Trump is Lying About – and Trying to Manipulate – the Presidential Debates

Posted by on August 6, 2020 at 3:20 pm. 2 Comments :

Apparently it hasn’t been enough for Donald Trump to rail maniacally about voting by mail. Or to attack his own medical experts for truthfully warning about the worsening coronavirus pandemic. Or to threaten to ban TikTok, a Twitter app that sometimes hosts messages that are critical of Trump. Or to whine incessantly about Fox News (aka State TV) when they aren’t sufficiently worshipful.

Trump Fear

Nope. It has not been nearly enough to satiate Trump’s massive and fragile ego. Now he is turning his wrath on the Commission on Presidential Debates, the independent, non-partisan organization that has been producing these general election encounters for almost fifty years. True to form, Trump cannot enter into any activity without angrily stomping his bone spurred feet until he gets the undeserved attention demanded by his addled-brain, malignant narcissism. Consequently, Trump took to his Twitter machine to bellow…

In order to give his imperious grumbling some additional oomph, Trump dispatched his equally schizoid personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to fire off an urgent missive to the Commission with a set of utterly irrational, albeit self-serving, requests. However, it’s hard to take seriously a plea that opens and closes with a disparaging remark about Joe Biden finally being, “available to leave his basement for the fall debates.” Stay Classy, Rudy.

Giuliani’s letter sought to change the terms of the already agreed upon debate schedule to add another meeting between Trump and Biden in early September because…

“By the time of the first presidential debate … as many as eight million Americans in 16 states will have already started voting. [Giuliani claimed to want to] avoid having millions of Americans disenfranchised by not being able to see and hear the two major party candidates debate before they have ballots in-hand.”

For Giuliani and Trump, or any Republican, to complain about disenfranchising voters after having gutted the Voting Rights Act, and worked so hard to eliminate early and weekend voting, close polling places, purge registration rolls, and draw preposterously gerrymandered districts, is Olympic-grade hypocrisy.

There is, however, a notable logical fissure in Giuliani’s demands. The vast majority of the states don’t allow for any voting prior to the first debate, which will be held on September 29. And the few that do provide ballots before then, do not require that they be returned until election day. Which means any voter who receives a ballot can simply hold onto it until after any or all of the debates before making their decisions and mailing it in. Although it is best to return ballots as soon as possible to facilitate tabulation, it is not required.

What’s more, voters this year are particularly committed to their presidential preference already. According to a recent poll by CBS News, most voters say that they “strongly support their candidate” (77% of Trump supporters / 74% of Biden supporters). Nine in ten say they would never consider the other candidate. So barring a catastrophic meltdown, the debates may not have much influence over the election outcome. And by all appearances, it’s Trump who would be most susceptible to the meltdown scenario.

In addition to Trump’s ludicrous scheduling alterations, he also weighed in on who he thinks should moderate the debates. Note that the candidates have never selected the moderators for these debates in the past. And the reason for that is perfectly illustrated in Trump’s ultra-partisan list of preferred moderators. Out of 24, nine of them are from Fox News, including notorious Trump-fluffers like Maria Bartiromo. The list also includes some shameless bootlickers from the New York Post, Christian Broadcasting Network, and the Wall Street Journal.

The Commission sent Giuliani their response that can be summarized as a big “NO” on every count. Surely Trump will regard that as a personal slight and throw a Twitter tantrum casting himself as the victim of a “Deep State” plot to destroy him. Because, sadly, that’s what we’ve all come to expect from the Crybaby-in-Chief. But his infantile tactics won’t help him get his way this time. And his well-founded fear of being humiliated is driving him to ever more deranged outbursts, such as…

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

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Crybaby Trump Runs to Fox News Following His Latest Media Fiascoes

Posted by on August 5, 2020 at 2:03 pm. 5 Comments :

The flop sweat gushing from Donald Trump is flowing like a tsunami the closer we get to Election Day. His polling continues to languish near historic lows for both reelection and job approval. And even his traditional allies are politically distancing from him for fear of being swept away themselves. it’s a downward spiral that shows no sign of slowing down.

