Trump Snubs Howard Schultz Because America Already Has ‘Not the Smartest Person’ as President

Posted by on January 28, 2019 at 2:42 pm. NO Comments :

As the 2020 presidential campaign season begins to unfold, there is one prospective candidate who has never stopped running for four straight years: Donald Trump. He announced his reelection campaign before he was even inaugurated. And for the entirety of his first two years in office Trump has postured as only a candidate would by attacking his past and future opponents and boasting interminably about his imagined accomplishments.

Donald Trump

Enter former Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz. The billionaire baron of a premium coffee chain told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes that he is seriously considering an independent campaign for president. Should he decide to run he will present Trump with the kind of political gift that can’t be bought with money. He would have zero chance of winning. However, he could dilute the anti-Trump vote sufficiently to allow Trump to prevail in a close race. The likelihood of that scenario is already earning Schultz the contempt of every American who is devoted to returning the nation to sane, responsible leadership. But it has also earned predictable whining from the notoriously infantile current occupant of the White House:

First of all, due to Trump’s childish simplicity it is way too easy to observe his pedantic attempts at psychological manipulation. He is essentially calling Schultz a “chicken” in order to bait him into running. Trump might was well stick his tiny hands in his armpits, flap his flabby elbows and start squawking. Clearly he needs Schultz to run and he’s doing what he can to encourage him.

Nevertheless, Trump has provided a pretty darn good reason why Schultz should pass up this opportunity. In maligning the intelligence of Schultz, Trump reminded everybody that America already has “not the smartest person” as President. That’s a hill that Trump can confidently be the king of. So what would be the incentive to replace him with someone who couldn’t claim that high level of stupidity? There is only room for one Village Idiot and Trump’s got that pegged.

As if to underline his profound idiocy, Trump even brought up the fact that Starbucks is a tenant in his Manhattan high rise. This can only only serve to remind people of the scores of financial ethical traps that he is waltzing through. Most are much more problematic than this one, and include potentially unlawful payments from Kremlin-affiliated Russian oligarchs, Saudi potentates, and other conflicted foreign parties. It’s also pretty dumb in that Trump is revealing that he doesn’t know that Schultz is no longer running Starbucks.

In addition to the tweet about Schultz, Trump also lashed out at his own White House propaganda division, Fox News. Apparently a couple of correspondents had the temerity to accurately portray Trump’s caving on the government shutdown without getting funding for his precious vanity wall. And any criticism of Trump results in immediate punishment from the Crybaby Tweetster:

Let’s just set aside Trump’s impression of good poll numbers that are actually the worst ever recorded. What’s interesting here is that he’s surprised because he “Never thought I’d say this” about Fox News. That’s an admission that he has an open bias in favor of of his Fox friends that’s so strong it even shocked him that it could be strained in any way. However, even that is untrue. Trump has said much worse when he felt that Fox News wasn’t being sufficiently deferential to him. For instance:

That’s just more evidence that Trump will praise anyone who sucks up him, and insult anyone who criticizes him. Even if it’s the same person. And his lizard brain is too weak to notice it. All of which firmly cements his position as “not the smartest person.” In fact, they should retire the category because at this point it’s clear that he really doesn’t have any credible competition.

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 Lies About Voter Fraud In Desperate Attempt to Recover from Caving on the Shutdown

Posted by on January 27, 2019 at 10:46 am. 3 Comments :

If there is one thing that Donald Trump can’t stand, it’s being exposed as the loser that he really is. He refuses to acknowledge his six (at least) bankruptcies. He pretends that he wasn’t played for a fool by Kim Jong Un. And the trail of failures – from his businesses to his marriages to his politics – just gets longer with each passing day.

Donald Trump, Loser

Consequently, getting beat to shreds by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who he deridingly calls “Nancy”) is surely gnawing at his substantial gut. He was forced to abandon his pledge to decline any deal with Congress that didn’t include his precious vanity wall – a wall that by his own argument isn’t necessary. Nevertheless, he insisted on building it in order to hurt innocent people.

