Polls

Trump Embarks on a Desperate Campaign to Frighten Suburban White Women

Posted by on June 12, 2020 at 12:50 pm. 3 Comments :

The prospects for Donald Trump’s reelection continue to sink into an abyss of his hostility, division, and lies. His mounting anxiety is threatening to submerge him into a deep and depressive self-delusional state as he retreats to his bunker, unable to comprehend the magnitude of hatred that America has for him.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Every recent poll shows that Trump is significantly trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. And he’s even losing support from groups that he once regarded as reliable, such as evangelical voters. His own Republican party members are increasingly repulsed by his angry and childish outbursts. And now he’s worried about a demographic group from which he had support in 2016: Suburban women. Trump tweeted this plaintive yearning on Friday morning:

There’s a lot of wrong in that brief query. First of all, Trump is exacerbating the racist overtones of his candidacy (and his life) by overtly addressing a segment of the electorate that he believes is sympathetic toward him: white women. He’s blatantly fear mongering in order to scare people into voting for him. Secondly, Trump is clinging to the racial anxieties of white voters generally by referring to “defunding the police” without putting that phrase into context. Every Democrat in public life has affirmed their support for reforming police departments – not abolishing them – in a way that refocuses their duties and their budgets on crime and safety, leaving other more personal matters to the social workers, drug counselors, and mental health professionals who are better prepared to handle them.

Finally, Trump is ignoring the reality that the suburban women he relied on four years ago have long since left his camp. A recent poll by CNN found that among these voters Joe Biden is crushing Trump 63 to 34%. And for those who aren’t convinced that CNN’s pollsters are fair, the results were nearly identical in a Fox News poll, giving Biden a 57% edge over Trump’s 29%. In both polls Biden has a nearly 30 point advantage.

It’s difficult to see how Trump can overcome this deficit of support. Particularly when he is bleeding support from so many other critical voter groups. So he’s resorting to the sort of filthy campaign tactics that are familiar components of his diseased persona.

Trump is pretending to be the tough guy (while cowering in his bunker) by deploying the military against peaceful American citizens engaged in constitutionally protected demonstrations. He’s slandering Biden and other Democrats with infantile insults. He’s advancing bizarre conspiracy theories from the Internet’s most abhorrent cretins occupying its outer fringes. And this is how Trump thinks he’s going to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate in order to prevail in November? Yeah, right!

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

Crybaby Trump Obsessively Clings to Bogus 96% Approval

Posted by on June 8, 2020 at 1:43 pm. 4 Comments :

This is a good time to remember the old saying that repeating the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result, is the definition of Trumpism (aka insanity). And Donald Trump is helpfully continuing to affirm the wisdom of that proverb with tedious, all-caps repetitions of moldy oldies like “LAW & ORDER,” “MAGA,” “OBAMAGATE,” and the venerable “FAKE NEWS!”

Donald Trump Pacifier Fox

Among Trump’s most often regurgitated banalities is one that he is convinced will juice his popularity by the force of some imaginary crowd appeal. Trump believes that if he can convince people that others are bewitched by his irresistible charm, then they too will fall under his spell. So he tweets ad infinitum…

There are two very serious flaws in Trump’s logic. First of all, He doesn’t have 96% approval among Republicans, and he never has. It’s notable that as often as he tweets this, he has never once included a source or a link to any poll that would confirm it. And he tweets it quite often. He began this BS back in February of 2019, when the number he made up was only 93%. We’ve had some inflation. Just this year Trump has tweeted this phony stat 28 times (more than once a week). On 17 of those tweets the percentage of his GOP approval was 95%. The other 11 were inflated to 96% for no discernible reason other than ego gratification.

Secondly, Trump is placing undue significance on his GOP approval. The percentage of voters who identify themselves as Republican is a paltry 28%. So Trump could have 100% of them and it still wouldn’t amount to much. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to win an election.

For the record, a new CNN/SRSS poll puts Trump’s job approval among his own party members at only 88%. What’s more, the poll also shows Trump’s overall approval at a pitiful 38% (57% disapproval). And in a head to head match up with Joe Biden, Trump comes out behind by 14 points (Biden 55%, Trump 41%). That represents a gain by Biden of four points since last month’s poll, and a loss by Trump of five points.

Trump is desperately trying to dismiss these results. Naturally he condemns them as being the work of “Fake News” CNN, and goes further to add a wildly irrelevant assertion that “The Dems would destroy America!” That, of course, is from the poll in Trump’s diseased brain.

