Hillary Clinton

Trump Flunky Kellyanne Conway Spends 20 Minutes Dodging Questions and Bashing Hillary Clinton

Posted by on November 5, 2017 at 3:21 pm. 2 Comments :

On Sunday morning’s broadcast of CNN’s Reliable Sources, host Brian Stelter welcomed Donald Trump’s most fact-averse spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway. She may be best remembered for coining the colorfully deceptive phrase “alternative facts.” Otherwise known as lies.

CNN Brian Stelter Kellyanne Conway

Conway’s interview (video below) was twenty minutes of unparalleled evasion and blatant propaganda. Sporting a plastered on simulated smile, she dutifully misrepresented the truth. And all the while injecting rancorous venom into the usual victims of her wrath. The segment began with a timely question concerning Donald Trump’s abysmal public image:

Stelter: Given President Trump’s historically low approval ratings, what specific steps are you and your colleagues taking to try to repair Trump’s credibility?
Conway: Well Brian, I think that’s the usual hyperbolic opening to one of the CNN segments. But let me tell you about the numbers that matter to Americans.

Whereupon Conway rattled off statistics about jobs and the stock market that Trump had absolutely nothing to do with. Congress has not passed, nor has he signed, a single bill related to the economy. The country is still operating on President Obama’s last budget. Stelter noted that morsel of reality saying that “The American people are not giving him credit for the economic boom according to all of the polls.” Conway’s glassy-eyed response: “Yes they are.” Is she on drugs? After that delusional comment she drifted off into some robotic criticisms of CNN. The fact that she cannot acknowledge that Trump has set new records for disapproval is typical of the tunnel-blindness of the administration.

This exchange continued with more questions from Stelter that Conway refused to answer. Each reply clumsily stumbled off to unrelated issues, most of which involved the GOP’s favorite fetish, Hillary Clinton. Conway employed the Clinton dodge repeatedly citing last year’s election and even reviving Benghazi. On the infamous Trump Dossier, Stelter interrupted Conway to admonish her for dismissing it as “completely unverified.” “Parts of it have been verified,” he corrected her. “That is misinformation you’re spreading on my program and I don’t appreciate it.”

Stelter also called Conway out on her obvious evasionary tactics saying that “I think viewers see what you’re doing – pivoting. When I say Russia, you say Clinton. It’s part of the strategy” She disputed that, then went straight back to bashing Clinton. And when she wasn’t bashing Clinton, she was bashing CNN. She made CNN the subject of debate throughout the interview, but Stelter wasn’t laying down for it. When she went directly at the unsupported charge of political bias, Stelter made the perfect response:

Conway: Brian, why not just say “Look. It’s in our commercial interest at CNN to be anti-Trump. We’re profitable if we’re against the President. Most of our viewers are against the President.” Just own it. Don’t you think that would be more credible for CNN?
Stelter: I understand that you don’t want an adversarial media. You just want everybody to be like Fox News.
Conway: No, that’s not true. Stop being so jealous of Fox News, Brian, and their ratings.

Now ratings are suddenly important again? When it had to do with Trump’s pitiful numbers, they were totally irrelevant. More to the point, Conway didn’t dispute that Fox News is a non-adversarial, pro-Trump, state-run network. She simply bragged about their status in the television market (which is losing ground to MSNBC). This interview was only useful as a lesson in how to badly evade a reporter’s questions. Conway’s failing grades on style were matched by her lack of substance. It’s no wonder that she rarely appears anywhere but on Fox News. And CNN would be justified in barring her from future appearances on the grounds that she only disseminates useless, self-serving bullshit.

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

Trump’s Perverse Fetish with Prosecuting Clinton Reeks of Both Ignorance and Fascism

Posted by on November 3, 2017 at 1:52 pm. 3 Comments :

Much of the news cycle on Friday morning was consumed with allegations by Donna Brazile against the Democratic National Committee. Her charges that the DNC “rigged” the primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton were lustily embraced by Republicans, Fox News, and Donald Trump. The debate over her account of the events will likely go on for days. And rather than contribute to the noise, I’ll just leave this brilliant Twitter thread by Joy Reid to explain things.

