Fox News Lawyers Tell Court: Our Audience Doesn’t Assume We Tell the Truth

Posted by on June 17, 2020 at 3:49 pm. 13 Comments :

Any fair-minded person who has watched Fox News for more than fifteen minutes knows that the network will twist, distort, mangle, and deliberately lie in the pursuit of their mission to disseminate right-wing propaganda. It is why they were created by conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch and Republican campaign hack Roger Ailes.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

The evidence of Fox’s purposefully dishonest “reporting” has been documented for years by a multitude of journalists and fact-checkers. But for the purpose of this article it isn’t necessary to provide any links to that documentation. That’s because Fox news has admitted it themselves. And this time it isn’t some Fox idiot making an inadvertently true gaffe. This time it was in a court of law.

See also: Fox News Court Ruling: No ‘Reasonable Viewer’ Takes Tucker Carlson Seriously

Tucker Carlson, one of Fox’s most prolific liars, is being sued for defamation. Karen McDougal is a former Playboy model who was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer on behalf of Donald Trump in order to buy her silence about their sexual affair. Subsequently, Carlson did frequent stories aiming to discredit McDougal and defend Trump. In the course of those stories Carlson accused McDougal of extorting Trump and made representations that he asserted were “undisputed facts.” The only problem is that they were easily disputed and not remotely factual.

So McDougal filed suit against Carlson and Fox News. And their in defense, Fox’s lawyers have taken a unique position. They are literally arguing that Carlson’s audience doesn’t expect him to tell the truth. According to The Hollywood Reporter…

“Fox News’ attorney Erin Murphy argued that Carlson repeatedly couched his statements as hypotheticals to promote conversation and that a reasonable viewer would know his show offers ‘provocative things that will help me think harder’ not straight news.

“‘What we’re talking about here, it’s not the front page of the New York Times,’ said Murphy. ‘It’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which is a commentary show.'”

Let’s set aside the ludicrous contention that Carlson has any reasonable viewers. Likewise the suggestion that any Fox News viewer has the capacity to think hard. What we are talking about are devotees of a media cult who blindly believe whatever they are told by Fox News and their current cult master, Donald Trump. They not only assume that what Fox says is true, they regard it as the gospel from a divine source.

In reality, Carlson did not couch his statements as hypotheticals. He explicitly described them as facts. What’s more, Fox News also floats a defense that asserts Carlson’s remarks were not made in malice, a standard that may be relevant in a defamation case. But how can an accusation of having committed a criminal act (extortion) against someone who Carlson is personally associated with (Trump) not be perceived as malicious?

It’s also interesting that Fox News is introducing the New York Times as a standard for truth telling. By making a distinction between Carlson’s fictionalizations and what should be considered honest journalism, Fox’s lawyers chose the New York Times as the model of a professional media enterprise. What will Trump have to tweet about that?

The bottom line is that now any time Tucker Carlson, or Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham or the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, attempt to pass off their lies and insults as “news,” it will be much easier to refute them with these admissions made by Fox’s legal team in a court of law. And the cherry on top of this sundae is that they will probably lose the defamation suit as well.

ADDENDUM: There has been some comparison of this defense to one used by MSNBC in defense of a defamation suit filed against Rachel Maddow by the Trump-fluffing conspiracy crackpots at OAN and elsewhere. However the only similarity is that both argued that their defendant offered opinions.

The difference is that Fox’s lawyers argued that Carlson’s audience did not expect his opinions to be factually based. But MSNBC’s lawyers argued that Maddow’s opinions were “precise factual recitations that indisputably and accurately state the facts” and that her commentary was “fully protected opinion because (a) it was based on disclosed facts.” Big difference.

