The Coronavirus is Killing Trump Supporters, So Now He’s ‘Concerned’

Posted by on July 27, 2020 at 2:07 pm. 2 Comments :

Much is being made by some the more milquetoast members of the media of what they are spinning as a “pivot” by Donald Trump with regard to his position on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. They have observed him wearing a face mask for the first time after four months of mocking those who did so, including his opponent, Joe Biden. They have seen him resume the coronavirus briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops), and managing to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump’s months long dismissal of the pandemic’s severity, and his stubborn negligence and incompetence, has resulted in the preventable deaths of nearly 150,000 Americans. And now it is morphing into an awkward display of robotic and transparently insincere “sympathy.” But the consequences of his inaction and deliberate malfeasance are too tragic to ignore. The reasons for which, Trump has just admitted in private discussions with his staff. According to the Washington Post…

“In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people’ in Republican states, a senior administration official said. They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

So Trump’s newfound concern for the suffering citizens of this country was only triggered by his own political self-interest. He wasn’t worried until he learned that his supporters in the red states that he has pandered to exclusively were vulnerable to the viral disease blanketing the nation. Until now, Trump must have thought that only Democrats were susceptible to the coronavirus. And if so, then he couldn’t care less.

However, Trump could not have been more wrong (as usual). Studies support the more probable likelihood that Republicans and Trumpists are actually at greater risk. That’s because they are more attentive to his self-serving and recklessly false platitudes, and his insistence that COVID-19 wasn’t any more dangerous than the common flu. Trump’s cult disciples believed him when he said that it would just disappear as if by magic.

A series of surveys by Axios show that “President Trump’s words and actions have shaped Republicans’ perceptions and behavior on everything from wearing face masks to worrying about economic collapse.” Among their findings is that Republicans report wearing face masks about 41% of the time, less than half of what Democrats reported (81%). Only 38% of Trump’s followers say they are “‘very concerned’ about the COVID-19 outbreak.” That’s compared to 83% of Democrats. The same partisan gaps exist on questions about whether someone has visited relatives (Republicans 61%, Democrats 36%), and concern about the economy collapsing (Republicans 54%, Democrats 60%).

The bottom line is that Trump’s faithful have fallen in line behind his dismissive view of the pandemic. They continue to reject the serious risks and the warnings of health experts. And many are still convinced that simple and proven methods of mitigating the spread (face masks, social distancing, contact tracing, etc.), are actually “Deep State” plots to infringe on their liberty that will eventually lead to America becoming one big communist gulag.

This deranged behavior is directly attributable to the example set by their messiah. And the more they try to emulate him, the more likely they will become victims of the virus. That is not good news for anyone. These careless Trumpoids can just as easily transmit the virus to Democrats as to Republicans. The virus has no partisan affiliations.

But as Trump is discovering, if the virus spreads more rapidly in parts of the country where his voters are more numerous, then the odds are greater that more them will become infected. And if illness – or death – prevents them from casting their votes for him, then he’s finally going to be concerned. It’s nauseating that it would take that sort of egomaniacal selfishness to move Trump to act, but it’s better than him continuing to not act at all.

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’s Dementia is on Vivid Display in Sunday Twitter Tantrum

Posted by on July 26, 2020 at 12:41 pm. 4 Comments :

There is nothing that Donald Trump likes better than to childishly insult his critics and political opponents. With regard to Joe Biden, that has included numerous references to mental stability and fitness for office. Unfortunately for Trump, the American people have thoroughly rejected his claims and, even worse, believe that Trump is the one with the cognitive dysfunction. And in a head to head comparison, more voters say that Trump is unfit to serve.

Donald Trump

Trump has been surprisingly helpful in providing abundant evidence of his acute psychoses. And on Sunday morning he added to the voluminous documentation that he is utterly nuts. This naturally came in the form of rage-filled tweets. Even though he has lately been curtailing the quantity of his Twitter output, this has not impacted that “quality” in any way. Such as this…

No matter how many times Trump asserts that President Obama spied on his campaign, it still isn’t true. And Trump’s allegations of corruption by Obama are a laughable demonstration of projection. It’s Trump and his confederates who have actually been charged and convicted of criminal – even treasonous – conduct.

Trump’s swipe at Biden for a trivial gaffe is just another deliberate misrepresentation of reality. The truth is that Trump clipped that comment out of a twelve minute interview of Biden. He was responding specifically to the anchor of a local TV station in the city of Phoenix. After this comment he immediately noted that the connection between him and the station was “breaking up” So it’s likely that when the anchor said he appreciated Biden “taking the time to talk to the people of our state,” Biden wasn’t able to hear it correctly and assumed the anchor said “city.”

