Hillary Clinton

Protecting Trump? Fox News Buries Paul Manafort’s Cooperation and Plea Deal with Mueller Probe

Posted by on September 14, 2018 at 12:18 pm. 1 Comments :

There is no question that Hurricane Florence is the top story of Friday, September 14. The potential loss of life and billions of dollars in destruction are too serious a matter to under play. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the only story of the day. It most decidedly is not.

Donald Trump Fox News

On Friday morning, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman went into a courtroom in Washington where his lawyer announced that he had accepted a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller in order to avoid further legal jeopardy. This is particularly significant because the deal includes Manafort’s cooperation with prosecutors on other matters. According to ABC News:

“In court Friday morning, prosecutors revealed that Manafort had completed a successful meeting with investigators in which he offered them information they considered valuable. They did not specify what information he agreed to share, but made clear the cooperation would be ‘broad’ and would include participation in ‘interviews, briefings, producing documents, [and] testifying in other matters.'”

This development now gives Mueller a cooperating witness who was in the room at Trump Tower when Don Jr. and others met with Russian operatives seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton. That’s the core of the “witch hunt” charges of collusion that have been driving Trump’s batty for two years. Additionally, Manafort’s high position with the Trump campaign makes it likely that he has other incriminating information about Trump and company related to Russia, Wikileaks, and efforts to obstruct justice. It’s hard to overstate the trouble this news poses for Trump.

However, it is easy to understate it. And that’s exactly what State TV (aka Fox News) has been doing since the news broke. While Fox News did air a twenty-six second “alert” prior to the plea being announced in court, they have taken great pains to ignore it ever since. That alert had no details about the agreement and no notice of Manafort’s cooperation with Mueller. At the noon hour Shepard Smith took over. It took him an hour and twenty minutes to say anything about the Manafort case. And that segment was the last he said about it for at least the next hour and a half.

It’s no wonder that Fox News is determined to suppress this news. It puts Trump in a the awkward position of defending himself against another former associate who is turning state’s evidence. In this case, Trump had previously praised Manafort for his loyalty and bravery under pressure:

Well, so much for not breaking. If history is any indicator, Trump will shortly tweet about what a weasel Manafort is for making up these lies to cut a deal for himself. Then Trump will Insist that he hardly knew Manafort and he had little to do with Trump or his campaign. And that’s when Fox News will resume reporting on this subject. They will virtually ignore the substance of the legal controversy and focus on Trump’s rejection of the weak-kneed former campaign boss. The script just writes itself.

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.

Trump Tweets ‘Big Story’ About the FBI that Turns Out to Be a Big Lie By Wingnut Website

Posted by on August 25, 2018 at 3:59 pm. 5 Comments :

The tribulations of Donald Trump continue to mount as news of his crumbling network of accomplices gets more dire with each passing day. Just this week his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of eight felonies and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to felonies of his own. Then two close associates – David Pecker of the National Enquirer, and Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization – were granted immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for their cooperation.

Donald Trump

As usual, when ever Trump sees dark clouds gathering he attempts to blow them away by creating a windstorm of his own. It’s an obvious tactic that just makes him look desperate and even more guilty. On Saturday morning he deployed this scheme with a series of tweets intended to distract from the Mueller probe and the slow-motion apocalypse that is his presidency:

The “Big story” that Trump refers to is one that has been in circulation for nearly two years now. It revolves around allegations that Hillary Clinton engaged in some vaguely defined wrongdoing connected to her handling of classified documents. This matter has been investigated by everyone from the FBI to various Republican-controlled committees in the House and Senate. And even when starkly partisan players in Congress were pushing hard to find misdeeds, they never did.

If getting “to the bottom of all of this corruption” was actually on Trump’s agenda, he would not be relying on Fox News as his source for information. After all, he has the world’s most sophisticated intelligence operations at his fingertips, but he still prefers the imbecilic sycophants on Fox and Friends to experienced law enforcement professionals.

The big story that has Trump triggered now is one that alleges that the FBI failed to review thousands of Clinton’s emails during their investigation in 2016. Trump attributes the story to Fox News, but it originated with a website, The Federalist, that is a virulent right-wing fount of extremist propaganda. The article authored by Paul Sperry is an interminably long screed that offers nothing but conjecture, when it isn’t rehashing ancient history about alleged Clinton misdeeds.