Now, among the lies he’s telling about the imaginary “emergency” on the border, and his blatant scam in statements explaining how it is being paid for, Trump is diverting to an old and utterly fictional narrative on voter fraud to distract the public and the press from his recent embarrassment at the hands of Speaker Pelosi. It’s a pathetic diversionary device considering his previous attempts resulted in the humiliating disbandment of his phony election “integrity” commission because it couldn’t find any evidence of voter fraud. Undeterred by this shame, Trump tweeted this:

This is, to no one’s surprise, a bundle of outright lies, presumably gathered from his obsessive concentration on Fox News. The data was produced by Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General who has been trying furiously to push the unsupportable case for rampant voter fraud. And Trump, of his own accord, tries to drag California into the controversy without the slightest bit of proof.

However, the Texas Tribune quickly came forward with some of those pesky facts that journalists rely on in order to debunk Trump’s dishonest ranting. In their analysis they wrote that:

“In an advisory released Friday afternoon, the office said it was flagging individuals who had provided the Texas Department of Public Safety with some form of documentation — including a work visa or a green card — that showed they were not a citizen when they were obtaining a driver’s license or an ID card. Among the individuals flagged, about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018, the secretary of state’s office said.” […]

“It’s possible that individuals flagged by the state — who provided DPS with documentation that indicated they were authorized to be in the country — could have become naturalized citizens since they obtained their driver’s license or ID card.”

So while Trump is implying that rampant voter fraud took place in recent elections, the information that he’s basing his lies on was actually accumulated over a period of twenty-two years. And during that time anyone who might have not been a citizen could have become naturalized before ever casting a vote. The Texas Secretary of State didn’t bother to check a single voter to see whether or not they were a citizen at the time they voted. But he still released a report that implied that all 58,000 voted illegally.

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

Of course, Trump parroted this irresponsible and poorly documented report as if it were valid. Because it fits nicely into his flagrantly racist narrative that nefarious brown-skinned villains are plotting to invade and take over America. And it also serves as convenient distraction from his border wall debacle that is, not coincidentally, aimed at maligning the same group of people. At least Trump is consistent in his raging dishonesty and bigotry.


Donald Trump Just Made a Fantastic Argument Against Building His Idiotic Border Wall

Posted by on January 26, 2019 at 1:53 pm. 1 Comments :

Well, it took thirty-five days and cost about six billion dollars, and incalculable personal suffering, but the Trump Shutdown is now over (temporarily). To say that Donald Trump caved is putting it mildly. He folded like a counterfeit three dollar bill under pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who he calls “Nancy”). And true to form, he emerged from the White House to declare victory in an impotent display of pathetic groveling and forced bluster.

Donald Trump

During Trump’s concession speech he revealed another repulsive side of himself as he admitted that the purpose of his wall is to hurt already suffering refugees by killing any “glimmer of hope” they might have for safety and freedom. And on Saturday morning he followed that up with a Twitter tantrum that was rife with callousness and delusion. This tweetstorm featured one posting that stood out as being a pretty darn good argument against the vanity wall that Trump has been so obsessed with:

So if we have already turned away two “caravans” of asylum seekers, then why do we need to spend billions of dollars on a wall that most experts say will be useless? The next caravan can be handled exactly the way the previous two were, without the expense or the pain associated with shutting down the government in an infantile rage.

Trump has actually admitted that our current ability to secure the border is perfectly adequate. There can be no credible argument that there is anything resembling an emergency at the border. So his yappy whining has no purpose other than to salve his ego. But he won’t let that stop him:

Let’s set aside Trump’s deranged assertion that he didn’t concede. The larger point he is making here is that he finally recognizes that the shutdown he was proud to impose was actually causing great harm and misery to millions of innocent people. But in the same sentence he callously threatens to do it all over again, unconcerned about inflicting more pain. He’s like the bully who uses his victim’s hand to slap his own face while taunting “Why do you keep shutting down yourself? Why do you keep shutting down yourself?”

This isn’t the first time that Trump’s argument for his wall has backfired on him. While his original campaign promise was that Mexico would pay for wall, he has failed utterly to bring that about. Instead, he has since insisted that the wall is being paid for by several different means in addition to Mexico, including: It would pay for itself, presumably by reducing unspecified expenditures on law enforcement; The new trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, which has nothing to do with wall funding as all the financial benefits of such a deal go to private industry; And the American taxpayer from whom he is currently demanding payment under threat of shutting down our government or declaring an unconstitutional national emergency.