However, Trump wasn’t satisfied with throwing around his own unsupported malarkey. So he later tweeted that he had “retained [a] highly respected pollster” to “analyze” CNN’s survey. Needless to say, Trump’s pollster is a notoriously biased right-winger who mangles the numbers beyond recognition. Trump isn’t interested in conveying an honest presentation of reality. His only objective it to muddy the waters and pacify his anxious cult followers.

The truth is that, not just one, but every single poll, including Fox News and Trump favorite Rasmussen, shows Biden leading significantly. The RealClearPolitics poll of polls shows Biden with an average lead of 7.8%. And Trump’s support is cratering among Republican notables. There are presently eleven generals and/or admirals that have publicly renounced Trump (Mattis, Kelly, Allen, Powell, Myers, Dempsey, Thomas, Hayden, McRaven, Stvridis, and Mullen). And a growing number of former Trump voters are pledging to support Biden this November.

Nevertheless, Trump soldiers on in his belligerent, childish, egocentric way. He has no idea what a fool he’s making of himself as he ignores the tenor of the electorate by becoming ever more hostile. His proclamations of authoritarian rule are only thrusting him further into the abyss of political toxicity. His negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance, is proving to be disastrous with regard to his handling of the social unrest, the coronavirus pandemic, and the recessive economy. And in his narcissistic stupor Trump refuses to see, or at least acknowledge, that for him it’s all downhill from here.

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

Trump Tries to Demonize the Protesters Supported By 73% of the American People

Posted by on June 3, 2020 at 2:56 pm. 6 Comments :

The most consistent principle of Donald Trump’s public relations game plan (if you can call it a plan), is to flagrantly distort reality (aka lie) in order to shape it into a form that doesn’t frighten him. For instance, he insists that thousands more people attend his cult rallies than the venues can actually hold. He claims to have built hundreds of miles of walls along the southern border where there has been no new wall built at all. He boasts about being the best thing that ever happened to African-Americans. He celebrates his “progress” with the coronavirus despite more than 107,000 deaths due to his negligence and incompetence.

Trump Fear

Trump will lie about all things great and small, no matter how easily the truth can be validated proving his obvious dishonesty. These are lies rooted in fear of being seen for the fool that most people know he is. On Wednesday Trump posted a tweet that is emblematic of that behavior in the worst possible way:

This tweet begins by chastising the media (specifically his longtime nemises, CNN and MSNBC) for allegedly supporting a frightful array of evildoers who Trump asserts the media lavished with praise. Needless to say, that never occurred, and Trump doesn’t provide any evidence of his vile assertion. All the media did was to accurately report that those committing acts of violence or vandalism were in the minority, and that the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and devoted to positive change. Trump doesn’t want to hear that because it conflicts with his paranoid vision of a dystopian society where villains have taken control of the streets and his enemies are coming after him from every direction

What’s more, Trump is disgustingly maligning the honest, concerned Americans who are protesting real injustices as “killers, terrorists, arsonists, anarchists, thugs, hoodlums, looters, ANTIFA & others.” It’s a nauseating mischaracterization done purposefully to dehumanize good citizens for whom Trump has a deep seated, personal animosity. Notice that he doesn’t allow even a hint of any appreciation for the majority of people who are lawfully expressing their entirely justified anxiety with regard to systemic racism. Trump’s loaded rhetoric that accuses these protesters of being murderers and terrorists is way beyond the pale. And his invention of an Anti-fa(scist) organization is just another figment of his diseased imagination.

All of this is being done out of pure desperation on Trump’s part. He recognizes (or more likely has been told) that his approval ratings are in the sewer. Every poll shows that he is losing to Joe Biden nationally, as well as in most of the swing states. So he has embarked on a campaign of image restoration in order to plug his leaking ship of state. It’s what produced the travesty on Tuesday when he had protesters tear gassed in order to clear his way to a faux-religious photo-op that even some on his own staff found stomach churning.

What makes Trump’s PR plan all the more inept is that he is bucking popular opinion. A new poll by Reuters/Ipsos finds that…

“Three-quarters of Americans report they support the peaceful protests and demonstrations as a response to George Floyd’s death (73%). A majority of Democrats (86%) and Republicans (59%) report supporting the peaceful demonstrations.”

