Robert Mueller

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

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

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

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Rudy Giuliani’s Own Standard Donald Trump is Guilty of Obstruction of Justice

Posted by on August 2, 2018 at 5:02 pm. 1 Comments :

It just keeps getting easier and easier to catch Donald Trump and his Merry Band of Incompetents in lies or other nefarious activities that reflect their dishonor and deceit. And the blunder by Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, on Thursday is just the latest example of this phenomenon.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump

If Saturday Night Live wanted to create a satirical character whose practice of the law incriminated his client more often than not, they would only need to transcribe Giuliani’s comments verbatim. In this episode, Giuliani attempted to clean up a Trump tweet that appeared to most people as an obvious effort to obstruct justice with regard to the special counsel probe of Robert Mueller. Trump tweeted:

That sure looks like Trump is directing his Attorney General to halt the investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia. But Giuliani has an alternative interpretation of the tweet that makes it completely innocent. He told CNN’s Dana Bash that Trump was just “expressing his opinion on his favored medium for asserting his First Amendment right of free speech. He said ‘should’ not ‘must.'”

So the use of the word “should” absolves Trump of any culpability for comments that seem to be giving Sessions a direct order. But if your boss told you that you should stop working on a “terrible” project “right now,” would you think he was just expressing an opinion and ignore him? Not if you wanted to keep your job, you wouldn’t. But if Giuliani is so fixated on the words “should” and “must,” then he might want to refer back to this tweet by Trump in April:

That satisfies the Giuliani standard of saying “must” in order for the directive to be considered obstruction of justice. So we all owe Rudy our thanks for making the legal argument so clear and applicable to his client. Now we just need to wait and see how he and/or Trump try to spin this into something that means the opposite of what it obviously means.

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

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

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

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

Fox News, Shepard Smith, Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fox News Reports Poll Showing Democrats are ‘Out of Step’, But Guess What They Left Out

Posted by on July 29, 2018 at 11:03 am. 3 Comments :

The deliberate deceit and hostility of Fox News is escalating as Donald Trump gets closer to being tossed into the dustbin of history. With special counsel Robert Mueller progressing toward the inevitable report of Trump’s criminality, and former insiders like Michael Cohen preparing to truth bomb the President, the weasels at Fox News are just getting more desperate in the most obvious and embarrassing ways.

Fox News Lies

On Saturday’s episode of the Greg Gutfeld show, the eponymous host (who thinks he’s a comedian) introduced the program with the “shocking” results of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. [Note: Fox and Friends misused the same poll] Among other things it revealed that a majority of respondents (56% to 33%) said that Democrats are “out of step with most Americans’ thinking” That’s a pretty lousy number that indicates some trouble for the party. Although it doesn’t reflect the manner in which Democrats are disconnecting. While Fox News and the GOP want you to think it’s a condemnation of the Party’s embrace of lefties like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it could be just as easily that they think the Party isn’t embracing them tightly enough.

But what really makes this Fox News segment ludicrous is that they left out another significant result from the poll. Republicans were also deemed to be out of touch, and by a slightly larger margin (57% to 33%). For some reason that statistic was never mentioned on Fox News. Go figure.

In addition to this dissemination of blatantly distorted news, Fox also failed to mention everything else in the poll that revealed how badly the Trump administration is at odds with the American people. For instance:

  • They believe Trump’s tariffs will hurt, not help the economy (46-25)
  • Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice should continue (46-38)
  • Trump is too friendly with Vladimir Putin (46-39)
  • Russia is an adversary, not an ally (72-16)
  • Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election (65-26)
  • The interference by the Russians affected the outcome of the election (41-18)

Since Fox News went to the trouble of citing this poll, they ought to have reported the results more completely. And particularly with regard to the question of how badly Americans think the Republican Party is out of touch. But then again, Fox has never been known to responsibly cover the news, so why should they start now?

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

With the midterm elections coming up you can count on Fox to lie profusely about the issues and to smother Trump with accolades. Trump has promised to campaign on behalf of GOP candidates “six to seven days a week when we’re sixty days out.” So he’s effectively abdicating his presidency. And Fox News will devotedly air every single one of Trump’s boring, mindlessly repetitive rally speeches in their entirety. Which is certain to increase the incidence of cognitive infirmity among his glassy-eyed Deplorables.

Heartsick: Trump Breaks His Date With Putin Until 2019, After the ‘Witch Hunt’ is Over (Huh?)

Posted by on July 25, 2018 at 12:42 pm. 1 Comments :

The first date went so tremendously that Donald Trump almost immediately asked dreamy Vladimir Putin out again for a rendezvous in romantic Washington, D.C. in the fall. But Trump was dissed by his crush when Putin wavered as to whether he would accept the invitation. A crestfallen Trump is now saying that he has other plans as well.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

Trump’s National Security Advisor, and mustache ride attendant, John Bolton, made the announcement that “The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.” A dejected Trump is now employing the famous “You can’t fire me, I quit,” method of diplomatic courtship.

