Coronavirus

BAD FOR AMERICA! Trump Delights In the Suffering of American Workers and Business

Posted by on April 6, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 3 Comments :

In times of crisis, the American people want and expect their leaders to exhibit wisdom and compassion. Difficult problems require both intelligence and judgment to resolve, and at least the appearance of sympathy for the hardships facing the average citizen. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is just such a circumstance. Unfortunately, the United States is currently stuck with Donald Trump who has none of these qualities.

Donald Trump Climate Change

The single most reliable feature of Trump’s character (or lack thereof) is his unflinching determination to always do only what is best for him. This selfishness is evident in his reckless and greed-driven proposals to “reopen” the country before any public health expert considers it safe. It’s obvious in his obsession with the polls and TV ratings that define his self-worth. There is virtually nothing that Trump addresses in his Coronavirus Task Force briefings (that he has hijacked and turned into 2020 reelection events) that isn’t directly attached to his personal welfare.

On Monday morning, while the nation was trying to cope with ever more troubling news concerning the spreading pandemic, Trump was, as usual, manning his Twitter machine and pounding out dangerous falsehoods, childish platitudes, and tributes to himself. Among the tweets that he posted was one that was particularly offensive:

What’s “bad for America” is a president who repeatedly maligns the free press in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” It’s fair to say that it’s also bad when a president is so stupid that he doesn’t understand that all businesses are presently struggling due to a virtual economic shutdown made necessary by Trump’s negligence and incompetence. Among the businesses that are experiencing financial difficulties are those owned by Trump. In fact, many are currently closed and his net worth has declined by thirty percent.

However, what’s truly repulsive about this tweet is that Trump is openly gleeful that American media companies are being hurt financially along with the rest of the country. These are businesses whose mission is to keep the American people informed, sometimes at great risk to themselves. This is especially difficult when the president is a pathological liar. But they are also businesses that employ tens of thousands of Americans. Clearly Trump couldn’t care less about these people, their families, and communities.

It’s further proof of Trump’s ignorance that he doesn’t know whether the press is suffering financially because of the quality of their reporting or the impact of a global pandemic. Trump is just exploiting the issue to bash the media, which prior to this coronavirus outbreak was having a banner year in both viewership and revenue. And it must be driving him crazy(er) knowing that according to most polls, the American people still trust the media more than they trust Trump.

It’s that public disapproval that is likely contributing to Trump’s downward spiraling emotional state. Not only has Trump not enjoyed a sustained “rally round the flag” polling bounce, he is at a four month low (44%) with his favorite, unabashedly biased, right-wing pollster, Rasmussen. That’s gotta hurt. But it shouldn’t hurt so much that it drives Trump to celebrate the misfortune of thousands of American workers. That’s on Trump.

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

Why is Trump So Desperate to ‘Reopen’ the Country? His Net Worth Has Dropped 30%

Posted by on April 5, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 8 Comments :

For at least two months Donald Trump negligently ignored the mortal threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) posed to the people of the United States and the world. He mocked its lethal consequences, dismissed its capacity to spread, and lied to the American people when he said that it was “under control” and would soon go away by itself.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

Compounding his lies at the outset of the outbreak, Trump later tried to boast that he always took the threat seriously and even called it a pandemic before others were doing so. Not only is that brazenly false, it would actually be even more damning if true. It would mean that he recognized the danger early on, but failed to act.

Eventually it became impossible for Trump to pretend that there wasn’t a severe public health hazard on his hands. So he assembled a Coronavirus Task Force to address the problem, but then decided against letting them do their job. He hijacked the daily briefings and turned them into campaign events for his 2020 reelection. And our reality TV game show president assessed their value by tracking the Nielsen ratings, as if they were an indicator of his popularity. They most definitely are not.

As the fallout from the pandemic escalated, Trump noticed that it was having a negative effect on the economy. And that’s when his concern kicked into high gear. On March 4, just as the stock market began it’s historic slide, Trump floated a proposal to “reopen” the country by Easter, a date that no public health expert would endorse. By March 24, the day after the stock market had completed a decline of 11,000 points from its recent high only a month prior, he began using reckless and callous rhetoric about not allowing “the cure to be worse than the problem.” That suggests that he believes a weak economy is worse than tens of thousands of people dying.

Trump repeatedly insisted that the nation must return to business as usual within a timeline that was grossly unrealistic. The question is: Why was Trump so adamant about this? Did he really have compassion for the working people of the country who were being subjected to such brutal hardship? Was he worried about the future health of the corporations that support much of the economic infrastructure of the nation?

