Confederacy of Morons: Trump Thanks Fox and Friends for Funneling Him Another Blatant Lie

Posted by on February 5, 2018 at 12:11 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s Monday morning and Donald Trump is deeply embedded in his ritual of “Executive Time,” stretched out with last night’s cheeseburger and his (not very) smart phone. As usual, he is glued to his daily so-called “intelligence” briefing from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, who are his most trusted advisers on pretty much every issue. What could possibly go wrong?

Fox News

The crew at Fox News prepared a lengthy report on alleged problems with Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). They invited ultra-rightist British politician, and Fox News contributor, Nigel Farage, in for a well-scripted segment bashing universal healthcare (video below). The apparent inspiration for these eight minutes of unadulterated hogwash was a report that thousands of protesters took to the streets of London to express their dissatisfaction with the U.K.’s health care system. And our TV-addicted president was paying close attention. He tweeted that:

And giving credit where credit is due, Trump shortly after acknowledged his pals at Fox and Friends for enlightening him:

You have to wonder why Trump sounds “soooo much” like a thirteen year old girl when he tweets. But more to the point, you should wonder why he is soooo oblivious to the truth. The President, following his marching orders from Fox News, completely misunderstood the British rallies. The people were, in fact, protesting the Conservative government that has been cutting funding to the NHS and curtailing services. The marchers were in favor of their universal healthcare and were demanding that the NHS be properly funded. British leaders, including the Conservative Party Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, lashed out at Trump’s ignorance:

The Farage interview on Fox News brazenly lied about the purpose of the demonstrations and the state of British health care. And to make matters worse, Farage went to great lengths to blame what he alleged were problems on immigrants:

“The National Health Service has turned into the International Health Service and we’re providing a lot of healthcare for people coming into Britain from all over the world.”

True to form, Fox News is seeking to make immigrants the cause of every problem that rich, pseudo-patriotic, white, Christianists suffer through. Whether it be the supposed hoards invading the U.K., or the imaginary masses streaming into the U.S. across the Rio Grande. Foreigners always seem to be the cause of whatever these bigots happen to be upset about at any given time. And America’s first TV game show president buys into it and spreads his diseased ignorance to the glassy-eyed disciples who worship him. it’s a closed loop of hate and stupidity that feeds off of itself.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p3CMTDHL08

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The Desperate Fox News Effort to Spin the Nunes Memo is a Pretty Bogus ‘Bombshell’

Posted by on February 4, 2018 at 10:51 am. 2 Comments :

The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Devin Nunes, spent the last couple of weeks alleging that he had proof of an all-consuming, “deep state” conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump. He didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from beating the drum for partisan drivel that was giddily embraced by many of his GOP colleagues, as well as the conservative media echo chamber.

Not surprisingly, Fox News was the first, and most enthusiastic, torch carrier for the overblown hype that Nunes was peddling. Take a look at how they presented the “news” announcing the memo’s release:

Fox News

Okay, that last one in the bottom-right was from Saturday Night Live, but even they have better journalistic ethics than Fox News does. The others are from Fox’s primetime Trump-fluffers Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and Saturday’s pitiful wannabe propagandist, Jesse Watters. And what they all have in common is the compulsion to characterize the super-dud Nunes memo as a “Bombshell.”

Let’s be clear, the memo fell as flat as the Earth that Fox’s science deniers are perpetually squawking about. It failed utterly to prove any of the allegations its authors and promoters had put forward. In fact, it literally proved the case made by Democrats that the FISA court’s granting of a surveillance warrant for Trump flunky Carter Page had nothing to do with the Russia investigation or the work of special counsel Robert Mueller. If anything, that was the “bombshell” produced by the memo. And even several Republicans who sit on the Intelligence Committee agree. As reported by Talking Points Memo:

  • Trey Gowdy (R-TN): “I actually don’t think it is has any impact on the Russia probe.”
  • Brad Wenstrup (R-OH): “I don’t think it really has anything to do with” Mueller’s probe.
  • Chris Stewart (R-UT): “This memo has frankly nothing at all to do with a special counsel.”
  • Will Hurd (R-TX): “I don’t believe this is an attack on Bob Mueller.”

