Trump-Fluffers at Fox News Begin War Mongering Before Soleimani’s Body is Cold

Posted by on January 3, 2020 at 12:48 pm. 8 Comments :

On the second day of the new year Donald Trump launched a new conflict in the Middle East, this time with the region’s largest military, Iran. Contrary to his frequent promises to withdraw the United States from the Middle East, Trump’s assault is likely to result in another prolonged war that will be costly in both lives and dollars.

Donald Trump

No American will mourn the demise of General Qasem Soleimani. He was the leading purveyor of Iran’s international terrorism and was responsible for hundreds fatalities among both Americans and civilians in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. But the mission to assassinate Iran’s second highest military leader in Iraq was nevertheless a provocative act that could lead to further unnecessary tragedies for the U.S. and the region.

This is particularly apparent since Trump has no coherent strategy, policy, or end game. He failed to consult members of Congress as the law requires and, therefore, had no legal authorization for the attack. And in a flurry of syrupy, worshipful retweets, Trump included one by disgraced pundit Dinesh D’Souza that shamefully implied that had Trump told Congress they would have told Iran. To date, the only one who has disclosed state secrets to hostile foreign nations is Trump when he speaks to Putin.

In fact, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that he discussed this attack with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in advance. So Trump informed Russia, but not Congress. It’s also notable that, by targeting an individual, as opposed to military assets, Trump possibly violated international laws against assassination.

Trump’s initial justification for the attack is that it was executed in order to prevent imminent future attacks on Americans. However, he provided no evidence of any such threat. It sounds very much like the false assertions of the Bush administration alleging nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Also familiar is the statement by Pompeo, who baselessly claimed that “We have every expectation that people not only in Iraq, but in Iran, will view the American action last night as giving them freedom.” That recalls Dick Cheney’s preposterous assertion that “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators [in Iraq].”

Immediately following Trump’s attack, Fox News predictably leaped to his defense with a vigor that can only be described as gleeful. Although he was on vacation, Sean Hannity called into his own program to insist that Iran had “put American lives in jeopardy and the president very quickly acted,” and that it was “a huge victory and total leadership by the president.” But Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends was representative of the Fox position when he rebutted Geraldo Rivera’s criticism of the attack by gloating that “I will cheer this on. I am elated.”

Make no mistake. This is the host of a popular Fox News program expressing his elation about a potential war that would result in untold casualties of Americans for a purpose that no one in the Trump administration has been able to define.

If you’re looking for a plausible reason for why Trump would take this action at this time, look no further than the news that broke earlier the same day. The release of newly unredacted emails from Trump’s national security personnel that state unequivocally that Trump knew his withholding of military aid to Ukraine was illegal. The discovery of this provides additional urgency for the Senate to agree to call witnesses and to introduce documents when it takes up Trump’s impeachment.

Trump knows this, and it escalates his fear that impeachment could result in his removal from office. So in order to deflect from the growing political peril he is enduring, Trump appears to have taken the course of action that he once falsely accused President Obama of considering: Start a war with Iran:

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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Fox News Hack Defends Trump for Making 2019 the ‘Darkest Year Yet for Journalists’

Posted by on January 2, 2020 at 3:53 pm. 11 Comments :

After three years of bootlicking fealty to Donald Trump, there are very few people who would dispute that Fox News is serving as the Ministry of Propaganda for the Trump regime. There has never been a “news” organization more tightly aligned with a political leader and party than Fox News. They even regularly exchange personnel who seamlessly work for both the network and the White House. Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and others are card-carrying members of Trump’s “Shadow Cabinet.”