Hillary Clinton

More importantly, Trump’s reaction to the news provided more evidence of his profound stupidity and his obsession to be America’s dictator. He fired off a flurry of tweets calling for the prosecution of Clinton. This is the deranged behavior of a two-bit tyrant seeking unchallenged power:


That’s a Trump lie. Actually, Brazile explicitly said that the funding arrangement “was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical.” So in fact, it’s two Trump lies. There is nothing illegal about what the DNC did, and Brazile never said there was.


Here Trump is trying to re-purpose the word “collusion” to take the heat off of himself for having colluded with Russia to illegally steal the election. No campaign finance or money laundering laws were broken by anyone but Trump. However, with this tweet he begins his obvious signals to his Justice Department minions.


Trump and his cronies at Fox News are the only ones asking about this. And here he continues waving at the DoJ.


Having provided zero evidence of any crime, Trump brings up a bunch of other crazy and debunked conspiracy theories in hopes that something will stick to the wall (that Mexico isn’t paying for).


Well, Trump is sure angry. But polls show that most other Americans support Robert Mueller’s investigation and believe that Trump committed crimes. And he’s still putting pressure on his Attorney General to prosecute something that isn’t illegal.


Now Trump is just repeating himself like the old dotard that he is. And just because he’s a infantile jackass, he throws in an insult to Bernie Sanders.


Because racist insults play so well with his idiot base, he lobs one Sen. Elizabeth Warren. And he makes another plea to persecute his former political opponent, like all good tyrants do.


In case you’re wondering what Bernie Sanders thinks of all of this, he responded with this tweet:

Trump’s comments are those of a deeply disturbed individual. Trump appears to be suffering from acute dementia mixed with a dangerous portion of Malignant Narcissism. His multiple calls for prosecution of a political opponent reek of authoritarian power madness. And his total lack of knowledge of the law only exacerbates the potential harm he is capable of.

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

What’s more, he has no sense of the ethical restraints a president has with respect to the independence of the Justice Department and law enforcement. He only thinks of himself and what he wants. He said precisely that to Laura Ingraham on Fox News Thursday night. She asked about the numerous vacancies in his administration (which portend great risks to the nation). His typically egocentric response was that it doesn’t matter because “I’m the only one that matters.” Good f**king grief.

A Million Plus Sign Petition to Impeach Donald Trump as His Polling Hits Record Lows

Posted by on October 31, 2017 at 3:03 pm. NO Comments :

The presidency of Donald Trump has been a disaster from day one. He has never had a majority of the people supporting him since his inauguration. Even before that, he lost the popular vote by about three million voters who preferred Hillary Clinton. His policies on healthcare, immigration, taxes, trade, climate change, and more, are all underwater. But it’s one thing to be unpopular and another to have most people favor impeachment.

Donald Trump

With the indictments of his campaign associates, Trump’s approval rating is bound to fall even more. The most recent surveys do not reflect this breaking news. It’s fair to say that choosing staffers who get arrested for “conspiring against the United States,” and lying to the FBI, will not boost one’s standing in the polls. Currently he has marked new lows on polls by Fox News (38%), NBC/Wall Street Journal (38%), and Gallup (33%).

That assumption was borne out by the response to a recent campaign by billionaire financier and activist, Tom Steyer. He recently launched a website and petition drive based on the “Need to Impeach” Trump for violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, obstruction of justice, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. And in less than ten days the petition has been signed by more than a million concerned and patriotic Americans. That’s an astonishing response to the failure of a president who hasn’t completed his first year in office.

This isn’t the first indication of Trump’s weakness as president. On the White House’s own petition site there is one that seeks Trump’s resignation. It has over 137,000 signatures to date. The website promises that all petitions getting over 100,000 signatures would receive a response from the President. It’s been more than seven months since this petition hit that goal, but there’s still no presidential reply. On a separate matter, a petition calling for Trump to release his tax returns has more signatures than any other petition on the site (1,104,746). Trump has ignored this one as well.

