Sean Hannity

Fox News Primetime Shows are So Offensive that Fox is Afraid to Sell them to Advertisers

Posted by on February 11, 2019 at 2:05 pm. 2 Comments :

There’s been a pretty steady stream of bad news lately for Fox News. Most prominent is the success of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, along with many of her colleagues. She has beaten her Fox competition, Sean Hannity, nearly every night since early November, after the midterm election. Fox is also hurting from the exodus of advertisers due to the racist commentaries of their featured hosts. And they can’t be happy about Donald Trump coming to their aid, with all the baggage he brings along.

Donald Trump Fox News

On top of that, Fox is embarrassing itself with ludicrous lies, flagrant Trump sycophancy, and hosts who brag that they have nauseating personal hygiene practices. And in the midst of these self-made messes, Fox has to pitch their network to advertisers in the upcoming “upfront” sales season when networks make their cases to the advertising community for the new year. Given their ratings failures and sinking reputation, Fox is going to have a hard time making their network seem appealing. According to Variety:

“Whether or not they watch Fox News Channel regularly, a lot of people talk about its primetime hosts: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. Now executives at the network hope to spark new conversation about its news anchors, like Martha MacCallum, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace.” […]

“Fox News sparks the new initiative at a time when its opinion programs have come under scrutiny from advertisers. Some sponsors have pulled their advertising from Tucker Carlson’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” or Laura Ingraham’s “The Ingraham Angle” after remarks made by the hosts in 2018 and amid subsequent protest from advocacy organizations.”

In other words, Fox is trying to downplay the programs hosted by their biggest stars during primetime, the most watched daypart. This is an unprecedented display of cowardice for a television network. It would be like CBS trying to downplay “The Big Bang Theory” and “CSI” in favor of some daytime game shows. Variety quotes a Fox advertising executive as saying that they want to press “against the notion that the network is only for conservatives.” It’s way too late for them to sell that nonsense. Fox doesn’t even use the “fair and balanced” slogan anymore. They ditched it for “Real News,” an obvious suck-up to Trump.

Everyone knows that Fox News is now just a surrogate for the White House. They have become the closest thing to State TV that America has ever known. And now the ad sales people think that advertisers can be fooled into believing that Fox is “transcending its own genre and becoming popular culture, thanks in part to the Trump presidency.”

But there are two problems with that theory. First, Trump is decidedly unpopular. He has record low approval ratings hovering in the upper thirties on most polls (despite Trump’s lame effort to convince people that he’s universally beloved). And secondly, by positioning the network as popular culture, Fox is admitting that they are not news.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention already knows that Fox hasn’t been a legitimate news network in years, if ever. They have few, if any, reputable journalists. They have never won a journalism award from the Pulitzers, the Emmys, or any other industry association. Their program hosts are more like cheerleaders for Trump, who actually appear on stage with him at his rallies.

The problem for Fox is that advertisers are not the sort of ignoramuses who watch Fox. They deal with multimillion dollar budgets and they know what they’re buying. By pretending that Fox isn’t the equivalent of Trump TV, their ad sales people will only be insulting the intelligence of the media buyers. And if Fox thinks that’s going to pump up sales, they’re as stupid as their audience – and their President.

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

Donald Trump Lamely Tries to Rescue ‘Failing’ Sean Hannity’s Arsekissing Hour on Fox News

Posted by on February 9, 2019 at 12:36 pm. NO Comments :

Donald Trump would not be president today were it not for the donation of millions of dollars of free airtime to his candidacy by Fox News. The broadcast of his hate-filled cult rallies in their entirety for the months preceding the election allowed Trump to disseminate his message of divisiveness and bigotry to an audience he would never have been able to reach otherwise.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Since the election Fox News has continued to serve Trump as his own personal propaganda outlet with hosts and guests who furiously defend everything he says and does, while fiercely attacking his critics. And he continues to get preferential treatment with regard to airtime and interviews. He has done more than forty interviews as president with Fox News, but zero with CNN and MSNBC. And he has another Fox interview next Monday with Laura Ingraham.