The key point that Trump’s tantrum focuses on is the charge that the FBI deliberately ignored thousands of Clinton’s email that were discovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Sperry asserts that some 675,000 emails were found, but that the FBI only reviewed 3,077 of them. That’s because the FBI conducted an automated review that identified the vast majority of these emails as duplicates that they had received and reviewed from other sources. Sperry casts doubts on the FBI’s ability to have effectively screened out the duplicates, but he offers no proof for that contention, and he completely ignores the fact that computers are quite capable of comparing text.

Somehow, Trump concludes from this dubious article that the emails that were supposedly unreviewed were “REALLY BAD” and “disasters.” Where he got that from is anyone’s guess because even Sperry never made that claim. Nevertheless, on the weakness of this report, Trump is threatening, again, that he “may have to get involved” in the work of what should be the independent Justice Department. He has long claimed that he has that right and that he could even run the investigation himself if he wanted to. Imagine that: a president who personally takes control of the persecution of his political enemies. That says pretty much everything you need to know about the wannabe dictator in the White House.

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

Massive Voter Fraud? Via Fox News, 19 Non-Citizens Voted in 2016 – Trump’s Off By Only 2,999,981

Posted by on August 24, 2018 at 3:53 pm. 1 Comments :

This week Donald Trump laid into his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, chastising him for having properly recused himself from the Russia investigation, and for not persecuting Trump’s perceived enemies. In Trump World the Department of Justice is his personal legal team who should be pursuing only those matters that advance his interests. That’s not the way the Constitution sees it.

Vladimir Putin Voted

Perhaps to mollify Trump, Sessions is throwing him bone in the form of a set of indictments for voter fraud. This is an issue that has been close to Trump’s shriveled heart ever since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 3,000,000 votes. The egocentric President has claimed repeatedly that this loss was the result of millions of illegal Clinton voters. But every study that has researched this has concluded that no such widespread fraud exists. That even includes the commission Trump empaneled, which was quickly disbanded having proved nothing. But none of that stopped Trump from exercising his active imagination:

The charges that Fox News is reporting involve nineteen (19) people who allegedly registered and/or voted in 2016, despite not being American citizens. The accused are from all over the world, including Mexico, Nigeria, Italy, Korea, and Poland. Which puts to rest the right-wing conspiracy theories that Mexicans are swarming into the country to take it over. Additionally, there is no indication who these people voted for, and it is just as likely that some of them supported Trump as Clinton.

Given that Trump has variously claimed that between three and five million people voted illegally, he’s only off by between 2,999,981 and 4,999,981. That’s actually not a bad effort by a president whose record for being 100% wrong (i.e. lying) is unmatched in American history. And while Trump was adamant about stopping non-citizens from south of the border tainting our elections, he had no objections to Vladimir Putin doing it.

To make matters worse, the Republican Party just voted to kill “A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation’s defenses against electoral interference” and they did so “at the behest of the White House.” So Trump’s GOP cannot credibly claim to be interested in fair elections. And these new charges from the Justice Department really just reaffirm how rarely the sort of voter fraud that has Trump all verklempt actually occurs.

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

Michael Cohen’s Lawyer Drops Truth Bomb on Fox News: Rhetoric Without Facts is Too Common on Fox

Posted by on August 22, 2018 at 1:50 pm. NO Comments :

In the wake of the felony convictions of Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, Fox News has endeavored to trivialize these historically unprecedented events. Their tactics include sweeping these legal bombshells under other stories that don’t have the national scope of presidential corruption, but which fit into the Fox themes of wingnuttery and racism. Or they entirely dismiss the crimes as even being criminal (which Trump did himself Wednesday morning on Twitter).

Fox News, nuclear Bomb

Joining the parade of propaganda, Fox News host Eric Shawn interviewed Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, on Wednesday’s episode of America’s Newsroom. Shawn thought he was going to bury Davis with a question that stuffed every Clinton cliche imaginable into thirty seconds of blather. But Davis wasn’t having it (video below):

Fox News: What do you say to those who say there should be a special counsel investigating the Clinton, the DNC, the dossier, Christopher Steele, and the way this was handled by the Department of Justice and FBI officials. Some of whom have been fired and certainly showed a distaste for Donald Trump becoming President of the United States.
Davis: First of all, you didn’t state a single fact involving the Clintons. And although I have a lot of friends at Fox, and have been a Fox guest on almost every show, that kind of rhetoric without facts is, unfortunately, too common on Fox shows. So state me facts of what Bill and Hillary Clinton actually have done that would suggest anything illegal suggesting a special counsel.

