Despite His Hysterical Smear Campaign, Americans Still Trust the Media More than Trump

Posted by on September 12, 2018 at 5:53 pm. NO Comments :

For more than two years now, Donald Trump has been attacking what he calls the “fake news” at every opportunity. He does it in interviews, on Twitter, and at his tedious cult rallies where he seems to be on auto-pilot, regurgitating the same old cliches that his disciples devour like nicotine candy. Even after being told that his reckless labeling of the press as “the enemy of the people” was a rhetorical remnant of Joseph Stalin, Trump continues to use the line without the least bit of shame or decency.

Donald Trump

However, after his years-long campaign of denigrating the press, as well as the Constitution’s First Amendment, Trump has gotten nowhere in terms of swaying the favor of the public. A new poll by Quinnipiac asked “Who do you trust more to tell you the truth about important issues: President Trump or the news media?” A majority of fifty-four percent chose the media. Only thirty percent chose Trump. That’s a twenty-four point margin of difference. Broken down demographically, the only group that trusts Trump more, outside of the margin of error, is Republicans. But Independents, Men, Women, and every age and ethnic group trusts the media more.

The poll also asked “Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?” And by an even bigger majority the media came out far ahead, with sixty-nine percent saying that the media is an important part of democracy. And once again, every demographic breakdown agreed, except for Republicans. Forty-seven percent of the Grand Ole Party actually agrees with Trump (and Stalin) that the media is the enemy of the people. This is an affirmation of the Trump rally-goers who were immortalized wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”

The poll had plenty of other bad news for Trump and the GOP. On the question of which party voters will back in the November election, a majority of fifty-two percent said Democrats, beating Republicans by fourteen points. Seventy-two percent of voters disapprove of the job the Republican controlled Congress is doing. Perhaps that’s because fifty-eight percent of them think Congress isn’t doing enough to be a check on the President. And both of those last two responses were shared by majorities of every demographic group. These survey results are in alignment with most of the recent polling on these subjects. See also:

It seems that no matter hard Trump pushes on his media bashing, the American people see through his tirades and continue to reject him. That’s reflected in the three latest opinion polls on Trump’s favorability (CNN, Quinnipiac, and NPR/Marist) that all put him in the thirties, and at new lows. Add to that the polls showing that the public trusts special counsel Robert Mueller over Trump, and the future looks bleak for Donnie and his dwindling party. Mueller, of course, has also been the victim of Trump’s persistent, but apparently impotent, outrage.

If these results hold for the next eight weeks, the much anticipated “blue wave” is going to swell into a tsunami. According to the survey statistics experts at FiveThiryEight, Democrats need an eleven point advantage to secure a takeover of both the House and the Senate. That advantage is currently at fourteen points. But these are merely estimates based on numerical analyses. The final election results rely on people actually going to polls and casting votes. So this is no time to become complacent of overly confident. It’s time to work hard every day between now and election day. That’s the only way to achieve the victory that America needs so badly.

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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Our Pathological-Liar-in-Chief, Donald Trump, Just Beat His Own Record for Lying – Again

Posted by on September 12, 2018 at 9:55 am. 2 Comments :

You have to hand it to Donald Trump. He is never satisfied with holding the world’s record for lying to the American people. He’s already received the honor of being awarded PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year – twice. First in 2015 for his collective campaign “misstatements.” Then again in 2017, for his repeated denials of Russia’s interference in the presidential election. In 2016 PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year went to “Fake News,” so you might say that Trump deserved a share of that as well.

Donald Trump Lies

But now Trump is soaring to new heights in his ability to distort and dishonor the truth. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star has been documenting Trump’s lies and is now reporting that the total number of presidential fabrications in August surpassed those in July, setting a new record of 321 for the month. Here are some examples of the most recent White House whoppers:

“The ABC/Washington Post Poll was by far the least accurate one 2 weeks out from the 2016 Election. I call it a suppression poll – but by Election Day they brought us, out of shame, to about even. They will never learn!”

“We’ve already started building the wall, and I can tell you these people are helping us with the wall. We need the wall. We put $1.6 (billion) and now another $1.6 (billion).”

“We withdrew from the horrible Paris climate accord. It sounds so pretty. It was gonna cost us a fortune and it was going to put us at a tremendous disadvantage — and we have cleaner air now than anybody.”