However, Trump’s biggest booster on Fox News is indisputably Sean Hannity, who has even appeared on stage at his rallies in violation of Fox News “standards,” such as they are. Hannity devotes most of his program to his sycophantic admiration for Trump and deranged conspiracy theories about everyone from Hillary Clinton to special counsel Robert Mueller. Last summer Hannity let two of Trump’s lawyers guest host his three hour radio show. And, of course, Trump has granted him more interviews than any other television personality.

None of that, however, has prevented Hannity’s show from declining in the ratings. What used to be the number program on cable news now loses on an almost nightly basis to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Hannity’s total ratings crashed nineteen percent since the midterms in November. His fall in the coveted, advertiser-friendly 25-54 year old demographic was a massive thirty percent. He is also suffering from an exodus af advertisers along with his colleagues Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham due to their offensive and racist rhetoric.

Consequently, Trump is coming to the rescue of his friend and “shadow” chief-of-staff. On Saturday morning Trump retweeted three of Hannity’s tweets that were typically flattering to the President. The first was an article from Hannity’s website about remarks by the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee concerning his opinion that no evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia has been found. That opinion was refuted by the ranking Democrat on the committee, but Trump wasn’t interested in that. Nor was he interested in the mountains of evidence found by the special counsel, other than to whine incessantly that it’s a hoax.

The second retweet was an article on Hannity’s website asserting that Ford was investing a billion dollars in two Chicago-area factories, and giving Trump credit for it. But as with every other announcement of this kind, it was either something that had been planned long before Trump was president, something that was merely a proposal with no guarantee, or something that would never actually come to pass. And none of that has ever stopped Trump from taking credit anyway.

The third retweet was Hannity’s posting of an article on TheHill by right-wing shill and Trump flunky, John Solomon. The article posited a ludicrous conspiracy theory that Rep. Adam Schiff, the new Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, had met secretly last year with GPS Fusion founder Glenn Simpson, whose company hired the author of the Steele Dossier. No such meeting ever took place, and the article provided no evidence of it. Nevertheless, Hannity posted it and Trump retweeted that posting.

Trump often live-tweets what he’s watching on Fox News. And by the frequency of it, he seems to do nothing else all day long. But he rarely posts multiple tweets in succession promoting a single program. Doing so now, at a time when Hannity’s show is sinking like a rock, seems like Trump is throwing a life preserver to his drowning pal. But this can’t possibly help. If Trump’s followers on Twitter aren’t already watching Hannity, they aren’t ever going to start now. And his retweets certainly aren’t going to slow the rapid growth of Maddow’s program.

The problem with Hannity’s show isn’t that there aren’t enough Trump supporters watching it. It’s that Hannity is a repugnant jerkwad whose asskissing is so tedious that even conservatives and Republicans are sickened by it. The problem is that Hannity offers the same noxious blend of lies and insults every night, aimed at the same “villains” he’s been attacking for years. His program is both annoyingly repetitive and presented by an angry mouth-breather who seems less coherent than the schizophrenic on the street corner shouting at passing cars. That has never been a winning formula for television viewing.

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

Fox News Primetime Shows are Bleeding Audience, Advertisers, and Revenue Due to Excessive Assholery

Posted by on February 7, 2019 at 12:59 pm. 7 Comments :

The news just keeps getting worse for Donald Trump’s favorite television network. Over the past three months Fox News has been thrashed in the Nielsen ratings by MSNBC, particularly by Rachel Maddow who has topped her competition, Sean Hannity, almost every night since the November midterm election.

Fox News, Titanic

Now TheWrap is reporting that Hannity’s primetime colleagues have problems of their own. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have both been the targets of advertiser boycotts as a result of commentaries that were especially loathsome. Not that their regular topics don’t routinely offend decent people. But even these weasels can cross lines that are impossible to ignore:

“According to an analysis for TheWrap by advertising data firm Standard Media Index, Fox News’ 10 p.m. slot, hosted by Ingraham, was down at least $16 million in ad revenue in 2018. Carlson’s show, which airs at 8 p.m., has lost another $2.2 million thanks to an ad boycott that began in December after he said mass immigration makes the U.S. ‘poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.'”