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Other than Fox News, Trump has been relentlessly hostile to the press from the beginning of his presidency. He routinely refers to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people,” and dismisses any less than adoring coverage as “fake news.” Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York times took note of this in a year-end column that accurately described 2019 as the “darkest year yet for journalists“ He elaborated…

“On Twitter, President Trump deployed the phrase ‘fake news’ 273 times this year — 50 percent more often than he did in 2018. He demanded ‘retribution’ over a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch, declared that Washington Post reporters ‘shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House,’ and accused The New York Times of ‘Treason.’ […]

Mr. Trump’s vilification of the news media is a hallmark of his tenure and a jagged break from the norms of his predecessors: Once a global champion of the free press, the presidency has become an inspiration to autocrats and dictators who ape Mr. Trump’s cry of ‘fake news.'”

Trump has terminated the daily press briefings that were a decades-long part of White House operations. He replaced them with his “Chopper Talk” harangues on the lawn of the White House where he’ll berate reporters and lie unashamedly while dodging their questions. And his constant assaults on the press creates an environment of imminent risk to the lives of reporters. Trump even whined to Vladimir Putin that he would like to “get rid of them,” expressing his envy of Putin’s ability to assassinate journalists who offend him. That’s the sort of loathsome rhetoric that caused the Committee to Protect Journalists to issue a long and detailed condemnation of Trump as “an unprecedented threat,” and went on to say…

“Donald Trump, through his words and actions as a candidate for president of the United States, has consistently betrayed First Amendment values. […] A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States.”

In response to the article in the New York Times (a frequent victim of Trump’s attacks), right-wing media hack Joe Concha appeared on Fox News to defend Trump’s malicious behavior (video below). However, he proffered a badly mangled argument that Trump was justified in criticizing the press because they were so critical of him. The problem with that is that no one was suggesting that Trump couldn’t offer his own criticisms. But there is a difference between pointing out what he believes are inaccuracies, and accusing reporters of treason.

Likewise, Concha argued that Trump couldn’t be considered a threat to journalists because he speaks to them directly from time to time. Once again, that doesn’t excuse what he’s actually saying in those encounters. If you threaten reporters with cancellation of their credentials, or with prosecution and imprisonment, you cannot simultaneously claim you’re not a threat because you spoke to them.

Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy eagerly agreed with Concha’s premise, saying that Trump often approaches reporters at Mar-A-Lago and takes questions. What Doocy didn’t acknowledge is that those avails are always designed to give Trump the advantage. He takes only the questions he wants, and pretends he didn’t hear the others. And if his answers are insufficient, or totally irrelevant, he refuses follow-ups or any effort to clarify.

The problem with what Concha and Doocy are saying is that they regard Trump’s insults and threats as legitimate critiques of the media. They ignore Trump’s menacing outbursts that cast journalists as criminals and traitors. And they don’t seem to comprehend that labeling everything you disagree agree with as “Fake” isn’t a coherent rebuttal. It’s a flagrant attempt to demean an honorable profession, and the only one protected by the Constitution.

Trump’s purpose is to destroy the public’s confidence in the only institution they can rely on to keep them informed and hold the powerful accountable. In this way Trump hopes to get away with his criminal, amoral, and disloyal, activities. And Joe Concha and Fox News are right there to back him up.

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


The Bottom 10: A Year of Derp from Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News

Posted by on January 1, 2020 at 2:54 pm. 4 Comments :

Happy New Year to America and the world. We are now embarking on a new decade whose beginnings will likely be tumultuous, maddening, and occasionally hilarious. By the end of 2020 we will hopefully have a new president preparing to move into the White House. Maybe sooner if Republicans decide to put country before party and decency before dishonesty, decadence, and corruption.

Donald Trump New Year 2020

The past year was a wild ride with an unprecedented number of scandals emanating from the White House. The sheer quantity of political atrocities would be mind boggling if it wasn’t so predictable with an ignorant, childish, narcissist leading the way to perdition. And this uncommonly aberrant year concluded with Trump’s impeachment for “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.” This marks him forever as the first reality TV show host (and only the third president) to have been impeached. That’s not exactly how he thought it would end when he tweeted his all-caps New Year’s message a year ago:

This year Trump tweeted a more diffident and compact “HAPPY NEW YEAR,” but he also posted a ten minute video of himself at Mar-A-Lago adding to his year-end compilation of lies (video below if you have the stomach for it). But don’t expect the Twitter patter of Trump’s sheepishness to last. With both the Senate’s impeachment hearing and a national election on the horizon, Trump’s surly mood will undoubtedly return with the gusto of starving MAGAts in a bucket of KFC extra crispy.

