Robert Mueller

Total Transparency? What Trump Really Means When He Lies About Exposing the Phony Witch Hunt

Posted by on September 18, 2018 at 1:37 pm. 1 Comments :

There has never been a president who has expressed more animosity toward the intelligence community he is supposedly leading than Donald Trump, His open disdain for the Department of Justice, the FBI, and all of the other intelligence agencies throughout the federal government and the military, is well documented. He even prefers the word of Russia’s Vladimir Putin to his own intel resources.

Donald Trump

On Monday evening it was revealed that Trump ordered the declassification of a select group of documents involving the the investigation of his nefarious connections to Russia. It’s a conspicuously cherry-picked set of docs that were previously requested by the smarmy and ultra-biased Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes. Needless to say, these items were chosen to deceitfully advance Trump’s paranoid “witch hunt” narrative. However, they actually pose a significant risk to intelligence sources and methods, while also adding to Trump’s expanding portfolio of obstruction of justice charges.

So naturally Trump made a statement on Tuesday morning to try to shore up his crumbling arguments against the work of special counsel Robert Mueller (video below). Trump unironically told the press that “I want total transparency.” Sure he does. He continued saying that:

“This is a witch hunt. Republicans are seeing it. The Democrats know it’s a witch hunt, too, but they don’t want to admit it because that’s not good politics for them. But it’s a terrible witch hunt and it’s hurt our country. And the things that have been found over the past couple of weeks about text messages back and forth are a disgrace to our nation. And I want transparency, and so does everybody else. As you know, congressional committees came to me and they wanted this, and I did it based on their request. But I think it’s a good thing because we should open it up for people to see.”

It’s funny how Trump thinks he knows what Democrats want and are secretly thinking. Particularly since he doesn’t even know what is in the documents that he just declassified at the request of partisan hacks in Congress. But it’s his claim to wanting transparency that really tests the limits of believability. If Trump is really committed to transparency, here are a few other matters that he might want to consider being transparent about:

  • His tax returns. He promised to release them several times, but that’a promise he never intended to keep. Presumably due to the numerous illegal and embarrassing things we would learn if he did release them.
  • Transcript of meeting with Vladimir Putin. Trump met with Putin for a couple of hours in Helsinki, but has refused to disclose what was discussed, even to his own national security officials.
  • Obama’s birth certificate. Trump said that “investigators” he sent to Hawaii “cannot believe what they’re finding.” We know how they feel.
  • Brett Kavanaugh’s file. Tens of thousands of pages relating to Kavanaugh’s service in the George W. Bush White House are still being withheld by Trump.
  • Emails and text messages related to Russia. While Trump did selectively declassify some of these documents, they were limited to those produced by people he regards as “deep state” enemies (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr) He refuses to release the same sort of documents by Devin Nunes, Jeff Sessions, Sean Hannity, Wikileaks, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, etc.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Trump is surely withholding much more information regarding his finances, his campaign, his relationship with Putin and Russia, and his myriad relationships with the women he was cheating on his wife (wives) with. This is not the behavior of someone genuinely interested in transparency. It’s just another dishonest representation by a notorious liar who is now trying to employ the deceitful, punitive practices of the dictators he admires.

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

Trump is in a Panic Sweat as He Binge Watches Fox News for Leaked Conspiracy Theories

Posted by on September 17, 2018 at 12:38 pm. NO Comments :

Monday morning we have been treated to a new episode in the continuing series of Donald Trump’s epic saga “How Can I Make Myself Look Even More Guilty?” It’s the tale of a traitorous president who thinks that by repeatedly lashing out against the valiant guardians of the law he will escape accountability for his treasonous crimes. In this outing we see our lead character colluding with Fox News to weave a narrative that mocks reality.

Donald Trump Fox News

Over the weekend there was a dearth of Trump tweets for an extraordinarily long seventeen hour span. The only plausible reason for this was that Fox News was covering Hurricane Florence non-stop and couldn’t engage in their usual advisory role for the President. Since Trump doesn’t have the foggiest notion what he actually believes, he was left dumb by the absence of his brain trust. But now that the hurricane has been demoted to old news by Fox, the pundits are back fulfilling their duties to the White House.