“Four million jobs created since the election. That’s unheard of. Nobody thought that was possible.”

“The hottest industry there is right now is the steel industry, and it was dead as a doornail. We were not going to have a steel industry in a couple of years from now had we not done what we did.”

“And the failing New York Times, which, by the way, if I wasn’t here, those — they would be out of business, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN.”

“The advantage we have is — I am actually a very popular president, which people don’t like to say, you know.”

“There was no collusion. I think almost everybody, even in your business, is saying there just is no collusion. There were no Russians. If there were, you would have known about it. There was collusion between the Democrats and the DNC and Russia.”

“What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks – with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!”

“Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!”

“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?”

“You know, they kept saying I had a problem with the women’s vote; I get 52 per cent in the election. I did OK. I did OK.”

“Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime.”

“We’ve also come and, you know, once you get rid of the individual mandate, which we’ve done, that really was the end of Obamacare.”

“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

“I’ll tell you what: Russia’s very unhappy that Trump won, that I can tell you.”

All of these statements are documented, bona fide lies. And if that’s not enough, the Toronto Star has over 300 more. We have a president who can’t seem to say anything without falsifying it. Even unimportant things where there is no discernible gain from lying. It’s a disease. But, unfortunately, it’s the nation that is suffering. And it will continue until we cast this deceiver from his perch. And that cannot come too soon.

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


TFA: Eric Holder Slams Trump and Lou Dobbs of Fox News for Ignorant Tweet About the DOJ

Posted by on September 11, 2018 at 12:19 pm. 4 Comments :

One of the most fascinating aspects of Donald Trump’s dementia is how he frequently expresses something that has the effect of contradicting his intention. He did this recently in a tweet about his “witch hunt” delusion that actually affirmed it. And he did it again in a rant about the anonymous New York Times op-ed that validated the article’s warnings about his unfitness to serve.

Donald Trump, Eric Holder

Well, he’s done it again. On Tuesday morning, when the rest of America was deep in remembrance of the victims of 9/11, Trump decided he would go after his own Justice Department. And he did so with what he must regard as the worst possible indignity he could muster: comparing it to Obama’s Justice Department:

On the surface, what Trump is implying is that his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was no better than his predecessor, Eric Holder. But this attempt at insulting Sessions could be interpreted another way. Trump might be saying, inadvertently of course, that the Justice Department is operating exactly as it should be. A change in administrations ought not to alter the mission of the agency, which is to be a nonpartisan seeker of facts and accountability for wrongdoing. So it should, in fact, not be any different under Sessions, than it was under Holder.

Trump, however, is wholly incapable of understanding anything as principled and anchored by ethics as that. What he was aiming at was the refusal of Sessions to turn the department into his own Office of Personal Persecution. Trump is livid that Sessions won’t lead an inquisition against Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who Trump, in his paranoid haze, believes are conspirators in a “Deep State” plot to dethrone him.

As for Holder, he noticed Trump’s harangue at Sessions and observed some differences between the current DoJ and the one that he led. Holder tweeted in response to Trump:

Indeed, Holder took his responsibilities seriously as the nation’s top law enforcement official. He dedicated his service to advancing the rights of all Americans and bringing criminals to justice. His closing acronym, “TFA,” was a reference to the 25th Amendment that provides for the removal of a president who is incapable of carrying out his duties.

Finally, Trump’s tweet was his second of the morning that quoted Lou Dobbs, the Fox News hack who is so infatuated with Trump that he signs most of his own tweets with the hashtags #MAGA and #TrumpTrain. Nothing like being fair and balanced. The other Dobbs quote posted by Trump said:

Needlass to say that is 100% false. There are mountains of evidence that connect Trump directly to Russia and people close to Vladimir Putin. And there is literally nothing that connects Clinton to Russia except for the partial funding of the Steele Dossier, which included sources that were Russian dissidents, not Kremlin operatives. That’s a huge difference.

All of this underscores the differences between what Eric Holder sees as an honest Justice Department and what Trump thinks should be an agency that is obedient to his tyrannical rule. Fortunately, that perverse vision isn’t being carried out – yet. But with Trump threatening to fire Sessions after the midterm elections, who knows.