One thing Trump will can rely on is that Fox News will be there in 2020 to shield him from criticism and to smear his foes, just as they were in 2019. It was a banner year for the Trump-fluffing network as they insured that their audience would remain ill-informed and blindly loyal to Dear Leader Trump. This was done by coordinating closely with the White House to manufacture flagrantly dishonest stories that bore no resemblance to either reality or journalism. What follows are few of the more notable examples of how Fox News poisons the political environment while sucking up to their malignant messiah:

This is the sort blatant puffery that is generally observed in the propaganda ministries of totalitarian regimes. Fox News long ago abandoned any pretense of being a neutral news provider. They are as much a part of Trump’s administration as Kellyanne Conway, Mick Mulvaney, and Ivanka. And that will surely continue into the new year as they attempt to deceive their glassy-eyed viewers with ever more outlandish fiction that exalts Trump and spellbinds the cult that surrounds him.

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


The Best/Worst Donald Trump Advice of 2019: Read The Transcript!

Posted by on December 31, 2019 at 3:05 pm. 5 Comments :

It’s New Year’s Eve and Donald Trump is doing what he does most of the rest of the year: Lounging at his golf resort, watching Fox News, and posting asinine lies on Twitter. It’s a lazy lifestyle of ego gratification that he has adopted since becoming president and rarely wavers from it.

Trump Lies

True to form, Trump was busy tapping out tweets on Tuesday morning to insult Democrats, praise Putin, and insist on his innocence with quotes from some Fox News flunkies. And stuffed into the mix was one of Trump’s favorite phrases that he thinks is an effective argument for his impeachment defense. And as it turns out, it’s actually the most useful suggestion that Trump has given to the nation for the whole year. Therefore News Corpse has chosen it as…

The Best/Worst Donald Trump Advice of 2019: Read the Transcript!

Everyone really should read the summary memo that Trump falsely calls a “transcript.” The memo that Trump himself released reveals with crystal clarity that Trump extorted President Zelensky of Ukraine. Trump asked Zelensky to interfere in the U.S. election by trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. And he conditioned critical U.S. military aid on Zelensky’s cooperation. What the memo says that Trump said, in response to Zelensky’s inquiry about the aid, was…

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

That’s a textbook quid pro quo. Trump then talks about getting some information related to a debunked conspiracy theory about a computer server that belonged to the Democratic National Committee. But he quickly segues from that to explicit requests for dirt on Joe Biden:

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with [Rudy Giuliani and] the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great … so if you can look into it.”

So yes, please take Trump’s advice and read the “transcript.” It’s one of the most precise confessions that Trump has made to his criminal behavior. And if that isn’t enough, there is also Trump’s explicit admission that he wanted Zelensky to probe the Bidens, which he made on national television. Yet somehow, Trump still had the audacity to spend much of the year denying that he asked for that obvious quid pro quo. In fact, he tweeted that there was no such request at least 43 times this year.

Trump’s Twitter timeline was awash with flagrantly dishonest declarations of his innocence that he usually couched in attacks on others. He tweeted about the whistleblower 119 times this year; he swore that there was “no collusion” 153 times; he called his critics “crazy” 209 times; and he whined impotently about impeachment a whopping 589 times. That’s nearly twice every day.

Trump is particularly obsessed with the whistleblower whose whereabouts he repeatedly asks for. He accuses the whistleblower of having gotten everything wrong in his report to the Inspector General. That claim was chosen by PolitiFact as their “Lie of the Year“ for 2019. But worst of all, in a post-Christmas tweet, Trump retweeted a shady account that allegedly named the whistleblower. Of course, that cannot be substantiated, but the harm is done to that person whether or not he/she is involved.