In addition to Steyer’s impeachment petition, a poll was just released by Public Policy Polling that asked whether Trump should be impeached. Forty-nine percent said that they support his impeachment. According to the pollsters:

“PPP’s newest national poll finds a record level of support for impeaching Donald Trump. 49% of voters support impeaching him, to 41% who are opposed to doing so. This marks the 6th month in a row we’ve found a plurality of voters in favor of impeaching Trump, and it’s the closest we’ve found to a majority.”

Perhaps even more painful for Trump are the results of questions addressing who people trusted more: Trump or the media. For all six news operations included in the poll, Trump lost by wide margins.

Media Trump
ABC 54 36
CBS 54 36
NBC 54 36
NY Times 54 37
CNN 52 37
Wash Post 52 37

Trump’s tedious and dangerous attacks on the press and the First Amendment have had little effect on the public. Although he has managed to divide his Deplorables from the rest of the American family. And now, as special counsel Robert Mueller continues his investigation, Trump and his cult followers are likely to drift further into the lunatic abyss. There are reports that he is becoming unglued as legal walls close in around him. All of that could make him even more dangerous than ever. And that, of course, makes impeachment all the more justified and necessary before it’s too late.

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

Donald Trump is in Full-Panic Mode Ahead of Mueller’s Monday Indictment Announcement

Posted by on October 29, 2017 at 3:09 pm. 4 Comments :

Like a lousy poker player, Donald Trump has a “tell” that broadcasts his innermost thoughts to anyone paying attention. Whenever he’s worried, or someone has dared to criticize him, he lashes out on Twitter. His thoroughly predictable routine is to focus intently on whatever is sticking in his craw at the moment. Everything else will be ignored, even pertinent matters like hurricane relief or the deaths of American soldiers.

Donald Trump Robert Mueller

And so it was Sunday morning with an especially protracted tweetstorm by the President. This Twitter tantrum revolved around Friday’s announcement that a Grand Jury convened by special counsel Robert Mueller is about to issue indictments. While there was no indication of the targets or the charges, it’s clear that it has spooked Trump. Consequently, he unleashed a stream of bile that exposes his own worst fears. And even though he posted them as a fractured run-on sentence, let’s address each one in sequence:


In fact, only a few ultra-rightist Republicans have bothered to comment on this. Most likely they recognize the folly of helping the Trump/Russia story to persist in the news cycle. What Trump probably meant was that he hasn’t seen such Fox News “ANGER & UNITY.” He could point to several Fox rants, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. But the looniest is surely that of Jeanine Pirro, who calls for Mueller to be fired and Hillary Clinton to be jailed.


Here Trump rattles off a few golden oldies from his campaign. Never mind that they have all been debunked by legitimate journalists. For instance, PolitiFact called the Uranium One allegations “Mostly False” more than a year ago.


Continuing to envelope himself in the bubble-wrap of Trumpian denial, the President dismisses the avalanche of facts associating him and his comrades with Russia. If it’s a “Witch Hunt,” it has actually found some witches. That’s what Mueller will be disclosing Monday.


Once again, Trump has asserted a Republican response that he can’t support with proof. It’s a Fox News response. And he is virtually admitting that there is no GOP pushback by posting, in all caps, “DO SOMETHING!” Why would that be necessary if they were already fighting back?


And there’s the capper. Trump thinks that Mueller’s indictments were timed to sink tax reform. That’s a spectacularly ludicrous conspiracy theory. To be true you would have to believe a flurry of unlikely events. First, that the special counsel appointed by a republican Justice Department is among the conspirators. Secondly, that the investigation was a legal time bomb intended to blow up legislation rather than bring criminals to justice. Thirdly, that it was triggered last May and set to go off whenever tax reform was taken up in Congress. Of course, no one had any idea then (or now) when that would be. Finally, why would this plot be aimed at tax reform rather than healthcare, immigration, climate change, or any other issue Trump has demagogued?

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

The quantity and quackery of these tweets is the best evidence that Trump is frightened enough to require new pants. The conspiracy component sounds like something he picked up from his pal, Alex Jones. And he even managed to get in a swipe at his favorite foe, Hillary Clinton. The whole package appears to have been crafted by Fox News, where precisely the same narrative is unfolding. It’s a lame strategy that is destined to fail. As soon as Mueller’s indictments are announced, these whining outbursts will seem comically irrelevant. But it’s all they have, and they’ll play it for all it’s worth, for as long as they can.

