Coronavirus

HOAX: Trump’s Endless Obsession with Politicizing the Coronavirus

Posted by on August 7, 2020 at 1:49 pm. 2 Comments :

So far this election cycle, Donald Trump has been asked four times to describe his agenda should he be reelected to a second term. And four times – most recently two days ago – he failed to articulate a coherent vision for the future or even a compelling reason to vote for him. That might have something to do with why he’s trailing so badly in every poll.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

How hard could it be for Trump to lay out a plan for finally getting the coronavirus pandemic under control, restoring the jobs lost due to his incompetence, advocating for the welfare of working Americans, and repairing the nation’s relationships with international allies? Not that Trump is capable of doing any of that, but you would think that his press operatives ought to be able to craft an image makeover for PR purposes. You would think.

What makes this task so difficult for Trump is that he can’t be relied upon to focus his increasingly feeble mind on anything that isn’t either directly beneficial to him personally or injurious to his perceived enemies. Evidence of this mental fetishism that consumes Trump was provided in a Friday morning tweet that raised an old issue seemingly out of thin air:

The likely trigger for Trump’s latest tantrum was a “Trump Hoaxed America” Twitter ad that featured a string of his paranoid “hoax” accusations. It covered matters that he has repeatedly dismissed as hoaxes, such as climate change and the investigations into his unsavory connections to Russia during the 2016 election. More to the point, the ad also included Trump’s infamous outburst that the coronavirus was just another Democratic spawned hoax. Hence his enigmatic tweet. Here’s the ad that Seems to have gotten under Trump’s thin skin:

For the record, What Trump said at his cult rally on February 28, in Charleston, South Carolina, (video below) was that…

“Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? … Think of it, And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that’s pretty amazing. We’re fifteen people in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that. We’re doing great.”

Trump’s complaint that he wasn’t referring to the pandemic as a hoax is specious at best. He included it in a list of other alleged hoaxes, not flimsy assertions about political rhetoric. And the notion that “politicizing the coronavirus” was the actual hoax doesn’t even make sense unless he means to say that it wasn’t politicized.

However, for the sake of argument, let’s concede the point and move on to the rest on Trump’s comment. Immediately following his hoax assertion Trump bragged that there were only fifteen people in the United States who were diagnosed with the coronavirus. Then he praised himself for the number being so low and insisted that “We’re doing great.” That was nearly 5,000,000 cases and 160,000 deaths ago.

So whatever fictions Trump wants to sell to Fox News and his cult disciples, there is still the unmistakable presence of a deliberate hoax. It’s the one that Trump and his Republican confederates have manufactured for five months pretending that he has everything under control, that the virus isn’t harmful, and that it’s going to disappear magically any day now. And this isn’t just a garden variety hoax. It’s a hoax that is killing people. And it’s a hoax that, at this late date, no one in their right mind still believes.

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

Crybaby Trump Runs to Fox News Following His Latest Media Fiascoes

Posted by on August 5, 2020 at 2:03 pm. 5 Comments :

The flop sweat gushing from Donald Trump is flowing like a tsunami the closer we get to Election Day. His polling continues to languish near historic lows for both reelection and job approval. And even his traditional allies are politically distancing from him for fear of being swept away themselves. it’s a downward spiral that shows no sign of slowing down.

Donald Trump, Mask, Fox News

Trump’s response to the imminent peril that he finds himself in has been to triple down on the lies, insults, and fear mongering, that have been the staples of his campaign. As a result he lashed out at Dr. Deborah Birx, his hand-picked Coronavirus Task Force medical expert, as “pathetic” just because she told the truth for a change. He flip-flopped on his opposition to mail-in voting (but only in Florida where he needs the votes of senior citizens who might not otherwise cast ballots). He made a ludicrous and unconstitutional proposal to delay the election. And he even threatened to ban TikTok from the United States in retaliation for criticism on the app from people like Sarah Cooper.

But that’s not all. Trump’s recent interview by Jonathan Swan of Axios exposed his shallow and hostile knee-jerk defensiveness and inability to engage in a coherent discussion. A PolitiFact analysis identified 22 false statements in the interview. And in a desperate effort to counteract the pitiful image he displayed, he immediately sought refuge in the warm embrace of his Fox News sycophants.

