Fox News

Trump Fails to Renounce ‘White Power’ Tweet in Official Response

Posted by on June 28, 2020 at 11:51 am. 3 Comments :

The White House Deflection Shields are on full force this morning as Donald Trump is faced with some of the most damning evidence of his despicable negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to date. He has turned to his customary tactic of hurling insults, shifting blame, and denying reality. In other words, it’s the same old Trump who is only concerned with himself and his image.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Following the publication of the New York Times story about Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops, Trump tweeted that “Nobody briefed or told me” about the matter. Then he casually dismissed it with his tedious whining about “fake news.” There is virtually zero chance that this sort of intelligence report would not have been conveyed to the president. But even if Trump were not lying, the contention that he wasn’t told makes matters even worse. It would mean that his intelligence apparatus is dangerously inept and that Trump was ill-informed about the welfare of the troops he is allegedly commanding.

What’s more, Trump continues to downplay the increasing severity of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic as its spread throughout the nation accelerates. He triples down on his defense of Confederate traitors and the offensive statues paying tribute to them. He obsessively watches his “shadow cabinet” advisors on Fox News. And then he goes golfing. This is how Trump is handling the duties of his office at a time of extreme crises and distress for the American people.

In addition to these disturbing examples of Trump’s dereliction of duty, he is also reaffirming his most abhorrently racist tendencies. He tweeted a video Sunday morning that featured his MAGA supporters shouting “white power” as they paraded in their golf carts through The Villages retirement community:

https://twitter.com/danielnewman/status/1277285058546720769

Trump’s comment in the tweet , which he deleted a few hours later (but is preserved here), thanked “the great people” expressing these repugnant views. That’s reminiscent of his praise for neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” and the corroborating views of his Fox News sycophants who last week defended slave owners saying that “It doesn’t mean they were terrible people.”

White House spokesperson Judd Deere frantically issued a statement in an attempt to clean up Trump’s latest mess. Deere said that…

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

Really? The “white power” chant occurred in the first ten seconds of the video. It’s hard to imagine how anyone, even someone as cognitively challenged as Trump, could have missed it. And if all he saw other than that was “tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters,” he must have a mental filter that edited out all the people shouting “F*ck Trump!” and asking “Where’s your white hoods?” All things considered, it’s surprising that Trump ever thought it was a good idea to post this video. In fact, it’s possible that he deleted it because of the criticism of him, not the racism.

What we didn’t hear from Trump’s spokesperson, or Trump himself, was any denunciation of the racist epithets so viciously bellowed by those unashamed bigots. There was not one word indicating that Trump disapproved of that hateful rhetoric. Perhaps he was worried about alienating his equally racist supporters and Klan pals. The entire statement said only that he hadn’t heard it and that he’s a big fan of those who said it. And that pretty much settles the question as to Trump’s flagrant racism. If he can’t repudiate this painfully obvious bigotry, then he simply doesn’t want to.

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

Reality Game Show ‘President’ Trump Thinks TV Ratings are ‘The Real Polls’

Posted by on June 27, 2020 at 1:12 pm. 1 Comments :

Every day seems to provide a new opportunity to declare that Donald Trump has done or said something that is even worse than anything he’s done or said before. It may seem redundant or hyperbole, but somehow Trump actually does rise to the challenge and manages to exceed whatever heinousness he excreted the day before. It’s a gift.

Donald Trump TV Set

On Saturday morning Trump took to his Twitter machine to unleash another series of frenzied, paranoid, and nearly incoherent rants. Among them, he has apparently abandoned his “Sleepy” nickname for Joe Biden and is trying out “Corrupt” because nothing is working for him. Biden continues to expand his lead in national polls, as well as in every swing state. Trump’s desperation shows in his Twittering that is now rampant with QAnon conspiracy crackpots. And he’s touting his efforts to kill healthcare for 20 million Americans during a pandemic in which he has already killed more than 125,000 people. It’s notable that he’s been promising to repeal and replace Obamacare for 4 years, but still doesn’t have a plan. The GOP has been running the same con for 10 years.