However, if Trump really wants to make this an issue for debate, then he has to deal with more than a few verbal mishaps of his own. For instance, Trump said that…

  • Africa is a country
  • Belgium is a city
  • He “met with the president of the Virgin Islands.”
  • Revolutionary war troops took control of airports
  • Kansas City, Missouri is in the state of Kansas
  • He “watched the firemen on 7/11.”
  • Injecting bleach will cure the coronavirus
  • He is building a border wall between Colorado and Mexico

That’s just a small sampling of Trump’s episodes of derangement. He has also been documented as having told more than 20,000 lies in the past three and half years. But he wasn’t through with his Sunday morning rage-tweeting. He also posted this…

Well, if Trump says that enthusiasm for him is greater than for any campaign in history “according to many,” then it must be true. You just have to ask, many what? Because every poll shows that Biden is beating him nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. What’s more, he can hardly brag about enthusiasm in 2016 when he lost the the popular vote by three million votes.

Trump’s imaginary “silent majority” is a dead give away of his desperation. Because it can’t be a good sign when you’re stealing campaign slogans from Richard Nixon. Also, the majority in America is far from silent. They have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands all across the nation. They are virtually screaming that Trump must be thrown out in 2020.

The American people have had enough. They have seen Trump’s negligence and deliberate malfeasance in mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic. That has led to the deaths of more than 146,000 people. Voters are also aware that Trump’s incompetence has resulted in an economic recession that put 50 million people out of work. They have watched as he cozied up to our enemies and alienated our allies. And they have endured his prioritizing the welfare of corporations and the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

So now Trump is resorting to his infantile tendencies to lash out with petulant tantrums, while avoiding coherent solutions and ignoring the needs of the nation. And he thinks that voters won’t notice how absolutely insane that is. But like everything else, he’s pitifully wrong. And voters will make sure that he knows that in less than 100 days. Meanwhile, enjoy this video that puts Trump’s psychological maladies in perspective:

UPDATE I: Trump returned to Twitter to insure that everyone sees how sick he is. He tweeted that he’s canceling his trip to New York to throw out the first pitch at a Yankee game “Because of my strong focus on the China Virus.” When you’re finished laughing, he also tweeted that “The 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed.” And finally he tweeted that citizens exercising their constitutional rights “are actually anarchists who hate our Country.” Each of these tweets are naked expressions of rabid fear. He knows he’s toast, and he can’t handle it.

UPDATE II: On Monday Trump hammered out another 67 tweets of which 61 were retweets, only 6 originals. Thirteen of the retweets promoted hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure despite abundant evidence that it is both ineffective and potentially harmful. A couple of the videos in those tweets were removed by Facebook and YouTube for sharing false information. Trump also retweeted 19 senators thanking them for passage of the NDAA – All Republicans. Thirty-six Democrats also voted for passage (84-14) who Trump didn’t bother to thank. Unmentioned was that Trump promised to veto this bill if it called for renaming military bases named for Confederate traitors – which it does.

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


Trump is ‘Wow’ed By the Anti-Democratic Profanities of a QAnon Kook

Posted by on July 25, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 2 Comments :

The things that impress Donald Trump are frequently things that most people would find banal at best, nauseating at worst. He is amazed mostly by his own alleged brilliance, self-appraised good looks, and imaginary popularity. His appreciation for things other than himself are few and far between. That’s the life of a malignant narcissist.

Donald Trump

On Saturday morning Trump took to his Twitter Machine and pounded out a few retweets. As usual, they were entirely self-congratulatory tributes to whatever pitiful achievement he thought he had accomplished in the recent past. But apparently, even Trump has had trouble identifying any good deeds for which he could lavish praise on himself. That’s reflected by his sharply reduced Twitter output of late.

Trump’s reliance, therefore, has been on retweets, sometimes of fringe characters with dubious credentials. It’s a risky business that Trump himself acknowledged in an interview Friday saying that “It’s the retweets that get you in trouble.” Of course, his his own tweets are just as troubling as those he swipes from others. But despite that fragile and temporary awareness of reality, Trump went ahead and retweeted this:

The video that Trump was “Wow”ed by was posted by Antoine Tucker (aka Tony Montaga), a former gang member who now claims to be a Christian Republican. He is also a candidate for New York’s 14th district Congressional seat currently held by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, his candidacy could be considered a long shot since, as a write-in candidate, he isn’t even on the ballot.

What’s more, Tucker is proud supporter of the QAnon Conspiracy Crackpot Crusade. “Yes I am a Q Supporter,” he tweeted. “And as your Congressman I’ll make sure The Truth will never have to be Questioned in DC again.” Trump has been promoting QAnon freaks for quite a while now. And as if that weren’t enough, the video is jam-packed with the sort of profanities that a professed Christian would sanctimoniously condemn. For instance…

“The Democrats don’t give a f*ck. They don’t give a f*ck about helping Americans. They don’t give a f*ck about what race you are. They don’t care about what LBGT whatever community you belong to. They care about power. All of this sh*t is about power. All of the media hysteria is about power. Control and power.”