What’s more, the post that Trump retweeted was extraordinarily suspicious. The name on the account changed at least four times. And with each new name, the previous one was deleted. But all of the accounts had the exact same tweet content, were created at the same time, and linked to known Russian propaganda sources.

It’s a year-end enigma that just drips with criminal, if not treasonous, intrigue. But it Trump is confidant that everything will be resolved if you would only “read the transcript!” Even if none of his own willfully ignorant cult followers will:

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


Fox News Hits Record High Ratings of a Measly 0.8% of American Viewers in 2019

Posted by on December 30, 2019 at 3:07 pm. 2 Comments :

If there’s one thing we can learn from 2019 it’s that hostile, melodramatic lies can boost the profits of a flagrantly biased organ of propaganda like Fox News. The right-wing network abandoned all pretense of journalistic integrity (what little it had) in order to sign on to the Donald Trump White House’s perverse distortions of reality.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

The reward for Fox News was the undying devotion of an audience of willfully blind cult followers who agreed to believe only what they saw on Fox and heard from Dear Leader Trump. And their loyalty helped propel Fox News to the number one cable news network for the year.

Fox News – and their number one viewer, Donald Trump – surely celebrated this achievement. But as the year comes to a close it’s important to place this statistic in perspective. The numbers that produced this “victory” represent about 2.5 million viewers per night, or about 0.8% of the television audience on the United States. That’s not exactly a commanding presence of disinformed boob-tubers with eyes glazed over and chanting wingnut slogans.

Of course, any contribution to the thinly populated MAGA cult is troubling and can have negative consequences. But knowing that they are safely confined within the walled off world of Fox News makes their impact nearly irrelevant. The bigger problem with Fox is when they manage to persuade other news organizations that they have any credibility and use that to further spread their fabrications and slander.

The bragging rights for Fox News have always been the result of their having corralled all of the nation’s conservative TV news audience into their single channel pen. Meanwhile, all the other news networks are splitting up the rest of the viewers, which dilutes their total audience. But in 2019, just the combined numbers for MSNBC (1.75 million) and CNN (972,000) exceed the total for Fox News. So anyone who tries to argue that Fox’s numbers are proof of a conservative majority in the country are engaging in the same sort of dishonesty that is the hallmark of Fox News.

While Fox’s average numbers did earn them the top spot for the year, that doesn’t mean that they resided there the whole time with every program. In fact, Rachel Maddow beat her time period competition, Sean Hannity, for the entire first quarter of the year. She also won the months of September, October, and November. And both “Deadline: White House with Nicole Wallace” and “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” won their time periods for the year outright.

The real ratings disaster for the year was, once again, Donald Trump. He remains the most unpopular president since modern polling began. Even his favorite pollster, the disreputable and biased Rasmussen Reports, has him underwater with only 46% approving. And a recent Fox News poll showed that a majority of Americans (53%) have an unfavorable view of his job performance. In addition to that, a solid majority of 54% in the Fox poll said that Trump should be impeached, with 50% saying that he should also be removed from office. So whatever influence Fox News purports to have by snagging 0.8% of the television audience, it isn’t having much effect on the views of the American people. And that’s something Trump will surely post an angry tweet about before long.

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


Even Lindsey Graham is Spooked By Trump Shill Rudy Giuliani’s Russian Propaganda

Posted by on December 29, 2019 at 2:20 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has recently been gallivanting around the globe in an effort to dig up dirt on a potential Trump election opponent, Joe Biden. In a normal world (remember that?), that’s not the job of a lawyer who is supposedly defending Trump on charges related to his impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Then again, Giuliani is bumbling his way through criminal allegations of his own and threatening to sue Fox News, so perhaps he doesn’t have sufficient time to devote to his Client-in-Chief.