Donald Trump, Mask, Fox News

Trump’s response to the imminent peril that he finds himself in has been to triple down on the lies, insults, and fear mongering, that have been the staples of his campaign. As a result he lashed out at Dr. Deborah Birx, his hand-picked Coronavirus Task Force medical expert, as “pathetic” just because she told the truth for a change. He flip-flopped on his opposition to mail-in voting (but only in Florida where he needs the votes of senior citizens who might not otherwise cast ballots). He made a ludicrous and unconstitutional proposal to delay the election. And he even threatened to ban TikTok from the United States in retaliation for criticism on the app from people like Sarah Cooper.

But that’s not all. Trump’s recent interview by Jonathan Swan of Axios exposed his shallow and hostile knee-jerk defensiveness and inability to engage in a coherent discussion. A PolitiFact analysis identified 22 false statements in the interview. And in a desperate effort to counteract the pitiful image he displayed, he immediately sought refuge in the warm embrace of his Fox News sycophants.

In the past three days Trump has done three phone-in interviews on Fox. One with his BFF Sean Hannity. One with Fox’s Senior Trump-Fluffer, Lou Dobbs. And on Wednesday morning, a full hour (video below) with the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. Here are a few of the lowlights:

ON SUSPENDING THE PAYROLL TAX:

FOX: What’s your plan for businesses when it comes to the payroll tax cut?
TRUMP: Well, I may do it myself. We’re negotiating right now. I have the right to suspend it. And I may do it myself. I have the absolute right to suspend…ah, the payroll…ah, do the payroll tax. We call it a payroll tax suspension.

Did our “stable genius” president come up with the idea of calling suspending the payroll tax a “payroll tax suspension” himself? More importantly, does he know that the payroll tax is used exclusively to fund Social Security, and that his proposed suspension would put the program at risk? And finally, he clearly doesn’t know that he has no authority whatsoever to suspend or otherwise alter tax laws passed by Congress. To his great dismay, he is not the American Dictator.

ON OPENING SCHOOLS:

FOX: What is the latest in your view as to how these schools should reopen?
TRUMP: My view is schools should reopen. This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away. And my view is that schools should be open. If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost immune from this disease.

My view is that Trump is almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost completely insane. He repeats himself ad nauseam without ever answering the question or making an intelligible point. And above all, he is comfortable with exposing children and their families to a deadly virus that is still out of control due to his negligence and incompetence.

ON OBAMA’S EULOGY FOR JOHN LEWIS:

FOX: Do you agree that [Obama’s eulogy for John Lewis] seemed like a campaign speech and less of a eulogy?
TRUMP: I thought it was a terrible speech, it was an angry speech. It showed there’s anger there that people don’t see. He lost control and he’s been really hit very hard by both sides for that speech. That speech was ridiculous.

You really have to wonder if Trump even saw Obama’s inspiring and heart-felt tribute. It is Trump’s review that is “terrible” and “angry” and utterly “ridiculous.”

ON HIS 2ND TERM:

FOX: Mr. President, what is your second term agenda? What are your top priorities?
TRUMP: I want to take where we left – we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. We were better than any other country. We were better than we were ever. We never had anything like it in this country […] What I want to do is take it from that point and build it even better.

Trump went off on a deranged rant about everything from unemployment to the stock market to how awful our allies are. What he never bothered to mention was anything about his second term agenda.

Needless to say, no one on Fox News challenged Trump’s lies or even bothered to ask a follow up question. They merely tossed him softballs and let Trump ramble on incoherently for twenty minutes. So Trump gets away with claiming he can unilaterally undo tax legislation, baselessly project his own anger onto Obama, and failing to articulate an agenda for the future. And for the record. Trump unleashed another 20 falsehoods on the Fox interview.

Which is why the one thing Trump said that is remotely connected to reality was just slightly off the mark. Referring to his prediction about the forward course of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump babbled that “This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away.” However, that typically inane Trumpism is more aptly applied to his presidency. And for those of you with exceptionally strong stomachs and nothing better to do, below is the full Fox and Friends interview.