Also revealed in this survey is that those who strongly support the protests (43%) far exceed those who strongly oppose them (12%%). And that “Four in five Americans (82%) report that peaceful protests are an appropriate response to the killing of an unarmed man by police.” And that “Just 33% of Americans approve of how Donald Trump is handling the protests.”

In short, Trump is wrong the wrong side of the American people on everything. Yet, in his delusional stupor, he is still cranking out all-caps tweets shouting about some make-believe “SILENT MAJORITY” that he imagines is on his side. And this is how he thinks he will improve his standing in the polls and his prospects for reelection? Sure. Good luck with that, Bunker Boy.

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

Trump Flings Feces at Fox News for Poll Showing that America Favors Biden

Posted by on May 22, 2020 at 11:57 am. 6 Comments :

As the nation continues to endure a deadly pandemic, Donald Trump continues to be obsessed over his public image. The death toll is approaching a tragic milestone of 100,000 Americans lost to COVID-19 (coronavirus). And recent studies show that tens of thousands of those deaths could have been avoided had Trump not been so negligent, incompetent, and even deliberately dismissive of the threat.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump Baby, Fake News

Trump manages to turn every public appearance into an infomercial for his 2020 reelection campaign. He simply cannot address this crisis without ultimately referring to himself and what he regards as mistreatment by the media. For the alleged “leader of the free world” Trump sure seems to fall back into a state of paranoid victimhood every time he speaks.

For two days running Trump has also been lashing out wildly at his State TV network (aka Fox News). Anyone who is paying attention recognizes that Fox News is the unabashed propaganda organ of Trump’s presidency. But even with the unprecedented loyalty and adulation that Fox pours over Dear Leader, it can never be enough to mollify Trump’s acute narcissism. And when Fox is less than sufficiently adoring, Trump unleashes his wrath. For instance, on Thursday he whined that…

Trump apparently thinks that Fox “News” is obligated to “help Republicans, and me, get re-elected.” That’s how corrupted his concept of journalism is. Not that Fox practices much journalism. But you would have to believe that some of their “reporters” would take offense to being cast as Trump’s political lackeys. However, none of them have said so since this tweet was posted. And in Trump’s diseased brain, the difference between being “great” and “garbage” is the quality of your bootlicking. Any divergence from total obedience is not tolerated. That’s the deranged mindset behind Trump’s Friday morning tweet demanding that…

Naturally, Trump regards any negative polling results as “fake” and an offense that serves as grounds for termination. However, his complaint that he’s “Never had a good Fox Poll” is an easily provable lie. In fact, he’s had many, and he has effusively praised Fox on those occasions. That doesn’t mean he won’t forget that the moment there is a less positive poll. But Trump wasn’t through whining:

If Trump is really interested in examining a variety of polls, he might take a look at the RealClearPolitics poll of polls that averages the most recent published surveys. As of May 22, every single one of them has Joe Biden leading Trump, including CNBC and CNN. However, what’s particularly disturbing about this tweet is Trump’s shout out to the late Roger Ailes, the former Fox News CEO who was fired due to numerous accusations of sexual harassment and assault. Although, you can’t blame Trump for admiring someone so much like himself. And with regard to the findings in the Fox News poll, it is understandable that Trump would be worried. It shows that…

“…voters prefer Biden to Trump 48-40%. Biden wins on on health care by 17 points, coronavirus by 9, and relations with China by 6. Trump is trusted more on the economy by a slim 3-point margin.”

Trump’s outrage notwithstanding, he will surely continue to show favoritism to Fox News. He has done the vast majority of his television interviews on Fox. He regularly promotes Fox News Trump-fluffers like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jesse Watters, Maria Bartiromo, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. And while he will occasionally exploit other news sources (such as One America News Network – OANN – which some of his big donors have taken a financial interest in) in order to pressure Fox to be more subservient, he will always return to Fox for the ego stroking he craves. And Trump’s attacks will be passively tolerated because that’s what the Fox News Ministry of Propaganda was created to do.