Doubtful. Trump has never expressed any such sympathies during his term as president or his decades in public life prior to that. It’s unlikely he had some sort of personal epiphany that altered his life-long character, or lack thereof. No, the real reason is the one that is the most obvious.

It is now being reported that Trump’s personal net worth has declined by about a billion dollars. That would represent approximately 30% of his fortune as estimated by Forbes. It’s difficult to provide a precise estimate because after three years as President, Trump still refuses to release his taxes. There must be something truly hideous in there.

Trump’s assets are predominantly in commercial and residential real estate, hotel licensing and management, and golf courses. All of these businesses are especially vulnerable to the consumer pullback caused by the “stay at home” orders issued in at least 42 states in order to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic spread. So it isn’t just coincidence that Trump’s concern crept up just as the economy slumped down. As reported…

“It’s unusual for Trump to lose money because of his presidency. He’s used his position to promote his hotels and resorts, even going so far as to try to host the next G7 summit at the Trump National Doral golf resort near Miami. The Secret Service often stays on Trump properties when the president is on vacation, paying room and board directly to the president’s private business, sometimes as much as $650 per night for a single room. Of course, the hotel industry has been one of the hardest hit by the global economic downturn—including the Trumps’ DC hotel, which had a steady revenue stream from foreign governments looking to curry favor with the American president, and was up for sale up until the current economic crisis.”

Prior to the emergence of the coronavirus, Trump frequently tried to pressure the Federal Reserve Board to lower interest rates. His stated intent was that it would give a boost to the economy. The truth is that Trump was only seeking to reduce his own fiscal burden. He is carrying more than $350 million dollars in variable rate loans from Deutsche Bank and other lenders. So he benefits significantly when rates go down. He also hoped that such a move would juice the stock market which would aid his reelection prospects. But when the Fed did cut rates, the market nosedived, recognizing that it was a sign of trouble ahead in the form of a recession or worse. Trump’s flagrantly self-serving pestering of the Fed backfired.

So whenever you hear Trump whine about how “our country wasn’t built to be shut down” – a bizarre comment that implies that other countries were built for that – remember that Trump’s concern was only triggered with a conspicuous connection to his own financial welfare. The American people do need the country to return to its former stability and growth as quickly as possible. But first they need to ensure the health of themselves, their families, and their communities. And Trump’s rush to superficially attend to the economy, at the expense of public health, must be seen for what it is: unvarnished, self-serving greed.

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

How Does Trump Have Time to Post Dozens of Tweets During a Raging Pandemic?

Posted by on April 4, 2020 at 2:29 pm. 5 Comments :

It’s Saturday and time once again for the regularly scheduled Trump Tweetstorm. On this episode, our reality TV game show president posted fifty (50!) self-serving, lie-riddled, insult-laden tweets, all before mid-afternoon.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

It’s bad enough that the American president finds it necessary to constantly lash out with such childish egocentrism on a frivolous social media site. But during a pandemic that is causing hundreds of thousands of illnesses in the country, and thousands of deaths, it is mind-boggling that he even has the time. Trump has never been a particularly efficient manager, having spent more time playing golf than any other president. And that’s when he isn’t watching Fox News or staging cult rallies. But you would think that his days would now be consumed with finding ways to mitigate the hardship – physical, emotional, and financial – that our fellow citizens are enduring.

Instead, Trump is tweeting interminably. With 50 tweets in seven hours (that’s about a tweet every eight minutes), Trump really needs to explain how that benefits a nation in distress. And you also need to factor in the time it took him to read the content that he’s retweeting prior to posting it.

Among this morning’s retweets were eight by John Solomon, a disgraced, ultra right-wing conspiracy crackpot. But even more egregious, there were 16 tweets that featured Trump’s daughter Ivanka. They covered a variety of subjects, but were mostly attempts to pay tribute to her and whatever project she’s pretending to be involved with. That’s a lot of tribute to someone who is only in the White House because of her family name.

The tweeting appears to have stopped just as Trump took to the podium at today’s Coronavirus Task Force briefing. Unfortunately, these briefings have not served their purpose from the start. Trump has hijacked them to boost his 2020 reelection campaign. So he commandeers the microphone to exalt himself, malign his critics, and shout manically at the press.

In fact, Trump opened today’s briefing by haranguing the media in some vague sense without ever explaining what he’s talking about. He later spent several minutes defending his firing of the intelligence community Inspector General, which led into several more minutes lying about the conversation wherein he extorted the president of Ukraine to get dirt on Joe Biden. Again, this obsession with himself does nothing to advance the fight against the coronavirus.