Shawn didn’t take Davis up on his request for facts. Davis did, however, masterfully let Fox News have it on their own air. Shawn’s question was reeking of bias and a predetermined mindset that Clinton is the real criminal. Never mind that she has been investigated for thirty years by hostile Republicans who still couldn’t find any trace of wrongdoing. Shawn’s reference to Steele and his dossier ignores the fact that much of it has been confirmed and that none of it has been proved untrue. And the only reason there is a distaste for Trump among law enforcement officials is because they know what he’s done. It’s like complaining that the police, after investigating, had a distaste for Charles Manson. Who wouldn’t?

What’s more, the knee-jerk reaction by Trump and so many of his sycophants/surrogates to point their fingers at the Clintons or Obama is merely their obvious attempt to change the subject by way of a scheme now known as “whataboutism.” Trump’s cult followers simply can’t focus on any of the facts about his crimes without resorting to whining about factless allegations involving retired Democrats.

That’s a pretty good indication that they have no coherent response to Team Trump’s crime spree. If they did they would present it, and not jingle their keys at the camera as a distraction. Then again, that’s just the sort of thing that compels the attention of babies and Trump supporters who have trouble comprehending the real world.

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

https://twitter.com/MelsLien/status/1032270644652765184

Trump-Fluffing Fox News Shill Sean Hannity Weaves Bizarre Anti-Mueller Tales with Rudy Giuliani

Posted by on August 9, 2018 at 9:12 am. 4 Comments :

On Wednesday Donald Trump accomplished a previously unheard of achievement. He tweeted twelve times without once mentioning anything about the “hoax” probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. Instead he was focused on how many election he won on Tuesday (yes, he thinks he was the winner), despite it being a night of primaries. That’s okay though, because he still has Sean Hannity to man the “witch hunt” front.

Rudy Giuliani

On Wednesday’s episode of the Mighty Trump Ninja Defenders Hour (video below), Hannity slow-danced with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to the haunting refrains of the score to The Desperate Hours. The two jumped right into the segment with wild-eyed exclamations of corruption on the part of the Justice Department and condemnations of international super-villain, Hillary Clinton. The first words out of Giuliani’s mouth were:

“What do we need to know that this is a totally illegitimate investigation based on a dossier that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats? Probably the biggest illegality so far. The biggest collusion so far. Completely made up. That led to nothing except several fraudulent FISA wires. And now we have Mueller who doesn’t seem to care that he’s sitting on top of a totally illegitimate investigation.”

Literally everything in that fantastical assessment was untrue with the possible exception of “and now we have Mueller.” If anything, these flagrant lies will end likely blow up in Trump’s face. The dossier was not the foundation of the investigation. Clinton didn’t pay for it. It wasn’t illegal or collusive. It surely wasn’t made up. Many parts of it have been confirmed, and nothing in it has been proved false. The FISA “wires” (presumably he meant warrants) were all issued by separate judges appointed by Ronald Reagan. And the allegedly illegitimate investigation has already produced dozens of indictments and five guilty pleas.

Hannity, naturally, concurred with Giuliani, saying that the dossier was “designed to misinform the American people…to influence the election” Which is curious considering that it was never meant to be seen by the American people. It was only after Buzzfeed got ahold of a copy and published it in January of 2017, after the election, that its contents were known to the public. Hannity, earlier in the program, gave his own assessment of the Mueller probe in a deranged diatribe that packed every wingnut cliche into one frantic run-on sentence:

“Like there’s truth in that phony, unverified, uncorroborated, debunked dossier that the Clinton campaign used to smear then-candidate Donald Trump, the same Russian lies that were used before the election as the foundation for the Mueller witch hunt and the op-research used to mislead the FISA court on four – not one – but four seperate occasions so the government literally can spy on an opposition party candidate and a Trump campaign associate.”

And … breathe. Once again, a loco-spiel that’s entirely devoid of facts. Then they spoke for a while about how Trump ought not to sit for an interview with Mueller because he can’t be trusted not to lie or accidently confess. What they continue to forget is that a perjury trap can be defeated by simply telling the truth. Giuliani mocked the notion of Trump being interviewed by saying “What? Do you think we’re fools?” Let’s just leave that one alone, and move on to the best part of the segment where Hannity makes a startling revelation:

Hannity: My sources are telling me that when the American people get to the bottom of all of this, it will shock the heart, the soul, and the mind of any fair-minded American.
Giuliani: I think it’s gonna lead to some very strict, very big reforms, just like Watergate.