The fact of the matter is that neither Giuliani, nor Trump’s apologists in politics or the press, have bothered to address the substance of the charges against him. They are all attacking the process or pointing fingers at people who have nothing to do with why Trump was impeached. And much of their focus has been on preposterous and thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories concocted by Russian operatives. Consequently, when Giuliani returned to Washington, he wasn’t exactly greeted with open arms. According to the Daily Beast:

“In the weeks leading up to their impeachment trial, senators on Capitol Hill are actively avoiding meeting with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — partly because they fear he might try to pass off Russian conspiracy theories as fact, according to interviews with more than half a dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides. […] various lawmakers, as well as administration officials and national security brass, have privately expressed concerns about Giuliani’s latest Ukraine jaunt, given that the Trump lawyer’s efforts are what helped create this Ukraine scandal and get the president impeached in the first place.”

Indeed, Giuliani may have been the acorn that grew into the mighty oak of Trump’s criminality. At the very least, Giuliani was watering the seedling every time he appeared on Fox News making statements that further incriminated Trump. The Daily Beast interviewed several Senate sources from both parties who indicated an aversion to dealing with Giuliani, whose credibility they said was suspect. Even White House sources were reticent to deal with Giuliani for fear of being caught up in his crackpot schemes. But surprisingly, one of Trump’s most devoted fluffers, Lindsey Graham, is also putting distance between himself and Trump’s lawyer:

“My advice to Giuliani would be to share what he got from Ukraine with the IC [intelligence community] to make sure it’s not Russia propaganda. I’m very suspicious of what the Russians are up to all over the world.”

That’s right. Trump’s sentinel in the Senate can’t be sure whether Trump’s attorney is a Russian asset. If Graham doesn’t trust Giuliani, then why should anyone else? Particularly those in the media who keep inviting him on to disseminate the propaganda of hostile foreign adversaries. There appears to be a consensus that Giuliani is – as John Bolton said – “a hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up.” And yet, Trump himself is totally reliant on Giuliani and his unique brand of lunacy. It must true what they say about birds of feather.

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 Violates Whistleblower Protection Laws with Retweet of Suspicious (Fake?) Twitter Account

Posted by on December 28, 2019 at 11:58 am. 2 Comments :

You have to wonder if Donald Trump is now actively seeking additional Articles of Impeachment that can be filed against him. Apparently “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress” are not stigmatizing enough for a malignant narcissist who considers himself the greatest [fill in the blank] that the world has ever seen, not to mention the Earthly personification of “The Chosen One.”

Donald Trump, Prison

Late on Friday night Trump embarked on a three hour Twitter-palooza that included panicky attacks on his perceived foes, fear-soaked cries of unfair persecution, and featured a random assortment of worshipful Twitter defenders, including QAnon crackpots. Trump tweeted until midnight, saving what he must have considered the best for last. The final post of this 40-plus, witching hour harangue was a tweet that could land Trump in even deeper impeachment trouble. The posting that Trump retweeted will not be linked here because of its profoundly illegal content and reckless endangerment of the innocent. But here is a graphic with appropriate redactions:

Donald Trump Whistleblower Tweet

This tweet includes the name of someone that the original tweeter (Sophia), and Trump, are asserting outright is the whistleblower. Of course, they have no evidence to make such an assertion, and there is no credible validation of its accuracy. Nevertheless, Trump is disseminating this rumor as if it were true. There are two big problems with this.

The first problem is that it is unlawful to expose the identity of an anonymous whistleblower. The whistleblower statute is provided to protect the individual from harm and/or retaliation, and to maintain the right for others to safely come forward when they encounter government waste, fraud, abuse, and to protect public health and safety.

The second problem is that, because the identity of the whistleblower is still unknown, the person identified in this tweet could have nothing to do with this, but his/her welfare is still put in jeopardy. That is an act that is beyond reckless. It would be irresponsible for anyone to post this sort of information. but it’s far worse that a president would participate in such a potentially harmful act.