So that’s four different payments for the same wall. How is that not a con game that would land anyone else in jail? Especially since the wall isn’t needed in the first place as Trump has now conceded on Twitter. And along with that concession, Trump has provided a couple of tweeted endorsements that are as phony as a con man’s paid shills. The first is by Fox News regular Matt Schlapp, who also happens to be married to Mercedes Schlapp, the White House Director of Strategic Communications. And the second is a video produced by the Daily Caller News Foundation, which is run by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. So these are hardly independent affirmations of Trump’s wall fetish.

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

The more Trump talks and/or tweets, the less Democrats need to make the case against Trump’s wall. He’s doing a mighty fine job of that all by himself. And the last person who would be surprised by that is special counsel Robert Mueller, who has seen Trump’s public statements as some of the most incriminating pieces of evidence against him, particularly with regard to obstruction of justice. This is just how Trump operates. He is so consumed by his narcissism that he truly believes that everything he says is brilliant and furthers his objectives. By the time he finds out how wrong he is, it will be too late.


Trump Brags that His Wall Will Kill the ‘Glimmer of Hope’ that Refugees Have to Be Safe and Free

Posted by on January 25, 2019 at 5:34 pm. 4 Comments :

After thirty-five long and difficult days, the Trump Shutdown is coming to an inglorious end. Donald Trump vowed that he would not cave, but in the end that’s exactly what he did. He accepted a proposal that Democrats had offered a month ago, before the shutdown began. And it provides zero dollars for his precious vanity wall.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

This is not, however, a final conclusion to the matter. It merely kicks the can down the block for three weeks when we will be faced with the same debate over Trump’s insistence on a useless wall. Trump even threatened to shut down the government again, or declare an unconstitutional national “emergency” if he doesn’t get his way next month. So no one should get comfortable, particularly if you’re a federal employee.

In his speech announcing the temporary agreement to reopen the government, Trump spent most of his time lauding the imaginary benefits of a border wall. He imbued it with magical powers to eliminate drugs and human trafficking. He said it would reduce crime, even though these immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born citizens. But perhaps the most repulsive part of his statement was one that illustrated just how callous and uncaring he is with regard to real human suffering (video below). Trump asserted that among the benefits of a wall is that…

“They save good people from attempting a very dangerous journey from other countries. Thousands of miles because they think they have a glimmer of hope of coming through. With a wall they don’t have that hope.”

So Trump is actually advancing as a positive argument for his wall that it will extinguish the hope of refugees who are fleeing violence and poverty in their countries of origin. How is that representative of the American Dream that brought generations of people escaping tyranny and torture to the shores of “the land of the free”? Trump declares proudly that his wall will mean that similar asylum seekers won’t have the hope that contributed so much to America’s greatness.

Not only is this attitude noxious and anti-American, but it ignores some obvious facts. If Trump acknowledges that these refugees are braving long and dangerous journeys, does he stop and think for a second about why? Clearly they would not undertake such an arduous task, often with young children, if the need wasn’t crucial to their survival. This isn’t a pleasure cruise they are enjoying. Trump knows that. He knows that these refugees are motivated by fear and hope, but he still thinks it’s appropriate, and even worthwhile, to strangle the hope out of these desperate souls.

Trump admits in his remarks that the refugees are “good people” who are “attempting a very dangerous journey.” And in his next breath he smugly asserts that the “glimmer of hope” to which they cling should be snuffed out with his “big, beautiful wall.” So what does he think they should do after that hope is extinguished? He doesn’t bother to say. Presumably they should just stay put and suffer and die quietly. Because for many of them, that’s the alternative. Do you think Trump cares?

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


Willfully Blind: Fox News Wonders ‘Where is the Russia Collusion?’ in Roger Stone Indictment

Posted by on January 25, 2019 at 11:32 am. 1 Comments :

The walls continue to close in around Donald Trump and his criminal enterprise. And these aren’t the border walls over which he orchestrated history’s longest government shutdown. On Friday morning one of Trump’s longest known and closest associates, Roger Stone was arrested on seven counts that include lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. Charges that Trump would be wise to study up on.