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


Category 5 Tweet Storm Hits as Trump’s Panic and Fear Threaten to Blow Him Away

Posted by on September 10, 2018 at 11:09 am. 2 Comments :

The all too frequent occurrence of Donald Trump frantically pounding out Twitter posts to defend himself against his outrage of the day is becoming absurd. The more he feels pressured by events, and the exposure of new and damaging facts, the more wild-eyed his tirades become as his world collapses around him.

Donald Trump

On Monday morning Trump banged out fifteen tweets. The quantity alone is evidence of how obsessed and afraid he is. But the content makes that even more clear. They are mostly filled with lies and desperate distractions aimed at relieving the crushing duress he must be under. He began with a lie so easily disprovable that Fox News did it:

From there Trump moves on to the new, bestselling book by veteran investigative journalist, Bob Woodward: Fear: Trump in the White House. The book is a well documented tour of Trump’s dysfunctional White House. It affirms all of the similar reports that have come out over the past year and a half that cast the administration as a pit of animosity, jealousy, and above all, fear and disrespect for the Commander-in-Chief. Trump leads off with a tweet that contradicts itself. He asserts falsely that Woodward’s book relies on “disproven unnamed and anonymous sources.” And in the very next sentence notes that these real people “have already come forward” to deny the quotes attributed to them.

So Trump alleges that the book is a “joke” and a “scam” and that he’s going to “write the real book.” Don’t hold your breath. This is coming from someone who has never actually written a book himself, and who is best known for his pathological lying. He also alleges that the quotes attributed to him are fake because he doesn’t “talk that way.” But everyone has heard how he talks going all the way back to his “pussy grabbing” comments during the election.

Trump was especially dishonest in the tweet wherein he presented the question that NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Woodward as if it were a statement of fact that corroborated him. It wasn’t. She was just asking a question the way that real journalists do. In fact, she was rather aggressively taking an adversarial position that favored Trump. But the President’s tweet proves that he either couldn’t understand that, or just doesn’t care about the truth. And he didn’t bother to post Woodward’s answer to the question, which was “These are political statements to protect their jobs – totally understandable.” That’s because real journalists know that sources often tell the truth on background, but lie in public.

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

While Trump whines about what he regards as a “Deep State” coup that is out to get him (even though many of his critics are his own appointees in the administration), the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller rolls on, getting new information and cooperative witnesses every day. It’s only a matter of time before all the truth comes out and Trump will have nothing but his glassy-eyed disciples to prop up his failed presidency. And that time cannot come soon enough.


Ted Cruz’s Idiotic Anti ‘Tofu and Silicon’ Platform Will Destroy the Economy of Texas and America.

Posted by on September 9, 2018 at 11:17 am. 7 Comments :

The ongoing spectacle of the collapse of common sense within the Republican Party seems to be accelerating with each new day and each new preposterous outburst by some GOP ignoramus. The ignoramus in question is most frequently the one who occupies the White House, but Donald Trump can’t hog the glory entirely, much as he may want to.

Ted Cruz

Texas Senator Ted Cruz isn’t about to sit back and let someone else get all the attention for being America’s most flagrant disseminator of lies and misinformation. Cruz has worked too long and hard to make a name for himself in this field of assholery. So in an effort to recapture the recognition that he feels he deserves, Cruz gave a speech in Humble, Texas, about the evil agenda being advanced by his opponent, Beto O’Rourke, that included this brilliant campaign promise:

So Cruz is appalled that Democrats want Texas to be “just like California” (the most prosperous state in the country) “right down to tofu, silicon, and dyed hair.” But he’s not having that “on our watch.” Which makes you wonder if he’s ever been to Texas, or gives a damn about it.

Let’s start with tofu. This much maligned product is actually enormously popular in the United States and around the world. It’s made from soybeans which is now the largest cash crop in America, surpassing the previous king of the farming hill, corn. It accounts for billions of dollars in revenue. Unfortunately, much of that is being threatened by Trump’s ill-advised tariffs aimed at China. And Texas itself produces more than 6.84 million bushels a year. What must Texan farmers think of Cruz’s attack on their businesses? Fun Fact: Whole Foods is headquartered in Texas.

As for silicon, Austin, Texas is the home of Dell Computers, the third largest PC manufacturer in the world. It’s also the largest private company in Texas by revenue. Of course, they aren’t alone. Many other nationally prominent computer related business call Texas home, including Texas Instruments and GameStop. And giants like Apple, Cisco, and Google all have regional offices in the state. Perhaps Cruz was thinking of silicone as what he wanted to keep out of Texas. That would cause significant harm to Hollywood, but also make a lot of cowboys really mad. And would Melania be prohibited?