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

ORANGE CRUSHED: More Americans Trust CNN than Either Trump or Fox News

Posted by on May 12, 2020 at 2:06 pm. 8 Comments :

In recent days Donald Trump has been exhibiting surging symptoms of acute paranoia, anxiety, and desperation. Two days ago he posted a near record 124 tweets in one day. They ran the gamut of his typical fetishes from ego-drenched bragging about imaginary achievements, to vicious insults aimed at his perceived enemies, to delusional assertions of non-existent crimes committed by political adversaries. If Trump were on a street corner reciting the content of his tweets he would be quickly escorted to the nearest asylum for observation.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

On Tuesday morning the out of control tweetstorming continued with Trump posting another 32 twantrums, all before 10:00am. While this behavior is not unheard of for Trump, there is clearly something that has triggered this escalation of hysterics. And more than likely it has something to with his downward spiraling approval ratings and the polls that show him losing to Joe Biden nationally, as well as in most of the crucial swing states. Trump’s hijacking of the Coronavirus Task Force briefings backfired badly as his lies and belligerence turned off most Americans who were more interested in getting useful information about the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

A new poll is now affirming that what remains of Trump’s already tattered reputation has taken a series of severe blows. His overall approval is still underwater (45%) and has never exceeded 50% at any point during his accidental presidency. What’s more, a paltry 36% of the American people trust the information Trump provides about the coronavirus. That compares to 74% who trust the Centers for Disease Control, 67% who trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, and (and this has gotta sting) a majority of 55% who trust CNN, 19 points higher than those who trust Trump. That’s in line with previous polling that found the same preference for what Trump refers to is Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”

There is some more worrisome news for Trump in the details of this poll. The support for Trump is tightly bound into his base, which at this point is more of a cult. How else would you explain that Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples trust him more (84%) than they trust Dr. Fauci (61%)? As reported by CNN…

“Republicans are more apt to say that they trust the information they get about coronavirus from Trump (84%) than they are to say they trust the information they get from Dr. Anthony Fauci (61%), the nation’s top infectious disease expert, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (72%). Among Democrats, just 4% say they trust the information they get from the President, well behind the 81% who say they trust Fauci or the 80% who trust the CDC. Overall, CNN (55% trust) inspires far more trust than Fox News (35%), with those figures also divided by party.”

Democrats are plainly more persuaded by science than by partisan hackery and political lie factories. Can’t say the same for Republicans. And the American people have made their choice with regard to news sources. While Fox News is still higher rated, that’s only because their audience is glued to the right-wing propaganda network day and night, while the majority of the country gets their news from a variety of more credible sources, both national and local.

Trump surely has many reasons to be mired in a crushing meltdown. His polling is in the gutter. His reelection prospects are fading. The Supreme Court is hearing cases that could result in his finally having to reveal his tax returns. And he is rightfully being held accountable for the suffering and death caused by his negligent and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Not that he cares about that. What’s boiling his thinning blood is that, in addition to those other triggers, he knows that the American people – and the people of the world – see him as a failure and a clown who was never fit to be a leader. And that is the sort of judgment that weighs most heavily on narcissists with unchecked delusions of grandeur, like Trump.

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

Trump’s Worst Nightmare: More Americans Believe CNN than the Liar-In-Chief

Posted by on May 6, 2020 at 12:28 pm. 9 Comments :

Each day that passes, Donald Trump appears to be sinking ever further into the Mariana Trench of desperation and deceit. His rapidly unraveling mental state becomes more critical and evident to all who are paying attention. It’s an unprecedented public display of an emotional breakdown playing out before millions, not unlike his old reality TV game show performances.

Donald Trump, CNN

Trump is frantically trying to buttress his disintegrating psyche by lashing out incoherently at his many perceived enemies. He is cowering in a bunker constructed by a diseased, fearful, and paranoid mind, and refusing to engage with the “haters” that he is convinced mean him harm. And he consoles himself with increasingly deranged reassurances that he is beloved by everyone.

The truth, however, is surely going to result in even more outlandish outbursts from the fragile ego of our defective “president.” A new poll by Monmouth University asked respondents this provocative question: If Donald Trump and CNN gave conflicting information about the coronavirus outbreak who would you be more likely to believe – Trump or CNN?

Trump has made a point of broadly disparaging the free press for the past three years. He does this, as he openly admitted, in order to discredit them so that they they won’t be believed when they criticize him. And he has frequently singled out CNN as one of the primary targets of his wrath, calling them “fake” news and lying about their ratings.