Fox News is a Halloween Frightfest Featuring “President” Hillary Clinton

Posted by on October 28, 2017 at 3:27 pm. 3 Comments :

On the this weekend America will be wallowing in ghosts and goblins as they commemorate the annual ritual of Halloween. The horrors of the underworld will be unleashed upon all who dare to leave the safety of their abodes. This season of fear mongering is one that fits all too well with the mission of Fox News. Most of their programming is designed to terrify their already skittish and dimwitted viewers. For some reason having Donald Trump as president isn’t already scaring the pants off of them.

Fox News

So Fox News is reaching into their bag of tricks (no treats) to compose the scariest of all horror stories. And the demon most frightening to Fox’s audience is, of course, the grim and ghastly visage of Hillary Clinton. Halloween couldn’t have come at a better time. On Friday evening the news broke that a Grand Jury convened by special counsel Robert Mueller would deliver its first set of charges. Arrest warrants are expected to be issued as soon as Monday. The specific targets and violations are sealed and and will be closely held until official announcements are made.

In the meantime, Fox News is scattering chum throughout the mediaverse. Their clear intent is to deflect from the potentially devastating news that Monday’s announcement might bring. Rather than waiting to see which of Trump’s cohorts will be fingered, Fox News is fully engaged in taking Clinton down. They must have forgotten that she isn’t actually the president and holds no position from which she can be toppled. But that’s of no matter. She is still a dreadful beast to the Fox disciples and Trump cultists. She must be stopped.

Consequently, Fox is pushing a variety of fake news stories that allege various crimes Clinton is supposed to have committed. From the long ago debunked Uranium One nonsense, to the newly fashioned assertion that the Trump dossier was Clinton’s doing. There are no facts to accompany these allegations, but that never stopped Fox before. What follows are some of the frightening angles that the network is furiously working this Halloween weekend. Be prepared to shiver:

Those of you who are not quivering behind your sofas will have noticed the vast array of Fox’s most fear-inducing contributors. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump himself, and more are piling on the Clinton smear campaign. It’s a frenzied assault that is based on nothing but pure hatred and a bitter stew of vengeance. But it has a devious purpose. Fox News is determined to keep people from thinking about the legal calamities of Donald Trump and his traitorous comrades. That’s the only reason they dug up these zombie accusations and are hurling them at a retired grandma in Chappaqua.

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

But it is Halloween, so the rest of us can take this in good humor. If there are serious charges coming out of the Grand Jury next week, Fox’s diversions will be comically irrelevant. They simply can’t sustain this level of absurdity while Trump associates are frog-marched to jail. Time will tell. And for those seeking some respite from this devilish escapade, remember that the next big holiday is Thanksgiving. Hopefully the majority of Americans who are deeply disturbed by Trump and company will have something for which to be thankful.

Gee Thanks: Donald Trump and Fox News Bring Back the Russia Pee-Pee Dossier

Posted by on October 25, 2017 at 3:55 pm. NO Comments :

The nation, and the world, are presently enveloped in a myriad of potential catastrophes. For example: nuclear war with North Korea; tax reform; natural disasters; terrorism, etc. Under the circumstances, you might think that Donald Trump would seek to focus on any of those critical issues. If so, you don’t know Donald Trump. True to form, the President has managed to shine a spotlight on one of his biggest embarrassments.

Sean Hannity

The now infamous Trump Dossier is a treasure trove of salacious and politically damning information. Much of it is speculative, but much has also been vetted and independently corroborated. The former British spy who compiled it is considered reliable by many intelligence agencies, including those in the United States. And if there is one scandalous controversy that Trump should be anxious to ditch, it’s the one that has him cavorting with Russian prostitutes. But for some reason, the Twitter obsessed President can’t resist his self-destructive urges:

Poor Donnie, Always the victim. And now he’s helping to remind America of his alleged escapades in Moscow with a different kind of golden shower than the one in his Manhattan penthouse. Trump is reprising this story because the Washington Post just published an article that ties Democrats to the Dossier. The only problem with this breaking news is that it was broken a year ago. In October of 2016, David Corn wrote for Mother Jones that the Dossier’s author had been “researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere.” In his article Corn noted that:

“This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats).”