Cruz’s vicious and unprovoked assault on dyed hair is the most peculiar items on his list of evils invading the state. First of all, it presupposes that there isn’t already lots of dyed hair in Texas. And that isn’t limited to the punk rockers that he was probably inferring. It also includes much of their blonde population and, therefore, almost every woman who works for Fox News. And it includes men of a certain age as well, and probably Cruz himself. So what, exactly, is his point?

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

This campaign tactic seems destined to fail. Not only does it hurt the Texan economy, it makes Cruz out to be both ignorant and out of touch with his state – and reality. It reaffirms many of the reasons that he is regarded as so unlikeable and the most hated man in Washington. And juxtaposing that with the charisma and magnetic personality of Beto O’Rourke can only be a further, and serious, detriment to the Cruz candidacy. It might be the worst thing that Cruz could have done after his inviting Donald Trump to come to Texas to hold a rally for him. That should be fun considering what these two have said about each other over the past couple of years. For instance:


White-Winger Tucker Carlson of Fox News Can’t Figure Out How Diversity Strengthens America

Posted by on September 8, 2018 at 1:29 pm. 6 Comments :

The enthusiasm with which Fox News has been embracing the racist themes of white nationalism has been observable for years. It was a constant feature on Bill O’Reilly’s program, as it is on Laura Ingraham’s. However, their adoption of this abhorrent political movement is accelerating on a daily basis throughout the Donald Trump presidency. And it’s unchallenged leader in this crusade is their primetime anchor, and man with “resting douchebag face,” Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson Fox News

Carlson is having trouble understanding why diversity strengthens America. In Friday’s episode of his White Nationalism Hour on Fox News, Carlson played a video montage of President Obama and others praising the benefits of a diverse nation. After which, Carlson complained that he doesn’t “know exactly what it means other than ‘stop talking or else.'” How he got that from people advocating for more voices joining the public discussion is a mystery only a Grand Wizard can solve. But his whole segment on diversity was a holy mess of bigotry and ignorance. For example (video below):

“How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions – I don’t know – marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common the more cohesive they are. Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can’t understand each other, or share no common values?”

This is way to easy. First of all, is Carlson really using the military as an example of an institution where these is no diversity? America’s armed forces were desegregated in 1948 by President Harry Truman. And ever since then they have been a model for desegregating other sectors of public and private society. Does Carlson think our troops would be better off going back to forced separation based on race? Of course he does. That’s actually his point.

What’s more, Carlson also seems to be criticising the acceptance of interracial marriages. That’s another barrier that was legally overcome by the Loving v. Virginia decision by the Supreme Court in 1967. And it’s another human rights advancement that Carlson apparently wants to rollback.

His language in the sophomoric question he asks is revealing in itself. He implies that the purpose of encouraging diversity is “cohesiveness.” No, that’s the purpose of segregation and whites-only lunch counters. The purpose of diversity is expanding everyone’s understanding of a broader perspective of the world. It’s to combat exactly what Carlson thinks are obstacles to understanding each other. But in Carlson’s view our differences in skin color represent insurmountable conflicts in values. What freaking hell hole of a planet does he live on?

The fact that Fox News allows these types of flagrant white supremacy diatribes to go out on their network is an indication of their support for such repulsive tributes to prejudice and hatred. Tucker Carlson is just a petulant little jerkwad who’s views are aligned with the Klan. But Fox News runs a major cable “news” network that influences a significant faction of America’s Deplorables. And such a network must not be permitted to advance these hateful, ignorant notions without consequence. Their advertisers need to be shamed and shunned. The cable operators who carry the network need to hear from their subscribers that this hate speech is unacceptable.

Most importantly, conscientious people in public life must not grant Fox credibility by appearing on their racist programs. The network needs to be frozen out of decent society. Let them wallow in the filth of their regular cast of bigots. They can host Ann Coulter and Sebastian Gorka and Donald Trump and other white supremacists exclusively. That way it will always be easier to recognize the sleazeballs by their presence on the avowedly racist cable network.