Tucker Carlson’s flagrant white nationalism has become a staple of his nightly program. It’s unconscionable that any advertisers continue to support him. But the exodus of ads has definitely proven to be more than a temporary setback. Carlson is currently is running about half of the ads he had prior to the boycott. And they have been replaced by unpaid Fox promos and public service announcements.

Laura Ingraham’s problems began after she attacked the survivors of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting. These are kids who suffered a nightmare that no one should ever face, but who Ingraham considered fair game for even more abuse. She is also notorious for her racist and elitist views, such as when she said that basketball legend and philanthropist LeBron James should “shut up and dribble.” Now her advertisers have also been cut in half.

Fox News is standing behind their repugnant hosts. They insist that they will not be bullied by lefties like Media Matters and Sleeping Giants. What’s more, they contend that they haven’t lost any revenue as a result of these boycotts because the ads were merely “shifted to other dayparts.” That’s an outright lie. It would mean that the other programs had unsold ad inventory that these ads could be slipped into. But even if they do, that means they still lost money because they were only replacing one ad for another. Additionally, an ad in primetime costs much more than other dayparts, so such shifting would require those ads to be discounted.

And that’s not all. With MSNBC taking the number one spot in most of the primetime cable news market, Fox News would have to lower their ad rates because advertisers aren’t going pay a premium for a number two network. And with that change in leadership comes an even bigger problem for Fox. Like every cable channel, Fox News makes most of its profits through licensing fees from cable system operators. They currently have a very lucrative contract that was negotiated at the height of their ratings success. Now that they are no longer the leader, those contracts will decline in value when they are up for renewal.

All of this is due to Fox’s determination to advance a radical right-wing agenda and to serve as the State TV mouthpiece for Donald Trump. It’s an unsustainable business model as the nation wakes up from its temporary lapse in judgement and rejects Trump and the sycophantic, cult-like GOP that he commandeered.

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

The midterm election that produced a historic shift in party control in the House of Representatives was just the beginning. And as the legal consequences of Trump’s criminal and treasonous activities unfold, Fox is going to find itself in ever deeper trenches of muck. That’s surely not going boost their bottom line.

Trump Has ‘No Confidence’ in the Intelligence Chiefs He Appointed, But Relies Heavily on Fox News

Posted by on January 31, 2019 at 1:45 pm. 4 Comments :

The United States is undergoing a unique adventure in surreal governance. Its president has assembled a team of advisors and cabinet department heads that he is publicly assailing as ignorant and lacking the knowledge and abilities to perform the jobs to which he appointed them. Donald Trump is literally calling his own Intelligence chiefs incompetent.

Donald Trump

This is the sort of breakdown that would be laughably unbelievable in political fiction. If Trump has such little respect for the people he appointed, why does he keep them in their jobs? Wouldn’t a sane president remove people who he thought were getting everything wrong so that they wouldn’t continue to put the country at risk? Would a mentally stable leader tweet that his “Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive,” and then follow that up with another tweet saying that they “should go back to school,” and then allow them to keep their highly sensitive jobs in national security?

Trump was long ago proven to be a malignant narcissist who regards himself as the most brilliant expert at whatever he happens to be talking about at the moment. Despite having evaded military service with five phony deferments, he said that he knows more about military affairs than “his” generals. And on Thursday morning when he was asked a question about his Intelligence team, it resulted in this bizarre exchange (video below):

Reporter: Do you have confidence with [CIA Director] Gina Haspel and [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats to give you good advice?
Trump: No, I disagree with certain things that they said. I think I’m right, but time will prove that. Time will prove me right, probably.