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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REALLY? Trump Shill Kellyanne Conway Wants More Fact-Checking By the Media

Posted by on June 17, 2020 at 1:22 pm. 1 Comments :

On Wednesday morning Donald Trump’s Director of Alternative Facts, Kellyanne Conway, strolled out onto the White House lawn to chat with “the enemies of the people” (aka the free press). She quickly launched into a preemptive attack on the book that’s about to be released by former Trump National Security Advisor, John Bolton.

Kellyanne Conway, Fox News

Without having read a single word, Conway insinuated that there are factual errors that she wants the media to research and correct. She couldn’t cite any examples of such errors, but she was adamant that they must be there because, in the view of the Trump cultists, anything critical of Trump has to be a deliberate lie by partisan haters. Never mind Bolton’s decades-long record as a committed ultra-conservative who Trump trusted enough to place in an influential White House post. Conway still lashed out with baseless inferences of errors that remained mysteriously vague:

“I think if you’re wrong about small things, you’re wrong about big things. And I do worry that there’s very little fact-checking.”

Coming from the person who coined the term “alternative facts,” this is a remarkable complaint. Conway is as pathological about lying as her boss. And her boss has been documented as having told more than 18,000 lies – big and small – since his inauguration. What’s more, Conway and Trump are usually complaining about too much fact-checking. They are notoriously averse to truth seekers, whom they malign as biased and controlled by his Democratic foes. And they dismiss non-partisan sources like PolitiFact where Trump’s record is dominated by a whopping 69% total finding of either “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire”.

Trump is so scared of the truth with regard to the Bolton book, that he has ordered his Attorney General, Bill Barr, to file a lawsuit aimed at blocking its publication. This is likely to be laughed out of court as an unconstitutional attempt to impede the First Amendments rights of the author.

The argument being made by the Trump administration is that some portion of the book contains material that is classified. But that’s a charge that has already been refuted by the National Security Council official responsible for classification and publication clearances, Ellen Knight. She worked with Bolton for months and “was of the judgment that the manuscript draft did not contain classified information.” However, she was later overruled by Trump loyalists with partisan axes to grind. According To Trump, though (video below)…

“I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean if he wrote a book, and the book gets out, that would mean he’s broken the law. And I would think that he’d have criminal problems. I hope so.”

That, of course, is utter madness, with a pinch of toxic vengeance for spice. There is no precedent for asserting that every conversation with any president is automatically classified. Trump is making this up as he goes along. Additionally, he suggested that “maybe [Bolton] is not telling the truth. He’s been known not to tell the truth – A lot!” Which might explain why Trump hired him in the first place. But more to the point, if Bolton is lying, then there can’t be any allegation of disclosing classified material at all. How could it be classified if it isn’t true? Which brings us full circle back to the issue of truthfulness and how distant this president and his team are from it. They actually seem to revel in it.

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


Trump’s Feeble Effort to Reform Policing Validates the Protests He Condemned

Posted by on June 16, 2020 at 12:21 pm. 2 Comments :

Three weeks after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, America’s streets are still teeming with outraged citizens who are no longer willing to tolerate such injustices. It’s an unprecedented and sustained demand for change that has been fueled by a string of atrocities and populated by a truly diverse cross-section of Americans.

Donald Trump, Police

Conspicuously absent from this nationwide (worldwide) outpouring of grief and determination is the President of the United States, Donald Trump, whose only contribution has been to malign the protesters as “rioters,” “looters,” “thugs,” and even “terrorists.” Trump has repeatedly assaulted both the protesters and local governments with noxious threats of deploying the military against the American people. In Trump’s view these concerned citizens are enemies of the state simply because they oppose police brutality and are willing to act on their constitutional rights.

So for three weeks the people have clearly stated their intentions to compel meaningful change. And during that time, despite (or because of) his stubborn and bellicose opposition, Trump has seen his approval ratings decline into record low territory. The American people overwhelmingly support Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests lobbying for reform.

Consequently, Trump has pivoted in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of his 2020 reelection campaign. He has apparently been convinced that he needs to grab onto this whirling tornado of dissent and score some undeserved points for himself. To that end he has hurriedly patched together a pitifully weak policing reform initiative that fails to address many of the core issues and solutions.