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


In Desperate Reversal Trump Pleads with His Supporters to ‘Vote By Mail’

Posted by on August 4, 2020 at 12:22 pm. 5 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has been ranting in his customary incoherent manner about the risks of voting by mail. He insists that it is a process that is rife with fraud, despite not having any evidence to support his alarmist raving. To the contrary, all the evidence shows that it is safe and secure, and has been for decades.

Every study conducted to ascertain the reliability of mail-in voting has concluded that there is no problem other than trivial numbers of incidental errors. David Lublin, an elections expert and professor at American University in Washington, D.C. told ABC News that…

“Voter fraud has not been a widespread problem in the United States. It’s just not remotely a widespread problem that, in fact, usually when claims are made, the more they’re investigated the more they disappear.”

Even a Commission on Election Integrity set up by Trump himself in 2017 failed to document any fraudulent voting and, humiliated, was disbanded a few months later.

So it is with particular curiosity, although not remotely surprising given his penchant for hypocrisy and lies, that Trump has reversed himself completely and is now embracing mail-in voting, but only because it is now in his interest to do so

Trump’s tweet starts off with the tacit admission that he has been deliberately misrepresenting an alleged difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting. But everyone other than Trump knows that there is no difference whatsoever in the processes for requesting or casting ballots. They are just different names for the same thing. What’s more, Trump concedes that voting in this manner is both “Safe and Secure, Tried and True.” While he singles out Florida, the same is true for every other state.

This striking turnaround comes just hours after Trump reiterated his baseless charge that voting by mail is an attempt to rig the election and will result in massive fraud. A few days ago Trump unleashed a maniacal tirade declaring that, due to mail-in voting, “This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.” He likely meant that not as a warning, but as a promise of what he intends to do.

The reason for this frantic u-turn is likely that Trump has finally been convinced that his anti-voting harangues are actually hurting his own reelection prospects. Republicans across the country have been begging him to stop this rhetorical nonsense because they see how badly it is affecting their campaign efforts for both the White House and down-ballot races for Congress, the Senate, and local offices.

The real purpose of Trump’s assault on democracy has been to suppress the vote. He and the GOP have been focused on reducing voter participation for years. They know that when more people vote, Democrats win. Trump even admitted this last April when he told Fox News that it “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” He went on to complain that Democrats were “crazy” for supporting vote-by-mail, saying that “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” For once, he’s right.

To achieve his nefarious anti-democratic ends, Trump is attempting to sabotage the Postal Service. He is refusing to allocate necessary funding for continued operation. He has advocated for privatization, which would utterly destroy the 250 year old, constitutionally mandated institution. He recently installed Louis DeJoy, a major campaign donor, as the new Postmaster General. DeJoy is already ordering slow-downs and other measures to impede service with the intention of disrupting the election.

Trump obviously doesn’t care about the adverse effect this will have on voting. And he certainly doesn’t care that a majority of Americans support mail-in voting. But he is also ignoring the fact that a crippled post office would have trouble delivering Social Security checks, prescription medicines, and other critical necessities. It could literally cost lives. But Trump’s purposeful mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic has already taught us that he couldn’t care less about any of that.

However, now that Trump has become aware that he might also suffer some ill effect of his campaign against mail-in voting, he is callously and selfishly changing his tune. Whether this will have any effect on his cult disciples is another question. They have already initiated demonstrations to protest mail-in voting by burning their own applications. If MAGAts don’t want to vote, that’s something Democrats should eagerly encourage. Feel free to retweet/share this:

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


PATHETIC: Attack Dog Trump Snarls at Dr. Birx for Daring to Tell the Truth

Posted by on August 3, 2020 at 2:50 pm. 4 Comments :

You have to wonder how anyone can lower themselves to working for Donald Trump. The rancid patterns of his perverse and egomaniacal behavior are so reliably steeped in punishing vengeance that it’s impossible to ignore the certainty that eventually you will become his victim. What measure of denial prevents people from seeing that?