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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Breaking on Fox News: Doddering Old Man Trump Can’t Stay Awake During Obama’s Speech

Posted by on September 7, 2018 at 4:58 pm. NO Comments :

This Friday has been a day filled with significant news stories that have a profound impact on the nation and the world. For instance, Donald Trump asked his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to investigate the New York Times for publishing an op-ed by an anonymous author. Trump’s campaign foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, was sentenced in federal court. Hurricanes are heading toward both Hawaii and the East Coast of the United States. And Russia is threatening an offensive in Syria that could put American soldiers at risk. So what is the top story on the Fox News website this afternoon?

Fox News, Donald Trump, Barack Obama,

That’s right. Donald Trump trolls former President Barack Obama by saying that “I fell asleep” during the speech Obama gave today at the University of Illinois. That seems like a pretty sorry effort at trolling. After all, Trump is essentially admitting that he’s a tired old coot with weak stamina. In fact, The Fox News lede could just as well have read:

“A doddering old man, with observable physical and mental infirmities, is unable to stay awake in the middle of the day during a noteworthy speech by a former president even though it is partially about him.”

Of course, that would be somewhat unwieldy as a headline, but it’s a more accurate representation of the facts. Why would Trump want to portray himself as having such low energy, a criticism he used to throw at Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush? What’s more, if Trump had trouble staying awake for this speech, he had better see his doctor immediately. Obama gave an eloquent and rousing address that covered a broad range of important issues facing the country. Here is a just a taste (full video below):

“Over the past few decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has, unfortunately, found a home in the Republican Party. This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires outside influence over our politics; systematically attacked voting rights to make it harder for young people and minorities and the poor to vote; handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits; slashed the safety net wherever it could; cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans.

They embraced wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi; or my birth certificate; rejected science; rejected facts on things like climate change; embraced a rising absolutism on a willingness to default on America’s debt by not paying our bills; to a refusal to even meet, much less consider, a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic president. None of this is conservative … It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical.

And that put Trump to sleep? These weren’t even the parts that spoke directly about him. He probably wouldn’t have appreciated Obama reducing him to a symptom of today’s political divisiveness. Trump wants to always be the center of attention. And Obama directly addressed Trump’s Stalinist tendencies toward the media by saying that “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.”

If Donald Trump has trouble maintaining consciousness during a speech like this, imagine how difficult it must be for him to stay awake during national security briefings. And what about legal consultations with his personal attorneys handling Robert Mueller’s investigation into his collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice? And if he’s only kidding around, it’s an idiotic attempt at humor that only reaffirms the perception of him as being confused and oblivious. Which is a perception that has been reaffirmed so often that we can just accept it as fact at this point.

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


Trump’s Incoherent Whining on Fox News About Anonymous Op-Ed in NY Times Actually Affirms It

Posted by on September 7, 2018 at 11:41 am. 3 Comments :

We’re two days into the news cycle on the anonymous op-ed that appeared in the New York Times announcing a “resistance” inside the White House to Trump’s dangerous unfitness for office. If anything, the temperature has increased with more insiders coming forward to warn about Trump’s unbalanced mental state.

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, Trump is proving the allegations against him by bellowing at his staff and behaving even more paranoid than usual. He can’t trust anyone around him but his children, and even that might be assuming too much. The effect this has had on him is obvious and profound. He’s tweeted about this, and the related book by Bob Woodward, eighteen times already. He’s clearly obsessed with these credible depictions of his mental infirmities by people who have access to him and reason to know.

So naturally Trump rushed frantically to Fox News in order to get a good tongue bathing in an environment where he would be safe from well deserved criticism. He was interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth before the crowd at his Montana cult rally. And the part of exchange that covered the New York Times op-ed pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Trump’s rupturing psychoses. It’s a wholly incoherent rant that he seemed to disgorge in a single, panicky breath. (video below):

Hegseth: Folks here might have seen an anonymous column written in the New York Times. [Audience boos] And I think this audience would say that an attack on you was an attack on the people that voted for you. Are you any closer to knowing who did it and what should be done if you find out who did it?
Trump: Well number one, the Times should have never have done that because really what they’ve done is, virtually, you know it’s treason. You can call it a lot of things, but to think that you have somebody in all of the cabinets – some many people as you know they came forward, they’re writing editorials. They’re all saying you know it’s got to be at a fairly low level. Because so many people today, I was just coming out, and I see all the people that are saying such great things. We have a lot of love in the administration, and the White House is truly as you would say, a well-oiled machine – it is working so well. You know we have – I heard you say yesterday, we have thousands of people that in theory could qualify. So they take one person out of thousands, but what’s unfair – I don’t mind when they write a book and they make lies cause it gets discredited. We just discredited the last one, we discredit all of them because it’s lies. But I’ll tell you, when somebody writes and you can’t discredit because you have no idea who they are – usually you’ll find out, it’s a background that was bad, it may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state person that’s been there a long time. You don’t know where – it’s a very unfair thing. But its very unfair to our country and to the millions of people that voted, really for us. They voted for us.

