Good News: Trump Promises to Ignore His Job for 2 Months to Campaign for Republicans

Posted by on July 28, 2018 at 4:37 pm. 1 Comments :

The only thing worse than having Donald Trump gallivanting off to his luxurious golf resorts every weekend is having him in the White House doing more harm to the country. He has already spent about thirty-one percent of his presidency (175 days) at Trump owned properties like Mar-A-Lago. It’s an unprecedented negligence of duty for the alleged Commander-in-Chief, but a welcome relief to the nation and, most likely, the long-suffering staff at the White House. Now if we could just get him to stop tweeting as well.

Donald Trump, Disability

In addition to his vacation getaways, Trump is a frequent flyer on Air Force One to political events across the country. On Friday he posted a message on Twitter announcing that he will be appearing at a tremendous gathering of his true believers in Tampa Bay, Florida next Tuesday. That will mark his twenty-third purely partisan revival meeting this year alone. That averages out to three times a month that the President has assembled his staff, security detail, and transportation crews to venture from Washington on the taxpayers dime, delivering nakedly partisan speeches to adoring throngs of Deplorables. These are expensive excursions that every American is footing the bill for. While some costs are reimbursed by Trump’s campaign committee, the trappings of the presidency are borne by us hard working rubes, most of whom voted for Hillary Clinton. And if you want to know what Trump thinks about forcing this financial burden on regular folks, just refer back to his tweets on the subject when Barack Obama was President:

On Friday Trump had a surprise phone-in interview with his shadow chief of staff, Sean Hannity. Among the things they discussed were the upcoming midterm elections. Most prognosticators are predicting a massive Blue Wave that will sweep the Democrats back into the majority in the House of Representatives, and perhaps the Senate as well. But Trump has a different opinion. He believes that the power of his personality will shock the experts and produce a glorious Republican victory. Who knows? Maybe he’s right. And no Democrat should get complacent about winning given the unpredictable nature of this electorate. But in the furtherance of his goal, Trump told Hannity (at about 26:05) that “I am going to work very hard. I’ll go six or seven days a week when we’re sixty days out.”

So what he’s saying is that he’s going to take a leave of absence from the presidency to become a full-time campaign shill. This isn’t really new. Last December his people said that he intends to spend more time campaigning. But this does present some problems. Does he think the country will just wait around for two months until he’s through politicking and returns to the Oval Office to see if he has any messages? Will Vlad know where to reach him? And when, for the love of God, will he have time for golf?

Why he needs to take these measures is puzzling. His rallies to date have been carbon copies of each other where he does and says virtually the same thing every time. It’s just like his Twitter endorsements of GOP hopefuls that are veritable robo-tweets on behalf of interchangeable Stepford Republicans. And for the most part, he’ll talk more about himself than the the candidate he’s suppoedly there to support. But he will play all the hits (“Crooked Hillary, Build the Wall,” and the epic “Witch Hunt”) while castigating the ever-present media as “the enemy of the people.” These affairs are so mindlessly repetitive that they could be performed with a mannequin and tape loops. And his glassy-eyed disciples wouldn’t know the difference.

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

However, at least the country will know where he is and that he won’t be able to do as much damage as he would while playing president and barking orders from the big chair in the Oval Office. And he won’t be cozying up to foreign dictators and selling out the country to our enemies. Of course, he could still relay messages to them from the stump, and they would be listening while waging another cyber war against America during an election. So we’ll have to alert wherever he is. Because we know that Trump and his lackeys won’t be.

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Fox News’ Senior Whipping Boy: Juan Williams Has Tolerated Political and Racial Bias for Two Decades

Posted by on July 28, 2018 at 11:04 am. 2 Comments :

The Huffington Post just published an article by Yashar Ali that explored the reasons behind Kimberly Guilfoyle’s surprise departure from Fox News. Donald Trump Jr’s lover was criticized for trying to hang on to her Fox gig while shacking up with the President’s recently divorced son. How could she, folks wondered, comment on Trump without bias under these circumstance?