So Trump has no confidence in his CIA director or his director of National Intelligence. And he followed that up with a rambling array of nonsense regarding Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and North Korea. Literally none of it had any resemblance to reality. Trump has cloaked himself in a shroud of fantastical fiction that he either has convinced himself is true, or is deliberately lying about in order to advance some perverse narrative that is contrary to the interests of the nation. When John Brennan, a former CIA director who had the confidence of his boss, heard about Trump’s remarks, he tweeted that it “shows the extent of [his] intellectual bankruptcy” and that “All Americans, especially members of Congress, need to understand the danger [Trump] poses to our national security.”

So if Trump isn’t getting his advice on these critical issues from the experts he appointed, where is he getting it? Is it coming from his pal Vladimir Putin, with whom he’s been meeting in secret without any other Americans present to record their conversation or refer it to professionals for analysis? Or is he getting it from his shadow cabinet at Fox News: Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Steve Doocy, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, etc.? Could there be a more pathetic batch of know-nothings in such positions of power?

Thursday afternoon Trump returned to his Twittering to announce that he had a meeting and that everything was now copacetic with his intelligence team. He said that the media “mischaracterized” what they said during the Senate hearing on Wednesday. But it was Trump who said that he had “no confidence” in his team, not the press. And he’s been saying it for quite a while. These tweets are obviously an attempt to repair the damage his big mouth got him into. But anyone who’s buying it is terminally naive.

In the end, it’s America that is losing out by Trump’s reliance on foreign adversaries and propaganda shills at State TV (aka Fox News). Trump is selling out the nation for reasons that are not fully known yet, but probably have something to do with his indebtedness to Russian oligarchs, his clandestine conspiracy with Kremlin operatives to steal the election, or some other means by which he has been compromised and forced to serve as a puppet to our foes. And at this point, the only reason that the Intelligence community hasn’t resigned en masse is that they feel a patriotic duty to shield the country from the potential harm that Trump represents as its most virulent national security threat.

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

Rachel Maddow Leads MSNBC to a January Freeze-Out of Sean Hannity and State TV (aka Fox News)

Posted by on January 30, 2019 at 10:11 am. 6 Comments :

The new year has started off with big bang for MSNBC and its star anchor Rachel Maddow. For the past couple months her program has been smothering her Fox News competition, Sean Hannity. It began immediately after the midterm election on November 6th and hasn’t slowed down since. And January’s results confirm that it was no fluke. Maddow has definitely caught fire and her sharp analysis and engaging manner of unfolding complex subjects is clearly winning over viewers.

Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity

Some of the highlights from the January Nielsen ratings include that Maddow was the number one non-sports show on all of cable, not just just news programming. She dominated in both total audience and the advertiser friendly 25-54 demographic. Her success helped drive up the performance of her primetime colleagues Lawrence O’Donnell and Brian Williams. In fact, that bloc of programming won every hour for the entire month.

Maddow’s show contributed to MSNBC’s impressive audience growth. It gained fourteen percent in total day, and six percent in prime time versus January 2018. During the same time period Fox News declined significantly. It’s total day viewership was down eleven percent. In primetime Fox News lost ten percent. And those numbers were even worse for in the 25-54 demo: down twenty-one percent total day, and twenty percent in the demo.

Almost as satisfying as Maddow’s success is the failure of Fox’s Sean Hannity. Once the unchallenged cable news champ, Hannity’s total ratings crashed nineteen percent since the midterms in November. His fall in the demo was a massive thirty percent. His Fox News lead-in, Tucker Carlson, didn’t fare any better. He was Fox’s top program, but he trailed Maddow by seventeen percent in total audience, and by nineteen percent in the demo. It’s a relief to know that America’s television viewers are recognizing the hatred and racism that emanates from the likes of Carlson and Hannity and are changing the channel.

What’s more, Carlson and Laura Ingraham are suffering from an advertiser exodus due to their offensive positions. Carlson mainly for his open advocacy of white nationalism. And Ingraham for her attacks on the kids from Parkland, Florida, who survived the school shooting last year. So their shows are not only losing viewers, but they aren’t making any money either.