In a tweet dripping with the panic sweat of a caged rat, Trump once again portrays the investigation of his activities as a “totally illegal Witch Hunt.” Proving that he doesn’t know the meaning of the words “witch hunt” or “illegal.” Furthermore, Trump acquired his latest paranoid delusion from his senior White House advisers at Fox News. Here is what he posted:

The Fox News story, as reported by Catherine Herridge (video below), did assert that former FBI attorney Lisa Page testified in a closed-door session of Congress that that there was no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. Herridge said that:

“A transcript reviewed by Fox News shows that during her recent closed-door interview on Capital Hill, Page testified that collusion was still unknown nine months into the FBI’s Russia case when the special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed. Quote: ‘I think this represents that even as far as May 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question.'”

Herridge later characterized Page’s testimony as an “admission that there was no evidence of Russian collusion.” But that is not what Page said. According to Herridge’s own reporting Page merely said that it was an open question. If anything she was saying that, while there was evidence, there wasn’t hard proof. What Page actually said was that “it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing.” That means there was a chance nothing happened, not that nothing happened.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion that “the case should never have been allowed to be brought,” this is exactly the sort of scenario that calls for a special counsel to conduct a more in depth and independent investigation. Still, the Justice Department, acting with an abundance of caution, didn’t request a special prosecutor until after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, signalling the possibility of obstruction of justice. And it cannot be reiterated enough that it was a Trump appointee (Rod Rosenstein) who named a life-long Republican (Robert Mueller) for the job.

So Trump is, once again, demonstrating that he spends an inordinate amount of time watching Fox News and regurgitating the nonsense he learns from it. That’s no longer in question. What isn’t being asked is how Fox News got Page’s testimony from a closed session of Congress? Who leaked it and why only parts that help Trump (if they are deliberately misinterpreted)? What about the rest of her testimony? Shouldn’t that be released now to insure that the leaked portions are viewed in their proper context?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the remainder of Page’s testimony to be made public. The Republicans in charge of that information don’t want a fair reading of what took place. That’s why they cherry-picked some ambiguous comments and delivered them exclusively to Fox News. And it was tailor made for their number one viewer to validate his already preposterous fantasy that there is a nefarious “deep state” cabal working to destroy him. What a coincidence.

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

A New Record? Liar-in-Chief, Donald Trump, Squeezes 10 Lies Into a Single Tweet

Posted by on September 16, 2018 at 11:49 am. 4 Comments :

For someone who has made lying the hallmark of his public persona, Donald Trump is committed to advancing that character flaw to ever new heights. It’s not enough that he has won at least two Lie of the Year awards from PolitiFact, or that he surpassed 5,000 lies since his inauguration. He continues to climb to new summits in the pursuit of prevarication.

Donald Trump Robert Mueller

On Sunday morning, Trump apparently missed church so that he could repeatedly violate the Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not lie. And he managed to commit this sin ten times in the space of a single tweet. It’s a feat that could compete with the holy spectacles of parting the Red Sea or getting elected president after bragging about grabbing women by their private parts. Here is the miraculous tweet:

Lie #1: It’s not illegal.
Let’s break this down in order. The first lie arrives quickly in the second word, “illegal.” The Mueller investigation is legal by any measure of consideration. It was authorized by Trump’s own attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and is headed by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Sessions’ deputy, Rod Rosenstein. The entire probe is subject to the review of the Deputy Attorney General, who has approved everything that Mueller is doing.

Lie #2: It’s not a “Witch Hunt”:
This is one of Trump’s favorite ways to malign the investigation. But the absurdity of his attack is evidenced by the fact that so many “witches” have already been found. Mueller has produced dozens of indictments and secured seven guilty pleas/verdicts. And many of these felons are now cooperating with Mueller on broader matters that might include Trump’s collusion with Russia.

Lie #3: Mueller is not searching for a crime:
The special counsel is limited to only those areas of inquiry that are authorized by his bosses at the Justice Department. Everything he has been investigating has been explicitly approved and he has no authority to go beyond those limits without getting additional approvals. His only mandate is to investigate alleged crimes and document what he finds. If there were no crimes committed, he won’t find any.