Praise Jesus! What a testimony to the holy word of Gawd! And what a dignified oratory for a U.S. president to honor.

Tucker’s utterly substanceless rant eventually got around to the fringes of a subject. He was apparently steamed at Democrats for not passing a one trillion dollar coronavirus relief bill. He was so steamed that he blamed Democrats for the deaths of quarantined Americans, while absolving Trump of any responsibility for more than 143,000 deaths due to his negligence and incompetence in mishandling the pandemic response:

“Every day that an American dies, suffers, or finds themselves hungry, you thank the damn Democrats for it because that’s what the f*ck they’ve been doing. F*cking up public trust. f*cking up the economy. And blaming this sh*t on Trump. Like it’s his fault when it’s f*ckin’ them. Be aware, man.”

At this point it needs to be noted that this video that Trump posted today was originally posted by Tucker on March 25, four months ago. Two days later Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill, twice the amount that Tucker was triggered by. Democrats wanted $3 trillion, but Senate Republicans forced them to compromise for the lower amount. there is a similar debate in Congress now with Democrats proposing significant relief that Republicans are, once again, opposing. So you might think that Tucker would now be angry with the GOP and blame them for Americans dying every day. Be aware, man.

You have to wonder what Trump thought was so amazing about this three month old video, other than that it viciously and unjustly attacked Democrats. But then again, what more would Trump ever want from such a screed, since that’s how he spends the vast majority of his own time. His GOP confederates have even proposed a resolution in congress to ban the Democratic Party.

So while he is promoting the profanity-laced rants of conspiracy kooks and inciting riots by sending stormtroopers into cities with Democratic mayors, Trump is ignoring the real problems that face real citizens. He has no coherent agenda, no campaign strategy, no plan for handling a surging pandemic or an economy in recession. He is just a ratty bundle of rattled nerves radiating hatred toward his perceived enemies. Which these days, in his paranoid stupor, is nearly everyone.

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


GOP Fascists Float Resolution to Ban the Democratic Party

Posted by on July 24, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 6 Comments :

The devolution of the Republican Party continues to accelerate headlong toward the rocky cliffs of ultimate oblivion. Its leader, the aspiring tyrant and sociopath Donald Trump, is the key propellant of this political disintegration. The Party’s worshipful devotion to Trump makes every member complicit in his heinous crimes against America and humanity.

Donald Trump

The latest testament to the downward spiral of the GOP (Greedy One Percent) is a resolution introduced by Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. Gohmert’s resolution instructs the Speaker of the House to “remove any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy.” It further directs that any such party “be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.”

This is what Gohmert likely believes is a crafty way of disparaging the Democratic Party which, as the party of the South during the Civil War era, advocated for slavery and secession. He is proposing this resolution in response to Nancy Pelosi’s order to remove statues, and other tributes to Confederate traitors, from the Capitol building. The bill approving the order passed the House this week, 301 to 113.

Gohmert and a couple of his GOP colleagues were unable to constrain their dismay over this initiative to finally put an end to the official honorary treatment of treasonous confederate politicians and generals. “The time has come,” Gohmert ranted, “for Democrats to acknowledge their party’s loathsome and bigoted past.”

Of course, the Democratic Party long ago acknowledged – and renounced – the tangential past association with the doctrine of southern racism. Historians agree that it was just southern Democrats, not the Party, that trafficked in such bigotry. What Gohmert isn’t saying (but surely knows) is that there was a realignment in the mid-20th century wherein Democrats embraced civil rights, resulting in the flight of southern bigots to the Republican Party. And that’s where they remain today with the fervent support of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

So Gohmert’s snarky resolution is just another thinly disguised shout out to the GOP’s racist base. It calls on a party that for decades has demonstrated its support for civil rights to be banned, while ignoring the fact that Republicans continue to work for suppression of civil rights and equal justice. There is a reason that the Democratic Party today has the support of 92% of African-Americans.

If Gohmert were sincere about his proposal it would call, instead, for the banning of Republicans and acknowledge their “loathsome and bigoted” present. His resolution’s call to ban any political party that has ever supported the Confederacy seems tailor-made for the GOP. That is made all the more clear with the vote on the bill to remove Confederate statues. All 113 votes opposing the bill (including Gohmert), and thus supporting the confederacy, were Republicans. And not to be left out, Donald Trump weighed in on the matter in his typically deranged way. Trump tweeted that…

First of all, this isn’t up to Sen. Inhofe. The bill has now passed both the House and the Senate by veto-proof margins and will shortly be on Trump’s desk. Should he live down to his racist standards and veto it, his veto is unlikely to be sustained. What’s more, Trump’s assertion that he’s “not a believer in ‘Cancel Culture'” is contradicted by all of the times he has personally “canceled” people and businesses that he disapproved of.