In addition to the solid wins by Maddow, there was good news in January’s numbers for the rest of the MSNBC roster. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and The 11th Hour with Brian Williams were both number one in both total audience and the demo. Morning Joe rose fourteen percent while its competition, Fox and Friends, sunk ten percent. Hardball was number one in total viewers. And the programs hosted by Chris Hayes, Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle, Hallie Jackson, Craig Melvin, Andrea Mitchell, Ali Velshi, and Katy Tur all posted record numbers. One particular standout was Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace, which was number one in total viewers, beating perennial Fox News host Neil Cavuto.

The days of Fox News dominating the cable news ratings are definitely over. And thanks for that should go to Rachel Maddow for redefining how a successful news program can be produced. She does not follow the daily tweetstorming of the President, and never hosts panels of belligerent partisans yelling over each other. She presents detailed examinations of serious issues in an honest and accessible way, and respects her audience.

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

But some thanks should also go to Donald Trump for behaving like a loathsome cretin whose flagrant lies are driving away whatever few rational thinkers are still left watching Fox News. Those who remain are the barrel-bottom crud who enjoy wallowing in ignorance and will never be pried loose from their cult worship.

Trump’s Braintrust (Fox News) is Pushing Him to Declare a National Emergency to Get His Border Wall

Posted by on January 11, 2019 at 12:07 pm. 4 Comments :

The presidency of Donald Trump has distinguished itself for its hostility to the media and the Constitution’s protection of a free press. His tedious whining about “fake news” and his Stalinist references to the media as “the enemy of the people” are evidence of his desire to poison the public’s minds in order to suppress criticism of him and his administration.

Donald Trump, Fox News

That said, no president has ever been more closely intertwined with a media enterprise than Trump is with Fox News. Before his election he was a regularly scheduled contributor to Fox and Friends with a segment called “Mondays with Trump.” He limits his interviews to Fox News on a nearly exclusive basis. His administration is infested with former Fox News staffers. They include: Deputy Chief of Staff, Bill Shine, who was the president of the network before being fired for mishandling incidents of sexual harassment; ambassador to the United Nations nominee, Heather Nauert, a former Fox host; National Security Advisor, John Bolton, an ex-Fox contributor.

In addition, Trump employs current Fox News anchors as his de facto cabinet, getting advice on everything from the economy to military engagements, to taxes and more. Sean Hannity is reported to talk with the President almost every night before bedtime. Lou Dobbs is often on conference call during Oval Office meetings. Jeanine Pirro is a favorite consultant on legal matters. And Trump is frequently live-tweeting whatever he happens to be watching on Fox, day and night.

Recently, Trump was prepared to sign a bipartisan bill to keep the government open. But when Fox Newsies heard that it didn’t provide funding for his idiotic vanity wall, they went berserk. Subsequently, Trump reversed course, and now we find ourselves in what is about to become the longest government shutdown in history. Which makes it all the more troubling that many of Trump’s Fox faves are now imploring him to declare a national emergency as a tactic to fund the wall that has nothing to do with any emergency, and that most Americans oppose. For instance, as reported by Media Matters:

Sean Hannity: So, with the president speaking, I’m guessing he’s going to declare a national emergency. […] victims of crime happening in this country, that should be enough of a national emergency.

Lou Dobbs: This is the president of the United States. He says a wall should be built; that it’s a national emergency. At that point, the nation should rally behind him. […] It is a national emergency, it is a crisis, and there could be no rational disputation of that.

Lou Dobbs (again): I really believe that the way forward here is for him to declare a national emergency, and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country.

Stuart Varney: I think this total refusal to negotiate has pushed the president to the point where he has to declare an emergency on the border.

Rush Limbaugh: And so they empowered the executive branch with the National Emergencies Act. He can confiscate private businesses, if he wants. All he has to do is declare it a national emergency.