Lie #4: There was collusion:
No matter how many times Trump whines that there was no collusion, he cannot erase reality. His son and his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, admit that they met with Russian operatives to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. What’s more, numerous people in Trump’s circle (Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Jeff Sessions, Carter Page, etc.) have met with Russians and lied about about until the evidence made that impossible.

Lie #5: The collusion was not by Hillary Clinton:
There is absolutely zero evidence that Clinton or her campaign had any dealings with Russia. What Trump likes to assert is that the infamous Steele dossier is somehow proof of Clinton’s collusion. But that research was done independently by Christopher Steele, who got information from Russian dissidents, not Kremlin operatives. And Clinton never directed any of that investigation.

Lie #6: There aren’t 17 angry Democrats:
As a technical matter, there are 65 million angry Democrats. But more to the point, Trump is accusing Mueller’s team of being partisan and biased against him. But these are career Justice Department professionals who have shown no bias whatsoever in the conduct of their duties. And the head of the team, Mueller, is a life-long Republican who could overrule any finding that he determined was improperly influenced by personal opinions. Mueller proved his impartiality by removing former FBI official, Peter Strzok, after only two weeks due to the appearance of bias (although none was actually found).

Lie #7: They are not Looking for “anything”:
This is similar to lie #3 where Trump asserts that the investigation is just fishing for anything to hang on him. But once again, Mueller’s authority is strictly overseen by his superiors at the Justice Department. He cannot simply wander off on his own to hook the President.

Lie #8: It’s not unfair:
This is just Trump whining (and he did say that he is the “most fabulous whiner”. This is only unfair to the same degree that any criminal regards his prosecution as unfair. They would obviously prefer not to be under investigation at all. But Mueller’s probe is following all the rules set forth by applicable laws, and if Trump doesn’t like it he’s just behaving the way any other guilty person would. If he were innocent he would expect that the result would exonerate him and welcome the investigation as as an opportunity to clear his name.

Lie #9: It’s not bad for the country:
Let’s face it. This is only bad for Trump. What’s bad for the country is that Trump engaged in such shady and illegal activities that we all have to go through this nightmare. It’s no one’s fault but Trump’s. And he doesn’t get to decide whether his being brought to justice is bad for the country. His conviction will result in his having to pay the price for his crimes. And it will hopefully serve as a deterrent to other aspiring criminals and traitors.

Lie #10: It most definitely is allowed:
Everything that Mueller is doing is strictly according to the law (see Lie #1). Trump didn’t cite any alleged legal violation because there isn’t one. Not that he would be able to understand it if there were. His lawyers haven’t even cited any legal argument for ending the investigation, nor have they filed any motions to do so. The only threat to the investigation is Trump’s frequent warnings that he might interfere with the proceedings because he doesn’t like that they exist. That would just be another incident of obstruction of justice.

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

So Trump’s tweet managed to get everything wrong. It was a panicky outburst that exhibits just how frightened and desperate he is. It’s what lawyers call “consciousness of guilt.” And Trump has demonstrated that so many times it’s impossible to count. One thing for sure is that Mueller is taking all of this into consideration and it will be a part of his final report. Trump is so stupid he has no idea how badly he’s hurting his own case. But that’s typical of malignant narcissists who are always convinced of their own superior intelligence and virtue. And it’s also typical of their eventual downfall.

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.

Despite His Hysterical Smear Campaign, Americans Still Trust the Media More than Trump

Posted by on September 12, 2018 at 5:53 pm. NO Comments :

For more than two years now, Donald Trump has been attacking what he calls the “fake news” at every opportunity. He does it in interviews, on Twitter, and at his tedious cult rallies where he seems to be on auto-pilot, regurgitating the same old cliches that his disciples devour like nicotine candy. Even after being told that his reckless labeling of the press as “the enemy of the people” was a rhetorical remnant of Joseph Stalin, Trump continues to use the line without the least bit of shame or decency.

Donald Trump

However, after his years-long campaign of denigrating the press, as well as the Constitution’s First Amendment, Trump has gotten nowhere in terms of swaying the favor of the public. A new poll by Quinnipiac asked “Who do you trust more to tell you the truth about important issues: President Trump or the news media?” A majority of fifty-four percent chose the media. Only thirty percent chose Trump. That’s a twenty-four point margin of difference. Broken down demographically, the only group that trusts Trump more, outside of the margin of error, is Republicans. But Independents, Men, Women, and every age and ethnic group trusts the media more.

