu to our colony in the Caribbean and everything in between, very much including where you and your family live. Do not question us. Men with guns enforce our decrees. We control the Pentagon.”
These are the blatant scare tactics of totalitarians. His use of language like “No matter what they are telling you…” is purposefully chosen to ensure that you only believe the propaganda being spread by Carlson and Fox News. They want the American people to fear their own protectors who were brought in to prevent another nauseating spectacle like the one that occurred on January 6th, and which the whole world witnessed in horror.
Carlson and Fox News are actually rooting for another round of insurrection against the nation and the Constitution. And they are making villains of our patriotic sons and daughters in uniform, while ignoring the lawless, gun-toting militias working to overthrow the government. Carlson elaborated…
“Democrats in Congress demanded that the troops sent to Washington this week submit to a political purity test – ideological vetting as they put it – to make sure that every soldier profess loyalty to the new regime. Not loyalty to our our country. Not loyalty to our our Constitution. But loyalty to the aims of a specific political party.”
Carlson is lying through his treasonous teeth. Democrats in Congress had nothing to do with the vetting of the troops. And there were no “purity tests” or “loyalty” oaths to political parties. Carlson and Fox News know that. However, there were reports of potential insider threats by far-right extremists circulating among law enforcement officials. Consequently, they employed routine measures to ensure the safety of the troops and the public. The truth, as reported by the Associated Press, was that…
“U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.”
Note that those involved in making these decisions were Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy (a Trump appointee), who reported to Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (a Trump appointee), who conferred with the FBI that is conducting the vetting and is headed by Christopher Wray (a Trump appointee). And all of them were confirmed by the Senate that, at the time of their confirmation, was controlled by a Republican majority led by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell. So obviously it’s a Democratic plot.
That’s the core of the conspiracy over which Carlson and Fox News are generating this hysteria. And it is all wrapped in the hypocrisy of Carlson’s anti-law enforcement tirade. But Carlson, Trump, Fox News, and the GOP have apparently forgotten that they were staunch advocates of National Guard deployments during the Black Lives Matter protests last summer. True to his racist form, Carlson supports the oppression of mostly peaceful people of color, but he abhors any restraints on the aggressively violent white nationalists with whom he identifies. And the result is this sort of rabid diatribe that seeks to turn the American people against the military heroes they once pretended to admire.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
So where does an ultra-conservative television network go after the loathsome president they propped up for four years is cast out of office by a decisive majority of the American people? Well, if you’re Fox News you go shopping for programming that is even more radically right-wing and overtly offensive.
That’s the path that was recently announced by Fox’s management following the humiliating loss by Donald Trump to Joe Biden last November. Fox News struggled to maintain their support for the twice-impeached Trump with brazenly dishonest propaganda. They aided and abetted his relentless attempts to spread blatant lies about election fraud, despite having no evidence. Even after Trump was caught provoking a seditionist assault against Congress, and aligning himself with the conspiracy crackpots who orchestrated and carried out the assault, Fox News continued to back him up. That’s what he gets for favoring them with nearly exclusive rights to his softball interviews for four years.
Now Fox News is pondering its future in the wake of a season of ratings declines. For the first time in years, Fox finds itself in third place after CNN and MSNBC. And this isn’t a fleeting moment in the cable news game. Fox’s ratings have been in freefall since the November 3rd election. Along with the audience’s dissatisfaction, Fox has also picked some competition from newcomers, Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN). So the patriarch of the Fox media empire, Rupert Murdoch, has retaken the reins from his son Lachlan to reimpose the extremist wingnuttery that he believes put Fox at the head of the cable news class.
The result of Murdoch’s intervention is a new program anchoring their primetime schedule. It’s called simply “Fox News Primetime.” They probably paid a marketing consultant a fortune to come up with that. But that isn’t the worst of their problems.
The new program represents yet another shift of airtime to more ultra-conservative opinions. It will launch with a rotating cast of temporary hosts. The first week will have Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends in the anchor’s seat. He will be followed by Maria Bartiromo, Katie Pavlich, Mark Steyn, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and former U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy. What they all have in common is that they are all white wingers with an unflinching devotion to conservative politics in general and Trump in particular.