Donald Trump Angry

On Monday morning Trump provided yet another example of his steaming wrath, this time directed at an otherwise loyal member of his sycophantic Coronavirus Task Force. In a tweet that began by insult House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump stumbled into a bitterly insulting stab at Dr. Deborah Birx:

First of all, Trump’s sniveling whinery about Pelosi is ramped up to at least eleven. What he describes as “horrible” was actually pretty tame. Pelosi was asked if she had confidence in Dr.Birx. To which she calmly replied “I don’t have confidence in anyone who stands there while the President says ‘swallow Lysol and it’s going to cure your virus.'” No rational person could argue with that.

Secondly, Trump indicates that his anger is rooted in criticism of Dr. Birx being “too positive on the very good job we are doing” on combating the TrumpVirus. But that’s precisely why she has lost the confidence of Pelosi and every other knowledgeable person. Only the most heartless and uncaring cretins could celebrate 157,000 dead Americans and nearly five million sickened as a “positive” outcome.

Finally, Trump got to the point by making the accusation that Birx “took the bait & hit us.” He then called her “pathetic.” And what was so pathetic about Birx’s remarks? She simply said that “What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as equal urban areas.”

Birx was absolutely correct. Despite her generally embarrassing performances as Trump’s dancing puppet, Birx had a rare moment of honesty that corresponded to the facts. And Trump wasn’t having it. So while Pelosi gently conveyed that she lacked confidence in Birx, Trump viciously disparaged her as pathetic. And then he accused Pelosi of saying “horrible things.”

What’s more, Trump’s White House Director of Strategic Communications, Alyssa Farah, went even further saying that “It is deeply irresponsible of Speaker Pelosi to repeatedly try to undermine & create public distrust in Dr Birx.” What does Farah think that Trump is doing when he castigates Birx, Dr. Fauci, and other members of his task force whenever they have the audacity to place their expertise above his flabby gut feelings?

No one has done more to undermine his own team than Trump. He doesn’t even allow them to attend the briefings anymore. Which may be for the best since they are usually just photo-ops for his reelection campaign.

In addition to his tweet attack on Birx, Trump also praised himself for his tragic mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic, lied again about cases being created by testing, ranted about the “fake” news, indulged in his obsession with TV ratings, and bragged about the puny crowds who attended his event in “Frorida.” In other words, business as usual in the Dark Circus of Trump’s Dystopian World.

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


Trump Clings to Pitiful Fox News Polling Analysis that Mangles Reality

Posted by on August 2, 2020 at 1:23 pm. 2 Comments :

As Election Day draws nearer, Donald Trump’s prospects for reelection become more distant. All of the national polls show him losing to Joe Biden by substantial margins. Even worse, Trump is losing in every crucial swing state. Biden is even competitive in the traditionally red states of Texas and Georgia.

Donald Trump

With less than 100 days to go, Trump has to recognize that he is deep trouble. Although, with the severity of his malignant narcissism, he may have convinced himself that is universally beloved. But the truth is that his personal and job approval ratings are swirling the drain. His policies are rejected by broad majorities of the American people. His opportunities for in-person campaigning are constrained by the Trump Virus, ironically a problem exacerbated by his own negligence and incompetence. and it’s only been getting worse for him as time goes by.

Consequently, Fox News is stepping up their efforts to defend Dear leader with ludicrous analyses of polls that are inherently awful. Host Jesse Watters delivered a monologue on Saturday night that selected one poll that he managed to spin so furiously he might have created a black hole of derp. Watters led off a segment he dubbed “The Trump Turnaround” by saying that “You can feel the momentum shift in the presidential race. It showed up in the polls too, in key battleground states.”

It’s hard to know what Watters was actually feeling, but it could not have been momentum. He was citing a poll conducted by Change Research for CNBC. They are a pollster that is frequently an outlier that leans to the right. According to their methodology statement, the poll “reaches voters via targeted online ads that point people to an online survey instrument.”