Fox News, Juan Williams

However, according to Ali, that wasn’t the reason for Fox terminating her. Like many Fox personalities before her, Guilfoyle has been accused of sexual misconduct and abusive behavior. She denies the charges, but Ali’s reporting includes more than twenty witnesses. However, there was an interesting side note in the article that deserves more attention. To demonstrate the deteriorating environment surrounding Guilfoyle, Ali wrote that:

“Guilfoyle had become increasingly isolated in the past year, sources said. Three of her co-hosts on ‘The Five’ (Dana Perino, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld) have second shows to host themselves. Guilfoyle was not given the opportunity to host her own program while she was a co-host of the panel show.”

So of the five co-hosts of the creatively-named The Five (which airs at 5:00pm ET), three had second shows and one (Guilfoyle) did not. The fifth is Juan Williams. Since 1997 Williams has been the beleagured African-American, Fox-style liberal at Fox News, walking the tight rope of sheepishly representing the Democratic ideology while staying in the good graces of Fox’s conservative hierarchy. For more than twenty years Williams has been a loyal employee who often defended Fox News when they were criticized for their obvious right-wing bias. He would make himself available for appearance on other Fox shows to take abuse from the conservatives who always outnumbered him.

During his time at the network, many commentators who joined after him were rewarded with their own shows. Everyone from Gretchen Carlson and Jesse Watters to Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, and many more. They all have two things in common that Williams lacks: They are rabidly conservative and they are white. So despite having more seniority and more experience, Williams was passed over repeatedly by his right-wing, Caucasian peers.

It might be easy to explain Fox’s unwillingness to promote Williams as due to his politics. Fox has never had solo liberal host in it’s twenty-two year history. And as co-hosts and panelists liberals have always been outnumbered by conservatives. So his politics surely had something to do with his stagnant career. But for a network that is overwhelming dominated by white commentators and hosts it’s hard to dismiss the likelihood that race also played a profound role in the failure of Williams to land his own program.

The question is: Why does Williams stick around when it’s so obvious that Fox is discriminating against him both politically and racially? If he had any self-respect he would quit and issue a sharp rebuke of the network for it’s biases. But he is either addicted to the money, or he is so weak-livered that he can’t stand up for himself or the principles of equality. I think the former is part of the reason for his tolerance of this workplace abuse, but the latter is probably more responsible for it. That weakness is evident in his mushy advocacy of Democratic positions, which he will support only up until the point where he feels like he’s trampling on his wingnut colleagues. He almost always comes short of the sort of powerful argument that a real liberal would present.

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

As a result, Williams will always come short as a commentator who will never advance to a host as he watches other lesser Foxies leap frog him to greater success. Fox News will keep around because he fulfills their need for an African-American leftie. But they are keeping him around only for show and to persist with the lie of fairness and balance. Williams will stay because he’s a wimpy slave to the Fox plantation that allows him to hang out in the big house with his masters.


Did Donald Trump Snub the FBI’s 110th Anniversary Because of the So-Called ‘Witch Hunt’?

Posted by on July 27, 2018 at 4:14 pm. NO Comments :

Thursday July 26, 2018, was the 110th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It’s a milestone that was somehow missed by the Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump. That snub was out of character for Trump who has made a point of congratulating numerous other governmental agencies, particularly in law enforcement and the military.

Donald Trump

Of course, his recognition of other agencies was always just a gesture of pseudo-patriotism intended to make himself appear to be supportive of the heroes who sacrifice so much on behalf of their country.

He even congratulated himself on his electoral college victory (and popular vote loss) over Hillary Clinton:

However, neglecting to celebrate the FBI’s anniversary might be more than just a lapse in memory or the fault of an inattentive aide. Trump is currently being investigated by the FBI, the Justice Department, and a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who was once the director of the FBI. Trump calls these investigations “witch hunts” despite having already produced dozen of indictments and five guilty pleas.