While each of them have earned their own disrepute as individuals, Bartiromo has distinguished herself as Fox’s Senior Trump-fluffer. No one on the network comes to close her drooling sycophancy. So handing her a spot in primetime signals that Fox News is determined to own the rabid wing of the Republican Party. In other words… Same as it ever was.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
The calamitous era of Donald Trump is coming to just the sort of ignoble end that was easily predictable based on his contemptible record of hate, dishonesty, greed, negligence, incompetence, and malignant narcissism. Trump was, and is, a sociopath who never cared a whit for America or the American people.
Now in his final days, Trump has sequestered himself in his White House bunker, refusing to honor even the most trifling presidential duties or traditions. He has been invisible to the public for six straight days. That’s actually quite a feat for someone so notoriously egomaniacal. It speaks to the agonizing degree of despondency he must be suffering. And it cannot be due merely to his banishment from Twitter, which is surely gnawing at him, because he has all of the other communications resources available to any president. Although his Twitter absence has resulted in a major improvement of the Internet with a 73% decline in misinformation since his involuntary exit.
Trump’s uncharacteristic withdrawal from the attention he craves is further evidence of his innate cowardice. He simply can’t face the world before which he has been humiliated as the loser he has always been. It’s ironic that Trump’s cult disciples have regarded him as a courageous fighter for principles in which he never believed. The truth has always been apparent that he is a sniveling coward who fears any circumstance that he can’t control.
That fact is evident nowhere more than in his fear of the free press. Trump has spent the last four years manically assaulting the media as “the enemy of the people.” However, he has also steadfastly avoided confrontation with any reputable journalist whenever possible. And now that his term in office is over, the extent of his seething fear has been documented by presidential chronicler Mark Knoller:
This chart puts Trump’s media phobia into stark perspective. He was plainly too frightened to venture outside of the comfort zone that he knew awaited him at Fox News. The bootlicking sycophants at Fox promised him a free ride as well as shelter from the free press. Consequently, he spent the vast majority of his time granting softball “interviews” to suck-ups like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. He never once granted an interview to CNN, which is the first time in the network’s history that it didn’t interview a president.
This Fox favoritism came at the same time that Trump wavered between an ardent affection for his Fox protectorate and seething animosity for the network if they ever faltered by slipping in a tender criticism. His love/hate relationship with Fox occasionally resulted in blistering attacks declaring that “Fox News is dead“ and that his cult followers should quit watching and switch to the even more obsequious Newsmax or One America Network (OANN).
So Trump is fleeing the presidency with the same gutless trepidation that he demonstrated from the start. He shrunk from any confrontation because he knew deep down that he wasn’t up to the fight. And losing would be too mortifying to contemplate. And those are the same reasons that he is now retreating from public view. He is the consummate coward, which will remain a key component of his loathsome legacy forever.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
Donald Trump has maintained a virtual radio silence ever since his marauding horde of seditionists assaulted Congress on January 6th. It’s safe to assume he is pouting in his pantry with bags of Cheetos and watching reruns of his favorite parts of the riots as his cult disciples vandalized the Capitol and beat up law enforcement officers.
The timeline of events now clearly shows that Trump waited hours before posting his disingenuous video asking his Troll Troops to go home and telling them that he loves them as they were ransacking America’s seat of democracy. We also know that he refused to deploy the National Guard to protect members of Congress and his own Vice-President, Mike Pence.
In defense of his deliberate negligence, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley was dispatched to Fox News to explain why Trump failed so miserably to react in a responsible manner that might have saved as many as five lives. Gidley blamed the media, telling Fox’s media correspondent Howard Kurtz that…
“The media are trying to have it both ways. On one hand he should be censored by ‘Big Tech’ and not be allowed to talk. He also shouldn’t say anything because it’s divisive. And then when he doesn’t say anything, and can’t say anything, because the platforms have removed him, they say ‘Where’s the President? Why aren’t we hearing from him?’ The whole thing’s disingenuous.”