So Hannity has a source with inside knowledge of the private thoughts of – all of the America people? Wow, that’s a pretty good source. And thanks to Hannity we now know just how we will all feel when we get to the bottom of all of this. Feel better now? And Giuliani’s response was equally as mind-boggling. By predicting that there will be Watergate-like reforms, he’s essentially conceding that the President committed Watergate-like crimes. No wonder he doesn’t want Trump to be interviewed by Mueller.

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

Why Trump’s Loony Charges of Russian Collusion By Hillary Clinton Will Blow Up in His Lying Face

Posted by on August 6, 2018 at 11:42 am. 3 Comments :

In the process of his rapid descension into panic and fear, Donald Trump is becoming ever more frenzied and detached from reality. He knows that the law is closing in on him and his family (who he just threw under the bus) and he’s grasping for any lifeline to keep from sinking into the abyss of his treasonous criminality.

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

Among the tactics Trump has settled on is an effort to snare Hillary Clinton in a Russian collusion story of her own. This fictional construction has already been hammered to death by Trump’s pals at Fox News, so his cult followers are primed to buy into it. But there are a couple of significant problems with this desperation ploy.

The gist of Trump’s scheme asserts that Clinton is the one who has conspired with the Kremlin to bring down the candidacy of Trump. Never mind that Vladimir Putin admitted at a joint press conference in Helsinki that he wanted Trump to win. The President’s angle is that Clinton and/or her campaign paid Russians for dirt on Trump that they would use to his detriment in the election. And that is his basis for claiming that Clinton is the real colluder. He’s addressed it many times on Twitter, including this past weekend. For instance:

However, that fairy tale is just plain ludicrous. What Trump is referring to is the now famous Steele Dossier. It was researched and complied by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who was regarded as credible by his American counterparts. He did have Russian sources from whom he extracted information. That’s called investigating, but it’s not colluding. And he didn’t pay for the information. He was paid by a firm, Fusion GPS, that was originally contracted for opposition research on Trump by a conservative website, but he was not paid by Clinton or her campaign.

In addition to that, the data in the dossier was never used by the Clinton campaign. So the allegation that she engaged in this alleged collusion to harm Trump doesn’t make any sense. Contrast that with the evidence that Trump was colluding. He personally promoted the information that was obtained by his son and his campaign manager in meetings that they lied about later. He even asked the Russians to do more hacking to steal even more data from Clinton. Which they did.

But the real problem for Trump is that he keeps hedging his claim that there was no collusion with the false assertion that collusion isn’t a crime. That’s like a murderer saying “I didn’t shoot the guy, and was nowhere near the scene. But anyway, it was a self defense.” While “collusion” is not a word in the criminal statutes, the crime does exist as a combination of related offenses such as conspiracy. And it is illegal to interfere with an election and to solicit or accept money or other things of value from foreign governments.

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

So every time that Trump pretends that collusion is not a crime, he is outright lying. But worse, when he demands that Clinton be investigated for collusion, he is conceding that it actually is a crime. So which is it? Trump wants everyone accept his premise that “Crooked Hillary” should be investigated and prosecuted (lock her up) for colluding with Russia. Therefore, the same standard would have to be applied to Trump. By casting blame on Clinton, Trump is actually making the best argument for bringing himself to justice. And the good news is that that is exactly what special counsel Robert Mueller is doing.

Trump Confesses Collusion with Russia While His Lawyer Jay Sekulow Lies About Trump Tower Meeting

Posted by on August 5, 2018 at 3:06 pm. 1 Comments :

On Sunday morning’s edition of This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow about his prior statements concerning the infamous meeting in Trump Tower. That was where Don Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and other Trump associates conspired with Russian operatives to acquire emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Donald Trump

As a refresher, what Sekulow said at the time was that the meeting was an innocent gathering to discuss adoption issues. He further said that Donald Trump knew nothing about it and had no role in the false explanations that were disseminated to the press.

Of course, we now know that Trump dictated those phony excuses. And we know it because Sekulow admitted it in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller. What’s more, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is said to be ready to testify that Trump was aware of the meeting before they took place, and approved of it. At this point that’s almost academic since the evidence shows that Trump was talking about the ill-gotten fruits of the meeting in public in advance of it.