He has publicly insulted his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Chris Wray, all of whom he appointed. And even though he has occasionally differentiated the FBI rank and file from their leadership, perhaps he is still reluctant to give any of them any credit while the investigations are in progress.

In Trump’s mind it might be easier to malign the FBI if he is indicted, or otherwise implicated in criminal activity, if he hasn’t already praised them on their anniversary. So screw ’em. What doesn’t benefit Donald Trump isn’t deserving of recognition. That’s the Trump Way. And if the work of the men and women in the FBI is callously cast aside, too bad.

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


Icky Facto? Fox News Defends Getting Campaign Dirt on Hillary Clinton from Hostile Foreign Countries

Posted by on July 27, 2018 at 11:53 am. NO Comments :

On Laura Ingraham’s Thursday night Fox News program she hosted former federal prosecutor and Fox contributor, Andrew McCarthy. The segment was focused on the recent bombshell disclosure about Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The report alleges that Cohen is prepared to testify that Trump knew in advance about the meeting his son and senior campaign staff had with Russian operatives pitching negative information from Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails.

Fox News Commies

Cohen’s testimony would make Trump’s repeated prior claims of having no knowledge of the meeting a lie (Trump lied? Shocking, isn’t it?). On Friday morning Trump reiterated his ignorance of the meeting in a tweet that also disparaged Cohen. But all of that was of little concern to Ingraham and her guests. For the most part the conversation was typically defensive of Trump and sought to malign Cohen’s credibility. Ingraham even offered the long-ago debunked excuse that the meeting was only about Russian adoptions and was an attempt to lobby Trump’s people to support repealing the Magnitsky Act that imposed sanctions on Russia. Don Jr’s own emails refuted that red herring with a subject line that read “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential.”

In addition to trying to dismiss and trivialize the significance of the Cohen revelations, Ingraham and company likewise argued that there wasn’t anything wrong with the apparent collusion by Trump with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. She actually defended the practice of getting campaign dirt from hostile foreign countries. Although she did manage to criticize Clinton in a bizarre rant (video below):

“Hillary Clinton paid for dirt that was assembled by the Russians in the form of the Steele dossier. She actually went further than meeting with someone. Her people actually paid for it. They got dirt and then it ended up making its way all the way through the U.S. government.”

Ingraham is to truth what Donald Trump is to, well, truth. Clinton did not pay for “dirt that was assembled by the Russians.” Her campaign paid an opposition research firm whose activities were first funded by a conservative Republican website. That firm hired a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, to gather information about Trump and his associates. It was Steele, an American ally who the FBI regarded as credible and trustworthy, who assembled information that he obtained from his sources. The Russians had nothing to do with “assembling” the data, and Clinton had no interactions with Russians or Steele. And while portions of the dossier were cited in FISA warrant applications, they were merely a part of the evidence that the government presented.

So Ingraham was just mouthing off with a flurry of false, right-wing, Trump-sponsored talking points. And if that wasn’t bad enough, her guest, McCarthy, concurred with the opinion that there was nothing to see here:

“I don’t think that it’s bad if campaigns are turning to foreign governments for dirt. It’s not collusion. It’s not something that’s impeachable. It’s icky. But that’s what this is.”

Actually, when campaigns turn to foreign governments for dirt, that absolutely is collusion by definition. It is also conspiracy to aid and abet a foreign government’s interference with an election. And that’s both illegal and impeachable. But I’ll give McCarthy credit for at least admitting that “It’s icky.” I guess that’s a legal term that Fox News contributors use to sound smart.

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


Fox News Helps GOP Congresswoman Spread Debunked Lies that Obama Paid Iran $1.5 Billion

Posted by on July 26, 2018 at 5:51 pm. NO Comments :

Just in case you were looking for another example of Fox News casting off all pretense of being an honest news enterprise, they provided an excellent one Thursday morning. Donald Trump’s favorite TV show, Fox and Friends, invited Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney to discuss matters related to the Trump administration’s diplomatic agenda for Iran since Trump broke the agreement the United States made previously. And yes, that’s Dick Cheney’s daughter.