The poll also asked “Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?” And by an even bigger majority the media came out far ahead, with sixty-nine percent saying that the media is an important part of democracy. And once again, every demographic breakdown agreed, except for Republicans. Forty-seven percent of the Grand Ole Party actually agrees with Trump (and Stalin) that the media is the enemy of the people. This is an affirmation of the Trump rally-goers who were immortalized wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”

The poll had plenty of other bad news for Trump and the GOP. On the question of which party voters will back in the November election, a majority of fifty-two percent said Democrats, beating Republicans by fourteen points. Seventy-two percent of voters disapprove of the job the Republican controlled Congress is doing. Perhaps that’s because fifty-eight percent of them think Congress isn’t doing enough to be a check on the President. And both of those last two responses were shared by majorities of every demographic group. These survey results are in alignment with most of the recent polling on these subjects. See also:

It seems that no matter hard Trump pushes on his media bashing, the American people see through his tirades and continue to reject him. That’s reflected in the three latest opinion polls on Trump’s favorability (CNN, Quinnipiac, and NPR/Marist) that all put him in the thirties, and at new lows. Add to that the polls showing that the public trusts special counsel Robert Mueller over Trump, and the future looks bleak for Donnie and his dwindling party. Mueller, of course, has also been the victim of Trump’s persistent, but apparently impotent, outrage.

If these results hold for the next eight weeks, the much anticipated “blue wave” is going to swell into a tsunami. According to the survey statistics experts at FiveThiryEight, Democrats need an eleven point advantage to secure a takeover of both the House and the Senate. That advantage is currently at fourteen points. But these are merely estimates based on numerical analyses. The final election results rely on people actually going to polls and casting votes. So this is no time to become complacent of overly confident. It’s time to work hard every day between now and election day. That’s the only way to achieve the victory that America needs so badly.

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

Category 5 Tweet Storm Hits as Trump’s Panic and Fear Threaten to Blow Him Away

Posted by on September 10, 2018 at 11:09 am. 2 Comments :

The all too frequent occurrence of Donald Trump frantically pounding out Twitter posts to defend himself against his outrage of the day is becoming absurd. The more he feels pressured by events, and the exposure of new and damaging facts, the more wild-eyed his tirades become as his world collapses around him.

Donald Trump

On Monday morning Trump banged out fifteen tweets. The quantity alone is evidence of how obsessed and afraid he is. But the content makes that even more clear. They are mostly filled with lies and desperate distractions aimed at relieving the crushing duress he must be under. He began with a lie so easily disprovable that Fox News did it:

From there Trump moves on to the new, bestselling book by veteran investigative journalist, Bob Woodward: Fear: Trump in the White House. The book is a well documented tour of Trump’s dysfunctional White House. It affirms all of the similar reports that have come out over the past year and a half that cast the administration as a pit of animosity, jealousy, and above all, fear and disrespect for the Commander-in-Chief. Trump leads off with a tweet that contradicts itself. He asserts falsely that Woodward’s book relies on “disproven unnamed and anonymous sources.” And in the very next sentence notes that these real people “have already come forward” to deny the quotes attributed to them.

So Trump alleges that the book is a “joke” and a “scam” and that he’s going to “write the real book.” Don’t hold your breath. This is coming from someone who has never actually written a book himself, and who is best known for his pathological lying. He also alleges that the quotes attributed to him are fake because he doesn’t “talk that way.” But everyone has heard how he talks going all the way back to his “pussy grabbing” comments during the election.

Trump was especially dishonest in the tweet wherein he presented the question that NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Woodward as if it were a statement of fact that corroborated him. It wasn’t. She was just asking a question the way that real journalists do. In fact, she was rather aggressively taking an adversarial position that favored Trump. But the President’s tweet proves that he either couldn’t understand that, or just doesn’t care about the truth. And he didn’t bother to post Woodward’s answer to the question, which was “These are political statements to protect their jobs – totally understandable.” That’s because real journalists know that sources often tell the truth on background, but lie in public.