What Trump is a believer in is the same thing that Gohmert and the rest of the GOP believes: That they should have unchallenged, dictatorial, single-party rule over America. Unfortunately for them, the American people have a different perspective and will fight for the democracy and liberty that the Constitution guarantees. And the next battle in that fight is November 3rd.

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


Trump Resorts to Racist Fear Mongering to Draw the Votes of Suburban ‘Housewives’

Posted by on July 23, 2020 at 2:23 pm. 3 Comments :

It never fails. Whenever Donald Trump is cornered by events that expose his disastrous mismanagement of the people’s business, he falls back on the Republican Party’s established, all-purpose defense mechanism: Racism. It’s a tactic that has been employed for decades by the GOP, but never with such knee-jerk consistency as by Trump.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Trump is currently juggling multiple crises, including a raging pandemic that has already taken the lives of more than 143,000 Americans, civil unrest across the nation, economic recession and historic unemployment, and the only problems that Trump actually care about, his disintegrating public image and the approaching presidential election.

So naturally Trump has made a typically tone-deaf, self-serving, executive decision to inflame more racial animus. On Thursday morning he tweeted that…

It’s notable that Trump’s tweet attempts to appeal to an archaic demographic of “Suburban Housewives,” a degrading label that died decades ago along with anachronisms like “the little woman.” But more importantly, Trump is brazenly trying to frighten suburban women and families with thinly veiled inferences to marauding hordes of dark people moving into their exclusive neighborhoods.

This is a purely political desperation ploy that Trump is taking in the wake of polling that shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. Specifically with regard to the suburbs, polls show Biden handily beating Trump by a 52-43% margin. A recent CNN poll found that Biden was leading Trump 63-34% among suburban women.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to scare suburban women with nightmares of neighborhood diversity. But it may be the first time that he’s explicitly blamed Biden for it. However, Trump’s link to an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is hardly justification for this scare tactic.

The article is headlined “Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs.” However, it describes a part of the Fair Housing Act that was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 – fifty-two years ago. The mangling of facts like that in this article shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that it was written by Betsy McCaughey, the woman who coined the deceitful term “death panels” when she lied about Obamacare a dozen years ago. More recently, she appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that “The number of deaths from the shutdown may exceed the number of deaths from the coronavirus” That was more than 100,000 deaths ago. In her article McCaughey claims that…

“Biden’s plan is to force suburban towns with single-family homes and minimum lot sizes to build high-density affordable housing smack in the middle of their leafy neighborhoods — local preferences and local control be damned.”

There is nothing remotely resembling any of that in the law. The specter of high rises in the suburbs is a fiction formed entirely in McCaughey’s mendacious mind. The truth is that the law seeks to advance the goal of “Diverse, inclusive communities with access to good jobs, schools, health care, [and] transportation.” Oh, the horror of it all.

So contrary to Trump’s alarmist warning about how this will “destroy…your American Dream,” the law actually guarantees it for more Americans. What Trump is hoping is that his fear mongering will reverse the trend of suburban women voting for Biden. But that isn’t going to be easy if he all he has are racist lies about good government and labels that disparage and belittle the very people to whom he’s trying to appeal.

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


Trump is So Scared He’s Slashed His Twitter Output

Posted by on July 22, 2020 at 2:12 pm. 2 Comments :

The month of July 2020 has seen another torrent of bad news for Donald Trump, mostly created by Donald Trump himself. His approval ratings continue to decline across nearly every demographic group. Joe Biden is beating him nationally,as well as in the crucial swing states. Even Republicans are drifting away from Trump as his behavior becomes ever more bizarre and driven by desperation.

Donald Trump Apocalypse

Perhaps the clearest signal that Trump recognizes the peril he faces politically is his activity on his favorite communications platform, Twitter. Throughout his presidency he has used Twitter to express his anger, frustration, and delusional (i.e. dishonest) take on reality. That has manifested in manic episodes of uncontrolled tweeting, exceeding a hundred posts on some especially bad days. But that volume has fallen off a cliff this month.

For July of 2020 so far (22 days), Trump has tweeted 508 times. That’s down by a whopping 40% from the same number of days in June when he tweeted 875 times. It’s also notable that in June only 2% (19) of his tweets were retweets. But in July that rocketed to 15% (75), or four times as many. Which means he spent significantly less time composing his own twitterature this month. On nine days his original tweets numbered in single digits. What’s more, there was a noticeable drop off in Trump’s tweeting about halfway through the month. From July 1 until July 11, he averaged about 28 tweets per day. From July 12 forward his average was only about 18 tweets per day. And once again, retweets were far more prevalent in his Twitter feed during the second half of the month. His original output was a third of what it was in the first half.