Huh? So respondents self-select by clicking on Internet ads. That is hardly a scientific process for statistical data analysis. However, even this dicey poll had nothing positive for the Trump camp. The take that Watters tried to sell to dimwitted Fox News viewers (and to Trump) was that this poll was less horrible for Trump than the previous one.

Watters noted that the lead Biden holds over Trump in six “battleground” states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) were smaller than the poll published two weeks prior. What Watters fails to mention is that they are still leads. That’s right, Biden is beating Trump in every one of these states, and Watters thinks there is good news in that.

Watters also neglected to inform his Fox Cult following that the leads reported in this poll are significantly smaller than the leads reported in every other poll. Comparing these results to the average of recent polls shows Biden’s cumulative lead in the swing states is literally double what the Change Research survey found. So naturally this prompted Watters to aim this admonishment at his audience:

“Don’t believe the lies you hear from the media or on social media about a Biden Victory. This is going to be a very close election. But President Trump has the edge.“

https://twitter.com/WattersWorld/status/1289728874293518337

Concluding that “Trump has the edge” when he is behind in every instance is a feat of Olympian bullshittery. Which is, of course, what Fox News is most famous for. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump retweeted this segment to bask in the glow of his epic failure. But if Watters and Trump want to believe this so badly, let’s not spoil it for them. Reality will reveal itself in its own time.

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


Cancel Culture: If Trump Bans TikTok, What’s Next? CNN? Fox News?

Posted by on August 1, 2020 at 12:43 pm. 4 Comments :

The ever expanding tyrannical aspirations of Donald Trump continue to test the limits of American tolerance for fascist, egomaniacal, ignoramuses in positions of power. Trump has already shown that it’s possible to assemble a devoted, albeit tiny, cult following who are willing to abandon the principles of liberty and freedom enshrined in the Constitution if it means achieving their dreams of a white, christo-supremacist confederacy.

Donald Trump Pacifier Fox

However, on Friday Trump took a step that may have crossed a line that even makes his most worshipful disciples nervous. No, it wasn’t his illegal suggestion that the election in November be delayed. And it wasn’t his quadrupling down on the lie that mail-in voting is rife with fraud. The latest Trumpism that is rattling the timbers of democracy is his declaration that he will ban the Twitter app TikTok from the United States:

“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States. Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order.”

As is always the case, Trump’s belief that he has omnipotent powers to rule with divine finality exists only in his infected imagination. Unfortunately, his delusional outbursts can’t be dismissed because they are inevitably adopted by his apostles in the populace and the press. And for some reason these perverse patriots are not bothered by the thought of the government stomping its boot down on a communications platform simply because it has hosted some content that is critical of Dear Leader. That’s right, I’m lookin’ at you Sarah Cooper.

Trump’s threat to cancel TikTok may be a risky gambit. The app has more than 800 million users worldwide and is popular with a broad cross section of Internetians. There are already reports that his threatened ban could ignite a torrent of angry young voters incensed by the censorious action. This may be another explanation for Trump’s vengeful threat. He is attempting to punish TikTok activists who punked his cult rally in Tulsa a couple of months ago by signing up to attend without any intention of doing so. That resulted in a humiliating campaign event that drew less than 6,000 people to an arena that holds 19,000.

However, this isn’t the first attempt by Trump to cancel something to which he objects. Despite the alleged right-wing aversion to “cancel culture” Trump has also endeavored to ban immigrants, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus tests, and mail-in voting. More ominously, Trump’s war on the media – which he maligns in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people” – is his way canceling everything from CNN and the Washington Post, to WKRP and the Hartford Pennysaver.

And let’s not forget one of Trump’s most despised critics … Fox News! Never mind the fact that Fox is practically the only network for which he will grant an interview. Or that he relies more on Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, for advice than anyone in his Cabinet. Trump still whines that it’s “so hard to watch Fox News anymore.” And that “@FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected.” And he’s “Looking for a new outlet“ because Fox has “more anti-Trump people, by far, than ever before.” And much, much more.