In the past three days Trump has done three phone-in interviews on Fox. One with his BFF Sean Hannity. One with Fox’s Senior Trump-Fluffer, Lou Dobbs. And on Wednesday morning, a full hour (video below) with the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. Here are a few of the lowlights:

ON SUSPENDING THE PAYROLL TAX:

FOX: What’s your plan for businesses when it comes to the payroll tax cut?
TRUMP: Well, I may do it myself. We’re negotiating right now. I have the right to suspend it. And I may do it myself. I have the absolute right to suspend…ah, the payroll…ah, do the payroll tax. We call it a payroll tax suspension.

Did our “stable genius” president come up with the idea of calling suspending the payroll tax a “payroll tax suspension” himself? More importantly, does he know that the payroll tax is used exclusively to fund Social Security, and that his proposed suspension would put the program at risk? And finally, he clearly doesn’t know that he has no authority whatsoever to suspend or otherwise alter tax laws passed by Congress. To his great dismay, he is not the American Dictator.

ON OPENING SCHOOLS:

FOX: What is the latest in your view as to how these schools should reopen?
TRUMP: My view is schools should reopen. This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away. And my view is that schools should be open. If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost immune from this disease.

My view is that Trump is almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost completely insane. He repeats himself ad nauseam without ever answering the question or making an intelligible point. And above all, he is comfortable with exposing children and their families to a deadly virus that is still out of control due to his negligence and incompetence.

ON OBAMA’S EULOGY FOR JOHN LEWIS:

FOX: Do you agree that [Obama’s eulogy for John Lewis] seemed like a campaign speech and less of a eulogy?
TRUMP: I thought it was a terrible speech, it was an angry speech. It showed there’s anger there that people don’t see. He lost control and he’s been really hit very hard by both sides for that speech. That speech was ridiculous.

You really have to wonder if Trump even saw Obama’s inspiring and heart-felt tribute. It is Trump’s review that is “terrible” and “angry” and utterly “ridiculous.”

ON HIS 2ND TERM:

FOX: Mr. President, what is your second term agenda? What are your top priorities?
TRUMP: I want to take where we left – we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. We were better than any other country. We were better than we were ever. We never had anything like it in this country […] What I want to do is take it from that point and build it even better.

Trump went off on a deranged rant about everything from unemployment to the stock market to how awful our allies are. What he never bothered to mention was anything about his second term agenda.

Needless to say, no one on Fox News challenged Trump’s lies or even bothered to ask a follow up question. They merely tossed him softballs and let Trump ramble on incoherently for twenty minutes. So Trump gets away with claiming he can unilaterally undo tax legislation, baselessly project his own anger onto Obama, and failing to articulate an agenda for the future. And for the record. Trump unleashed another 20 falsehoods on the Fox interview.

Which is why the one thing Trump said that is remotely connected to reality was just slightly off the mark. Referring to his prediction about the forward course of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump babbled that “This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away.” However, that typically inane Trumpism is more aptly applied to his presidency. And for those of you with exceptionally strong stomachs and nothing better to do, below is the full Fox and Friends interview.

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

PATHETIC: Attack Dog Trump Snarls at Dr. Birx for Daring to Tell the Truth

Posted by on August 3, 2020 at 2:50 pm. 4 Comments :

You have to wonder how anyone can lower themselves to working for Donald Trump. The rancid patterns of his perverse and egomaniacal behavior are so reliably steeped in punishing vengeance that it’s impossible to ignore the certainty that eventually you will become his victim. What measure of denial prevents people from seeing that?

Donald Trump Angry

On Monday morning Trump provided yet another example of his steaming wrath, this time directed at an otherwise loyal member of his sycophantic Coronavirus Task Force. In a tweet that began by insult House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump stumbled into a bitterly insulting stab at Dr. Deborah Birx:

First of all, Trump’s sniveling whinery about Pelosi is ramped up to at least eleven. What he describes as “horrible” was actually pretty tame. Pelosi was asked if she had confidence in Dr.Birx. To which she calmly replied “I don’t have confidence in anyone who stands there while the President says ‘swallow Lysol and it’s going to cure your virus.'” No rational person could argue with that.

Secondly, Trump indicates that his anger is rooted in criticism of Dr. Birx being “too positive on the very good job we are doing” on combating the TrumpVirus. But that’s precisely why she has lost the confidence of Pelosi and every other knowledgeable person. Only the most heartless and uncaring cretins could celebrate 157,000 dead Americans and nearly five million sickened as a “positive” outcome.