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

While Trump whines about what he regards as a “Deep State” coup that is out to get him (even though many of his critics are his own appointees in the administration), the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller rolls on, getting new information and cooperative witnesses every day. It’s only a matter of time before all the truth comes out and Trump will have nothing but his glassy-eyed disciples to prop up his failed presidency. And that time cannot come soon enough.

Trump’s Incoherent Whining on Fox News About Anonymous Op-Ed in NY Times Actually Affirms It

Posted by on September 7, 2018 at 11:41 am. 3 Comments :

We’re two days into the news cycle on the anonymous op-ed that appeared in the New York Times announcing a “resistance” inside the White House to Trump’s dangerous unfitness for office. If anything, the temperature has increased with more insiders coming forward to warn about Trump’s unbalanced mental state.

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, Trump is proving the allegations against him by bellowing at his staff and behaving even more paranoid than usual. He can’t trust anyone around him but his children, and even that might be assuming too much. The effect this has had on him is obvious and profound. He’s tweeted about this, and the related book by Bob Woodward, eighteen times already. He’s clearly obsessed with these credible depictions of his mental infirmities by people who have access to him and reason to know.

So naturally Trump rushed frantically to Fox News in order to get a good tongue bathing in an environment where he would be safe from well deserved criticism. He was interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth before the crowd at his Montana cult rally. And the part of exchange that covered the New York Times op-ed pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Trump’s rupturing psychoses. It’s a wholly incoherent rant that he seemed to disgorge in a single, panicky breath. (video below):

Hegseth: Folks here might have seen an anonymous column written in the New York Times. [Audience boos] And I think this audience would say that an attack on you was an attack on the people that voted for you. Are you any closer to knowing who did it and what should be done if you find out who did it?
Trump: Well number one, the Times should have never have done that because really what they’ve done is, virtually, you know it’s treason. You can call it a lot of things, but to think that you have somebody in all of the cabinets – some many people as you know they came forward, they’re writing editorials. They’re all saying you know it’s got to be at a fairly low level. Because so many people today, I was just coming out, and I see all the people that are saying such great things. We have a lot of love in the administration, and the White House is truly as you would say, a well-oiled machine – it is working so well. You know we have – I heard you say yesterday, we have thousands of people that in theory could qualify. So they take one person out of thousands, but what’s unfair – I don’t mind when they write a book and they make lies cause it gets discredited. We just discredited the last one, we discredit all of them because it’s lies. But I’ll tell you, when somebody writes and you can’t discredit because you have no idea who they are – usually you’ll find out, it’s a background that was bad, it may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state person that’s been there a long time. You don’t know where – it’s a very unfair thing. But its very unfair to our country and to the millions of people that voted, really for us. They voted for us.

First of all, go back and read the question. Trump came nowhere near anything that might be considered an answer. What you have there is an insane person insisting that he’s completely sane while proving that he isn’t. Trump began by charging the Times with treason. Obviously, he has no idea what the word means or how to apply it. And this wasn’t a hypothetical comment. On Air Force One this morning Trump said he was asking his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to investigate the Times as a “national security” matter. However, he couldn’t explain how a critical op-ed endangered national security. He also said he’s looking into taking some unspecified action against the paper and the author. That would be a flagrant breach of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Trump went on to extol the “love in the administration,” despite the unprecedented turmoil, resignations and terminations during his first two years in office. His senior staff are reported to have called him “an idiot,” “a moron,” “a liar,” “a baby,” and more demeaning, but accurate epithets. If this is his idea of a “well-oiled machine,” what, in heaven’s name, would a squeaky one look like?

Trump also told Hegseth that “I don’t mind when they write a book” because “we discredit all of them.” Notice that he doesn’t say that he refutes them or offers substantive rebuttals. He astonishingly admits that he goes straight for character assassination. He affirms that by complaining that he can’t discredit the author if he doesn’t know who it is. Of course, he could dispute what was said, but the only thing he’s interested in is attacking the person, not the allegations. That’s because he can’t attack allegations that are demonstrably true.

The more Trump defends himself from charges of mental infirmity, the more he is demonstrating the validity of the charges. And he’s behaving like the cornered animal that lashes out wildly at any perceived threat. That’s the same behavior he’s exhibited with regard to the investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Trump is clearly afraid and in panic mode. And that is turning his responses to these situations into more evidence against him. So keep ranting, Donnie. You’re signing your own impeachment order.