Fox News Friends

The segment began with Ainsley Earhardt reminding viewers that Donald Trump recently posted a deranged, all caps tweet that warned Iran to “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.” It cannot be overstated that this was the President threatening the nuclear annihilation of men, women, and children, of a foreign adversary over mere words.

Much of the conversation centered on Cheney’s impressions of Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, and his efforts to prevent Iran from advancing their nuclear ambitions. Of course, President Obama had already put an end to that prior to Trump blowing it up in his obsessive fetish to undo all things Obama. But Cheney was then asked specifically how the current administration’s approach to Iran differed from their predecessor. Which seems like a planted question that really had no purpose other than to bash Obama’s achievements. Cheney took full advantage of that saying:

“Oh it’s hugely different. If you look at the fact that Barack Obama paid $1.5 billion – U.S. taxpayer money – paid the Iranians to get them to enter into the nuclear agreement.”

The only problem with that response is that is utterly and provably false. PolitiFact, and every other fact-checker, has documented that the monies disbursed to Iran when the deal with the Obama administration (and by the way, six other nations) was executed, was Iran’s money to begin with. The U.S. was merely releasing funds that it had sequestered as part of the sanctions that were imposed on Iran in order to bring them to the negotiating table.

After Cheney made her wholly dishonest claim about these funds, Earhardt failed to challenge her or to let Fox’s viewers know that she was lying. So that false information was disseminated once again to Fox’s already ignorant and ill-informed viewers. And as if that weren’t enough, Fox News later posted a video clip of the segment on Twitter that featured Cheney’s remarks, but still didn’t point out that they were false. This is typical of Fox’s practice of mangling the news so that it misrepresents reality and feeds disinformation to an audience that can’t distinguish truth from fiction anyway.

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


Goebbels Redux: White House Bans CNN Reporter Because She Asked Trump Some Questions

Posted by on July 26, 2018 at 7:11 am. 2 Comments :

On Wednesday Donald Trump held an impromptu photo-op with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission. This is the same European Union that Trump recently cited first when asked when to identify America’s “biggest foe.” He later added China and Russia as if they were afterthoughts. But now he was meeting with our EU foe’s president in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump, CNN

As the event drew to a close, Kaitlan Collins of CNN threw out some questions for Trump, just as reporters always do at these affairs. She was representing the television news community as the pool reporter for the day. Her questions were focused on subjects that were currently topical and that Trump himself was addressing to reporters and on his communications platform of choice, Twitter. Specifically, she asked about the release of Micheal Cohen’s recoreded conversations with Trump and Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin for a meeting at the White House. Trump often answers such questions in this setting, but on this occasion he chose not to.

Immediately thereafter, Collins was called into the office of Bill Shine, the former Fox News president who is now Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Shine was fired by Fox for his enabling of the network’s sexual predators, including Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. Now he performs the same services for Trump. But as Trump’s chief media staffer he wanted to see Collins to tell her that she would be barred from covering the next event on the President’s calendar, a Rose Garden Q & A with Juncker. According to CNN, Collins arrived at Shine’s office and then:

Shine and press secretary Sarah Sanders met Collins there. “They said ‘You are dis-invited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today,'” Collins said in an interview. “They said that the questions I asked were inappropriate for that venue. And they said I was shouting.”

A video clip of the exchange shows that Collins was speaking the same way journalists in the press pool usually speak.

Collins said she reacted by saying, “You’re banning me from an event because you didn’t like the questions I asked.”

Collins is only partly right. It is not insignificant that the reporter who was banned for doing something all reporters do works for CNN. Trump routinely maligns the press as being “sick,” and “sleazy,” and “the enemy of the American people.” But he frequently singles out CNN as being “the worst” of them all. So the banning of a credentialed CNN reporter is not a random incident. It is a retaliation.