None of these Republican members of Nunes’ committee agree with Nunes. Nor do they agree with Trump’s deranged tweet that the Nunes Memo “totally vindicates” him. The measure of psychosis that Trump displays by his narcissistic self-delusion is off the scale. And therefore, so is the hyperbolic, pro-Trump editorializing of the well-orchestrated Fox News “bombshell” amen chorus. They can’t even tell the truth when their own side is dismissing the vacuous memorandum (with an emphasis on the “dumb”).

And don’t expect the designated media expert of Fox News, Howard Kurtz, to set the record straight. He is currently promoting his new book, Media Madness, that is a right-wing take on how much the media allegedly hates Donald Trump. (To be accurate, it isn’t just the media. It’s the vast majority of Americans, but that’s another subject). One of the reasons that Kurtz’s book has rocketed up to #710 on Amazon is that he is undoubtedly the worst media analyst in the business. In one of his recent book tour appearances on Fox News (of course) he said that…

“There is something about Donald Trump, the candidate and now the president, where many journalists and commentators believe they have some kind of mission to save the country from an erratic president. And that’s not journalism.”

Actually, that absolutely is journalism. Kurtz apparently thinks that the mission of the media is to be an obedient lap dog that serves no purpose other than presidential stenography. But the Founding Fathers put a unique protection in the Constitution for freedom of the press specifically because it is sometimes required to take positions that will offend the powerful. It is the duty of the press to alert citizens when their leaders are corrupt, lying, treasonous, ignorant, and even erratic. And it’s all the more critical when we have a president who is all of the above. That is, without a doubt, a real bombshell that is ready to blow bigly.

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


The Illness That is Sean Hannity is Infectious and Has Spread to the Trump White House

Posted by on February 3, 2018 at 10:11 am. 4 Comments :

The release of the infamous “Nunes Memo” may have been the worst anti-climax since O.J. Simpson’s promise to “find the real killer.” (Like Trump, Simpson spent most of his time searching on a golf course in Florida). The memo was supposed to crush special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and its interference in the presidential election. But the actual document was about as revealing as a stripper in a concrete burka. (See this breakdown of the Nunes embarrassment).

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

But leave it to Sean Hannity, the Chief Trump-fluffer of Fox News, to continue trying to peddle the pitiful prattle after its public fizzling. Hannity, practicing total abstinence from reality, opened his Friday night program with a monologue that future psychology textbooks will include to illustrate complete cognitive failure (video below).

Hannity isn’t content to simply spin what he incredulously calls the “FISA Abuse Memo” into one his typical pro-Trump rants. Not this time. His spittle-inflected delivery features unsupported hyperbolic nonsense like “shocking” and “stunning” and “the biggest abuse of power corruption case in American history.” Hannity’s unhinged tirade asserts that he has…

“…irrefutable proof of a coordinated conspiracy to abuse power by weaponizing and politicizing the powerful tools of intelligence by top-ranking Obama officials against the Trump campaign, against the Constitution, and against your Fourth Amendment rights.”

Holy hallucination, Batman. The only thing we have irrefutable proof of is that Hannity scored some wicked acid. His wind-tunnel of wingnutisms continued with hoary references to the “Deep State,” “unelected bureaucrats,” “undermin[ing] a duly elected president,” and the baseless contention that the memo “proves that the entire basis for the Russia investigation was based on lies that were bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and her campaign.” And Hannity’s closer was an impotent demand that “The Mueller investigation does need to be shut down. And the people involved – who we will name tonight – many need to go to jail.”

All of that was all that Donald Trump needed to make a painfully misinformed analysis of his legal jeopardy. He tweeted that “This memo totally vindicates “Trump” in probe.” Notice the sarcastic quotes around his own “alleged” name:

Notice also that Trump – he of the best words – misuses “their,” capitalizes incoherently, and makes the delusional pronouncement that “collusion is dead.” That’s exactly what he said about ObamaCare, which enjoyed record-setting sign-ups last year, despite his attempts at sabotage. What’s more, even arch-conservative Benghazi inquisitionist, Trey Gowdy, flatly disagrees with Trump on the matter of vindication, tweeting that “The contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit [Mueller’s] investigation.”