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

A Confused Donald Trump Posts Witch Hunt Tweet that Actually Debunks His Witch Hunt Claim

Posted by on September 3, 2018 at 8:00 pm. 6 Comments :

Nobody is going to fall out of their chair by encountering a mindnumbingly boneheaded comment from the Dotard-in-Chief, Donald Trump. To the contrary, any sign of intelligence would be more likely to require a whiff of smelling salts. But every now and then our nation’s idiocy dispenser squeezes out something that really underscores our lowest expectations of him.

Donald Trump

Monday was such a day as Trump manned his Twitter machine to rant about some perceived slight and/or yowl at his many looming enemies. When he isn’t lashing out manically at critics, he’s protesting too much about his fake innocence, or insisting that he’s a beloved figure about whom all the polls are lying. All of these harangues are disgorged on his Twitter feed, which is all too often an incoherent mess. For instance, just last week he boasted that his approval rating had climbed to fifty-two percent. But that was actually his disapproval rating. He also posted what he said was a “big story” that turned out to be a big lie from a wingnut website. And tucked into his latest tweetstorm was a little gem that truly captured the full measure of his dementia.

Let’s set aside Trump’s tiresome and false assertion that the New York Times is failing. Thanks in part to Trump’s perpetual circus of psychoses, the Times is enjoying a financial renaissance. The meat of this tweet lies in the preposterous illogic of his quotation. What he is apparently too obtuse to observe is that the existence of an FBI probe so long before he was a candidate, and two years before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, is proof that there was no witch hunt.

What’s more, Trump is quoting Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times from an appearance on CNN, a network that he swears he never watches. And Rosenberg himself noticed Trump’s tweet and promptly corrected it:

So in this one tweet, Trump managed to debunk his own witch hunt conspiracy theory and to exonerate all of the “Deep State” conspirators that are such a core part of his warped imagination. And, of course, by extension, he validates the credibility of the FBI’s work which only snagged him as a consequence of the evidence turned up in their prior, unrelated investigation. It takes a special kind of stupid to do all of that in one little tweet.

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

Whiner-in-Chief Donald Trump is Freaking Out About Polls Because He’s at Another New Low

Posted by on August 31, 2018 at 9:18 pm. NO Comments :

It really is pathetic when the President of the United States is so obsessed with his polling that he can’t keep from whining – and lying – about it to his Dimwitted Deplorables on Twitter. But then again Donald Trump is, in his own words, “the most fabulous whiner.” It’s just too bad that he has to prove it at every opportunity, usually over something that is petty and otherwise forgettable.

Donald Trump

On Friday an ABC/Washington Post poll was released with some data that was bound to trigger Trump’s acute insecurity and malignant narcissism. The poll showed that Trump had notched a new high in his disapproval rating of sixty percent. Considering everything that has been going wrong, he’s lucky it isn’t worse. But not known for being rational enough to appreciate that reality, Trump went off on a Twitter tirade against the poll:

First of all, two weeks before the 2016 election, the ABC Washington Post poll had the race at forty-seven percent to forty-three percent in favor of Hillary Clinton. That’s right on the mark since the final election results gave Clinton a three million vote lead. This polling measures voter sentiment, not the electoral college. So Trump’s complaint that the poll was “by far the least accurate one” is just another of his innumerable untruths. Will he ever learn? Don’t bother to answer that. Just take a look at his next tweet:

Rasmussen does currently have Trump at forty-eight percent, but Rasmussen is a notoriously biased outfit that Republicans lean on for positive news when all the reputable pollsters are providing more credible numbers. And Obama’s ratings on August 31, 2010, were also forty-eight percent, so Trump was not higher, as he claimed. As for Trump’s assessment of these two pollsters, the experts at FiveThirtyEight have ABC/Washington Post at A+, while Rasmussen is much farther down the scale at a mere C+.

It’s no wonder that Trump is concerned about his polling. As his presidency continues to be mired in scandal, the results on several other topics are just as bad as his approval. For instance, sixty-three percent of voters support special counsel Robert Mueller. Sixty-four percent oppose Trump firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which he is threatening to do after the midterms. Fifty-three percent say that Trump is already guilty of obstruction of justice for interfering with the Mueller probe. And a plurality of nearly half (forty-nine percent) of Americans say that Congress should begin impeachment hearings. That includes thirty percent of conservatives.