Gregg Jarrett: The National Emergency Act authorizes the president to declare an emergency, and nobody can second-guess him. He has unfettered authority. […] he can use the military, redirect them for construction of an unauthorized project, whatever it is, the president wants it to be. That can be the barrier wall, and nobody can stop him from doing it.

Bob Bianchi (Fox guest): To me, politically, it makes perfect sense. [for Trump to] invoke my powers as the president under the National Emergency Act and under one of these sub-acts that allows me to move funds around to build this border wall.

Tom Fitton (on Tucker Carlson Tonight): It is a national emergency when we have a thousand plus miles of unsecured border in our southern area without any ability to figure out who’s coming across. We know the terrorists are targeting [the] southern border.

Considering how gullible Trump is, and how easily influenced he is by his Fox News brain(?) trust, it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll declare a national emergency. However, contrary to the ravings of Trump and Fox, he does not have unfettered authority to do so. It will undoubtedly be challenged in court. And since the facts don’t support any claim to a crisis, he’ll almost certainly lose. In the meantime, millions of people are hurt and the nation is stifled by Trump’s ignorance and ego. Hopefully that can all be avoided by Congress waking up and doing the right thing. But given the abdication of its civic duty, Mitch McConnell’s Senate has to be considered a long shot.

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

Rachel Maddow Beats Her Fox News Competition Every Single Day for the Whole Month of December

Posted by on January 3, 2019 at 11:57 am. 2 Comments :

The new year is beginning with an incredible boost from the remarkable performance of Rachel Maddow’s program on MSNBC. She has been dominating her Fox New competition, Sean Hannity, ever since the midterm election in early November. But her numbers for December are truly spectacular and may indicate a monumental shift.

Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, Fox News

The success of Maddow’s program may even be getting to Donald Trump. While he has never tweeted about her since becoming president, he did run an ad on Facebook that featured her as his top nemesis. Trump is notoriously frightened by strong women (see his fearful behavior around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). And he has good reason to be scared of Maddow. Her program provides some of the most incisive, detailed accounts of Trump’s criminality and analyses of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. That attention to the facts in a comprehensible form has paid off for Maddow.

The Nielsen ratings for The Rachel Maddow Show have exceeded in almost every way possible. She beat the Sean Hannity show every single day for the entire month of December. Granted, he was on vacation for a small part of that time, but so was she. The numbers weren’t even close. Maddow topped Hannity by a whopping forty-seven percent in total viewers. She also whooped him by twenty-one percent in the all-important advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds.

What’s more, Maddow powered MSNBC to historic highs. The network was the third most-watched channel in primetime for all of cable TV, not just cable news. And it was the second most-watched basic cable network across the 24-hour day for 2018. It was the only network that posted double-digit growth over the prior year. And it was number one among African-American viewers for the year.

The rest of the MSNBC schedule also enjoyed record ratings. Lawrence O’Donnell, Brian Williams, and Nicole Wallace regularly beat their time-period competitors. And the dayside programs with Katy Tur, Andrea Mitchell, Ali Velshi, Stephanie Ruhle, Chris Hayes, etc., leaped to new highs. And all of this happened while Fox News either declined or made impotent gains of one or two percent.

This should inform the rest of the media that intelligent, honest, reporting and analysis is a winning programming strategy. The public is tired of deliberately hostile panels and ridiculous attempts to balance facts with lies and nonsense. And as the new year progresses with more revelations from Mueller and the expected oversight hearings in the new Congress, the media needs to rise to the occasion and fulfill its obligations to the people.

That means rejecting Trump’s anti-constitutional assaults on the free press that he frames in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” Maddow proves that when the press respects the principles of ethical journalism, rather than devolving into State TV flunkies (aka Fox News) the people will reward them them with their viewership, trust, and loyalty.