Of particular interest is one tweet that reveals just how shallow, delusional, and devoid of substance Trump is. His background as a failed real estate grifter and self-proclaimed “King of Debt“ (with six bankruptcies under his bulging belt) never prepared him for the presidency. Nor did his most recent professional experience as a reality TV game show host. But that’s the one that continues to guide his conduct in office:

Trump is lashing out in a state of dread and hopelessness as he realizes that his prospects for the future more closely resemble his worst nightmares. So he grasps onto the ludicrous notion that television ratings are a reasonable alternative to scientifically conducted public opinion surveys. “These are the real polls,” Trump whines in an attempt spin some something positive out of the dregs of a news cycle that holds only misery for him.

Along with the horrific rise in coronavirus infections and fatalities (which studies prove were intensified by viewing Fox News), Trump is also having to explain the poor attendance at his revived cult rallies. He is saddled with responsibility for an economy in recession. His former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has exposed Trump’s ignorance in a new book that Trump was unsuccessful in suppressing. Same goes for the book by his niece, Mary Trump. And the New York Times just reported that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, and Trump knew but did nothing. How is that not treason?

With all of that going on, Trump found time to go golfing at his Virginia country club and tweet idiotic tributes to himself. For the record, Trump’s boasting about the TV ratings for his Oklahoma speech and his interview with Sean Hannity are just the ratings for Fox News programming. So naturally his Deplorables would be tuning in. That proves nothing except that he and Fox News are running a bona fide cult whose members have abandoned free thought. Those ratings are only “polls” of people watching that particular network and amount to less than one percent of the American population. That’s the pitiful pittance of viewers that Trump is trying to characterize as “the Silent Majority.”

Trump has been plaintively beseeching the nation to “not believe the Fake News Media” for at least four years now. But his whining has been met with ridicule as the American people continue to reject him by ever larger margins. In fact, the real polls show that more Americans trust CNN than either Trump or Fox News. So nice work, Bunker Boy. Despite tedious repetition and relentless hostility, the “fake news” branding campaign has been an epic flop. Pretty much like everything else Trump does.

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

Fox News Defends Slave Owners: ‘It Doesn’t Mean They Were Terrible People’

Posted by on June 26, 2020 at 1:23 pm. 10 Comments :

There is a bitter controversy spreading across America like a viral pandemic. The nation’s past is being held to greater scrutiny as a result of repeated incidents of unarmed black Americans being murdered by the police. This evidence of systemic racism has boiled over into a much needed dialog on what values our country ought to be preserving and encouraging.

Fox News, KKK

Citizens have been pouring into the streets to express their anger and their refusal to tolerate the prejudice that presents itself in the form of “historical” statues. These monuments were intended to pay tribute to leaders of the treasonous Confederacy. In some cases these statues have been ripped from their pedestals or otherwise defaced. Donald Trump has taken the side of the traitors (while accusing others of treason) and is calling for the arrests and harsh punishment of the protesters. On Friday morning he even tweeted “Wanted” posters. He is doing far more to persecute these demonstrators than he has ever done to hold actual racist murderers accountable for their crimes.

Those making arguments in favor of maintaining these statues barely disguise their racist motives. They assert that it’s a matter of preserving history. But we do not erect statues of traitors and criminals as historical markers. If we did there would be statues of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray. Statues are honorific, not history lessons. And removing them doesn’t erase any historical data. The South’s rebellion to preserve slavery is still recorded in history books and documentaries, as it should be.

Cut to Fox News (the network that is literally killing people). On Friday’s edition of Fox and Friends, the now social distancing “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham to discuss these issues. Co-host Brian Kilmeade led off with this wholehearted embrace of what Trump once called the “very fine people on both sides” of the racial hatred debate. “These people were right,” Kilmeade began, and “Those people were wrong. But it doesn’t mean they were terrible people. They were people of their times.”

Really? Kilmeade is defending the slave holders who were wonderful folks who just liked to own and brutalize other human beings as if they were cattle. What’s so terrible about that? As “people of their times,” how could they be faulted? How are they any different than the Nazis who were people of the 1940s in Germany? How are they any different than the KKK and the white nationalists in America today who are merely people of these times?