Hannity’s harangue was just the latest evidence of how he exercises influence with our TV-addicted president. Trump’s reliance on the counsel he gets from Fox News, whether it be Hannity, “judge” Jeanine Pirro, or the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, is unshakable. He assigns greater authority to their inane ravings than to all of the available intelligence that he has at hand as Commander-in-Chief. Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng documented this mental disconnect in their article for Salon, saying in part that:

“…by all indications, the president is less amenable to the concerns of his own FBI than those shared by a less formal, more bombastic adviser. That adviser is Sean Hannity, who has been hyping the so-called Nunes memo all week, and with whom the president continues to speak regularly.

“According to three sources with knowledge of their conversations, Trump has been in regular contact with Hannity over the phone in recent weeks, as the Fox News prime-time star and Trump ally has encouraged the prompt release of a controversial four-page memo crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. […] Sources say Hannity’s persistent advocacy reinforced Trump’s already growing determination to get that memo into the public realm.”

Having succeeded at publicly embarrassing everyone connected to that memo, Trump tapped out the tweet noted above. His confidence in the mental midgets of Fox News appears to even override that of his own gaggle of lawyers, who are not well regarded or considered to be especially competent in the law. Particularly when compared to the legal superstars assembled by Robert Mueller. Trump is setting up a title fight for his life wherein he has put all his money on the likes of Sean Hannity. It’s going to be a massacre that will be both painful and beautiful to watch.

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


Donald Trump is Right: ‘People Should Be Ashamed.’ Especially Trump, Nunes, and the GOP

Posted by on February 2, 2018 at 12:39 pm. 5 Comments :

The long-anticipated public unveiling of the highly partisan and corruptly biased “Nunes Memo” is finally out. And it proves nothing but the bad faith and desperation of congressional Republicans and Donald Trump who authorized its release. There is little of substance to arrive at any conclusions that the government abused its power or acted improperly. In fact, it reflects more negatively on its authors than anyone else.

Donald Trump

The entire Nunes Memo was published and is available for anyone to review. Trump has already had his say in a brief media encounter, where he whined that “A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that.” He’s actually right, although not in the way he thinks. The embarrassment will fall on Trump himself, and his comrades in the Republican Party. This is a transparently political act intended to undermine the special counsel’s investigation of Trump and his treasonous, Russia-loving associates. Shockingly, it’s Trump who is attempting to accuse his own hand-picked FBI and Department of Justice leadership with “unthinkable” politicization. On Friday morning prior to the memo’s release he tweeted:

The Nunes Memo is a logical mess in addition to being patently dishonest. It outlines five points that its authors regard as salient to their argument that America’s top law enforcement institutions are engaged in a “deep state” conspiracy against Trump. It’s hopelessly partisan and bereft of independent affirmation. What follows is a summary, with annotations, of the five points:

1) The “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application.

Nunes is aghast that information was allegedly withheld from the FISA Court, but he’s the one leaving out facts. For instance, the fact that the Steele dossier was originally funded by a conservative media outlet, The Free Beacon. Also, Nunes refuses to allow a Democratic response to his memo to be made public.

2) The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow.

Nunes asserts that the FISA application “cited extensively” on an article by Yahoo’s Isikoff. What Nunes is not disclosing is what else the application cited. In fact, the FISA application is still classified. However, in Isikoff’s article he refers to “multiple sources.” So Steele’s dossier was not the sole evidence presented to the FISA court:

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.”

Another thing unaddressed by Nunes et al, is that the FISA court never relies on a single source of evidence. He is insulting this court by implying that they would be fooled by a partisan document and wouldn’t seek further testimony before issuing a warrant. And for the record, the FISA judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court – a Republican.

3) Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein. [and that] Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”

So what? Does Nunes think that someone conducting opposition research would be a supporter of the target of the research? Steele’s opinions about Trump in no way impact any factual data that he uncovers. That’s also true with regard to FBI employees and other law enforcement personnel.