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

Elizabeth Warren Slams the Fox News ‘Echo Chamber’ of ‘Fear and Hate’ in Presidential Campaign Video

Posted by on December 31, 2018 at 11:35 am. 1 Comments :

On the precipice of a new year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released a video (below) announcing that she is forming an exploratory committee to test the waters for a prospective presidential campaign. She is the first of what will likely be a big pool of Democratic hopefuls seeking to cast out Donald Trump in 2020 – if he makes it that far (Mueller?).

Elizabeth Warren, Fox News

Notable in her video was the fact that she didn’t mention Trump’s name once. That will surely drive him nuts. There’s nothing he craves more than hearing his own name in pretty much any context. But she concentrated on bread-and-butter issues of importance to America’s middle class families. For instance, she laid out a platform that directly addresses the threat of corporatism and income inequality:

“I spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster. And what I found was terrifying. These aren’t cracks that families are falling into. They’re traps. America’s middle class is under attack. How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie.”

Warren went on to link the political class to the problems that Americans are experiencing. She noted that the one-percenters “enlisted politicians [and] crippled unions.” to achieve their self-serving goals. And she pointedly stated that “Today corruption is poisoning our democracy.” She may not have said Trump’s name, but he was ever-present in her remarks.

It was also encouraging to see that Warren wasn’t shy about holding Fox News accountable for their contribution to the decline of Western Civilization. She took on the wealthy elites and Fox News saying forthrightly that:

“The whole scam is propped up by an echo chamber of fear and hate designed to distract and divide us.”

While she spoke those words there were images of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Fox and Friends, and Laura Ingraham prominently displayed. She got in the whole primetime lineup, plus Trump’s favorite Fox News morning show.

This is the kind of fearless honesty that will be needed to beat Trump (or whatever GOP hack runs in his place) in 2020. You can rest assured that Fox News will there to advance the lies and hostility of the Republican agenda and defeat the champions of unfettered democracy who are fighting for the welfare of the majority of American citizens.

The Trump presidency has shown us that the GOP couldn’t care less about ordinary people, honest representation, or the rule of law. But it has also shown us that there are voters who are susceptible to flagrant deception and who are willing – even eager – to be lied to. They are the rubes that Fox News is designed to corral into the GOP camp. And the rest of us need to be alert and engaged in order to preserve our country and the democracy that it pioneered.

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

Scared Bro? Trump is Featuring Rachel Maddow in His Phony ‘Media Accountability’ Come-Ons

Posted by on December 14, 2018 at 11:58 am. 3 Comments :

Throughout his public life – and especially while president – Donald Trump has demonstrated what an awful poker player he would be. He has what pros call a “a tell” that gives away what cards he’s holding. And for the most part, Trump is holding a hand that is panic full of fear. He displays that on a nearly daily (hourly?) basis with his insipid “Witch Hunt” tweets and his frantic attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller.

Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow

Of course, Trump is also squarely focused on the media that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” His frightened reaction to every new disclosure of wrongdoing by him or his crime family is obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention. And the more he attacks CNN or the New York Times or whatever reporter happens to ask him the probing question of the day, the more he reveals what’s scaring him the most at that moment.

So what’s clearly scaring Trump now is MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” reelection committee just posted an ad Facebook that asks his dimwitted cult followers to take a survey, and Rachel Maddow is featured in the ad’s graphic, although not in the video to which it links. She’s the bait for this campaign that implores his fans to “Take the Survey.”

The alleged “survey,” however, is an old marketing trick aimed at getting respondents to sign up and divulge personal information, including their email addresses. These are later used to beg for donations and organize political events. The results of the fake survey are never published, and if they were they wouldn’t have any real value due to the smarmy tactics used to lure respondents. Like everything else Trump does, it is hardly scientific.

So what’s the news that has triggered Trump’s assault on Maddow, someone he rarely even mentions? Right now Maddow is perhaps the most insightful and effective commentator on Trump’s exploding legal problems. She is dissecting them in a coherent and relatable manner. But is that enough to set him off. After all, he has never tweeted about her since becoming president. Although he did retweet his son Eric once, nearly a year ago. And that retweet contains a clue:

Trump is very concerned about his friend, and “shadow” chief of staff, Sean Hannity. Lately Maddow has been beating the pants off of Hannity. She has dominated him in the ratings ever since the election last month. So far in December she has beaten him every single day in both total viewers and the all-important advertising demo of 25-54 year olds. So it looks like Trump is rushing in to rescue the floundering Hannity. Or maybe someone at Fox News reached out for this aid.