Donald Trump, Roger Stone

The arrest and indictment of Stone was not unexpected. In fact, Stone himself had predicted it in May of last year. Most observant followers of the Mueller investigation have known for some time that Stone was a target of the probe and that he likely ran afoul of the law. Even Trump acknowledged Stone’s complicity and praised him for clamming up about the case in a tweet that could have been written by an old-school mob boss:

Meanwhile, Fox News immediately went to work fulfilling their mission to shield Trump from any and all criticism. In a series of reports they downplayed any significance of Stone’s indictment, presenting it with exactly the same framing as Trump did in his knee-jerk tweet:

For the record, no one “alerted CNN to be there.” They noticed some unusual activity at the Grand Jury and surmised that an indictment might be imminent, so they sent a crew to Stone’s home in Florida. And you have to wonder which drug dealers Trump was referring to who were treated better than Stone who was released a couple of hours after his arrest. As for the “Greatest Witch Hunt,” it surely is the most successful with dozens of indictments and guilty pleas, some by top officials in Trump’s campaign.

Steve Doocy, co-host of Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends, was dumbstruck by the charges against Stone. But more importantly, he couldn’t understand how anyone would see any hint of collusion in the charges against Stone:

“When you look at the seven counts from the Grand Jury – obstruction of an official investigation, false statements to Congress, and perhaps witness tampering – once again, where is the Russia collusion?”

Where is the collusion? It’s everywhere. It’s in each and every one of the charges Doocy just itemized. The obstruction of justice is specifically related to Stone’s efforts to cover his involvement in conspiring with the Russia-affiliated WikiLeaks to acquire and publish emails stolen from Hillary Clinton and her team. The false statements to Congress were specifically related to his denials of such involvement. And the witness tampering was also connected to his attempts to intimidate his co-conspirators into keeping quiet about these crimes committed on behalf of Trump.

The position of Fox News is remarkably tunnel-blind, even for them. Some pundits have even said that these indictments are good news for Stone and Trump. Because it’s always such good news to have one of your closest confidants arrested for multiple felonies. The narrative at Fox is that because the word “collusion” wasn’t spelled out in the text of the indictments, that there wasn’t any. But that is a fool’s interpretation considering that each of the indictments explicitly address the criminal conspiracy in Trump World.

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

No doubt Fox’s cult-bound audience will buy into their narrative, as will Trump. But that is a small minority of the population at large, and the more new revelations about the Russia probe come out, the more the American people are turning against him. He is currently sitting at record lows of approval (37%), and even his favorite pollster, the thoroughly biased Rasmussen, has him at 54% disapproval (46% strongly disapprove). So Fox’s viewers are, once again, living in a manufactured world that bears no resemblance to reality. They are going to be shocked when all the facts are finally revealed. Unless Fox claims that they are “alternative facts” and that it’s all “fake news.” Which you can bet on.


Trump’s Brain Shutdown: He Fails Pitifully to Grasp Pelosi’s Reply to Wilbur Ross on Food Banks

Posted by on January 24, 2019 at 1:41 pm. 2 Comments :

For much of the past two years there has been abundant talk about Donald Trump’s unfitness to serve as president. Professionals in the field of mental health have made shocking observations that suggest that he is suffering from a variety of psychological problems with varying degrees of severity. They include everything from Malignant Narcissism to Senile Dementia.

Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi

However, it doesn’t take a professional to notice some the mental infirmities that virtually scream out whenever Trump makes a public appearance or posts a comment on Twitter. His vocabulary is badly limited to a few “tremendous” words and phrases that he repeats frequently. “That I can tell you.” And his tendency to resort to childish insults and nicknames is evidence of a stunted emotional maturity. On Thursday morning Trump displayed another example of his failing cognitive skills in a furious tweet:

Judging by the context in Trump’s tweet, it would appear that he’s criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her inability to understand why he’s fighting so hard for a wall on the southern border. The only problem with that is that the remarks he is referring to had nothing whatsoever to do with that.