Former Trump campaign spox Hogan Gidley claims Trump "can't" denounce the Capitol riot because social media "platforms have removed him" — as though tweeting is the only way the president can communicate with the public pic.twitter.com/bbCnaenGfA
First of all, it isn’t up to the media whether “Big Tech” suspends Trump’s posting privileges when he repeatedly violates their terms of service by advocating violence and disseminating harmful lies. It’s Trump’s responsibility to follow the rules, which he was warned about more than a hundred times. Secondly, Gidley’s complaint that Trump might be regarded as divisive is also within Trump’s sole control. In fact, he intends to be divisive.
However, the most preposterous point that Gidley proffered was the one where he claimed that Trump “can’t say anything” because Twitter suspended his account. Someone really needs to tell Gidley – and Trump – that the White House has a massive press operation that is specifically designed to put messages out to the public. They can even use more than 140 characters. What’s more, Trump has a right-wing media menu of outlets like Fox News, One America News Network (OANN), and Newsmax, to spread whatever falsehoods are clawing to get loose from their diseased craniums.
It’s notable that Gidley was asserting these accusatory grievances to the millions of viewers on Fox News as he was whining about having no outlet. So he knows that that channel for communications is available. Trump, however, hasn’t even made one of his self-serving phone-in interviews with the bootlickers on Fox and Friends to defend himself. it’s also notable that Kurtz didn’t bother to refute Gidley’s ludicrous claims as to Trump’s alleged inability to communicate with the public.
If the media is asking “Where’s the President,” it’s because Trump himself has decided to go into hiding in the final days of his failed term because he has no discernable excuse for the damage caused by his incompetence and malfeasance. And it’s clear that his spokesman isn’t any better able to make excuses for him either. And the same goes for Trump’s Fox News apologists. This is what the end looks like for a narcissistic sociopath with the emotional maturity of a six year old.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
On January 8th, two days after the Donald Trump Insurrectionists assaulted Congress, Twitter finally suspended his account. It was a long overdue action to prevent him from inciting further violence and disseminating ever more preposterous and self-serving lies. Unfortunately, it came after five deaths and the desecration of America’s seat of democracy.
Trump got away with exploiting social media for years, where he recklessly radicalized an intellectually challenged and emotionally vulnerable confederacy of conspiracy crackpots. He deftly manipulated them to serve his own brazenly selfish and nefarious purposes. It culminated in the riots in Washington that Trump’s deliberately inflammatory rhetoric triggered.
However, that is not the end of the story. Trump will surely continue to advance his egomaniacal aspirations. And he will be aided and abetted by Fox News. On Saturday evening, Fox’s Senior Trump-Fluffer, “Judge” Jeannine Pirro, hosted the Republican’s leading propagator of political cowplop, Jim Jordan. This excerpt from their discussion is illustrative of the deranged mindset on the right:
Pirro: To limit those who are Republicans, to literally get them off the Internet, Facebook and Twitter. I mean there is basically, not just a removal of free speech, but it is a removal of our freedom. Jordan: Yeah. This cancel culture is dangerous. It’s the most dangerous thing going
Jordan: This cancel culture is dangerous. It’s the most dangerous thing going pic.twitter.com/l3Le04uVQq
That’s right. Removing Trump from Twitter is “the most dangerous thing going.” Clearly more dangerous than the deadly rioters that Trump incited with his incendiary and delusional tweets about election fraud. And far more dangerous than the coronavirus that Trump downplayed and allowed to spread unchecked, killing 400,000 Americans.
Fox News would never engage in that sort of “cancel culture.” Well, except that they have totally refused to give me any airtime to reveal how dishonest and dangerous they are. I mean, what’s up with that? They are removing, not just my right to free speech, but my freedom.
And it’s not like Trump deserves this online suppression. Has he ever “cancelled” anyone? Well, you know, other than cancelling Fox News whenever they have been less than unconditionally adoring or insufficiently flattering for his elephantine ego. If Fox ever permits a Trump critic to speak – even if just momentarily so they can prepare an attack – Trump immediately whines that “Fox News is dead“ and insists that everyone stop watching and switch to even more worshipful channels like OANN or Newsmax.