Considering Trump’s steaming disdain for Fox News (when he isn’t lavishing it with praise and exalting in their adoration), it may just be a matter of time before he calls for banning the network from the airwaves if they don’t adjust their 98% pro-Trump propaganda to 100%. [Yes, I know that Trump will never ban his Ministry of Disinformation]. But if Trump really wants to ban the biggest source of online content that is harmful to his public image and his reelection, he needs to ban Donald Trump. Because there is no one who does more to expose his idiocy, hatred, and sociopathic self-interest, than he does himself. It’s not even close. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.

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

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Trump Reveals New Campaign Slogan: The Greatest Election Disaster in History

Posted by on July 31, 2020 at 1:25 pm. 1 Comments :

When someone is suffering from severe mental infirmities, they are prone to making remarks that inadvertently expose the depths of their derangement. Donald Trump is a prime example of this. And he just provided another instance to add to the cornucopia of commentaries that serve to prove how socially distant he is from reality.

Donald Trump Rally Trash

On Friday morning Trump addressed a gaggle of reporters in his ongoing effort to claw his way out of the political abyss he has dug for himself. Among the questions he replied to was one about mail-in voting. He began by falsely asserting that “mail-in ballots are a disaster,” and that the upcoming election will be “rigged.” He then went off on an extended tirade that was chock full of baseless allegations drawn mostly from his asinine imagination. The rant (video below) concluded with Trump claiming that…

“This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.”

Don’t be confused. That is not a warning. It’s a promise. It’s what Trump and his Republican confederates intend to insure happens by whatever means necessary. He’s not issuing an alarm. He’s proclaiming with pride the core strategy of his 2020 reelection campaign. He should print it on his hats.

This isn’t a new tactic by the GOP. They have made the failure of government the primary theme of their party philosophy for decades. They fear monger about how terrible government is, and then, when they gain power, they set about to prove it by purposefully orchestrating the failure they predicted. Then they ask you to vote for them again.

Trump’s persistent condemnation of mail-in voting will continue to be a key component of his reelection effort. He knows that his prospects for victory are dismal, so he’s focusing on delegitimizing the election. He even went so far as to propose to delay the election, which he has no legal authority to do. Although, if the the election date were to change, most Americans would probably prefer to make it sooner, along with Inauguration Day.

In a bizarre twist of political theater, Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was asked about the news that Hong Kong would be delaying their elections. She responded without a hint of irony that…

“We condemn the Hong Kong government’s decision to postpone for one year its legislative counsel elections and to disqualify opposition candidates. This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s prosperity.”

Exactly! So McEnany is affirming that Trump’s intentions are to “undermine the democratic processes and freedoms” of the United States. Not that any further affirmation was needed. It was apparent in Trump’s deployment of federal storm troopers to assault and suppress citizens exercising their constitutional rights to demonstrate. It’s apparent in his toleration of Russia placing bounties on American soldiers. It’s apparent in his favoritism of corporations and the wealthy in his economic and taxation agenda. And it’s tragically apparent in his fatally negligent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Remember that when you hear Trump say that “This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.” He’s right, but not for the reason he thinks. Like everything else that Trump brags about, this will be “the greatest…in history.” That’s how you know that it’s something he’s taking pride in. And It’s why the American people cannot afford to be complacent about it. It will take the determined vigilance of every patriotic citizen to prevent Trump from achieving the disaster he intends to provoke.

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


Trump is Right About Changing Election Day – Make It Sooner

Posted by on July 30, 2020 at 12:53 pm. 3 Comments :

On the day that civil rights hero John Lewis is being laid to rest, Donald Trump is ranting incoherently on Twitter. But then why should today be any different for him? He didn’t even send a representative to pay respects at the service. The depths to which Trump’s desperation is sinking is profoundly disturbing and predictive of his dangerously devolving psychoses. And the worst is yet to come.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

The reference to John Lewis is not tangential. He was an iconic fighter for voting rights for all Americans. But on Thursday morning Trump posted another round of tweets attacking the legitimacy of mail-in voting. Never mind that it has been done safely and securely for decades. Or that it is used by Trump and many in his family and administration, and the military. Or that his own commission on the matter found no evidence of fraud. Or that Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, just testified this week that he has no evidence supporting assertions that voting by mail is susceptible to foreign interference.