What Pelosi was responding to were comments by Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross. During an interview on CNBC, Ross was asked about the sad occurrence of federal workers, furloughed by Trump’s government shutdown, having to visit food banks in order to provide for their families. He replied saying that “I don’t really quite understand why,” and suggested that they should just go out and get loans to tide them over. That strikingly insensitive response is what Pelosi was referencing when she said

“What do [Republicans] have? They have Wilbur Ross saying he doesn’t understand why when he was asked about people going to food lines and pantries and the rest. He says that he doesn’t understand why they have to do that. Is this the ‘let them eat cake’ kind of attitude, or ‘call your father for money?'”

So Pelosi was not saying that she didn’t understand the need for the wall. She wasn’t even saying that she didn’t understand anything. She was recounting Ross’ comments that it was he who didn’t understand. How could Trump have gotten that so terribly wrong? It wasn’t the least bit confusing.

The answer may have something to do with the obvious mental defects he is suffering from. Or it might be that he’s just dishonestly twisting Pelosi’s words to fit them into his own narrative. Then again, it could have something to do with Trump’s inability to deal with strong women that just threw him into a psychotic haze. After all, he has already had to bow down in submission to Pelosi with regard to the State of the Union address that she isn’t permitting him to give until the government is reopened. And it’s cute how his tweet says that he “will not Cave,” after just having done so a few hours earlier.

Trump is having a difficult time dealing with Pelosi. He couldn’t even make up a nasty nickname for her, so he settled for calling her “Nancy.” That’s pretty lame. What’s more, while he has no problem insulting the men in Congress that he doesn’t like, his “insults” directed at Pelosi are often more like compliments. Trump calls Democratic representatives her “puppets.” He even said that Pelosi “dominates” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. Those comments suggest strength on Pelosi’s part.

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

What’s more, when he was unhappy with the former GOP Speaker, Paul Ryan, Trump wasn’t shy about saying that he is a “very weak and ineffective leader.” But he never disparages Pelosi that way. There is clearly something constraining him. And from all of the available evidence, it looks very much like fear. And if so, it’s exactly the right way he should feel.

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Fox News Compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Hitler and Stalin in Unhinged Rant

Posted by on January 23, 2019 at 1:03 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s always easy to tell who the Republican Nationalist Party is most afraid of. It’s the person they lie about most, and whose character they malign with the most vicious insults. Their obvious defensiveness gives away their fear and betrays their intentions to destroy anyone they think is having a real impact on changing the status quo.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The current ogre under the GOP’s bed is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has had the audacity to advocate for the common American, the oppressed, and those who have been left out of the nation’s prosperity. Her recent comments regarding raising the marginal tax rate for multi-millionaires to 70% has brought severe anxiety to the rightists in Congress and the media who serve the wealthy. So their response to this common sense proposal, that was in effect for decades prior to the Reagan administration, is to lash out in the most absurd and offensive way imaginable.

On the Fox Business Network program host Trish Regan invited right-wing clown and alleged economist, Ben Stein, to discuss Ocasio-Cortez. The segment was utterly devoid of any substantive discussion of her ideas or her role in Congress. Instead, it was a bitterly personal assault that was nothing but invective and slander. Stein delivered a thoroughly deranged tirade dismissing her impact and insulting everyone who supports her. “She’s seeing success,” Stein began, “because there’s a lot of people just as ignorant as she is out there.” Never mind that he’s disparaging the majority of Americans (59%) who agree with her.

Stein believes that “messages about justice and equality … always turn out to be messages that lead to a dictatorship.” And his extended comments on Fox affirm that opinion, but go even farther into an abyss of slime (video below):

“We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Miss Ocasio-Cortez is promising. And it led to mass murder. It led to dictatorship. It led to genocide. These promises are old promises and they invariably led to bad things.”

Stalin? Hitler? Does Stein really believe that Ocasio-Cortez is an aspiring tyrant who hungers for the blood of the masses? Does he really believe that her agenda, which is squarely in the mainstream of America’s principles and history, will lead to genocide? Or is he merely mouthing off with noxious hyperbole intended to incite the hatred of Fox’s viewers? If Stein is looking for an aspiring tyrant, he might want to look at Donald Trump, who actually kept a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside. And Trump’s anti-press chant of “the enemy of the people” was stolen verbatim from Stalin. But Stein wasn’t finished:

“Capitalism is a system that allows people to make something of themselves, instead of suppressing other people. Making money is … what our society is about. It’s not about ordering people around, putting them in concentration camps. What do you do if a person is a richer person or a poorer person? What do you do? Do you take him away and shoot him?”