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

Trump is a walking disaster and he knows it. So he’s trying to gaslight the public with his ludicrous Twitter tantrums. And all of this bad news is coming as Trump is preparing to hit the road to campaign for Republican candidates. You have to wonder how many of them still want him to show up. He just announced that he’ll be holding a “major rally” in Texas for Sen. Ted Cruz. That freak show ought to be a real humdinger considering all the awful things they’ve said about each other. Be sure to have plenty of popcorn on hand.

Frantic Gaslighting: Trump Accuses Lester Holt of ‘Fudging’ Interview Where He Incriminated Himself

Posted by on August 30, 2018 at 12:42 pm. 3 Comments :

Thursday morning most of the media was focused on the first public memorial service for the late Sen. John McCain. So as the nation was united in paying tribute to McCain, Donald Trump naturally took to his Twitter throne and fired off a series of frighteningly incoherent outbursts at what he regards as “the enemy of the people.” It’s his way of continuing to show contempt for a man that had the audacity to challenge him.

Donald Trump

The substance of Thursdays’ tweetstorm was typically centered on his aversion to, and fear of, the free press and the Constitution. He began by taking a swipe at a perennial foe, CNN. Trump lashed out at the network’s boss, Jeff Zucker, and called on AT&T to fire him. Think about that. The president of the United States is issuing orders to a private company in order to control their executive management. That’s pretty much the definition of fascism.

But Trump didn’t stop there. The next tweet in the tantrum was aimed at NBC and their news anchor, Lester Holt. What Trump said was obviously pulled from the recesses of a deeply disturbed mind. It was based on nothing resembling reality, but it did serve to advance his mission to Make America Stupid Again:

This is a perfect example of Trump disseminating utter bullcrap to his pathetic and glassy-eyed cult followers who will believe anything Dear Leader disgorges. The interview with Holt was not “fudged” in any way, and Trump offers no evidence to support his charge. The entire interview is posted online for all to see. Trump’s sole purpose in hurling this lie is to mitigate the fact that he incriminated himself in that interview. Trump told Holt that he fired FBI director James Comey because of the Russia investigation.

So Trump literally confessed to obstruction of justice on national television. Now he’s trying to back out of it by saying the interview was doctored. But everyone knows that he’s making that up out of pure desperation. And by doing so he only makes things worse by being so transparently dishonest and by bringing attention back to his guilt. Even Fox News was taken aback by Trump’s glaringly false allegation.

Trump continued his Twitter tirade with a more generalized attack on what he called the “totally dishonest” media. He said that “Truth doesn’t matter to them,” and that “they only have their hatred & agenda.” This is coming from the man who has been documented as telling more than 4,200 lies since his poorly attended inauguration (which he lied about). And he’s also the man whose whole presidency has been marinated in hate and bigotry. He can’t go a single day without tossing around vicious and infantile insults at anyone he perceives as insufficiently worshipful.

Finally (for the time being), Trump circled back around to CNN to reiterate some completely fake allegations about a recent story concerning his troubles with his personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, had told CNN that Cohen might tell special counsel Robert Mueller that the President knew about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with the Russians before it occurred. Davis later backpedaled and said that he could not actually confirm that. Note that he did not say it wasn’t true, only that he was no longer comfortable with the comment. That’s probably because it could put his client in legal jeopardy because it contradicted what Cohen told Congress.

Subsequently, Trump, Fox News, and other rightist media began accusing CNN of flubbing the story. But they actually got it right. It was Davis who admits that he made a statement that he would no longer stand by. That isn’t CNN’s fault, especially since they also had other sources corroborating their reporting. They continue stand by the story.

The fact that Trump would take this time, as the nation is still mourning the passing of John McCain, to trot out his self-serving delusions, is indicative of his utter lack of character and class. He simply isn’t able to allow anyone else to have the spotlight for a day or two. But the ludicrous charge that Lester Holt tampered with the video of his interview shows that Trump will propound any lie, no matter how outrageous and unfounded, to deceive the nation. And that sort of dishonesty has been the hallmark of his tenure so far 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.