Trump’s latest exercise in hypocrisy comes in the form a unilateral move that Republicans regarded as an act of dictatorship when President Obama did it. His new executive order (EO) – the 162nd of his presidency – is an attempt to upstage congressional efforts to legitimately reform police practices by appropriating initiatives proposed by Democrats. However, this EO will be less comprehensive and will not have the force of law behind it. It can also be reversed or watered down by another executive order.

Additionally, Trump’s EO is a blatant contradiction of nearly everything he’s said about “law and order” since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began. Virtually every public comment he’s made has condemned Americans who have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and unequal justice. He has never acknowledged the systemic racism that permeates many institutions, and this EO doesn’t do so either. But the fact that he felt it necessary to take this step is actually a validation of the demonstrations and proof that they were required to force forward movement on these issues.

Trump’s Rose Garden speech, before a nearly totally white audience, spent far more time praising the police than criticizing the injustice and violence that his EO was supposedly drafted to address. And of course, he politicized the event by applauding himself as the great emancipator. He also heralded imaginary achievements with the economy, the coronavirus, and other matters that have nothing to do with law enforcement reform. And only Trump could say that “We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country,” during a speech meant to ease concerns about racist cops. It was a painfully obvious screed of propaganda aimed at boosting his floundering reelection prospects and nothing more.

Simultaneously, Trump falsely asserted that President Obama and Joe Biden “never even tried” to do anything about systemic racism. In truth, every time Obama tried to advance those matters he was blocked by Republicans and accused of being racist himself. The Trump administration actually repealed Obama’s reforms by executive fiat, slashed funding for community policing, and refused to enforce consent decrees won in court by Obama’s Justice Department. Obama also impaneled a task force to study the problems plaguing policing in December of 2014. In March of 2015, they issued a detailed report with specific policy recommendations. At the time, Trump was tweeting about how Obama was anti-police:

That tweet was in response to Obama’s remarks criticizing the failure of grand juries to indict police officers for the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Five years later Trump is still avoiding the real issues, and still doing nothing to prevent future tragedies because he only cares about how he can further his own personal and political interests. And anyone who fails to recognize that now is a fully indoctrinated disciple of the Cult of Trump and, sadly, beyond help.

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


Trump Vows to Expose His Own Followers to the Coronavirus to Spite the Media

Posted by on June 15, 2020 at 11:59 am. 2 Comments :

A callous disregard for human life has become the hallmark of the Donald Trump presidency. He has made repeated attempts to terminate and/or sabotage Obamacare. His economic and tax policies have punished millions of working people, while benefiting corporations and the wealthy. He has presided over the decimation of the environment. And as a result of his negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance, more than 116,000 American have been lost to COVID-19 (coronavirus).

Donald Trump Virus

This week Trump will resume the cult rallies that, until the coronavirus pandemic, were the primary source of the ego-stroking that his malignant narcissism requires. Every public health expert has warned that it is too soon – and therefore gravely irresponsible – to hold such an event while infections are continuing to rise. That’s specifically true for Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of Trump’s rally on Saturday. The Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Bruce Dart told The Tulsa World that…

“‘I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well. COVID is here in Tulsa, it is transmitting very efficiently,’ Dart added. ‘I wish we could postpone this to a time when the virus isn’t as large a concern as it is today.'”