4) According to the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the initial Page FISA application. […] Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

The “infancy” or maturity of the dossier’s verification is utterly irrelevant to the FISA court. They are not finding guilt or innocence, but merely justification for proceeding with an investigation. And it’s interesting that Nunes asserts something that McCabe told Congress in closed hearings, but doesn’t provide a direct quote. It’s just his interpretation without any necessary context. McCabe’s testimony could have been quite different and Nunes is purposefully misrepresenting it, which he has been known to do.

5) The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation.

This may be the most significant item in the Nunes memo. It’s affirming that the FISA court’s warrant wasn’t even the instigation for the investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia during and after his campaign. Therefore, everything that Nunes is complaining about in all of what precedes this part of the memo is irrelevant. Even if the entire phony controversy over Page’s surveillance was excised from the investigation it would have negligible impact on the outcome.

This whole charade is just another effort by Trump and Republicans to deflect from, and discredit, Robert Mueller and others looking into Trump’s criminal activities. But it’s such a weak attempt it hardly requires a reply. It is brazenly biased and fails to make a single point that it alleges. And it’s further proof that these cretins are more interested in protecting Putin and Russia and those who are colluding with them, than with respect for the law and the welfare of the nation. And the perpetrators of this fraud will surely regret it when the truth comes out. #MuellerTime

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


Totally Nuts: Trump Says His State of the Union Ratings Were ‘The Highest Number in History’

Posted by on February 1, 2018 at 11:08 am. 2 Comments :

This is getting so far beyond ridiculous. The compulsion that Donald Trump has to lie about virtually anything cannot be regarded as merely self-interest or ignorance. This is a sickness. He lies about things that have no particular benefit to him; things that are easily fact-checked; things that are only designed to feed his gargantuan and diseased ego.

Donald Trump

The latest in a collection of literally thousands of lies came in the form of (surprise) a tweet about his State of the Union address. There was a curiously long absence by the President on Twitter (72 hours) prior to this posting. So it looked for a while like he had been kidnapped by the “deep state” or had his phone confiscated by the Secret Service. But on Thursday morning he reappeared to deliver this unadulterated bullshit:

Certainly Trump enjoyed all of the nice compliments and reviews he received from his usual pack of sycophants (Fox and Friends, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Breitbart). And just as surely he saw none of the objective analyses that reported his bland, ultra-partisan delivery and documented his lies. But Trump’s claim that the audience for his speech was “the highest number in history” was so completely deranged it’s hard to imagine that he’s allowed dress himself or use sharp utensils.

According to Nielsen, Trump’s audience wasn’t anywhere near the highest ever. His seventh place showing was an embarrassing loss to his perennial nemeses Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (twice each). No matter how hard he tries to rise above these objects of his loathing, he continually falls short. Here is Nielsen’s chart of ratings for historical State of the Union addresses:

Date Rating Viewers President
2/17/1993 44.3 66,900,000 Clinton
1/28/2003 38.8 62,061,000 G. W. Bush
1/27/1998 37.2 53,077,000 Clinton
2/24/2009* 32.5 52,373,000 Obama
1/29/2002 33.6 51,773,000 G.W. Bush
1/27/2010 29.8 48,009,595 Obama
2/28/2017* 28.7 47,741,000 Trump

Trump is correct that Fox News beat the other networks. But why that is notable escapes me. Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples are glued to Fox News and dependent on its Big Brotherly guidance. They wouldn’t watch the Trump Show anywhere else. And naturally, Trump’s reality TV fans are the most likely to tune into his lie-fest.

It should be noted that while Trump suffered this poor historical showing in the SOTU ratings race, Rachel Maddow was beating the pants off of Sean Hannity. Her MSNBC program was the number one cable news show for the month of January, 2018. She scored solid victories for three of the four weeks in both the key 25-54 year old demo and total viewers, and double-digit year-over-year gains. Meanwhile, Fox News declined by fourteen and eighteen percent, respectively, in those same metrics.