Trump is not only speculating about someone whose identity he doesn’t know, he is threatening the person with prosecution for perjury. That’s precisely the sort of retaliation that the Whistleblower statute prohibits. What’s more, there is no evidence of perjury. While Trump has repeatedly claimed that the whistleblower’s report was untrue, a simple comparison of the filing to the summary memo (what he falsely calls a transcript) of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president shows that the whistleblower was correct on every point made. Trump himself has corroborated the whistleblower’s account.

But there is even more wrong with this tweet. For one thing, Sophia is not exactly a credible source. The picture in her Twitter profile is, in fact, a stock photo available from Getty Images. Furthermore, the text of her tweet is a verbatim copy from a three week old posting on the blog of a notorious, right-wing conspiracy nut, Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit). The text of the tweet of her own that she retweeted was also copied from Hoft’s page. And it bizarrely claims that “secret” hearings exonerate Trump. But how could Sophia (Hoft) know that if they’re secret? And for the record, those hearings were open to both Democrats and Republicans.

Clearly Sophia is a dubious character who is endeavoring to plant and disseminate disinformation on the Internet. And Trump somehow managed to stumble upon this bogus account and retweet it. Coincidence? Who knows? But what is know for certain is that Trump has put an innocent person’s life in danger. (Note: the person is innocent whether or not he/she is the whistleblower). And he has also added to the potential list of legal breaches for which he can be impeached. If only the Senate would do its job with integrity and concern for the nation, rather than coddling the criminal occupying the White House.

UPDATE: This is bizarre. The Twitter account for “Sophia” (Surfermom77) has been deleted entirely. But when that name is entered it redirects to someone named “Emma” (2Samson67) that has all of the exact same content as Sophia. The tweet that Trump retweeted is still in the same place on his Twitter timeline, but now says it’s from Emma.

UPDATE II: Now Emma’s account is deleted and was replaced with “Leona” (2Leona65), which was also deleted and replaced with a second “Leona” (4Shereene4). All of these accounts have the same content (tweets) and say they are “100% Trump supporters” in California and joined Twitter in July 2013. They seem to be trying to evade detection and suspension by Twitter.

UPDATE III: And the parade of fake accounts continues. The second Leona has been deleted and replaced with “Gigi” (LovelyGigi33). Stay tuned.

UPDATE IV: The mysterious tweet that kept changing identities is now gone. But the damage was done, and Trump’s complicity in this deceit – and illegal naming an alleged whistleblower – needs to be fully investigated.

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


WTF? Trump Whines that His Impeachment was ‘Unfair’ Because He Refused to Cooperate

Posted by on December 27, 2019 at 3:45 pm. 10 Comments :

The impeachment of Donald Trump is now a part of history. It is a permanent stain on his legacy that will also include caging babies, sabotaging healthcare, abandoning terrorist-fighting allies, exploding the deficit, embracing brutal dictators, humiliating the nation, telling more than 15,000 lies, empowering white supremacists, enriching the already wealthy (including himself) at the expense of everyone else, and ignoring the lethal planetary climate crisis.

Donald Trump WTF

In the midst of the impeachment process, Trump is continuing to demonstrate that his greatest personal skill is his Olympic-grade ability to whine. It’s astonishing how the alleged leader of the free world can be so mired in victimhood. Trump has been in a state of perpetual whimpering for weeks (well, decades really, but let’s stay focused on the present). His Twitter feed is dripping with the piss and moan of a professional crybaby. He recently broke his own record with 123 self-serving panic tweets in a single day.

One of his most frequent complaints that is getting extra attention lately is his assertion that the impeachment process has been unfair to him. But the logic that he employs to make that case is built on a foundation of whipped cream. On Friday morning Trump posted a tweet that perfectly expresses both his frustration and his confusion:

Let’s break down this fetid bouquet of BS. Trump is essentially complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “demanding fairness” from the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, that she didn’t provide in the House. This is a repeat of a previous tweet from a couple of days ago in which he asked why Pelosi is “allowed to impeach the President” at all.