What Jordan, Pirro, and Fox News continue to fail to understand is that the free speech protections in the Constitution only prohibit government censorship. Twitter is a private company with stated rules that users must comply with. They include refraining from advocating violence and disseminating falsehoods that could result in harm. Trump violated those rules regularly.
The evidence of the harm Trump caused was recently documented in a study that found that after Twitter banned Trump, “online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent.” That’s a pretty revealing statistic that attests to the hypnotic influence Trump has on his cult disciples. It isn’t just an accounting of his Twitter activity, but the combined effect of the retweets and other regurgitation on the part of Trump’s followers.
The fact that Trump’s absence from Twitter and Facebook can have this profound an impact on the disinformation that circulates online is justification for removing him and any other party that seeks to mislead the public in ways that produce violence and tangible trauma to society at large. And that being the case, how about we do Fox News next?
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
Last week the militant flank of Donald trump’s cult brigades mounted a seditious assault on the Congress of the United States. Their mission was to disrupt the legislative branch of government from performing its constitutional duty to certify the results of the presidential election. Their orders came from Trump himself who was intent on overturning the will of the American people and declaring himself the de facto dictator of the country.
Trump’s plot was a predictable failure, like pretty much everything else he attempts. But it still produced significant harm as at least five people were killed, and untold more injured. And that isn’t counting the harm it did to the nation’s reputation and faith in democracy.
However, this violent and unpatriotic insurrection didn’t happen in a political vacuum. It was whipped into a manic state of irrational fury by the relentless provocation of Trump, who devoted months to persuading his cult disciples to ignore reality and to disbelieve the facts about the election that he lost decisively to Joe Biden.
Trump was aided and abetted by an ultra-conservative pack of media shills who parroted his delusional assertions of election fraud. And that media contingent was led, as usual, by Fox News. Sycophantic bootlickers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, all contributed to the flagrant flurry of falsehoods that buttressed Trump’s attempted coup.
The traitorous rhetoric disgorged by Fox News was produced and sanctioned by the family of Rupert Murdoch that controls the company. The patriarch, Rupert, still serves as chairman of the media empire. His son Lachlan is the current CEO. And their hand-picked executive team carries out their orders to advance the rightist dogma of the Trump-led Republican Party.
Rupert’s other son, James, has set himself apart from any operational role in the family business. Although he is still a major stockholder and sits on the board of directors. However, he appears to have somewhat less extremist conservative positions. And that was evident in his remarks following the Capitol riots:
“The damage is profound. The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years. […]
“Spreading disinformation – whether about the election, public health or climate change – has real world consequences. Many media property owners have as much responsibility as the elected officials who know the truth but instead choose to propagate lies. We hope the awful scenes we have all been seeing will finally convince those enablers to repudiate the toxic politics they have promoted once and forever.”
James Murdoch nimbly avoided naming names in his commentary. But it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Fox News when he cites “those outlets that propagate lies.” Fox News has long been the foremost offender among media sources that were “spreading disinformation” about “the election, public health or climate change.” So when brother James condemns the “media property owners … who know the truth but instead choose to propagate lies,” it’s impossible to believe that he isn’t referring to his father Rupert, and his brother Lachlan.
And James is right about the persistent damage caused by the purposeful dishonesty of his family of propagandists. They enabled both Trump and the hordes he commanded into the service of his totalitarian aspirations. His statement is a profound condemnation of a media Firestarter bent on burning down the foundation of American democracy.
However, what will James do about it going forward? As a board member and stockholder he has considerable clout in shaping the future direction of the company. And he has both ethical and financial arguments for insisting on major changes. After all, Fox News has taken a considerable hit in the ratings since the election on November 3rd. CNN has actually been beating Fox regularly since then. Even MSNBC has been outperforming Fox.
So now that Fox is languishing in third place it would be a good time to shake up their programming. The problem is that they have actually been getting worse and worse. They even announced recently that they will not broadcast an inaugural special on January 20th that is being carried by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC. So if James wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than release statements to his pals in the press.
NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.