Consequently, Trump won’t be thrilled about the response to the question above. The poll found that a majority of 51% say they believe CNN more than Trump. A mere 38% said they would believe Trump more. That’s a number that aligns with his dismal approval ratings. And as an indicator of how mired in cultism Trump’s supporters are, 82% of Republicans believe Trump over CNN. They even opt for Trump over Fox News (66% to 20%). These results are in line with previous polls on the same subject. In March respondents said that they trusted CNN more by 48% to 35%. They also said they trust MSNBC more by 45% to 32%. And for good measure, Monmouth’s national survey of the presidential race finds Biden expanding his lead over Trump (50% to 41%).

If anything gets under Trump’s notoriously thin skin it’s the prospect that people might be less than worshipful of him. He demands total loyalty, devotion, and unflinching support for his every word and deed. Should anyone be even modestly critical he will go after them like a starving piranha. He demonstrated this viciousness in a recent rage-tweeting episode directed at the producers of an anti-Trump political ad.

However, CNN is not just a another source of aggravation for Trump. He regards them as a mortal enemy. He harbors a deep hatred for the network and every person associated with it. He lobs infantile insults at their reporters, anchors, and executives. He lies about their ratings and finances (which are both hitting record levels lately). He threatens them in a manner that is censorial and flagrantly anti-constitutional. And he is even suing them.

Trump despises CNN so much that he can’t help but watch it obsessively. He knows all their anchors and is on top of their breaking stories about him. He has tweeted derogatorily about them 17 times in just the past month. So discovering that the American people prefer CNN to Trump is likely to trigger an acute aneurysm that could result in severe brain damage. Not that anyone would be able to tell the difference.

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

While Americans Suffer, Trump is Laser Focused On – His Polling?

Posted by on May 3, 2020 at 12:24 pm. 2 Comments :

The voracious ego of Donald Trump continues to run roughshod over our nation. He seems unfazed by the latest reports of 1.1 million Americans infected by the coronavirus, and more than 67,000 dead. And he’s equally unmoved by the news that more than 30 millions Americans have lost their jobs. Trump posted 19 tweets on Sunday morning and hardly mentioned pandemic or it’s consequences at all. So what did he mention?

Donald Trump

It’s all too apparent what is consuming the thoughts of our “president” these days. He makes his priorities known by expressing them unabashedly on Twitter. And on this Sunday morn he revealed that his primary interest is – as usual – himself. The most frequent subject of his tweets was his approval rate polling, with four addressing that one fetish:

It needs to be said that what Trump is bragging about repeatedly is a Gallup poll that is a conspicuous outlier. Most other polls put Trump in the low forties. It is also notable that Trump is excited about this being the highest number Gallup has posted for him, even though it is still below 50% which he has never achieved.

For some reason Trump tempers his giddiness over this poll with a swipe at the “Fake News,” “Lamestream” media that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” But whining that the press “doesn’t show real polls” while celebrating a Gallup poll that the press always shows is a strange way to boast about his alleged popularity. He’s tearing it down even as he’s using it to lift himself up.

Additionally, Trump twice makes reference to a “96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party” that he fails to back up with a link or even a name for the pollster. The fact is, that poll doesn’t exist. Nor does Trump offer a source for his assertion that he’s beating Joe Biden. Which is likewise not supported by reality. Biden is shown ahead of Trump both nationally and in critical swing states.

For contrast, the rest of Trump’s morning tweetstorm was littered with tributes to himself and bizarre divergences from the matters that are of interest to most Americans. For instance:

  • Whining that George Bush didn’t speak out against his impeachment.
  • Some guy who wrapped his boat in a Trump ad.
  • How much he misses his cult rallies.
  • Two propaganda videos (here and here)
  • Mike Tyson (?)
  • An old propaganda video attacking Democrats.
  • A shout out to his Turnberry golf course in Scotland.

And then there’s whatever the heck this is:

So rest assured that Trump is on the case, working to ensure that the American people don’t suffer from any deficiency in impotent Trump exaltations and syrupy propaganda. This is how a reality TV game show president thinks governing is done. When he isn’t neck deep in mounds of his own PR manure, he’s maligning the free press or the political foes that he is so transparently afraid of. and naturally, he’s always upselling, such as with these Trump-branded coronavirus face masks. This would all make an entertaining social satire if it weren’t for the corpses that are piling up due to Trump’s negligence and incompetence.

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

Fox News Cultists – And Nearly No One Else – Believe Trump is Honest

Posted by on April 28, 2020 at 2:30 pm. 5 Comments :

The determination of Donald Trump to malign the credibility of the media has taken a toll. However, the impact has been felt mostly by his own devoted disciples. The American people by and large continue to have little respect for Trump as a trustworthy source of information.