Someone should inform Trump that Pelosi’s power to impeach is because of this thing we call the Constitution. Trump further asserted that Pelosi “is demanding everything the Republicans weren’t allowed to have in the House.” Clearly Trump has no idea what he’s talking about.

So what is Pelosi demanding of the Senate? She is merely seeking to have the hearings in the Senate include witness testimony and document production. As it happens, these are exactly the same things that she sought for the hearings in the House. But an obstinate and fearful Trump refused. So Trump’s assertion that Pelosi is asking for something that Republicans were denied previously is patently false. There is literally no difference in what she’s asking for.

Now Trump is pretending to be upset that he wasn’t provided “Due Process, proper representation, or witnesses.” However, he was offered all of those things, he just declined to accept the offers. And now he is continuing to refuse to participate, in precisely the same way, in the upcoming Senate hearings.

So if there is any unfairness in the impeachment, it is entirely the fault of Donald Trump, who has refused to participate, and now is declaring that his refusal is the cause of the alleged unfairness. It’s not unlike the murder defendant who killed his parents and asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. Had Trump agreed to testify – or to allow his staff to do so, or delivered the documents that were subpoenaed – he could not now whine about unfairness. And yet, he’s still refusing to cooperate with the Senate, even though it is controlled by a Republican majority.

The only plausible reason for this persistent obstruction is that Trump knows he’s guilty and that additional testimony and documents will prove it. He’s behaving like a man consumed by fear and the consciousness of guilt. If he really believed that any of his staff could exonerate him, he would drive them to the hearings himself. One thing is certain: This is not the behavior of an innocent man. The only thing Trump has left is obstruction, lies, deflection, and, as always, whining.

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


Trump Goes on Holiday Twitter Tantrum Against Nancy Pelosi – and the Constitution

Posted by on December 26, 2019 at 11:55 am. 4 Comments :

STOP THE MADNESS! During his campaign, Donald Trump promised that he would work every day in The White House because there was so much that needed to be done. Instead, he has spent more time at his golf resorts, watching Fox News, and tweeting, than anything else. In fact, when it comes to those wasteful, childish diversions, he never takes a day off. Not even for Christmas.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

Trump’s holiday tweet-o-rama was narrowly focused on matters that have consumed his consciousness for weeks. While he pretends not to be worried about having been impeached, it’s practically the only thing he is paying any attention to. It’s an obsession that is gnawing at him to the exclusion of everything else. And his Twitter tantrum is evidence of just how haunted he is by this permanent stain on his legacy. He began on Christmas day by tweeting that…

There’s a lot to unpack in that brief tirade. On the same day that Trump released an eerily morose Christmas message that called for “deeper understanding and respect,” he’s posting insults to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “crazy.” And he is also exhibiting his painfully weak grasp of the Constitution that unambiguously grants the House of Representatives the “sole power to impeach.” What’s more, he doesn’t understand that a majority of any size gives that party parliamentary control. Even so, a 34 seat majority is not “slight.” And he has apparently forgotten that the Republican majority in the Senate is only four seats.

Trump goes on to dismiss the impeachment because no Republicans voted for it. But that only reinforces the fact that the GOP acts as a monolithic and partisan unit that doesn’t care about the truth. Which puts them in alignment with Trump who then proceeds to lie about his allegedly “perfect,” “no pressure” phone call with the president of Ukraine.

From there Trump wanders off into a diatribe about “due process,” which is only relevant in a court of law. Nevertheless, Trump did have the opportunity to appear in his own defense and to have his attorneys plead his case. It was not disallowed. He declined. Now Trump is refusing to allow witnesses and documents in the Senate hearing that he has whined about not having in the House.

Let’s set aside the false assertion that any particular part of this is “supposed” to be in one body or the other. What Trump is complaining about here is that the testimony that he actively obstructed wasn’t made available. Maybe he should stop obstructing it. Maybe he should also stop pretending that Democrats want to slow down the process, as he says in his next tweet. It’s Trump and the GOP who are gumming up the works by refusing to set the terms for the Senate hearing.