These warnings are falling on deaf ears in the Trump camp. Just as he did in the early months of the pandemic’s spread, the Trump administration is dismissing the risks and pretending that everything is just fine. Several weeks ago he ceased to hold the daily briefings by his White House Coronavirus Task Force. Perhaps he believes that by selling his Trump-branded face masks everyone will be immunized. This second wave of Trump delusionally downplaying the scientific realities is certain to have the same disastrous results. Not that Trump cares about any of that. He tweeted Monday morning that…

That is a Twitter tirade that is just oozing with the block-headed idiocy for which Trump is so well known. First of all, Trump is unsurprisingly lying about the press coverage of the demonstrations where citizens were spontaneously expressing their outrage over the murder of George Floyd and other unarmed African-Americans at the hands of the police. The media extensively reported on the potential health risks posed by demonstrators. However, they also made obvious distinctions between these protesters (not “rioters and looters” as Trump derisively calls them) and Trump’s cultists. The demonstrations were all outdoors, where the risk of transmission is lower. And the vast majority of protesters wore masks. Trump’s rally will be held indoors with people who, like Trump, reject the necessity for social distancing and facial coverings.

Trump is also purposefully misleading with his assertion that the demonstrations were limited to “Democrat run cities.” Even if that were true, it wouldn’t make any difference. They’re still Americans in massive numbers speaking out about injustice. But the fact is that these protests stretched across the nation with hundreds of thousands of participants in more than 2,000 cities, many of which are run by Republicans. For instance, San Diego, CA, Waco, TX, Mobile, AL, Colorado Springs, CO, and Palm Beach, Fl, to name just a few.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of Trump’s tweet is his stand in defiance of what he imagines to be the media “trying to Covid Shame” him. Really? Is he really taking a stance against this imaginary media plot to humiliate him by doubling down on his commitment to put the lives of his own supporters at risk? Just to show the press that he has no capacity for shame? Most Americans already knew that.

As for Trump, he knows full well the peril that his rally poses for those who attend. That’s why he is forcing all of them to sign an agreement not to sue him or his campaign if they contract or die from the coronavirus. That’s an outright admission of knowledge of harm, and an overt attempt to dodge accountability. You would think that would be a red flag for potential rally-goers. But these are Trump supporters and, as he has said, he loves the poorly educated. And with this rally they are getting yet another opportunity to prove him right.

UPDATE: Trump Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway says that there will be temperature checks for rally-goers and that masks and hand sanitizer will be distributed. For a million people? Of course there won’t really be a million people, but the venue holds 19,000. It is highly improbable that they will have 19,000 face masks and bottles of hand sanitizer to give away. And temperature checks for that many people (at 5 seconds each, if that’s possible) would take more than 26 hours.

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


Trump Supporters are Burning Their Own Vote-By-Mail Applications to Own the Libs

Posted by on June 14, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

There seems to be no outer limit to the magnitude of idiocy achievable by Donald Trump and his legions of glassy-eyed disciples. They have built up an impressive tolerance for humiliation, which serves them well considering how often they subject themselves to it. Just continuing to support Trump amid his endless string of failures and his noxious persona is a feat of Olympic-grade stamina and tunnel-blindness.

Flaming Trump

However, a group of Trump cultists in Michigan are pulling out all the stops in the competition for the gold medal in Trumpian crackpottery. They have embarked on a campaign to eliminate the scourge of election fraud by constraining their own options for voting. As reported by the Detroit News…

“People burned letters informing them that they can vote by absentee ballot in future elections during a protest near Grand Rapids.

“The applications were burned Friday during an event called Operation Incinerator outside the DeltaPlex Arena in Walker. Many people had flags, shirts and signs showing support for President Donald Trump and Republicans.”

That’s right! They received forms permitting them to apply for mail-in voting ballots and gathered to hold a public bonfire into which they cast the offending applications. No one was requiring them to fill out the applications or return them. No one was hindering their freedom to show up at a polling place on election day to cast their vote. But their repulsion of having been given the choice to vote by mail was too much for them to endure.