What’s worse is that this sort of sanction is intended to send a message to the rest of the press corps. Either behave the way we want you to, or be banished from the White House and other presidential events. It’s notable that even Fox News issued a statement criticizing the White House and expressing solidarity with CNN. Although Fox host Lou Dobbs wasn’t on board with that, praising Collin’s punishment by saying that “it’s about time there were consequences.” As for the White House, they released a statement saying that:

“At the conclusion of a press event in the Oval Office a reporter shouted questions and refused to leave despite repeatedly being asked to do so. Subsequently, our staff informed her she was not welcome to participate in the next event, but made clear that any other journalist from her network could attend. […] To be clear, we support a free press and ask that everyone be respectful of the presidency and guests at the White House.”

So Donald Trump is demanding that the press be “respectful” of him? The same guy who menacingly points to the journalists pen at his rallies, calling them “liars” and “horrible people,” and whipping up the hostility of his crazed followers? The guy who has proposed revoking the credentials of any reporter who is less than doe-eyed adoring? The guy who tries to undermine independent news operations by falsely smearing them as “failing” or criminal? Now he thinks they should be respectful, by which he means unquestioning sycophants?

The media is doing their job just as they have done for decades. And that has caused other administrations to have uncomfortable relationships with them. But this administration has gone further than any other to upend the very notion of press freedom. And if this is their idea of supporting a free press, they have a severe problem with the definition of “free press.” It doesn’t include bullying a woman from a network that you’ve already designated as your enemy. By abusing power in this manner the Trump administration has proven once again that they are intent on emulating the tyrannical governments of Putin and Kim Jong Un who Trump seems to admire so much. But he’s going to find out that America’s Constitution is stronger than his desire to suppress the freedom of the press.

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

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Trump’s Flagrant Lies About Sexual Affairs is Okay with Fox News Because Everybody Does It

Posted by on July 25, 2018 at 4:17 pm. 1 Comments :

The relentless efforts by Fox News to defend Donald Trump for anything and everything he does and says is well known to anyone paying attention by now. Their duties as the official State TV of the Trump presidency require them to abandon all reason and principle in order to prop up the President and crush his critics. And they fulfill these obligations with determined devotion, if not much in the way of logic or adherence to facts.

Donald Trump, Playmates

On Wednesday’s episode of Outnumbered, the four right-wing co-hosts welcomed former GOP congressman, and Benghazi fetishist, Jason Chaffetz to group as their so-called “One Lucky Guy.” The discussion included a venture into the breaking news about Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen and the tapes that were just released of him plotting with Trump to pay hush money to Playboy model Karen McDougal, with whom Trump had a longstanding affair.

As the conversation developed it was clear that there was no way to deny Trump’s bad behavior. He was cheating on his third wife who had recently given birth to his son, Barron. So the Fox crew had to shift to a defense that consisted of excusing the behavior, no matter how repugnant. And so that’s just what they did, beginning with co-host Melissa Francis, who tried to employ some classic “whataboutism” by maligning former Clinton attorney Lanny Davis (video below):

Francis: I think it’s a bit rich when you have the Clinton cleaner out there talking about the Trump cleaner. It makes you wanna jump in the shower and wash it all off and wash it off your brain. I guess Lanny Davis says ‘What’s the point? What’s this all about?’ It’s about truth and that the President lied.

Okay. I kind of assumed that from the beginning. I don’t know what this does for us.

Kennedy: I think most people have. That was the thrust of the whole Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti soap opera. It was somehow getting at the mysterious truth as though we’re being trolled and living in an episode of political X-Files: The truth is out there.

See what they did there? Since other people have behaved badly in the past, it doesn’t matter that Trump does it too. But it is a little surprising that Francis shrugs at Trump’s dishonesty as something that she assumes as a matter of course. And then Kennedy went into a rant about how all of this is just a series of distractions from both sides. She cites everything from the fallout of the Helsinki summit to Trump considering the revocation of security clearances of former Obama officials. These, of course, are all melodramas created by Trump himself that Kennedy is now insisting are distractions. And the fact that Trump lied isn’t newsworthy because everyone already knows that he’s a liar. This is Fox News making that argument.