Despite all of that, Trump still sought to sow doubt about the election. It’s a position he’s taking due to his well-founded fear that he is going to lose bigly. And he’s working hard at it. Trump has tweeted his opposition to mail-in voting at least 22 times so far this year. And he is simultaneously trying to sabotage the Post Office in order to disrupt the election. So he tweeted that…

First of all, there is absolutely no difference between “mail-in voting” and “absentee voting.” That’s just a pitifully illogical dodge that Trump invokes in order to excuse the fact that he frequently votes by mail.

More importantly, Trump’s suggestion that the election be delayed is another brazen example of his tyrannical aspirations. The president has no authority to delay an election. However, Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law, was asked by Sen. Tim Kaine about Trump’s tweet. Pompeo refused to acknowledge that Article II, Section I of the Constitution states explicitly that only “The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Pompeo’s pathetic evasion perfectly exemplifies the Trump regime’s aversion to constitutional law.

It is unarguable that the power to set election dates resides exclusively with the Congress. What’s more, the date that the president’s term ends is set by the Constitution as January 20, and is immovable. In fact, if a new president is not sworn in by January 20, then the Speaker of the House (currently Nancy Pelosi) becomes president. Even Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at Fox News, refuted Trump’s ludicrous proposal as “a flagrant expression of his current weakness.”

However, if we were to humor Trump in his dictatorial ignorance, there is a case to be made for changing the election day. Not to delay it, but to advance it. The harm that Trump is doing to America is escalating with each passing day. His negligence and incompetence with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is producing more illness and death that would otherwise be preventable. He continues to suck-up to Vladimir Putin, and refuses to hold him accountable for putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers. He is cozying up to our enemies and alienating our allies. Domestically, he is deploying his StormTrumpers in cities around the country to assault people exercising their rights to protest. He is issuing executive orders that cut regulations intended to protect America’s air, water, and workplaces.

Every day that Trump remains in office is another day that he makes the nation weaker. And the prospect of removing him sooner by scheduling an earlier election would be an enormous benefit to all citizens, and to the world. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until November 3rd to vote Trump out, and then another two and half months to inaugurate his successor, Joe Biden. Until then, we must remain vigilant and determined to suppress Trump’s worst tendencies. That isn’t going to be easy, but it is necessary and an obligation for all patriots.

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


WTF? Fox News Judge Says Trump is Totalitarian – And He Retweets It?

Posted by on July 29, 2020 at 1:35 pm. 4 Comments :

There have been far too many episodes of Donald Trump exposing himself as mentally unfit to enumerate here. After all, there are books dedicated to the subject (like “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”). Let’s just take the voters (as polled by Fox News) as proof that the nation has had enough of being governed by a sociopathic narcissist. Trump’s claim that he “aced” a cognition test notwithstanding, he is unarguably psychologically distancing from reality.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

On Wednesday morning Trump mounted his customary Twitter defense with more than three dozen tweets before noon. But one in particular illustrated perfectly how badly his cognitive skills have deteriorated. Presumably he was responding to the criticism of his fascist deployment of faux federal law enforcers in Portland.Oregon, and other localities. But what he tweeted was an article in the “Moonie” Washington Times, written by Fox News senior legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano. The headline reads “How totalitarianism begins in the U.S.”

It’s fair to say that Napolitano does not regard Trump’s hyper-aggressive tactics as an appropriate use of government authority. In fact, he castigated Trump’s phony “law and order” rhetoric saying that “there is nothing lawful or orderly about what these agents did. Their activities in Portland are unlawful, unconstitutional and harmful.” Some other choice excerpts are even more damning…

“Last weekend, with no notice or local consent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent teams of agents — untrained in crowd control and wearing military fatigues — onto Portland’s streets. Their uniforms bore no governmental, administrative or personal names, just the word “Police” on masking tape. They descended upon the city in unmarked SUVs and began grabbing people indiscriminately off the streets, without regard to the person’s lawful presence or personal behavior.