So what began as opposition research for the GOP was taken up by Democratic operatives. That’s probably because the findings included “troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government.” Also, sources alleged “an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.” But in any case, the Democratic connection was obviously known long before WaPo’s “scoop.” It was even known by wingnut propaganda dispensers at Fox News. Trump fluffers like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have long been peddling this partisan snake oil.

So it’s ironic that Trump is now relying on the “fake” news purveyors at WaPo for his smear campaign info. His tweet Wednesday morning credited Fox News with the data. However, there’s a bigger question here. Do Trump and Fox News really think it’s noteworthy that Democrats might have funded opposition research against their opposition? Isn’t that what all campaigns do as a matter of routine? When Fox’s Jeanine Pirro was defending Trump, Jr. for meeting with Russians during the campaign she bragged that:

“As someone who’s run for office five times, if the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I’d be on the first trolley to Hell to get it. And any politician who tells you otherwise is a bald-faced liar.”

In fact, Trump said pretty much the same thing:

Now suddenly it’s an abomination for Hillary Clinton’s campaign to engage in opposition research. The hypocrisy is palpable. But the objective for Trump and his pals at Fox News is to conflate this old, non-story with the more relevant allegations of Trump’s collusion with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election. And it’s a talking point that was distributed to all of the network’s programs. Already the subject has been covered by Pirro, Tucker Carlson, Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, and, of course, Sean Hannity. For his part, Hannity helpfully stirred the recollection of the most depraved portions of the Dossier:

“The Democrats, media, they were happy to repeat, for example, that ‘Oh, Donald Trump was at the Ritz in Moscow and he had hookers urinating in his bed.’ […] All of this makes the Clinton campaign and the DNC complicit in spreading Russian propaganda and Russian lies about then-candidate, Donald Trump.

You have to wonder why Hannity thought that would benefit his buddy Trump. He could have simply talked about the Dossier in disparaging terms and left it at that. But no. This genius thought visualizing Russian hookers urinating on Trump had to be a feature of the broadcast. Never mind that the entire story involving who paid for some routine opposition research doesn’t even come close to the scandal of enlisting Russians to tamper with an American election. Clearly they are pretending to be more interest in who paid for it than what’s in it. But all of this just illustrates how desperate they are to deflect from the real news and to attack their perennial foe, Hillary Clinton, who holds no office and says she never will.

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

Lying Trump confidant inadvertently makes case for Trump’s impeachment on Fox News

Posted by on October 14, 2017 at 2:17 pm. 3 Comments :

Republicans are known to be fond of making brash and false accusations about Democrats. In fact, it’s an obsession. They generally deploy this tactic when they are desperate to create a distraction from something horrible they did or said. And lucky for them, they have Fox News to broadcast their diversions and lies to millions of their glassy-eyed disciples.

Fox News

A perfect example of this took place Saturday morning on Fox and Friends. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, and devoted bootlicker, Corey Lewandowski to talk about a variety of current events (video below). Among them were the allegations against Trump for sexual harassment and abuse. The segment featured a graphic that said “HRC Falsely Claims Trump is “Sexual Assaulter.” But the claim is factual based on Trump’s own words. They played video of Hillary Clinton’s BBC interview pointing out the similarities of Trump’s behavior to that of Harvey Weinstein. She correctly noted that:

“This kind of behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere. Whether it’s in entertainment, politics… After all we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.”

Indeed. No one should be excused from committing these atrocious acts, Democrat or Republican. But that’s not how Fox News sees it. Not only did Trump admit to his abuse, at least a dozen women have come forward with credible allegations. But Clinton’s remarks set Lewandowski off on a tangent that hardly exonerates Trump:

“There was a sexual assaulter in the White House and he was called Bill Clinton. He had to pay a $750,000 fine for abuses that he perpetrated while he was President of the United States. He was disbarred. He lost his law license. He lied under oath and he was impeached.”