They go on to defend Trump’s lying because “people who have affairs lie about it.” And somehow they are completely oblivious to the fact that these Fox News shills, and the whole Republican Party, supported the impeachment of President Clinton for that very thing. But now it’s such a minor point it should be tossed aside as a mere diversion that doesn’t warrant our attention.

You can be sure that if it were President Obama who was having an affair and was caught in a taped discussion about covering it up with hush money, they wouldn’t have written it off so gleefully. But their Dear Leader in the White House is so sacrosanct that he’s allowed to commit any sin or crime he wants to. That’s the privilege of demagogic cult leaders like Trump who command blind devotion from their disciples. Must be nice.

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


Heartsick: Trump Breaks His Date With Putin Until 2019, After the ‘Witch Hunt’ is Over (Huh?)

Posted by on July 25, 2018 at 12:42 pm. 1 Comments :

The first date went so tremendously that Donald Trump almost immediately asked dreamy Vladimir Putin out again for a rendezvous in romantic Washington, D.C. in the fall. But Trump was dissed by his crush when Putin wavered as to whether he would accept the invitation. A crestfallen Trump is now saying that he has other plans as well.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

Trump’s National Security Advisor, and mustache ride attendant, John Bolton, made the announcement that “The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.” A dejected Trump is now employing the famous “You can’t fire me, I quit,” method of diplomatic courtship.

However, this statement has some peculiarities that warrant additional scrutiny. First of all, this is the first use of the phrase “witch hunt” by Mr. Bolton, and maybe by any senior White House staffer other than Trump himself. Apparently they are trying to cement its use as an acceptable descriptor of legal processes.

Secondly, Trump is assuming that Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation will be ongoing at least through the end of this year. That’s a long ways from the predictions of his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who has been saying that the probe would be over in a couple of weeks ever since he joined Trump’s legal team.

Finally, it is very likely that the real reason for the delay has something to do with the upcoming midterm elections. It could be embarrassing if Trump were to repeat his disastrous performance in a rematch with Putin just prior to those contests. Republicans are already considered to be in dire shape as a massive blue wave of Democratic victory is forming. Putin may have been aware of that and was subtly nudging his politically naive American stooge into rescheduling until after election day. Not that things will be any better for Trump if the GOP takes the beating that is being forecast. But they could simply pretend to forget about the summit entirely should that happen.

What’s more, if Mueller completes his investigation anytime between now and year’s end, that will throw a huge Russian boot into plans for the two authoritarian aficionados to convene. Unless, of course, wherever they wind up incarcerating Trump allows for conjugal visits.

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


Rachel Maddow: White House Transcript Erases Putin Saying He Helped Trump Win the Election

Posted by on July 24, 2018 at 10:10 pm. 3 Comments :

Holy crap. This is one of those moments when it simply cannot be ignored that the Trump administration is deliberately falsifying reality in order to deceive their glassy-eyed Deplorables. The White House has brazenly disappeared part of the press conference he held with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. And the purpose is painfully obvious.

Rachel Maddow Donald Trump

On the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, Rachel revealed that the official White House transcript had an omission that could not have been accidental. The video from Maddow’s show tells the whole story. But the gist of it this: Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked Putin a question and got a surprisingly candid answer. After Putin replied to a question about assisting Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, Putin and Mason had the following exchange:

Putin: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Jeff Mason: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

However, that is not what showed up in the White House transcript. They omitted the first part of Mason’ question, making it appear that Putin was still replying to the Mueller question:

PRESIDENT PUTIN: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Q: And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
PRESIDENT PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

So the Trump camp removed Putin’s explicit admission that he wanted Trump to win the election, and that he took measures to achieve that end. Gee, why do you suppose Trump didn’t want the American people to know about that, even after they saw it with their own eyes when it occurred? Could Trump be trying to re-write history in order to cover up his collusion with Russia? Would he be that obviously Orwellian? Well, on Tuesday he spoke at a VFW event and said “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” That’s frighteningly close to what Orwell wrote in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