Here’s a creative way some Bulgarian artists dealt with the Russian oppressors of their times:

The fact that Kilmeade considers that a valid argument is precisely what’s wrong with Fox News and those who align themselves with their heinous political ideology (including Trump and his Deplorables). When it was Sen. Graham’s turn to contribute to this dialog, he didn’t bother to renounce what had been said so far. In fact, he elaborated by attacking the protesters in even more loathsome terms (video below):

“The people doing this hate our country. They hate the way we were founded. They hate capitalism. They have no respect for religion. They have no respect for diversity of thought. These people are the most radical people known to America. We’re at war with them politically. They want to destroy America as we know it. They hate America and every symbol of our country from the flag to the statues.

They hate. They want to turn us into a socialist nation. They want to destroy the family unit as we know it. And I tell you what, to the listeners out there. You may not believe you’re in a war, but you are, politically, and you need to take sides, and you need to help this president.”

Sound familiar? This is the dehumanizing rhetoric of the Old South that regarded people as animals and property. In Graham’s view, they have no rights, no decency, no family values. They represent everything that is unholy and against the country as seen by Graham and his ilk. And the only solution, according to Graham and his Fox News cohorts, is (civil) war.

Make no mistake, Graham and Fox News speak for Trump. Not that anyone outside of their bubble believes them, or that Trump needs their help. He’s been saying the very same things himself. This is the diseased mindset of people who still haven’t accepted that the South lost. They still want the statues that honor traitors. They still want to fly the Confederate flag. They still want to oppress African-Americans and others they regard as non-white deviants. And they are terrified that they are losing the battle to retain their delusions of superiority. Which, thankfully, they are.

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

Studies Prove that Watching Fox News Increases Coronavirus Fatalities

Posted by on June 25, 2020 at 3:08 pm. 7 Comments :

Media scholars and neutral observers almost universally agree that Fox News has been a source of flagrantly biased right-wing propaganda from the day it began broadcasting. It’s founders – an arch-conservative, foreign-born, media baron (Rupert Murdoch), and an ultra-rightist Republican campaign operative (Roger Ailes) – intended that political prejudice to be its primary mission when they launched the network.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

However, the presence of Fox News in a splintered media environment has had a more disastrous impact on the nation than anyone could have predicted. Amidst the spread of the deadly COVID -19 (coronavirus) pandemic, Fox News became the central point of infection to spread disinformation and deliberate lies that can now be shown to have directly contributed to the nation’s tragically high fatality rate. Along with Donald Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and purposeful malfeasance, Fox News deceived dimwitted Americans into volunteering the lives of themselves, their families, and their communities, in the service of partisan political power and the ego of a malignantly narcissistic president.

The Washington Post is reporting that – not one, not two – but three recent studies confirm the role that Fox News played in exacerbating the harm of the coronavirus. [NOTE: the first of these studies was reported here on News Corpse in April, revealing that higher rates of coronavirus deaths could be linked to watching Sean Hannity] Fox News, along with other right-wing media (i.e. Rush Limbaugh, OANN, Breitbart, etc.) distorted and/or invented narratives that downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. They portrayed it as equivalent to the common flu and mocked health experts who advised cautionary behavior such as social distancing and wearing face masks. According to the Post:

There are many reasons our response to the pandemic tied to more than 120,000 U.S. deaths has faltered, experts say, including the lack of a cohesive federal policy, missteps on testing and tracing, and a national culture emphasizing individualism.

In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the seriousness of the coronavirus. Taken together, they paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others.

The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.

In other words, watching Fox News actually amplifies the mortality rate of an already deadly disease. Their viewers were deceived into believing that the virus wasn’t anything to worry about, and that they could conduct their lives as usual with no added risk. That was recklessly untrue. The Post continued pointing out the lethal mythology that Fox News disseminated:

Administering a nationally representative phone survey with 1,008 respondents, they found that people who got most of their information from mainstream print and broadcast outlets tended to have an accurate assessment of the severity of the pandemic and their risks of infection. But those who relied on conservative sources, such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories or unfounded rumors, such as the belief that taking vitamin C could prevent infection, that the Chinese government had created the virus, and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exaggerated the pandemic’s threat “to damage the Trump presidency.”

It is no coincidence that all of those conspiracy theories match up precisely with what Trump himself has been saying. Fox News is, after all, his State TV Ministry of Disinformation. And between the two they are unambiguously responsible for deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. But even worse, they are both continuing to spew the same falsehoods that have already proven to be so deadly.