Where on Earth did Stein get that from? Certainly not from anything Ocasio-Cortez, or any Democrat, has ever said. It’s simply Stein inventing horror stories for the Deplorables watching him on Fox News. And the number one viewer is, of course, Donald Trump, who spends countless hours watching, and live tweeting, what he sees on Fox. And as a result of crackpot diatribes like this one, watch for Stein to be hired by Trump as an economic advisor or, perhaps, his new Billionaire Tax Elimination and Peasant Revenue Collection Czar.

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


Bunker Mentality: A Fearful Trump Orders Press Secretary ‘Not to Bother’ with Press Briefings

Posted by on January 22, 2019 at 12:07 pm. 1 Comments :

When third world dictators find themselves getting squeezed by opposition from enemies, foreign or domestic, they have a common response. It generally involves narrowing their exposure to any criticism or events that might produce negative results. They begin to purge those they fear could be disloyal, they tighten their grip on the media, and they hide behind a wall of propaganda and sycophantic shills.

Donald Trump

Sound familiar? That’s precisely what Donald Trump has been doing for several months. Top administration officials like Jeff Sessions, Jim Mattis, and John Kelly have been humiliated by public terminations. Meanwhile, Trump has surrounded himself with former Fox News figures like Bill Shine, John Bolton, and Heather Nauert. And now the President has publicly declared that he ordered his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to stop giving press briefings because he doesn’t like the questions:

What Trump considers rudeness is actually just any inquiry that seeks the truth about his actions and statements. Never mind that it is the responsibility of journalists to ask probing questions of any president. This one believes that the media’s job is to flatter him and applaud everything he does. That’s why the vast majority of his interviews are given to Fox News, where he can rely on velvet glove treatment.

Trump doesn’t bother to identify any of the reporting that he’s asserting is inaccurate. He just swings wildly and hopes that his accusations take hold. As far his stable of Deplorable cult followers is concerned, he need not worry. They will believe whatever he tells them to believe. But according to every poll on the subject, most Americans trust the media far more than they do Trump.

Trump justifies cutting off access to the press because he believes that his message will get out anyway. He has great confidence that his Twitter feed will serve as a substitute to the free press that America’s democracy was built upon. And he’s certain that by shunning the media there won’t be any negative stories about him. The only problem with his logic is that it is completely illogical and utterly insane. The press will still conduct investigations and publish stories based on the facts they uncover. And Trump’s evasion just makes him look more frightened and guilty.

In addition to his directive to quit White House press briefings, Trump is now considering a peculiar alternative to the traditional State of the Union address. He’s been forced into this position because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him that having the address in the Capitol during the Trump Shutdown would be problematic due to security concerns. So Trump is now preparing two different speeches. One traditional version in the event that government is reopened and the Capitol is available. And one to be delivered outside of Washington, perhaps at a rally.

However, this presents a whole new set of problems. If Trump gives the State of the Union speech at one of his cult rallies, it should not be covered by the press because it would be a political event, not official government business. His rallies are only open to his devoted disciples, and not to the general public. The access by the press is tightly controlled by Trump’s campaign committee. Such an event must not be considered a real State of the Union, but instead, a partisan affair for his reelection. That’s how the media should treat it. They should cover only those portions that are actually newsworthy. And judging by the more than forty rallies Trump staged last year, that would mean not covering it at all.

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

The press recently got played by the Trump regime when it asked for primetime TV access to deliver an address to the nation. But it was just a rehash of his past lies and self-serving talking points to persuade people that his idiotic vanity wall should be funded and built. It didn’t fool the American people. And the press should not allow itself to be fooled again.


Fox News Airs Ruth Bader Ginsburg Obituary Pic – What Would They Say if CNN Did the Same to Trump?

Posted by on January 21, 2019 at 7:02 pm. 5 Comments :

You wanna talk about “Fake News”? The most consistently dishonest news network, and Donald Trump’s personal State TV media division, Fox News, made a terrible mistake on Monday morning. They ran a graphic that implied that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.