However, this statement has some peculiarities that warrant additional scrutiny. First of all, this is the first use of the phrase “witch hunt” by Mr. Bolton, and maybe by any senior White House staffer other than Trump himself. Apparently they are trying to cement its use as an acceptable descriptor of legal processes.

Secondly, Trump is assuming that Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation will be ongoing at least through the end of this year. That’s a long ways from the predictions of his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who has been saying that the probe would be over in a couple of weeks ever since he joined Trump’s legal team.

Finally, it is very likely that the real reason for the delay has something to do with the upcoming midterm elections. It could be embarrassing if Trump were to repeat his disastrous performance in a rematch with Putin just prior to those contests. Republicans are already considered to be in dire shape as a massive blue wave of Democratic victory is forming. Putin may have been aware of that and was subtly nudging his politically naive American stooge into rescheduling until after election day. Not that things will be any better for Trump if the GOP takes the beating that is being forecast. But they could simply pretend to forget about the summit entirely should that happen.

What’s more, if Mueller completes his investigation anytime between now and year’s end, that will throw a huge Russian boot into plans for the two authoritarian aficionados to convene. Unless, of course, wherever they wind up incarcerating Trump allows for conjugal visits.

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

Rachel Maddow: White House Transcript Erases Putin Saying He Helped Trump Win the Election

Posted by on July 24, 2018 at 10:10 pm. 3 Comments :

Holy crap. This is one of those moments when it simply cannot be ignored that the Trump administration is deliberately falsifying reality in order to deceive their glassy-eyed Deplorables. The White House has brazenly disappeared part of the press conference he held with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. And the purpose is painfully obvious.

Rachel Maddow Donald Trump

On the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, Rachel revealed that the official White House transcript had an omission that could not have been accidental. The video from Maddow’s show tells the whole story. But the gist of it this: Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked Putin a question and got a surprisingly candid answer. After Putin replied to a question about assisting Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, Putin and Mason had the following exchange:

Putin: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Jeff Mason: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

However, that is not what showed up in the White House transcript. They omitted the first part of Mason’ question, making it appear that Putin was still replying to the Mueller question:

PRESIDENT PUTIN: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Q: And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?
PRESIDENT PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

So the Trump camp removed Putin’s explicit admission that he wanted Trump to win the election, and that he took measures to achieve that end. Gee, why do you suppose Trump didn’t want the American people to know about that, even after they saw it with their own eyes when it occurred? Could Trump be trying to re-write history in order to cover up his collusion with Russia? Would he be that obviously Orwellian? Well, on Tuesday he spoke at a VFW event and said “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” That’s frighteningly close to what Orwell wrote in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

To make matters worse, the official video of this on the White House website has the same clearly intentional and flagrantly deceptive edits. This is nothing more than the sort of twisted propaganda tactics that occur regularly in authoritarian dictatorships. In fact, Russia excised the same parts of the transcript as the White House did (collusion?). Trump is trying to erase the fact that Putin openly advocated for his candidacy, and even directed his officials to provide assistance. And what’s really disturbing is that it seems to be right in line with the sort of abhorrent behavior we all expect from Donald Trump.

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

See for yourself: And be prepared to be disgusted by the unscrupulous immorality of our current, and hopefully short-tenured, president.

UPDATE: Philip Bump of the Washington Post is saying that Maddow’s analysis of these video discrepancies is wrong. He says the video that the White House (and the Post) transcribed was missing the part of the question identified above. But even if that’s true, why didn’t the White House get the complete video? Maddow did. And if they want to say this is all just an innocent mistake, then why haven’t they corrected the White House website? Are we supposed to believe that they are committed to the truth when they leave information they know is false on their website?

UPDATE II: Sometime on July 26, the White House website finally corrected their transcript of the the Trump/Putin press conference. And it only took them them a week and a half.

Trump’s Response to Mueller’s Indictment of 12 Russians Further Implies His Consciousness of Guilt

Posted by on July 13, 2018 at 12:37 pm. 1 Comments :

The breaking news this Friday morning is on a scale that is rarely seen in modern politics and crime. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, announced the indictment of twelve Russian intelligence operatives for illegally hacking into the accounts of members of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. These are not some anonymous “dark web” patsies, but actual agents of Russia’s GRU spy agency.

Donald Trump

Naturally, Fox News has played down the story by airing short reports at the top of the hour and ignoring it thereafter. Other cable news networks are doing the deep dive into the many sordid details. And Fox is also leaping to the defense of Donald Trump by highlighting remarks that Rosenstein made regarding the allegations that are not asserting any complicity by Americans or vote total changes. What they are forgetting is that there are only no such allegations YET. This is not over by a long shot.