Remember, this was a meeting in his own building, with his son, his son-in-law, and his campaign manager, to discuss Russian dirt on his opponent, during his campaign. Gee, why would anyone think he knew anything about it? Nevertheless, that was the position of Sekulow and the whole Trump regime. But on This Week Sekulow said this (video below):

“I was in the case at that point a couple of weeks and there was a lot of information that was gathering, and as my colleague Rudy Giuliani said, I had bad information at that time. I made a mistake in my statement. I talked about that before. That happens when you have cases like this.”

Actually, that is most definitely not what happens in cases like this. In cases like this it is imperative that attorneys collect and disseminate only well researched and documented information. Anything less is a flagrant disservice to their client, as is evident by what’s going on now. But that isn’t the worst thing about Sekulow’s remarks.

The worst part is that the entire statement is riddled with lies. If Sekulow had “bad information” at the time, then why didn’t he correct the record after he was able to get good information. He had over a year to do that. He had access to the people who attended the meeting. Why didn’t he get statements from them to set the record straight? In fact, why didn’t they offer corrections themselves without being prodded by Sekulow? They knew what he said on TV and they knew is was false. Every one of them let the lies fester for a year. And, of course, Trump himself knew that what his lawyer said wasn’t true, but he didn’t bother to correct him either.

What’s more, you have to ask why Team Trump told so many lies about the meeting in the first place. If they all considered it to be innocent and legal there should be no reason to invent fictional scenarios that were sure to be uncovered eventually. That’s not the way innocent people behave. And they allowed those lies to gather mold for months, purposefully deceiving the American people as well as the investigating authorities.

And, for the first time, Trump himself has acknowledged that the subject of the Trump Tower meeting was to obtain dirt about Clinton from Russia. That’s a bombshell admission that also reveals that he lied when he told the press that it was about adoptions, and also when he dictated the lies that Don Jr told.

This tweet is confession that Trump colluded with Russia to get dirt on Clinton. It’s as simple as that. Furthermore, it isn’t legal and it isn’t done all the time. To the contrary, this has never been done, that anyone knows of. And it is strictly against the law to conspire with a foreign government to interfere with an election. It’s also illegal to accept cash, or anything of value (like stolen emails), without disclosing it in campaign finance reports.

Since we know that Trump and company have lied about whether there ever was a meeting with Russians, and then lied about the subject of the meeting, and then lied about the participants, and then lied about why they told the previous lies, then it’s a good bet that the lies Trump just told will also be exposed in short order. That being his claim that he didn’t know about the meeting. Anyone who believes that is terminally naive. It’s just a matter of time before the truth about this comes out, just like the truth about the meeting did. And when it does you can expect Trump start tweeting about illegal MS-13 immigrant children on a nationwide killing spree who refuse to stand for the national anthem.

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

Donald Trump’s Sunday Morning (Not So) Funnies: The ‘Fake News Hates Me’ Edition

Posted by on August 5, 2018 at 10:30 am. 1 Comments :

If it’s Sunday, this must be time for Donald Trump to flail about wildly with desperate and wacky allegations pouring from his Twitter machine. And our pathetically incoherent president did not disappoint. He’s like Lynyrd Skynyrd coming on stage and starting off their concert with Free Bird. As they say in show business: Give the Deplorables what they want.

Donald Trump Toilet

Trump’s latest flurry of tweets is rather typical of his customary routine. Although he does seem to have stepped it up a notch. Let’s dive right into the week’s banquet of crazy.

Actually, the “fake news” loves you saying that the media is the enemy of the people. The fake news being Fox News, Breitbart, Alex Jones, National Enquirer, etc. And you’re projection of blaming the media for the division and distrust that you create is all too obvious. Escalating your rhetoric to assertions that the media “can cause war” and is “dangerous and sick”, will only increase the odds for a tragic act of violence directed at journalists who are just doing their jobs.

So are you saying that you are not concerned about your son? That would be consistent with your narcissistic personality disorder. But nobody expected you to throw your son under the bus by finally conceding that he colluded with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Which is absolutely illegal and never done, so far as anyone can tell. What’s more, it did go somewhere (into your campaign stump speeches and the weak minds of Republican voters), and according to your personal attorney, Michael Cohen, you did know about it.