First of all, go back and read the question. Trump came nowhere near anything that might be considered an answer. What you have there is an insane person insisting that he’s completely sane while proving that he isn’t. Trump began by charging the Times with treason. Obviously, he has no idea what the word means or how to apply it. And this wasn’t a hypothetical comment. On Air Force One this morning Trump said he was asking his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to investigate the Times as a “national security” matter. However, he couldn’t explain how a critical op-ed endangered national security. He also said he’s looking into taking some unspecified action against the paper and the author. That would be a flagrant breach of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Trump went on to extol the “love in the administration,” despite the unprecedented turmoil, resignations and terminations during his first two years in office. His senior staff are reported to have called him “an idiot,” “a moron,” “a liar,” “a baby,” and more demeaning, but accurate epithets. If this is his idea of a “well-oiled machine,” what, in heaven’s name, would a squeaky one look like?

Trump also told Hegseth that “I don’t mind when they write a book” because “we discredit all of them.” Notice that he doesn’t say that he refutes them or offers substantive rebuttals. He astonishingly admits that he goes straight for character assassination. He affirms that by complaining that he can’t discredit the author if he doesn’t know who it is. Of course, he could dispute what was said, but the only thing he’s interested in is attacking the person, not the allegations. That’s because he can’t attack allegations that are demonstrably true.

The more Trump defends himself from charges of mental infirmity, the more he is demonstrating the validity of the charges. And he’s behaving like the cornered animal that lashes out wildly at any perceived threat. That’s the same behavior he’s exhibited with regard to the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Trump is clearly afraid and in panic mode. And that is turning his responses to these situations into more evidence against him. So keep ranting, Donnie. You’re signing your own impeachment order.

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


Hannity Insanity: Trump ‘Is the Most Sound-Minded Person to Ever Occupy the White House’

Posted by on September 6, 2018 at 12:56 pm. 7 Comments :

The question of Donald Trump’s fitness to serve as president has been a frequent topic of discussion in recent weeks. Dozens of psychiatric professionals are among those who have weighed in on the subject, declaring that Trump has severe mental deficiencies that pose grave risks for the nation. But Sean Hannity of Fox News, without any training in the subject, disagrees.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Speculation about Trump’s declining mental state is not a new concern. News Corpse addressed it two years ago with an analysis of his advancing senile dementia. And with every new day our obviously disturbed President provides new examples of why he must be removed from office. On Wednesday an op-ed was published in the New York Times by a “senior official” in the Trump administration that affirms much of the concerns expressed by others for the past two years.

Enter Sean Hannity. On his Wednesday evening episode of Trump-Fluffers on Parade, Hannity hosted one of his favorite fluffing guests, “doctor” Gina Loudon. She and Hannity jumped right into a defense of Trump’s self-made image as a “stable genius” with an awkward segue from the New York Times story. Hannity began by charging that the op-ed’s author is a “crazy, anonymous, gutless, cowardly,” person. And, fatigued from heaving so many insulting adjectives, he threw the question to Loudon (video below):

Hannity: There is a madness to this and your background and your book discusses this derangement. What do we call it?”
Loudon: We’ve got Trump Derangement Syndrome, Sean. That’s what most people have called it to this point. But my book actually uses science, and real data, and true psychological theory to explain why it is quite possible that this president is the most sound-minded person to ever occupy the White House.
Hannity: Literally, liberals heads are gonna explode at what you just said.
Loudon: That’s the fun part of the madness. Watching them go crazy over the fact that he’s really pretty unphased by them. And I believe that. And I know him.
Hannity: And that’s what drives them nuts.