So is there an explanation for this shift in behavior by Trump? Among the more significant events that took place in this period is, first and foremost, the cataclysmic surge by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Many states are reporting record high infections and fatalities. That’s despite Trump’s false assertions that those numbers are declining and that the virus will soon “disappear” by magic. Trump’s ludicrous dismissal of the severity of the crisis isn’t playing well with the American people. An overwhelming majority don’t trust Trump on the matter. Even worse, a majority regard him as mentally unfit to serve.

Which makes his decision to return to starring in the daily coronavirus briefings that were canceled two months ago all the more peculiar. Remember, they were originally ended because he was making an ass himself and driving his already abysmal approval ratings further into the gutter. And here are a few other probable influences on Trump’s Twitter pullback:

  • The news that Russia is putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan
  • Demotion of his campaign manager, Brad Parscale
  • Supreme Court rulings that could result in the release of his tax returns
  • The widely disparaged commutation for Roger Stone
  • Poor attendance and cancellations of his campaign rallies
  • Continuing civil unrest and demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter
  • The release of a devastating tell-all book by Mary Trump, his niece

That’s enough bad news to tranquilize an elephant, even the Republican kind. And Trump hasn’t had an effective or coherent response to any of it. He tried his usual tactics of insults, lies, and extremist bombast, but none of it has worked. Which leaves him with nothing but his Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) to rely on for emergency support. And even that is getting pitifully useless.

Trump’s enthusiasm for Twitter has been a hallmark of his presidency. He frequently insists that it is the only way he can get his message out without the interference of what he calls the “Lamestream Media.” So it’s noteworthy that he is limiting his own output. In the past, controversy and bad news actually fueled his tweet production. So it’s fair to speculate that now he may be suffering some degree of emotional depression resulting in a self-imposed social media isolation. And if we’re lucky, his condition will deteriorate until he isolates himself entirely, sparing the nation (and the world) any more of the harm and anxiety for which he has been responsible for the past three and a half years.

UPDATE: On Thursday morning Trump pounded out 50 tweets, 44 of which were retweets. So he’s still recycling other people’s posts while producing very little original output.

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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Gaslighting on Fox News: Trump is a Leader on Wearing Masks?

Posted by on July 21, 2020 at 2:53 pm. 3 Comments :

You really have to wonder if Fox News viewers are stupid enough to believe the sheer nonsense that flows from the network’s agents of disinformation (aka hosts). And isn’t Donald Trump’s State TV network insulting them by presuming that they will swallow everything thing they say no matter how preposterous? Are there any limits to what the cult will consume without question?

Donald Trump, Mask, Fox News

On Tuesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends led off with a segment that featured a tweet by Trump posing for a photo-op while wearing a face mask.

There is so much wrong with that tweet that it’s going to take some time to unwind all of it. First of all, Trump has been the most divisive president since the Civil War, so it’s ridiculous for him to assert that “We are united” in any context other than removing him from office. Secondly, even if we concede that the coronavirus originated in China, it’s success in infecting nearly four million Americans, and killing more than 140,000, is due primarily to Trump’s negligence and incompetence. Thirdly, if Trump regards wearing a mask as patriotic, then his patriotism has been woefully absent for the past six months. And finally, most polls show that Trump isn’t even in the top 44 of favorite presidents.

Despite the absurdity of Trump’s newfound advocacy of mask wearing, Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy latched onto it as launching pad for some syrupy sycophancy (video below):

“Trump encourages Americans to mask up. Look at this. […] It’s very telling that yesterday he posted that Twitter picture with him wearing the mask because, as we just opened this segment, certain localities may have to close things down again because the spread is going out there.

But you know, masks are not political. The science says that face coverings are the best way to slow the spread. And if you don’t want to close things down again, if you want to reopen the schools, if you want to keep businesses open, if you want to go to sports, you’ve got to wear the masks. And so I think the president is becoming a leader on this issue. Maybe now, once again, MAGA will stand for ‘Masks Are Great Again.'”

Seriously? Trump is a “leader” on this issue? Since when are people who, due to ignorance and vanity, refused to wear a mask – and even mocked those who did – regarded as leaders when they claw their way onto the bandwagon five months later, after unprecedented suffering and death?

Despite Doocy’s new position that “masks are not political,” Trump’s reversal on masks is nothing but pure politics. Trump’s flip-flop is obviously driven by the fact that his approval rating has fallen off the edge of the Earth, and he is losing to Joe Biden in most polls by double digits. This is a desperation play as Trump watches his world collapse around him. It’s the reason he’s returning to the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings, which were always just thinly veiled reelection campaign events.

Trump’s aversion to masks is well documented – by Trump! As recently as this past weekend, Trump was asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he regretted not wearing a mask and if he would consider a national mandate. He replied…

“No. I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that. No. And I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears. […] all of sudden everybody’s got to wear a mask, and as you know masks cause problems, too.”