The organizers of this pyro-protest called themselves “Operation Incinerator,” and they posted the announcement of their crusade on Facebook saying “Together we will gather and burn all of the taxpayer funded applications, illegally sent to us from [Secretary of State] Benson. When you receive your unsolicited application, ‘harvest it’ and bring it with you.” This demonstration – attended by nearly half a dozen devotees – was inspired by Trump’s repeated and baseless attacks on mail-in voting as being rife with fraud. He specifically singled out Michigan and issued a tweet threatening the state:

As with almost everything Trump says, these assertions are utterly false. [Note: Trump first tweeted this saying falsely that actual ballots were mailed out. He deleted that tweet and re-posted the one above specifying that it’s only applications] It is certainly not illegal for the Secretary of State to send out these applications. However, it would be illegal for Trump to withhold federal funds in retaliation. Not that he cares about that. It’s reminiscent of his threat to withhold funds from Ukraine unless they helped with his reelection campaign. In fact, he was impeached for it.

Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting has been in progress for some time. He has ranted without a sliver of evidence that mail-in voting will produce “the greatest Rigged Election in history,” with “thousands of forgeries.” He has also posted hypocritical remarks that approve of mail-in voting for seniors, the military, and himself, but not for any other citizen. And as part of this voter suppression effort, Trump has been attacking the United States Postal Service and advocating for its demise. His bizarre and fabricated arguments stretch into his personal contempt for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

Now that Trump supporters have taken it upon themselves to join his anti-voting campaign, perhaps Democrats should give them some encouragement. These cretinous losers should be applauded for their determination to limit their own voting options. They are actually helping to raise the collective IQ of the electorate by not participating. So News Corpse has created an advertisement to spread this message to Trump supporters around the country. Feel free to retweet it, post it on Facebook, and otherwise cause it to be disseminated everywhere. If this is how they want to march toward November’s election, we should respect their wishes and lend them a helping hand.

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


Trump Refuses to Confirm that He Would Leave the White House Peacefully

Posted by on June 13, 2020 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday Joe Biden was interviewed by the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. In the closing minutes of the segment he asked Biden whether he had given any thought to speculation that Donald Trump might not leave the White House voluntarily if he lost the election. It’s a question that has been asked many times considering Trump’s already disgraceful record of disrespect for the Constitution.

Donald Trump, White House

Biden’s response to Noah’s question was direct and punctuated with relevant facts. He began by predicting that “This president is going to try to steal this election.” That hardly stretches the imagination since that’s what Trump did in 2016, and he is already laying the groundwork to do so in 2020. Trump has flatly stated his belief that all mail-in voting is fraudulent and shouldn’t be counted. And he has his Senate lackeys holding kangaroo hearings aimed at smearing Biden with manufactured allegations. Biden elaborated on his reply saying that he has confidence that the military will uphold the Constitution if necessary:

“I was so damn proud. You have four [chairman of the Joint] Chiefs of Staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are.’ I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The following day, Trump was interviewed (again) by Fox News (video below). Anchor Harris Faulkner conducted yet another televised tongue-bath enabling Trump to lie, deflect, and filibuster incoherently. Her last question for Trump addressed Biden’s remarks on the Daily Show, and produced this bit of surreal theater:

Faulkner: [Biden] said that he believes that you will steal the election, and if you don’t win he thinks that military will escort you from the White House.
Trump: Look, Joe’s not all there. Everybody knows it. And it’s sad when you look at it and you see it for yourself. He’s created his own sanctuary city in the basement of wherever he is, and he doesn’t come out. And certainly if I don’t win, I don’t win. I mean, you go on, do other things. I think it would be a very sad thing for our country.

It’s notable that Trump begins his response by launching into an attack on Biden’s mental health. It’s also pure projection, since Trump is the one that is showing actual signs of dementia. It’s also laughable that Trump attempts to characterize his utterly unqualified diagnosis as “sad” after having made innumerable jokes about it for months. And it wasn’t Biden who retreated to a real basement bunker when he felt threatened by peaceful demonstrators, and then lied about.