Finally, Trump got to the point by making the accusation that Birx “took the bait & hit us.” He then called her “pathetic.” And what was so pathetic about Birx’s remarks? She simply said that “What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It’s into the rural as equal urban areas.”

Birx was absolutely correct. Despite her generally embarrassing performances as Trump’s dancing puppet, Birx had a rare moment of honesty that corresponded to the facts. And Trump wasn’t having it. So while Pelosi gently conveyed that she lacked confidence in Birx, Trump viciously disparaged her as pathetic. And then he accused Pelosi of saying “horrible things.”

What’s more, Trump’s White House Director of Strategic Communications, Alyssa Farah, went even further saying that “It is deeply irresponsible of Speaker Pelosi to repeatedly try to undermine & create public distrust in Dr Birx.” What does Farah think that Trump is doing when he castigates Birx, Dr. Fauci, and other members of his task force whenever they have the audacity to place their expertise above his flabby gut feelings?

No one has done more to undermine his own team than Trump. He doesn’t even allow them to attend the briefings anymore. Which may be for the best since they are usually just photo-ops for his reelection campaign.

In addition to his tweet attack on Birx, Trump also praised himself for his tragic mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic, lied again about cases being created by testing, ranted about the “fake” news, indulged in his obsession with TV ratings, and bragged about the puny crowds who attended his event in “Frorida.” In other words, business as usual in the Dark Circus of Trump’s Dystopian World.

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

Twitter Lets Trump Get Away with Dangerous Lies About the Coronavirus

Posted by on July 28, 2020 at 2:44 pm. NO Comments :

Last week Donald Trump announced that he would be reviving his Coronavirus Task force Briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops). In the few public session he’s held since then he has struggled to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter. But the effort has earned him some praise from sycophantic, right-wing, media shills as evidence of his “pivoting” to a more “presidential” demeanor.

Donald Trump Virus

Seasoned Trump watchers knew that any such pivot would be incidental and temporary. And that has proven to be the case. In the past week Trump has demonstrated his pitiful lack of self-control or disciple by ranting about everything from wearing face masks to campaigning for suburban “housewives” to maligning peaceful protesters as violent “anarchists” and more.

On Monday Trump fell completely off the fence by posting 13 deranged and dangerous late-night tweets promoting hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure, despite abundant evidence that it is both ineffective and potentially harmful according to his own FDA.

A couple of the videos in those tweets have since been removed by Twitter (and Facebook and YouTube) because they were sharing false information. Don Trump Jr’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended for sharing the same videos. Which begs the question: Why wasn’t Trump’s account suspended? After all, Trump actually shared the same false information at least six times.

For the record, here are the now removed/edited links to those tweets:

All of those tweets have now been either deleted or had the video removed. The degree of the misinformation they disseminated was so severe that the three biggest platforms for social media all agreed that it was too dangerous to share. It was so potentially harmful that Don Jr was punished by Twitter for passing it on to his followers.

Yet somehow, the Disinformer-in-Chief was let off the hook. For some reason Twitter doesn’t see fit to hold Trump accountable, or to protect their users from his irresponsible ravings. Trump’s tweets contained the same scientifically discredited video. Plus, he posted seven other tweets making the same hazardous claims about hydroxychloroquine without the offending video.

Trump is recklessly endangering the lives of his dimwit cult followers who cling blindly to every asinine idiocy that he utters. Twitter ought not to be helping him spread these lies but, ultimately, the fault and the harm lie with Trump.

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

The Coronavirus is Killing Trump Supporters, So Now He’s ‘Concerned’

Posted by on July 27, 2020 at 2:07 pm. 2 Comments :

Much is being made by some the more milquetoast members of the media of what they are spinning as a “pivot” by Donald Trump with regard to his position on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. They have observed him wearing a face mask for the first time after four months of mocking those who did so, including his opponent, Joe Biden. They have seen him resume the coronavirus briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops), and managing to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump’s months long dismissal of the pandemic’s severity, and his stubborn negligence and incompetence, has resulted in the preventable deaths of nearly 150,000 Americans. And now it is morphing into an awkward display of robotic and transparently insincere “sympathy.” But the consequences of his inaction and deliberate malfeasance are too tragic to ignore. The reasons for which, Trump has just admitted in private discussions with his staff. According to the Washington Post…

“In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people’ in Republican states, a senior administration official said. They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

So Trump’s newfound concern for the suffering citizens of this country was only triggered by his own political self-interest. He wasn’t worried until he learned that his supporters in the red states that he has pandered to exclusively were vulnerable to the viral disease blanketing the nation. Until now, Trump must have thought that only Democrats were susceptible to the coronavirus. And if so, then he couldn’t care less.