Trump Lies

Trump’s problems are entirely of his own making. His frequent and shameless lying does not go unnoticed. He has been documented to have told more than 18,000 lies since his inauguration. And particularly with regard to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, Trump has repeatedly disseminated easily verified falsehoods. As a result, the majority of the American people don’t believe what he says about pretty much anything. Even more painful from Trump’s perspective, and after years of vilification, they believe the media more.

A new poll by USA Today/Suffolk University affirms these views. When asked if they think Trump is honest and trustworthy, only 31% said that he is, while more than twice as many (64%) said that he is not. What’s more, when the responses were broken down by preferences for news sources, the ideological divide was starkly revealing:

“According to the Suffolk poll, of the 31% of Americans who believe Trump is honest and trustworthy, nearly two-thirds of them say Fox is their favorite news source. Among Fox-first viewers – who comprise about 25% of Americans in the survey – 78% say Trump is honest and trustworthy, while just 15% disagree.

The imbalance is even more striking when you look at people who don’t trust Fox the most. Among the three-fourths of the population who don’t list Fox as their No. 1, just 15% say Trump is honest and trustworthy, while nearly 80% say he is not.”

Let that sink in. The poll shows, firstly, that only 25% of the American people say they watch Fox News. The number is actually smaller than that as the Nielsen ratings show that only about 1% of TV viewers are actually tuning in the right-wing network. The poll respondents are likely just giving credit to the channel that reflects their political biases.

Of the 75% of Americans who are not Fox News viewers, a measly 15% of them regard Trump as honest and trustworthy. That compares to 78% of the Fox cultists who are only a quarter of the total respondents in the poll.

Consequently, Trump is suffering a huge trust deficit from which he is unlikely to recover in the few months remaining before the election. And his recovery is all the more difficult since there is no sign that he plans to be more truthful going forward, or that is even able to be. Trump’s commitment to spewing self-serving fiction has been a key component of his character (or lack thereof) for decades. And the more he puts himself in from of the people, the more he lies, and the more his credibility sinks into an abyss.

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

Talk About Desperate: Trump Celebrates an OANN Poll that Doesn’t Exist

Posted by on April 16, 2020 at 12:54 pm. 4 Comments :

On Wednesday Donald Trump unleashed one of his most bizarrely unhinged performances at the Coronavirus Task Force briefing (aka Trump Campaign Rally). He produced a fictional list of corporate executives he said were members of a new economic task force. He reiterated his delusional view that he has “total authority” and threatened to shut down Congress. And of course, he bragged about imaginary achievements and yelled petulantly at reporters. Then he stomped out in huff when he didn’t like the questions.

Donald Trump Pacifier Fox

Trump’s presence at these briefings has been a waste of time from the start. He contributes nothing of substance, but distracts from the experts who actually have some relevant knowledge to impart to the public. Trump has proved that the only things he cares about are those things that advance his personal self-interest and assuaging his voracious ego. That was affirmed on Thursday as he took to Twitter with bitterly partisan posts and flagrant lies.

The first of Trump’s tweets was his celebration of a poll by the ultra right-wing Fox News wannabe One America News Network (OANN). This is the network that doesn’t have a big enough audience to be rated by Nielsen. It’s the network whose reporter was recently booted out of the White House briefings for violating social distancing guidelines, but who got a personal reprieve to stand in the back of the room by Trump’s press secretary (since fired), Stephanie Grisham. It’s a network that has even less credibility than viewers. But Trump promotes them because he can always count on them to kiss his – let’s say ring. He also uses them to needle Fox News when he doesn’t think they are being sufficiently flattering. So Trump tweeted this Thursday morning:

The first thing that makes this tweet significant is that no such OANN poll exists. This is another example of Trump mangling the facts to disseminate whatever “news” he believes will put him the best light, even if it’s fictional. It’s similar to his repeated – and false – claims that he has a 95% approval rating among Republicans. Trump often makes things up on the fly.

There does appear to be a poll that has numbers aligned to Trump’s tweet. It was conducted by the Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank in North Carolina. So even if Trump had gotten the reference correct, it is still not a reputable, non-partisan survey. The notoriously biased Rasmussen poll only has Trump with a 46% approval, 53% disapproval. What’s more, the Civitas results are hardly worth bragging about. The alleged seven point lead over Joe Biden still has Trump below 50% (49-42%). Nationally, Trump has taken a nosedive with the most recent Gallup poll showing a six point drop in approval and a nine point leap in disapproval.