Thankfully, most of the American people do not watch Fox News and will resist the lies that are being told by Trump and his media shills. And hopefully, the majority of us will engage in responsible, cautious, and healthy behavior. Unfortunately, the deluded Foxies and Trump cultists can’t be counted on to take the simple precautions that save lives.. So it would be wise for the rest of us to socially distance from anyone who watches Fox News or attends Trump rallies. For your own sake, and that of your loved ones.

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

Trump’s Tulsa Rally Troubles Go Way Beyond the Pitiful Turnout

Posted by on June 21, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 1 Comments :

Donald Trump had several weeks to plan his return to the campaign trail after three months of a COVID-19 enforced lockdown. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, a deep red city and state that should have guaranteed a capacity crowd of glassy-eyed disciples. but things didn’t work out exactly as planned.

Donald Trump, Tulsa Rally

According to the Tulsa fire department, Trump’s rally managed to pack in a measly 6,200 of The Donald’s dimwitted devotees. That’s less than a third of the 19,000 people the arena can accommodate. What’s more, Trump and his campaign bragged repeatedly about having a million requests for tickets and they projected that there would be an overflow crowd of 40,000-60,000 out side the arena where Trump would give an additional speech.

However, the attendance turned out to be far less than projected. The overflow crowd never materialized at all, leading to the cancellation of the outdoor activities. If Trump thought that this rally would be his opportunity to turn around his polling slump (he’s losing to Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as in the crucial swing states), he must be mighty disappointed this morning. And his disappointment generally translates into fury directed at the “losers” responsible for his humiliation. Because, of course, it’s never him.

On Sunday morning Trump campaign advisor Mercedes Schlapp was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. She was there to attempt to put a positive spin on the previous evening’s fiasco. That plan didn’t work out very well either (video below):

Wallace: Your campaign said that more than a million people wanted tickets to this rally, but we all saw the pictures last night. The arena was no more than two-thirds full, and the outdoor rally that had been planned for the overflow crowd was canceled because there was no overflow crowd. Question: What happened?
Schlapp: When it comes to understanding how the rallies work, it’s a first-come-first-serve basis. Basically what the one million RSVPs include, it’s an opportunity for us to gather data, to get information obviously.

Schlapp went on to make absurd excuses about people having been too frightened by protesters to show up. But she didn’t explain how more than 90% of the predicted hundred thousand rally-goers were scared off by a few protesters, who were kept blocks away from the arena by the police. She also bragged about the number of people who watched online which, of course, included many Trump opponents and other curious independents. To his credit, Wallace wouldn’t let Schlapp deflect, and reminded her that Trump is always talking about the attendance at his rallies as a measure of his popularity. But now he isn’t popular enough to draw supporters in the right-wing hothouse of Oklahoma.

Wallace also disputed Schlapp’s false assertion that protesters prevented anyone from attending. Schlapp actually wants people to believe that Trump’s supporters stayed home because they didn’t want to expose their families to protesters. But exposing them to a deadly virus apparently wasn’t a problem.

More importantly, Schlapp’s reply to Wallace revealed what she considered to be the primary objective for the rally and the reason it should be regarded as a success. “It’s an opportunity,” Schlapp admitted, “for us to gather data.” Indeed it is. Everyone who requests a free ticket to the event is required to provide their name and other personal identification. That’s all entered into a database that is later used to contact potential voters. Trump’s campaign chairman, Brad Parscale made the same admission prior to the Tulsa affair, tweeting that this would be the “Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time.”

There’s just one problem. There are reports that an army of Tik-Tok users requested tickets that they had no intention of using. It’s hard to estimate the precise impact of this Trump trolling project, but there were thousands of interactions with the prank on social media. So somewhere between the 6,200 people who showed up at the rally, and the million who allegedly requested tickets, there an untold number of fake respondents. That means that there is a significant amount of fake data currently residing in the Trump campaign database. And that’s on top of the fake data that was there before this event. [NOTE: News Corpse is in that database, despite never having provided any information] So when the campaign begins its voter outreach they will be wasting huge sums of money and effort on ghost voters.

In the end, the legacy of the Tulsa rally will be that it revealed the softening support for Trump’s reelection, while simultaneously flooding his campaign database with bogus info. But at least he had the opportunity to soak up some cheers from his hardcore fans, while reinforcing his reelection themes of being able to drink water with one hand, stopping coronavirus testing, and defending Confederate statues. WINNING?