More importantly, Trump’s comments regarding leaving office have been twisted by the press into an assurance that he would quietly leave the White House if he loses to Biden in November. But that is not quite what he said. Trump merely stated that “if I don’t win, I don’t win.” So his departure from the White House would be reliant on his acceptance of having lost. But when has Trump ever admitted to having lost anything? He still thinks that he won the popular vote, had record breaking attendance at his inauguration, and was “totally exonerated” by the Mueller report.

Therefore, Trump could just say that the election was tainted by fraud and that he didn’t really lose. Consequently, in his diseased mind, he wouldn’t be required to leave. He would simply invent some “alternative facts,” challenge the results, and insist that he was victorious. That is what would initiate the process of involuntary removal to which Biden was referring. And it’s why the American people have to be vigilant and not allow Trump to usurp power in violation of the Constitution. Or to even let him get away with suggesting it, as Fox News did.

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 Embarks on a Desperate Campaign to Frighten Suburban White Women

Posted by on June 12, 2020 at 12:50 pm. 3 Comments :

The prospects for Donald Trump’s reelection continue to sink into an abyss of his hostility, division, and lies. His mounting anxiety is threatening to submerge him into a deep and depressive self-delusional state as he retreats to his bunker, unable to comprehend the magnitude of hatred that America has for him.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Every recent poll shows that Trump is significantly trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. And he’s even losing support from groups that he once regarded as reliable, such as evangelical voters. His own Republican party members are increasingly repulsed by his angry and childish outbursts. And now he’s worried about a demographic group from which he had support in 2016: Suburban women. Trump tweeted this plaintive yearning on Friday morning:

There’s a lot of wrong in that brief query. First of all, Trump is exacerbating the racist overtones of his candidacy (and his life) by overtly addressing a segment of the electorate that he believes is sympathetic toward him: white women. He’s blatantly fear mongering in order to scare people into voting for him. Secondly, Trump is clinging to the racial anxieties of white voters generally by referring to “defunding the police” without putting that phrase into context. Every Democrat in public life has affirmed their support for reforming police departments – not abolishing them – in a way that refocuses their duties and their budgets on crime and safety, leaving other more personal matters to the social workers, drug counselors, and mental health professionals who are better prepared to handle them.

Finally, Trump is ignoring the reality that the suburban women he relied on four years ago have long since left his camp. A recent poll by CNN found that among these voters Joe Biden is crushing Trump 63 to 34%. And for those who aren’t convinced that CNN’s pollsters are fair, the results were nearly identical in a Fox News poll, giving Biden a 57% edge over Trump’s 29%. In both polls Biden has a nearly 30 point advantage.

It’s difficult to see how Trump can overcome this deficit of support. Particularly when he is bleeding support from so many other critical voter groups. So he’s resorting to the sort of filthy campaign tactics that are familiar components of his diseased persona.

Trump is pretending to be the tough guy (while cowering in his bunker) by deploying the military against peaceful American citizens engaged in constitutionally protected demonstrations. He’s slandering Biden and other Democrats with infantile insults. He’s advancing bizarre conspiracy theories from the Internet’s most abhorrent cretins occupying its outer fringes. And this is how Trump thinks he’s going to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate in order to prevail in November? Yeah, right!

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


America is Exhausted: Joe Biden Should Embrace Trump’s ‘Sleepy Joe’ Nickname

Posted by on June 11, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 4 Comments :

The presidency of Donald Trump has been marked by failure after failure. His tax scam provided benefits only for corporations and the wealthy. His tariffs burdened American businesses and consumers with higher costs. His foreign policy focused on embracing our enemies (Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un) and alienating our allies.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Furthermore, Trump’s negligence and ignorance with regard to the coronavirus pandemic resulted in more than 112,000 deaths (so far). It produced an economic catastrophe that is only just beginning. And his inbred racism is inflaming social unrest throughout the country. Trump’s nauseatingly unpatriotic response to this is to deploy the American military against American citizens.