Finally, Trump acts out in his typically infantile way with a multi-tweet attack on Pelosi and the district she represents in California. Just like he has done previously with Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and others, he maligns them for problems that exist in all cities. But he blames Pelosi as somehow being responsible.

LATE ADDITION: Trump tweeted…

Trump actually believes that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally edited him out of a cameo in Home Alone 2. Never mind that this edit was actually made five years ago, before Trump was even a candidate. The reason Trump believes that Trudeau is responsible is because it’s what he would do in similar circumstances. Trump thinks that national leadership includes the power to exact petty vengeances on your enemies. In fact, he has even exercised that corrupt power by redirecting a federal contract from Amazon (because Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post), to Microsoft. Which is blatantly illegal.

There is simply no denying that Trump is terrified and desperate. The whole of his attention is on the impeachment and what he considers unfair treatment. And it manifests in these furious Twitter rampages that only make him look even more deranged. So it’s not surprising that public support for his impeachment and removal from office has hit a new high. And if he continues on this disastrous course, he should expect it get even worse.

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


Best Wishes to All for the Merriest Blue Xmas and a Bountiful Blue Wave New Year

Posted by on December 25, 2019 at 12:38 pm. 4 Comments :

Christmas is upon us once again, and families around the nation – and the world – are sharing in the warmth of the season. It’s a time to be grateful for good fortune, but also to be thoughtful and generous to those enduring more difficult circumstances. For in the end, we are all one family and we rely on one another for support and inspiration.

Donald Trump Hugs Christmas Tree

However, it cannot go unnoticed that this is the first Christmas since Donald Trump was impeached, making him the first reality TV game show host to have achieved that dishonor. And he can’t stop whining about it. It’s also the first Christmas since he declared himself “The Chosen One“ and basked in the praise of being called the Second Coming of God by some of his worshipful cult followers. He was even hailed for having “fulfilled the biblical prophecy of the gods“ by a Fox News “judge.” Behavior like this makes one wonder whether Trump’s dimwitted cult followers are watching the holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” and thinking that the evil Mr. Potter is the hero.

Trump promised during his campaign that “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” It’s that heartwarming 1930’s German-style totalitarianism that makes him think he can decide what we are ALL going to say. And it’s all the more meaningful coming from a greedy, lustful, gluttonous, wrath-filled, narcissist who insists that he has never had to seek God’s forgiveness because he’s never done anything wrong. And three years later, Trump is still taking credit for restoring the right to say “Merry Christmas” that no one has ever actually stopped saying. Just last week Trump told disciples at his cult rally “Let me begin by wishing you a ‘beauta-few-woodlook.'” (File that under “WTF” with “covfefe”). He went on to say that…

“Do you remember? They were trying to take Christmas out of Christmas. You remember? They didn’t want to let you say merry Christmas. … They’re all saying merry Christmas again.”

Well, do you remember? Because if you do you’re suffering from the sort of false memories that plague paranoid schizophrenics. And to be clear, nobody has ever been offended by a Christmas greeting. And nobody has ever said “happy holidays” or “seasons greetings” with an intent to offend. To the contrary, it is said out of respect for the many faiths that are held by the American people in a country where religious freedom is cherished. We are – or aspire to be – a diverse and tolerant nation.

So in the spirit of the season, News Corpse would like to continue its holiday tradition by presenting a musical gift that is truly inclusive and welcoming. This is for all of those who are not huddled around a dead tree today, buried in colorfully wrapped packages. It’s for the cynics who won’t accept the notion that the birth of an alleged savior is an excuse to exchange material goods or fruitcakes that nobody likes. It is for the forsaken and forlorn, the outcasts and rebels and nonbelievers who are puzzled by the greed and commercialism that permeates the season. And yes, it’s for those who still believe that peace and goodwill are morally superior to profit and oppression. Here is Miles Davis and Bob Dorough performing the heartwarming traditional Christmas ballad Blue Xmas:

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