First of all, there are a lot more than seventeen angry Democrats. It’s more like 65 million. But more to the point, there weren’t any meetings between Democrats and Russians concerning the dossier that has been confirmed in many respects (and none of it has been proven false. Ask Shepard Smith). But even if there were such meetings, you just got finished saying that it wasn’t illegal for you and your family. But it is illegal for Clinton? And by the way, if the witch hunt is one-sided it’s only because all the witches are cackling from the Republican side. There have already been dozens of indictments and five guilty pleas from amongst your associates.

The problem that you’re having is that the media actually is reporting the lies and corruption having to do with your treasonous activities. If they weren’t you would have to constrain yourself to just the racism and utterly dishonest, self-exalting themes of your presidency. Which for your cult followers would probably be enough.

And that’s it for this edition of the Trump (Not So) Funnies. Well, for the time being. Trump is, once again, at one of his luxurious golf resorts for the weekend. And that’s where he often goes farthest off the rails. So stayed tuned for more deranged bluster from the now disgraced (temporarily) White House.

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

Shepard Smith of Fox News Untangles the ‘Patently False’ Lies of Trump re: the Russia Probe

Posted by on August 1, 2018 at 3:24 pm. NO Comments :

It’s getting harder and harder to figure out why Fox News is allowing Shepard Smith to remain on the air. In the recent past he has made a some startlingly harsh condemnations of Donald Trump that were rooted in actual facts. You know, the sort of information that Fox News struggles to suppress for the other twenty-three hours of the day. It’s the sort of honest reporting that is contradicted by Fox’s primetime shills Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson.

Fox News, Shepard Smith, Donald Trump

On Wednesday Smith launched into an explanation for Trump’s latest tweetstorm that railed against Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion hoax rigged scam witch hunt (did I get them all in?). Aside from exposing his palpable fear and desperation, Trump is piling up more lies that now even Fox News is finding it hard to excuse. Smith began his take-down of Trump (video below) with an introduction that summed things up nicely saying that:

“The White House today echoed President Trump’s false tweet claiming that the [Steele] dossier was the foundation of the special counsel, Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.”

Then Smith played a clip of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at today’s press briefing saying that “the entire investigation is based off of a dirty, discredited dossier.” Notice that Sanders has adopted Trump’s speaking patterns. Smith followed that by displaying Trump’s tweet saying that the “rigged witch hunt” by “17 angry Democrats” and “started by a “fraudulent dossier” was “an illegal scam.” You have to give him credit for stuffing so many inane cliches into a single tweet. But it’s Smith who really gets credit for having the courage to tell the truth on Fox News to their audience of glassy-eyed Deplorables:

“in the main, and in its part, that statement is patently false. According to the Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee, the feds started the Russia investigation in July of 2016, after then-Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. The diplomat then gave that information over to the FBI.

“And while the U.S. intelligence community has not confirmed parts of the dossier, there are elements of it that are confirmed true. No part of it, to Fox News’ knowledge, has been confirmed false. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, is a registered Republican. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, is also a Republican. The Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who swore in Rosenstein, is also a Republican. President Trump, a Republican, appointed Sessions [and Rosenstein too].

“The dossier is 35 pages of research memos Christopher Steele wrote during the 2016 campaign. He’s a former British intelligence agent. A research firm called Fusion GPS compiled the memos. They alleged conspiracies between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to help Mr. Trump win the election over Hillary Clinton.”

If just a small bit of this actually got through to Fox News viewers it might have a discernible impact on the nation’s collective ability to recognize the truth. But most of this won’t even get through to Hannity or the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. It’s a sad commentary on the depth of the delusion that the Trump Cult has spread across Republican America. These cretins are actually supportive of Russia’s interference in our democracy. So why would they be bothered by Trump issuing tweet commands to his A.G. to stop the Mueller probe?

In response to that tweet Sanders told the press corps this afternoon that Trump was just expressing his “opinion,” and that it wasn’t an order directed at Sessions. She had to downplay it in this way because otherwise it would be unambiguously obstruction of justice. In fact, it still is. If your boss said that you should stop working on some terrible project right now, would you consider that only his opinion and that you could ignore it? If Trump succeeds in coercing Sessions to stop the Mueller probe it’s just more evidence of his intent to illegally interfere with the administration of justice. And, by the way, there are way more than 17 angry Democrats. There’s at least 65 million (more than voted for Trump), plus a few sane Republicans who can’t stomach his treason.

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