One of the few skills for which Trump has been recognized has been his instincts for marketing and branding. It comes with having been a reality TV game show host for fourteen years. He has a way of connecting with the most dimwitted demographic in American society with infantile nicknames and insults. It’s important to note that he isn’t impressing anyone with either intelligence or insight. He’s just adept at appealing to the lowest common denominator, a demographic category to which he also belongs.

In the current presidential campaign, Trump has taken to referring to his Democratic opponent as “Sleepy” Joe Biden, a label that Trump hopes will convey some sort of mental infirmity. Unfortunately for Trump, it applies more accurately to Trump himself than to Biden. Trump has been peddling this branding since April of 2019, with no discernible impact on Biden’s campaign. To date he has tweeted it 113 times. Yet every poll still shows Biden with growing leads nationally, as well as in most of the crucial swing states.

Nevertheless, Trump persists with this campaign despite its being about as effective as a flyswatter against a rhinoceros. So this might be good time for Biden to grasp a hold of the moniker and lob it back at Trump. Biden could say something like this…

Am I “sleepy”? Well, I sure as hell am tired of listening to Donald Trump’s lies about virtually everything. Yeah, I’m tired of him lying about me, but more importantly, I’m tired of him lying to the American people about his record of failure, bigotry, and imaginary achievements. I’m tired of him dividing Americans from one another at a time when we need to be united more than ever. I’m tired of seeing thousands get sick and die due to his ignorance total lack of competence or compassion.

And that’s not all. I’m tired of watching our country lose respect internationally and become the laughingstock of the world. I’m tired of seeing our leadership on issues like climate change, nuclear disarmament, and trade, be abandoned to foreign competitors. And if listening to Trump babble on and on about himself doesn’t make you sleepy, you might have a serious sleep disorder.”

That’s just for starters. It should also be pointed out that Trump’s banal and repetitive rhetoric could put a meth addict to sleep. He repeats more often than episodes of Friends. And his cult followers have been asleep from day one, in a hypnotic stupor – a cognitive coma – that shields them from facts, truth and reality.

So yes, Joe is sleepy. America is sleepy. And Trump is the nation’s sedative. But we are developing a resistance (that’s right, resistance) to Trump’s injections of verbal anesthetics. More Americans are waking up every day, and we’re ready to flush Trump down the drain in November.

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

And now for a bit of comic relief:


Apocalypse Wow! Trump is Bleeding Evangelical Support

Posted by on June 10, 2020 at 1:02 pm. 5 Comments :

From the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations he has disingenuously exploited America’s faith community. Never mind that he’s a thrice married adulterer and sexual predator. Or that he robs and cheats without remorse. Or that he is greedy, prideful, envious, wrathful, gluttonous, and profane. His pandering to supposedly devout Christians has been a hallmark of his political persona.

Donald Trump Messiah

America’s evangelicals were all to willing to prostrate themselves before their new Messiah. Not because he represented their spiritual ideals, but because he promised to deliver on their right-wing political agenda. If he could seat some ultra-conservative judges and abolish safe and legal abortions, they would abandon their faith and reward him with their votes.

Well, those days may be behind us. A new poll by Politico has some bad news for Pastor Don. Despite Trump’s success in appointing unqualified, but radical right-wing jurists, his support among the Jesus weasels has fallen into the depths of political Hades. He cannot get a majority of voters to buy his alleged religiosity. Even worse, majorities of the faith community don’t buy it either:

“Only 27 percent of registered voters in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll said they somewhat or strongly agree that Trump himself is religious, while 55 percent somewhat or strongly disagree. Among subgroups, just over a third of all Christians view the president as religious (50 percent do not), while 23 percent of Catholics and 18 percent of independents see him that way.”

The poll went on to show that among evangelicals, Trump could convince only 40% that he was one of them. In fact, the only demographic groups that did regard Trump as an actual Christian were conservatives (55%) and Republicans (60%). Proving that the whole charade was purely a political strategy that gained no ground outside of the rabidly partisan crowd.