Let’s not forget that the former president of Fox News, Bill Shine (who was fired for mishandling the sexual misconduct of Fox CEO Roger Ailes and host Bill O’Reilly) is now Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Or that Shine was Hannity’s producer before being bumped up to the executive suites. So it isn’t particularly surprising that Maddow would suddenly appear as the face of the “Mainstream Media … out to bring down [his] Administration.” In reality, he’s doing that pretty much on his own. Maddow is merely providing a factual chronicle of the criminal path that Trump chose for himself. But consistent with his warped character flaws, he’s determined to blame it on someone – anyone – else.

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

It’s Official! Lou Dobbs is the Undisputed “Most Deranged Lunatic” on Fox News for 2018

Posted by on December 5, 2018 at 11:27 am. 5 Comments :

The competition was fierce. With perennial Fox News favorites like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and the rabidly incoherent “Judge” Jeanine Pirro vying for the title, a longshot contender has emerged from the pack for a clear and unchallenged victory. Congratulations to Lou Dobbs.

Fox News, Lou Dobbs

While no one can dismiss the efforts by Hannity to relentlessly defend Donald Trump from any and all criticism, even to the point of appearing at his cult rallies to make his endorsement in public, it wasn’t enough. And Carlson’s ceaseless support for the white nationalism that is the foundation of Trump’s base wasn’t enough either. All of it, including the infantile babbling from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, failed to knock Dobbs from his well deserved perch. Because how can you compete with material like this:

Charles Hurt, Washington Times: This is the entire problem that all of these people have. They all have been – have been peddling this fear-mongering, the end of the world nonsense.
Dobbs: Actually, the United Nations really wants to go a little bit beyond being a, if you will, a debate club. They’d like to take over the world. And they see the perfect opportunity in global warming. […] despite the fact that there is great, great debate over whether there is that quote-unquote “warming.”

That’s right. The United Nations is actively pursuing a plot of world domination. And their dastardly scheme is centered on a determination to prevent the Earth from becoming inhospitable for living creatures. How underhanded and devious of them. And Dobbs calls out these villains who he says are ignoring the “great, great debate” about the reality of climate change that is currently raging among the three percent of scientists (and 97% of Fox News shills) who deny that it’s happening. But this alone wouldn’t have secured Dobbs this great honor. He also unleashed this epic idiocy:

Dobbs: What in hell is wrong with the American people that they don’t understand this president deserves their support because he is trying to protect their lives and that of their children? […] Why shouldn’t it be frustrating to the American people to see [Trump] assailed every day? You’re watching in Robert Mueller a man trying to kill him.

Those damn American people! Somebody needs to put an end to them. Maybe the U.N. Dobbs also wondered why every preacher and history teacher isn’t talking about this and he ranted that “higher education is indoctrinating American students to become left-wing radicals.” That’s wrong because, according to Dobbs, they should should be indoctrinating those kids to worship Trump the Protector.

But worst of all, Dobbs has revealed the clandestine plot by the leader of the “Deep State” conspiracy, special counsel Robert Mueller, to actually assassinate the President. Why isn’t anyone else talking about this? Isn’t it obvious that Mueller is maneuvering himself and his “Band of Angry Democrats” (as Trump calls them) into position to shoot his lethal legal filings and deadly facts straight at Trump’s bulbous, yet empty head?

Lou Dobbs really does deserve credit for beating out some pretty darn tough competitors for this honor. The “Most Deranged Lunatic” on Fox News was never going to be an easy award to capture. But Dobbs rose to the occasion and he’s entitled to all the of the attention and ridicule that comes with it.

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