To add another level of irrelevance, the poll was conducted from April 5-7, so it’s a week and a half old. A more recent poll of this North Carolina race by Public Policy Polling shows Biden with a small lead in the state (48-47%), and the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Cal Cunningham, well ahead of the GOP incumbent, Thom Tillis (47-40%).

Trump has also been obsessed with maligning his perceived foes, including, and especially, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of whom he has a mortal fear. He posted two tweets piling on as many derogatory adjectives as he could think of. He called her “crazy,” “weak,” “a poor leader,” “incompetent,” “a pathetic puppet,” and “third-rate.” The first tweet quoted the insults of Sean Hannity of Fox News. The second tweet accused Pelosi of being “responsible for many deaths.” It also accused her of deleting a tweet that she never actually posted.

In other words, Trump was suffering a severe bout of psychological projection. Because those are all characteristics that have long defined Trump himself. Particularly the one concerning responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths that are directly attributable to Trump’s criminal negligence, and incompetence. And to make matters worse, Trump is still insisting that he wants to “reopen” the country, despite the fact that every health expert says it would be disastrous and deadly to do so at this time. Not that Trump or his GOP confederates care.

For the perfect example of how callous, insensitive, and greedy they are, take a look at this clip of Dr. Oz on Hannity Wednesday evening saying that schools should be reopened now because the deaths of 2 to 3% of American children from the coronavirus would be an acceptable “tradeoff” to get the economy back on track. No, really. He actually said that while Hannity nodded approvingly. This is the so-called “pro-life” right-wing:

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

Fox News Viewers and Republicans are More Likely to Buy Trump’s COVID-19 Lies

Posted by on April 11, 2020 at 1:47 pm. 3 Comments :

The COVID-19 pandemic that is ravaging America and the world continues to set new and more tragic milestones. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is still understating the threat and promising to end the “Stay at Home” and social distancing guidelines that health experts insist are still necessary. He is, as usual, more concerned about his bank account, and his reelection prospects, than about the lives of the American people.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

Trump’s callous disregard for the welfare of the nation’s citizenry is typical for a malignant narcissist who thinks only of himself. Unfortunately, his impact is felt more broadly by those caught up in the Cult of Trump who believe every lie he tells and who hate every enemy he targets.

The depth of devotion to Trump by his glassy-eyed disciples is revealed in a new survey by Gallup. The responses were broken down into various groupings, including what Gallup called the “news diet.” A conservative news diet is one where the respondents view only sources such as Fox News, One America News Network, and Breitbart News. A liberal news diet consisted of sources such as MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times.

Among the questions in the survey was one that asked respondents if “the coronavirus is less deadly than, or as deadly as the flu.” More than twice as many in the conservative group believe that that COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu (57-28%). Never mind that all of the scientific data proves just the opposite by a wide margin.

Another question asked if “the Media is giving too much attention” to the pandemic. Once again, the disparity between the conservative group and the liberals is striking. Those who consume exclusively right-wing media (71%) already think think they’ve heard enough. Only 28% of liberals feel that way.

Finally, another question sought respondents’ opinions on Trump’s job performance. A whopping 94% of those who only view conservative media say that “Trump is doing an excellent/good job.” Those are unambiguously “cult” stats.

There was another survey released this week that further affirms the worshipful obedience to conservative lunacy. The Pew Research Center asked respondents whether they believed that the coronavirus came about naturally or was created in a lab. Once again, nearly twice as many Republicans (37%) as Democrats (21%) believe in the Frankenstein theory. This is the sort of conspiracy crackpottery that can only be produced by committed propagandists like those at Fox News.

Right-wing media and Donald Trump are the most productive purveyors of bullpucky about COVID-19, or any other subject for that matter. Trump continues to lie about the availability of medical supplies, the progress of testing, the success of his administration’s response, and virtually everything else related to this ongoing crisis. And Fox News is right there to back up his flagrant falsehoods.

No wonder people who confine themselves to conservative media are so dreadfully ill-informed. The only problem with that is that their ignorance could have an impact on the measures being taken to address the still considerable risks posed by the coronavirus. If they aren’t able to be educated, we are all likely to be in greater danger. And relying on the ability of Trump cultists to grasp reality is a precarious position for the nation to be in. Good luck everybody.

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