First of all, let’s address the cluster of outright lies in Lewandowski’s comment. Nearly everything he said was demonstrably false. Politico covered these claims last year and debunked all of them:

“[Paula] Jones sued Clinton for allegedly exposing himself to her in a hotel room in 1991. The Jones suit, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, was ultimately dismissed by a judge on the grounds Jones could not show damages. While it was on appeal, Bill Clinton paid $850,000 to settle the suit without admitting liability.” […]

“An earlier version of this piece falsely stated that Bill Clinton was disbarred and prohibited from practicing law in Arkansas and in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, Clinton’s law license was suspended in Arkansas and he resigned from the Supreme Court bar; he was not disbarred.”

So the incident Lewandowski referred to did not happen while Clinton was president. The payment was a settlement, not a fine. There was no judicial finding against him. He was never disbarred. The House of Representatives did impeach Clinton, but that’s a political action, not a legal one. And the Senate declined to convict or remove him from office.

Lewandowski unleashed a tortured stream of lies to divert attention away from Trump’s gross and illegal behavior. But his argument wasn’t that Trump was innocent. Only that Clinton was guilty. What’s more, he seemed to agree with the punishment he wrongly asserted was carried out against Clinton. Therefore, he is essentially advocating that punishment for anyone guilty of these crimes. Presumably that includes his buddy in the White House. In other words, he’s in favor of fining and impeaching Trump. A plurality of Americans agree.

Of course, to expect an ultra-partisan hack like Lewandowski to grasp the logical extensions of his own argument may be too much to ask. And even if he did, he would likely struggle to find an exception for his right-wing confederates. Democrats weren’t shy about denouncing the behavior of Clinton or Weinstein. It’s too bad that Republicans can’t do the same about Trump. After all, as Fox’s Abby Huntsman said at the end of this segment: “It’s so important to point out the hypocrisy.” Of course, she was referring only to Democrats.

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

[The Clinton discussion begins at about 3:50]

SRSLY? The Fox News Den of Sexual Predators Accuses Democrats of Enabling Weinstein

Posted by on October 12, 2017 at 3:09 pm. NO Comments :

Leave it to Fox News to politicize anything, no matter how repulsive. The salaciousness of the Harvey Weinstein scandal must have been too much for them to pass up. So for the past several days they have been desperately trying to tar any and all Democrats with Weinstein’s disgusting behavior. It’s a tactic commonly used by the political bottom-feeders on the right, and especially by Fox News.

Fox News Tucker Carlson

On Wednesday night Tucker Carlson, arguably the most annoying man on television, delivered one of his typically sour monologues. In his opening segment he spun furiously in an effort to intertwine Democrats with a story whose focus ought to have been on the victims. But at Fox News it is always more important to cravenly exploit political biases. Carlson made sure to single out Hillary Clinton in his remarks because what’s more relevant than someone who holds no government office, or likely ever will? “Weinstein couldn’t have gotten away with any of this,” Carlson smeared, “without enablers like Hillary Clinton.” And then he unleashed this cognitive mess:

“Sexual abuse is epidemic in Hollywood. The people in charge have covered it up and made excuses for it. In each case protecting the powerful from the powerless and the abused. It is time for the federal government to get involved. The Department of Justice should launch an immediate investigation into Hollywood’s culture of systematic sexual abuse.”

First of all, sexual abuse is epidemic in America. It isn’t unique to Hollywood, and that assertion minimizes the scale of the problem. Which may be deliberate on Carlson’s part. More to the point, Carlson’s statement would actually be more appropriate if applied to Fox News. The list of their high-level perverts began with former CEO, Roger Ailes. Then Fox’s biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, finally succumbed to years of rumored sexual harassment. The president of Fox News, Bill Shine, was also dismissed under a cloud. As were Fox Sports President Jamie Horowitz, Fox News Latino VP, Francisco Cortes, and most recently, host Eric Bolling.

As Carlson noted, “The people in charge have covered it up and made excuses for it. In each case protecting the powerful from the powerless and the abused.” It wasn’t until their victims started coming out publicly that the network acknowledged the cesspool they were wallowing in. So if the Justice Department should launch an investigation, they might want to start with Fox.

Oh wait, they already did. A probe of the personnel and finances of Fox News was initiated in the final days of the Obama administration. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, was in charge. That is, until Trump fired him.