Trump has been saying much the same thing since the earliest days of the pandemic. “I think wearing a face mask,” Trump said last April, “as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t.”

However, Trump sees it now. Why? Perhaps because of his abysmal polling and reelection prospects. For Trump the primary concern has always been himself. and it is no longer possible for him to pretend that the American people are on his side. A new ABC Washington Post poll shows that 64% say that they do not trust Trump on the matters related to the coronavirus. And 79% are in favor of wearing masks.

Consequently, Trump is suddenly presenting himself as a patriotic advocate of mask wearing. And true to form, Fox News sees that late and exploitative transition as a demonstration of leadership. And both seem confidant that Trump’s cult disciples will adapt these mythologies to their warped version of reality. The good news for them is that they are likely right. The Trump cultists remain firmly in their comatose state. The bad news for them is that there aren’t enough of them to fill an Applebee’s.

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


Trump Is Reviving His Coronavirus Lies and Propaganda Show

Posted by on July 20, 2020 at 12:55 pm. 4 Comments :

The stench of desperation continues to waft through the halls of the White House, swirling like a noxious cloud around Donald Trump as he struggles to avoid a total electoral and psychological meltdown. Trump’s frantic attempts to maintain some superficial appearance of stability are failing miserably as he trips over every effort to right his sinking ship of state.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump is painfully aware of how poorly he is regarded by the American people. In fact, it is driving his temperament ever downward as his inability to cope results in increasingly bizarre behaviors. His approval ratings are in the gutter. He is getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. And he clearly has no idea what to do to halt colliding with a massive iceberg.

So on Monday morning Trump told reporters that he intends to revive the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings that he held up until late April. You’ll recall that he canceled them because, the more of him that the public saw, the more his approval ratings cratered. It’s a ridiculous response that can only exacerbate his problems.

Ironically, he’s taking the advice of Kellyanne Conway who has tried to convince him that his “numbers were much higher when he was briefing everybody on a day by day basis.” That may be true, but the subsequent decline was not due to his having ditched the briefings. When Trump announced that he was discontinuing the daily Trump Show last April, News Corpse wrote that…

“Trump’s voracious ego compelled him to take center stage for these pseudo-informational events because he was convinced that his magnetic presence would be impossible to resist. Unfortunately for him, his impression of his own charisma was a figment of his acutely narcissistic imagination. As the briefings played on (and on and on and on), it became clear that Trump wasn’t doing himself any favors. […] Consequently, Trump’s advisors sought frantically to persuade him that he needs to fire himself as the COVID-19 spokesmodel.”

From the start, Trump used the briefings to replace his cult rallies that could no longer be held. He believed that the TV ratings were proof that he was universally beloved. When that turned out not to be the case, he tried to return to the rally circuit. But his recent rallies were poorly attended and incapable of pacifying his Olympic-grade egomania. So now, with no good options, he’s revisiting the losing strategies of the past. In his remarks to reporters (video below) he claimed that…

“We had very successful briefings. I was doing them and we had a lot of people watching. Record numbers watching. In the history of cable television there’s never been anything like it. And we were doing very well. And I thought it would be sort of automatic. And a lot of positive things were happening.”

As always, Trump believes that TV ratings are “the real polls” and are reflective of general popularity. They aren’t. Many people tuned in for the information provided by experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Many others watched because they didn’t want to miss the live television broadcast of Trump’s nervous breakdown. It was reality TV in its most morbid form.

When Trump resumes the daily briefings we can expect him to reprise his greatest flops of the past. He will lie about how fantastic everything is going, and due solely to his brilliance. He’s already started this by claiming in this announcement that “the country is doing well” but for a “flare up in Florida, Texas, a couple of other places.” By which he means more than half the states that are currently suffering through record cases and deaths. He’ll also shift blame to anyone who is handy (Dr. Fauci, China, Democrats, etc). He’ll downplay the severity of the pandemic as being comparable to the “the sniffles.” He may be confusing “sniff” with “snuff.”

Trump will once again cast himself as the star of the briefings despite the fact that, due to his ignorance and ego, he has nothing of value to contribute. Consequently, he wastes the time of the public and the press by upstaging the experts so that he can disgorge more lies, brag about imaginary accomplishments, and yell at reporters. He will once again turn what was intended to be a platform for disseminating life and death information into a petty, partisan, political charade.

We know that Trump considers these affairs to be exclusively for his benefit because, when he ceased to be the lead character last April, the briefings themselves came to an abrupt end with Trump tweeting “What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions?”

The real question going forward is: What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the President lies, lavishes undeserved praise on himself, and petulantly insults and argues with the press? If Trump wants to stage more of his phony, self-serving briefings, fine. But the media has no obligation to provide live coverage of these brazenly political sideshows. They can send cameras and junior reporters to record the events, and then broadcast whatever was newsworthy (if anything) afterwards. But they must not allow themselves to be exploited again for Trump’s obvious reelection campaign purposes.