The response from the White White was astonishingly tone deaf. They issued a brief statement that was entirely defensive, as if the only consideration was how this affected the probe into Trump’s criminal collusion with Russia. It read:

As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said today:

– There is no allegation in this indictment that Americans knew that they were corresponding with Russians.
– There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
– There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.

Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along.

It’s clear that Trump doesn’t care at all about the attack on America’s democratic system. He doesn’t say one word about the atrocity that is alleged in the indictments. And of course, he doesn’t criticize his friend (boss) Vladimir Putin. He doesn’t make even the most timid condemnation of Russia for their actions. He just whines that nothing in the indictments accuses him of anything. And, as noted above, that is only for the time being. Neither Rosenstain nor special counsel Robert Mueller said anything about there not being any further indictments. And the investigation is still in progress.

Along with Fox News and the Republican echo chamber’s ludicrous efforts to spin this as vindication for Trump, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is asserting that these indictments are “good News,” and suggest that they prove that “Trump is completely innocent.” Which they most certainly do not do. Giuliani is also saying that Thursday’s congressional inquisition of Peter Strzok makes it less likely that Trump will ever interview with Mueller. Gee, ya think? Trump never intended to interview with Mueller.

You can count on Fox News to fiercely continue defending Trump and to make these cries of absolution for at least the remainder of the day. It remains to be seen how long they will have this sort of wiggle room to avoid the increasingly obvious evidence of Trump’s treasonous guilt. But these new charges are an indication that Mueller is getting closer to the completion of his investigation. It isn’t surprising that no Americans were included in this set of indictments. The primary targets are always held in confidence until the end. Stay tuned.

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

The Rigged Witch Hunt Starring Donald Trump: A New Un-Reality Show That’s Only Fox News

Posted by on July 8, 2018 at 10:59 am. 1 Comments :

Beginning in 2004, and continuing for the next decade, Donald Trump was the host of a television reality game show known as “The Apprentice.” His hosting duties were minimal as he generally appeared only the the opening sequence and a staged “board meeting” at the end. So like most of Trump businesses he merely lent his name to the venture, collected a paycheck, and went off to play golf.

Donald Trump, Witch Hunt

That’s pretty much what Trump has done to the presidency. His name is widely promoted as he tries to take credit for anything positive that happens – or even that doesn’t happen, but which he says happened anyway. At the same time he lays the blame for anything negative on anyone but himself. Then he gets paid, mostly in the form of profits from his private enterprises that flagrantly exploit his position. And then he trots off to his golf resorts where he continues to advertise his Trump-label businesses.

In his free time Trump lounges in the White House executive suite where he watches Fox News and live-tweets what he sees. It doesn’t matter that the many of those Fox stories are riddled with inaccuracies and lies. In fact, that only makes it more consistent with the Trump brand. So it should surprise no one when Trump rattles off delusional commentaries on Twitter that are as far removed from the real world as the Chronicles of Narnia. Case in point:

This tweet reads like classic fantasy fiction. There is literally nothing in it that approaches the truth. But it does employ many of the tricks of effective storytellers. It could actually be a pitch for a new primetime fairy tale coming to a TV near you this fall. Let’s break it down:

Trump begins by introducing the heartwarming love story of FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. For some reason Trump and the right-wing press have become obsessed with their (alleged) relationship. It’s almost as important in the narrative as the content of their clandestine love letters. And as with any good fantasy, it is infused with phony characterizations and motives, but no substantive evidence of any wrongdoing. Despite repeated harping on this plot point for months, no one has shown that there was any bias whatsoever in their work product.

Then Trump unveils the story’s villains, which he has dubbed “the 13 Angry Democrats.” This theme is taken from Trump’s deranged perception of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his investigators. It’s a brilliant plot twist because what could be more frightening than angry Democrats? Their “strongly-worded memos” are like swords of vengeance that can pierce the heart of our sainted hero. How could Trump ever face this baker’s dozen of bad guys when all he has is the entire force of the United States government. So unfair. However, Trump missed a gap in this plot point that ignores the fact that there are actually more than 65 million angry Democrats, and that isn’t even counting Independents and more than a few patriotic Republicans.

From here Trump’s story heads into episodes that explore specific adventures in the Trump World fantasy. First comes “The Mystery of the Missing DNC Server.” The mystery is that the server was never missing at all. Trump’s frequent assertions that the FBI was denied access to it are a figment of his imagination. The DNC actually worked with the FBI and a private security firm to deliver everything that the FBI required.

Next we delve into “Crooked Hillary’s Illegally Deleted Emails.” This is a yarn so unsettling because it involves a retired grandmother and her horror-filled communications that are mostly about vacation plans and grocery lists. And to top it off, none of these dastardly emails were deleted illegally.