To make matters worse, the official video of this on the White House website has the same clearly intentional and flagrantly deceptive edits. This is nothing more than the sort of twisted propaganda tactics that occur regularly in authoritarian dictatorships. In fact, Russia excised the same parts of the transcript as the White House did (collusion?). Trump is trying to erase the fact that Putin openly advocated for his candidacy, and even directed his officials to provide assistance. And what’s really disturbing is that it seems to be right in line with the sort of abhorrent behavior we all expect from Donald Trump.

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

See for yourself: And be prepared to be disgusted by the unscrupulous immorality of our current, and hopefully short-tenured, president.

UPDATE: Philip Bump of the Washington Post is saying that Maddow’s analysis of these video discrepancies is wrong. He says the video that the White House (and the Post) transcribed was missing the part of the question identified above. But even if that’s true, why didn’t the White House get the complete video? Maddow did. And if they want to say this is all just an innocent mistake, then why haven’t they corrected the White House website? Are we supposed to believe that they are committed to the truth when they leave information they know is false on their website?

UPDATE II: Sometime on July 26, the White House website finally corrected their transcript of the the Trump/Putin press conference. And it only took them them a week and a half.


Gaslighting 101: Trump is ‘Very Concerned’ that Russia Will Be ‘Fighting Very Hard’ for Democrats

Posted by on July 24, 2018 at 11:02 am. 1 Comments :

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency will be the ease and frequency with which he passes off flagrant falsehoods to the American people and the world. It’s a display of pathological lying that could keep psychiatric researchers busy for decades. Yet is a daily occurrence for Trump and it is actually increasing in volume and depth of dishonesty every day.

Donald Trump

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump tweeted another absurdity that he hopes will tickle the shriveled hearts of the glassy-eyed disciples who believe his every utterance. The cult mentality is strong in these adoring StormTrumpers. But this latest Twitter post ought to be recognizably fake news to even the most naive Deplorable:

There is much wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin. How about with the fact that just two days ago Trump tweeted that Russian election hacking was “all a big hoax.” And that came only a few days after he insisted that he didn’t see why Russia would interfere with our elections, a statement he supposedly “corrected” the day after he said it. It appears that Trump was arguing that Obama should have told him about the Russian interference that he also says never happened? And what he has been repeatedly calling a hoax and a “witch hunt” is suddenly real.

Secondly, at the joint press conference Trump held with his Russian counterpart (aka boss), Putin was asked directly: “Did you want President Trump to win the election? And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?” Putin replied, “Yes, I did. Yes, I did.” In fact, Putin has been consistently as flattering toward Trump as the infatuated Trump has been toward him.

Thirdly, Trump has an odd conception of what toughness on Russia is. After all, he just rewarded Putin, who he now believes is intent on interfering with American elections again, with an invitation to the White House. Why on Earth would an American president grant such an honor to someone who the entire intelligence community has concluded was responsible for hacking the last election, and the same president is asserting plans to hack the next one?

Finally, if Trump is so concerned about the election being tampered with by Russia, then why did he and his Republican Party just vote to eliminate funding for election security? These cuts are being imposed even as Trump’s own national security team warn that Russia is still engaging in the election tampering activities that they employed in 2016.

While most of Trump’s tweets are dripping with hostility and deceit, this one is especially infested with his psychotic determination to turn reality on its head. He even said in a speech today to the VFW that “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” In other words my children, “Believe me, not your own eyes and ears.” Is he doing this to put Democrats on the defensive as the beneficiaries of Russia’s cyber war? Or to take the heat off of himself as Putin’s puppet? Or is it just a means of distracting the public and the media from his other scandalous behaviors? Most likely it’s a Trumpian combo-plate of his specialties: blaming others, lying, and treason. And the rightist Republicans who are incapable of coherent thought will eat it up.

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