However, Trump could not have been more wrong (as usual). Studies support the more probable likelihood that Republicans and Trumpists are actually at greater risk. That’s because they are more attentive to his self-serving and recklessly false platitudes, and his insistence that COVID-19 wasn’t any more dangerous than the common flu. Trump’s cult disciples believed him when he said that it would just disappear as if by magic.

A series of surveys by Axios show that “President Trump’s words and actions have shaped Republicans’ perceptions and behavior on everything from wearing face masks to worrying about economic collapse.” Among their findings is that Republicans report wearing face masks about 41% of the time, less than half of what Democrats reported (81%). Only 38% of Trump’s followers say they are “‘very concerned’ about the COVID-19 outbreak.” That’s compared to 83% of Democrats. The same partisan gaps exist on questions about whether someone has visited relatives (Republicans 61%, Democrats 36%), and concern about the economy collapsing (Republicans 54%, Democrats 60%).

The bottom line is that Trump’s faithful have fallen in line behind his dismissive view of the pandemic. They continue to reject the serious risks and the warnings of health experts. And many are still convinced that simple and proven methods of mitigating the spread (face masks, social distancing, contact tracing, etc.), are actually “Deep State” plots to infringe on their liberty that will eventually lead to America becoming one big communist gulag.

This deranged behavior is directly attributable to the example set by their messiah. And the more they try to emulate him, the more likely they will become victims of the virus. That is not good news for anyone. These careless Trumpoids can just as easily transmit the virus to Democrats as to Republicans. The virus has no partisan affiliations.

But as Trump is discovering, if the virus spreads more rapidly in parts of the country where his voters are more numerous, then the odds are greater that more them will become infected. And if illness – or death – prevents them from casting their votes for him, then he’s finally going to be concerned. It’s nauseating that it would take that sort of egomaniacal selfishness to move Trump to act, but it’s better than him continuing to not act at all.

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

Trump is ‘Wow’ed By the Anti-Democratic Profanities of a QAnon Kook

Posted by on July 25, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 2 Comments :

The things that impress Donald Trump are frequently things that most people would find banal at best, nauseating at worst. He is amazed mostly by his own alleged brilliance, self-appraised good looks, and imaginary popularity. His appreciation for things other than himself are few and far between. That’s the life of a malignant narcissist.

Donald Trump

On Saturday morning Trump took to his Twitter Machine and pounded out a few retweets. As usual, they were entirely self-congratulatory tributes to whatever pitiful achievement he thought he had accomplished in the recent past. But apparently, even Trump has had trouble identifying any good deeds for which he could lavish praise on himself. That’s reflected by his sharply reduced Twitter output of late.

Trump’s reliance, therefore, has been on retweets, sometimes of fringe characters with dubious credentials. It’s a risky business that Trump himself acknowledged in an interview Friday saying that “It’s the retweets that get you in trouble.” Of course, his his own tweets are just as troubling as those he swipes from others. But despite that fragile and temporary awareness of reality, Trump went ahead and retweeted this:

The video that Trump was “Wow”ed by was posted by Antoine Tucker (aka Tony Montaga), a former gang member who now claims to be a Christian Republican. He is also a candidate for New York’s 14th district Congressional seat currently held by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, his candidacy could be considered a long shot since, as a write-in candidate, he isn’t even on the ballot.

What’s more, Tucker is proud supporter of the QAnon Conspiracy Crackpot Crusade. “Yes I am a Q Supporter,” he tweeted. “And as your Congressman I’ll make sure The Truth will never have to be Questioned in DC again.” Trump has been promoting QAnon freaks for quite a while now. And as if that weren’t enough, the video is jam-packed with the sort of profanities that a professed Christian would sanctimoniously condemn. For instance…

“The Democrats don’t give a f*ck. They don’t give a f*ck about helping Americans. They don’t give a f*ck about what race you are. They don’t care about what LBGT whatever community you belong to. They care about power. All of this sh*t is about power. All of the media hysteria is about power. Control and power.”