UPDATE: Trump’s return to the Coronavirus briefing was solo – no doctors or other experts were present. And one of the resons he stopped doing them was his tendency to say stupid shit like “inject bleach.” So in this briefing he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is is currently in jail on charges of sex trafficking. He wished her well.

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


Majority Say Trump Does Not Have the Mental Soundness to Serve: Fox News Poll

Posted by on July 19, 2020 at 1:38 pm. 5 Comments :

There is trouble in the Realm of the Stable Genius. And the more that reality contradicts the fantasy life of Donald Trump, the more bizarre and dangerous his delusional tales become. But Trump is, without a doubt, his biggest booster. He has to be. No one else with any scrap of credibility wants the job.

Donald Trump, coronavirus

Trump is constantly telling anyone who still bothers to listen that he is brilliant and infallible. He says he knows more than the generals about war; more than economists about the economy; more than doctors about healthcare. And always, Trump insists that he has a mind that is far superior to those of mere mortals.

Sadly for Trump, he has failed miserably at persuading the American people that any of that is true. A poll by his State TV Propaganda Network (aka Fox News), was just published that asked voters “Do you think Donald Trump has the mental soundness to serve effectively as president?” A majority of the people (51% to 43%) responded that he does not.

Of course, anyone paying attention to the steady stream of Trump’s incoherent babbling, whining, and flagrant lying, already arrived at this conclusion long ago. But the fact that Fox News is validating it with their poll has some significance and provides a stinging rebuke to Trump’s laughable self-appraisals.

What’s worse for Trump is that when Fox asked the same question about Joe Biden, a plurality of voters (47% to 39%) responded saying that he is mentally fit to serve. And that is after Trump has spent months trying to malign Biden, particularly with regard to his mental competence. That effort on Trump’s part has actually backfired.

Another poll published last week by Monmouth University had similar results. Only 35% said they are “very” or “somewhat” confident of Trump’s mental stability. A majority of 54% said they are “not to” or “not at all” confident. Biden’s numbers are the complete opposite with 52% saying they are “very” or “somewhat” confident, and only 35% saying they are “not to” or “not at all” confident.

Following the release of the Fox News poll, Trump was interviewed by Chris Wallace, who actually brought up this question. Which led to one of the most peculiar exchanges between a president and the press ever recorded:

Notice that Trump didn’t actually respond to the fact that a majority of the American people think he’s too demented to be president. Setting that aside, Trump’s “challenge” to both Biden and Wallace to take the test and compare results is a typical Trumpian dodge. That’s because he has not – and will not – release his own results. Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Trump has issued this challenge. He is apparently exceptionally proud of the fact that he can identify an elephant and count backwards from 100. Well, allegedly. Without seeing his results we really don’t know if he “aced it” or even passed it.

In addition to the Fox News poll’s findings on Trump’s mental infirmities, it also showed Trump…

  • Losing to Biden by eight points
  • Losing women by 19 points
  • Losing Blacks by 64 points
  • Losing Hispanics by 30 points
  • Losing millennials by 22 points
  • Behind on favorability (Trump 43% / Biden 54%)
  • Negative on compassion (Trump 36% / Biden 56%)
  • Negative on intelligence (Trump 42% / Biden 51%)
  • Negative on judgment (Trump 40% / Biden 52%)
  • Less trusted on race relations (-21 points)
  • Less trusted on the coronavirus (-17 points)

And as if that weren’t enough, only 26% percent say they are better off than four years ago. A national mask-wearing order for indoor spaces is favored by 71%. Voting by mail is favored by 63%. Continuing the extra $600/week unemployment benefit is favored by 62%. There is almost nothing positive for Trump to cling to in this survey.

The Trump interview featured some nuggets of nonsense as well. Trump repeated his ludicrous assertion that testing for the coronavirus causes cases; he callously stated that the death toll “is what it is”; he claimed that he’s not losing because all the polls are fake; and he floated the crackpot conspiracy theory that “children are taught in school to hate our country.” These are the same schools that he is now recklessly pushing to reopen, which is also unpopular according to the Fox poll.

What’s more, Trump refused to say that he would accept the results of election if he lost. He railed some more about mail-in voting being rigged. And when asked “How will you regard your years as president” after your term ends, he replied “I think I was very unfairly treated […] I’ve been very unfairly treated. And I don’t say that as paranoid. Everybody says it.” Then he he repeated his oft-stated lie that Obama and Biden spied on his campaign.