It’s notable that this survey was conducted after Trump’s photo-op outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. Obviously, very few people, including believers, were fooled by Trump standing awkwardly in front of a boarded-up church, scowling as he held a bible upside down, and declining to say a single word. And the reports of how he cleared the way for this farce by having law enforcement beat and teargas peaceful demonstrators probably didn’t win any hearts or minds either.

Trump has never been very good at articulating his religious beliefs. He was unable to cite a single passage of scripture when asked. He often mangles the biblical parables he attempts to misappropriate. He frequently displays his utter ignorance of spirituality with bizarre responses to simple questions. For instance, he was once asked if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, which all Christians must do to receive salvation for original sin. He responded by saying that he didn’t need to because he has never done anything wrong:

“I’m trying to lead a life where I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. […] Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?”

So in addition to referring to himself as “The Chosen One,” Trump sees himself as infallible. What’s more, his orientation to faith is strictly wound around himself. He was recently asked whether he’s “grown in his faith” since becoming president. Trump replied, “I think maybe I have, from the standpoint that I see so much that I can do. I’ve done so much for religion.”

Everything in Trump’s narcissistic world revolves around Trump. So it isn’t surprising that his most reliable base of support is crumbling beneath his feet of clay. Another recent poll found that his support among evangelical voters declined a whopping 20% since March. At this rate the only people supporting Trump will be his family, the white nationalist militias, and a smattering of Deplorables who are still trying to figure out how to peel a banana.

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


Fox News Senior Analyst Inadvertently Admits Fox News is NOT Real News

Posted by on June 9, 2020 at 1:28 pm. 6 Comments :

The schizophrenic ravings of Donald Trump continue to be displayed unabashedly to an astonished world. Trump’s love/hate relationship with Fox News is one of the most bizarre symptoms of mental infirmity ever observed in an American “president.” As often as Trump embraces the daily idolatry of Fox’s sycophantic shills, he likewise condemns them when they fall short of the unflinching adoration that he expects and demands.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Among Fox’s most ardent Trump-fluffers is their senior political analyst, and former chief anchor, Brit Hume. On Tuesday morning Trump initiated a series of domino retweets aimed at rewarding Hume for his brazenly biased and oblivious lack of insight. Trump retweeted the rabidly right-wing Washington Examiner’s Mollie Hemingway, who retweeted Hume, saying that…

What Trump via Hemingway via Hume via Byron York (another Fox News contributor), were referring to was a statement by the chief executive of Axios, Jim VandeHei, who told the New York Times that he “he supported staff members’ right to march in public protests, adding that the publisher would cover bail for any employee who is arrested.” That’s not a particularly newsworthy comment. It simply affirms that staffers are permitted to exercise their First Amendment rights. It does not, as Trump et al imply, authorize them to introduce bias into their articles or to report on the events in which they participated. In fact, VandeHei reiterated that in his response to the Times.

What stands out in this criticism by Hume is his ability to dissociate from realty with regard to his own network. There is no mass distributed “news” enterprise that is as blatantly prejudiced as Fox News. Someone should introduce Hume to Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. The daily on-air performances of these slavish bootlickers is far worse than being a near anonymous individual among thousands at a public demonstration.

Hume should also be reminded that his Fox News colleagues, Hannity and Pirro, did not merely attend Trump campaign rallies, they were featured, on-stage speakers. So Hume is outraged if someone is compelled to express themselves on matters of great social significance, like police brutality and equal justice, but he is silent when his buddies are openly stumping for a political candidate.

This makes Hume’s cranky criticism regarding what constitutes a “real news organization” all the more poignant, especially as it applies to Fox News itself. Open your friggin’ eyes, Brit, and stop feeding Trump false narratives. Real news organizations have usually forbidden that. Which I guess allows Fox to do it since they have never been a real news organization. Thanks for pointing that out.

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