Praise Jesus! What a testimony to the holy word of Gawd! And what a dignified oratory for a U.S. president to honor.

Tucker’s utterly substanceless rant eventually got around to the fringes of a subject. He was apparently steamed at Democrats for not passing a one trillion dollar coronavirus relief bill. He was so steamed that he blamed Democrats for the deaths of quarantined Americans, while absolving Trump of any responsibility for more than 143,000 deaths due to his negligence and incompetence in mishandling the pandemic response:

“Every day that an American dies, suffers, or finds themselves hungry, you thank the damn Democrats for it because that’s what the f*ck they’ve been doing. F*cking up public trust. f*cking up the economy. And blaming this sh*t on Trump. Like it’s his fault when it’s f*ckin’ them. Be aware, man.”

At this point it needs to be noted that this video that Trump posted today was originally posted by Tucker on March 25, four months ago. Two days later Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill, twice the amount that Tucker was triggered by. Democrats wanted $3 trillion, but Senate Republicans forced them to compromise for the lower amount. there is a similar debate in Congress now with Democrats proposing significant relief that Republicans are, once again, opposing. So you might think that Tucker would now be angry with the GOP and blame them for Americans dying every day. Be aware, man.

You have to wonder what Trump thought was so amazing about this three month old video, other than that it viciously and unjustly attacked Democrats. But then again, what more would Trump ever want from such a screed, since that’s how he spends the vast majority of his own time. His GOP confederates have even proposed a resolution in congress to ban the Democratic Party.

So while he is promoting the profanity-laced rants of conspiracy kooks and inciting riots by sending stormtroopers into cities with Democratic mayors, Trump is ignoring the real problems that face real citizens. He has no coherent agenda, no campaign strategy, no plan for handling a surging pandemic or an economy in recession. He is just a ratty bundle of rattled nerves radiating hatred toward his perceived enemies. Which these days, in his paranoid stupor, is nearly everyone.

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

Gaslighting on Fox News: Trump is a Leader on Wearing Masks?

Posted by on July 21, 2020 at 2:53 pm. 3 Comments :

You really have to wonder if Fox News viewers are stupid enough to believe the sheer nonsense that flows from the network’s agents of disinformation (aka hosts). And isn’t Donald Trump’s State TV network insulting them by presuming that they will swallow everything thing they say no matter how preposterous? Are there any limits to what the cult will consume without question?

Donald Trump, Mask, Fox News

On Tuesday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends led off with a segment that featured a tweet by Trump posing for a photo-op while wearing a face mask.

There is so much wrong with that tweet that it’s going to take some time to unwind all of it. First of all, Trump has been the most divisive president since the Civil War, so it’s ridiculous for him to assert that “We are united” in any context other than removing him from office. Secondly, even if we concede that the coronavirus originated in China, it’s success in infecting nearly four million Americans, and killing more than 140,000, is due primarily to Trump’s negligence and incompetence. Thirdly, if Trump regards wearing a mask as patriotic, then his patriotism has been woefully absent for the past six months. And finally, most polls show that Trump isn’t even in the top 44 of favorite presidents.

Despite the absurdity of Trump’s newfound advocacy of mask wearing, Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy latched onto it as launching pad for some syrupy sycophancy (video below):

“Trump encourages Americans to mask up. Look at this. […] It’s very telling that yesterday he posted that Twitter picture with him wearing the mask because, as we just opened this segment, certain localities may have to close things down again because the spread is going out there.

But you know, masks are not political. The science says that face coverings are the best way to slow the spread. And if you don’t want to close things down again, if you want to reopen the schools, if you want to keep businesses open, if you want to go to sports, you’ve got to wear the masks. And so I think the president is becoming a leader on this issue. Maybe now, once again, MAGA will stand for ‘Masks Are Great Again.'”

Seriously? Trump is a “leader” on this issue? Since when are people who, due to ignorance and vanity, refused to wear a mask – and even mocked those who did – regarded as leaders when they claw their way onto the bandwagon five months later, after unprecedented suffering and death?