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

Trump’s Lie-Riddled Juneteenth Tweetstorm Ignores Juneteenth, Threatens Protesters

Posted by on June 19, 2020 at 12:34 pm. NO Comments :

It’s Juneteenth, and in celebration of this profoundly significant day in American history Donald Trump took the time to unleash a stream of hostile, egocentric, lie-riddled tweets. So it’s pretty much like every other day in Trump World. He utterly ignored the day’s meaning and memory in favor of paying tribute to himself and maligning his perceived enemies.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

At the top of Trump’s list of priorities was his determination to slander any protesters who might show up at his cult rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You know, the one where he’s purposefully exposing his cult followers to the coronavirus in a state that just reported a record high infection rate. His tweet was another demonstration of his anti-American aspirations of tyranny.

Notice that Trump associates lawful, constitutionally protected protesters with “looters” and “lowlifes,” because that’s exactly what he thinks of people petitioning the government for justice and liberty. And his assurance that they will not be treated like they were previously (which was also pretty awful) is an undisguised threat of more violence. That’s all the more offensive considering that this threat was made on Juneteenth, in a city that was the site of a brutal massacre of African-Americans.

Not to worry. Trump hasn’t forgotten to tell his Twitterati that he will have “big crowds” and that his campaign is just beginning. Never mind that he actually began his reelection campaign the same day he was inaugurated three and half years ago. That campaign is floundering desperately today as every poll shows that Trump is trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. He is losing in nearly every demographic category, including among normally reliable supporters like suburban women and evangelicals. His support among non-white voters has never been worse. That’s partly due to his flagrant racism and tweets like this one:

So after the Supreme Court ruled against his abhorrent attempt to deport Dreamers, Trump has the audacity to say that he “wanted to take care of DACA recipients better than” Democrats. Seriously? If that were true he wouldn’t be saying even now that “We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly” to finish the job of deporting these innocent Americans who know no other home. This has been a signature issue with Trump, which explains his outrage that the Court he thought he had under his thumb displayed some measure of independence.

Furthermore, Trump’s toxic fury is not reserved for the Supreme Court (or protesters, or John Bolton, or Joe Biden, or the press, or anyone or anything else that doesn’t bow down to him). He is also mad at his State TV network (aka Fox News) for publishing a poll that shows him losing to Biden by a whopping twelve points. The poll also shows Trump’s approval in the red by negative thirteen points, while Biden is positive by nine points. Almost every question in the poll has bad results for Trump. Which explains this tweet:

For the record, Trump has made this complaint before, but it’s always a deeply hypocritical whining session aimed at nudging Fox News into being even more reverential. He only thinks that “Fox is terrible” when they publish something that fails to sufficiently worship him as the Messiah he considers himself to be. But he continues to grant interviews almost exclusively to Fox because he knows they will pitch him softballs and ignore his flaming gaffes.

SIDE NOTE: A few days ago CNN posted a poll that also showed Trump trailing Biden by twelve points. So Trump sent them a “cease and desist” letter and threatened to sue the network for…oh, who the hell knows what. It will be interesting to see if he sends Fox News a similar letter. But don’t hold your breath.

Finally, Trump posted a couple of tweets accusing Democrats of false advertising. As usual, he neglected to provide any examples, or to offer any arguments to refute whatever the heck it is he’s whining about. But he did make blatantly false assertions that “China is paying us $BILLIONS” (actually that’s ZERO), and that he “LOVE[s] Seniors & protect Preexisting C’s” (he is currently suing to terminate Obamacare, including preexisting c[onditions]). In other words, it’s business as usual in the Trump White House where lying, insults, and undeserved boasting has replaced being presidential and serving the American people.

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

Fox News Lawyers Tell Court: Our Audience Doesn’t Assume We Tell the Truth

Posted by on June 17, 2020 at 3:49 pm. 13 Comments :

Any fair-minded person who has watched Fox News for more than fifteen minutes knows that the network will twist, distort, mangle, and deliberately lie in the pursuit of their mission to disseminate right-wing propaganda. It is why they were created by conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch and Republican campaign hack Roger Ailes.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

The evidence of Fox’s purposefully dishonest “reporting” has been documented for years by a multitude of journalists and fact-checkers. But for the purpose of this article it isn’t necessary to provide any links to that documentation. That’s because Fox news has admitted it themselves. And this time it isn’t some Fox idiot making an inadvertently true gaffe. This time it was in a court of law.