On Wednesday the Daily Mail reported that Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has instructed the FBI to open a probe into the Weinstein affair. However, the Daily Mail is an ultra-conservative British tabloid, which makes this story somewhat suspicious. To date it has only been shared on other right-wing websites like Breitbart, Redstate, and Newsmax. But it’s premise is not implausible. Trump is known for taking positions based on something he just saw on Fox News. So if he watched Carlson make this proposal, he might well have directed Sessions to have the FBI initiate an investigation. And a good bootlicker like Sessions would surely have obeyed.

In his segment, Carlson complained that it took Hillary Clinton five days to denounce Weinstein. Donald Trump still hasn’t done so. The only comment he made was “I’m not surprised.” So apparently Trump has known that Weinstein is a sexual predator, but he never bothered to mention it. As for Carlson, his hypocrisy is off the charts. He works for a network that harbored some of the most despicable miscreants imaginable.

There is no evidence that Fox News has cleaned up its act. Carlson owes his program to the departure of Megyn Kelly, who left in part due to sexual harassment from Bill O’Reilly. And now Carlson’s show actually airs in O’Reilly’s old time slot. Meanwhile Sean Hannity has brought O’Reilly back into the Fox fold as his guest, without ever mentioning the reasons he was fired. So if Carlson had any integrity, he might want to reexamine who the real enablers are.

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

GOP Chair Lies to CNN Saying ‘Women Never Came Forward’ to Report Trump’s Sexual Abuse

Posted by on October 9, 2017 at 2:48 pm. 5 Comments :

Let’s get one thing straight at the start. Harvey Weinstein’s actions were inexcusable. They were gross and demeaning and exploitative. He was right to apologize and seek professional help. But that wasn’t enough. It was also right for the board of directors of the company he founded to fire him.

Donald Trump

In light of that, it is downright nauseating that the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel, would turn up on CNN and dismiss the grotesque behavior of Donald Trump by comparing him favorably to Weinstein. Trump is actually much worse. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer (video below), McDaniel had the gall to assert that:

“It’s not even comparable. Harvey Weinstein brought women into his hotel room. I mean to even make that comparison is disrespectful to the President. He didn’t have eight settlements. He didn’t have women coming forward. Harvey Weinstein admits that he did that.”

It’s not even comparable? Everything that McDaniel specified regarding Weinstein is directly comparable to Trump. Her statement that “He didn’t have women coming forward” was a blatant lie. At least a dozen women have come forward with accusations about Trump’s abusiveness. McDaniel also lied about there being no settlements. Numerous women have filed complaints against Trump that resulted in settlements that Trump legally suppressed with binding non-disclosure clauses. He used the same tactic to hide complaints that never made it to a courtroom. Despite these obvious similarities, McDaniel went on to explain the alleged differences anyway. But she directly responded only to the infamous “pussy grabbing” videotape:

“Here’s the difference, Wolf. The President apologized for that and many Republicans came out and said those comments were not appropriate. The difference is that Harvey Weinstein is a major bundler for the DNC. They have embraced him him. He has admitted to these instances when he put women in a completely inappropriate situations. That he was a sexual predator.”

Once again, in each specific reference made by McDaniel the differences she asserts are only visible to someone who is purposefully dishonest. In his belligerent “apology” Trump mainly said he was sorry for having been caught. He never apologized to his victims. And he quickly changed the subject to attack Bill and Hillary Clinton. While some Republicans did repudiate his comments, many actually defended him. And Trump is unarguably the most prolific bundler of campaign financing for the GOP. They embrace him even though he admitted to being a sexual predator.

The only real difference is that Weinstein is now unemployed and Trump continues to reside in the White House (when he isn’t at one of his golf resorts, that is). Republicans are perfectly agreeable to allowing Republican perverts to retain the powerful positions they hold if they make an insincere apology. But if you’re a Democrat you must be impeached and all other Democrats must renounce everything you ever did or said.

The hypocrisy is on an atomic scale. If McDaniel and her party had any sliver of integrity they would abandon their support for Trump and demand that he resign. And they have plenty of other reasons for doing so. Trump is not only a monstrous sexual deviant. He is a traitor for his collusion with Russia to subvert our democracy. He is also corrupt financially as he unconstitutionally enriches himself through his government position. And his reckless incompetence is an imminent danger to the nation and the world by inciting nuclear conflicts with both North Korea and Iran. Have there ever been more reasons to impeach a president than Trump has provided in less than a year in office?