Despite Doocy’s new position that “masks are not political,” Trump’s reversal on masks is nothing but pure politics. Trump’s flip-flop is obviously driven by the fact that his approval rating has fallen off the edge of the Earth, and he is losing to Joe Biden in most polls by double digits. This is a desperation play as Trump watches his world collapse around him. It’s the reason he’s returning to the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings, which were always just thinly veiled reelection campaign events.

Trump’s aversion to masks is well documented – by Trump! As recently as this past weekend, Trump was asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he regretted not wearing a mask and if he would consider a national mandate. He replied…

“No. I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that. No. And I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears. […] all of sudden everybody’s got to wear a mask, and as you know masks cause problems, too.”

Trump has been saying much the same thing since the earliest days of the pandemic. “I think wearing a face mask,” Trump said last April, “as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t.”

However, Trump sees it now. Why? Perhaps because of his abysmal polling and reelection prospects. For Trump the primary concern has always been himself. and it is no longer possible for him to pretend that the American people are on his side. A new ABC Washington Post poll shows that 64% say that they do not trust Trump on the matters related to the coronavirus. And 79% are in favor of wearing masks.

Consequently, Trump is suddenly presenting himself as a patriotic advocate of mask wearing. And true to form, Fox News sees that late and exploitative transition as a demonstration of leadership. And both seem confidant that Trump’s cult disciples will adapt these mythologies to their warped version of reality. The good news for them is that they are likely right. The Trump cultists remain firmly in their comatose state. The bad news for them is that there aren’t enough of them to fill an Applebee’s.

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

Trump Is Reviving His Coronavirus Lies and Propaganda Show

Posted by on July 20, 2020 at 12:55 pm. 4 Comments :

The stench of desperation continues to waft through the halls of the White House, swirling like a noxious cloud around Donald Trump as he struggles to avoid a total electoral and psychological meltdown. Trump’s frantic attempts to maintain some superficial appearance of stability are failing miserably as he trips over every effort to right his sinking ship of state.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump is painfully aware of how poorly he is regarded by the American people. In fact, it is driving his temperament ever downward as his inability to cope results in increasingly bizarre behaviors. His approval ratings are in the gutter. He is getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. And he clearly has no idea what to do to halt colliding with a massive iceberg.

So on Monday morning Trump told reporters that he intends to revive the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings that he held up until late April. You’ll recall that he canceled them because, the more of him that the public saw, the more his approval ratings cratered. It’s a ridiculous response that can only exacerbate his problems.

Ironically, he’s taking the advice of Kellyanne Conway who has tried to convince him that his “numbers were much higher when he was briefing everybody on a day by day basis.” That may be true, but the subsequent decline was not due to his having ditched the briefings. When Trump announced that he was discontinuing the daily Trump Show last April, News Corpse wrote that…

“Trump’s voracious ego compelled him to take center stage for these pseudo-informational events because he was convinced that his magnetic presence would be impossible to resist. Unfortunately for him, his impression of his own charisma was a figment of his acutely narcissistic imagination. As the briefings played on (and on and on and on), it became clear that Trump wasn’t doing himself any favors. […] Consequently, Trump’s advisors sought frantically to persuade him that he needs to fire himself as the COVID-19 spokesmodel.”

From the start, Trump used the briefings to replace his cult rallies that could no longer be held. He believed that the TV ratings were proof that he was universally beloved. When that turned out not to be the case, he tried to return to the rally circuit. But his recent rallies were poorly attended and incapable of pacifying his Olympic-grade egomania. So now, with no good options, he’s revisiting the losing strategies of the past. In his remarks to reporters (video below) he claimed that…

“We had very successful briefings. I was doing them and we had a lot of people watching. Record numbers watching. In the history of cable television there’s never been anything like it. And we were doing very well. And I thought it would be sort of automatic. And a lot of positive things were happening.”

As always, Trump believes that TV ratings are “the real polls” and are reflective of general popularity. They aren’t. Many people tuned in for the information provided by experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Many others watched because they didn’t want to miss the live television broadcast of Trump’s nervous breakdown. It was reality TV in its most morbid form.

When Trump resumes the daily briefings we can expect him to reprise his greatest flops of the past. He will lie about how fantastic everything is going, and due solely to his brilliance. He’s already started this by claiming in this announcement that “the country is doing well” but for a “flare up in Florida, Texas, a couple of other places.” By which he means more than half the states that are currently suffering through record cases and deaths. He’ll also shift blame to anyone who is handy (Dr. Fauci, China, Democrats, etc). He’ll downplay the severity of the pandemic as being comparable to the “the sniffles.” He may be confusing “sniff” with “snuff.”