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

That’s encouraging evidence that thoughtful, well-researched and reasoned discourse can prevail over rancorous conspiracy theorizing and hate speech. Not to mention that the toxic and tedious lies that Fox News and Donald Trump peddle are clearly wearing thin. And it’s only February. Hopefully this is an indicator of what’s to come.


Rachel Maddow Swamps Hannity to Become the #1 Cable News Show for January 2018

Posted by on February 1, 2018 at 9:19 am. 2 Comments :

Last September Fox News moved Sean Hannity’s program to 9:00pm to compete directly with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Looking back they might not consider that a particularly smart decision. Hannity is Fox’s highest rated program, but it consistently comes up second to Maddow, which must be a painful embarrassment. And the first month of 2018 was almost all Maddow’s

Rachel Maddow Sean Hannity

The first week that Hannity aired in Maddow’s time period he looked pretty good. Of course he front-loaded the show with high profile guests including Fox favorites like Steve Bannon, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh. He certainly wasn’t going to keep that up. But it was enough to get Donald Trump to retweet his son Eric bragging…

It was mostly downhill from there. In January Maddow outperformed Hannity, and all other cable news programs, in the key audience demographic of 25-54 year olds. She averaged 677,000 viewers to Hannity’s 636,000. She scored solid victories for three of the four weeks in both the key demo and total viewers. The last week of the month Hannity staged a bit of comeback as he ramped up his wild-eyed, conspiracy theory rhetoric. But by month’s end Maddow still had a higher average rating than Hannity.

What’s more, MSNBC was the only cable news network to see ratings gains year-over-year. They grew in total prime time viewers more than sixty-one percent, and in total day viewers more than fifty-five percent. Meanwhile, Fox News declined fourteen percent and eighteen, respectively, in those same metrics.

It would be an understatement to call Hannity’s deranged broadcasts “over the top.” He repeatedly assailed the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller as corrupt agents of the “deep state” who were acting on behalf of a “secret society.” These were deliberate attempts to smear those investigating Trump’s unsavory relationships with Russia. Hannity’s rants derailed with repetitious hyperbole such as…

  • “…the biggest scandal in American history.”
  • “…never seen in American history.”
  • “One of the biggest political scandals in modern U.S. history.”
  • “…far bigger than Watergate.”
  • “…makes Watergate look like stealing a Snickers bar.”
  • “This is Watergate on steroids and human growth hormones.”

No doubt this nonsense will play well among Hannity’s dimwitted viewers and the glassy-eyed disciples of Donald Trump. Hannity is striving to steal the mantle of right-wing kook from Alex Jones. And his guests are often more tightly wound than he is.

This strategy could pay off over time because so much of the conservative audience has a an affinity for tabloid melodrama and unrealistic political soap operas. They like nothing better than the wingnut version of Housewives of Washington, D.C., mixed with some Duck Dynasty doofusness, and a healthy dose of white nationalism. You know, the makings of the average Trump voter. And Hannity is serving it up by the shovel-full.

Time will tell if Maddow’s thoughtful, well-reasoned, fact-based brand of intelligent discourse will continue to best Hannity’s Lowbrow Racist Hour. But it’s encouraging to see how successful she has been against competition that was considered unbeatable a year ago.

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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Bipartisan and Unity? Trump’s State of the Union Speech Was Neither, But It Was Filled With Lies

Posted by on January 31, 2018 at 8:57 am. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump’s first (and hopefully last) State of the Union address was sold as an attempt to embrace bipartisanship and unity. That was just another promise that Trump failed to deliver on. The actual speech turned out to be more partisan than any SOTU in memory, and seemed to be utterly hostile to unity.

Donald Trump

You have to wonder what part of this address the Trump people thought was bipartisan. Was it Trump’s boasting about sabotaging ObamaCare by eliminating the individual mandate? Or was it his immigration rhetoric that focused more on gangs than Dreamers? Or was it the cheers he elicited from Republicans for directing his Secretary of Defense to keep Guantanamo Bay open? Or maybe it was when he ordered his cabinet secretaries to be his accomplices to obstruction of justice by firing anyone who gets in his way (i.e. Rosenstein, Mueller, etc.). It couldn’t have been his concession to cooperate with the special counsel’s probe of Russian interference in the election, because he never mentioned any of that.