See also: Fox News Court Ruling: No ‘Reasonable Viewer’ Takes Tucker Carlson Seriously

Tucker Carlson, one of Fox’s most prolific liars, is being sued for defamation. Karen McDougal is a former Playboy model who was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer on behalf of Donald Trump in order to buy her silence about their sexual affair. Subsequently, Carlson did frequent stories aiming to discredit McDougal and defend Trump. In the course of those stories Carlson accused McDougal of extorting Trump and made representations that he asserted were “undisputed facts.” The only problem is that they were easily disputed and not remotely factual.

So McDougal filed suit against Carlson and Fox News. And their in defense, Fox’s lawyers have taken a unique position. They are literally arguing that Carlson’s audience doesn’t expect him to tell the truth. According to The Hollywood Reporter…

“Fox News’ attorney Erin Murphy argued that Carlson repeatedly couched his statements as hypotheticals to promote conversation and that a reasonable viewer would know his show offers ‘provocative things that will help me think harder’ not straight news.

“‘What we’re talking about here, it’s not the front page of the New York Times,’ said Murphy. ‘It’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which is a commentary show.'”

Let’s set aside the ludicrous contention that Carlson has any reasonable viewers. Likewise the suggestion that any Fox News viewer has the capacity to think hard. What we are talking about are devotees of a media cult who blindly believe whatever they are told by Fox News and their current cult master, Donald Trump. They not only assume that what Fox says is true, they regard it as the gospel from a divine source.

In reality, Carlson did not couch his statements as hypotheticals. He explicitly described them as facts. What’s more, Fox News also floats a defense that asserts Carlson’s remarks were not made in malice, a standard that may be relevant in a defamation case. But how can an accusation of having committed a criminal act (extortion) against someone who Carlson is personally associated with (Trump) not be perceived as malicious?

It’s also interesting that Fox News is introducing the New York Times as a standard for truth telling. By making a distinction between Carlson’s fictionalizations and what should be considered honest journalism, Fox’s lawyers chose the New York Times as the model of a professional media enterprise. What will Trump have to tweet about that?

The bottom line is that now any time Tucker Carlson, or Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham or the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, attempt to pass off their lies and insults as “news,” it will be much easier to refute them with these admissions made by Fox’s legal team in a court of law. And the cherry on top of this sundae is that they will probably lose the defamation suit as well.

ADDENDUM: There has been some comparison of this defense to one used by MSNBC in defense of a defamation suit filed against Rachel Maddow by the Trump-fluffing conspiracy crackpots at OAN and elsewhere. However the only similarity is that both argued that their defendant offered opinions.

The difference is that Fox’s lawyers argued that Carlson’s audience did not expect his opinions to be factually based. But MSNBC’s lawyers argued that Maddow’s opinions were “precise factual recitations that indisputably and accurately state the facts” and that her commentary was “fully protected opinion because (a) it was based on disclosed facts.” Big difference.

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

Trump Refuses to Confirm that He Would Leave the White House Peacefully

Posted by on June 13, 2020 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday Joe Biden was interviewed by the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. In the closing minutes of the segment he asked Biden whether he had given any thought to speculation that Donald Trump might not leave the White House voluntarily if he lost the election. It’s a question that has been asked many times considering Trump’s already disgraceful record of disrespect for the Constitution.

Donald Trump, White House

Biden’s response to Noah’s question was direct and punctuated with relevant facts. He began by predicting that “This president is going to try to steal this election.” That hardly stretches the imagination since that’s what Trump did in 2016, and he is already laying the groundwork to do so in 2020. Trump has flatly stated his belief that all mail-in voting is fraudulent and shouldn’t be counted. And he has his Senate lackeys holding kangaroo hearings aimed at smearing Biden with manufactured allegations. Biden elaborated on his reply saying that he has confidence that the military will uphold the Constitution if necessary:

“I was so damn proud. You have four [chairman of the Joint] Chiefs of Staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are.’ I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The following day, Trump was interviewed (again) by Fox News (video below). Anchor Harris Faulkner conducted yet another televised tongue-bath enabling Trump to lie, deflect, and filibuster incoherently. Her last question for Trump addressed Biden’s remarks on the Daily Show, and produced this bit of surreal theater:

Faulkner: [Biden] said that he believes that you will steal the election, and if you don’t win he thinks that military will escort you from the White House.
Trump: Look, Joe’s not all there. Everybody knows it. And it’s sad when you look at it and you see it for yourself. He’s created his own sanctuary city in the basement of wherever he is, and he doesn’t come out. And certainly if I don’t win, I don’t win. I mean, you go on, do other things. I think it would be a very sad thing for our country.