Donald Trump, Obituary Pic

This is not only a bad mistake, it is a morbid revelation that Fox News keeps such graphic materials handy and ready to broadcast at a minutes notice. To be fair, all news outlets have obituaries prepared in the event of the death of any famous person. They keep the files handy so that the news can be announced quickly without having to create it from scratch on the spot. But it is unusual for them to be queued up for live airing unless the person has been reported to be on their deathbed.

The error occurred during Trump’s favorite program, Fox and Friends. Shortly afterward, co-host Steve Doocy acknowledged the mistake and apologized saying:

“We need to apologize. At the beginning of Ainsley’s interview with a professor, a technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a date on it. We don’t want to make it seem anything other than that was a mistake. That was an accident. We believe that she is still at home recovering from surgery. Big mistake in the control room.”

No kidding. The thing is, if this had happened on any other network with – for instance – a graphic of Donald Trump, Fox would have devoted half the show to it and insisted that it was a deliberate slur for which the network should be immediately shut down and the people responsible stripped of their citizenship and deported.

Following that, it would be picked up on subsequent programs throughout the day until it reached the peak of frenzy during Fox’s primetime block. Then Sean Hannity would declare that the whole thing was actually a threat to assassinate Trump and he would call for the arrest of the CNN anchors and executives.

Fortunately, this happened on Fox News so all that was required was a ten second acknowledgement and then we would never hear another word about it. No explanation for how it occurred. No word on who was responsible or what the consequences would be. And no comment from Ginsburg, the victim of this blunder, or any attempt to deliver a personal apology. But rest assured that the next time CNN or the New York Times misspells Melania’s name (as Trump did), there will be hours of attacks on what they call “Fake News.” And Trump himself would weigh in with his condemnations of “the enemy of the people” hoping for his demise.

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


Trump’s Martin Luther King Jr Tweet Reveals the Hypocrisy of His Own Hostility to Equality

Posted by on January 21, 2019 at 12:51 pm. 1 Comments :

One of the great ironies in American politics is the rush to embrace Dr. Martin Luther King Jr by the very same people who so adamantly opposed him and his movement. In 1983, 90 representatives (77 Republicans, 13 Democrats) and 22 senators (18 Republicans, 4 Democrats) voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday. However, today the Republican Party officially (if not enthusiastically) celebrates King’s legacy in public statements and events.

Donald Trump, Martin Luther King

As for Donald Trump, he has a sketchy history of recognizing this day’s importance to the nation. It’s almost always a perfunctory tribute that appears forced and disingenuous. This year he had no plans to mark the holiday at all until reports of that neglect caused him to rush out to the King Memorial in D.C. for a couple of minutes. The year before that he announced that he would visit the new Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, but canceled it in a petty fit after being criticized by Rep. (and civil rights hero) John Lewis.

Trump did, however, manage to squeeze out a couple of tweets for the occasion this year. One was a purely propaganda video with no message, just images of him and Mike Pence laying a wreath at the King Memorial. The other tweet actually included some commentary on the subject:

That’s almost an appropriate message to honor this day and Dr. King’s contribution to the country. But part of this message is undercut by current events. In this tweet Trump specifies that “the place of our birth” does not negate the fact that “we are all created equal.” But Trump is feverishly seeking to discriminate against people for that very reason.

The nation is now in the midst of the longest government shutdown in history. And all because Trump is demanding that Congress fund his vanity wall on our border with Mexico. In his tedious justifications for this funding, Trump maligns the Latino refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. as murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. What’s more, he is committing political extortion by threatening DACA applicants and recipients of Temporary Protected Status (both programs he is trying to terminate) with deportation if his demands aren’t met.

This is not the way people who are created equal are treated in a just society. But it is the way that Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party are treating people who are fleeing violence and poverty. And it’s the way they are treating people who were brought here as children and have lived here their whole lives. Under these circumstances, for Trump to pretend that he cares about the principles that King fought for is completely absurd.

If Trump means what his tweet says about the place of our birth not precluding us from being treated equally, then he should immediately reopen the government and initiate procedures to process the asylum claims of all refugees, and provide DACA and TPS recipients permanent residency and a path to citizenship. That’s what he should do. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Trump and the GOP to behave honorably or to honor the spirit of Dr. King.

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