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

Fox News Wants You to Believe That Trump-Bashing Killed the Emmys – It Didn’t

Posted by on September 18, 2017 at 3:34 pm. 1 Comments :

The preliminary Nielsen ratings for the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast are in and they aren’t particularly good. The program drew about 11.2 million viewers, which is down slightly from last year’s show. But leave it to Fox News to turn this minor slippage into a political catastrophe caused by the relentless liberalism of Hollywood elites.

Emmys Stephen Colbert

An op-ed on the Fox News website trumpeted the ratings results with a speculative headline asking “Emmys ratings crater; Trump-bashing to blame?” The argument presented by Fox’s Brian Flood was that criticism of Donald Trump sunk the broadcast to new lows. He writes that:

“It looks like the 69th annual Emmy Awards are heading into sub-basement territory in terms of ratings after host Stephen Colbert spent much of Sunday’s event attacking President Trump. It turns out American viewers may not have been as into Trump bashing as Hollywood would like them to be.”

For the record, host Stephen Colbert didn’t spend much of the night attacking Trump. In all he spent less than three minutes out of a three hour program. But the real absurdity of this analysis is that it proposes something that’s impossible. Fox News thinks that viewers chose not to watch the program based on their clairvoyant observation of the Trump-bashing before it even began. Obviously, without such ESP skills they would not have known not to tune in.

In fact, the Emmy broadcast has been scoring lower numbers for several years. Trump wasn’t president when the ratings began a falling trend. The reasons knowledgeable people attribute to the decline are that television doesn’t have the popular appeal of the Oscars and the Grammys. What’s more, many of the winning programs are now airing on services like Netflix and Hulu that have fewer viewers than broadcast TV. Consequently, the stars are not as familiar or compelling. And airing against Sunday Night Football didn’t help either.

That didn’t stop Fox News from setting up their biased perspective and interviewing political partisans to support it. Flood first sought the opinion of Dan Gainor of the ultra-conservative Media Research Center. Predictably, Gainor slammed the event as “a Hollywood bubble show.” He further castigated television’s creative community as out-of-touch with America and unqualified to express an opinion. That’s a point of view that disappears from right-wingers when the TV personality is one of theirs. Case in point: Donald Trump (or Ronald Reagan, Ted Nugent, Clint Eastwood, Scott Baio, etc.).

The argument that Americans might have tuned out the Emmys because they objected to jokes about Trump also fails logically. Trump is currently sitting on record low ratings himself. And that’s from the American people, not a select groups of show business professionals. With his approval numbers wallowing in the mid-thirties, it’s unlikely that the program lost many viewers who were loyal to Trump. If anything, the fact that most Americans are repulsed and embarrassed by him might have drawn in a bigger audience. There is substantial appetite in the country for the Trump-bashing that Fox News is lamenting. An example of that is the fact that Colbert has become the top rated late night talk show host largely due to his nightly mockery of the President.

The program did feature some sharp jabs at Trump’s expense. Veep’s Julia Louis Dreyfus noted that her show had considered an impeachment plot line, but abandoned it because they were worried that “someone else” might beat them to it. Alec Baldwin, who’s portrayal of Trump on Saturday Night Live won him an Emmy, consoled Trump by giving him partial credit for an award he never won himself. But the most cutting comedy came from the reunited stars of 9-to-5 who said:

Jane Fonda: Back in 1980 in that movie, we refused to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.
Lily Tomlin: And in 2017, we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.

Those are the sort of comments that Fox News and their conservative disciples regard as intolerable attacks against their White House Messiah. And for some reason they get away with calling liberals “snowflakes” for being too sensitive. Yet it doesn’t bother them when Trump himself posts tweets that show him assaulting Hillary Clinton. Apparently joking about physically attacking women is perfectly acceptable to these Deplorables. But Fox News finds it necessary to write op-eds that lie about the Emmys just because they can’t handle a few harmless jokes.

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