Finally, Trump made a point of telling Wallace that “I’m not a big fan of Fox, I’ll be honest with you. They’ve changed a lot since Roger Ailes.” Actually, Trump isn’t a fan of any inference of negativity, regardless of where it comes from. And Trump missing former Fox CEO Roger Ailes isn’t surprising since they both have shared being dishonest, right-wing, sexual predators. But Trump still favors Fox News as his network of choice. It is almost the only network that he grants interviews. And his favorite media personalities (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, etc.) are all on Fox.

However, Trump isn’t shy about “working the refs” in an attempt to get Fox to be even more fawning and servile. So no matter how many times Trump says that it’s “So Hard to Watch Fox News Anymore,” he keeps coming back for more fluffing and ego-stroking.

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


Fearful Trump’s Extremist Attacks Are Escalating and It’s Only Going to Get Worse

Posted by on July 18, 2020 at 11:23 am. 1 Comments :

There is an unmistakable stench of desperation in the White House that is spreading like a virus. Donald Trump may be as delusionally confident as ever on the surface, but his behavior is more reflective of someone consumed by fear and a grossly misperceived sense of victimization. This has lead to a new “scorched earth” reelection approach to attacking Joe Biden and a nastier, more toxic campaign strategy.

Donald Trump Zombie

Trump has plenty to be worried about. His negligent and incompetent mismanagement of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has resulted in a tragic surge that exceeds anything seen throughout the world. The economy is in recession and more than 40 million Americans have faced unemployment. There is civil unrest in the streets of America protesting systemic racism, while Trump is advocating for Confederate traitors who fought to preserve slavery. And his reelection campaign is coming apart at the seams amidst historically low polling and abysmal approval ratings.

As Trump’s mental state deteriorates, his paranoia increases. He has begun administering “loyalty tests” to staffers in the White House and virtually every cabinet agency, including the Pentagon. He and his Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) are entertaining bizarre election theories aimed more at soothing his fragile ego than winning in November. And he sees himself as tormented by everyone from former advisors like John Bolton (see his book here) to family members like his niece Mary Trump (see her book here).

Consequently, Trump is resorting to ever more drastic methods of extraction from the electoral Mariana Trench he has dug himself into. He is ramping up his attacks on Joe Biden with allusions to his mental health. That’s a treacherous slope considering that the American people regard Trump as more mentally unfit than Biden. He sat for what he probably thought would be a softball Fox News interview, but ended up getting fact-checked live by Chris Wallace. Trump was called out for his lies about Biden’s position on defunding the police.

However, Trump’s primary concerns are never about the issues that are most important to the American people. He is endlessly and exclusively obsessed with his own welfare and image. Which explains much of his recent outrage over the media’s coverage of his floundering campaign. following his disastrous cult rally in Tulsa, Trump tweeted…

Trump’s uniquely deranged notion that TV ratings are “the real polls” is a perspective that can only come from someone whose otherwise pitifully thin resume is dominated by having hosted a reality TV game show for fourteen years. However, even by his own measure, Trump is a pathetic loser. The ratings for his tongue bath – er, interview – with Sean Hannity don’t look so good when compared to the ratings for Rachel Maddow’s interview of Mary Trump. Hannity pulled in 5.11 million viewers, while Maddow drew 5.23 million.

“Maddow’s sit-down with President Donald Trump’s niece drew a record 5.23 million viewers to the show, leading every show on cable and broadcast in primetime Thursday. […] Thursday’s edition also claimed the largest viewership for a regularly scheduled show in MSNBC’s history.”

So does Trump still believe that these are the real polls? Or will this just incite even more outrageous tweets that defy coherent explanation? It’s most likely going to spur more intense “hyperbollocks,” which is my word combining “hyperbole” and “bollocks” to describe rhetoric that is both exaggerated and unfathomable rubbish.

Regardless, Trump’s warped sociopathy is bound to get worse as the honest depictions of his failures continue to batter him mercilessly. so prepare yourselves for his his attacks on Biden that will grow ever more unhinged in the coming weeks. He simply cannot handle reality, and thus reacts by inventing psychotic fantasies wherein he is infallible and omnipotent. Unfortunately, he also reacts with greater hostility and viciousness. And where that might lead between now and January 20, 2021, is both a mystery and a troubling concern for this nation and the world.

UPDATE: The Washington Post published an editorial that reveals that the “scorched earth” strategy described above has actually been documented and circulated in the White House:

“President Trump has launched a slash-and-burn campaign against an exaggerated caricature of his Democratic opponent, casting former vice president Joe Biden as a destroyer of basic freedoms and a threat to voter’s safety who would ‘let terrorists roam free’ and ‘abolish the American way of life.’ […] In new advertising, tweets and public statements that began to appear earlier this month, Trump has argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a harbinger of chaos and destruction, depicting a fantastical scarecrow largely divorced from reality.”

Hold on, folks. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. And Biden, his surrogates, and Democrats everywhere need to be vigilant and ready to respond.

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