What Trump did succeed in doing was to lie repeatedly about what state he imagined the union to be in. PolitiFact was live-tweeting the speech and posted these comments as they occurred:

That should do for a start. After all, no one really expected Trump to do anything but continue telling more of the same lies he’s been telling for the past couple of years. And that was one expectation that he was able to live up to.

If Trump thinks this speech is going to create a new era of political harmony, he’s sicker than his phony doctor let on. You know that he will shortly return to insulting Democrats and complaining that “Crying” Chuck Schumer is trying to block him from wasting billions of dollars on a wall that will solve nothing. He’ll be tweeting about how his opponents won’t agree to everything this wannabe dictator demands. He’ll be shaking his tiny fists at the “fake” news media that has the audacity to report what he actually does and says.

However, in the spirit of unity, I would like to take a moment to agree with something that Trump said. It’s an observation that is difficult for anyone to dispute. It just may not have been timed very well:

Well said, Donnie. Now that’s something that millions of Americans who have rejected your leadership can get behind. We do need new leadership fast. Having a president with historically low approval ratings, who majorities of citizens say is embarrassing and lacks the intelligence or character to do the job, is not going to make America great.

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


UH-OH: There’s a Second Dossier Alleging that Russia has Compromising Materials on Trump

Posted by on January 30, 2018 at 2:44 pm. 1 Comments :

Republicans have been working furiously to discredit a dossier produced by Christopher Steele, a former British spy. The dossier contains information tying Donald Trump and his associates to the Russian government. Some of the material involves salacious activities placing Trump in a Moscow hotel room with Russian prostitutes.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

The Steele dossier has been examined thoroughly and some, but not all, of the data has been confirmed. Despite that, Republicans rant incessantly on Fox News and other right-wing media that the dossier is unverified. That is flatly untrue. Which makes their attempt to discredit it all the more difficult. And it isn’t going to get any easier now that, as the Guardian reports, another document that corroborates much of the dossier is currently in the hands of the FBI. According to the Guardian:

The FBI inquiry into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election has been given a second memo that independently set out some of the same allegations made in a dossier by Christopher Steele, the British former spy.

The second memo was written by Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s.

Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with scepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organisations before the election.

However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.

One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on it suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously.

It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by Trump’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be.

There is still much to uncover with regard to this new document. And the partisan associations of its author need to be taken into consideration. But the gravity with which it has been received by the FBI is sufficient to give Trump and his Republican defenders migraines. They can’t continue to swing so wildly at Steele if his data is backed up by an independent investigation.

What’s more, the Trump brigades’ campaign to smear special counsel Robert Mueller is going to be hampered by new evidence that Trump colluded with Russia and that Vladimir Putin might have damning evidence of it. This new information will compound the allegations against Trump and could lead to serious legal jeopardy for him and others in his administration. And while the GOP will surely try to leap out in front of this news and dismiss it, Mueller is not going to be so easily distracted.

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


Stock Market Down Over 300 Points in Advance of Trump’s State of the Union Speech

Posted by on January 30, 2018 at 11:13 am. NO Comments :

For some reason Donald Trump hasn’t tweeted about the stock market this week. That’s peculiar because Trump has made it a sacrament of his presidency that the performance of the stock market is an indicator of his success. That has always been a downright stupid idea. Firstly because he has had nothing to do with it. We have been in the second longest bull market in history, and it started in 2009, at the beginning of President Obama’s first term. And despite Trump’s wild and unsupported claims that the market would have tanked if Democrats were in charge, the market actually performed better during Obama’s last year than it has during Trump’s first.