It’s notable that Trump begins his response by launching into an attack on Biden’s mental health. It’s also pure projection, since Trump is the one that is showing actual signs of dementia. It’s also laughable that Trump attempts to characterize his utterly unqualified diagnosis as “sad” after having made innumerable jokes about it for months. And it wasn’t Biden who retreated to a real basement bunker when he felt threatened by peaceful demonstrators, and then lied about.

More importantly, Trump’s comments regarding leaving office have been twisted by the press into an assurance that he would quietly leave the White House if he loses to Biden in November. But that is not quite what he said. Trump merely stated that “if I don’t win, I don’t win.” So his departure from the White House would be reliant on his acceptance of having lost. But when has Trump ever admitted to having lost anything? He still thinks that he won the popular vote, had record breaking attendance at his inauguration, and was “totally exonerated” by the Mueller report.

Therefore, Trump could just say that the election was tainted by fraud and that he didn’t really lose. Consequently, in his diseased mind, he wouldn’t be required to leave. He would simply invent some “alternative facts,” challenge the results, and insist that he was victorious. That is what would initiate the process of involuntary removal to which Biden was referring. And it’s why the American people have to be vigilant and not allow Trump to usurp power in violation of the Constitution. Or to even let him get away with suggesting it, as Fox News did.

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

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.

Fox News Senior Analyst Inadvertently Admits Fox News is NOT Real News

Posted by on June 9, 2020 at 1:28 pm. 6 Comments :

The schizophrenic ravings of Donald Trump continue to be displayed unabashedly to an astonished world. Trump’s love/hate relationship with Fox News is one of the most bizarre symptoms of mental infirmity ever observed in an American “president.” As often as Trump embraces the daily idolatry of Fox’s sycophantic shills, he likewise condemns them when they fall short of the unflinching adoration that he expects and demands.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Among Fox’s most ardent Trump-fluffers is their senior political analyst, and former chief anchor, Brit Hume. On Tuesday morning Trump initiated a series of domino retweets aimed at rewarding Hume for his brazenly biased and oblivious lack of insight. Trump retweeted the rabidly right-wing Washington Examiner’s Mollie Hemingway, who retweeted Hume, saying that…

What Trump via Hemingway via Hume via Byron York (another Fox News contributor), were referring to was a statement by the chief executive of Axios, Jim VandeHei, who told the New York Times that he “he supported staff members’ right to march in public protests, adding that the publisher would cover bail for any employee who is arrested.” That’s not a particularly newsworthy comment. It simply affirms that staffers are permitted to exercise their First Amendment rights. It does not, as Trump et al imply, authorize them to introduce bias into their articles or to report on the events in which they participated. In fact, VandeHei reiterated that in his response to the Times.

What stands out in this criticism by Hume is his ability to dissociate from realty with regard to his own network. There is no mass distributed “news” enterprise that is as blatantly prejudiced as Fox News. Someone should introduce Hume to Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. The daily on-air performances of these slavish bootlickers is far worse than being a near anonymous individual among thousands at a public demonstration.

Hume should also be reminded that his Fox News colleagues, Hannity and Pirro, did not merely attend Trump campaign rallies, they were featured, on-stage speakers. So Hume is outraged if someone is compelled to express themselves on matters of great social significance, like police brutality and equal justice, but he is silent when his buddies are openly stumping for a political candidate.

This makes Hume’s cranky criticism regarding what constitutes a “real news organization” all the more poignant, especially as it applies to Fox News itself. Open your friggin’ eyes, Brit, and stop feeding Trump false narratives. Real news organizations have usually forbidden that. Which I guess allows Fox to do it since they have never been a real news organization. Thanks for pointing that out.

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