This is an Olympian feat of delusional, propagandizing hogwash. Loudon isn’t satisfied with merely claiming that Trump is of sound mind. Nope, she has to embellish it with the flaming absurdity that it’s the soundest mind ever. And what’s more, she has scientific evidence of it. How she can prove by scientific methodology that Trump, or anyone, has a mind that is more sound than any other, has yet to be revealed. She should release her “research” immediately, so that we can all have a good laugh. As for being “unphased,” his own hair-raising Twitter feed contradicts that bullcrap.

Hannity then went on to say that the media are “like drug addicts” who wake up every day and, if they don’t get their fix, their “hate for the day,” they “break out into sweats.” Sounds more like he is describing himself and/or his Dear Leader. Trump is the one who begins every day with rabid tweetstorms in all caps. The media is just reacting to the manic outbursts of the Commander-in-Tweet. Meanwhile, Loudon criticizes Bob Woodward’s book and praises her own, because he doesn’t know the President and she does. Which is really an endorsement of Woodward’s book because he isn’t going to be biased by a personal association, but she will be.

The gargantuan, Kool-Aid infused, suck up to Trump’s allegedly sound mind has to ignore two years of off-the-rails idiocy. Is it sound to kiss up to foreign dictators while lambasting long-time allies? Is it sound to continually take credit for the achievements of your predecessor and to lie about your own innumerable failures? Is it sound to brag about how effectively you are destroying the environment and sabotaging healthcare? Is it sound to praise neo-Nazis and to abduct children from their parents and warehouse them in cages? According to Hannity and Loudon (and the rest of Fox News), the answer is a resounding “Dah!”

This tendency to lavish effusive praise on Trump is a hallmark of his own hyperbolic rhetoric. He can’t say anything, particularly about himself, without making it the bestest of all time. Conversely, any criticism he has of someone else is automatically the worst in the history of the world. There is probably a psychiatric term for this condition, and we can just add to the list of the mental infirmities that Trump is suffering from. Unfortunately for America, it’s a long list.

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


Death Spiral? Trump’s Favorite Poll, Rasmussen, Has Him at 44% – Lowest in 7 Weeks

Posted by on September 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm. 2 Comments :

It isn’t easy being a malignant narcissist. Having such an intensely egocentric fetish with oneself carries with it numerous burdens. Chief among those is an unhealthy obsession with what everyone thinks of you. Consequently, Donald Trump is consumed with the polling on his public approval and, more notably, his disapproval.

Donald Trump

There hasn’t been very much good news for Trump with regard to his recent polling. This affront to his self image caused him to freak out and mistakenly brag that he had reached a fifty-two percent approval rating. Turns out he misread the numbers. That was actually his disapproval rating.

Many of the latest surveys place him at or near the worst showings of his presidency. For instance, last week ABC/Washington Post published their most recent poll that showed Trump at a new high in disapproval (60%). It so flustered Trump that he called it a “suppression poll” in an angry tweet that falsely maligned the pollster’s accuracy. Then he followed that up with a tweet about his favorite propagandist polling outfit, Rasmussen, that was somewhat more friendly, although it still had him underwater (48-50%). Nevertheless, his tweet praised Rasmussen as “one of the most accurate.”

Seeing as how Trump appreciates the alleged accuracy of Rasmussen’s polling, he must be taking seriously the latest in their daily tracking of the President’s approval, or lack thereof. On Wednesday Trump sunk to a seven-week low. Rasmussen is reporting his disapproval at fifty-four percent. His approval was down to forty-four percent. Interestingly, Rasmussen also has Trump’s “strong” disapproval at forty-four percent, which ties with his total approval. Ouch.

For the record, the most recent Fox News poll has Trump’s approval only one point higher than Rasmussen’s (45%). So the consensus among the State TV propaganda outlets is pretty clear.

This slippage could not be happening at a worse time for the President. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, has been tightening the screws with new indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas of close Trump associates. The release of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, is revealing the crisis of chaos in Trump’s “Crazytown.” His Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is getting flambe’ed at his confirmation hearings in the Senate (and his approval rating is the lowest of any Supreme Court nominee).

Finally, Trump is preparing to hit the campaign trail on behalf of floundering Republicans nationwide. You have to wonder how many of them still want him to show up. Because at this rate Trump may be hitting record lows even on Rasmussen’s poll. He’s only got six more points to go before matching the thirty-eight percent he pulled on August 2, 2017. That’s totally doable, Donnie. Keep hope alive.

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