Donald Trump

But that isn’t the only reason Trump is foolish to stake his presidency on the market. Investors will notice that the Dow Industrials are down about 300 points today, and nearly 500 points this week. This may be a temporary blip, or a sign of a coming correction. But it reveals the ignorance of the President tying himself to the whims of the market. As News Corpse noted just two weeks ago:

“Trump is going to regret his shameless boasting if he continues to insist that he is the primary driver of the market’s success. And it’ll be an epic backfire that puts real teeth into Trump’s backside. It’s always dangerous to rely on stock market performance to validate the economy. There are too many factors that can shift investor sentiment. It is a fluid indicator that could reverse course tomorrow. Indeed, many stock analysts regard the market’s current position as overvalued. These analysts are predicting a “correction” that could send the markets down significantly. Furthermore, the market does not reflect the economic realities of most Americans. Other economic indicators (i.e. wages) are showing only small advances. The beneficiaries of stock gains are predominantly the usual suspects of the GOP (Greedy One Percent).”

Trump’s obsession with market performance is recorded for posterity in his Twitter feed. Just this month he has bragged about the “Record Stock Market,” the “Most explosive Stock Market rally that we’ve seen in modern times,” that “The stock market has gained an incredible 7.8 Trillion dollars,” and “another big day for jobs and the Stock Market.” And there have been dozens of similar boasts since his inauguration.

However, Trump is silent today about the stock market that has commanded so much of his attention. If he really thinks that he deserves credit when the market goes up, then shouldn’t he be accepting the blame when it goes down? Of course not. In Trump’s world only greatness and glory are recognized. He will never admit fault or apologize for whatever disaster he causes. But he will take great pains to find someone else to blame. Probably President Obama, Hillary Clinton, the “fake” news, or the Deep State. And without a scapegoat, Trump will ignore the whole thing. So don’t expect him to mention this market decline tonight during his lie-filled SOTU. He has too many other lies, and his Russia collusion, to worry about.

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


Fox News Host Whines That ‘It’s Just So Anti-American’ to Criticize Trump

Posted by on January 29, 2018 at 6:44 pm. 1 Comments :

Last week the news broke that Donald Trump had ordered his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. That attempted obstruction of justice was foiled when McGahn threatened Trump that he would quit if required to carry out the order. The incident occurred in June of 2017. Since then Trump and all of his surrogates have denied that he ever entertained the notion of firing Mueller. That, apparently, was a lie.

Fox News Friends

Also last June, Sean Hannity was ranting on his program that Mueller was corrupt and should be terminated. He had only been appointed a month prior, so Hannity’s obsession was difficult to understand until we learned what we know now about Trump’s demand to McGahn. Hannity appears to have been doing Trump’s dirty work. And now Fox News thinks the reporting of this affair is part of a clandestine conspiracy.

In a segment of Trump’s favorite show, Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes ventured down a delusional trail of speculation that the story was deliberately held for seven months so it could be dropped strategically following Trump’s allegedly triumphant visit to Davos, Switzerland. What a devious cabal of “deep state” villains. During an interview with former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer, the hosts engaged in this paranoid exchange:

Kilmeade: Isn’t it amazing, the timing, something comes up about the Russia investigation, like for example, a story that could have broken in June comes out in January after the president goes to Davos and is treated like a rock star.
Spicer: Somebody will dig something up from when he was, like, 8 years old about how he didn’t clean his tray and try to take away the momentum from another great speech.
Doocy: Well, that’s what they’ve done in the past. It’s a formula that worked.
Earhardt: It’s just so anti-American. Where is the unity?

Anti-American? Suddenly it’s no longer sufficient to merely attribute the diabolical left’s motives to partisan politics or libtardiness. Now it’s anti-American to offer any criticism of the President. There’s a reason Fox and Friends is Trump’s favorite show. The one that he watches religiously and tweets live almost every morning. They are the most driven, sycophantic Trump-fluffers on television. Where else could he be defended by flunkies who will describe factual news stories as anti-American? And you’ll notice that at no time during this segment did any of the Fox crew dispute the substance of the report.

The plaintive cry for “unity” is also somewhat mind-boggling considering that it was these same Fox News cretins who sought to portray President Obama as a threat to America. When they weren’t questioning his birthright to even serve in the presidency, they were manufacturing “scandals” to get him thrown out of the White House and into prison. Which makes one want to ask “Where was the unity?”

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