Trump will once again cast himself as the star of the briefings despite the fact that, due to his ignorance and ego, he has nothing of value to contribute. Consequently, he wastes the time of the public and the press by upstaging the experts so that he can disgorge more lies, brag about imaginary accomplishments, and yell at reporters. He will once again turn what was intended to be a platform for disseminating life and death information into a petty, partisan, political charade.

We know that Trump considers these affairs to be exclusively for his benefit because, when he ceased to be the lead character last April, the briefings themselves came to an abrupt end with Trump tweeting “What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions?”

The real question going forward is: What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the President lies, lavishes undeserved praise on himself, and petulantly insults and argues with the press? If Trump wants to stage more of his phony, self-serving briefings, fine. But the media has no obligation to provide live coverage of these brazenly political sideshows. They can send cameras and junior reporters to record the events, and then broadcast whatever was newsworthy (if anything) afterwards. But they must not allow themselves to be exploited again for Trump’s obvious reelection campaign purposes.

UPDATE: Trump’s return to the Coronavirus briefing was solo – no doctors or other experts were present. And one of the resons he stopped doing them was his tendency to say stupid shit like “inject bleach.” So in this briefing he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is is currently in jail on charges of sex trafficking. He wished her well.

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

Chicken Trump Flees Fake News Conference For Fear of Being Asked Questions

Posted by on July 2, 2020 at 12:17 pm. 4 Comments :

The character (or lack thereof) of Donald Trump is on display every day, and it isn’t a pretty picture. In addition to his pathological lying, infantile name-calling, flaming racism, and malignant narcissism, Trump also flaunts his unabashed weakness and cowardice. He is the first American “leader” who has actually bragged about being “the most fabulous whiner.”

Donald Trump Chicken

On Thursday morning Trump held something that he called a “news” conference to announce the details of the latest jobs report. However, it was nothing but a self-serving public statement wherein he spoke for a few minutes, then left without taking a single question. The reasons for that were obvious after a quick analysis of his remarks.

First of all, the jobs report had some surface level good news that 4.8 million people had returned to work in June. But looking just slightly below the surface reveals that this report is not at all encouraging. None of those jobs were newly created. They were all just a small fraction of workers being called back from furloughs. More troubling is the fact that there are still more than 30 million people unemployed. The unemployment rate of 11.1% is still higher than at the peak of the Great Recession. And there were 1.4 million new unemployment filings. That’s likely to increase significantly next month reflecting that more than half the country has reinstated lockdown rules due the surging coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s phony fifteen minute press conference may be the shortest of his presidency. And no wonder. He was clearly afraid to face questions from the free press that he maligns in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”. He was afraid he would be asked about coronavirus deaths nearing 130,000, and cases exceeding 50,000 in a single day for the first time. He was afraid he would be challenged on his lies about Russia paying bounties to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers. And Trump was surely scared about having to field specific questions about this jobs report. He’d rather just unload his spin, waddle off the stage, and get back to satisfying his Twitter and Fox News addictions.

Consequently, Trump said nothing about the Russian bounty story that is, without a doubt, the most flagrantly treasonous conduct ever alleged against a U.S. president. As for the pandemic that is reaching new and tragic heights of cases and fatalities, Trump dismissively referred to them as “hotspots,” continuing to downplay the peril that he still thinks will “disappear” by magic. “Now we’re opening it up,” Trump boasted, “and it’s opening up far faster than anyone even thought possible. And more successfully.” If this is his idea of “success,” let’s hope we never see what he would call failure.

It would be an understatement to say that things are going badly for Trump lately. His standing in the polls is lower than any incumbent president in modern times. Speculation is growing that he might choose to drop out of the race, even on Fox News. His cherished cult rallies aren’t drawing the throngs of adoring disciples that he requires to satiate his ravenous ego. So it’s likely that he will continue to be ducking out of the public eye for the foreseeable future. If there’s one thing that we can rely on, it’s that Trump is a coward who would rather skulk in his bunker than face the prospect of accountability for his failures and crimes.

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

Studies Prove that Watching Fox News Increases Coronavirus Fatalities

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

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

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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