“It was a kidnapping, not an arrest. An arrest is a lawful restraint by a legitimate government authority pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge specifically naming the person to be arrested, or pursuant to probable cause of crime personally observed by the arresting officers. Neither of these was the case in Portland.”

“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to protect speech, not assault those who exercise it. If these indiscriminate beatings and kidnappings are intended to deter folks from publicly dissenting, it is profoundly unconstitutional, counterproductive and will be costly to the federal government.”

You have to wonder why Trump retweeted this article. Did he just see the Washington Times logo and a photo of civil unrest and assume that it advanced his fear mongering campaign theme? Was he going only by the byline of a Fox News pundit? Clearly he didn’t bother to read any part of the article. If this isn’t more evidence of his declining mental state, it is at best proof of his lazy and negligent approach to his job.

Trump’s attitude toward Fox News has been a wild ride of contradictions. He frequently whines about not getting 100% adoring coverage from his Ministry of Propaganda. But he also rewards them with nearly every television interview he grants. On Wednesday morning he displayed both his appreciation and his hostility to Fox News. In one tweet, Trump congratulated them on their recent ratings performance. Then, just a couple of hours later, he complained that they are “Not even watchable.”

That is emblematic of the roller coaster psychoses that Trump is exhibiting. And it’s getting harder to find an hint of coherency in his outbursts. On Tuesday he tweeted a witch doctor who claimed that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for the coronavirus. It isn’t! He defended her even after it was revealed that she also believes that dream sex with demons causes illnesses and that space alien DNA is in many vaccines. What’s more, he told his staff that he is concerned about CIVID-19 fatalities now that it is taking the lives of “our people” in red states. And this is the “stable genius” that the Republican Party (and a smattering of cultists) continues to stand behind? They all need a dose of that space alien DNA – ASAP!

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


Twitter Lets Trump Get Away with Dangerous Lies About the Coronavirus

Posted by on July 28, 2020 at 2:44 pm. NO Comments :

Last week Donald Trump announced that he would be reviving his Coronavirus Task force Briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops). In the few public session he’s held since then he has struggled to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter. But the effort has earned him some praise from sycophantic, right-wing, media shills as evidence of his “pivoting” to a more “presidential” demeanor.

Donald Trump Virus

Seasoned Trump watchers knew that any such pivot would be incidental and temporary. And that has proven to be the case. In the past week Trump has demonstrated his pitiful lack of self-control or disciple by ranting about everything from wearing face masks to campaigning for suburban “housewives” to maligning peaceful protesters as violent “anarchists” and more.

On Monday Trump fell completely off the fence by posting 13 deranged and dangerous late-night tweets promoting hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure, despite abundant evidence that it is both ineffective and potentially harmful according to his own FDA.

A couple of the videos in those tweets have since been removed by Twitter (and Facebook and YouTube) because they were sharing false information. Don Trump Jr’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended for sharing the same videos. Which begs the question: Why wasn’t Trump’s account suspended? After all, Trump actually shared the same false information at least six times.

For the record, here are the now removed/edited links to those tweets:

All of those tweets have now been either deleted or had the video removed. The degree of the misinformation they disseminated was so severe that the three biggest platforms for social media all agreed that it was too dangerous to share. It was so potentially harmful that Don Jr was punished by Twitter for passing it on to his followers.

Yet somehow, the Disinformer-in-Chief was let off the hook. For some reason Twitter doesn’t see fit to hold Trump accountable, or to protect their users from his irresponsible ravings. Trump’s tweets contained the same scientifically discredited video. Plus, he posted seven other tweets making the same hazardous claims about hydroxychloroquine without the offending video.

Trump is recklessly endangering the lives of his dimwit cult followers who cling blindly to every asinine idiocy that he utters. Twitter ought not to be helping him spread these lies but, ultimately, the fault and the harm lie with Trump.

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