At this point in the story, Trump introduces a super-villain know only as “The Pakistani Fraudster.” Well, the notorious PF was actually just the tech guy who worked for a Democratic member of Congress. He was caught committing a garden variety bank fraud that was unrelated to anything political. But it sure has a scary name.

Finally, Trump dives into a controversy that caught the whole nation in a web of utter indifference. “The Uranium One Affair” concerned allegations the Hillary Clinton secretly sold America’s supply of uranium to the Russians. Why that would bother Trump is unexplained. He loves the Russians and wants to be besties with Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, when Clinton does it there must be a devious intent to harm America. What makes this affair all the more curious is that there actually wasn’t any uranium at all sold or otherwise provide to Russia. None, zero, zip. The transaction involved a a Canadian processing facility located in the U.S. that was sold to a Russian energy company. And the sale was approved by nine separate government agencies of which Clinton’s State Department was only one.

Trump wraps up his scenario with vague references to John Podesta (who was the victim of a Russian hack) and a “Democrat Con Job.” The latter is Trump’s way of projecting his own motives onto his perceived enemies. Taken in full, “The Rigged Witch Hunt” promises to be a wild romp that splashes Trump’s famous lies and paranoid delusions across the small screen. If you’re the sort who enjoys getting lost in total fantasy that has no basis in truth whatsoever, “The Rigged Witch Hunt” may just be the entertainment event of the season for you. And you can catch it all on Fox News without having to pay anything extra for one of the elite Hollywood movie channels.

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

Awkward: Giuliani Implies that Mueller Has ‘Uncovered Something’ that Proves Trump is Guilty

Posted by on July 7, 2018 at 10:27 am. 1 Comments :

There has been talk in recent days about the peculiar disappearance of Donald Trump’s lead Russia attorney, Rudy Giuliani. After a flurry of embarrassing media appearances a few weeks ago, Giuliani has been uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps he’s still confused about the ongoing investigation that he said was “essentially over” a couple of months ago. He laughably told Fox News that Mueller and company are “just in denial.” But as of Friday afternoon, the cause for worry was relieved when the New York Times released a new interview.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump

Let’s just set aside Rudy’s choice of the allegedly failing New York Times as the platform for his latest public pronouncements. After all, there’s nothing unusual about the President’s lawyer fraternizing with “the enemy of the American people” is there? And on Saturday morning Trump tweeted his baseless prediction that the Times was going out of business. Nevertheless, Giuliani saw fit to call the Times when he wanted to unveil some new PR bullcrap. He told the Times that he was issuing new demands that must be met before Trump would interview with special counsel Robert Mueller:

“If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,”

In other words, if Mueller has the goods on us, we’ll talk. If we’ve successfully hidden our crimes, screw you. Notice that Giuliani isn’t saying that there is nothing to be uncovered. He’s saying that any evidence of crimes that might be uncovered would determine whether Trump would be deposed. That’s about as close as you can get to an admission that incriminating information exists without just pleading guilty. But the Trump camp doesn’t want to show their dirty hands unless the prosecutors already have them nailed.

Even with this new position regarding Trump’s reluctance to come clean, Giuliani betrayed his own bad faith negotiating by conceding that Mueller was unlikely to agree to the interview demands. So Giuliani is just throwing more obstacles in the path of justice, and he’s doing it deliberately. And according to the Times, this obstruction doesn’t stop there:

“The president’s lawyers want Mr. Mueller to explain how the Justice Department gave him the authority to investigate possible obstruction of justice by the president in what began as a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s election meddling. […]

“The lawyers also want evidence that the special counsel exhausted every other investigative measure before asking the president to answer questions, and that he is the only person who could provide them with the information they are seeking.”

With regard to the explanation for Mueller’s authority to investigate obstruction of justice, Giuliani could have answered that question by simply reading the Justice Department’s order appointing Mueller. It explicitly grants him investigative authority over the Russian meddling affair and any matters that arose from it. And the demand that all other sources of evidence be exhausted before Trump will talk is just plain loony. It’s like saying that the ringleader of a bank robbery will only testify if prosecutors already know everything. Trump is the ringleader, and his testimony is relevant regardless of what other evidence has been obtained. But then, his avoidance (fear) of testifying is relevant in its own way.

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The bottom line here is that Giuliani is just engaging in obvious delaying tactics that have no legal basis. He actually admits it by conceding that the special counsel will reject his impotent demands. It’s a strategy that betrays Trump’s consciousness of guilt. This is not the behavior of someone who is confidant of his innocence. And by floating the existence of evidence that has yet to be uncovered, Giuliani is once again doing harm to his own client. Nice work, Rudy.