The bottom line is that we have a president who is flagrantly negligent. A competent leader wouldn’t have time to cast himself as the star of a daily press conference. He wouldn’t have time to bicker with reporters for whom he harbors a bitter hatred. And he surely wouldn’t have time to tweet dozens of times, predominantly about his own daughter, while the American people are suffering.

We need a president who will assemble the best and brightest experts to attack this pandemic, and then let them do that while he attends to a bigger picture agenda and the multitude of other presidential responsibilities. Trump has dropped the ball on virtually everything. And with respect to COVID-19 that has been a deadly dereliction of duty.

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

Trump’s Approval Goes Down in Flames, After He Bragged About Rising Polls

Posted by on April 3, 2020 at 12:25 pm. 9 Comments :

Let’s face it, Donald Trump proves every day that the only thing he really cares about is Donald Trump. He rarely talks about anything other than his hyper-inflated self-adoration, and how magnificent he believes he is at whatever he does. He even wasted time during what was supposed to be a Coronavirus Task Force briefing (but which he has hijacked to exploit for his 2020 reelection campaign), to falsely claim that he’s number one on Facebook. He’s not (Trump has 29 million followers vs. Obama’s 53 million).

Flaming Trump

Trump frequently tries to justify himself with references to his polling. More often than not he either lies or cherry picks results that appeal to him. He has been leaning on that obvious PR tactic extra heavily in recent days. And while a couple of polls have shown some small improvements, they were short-lived and easily explained as some respondents exhibit the “rally round the flag” syndrome common to times of great distress.

Nevertheless, Trump continues to fluff himself with bogus boasts about his imaginary popularity. On Thursday, while complaining about a proposed congressional coronavirus oversight committee, Trump once again congratulated himself for fake numbers:

“It’s witch hunt, after witch hunt, after witch hunt. […] and we want to fight for American lives, not waste time and build up my poll numbers. Because that’s all their doing.”

What Trump has still yet to learn (among so many other things) is that if you live by the poll, you can die by it as well. On Friday morning, Trump’s favorite pollster, the rabidly right-wing Rasmussen Reports, delivered the lowest approval rating they have recorded for Trump in four months: 44% versus 53% disapproval. That’s sharply down from 48-50% the day before. And this is by the pollster that reliably delivers the most pro-Trump numbers, and after Trump’s daily COVID-19 unreality show.

What’s more, the “rally round the flag” syndrome seems to have already fizzled. An ABC News/Ipsos poll asked Americans what they thought of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus response. A majority of 52% said they disapprove of his management of the deadly outbreak, while only 47% approve. That’s a deep dive from the previous poll that had a majority approving (55-43%).

This is the sort of news that will drive Trump crazy. His gargantuan and tender ego can’t handle criticism of any kind. He is likely to lash out at the pollsters and the media outlets that publish the data. And while he can’t escape the truth, he’s going to try. For instance, a few days ago he tried to take credit for high Nielsen ratings for the Task Force briefings. Never mind that there are at least as many Trump opponents as supporters who tune in to get information from experts like Dr. Fauci.

Trump’s attempts to console himself with false and flattering representations of reality will just look more pathetic with each attempt. The American people are united in their distrust of whatever Trump says about COVID-19 (or anything else). Even worse from Trump’s perspective is that they trust the media more. And they do not appear ready to reassess that opinion as his negligence, incompetence, callousness, and failure is more evident with each passing day.

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

GOP and Fox News Oppose Coronavirus Oversight Committee

Posted by on April 2, 2020 at 2:56 pm. 6 Comments :

Last week Congress approved a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. It’s the largest congressional appropriation of any kind in United States history. You might think that this sort of government expenditure would produce bipartisan agreement on a means to ensure that these funds are spent effectively with an emphasis on providing the greatest benefit for the people and businesses impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

Unfortunately, the political harmony that ought to accompany efforts to allocate these funds never materialized. Almost immediately there was opposition from Republicans in Congress, and their official Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, to a proposed House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis. This committee would just be responsible for oversight going forward. It is not the sort of investigative committee that would seek to understand how the crisis developed and how to avoid similar tragedies in the future (which Reps. Bennie Thompson and Adam Schiff are exploring).

Nevertheless, the featured story on the Fox News website carried a blatantly biased headline reading “Pelosi Power Play: New House coronavirus oversight committee will have ability to subpoena Trump administration.”

The clear intention of that language was to spin the proposed committee as a Democratic effort to harm Trump. It characterizes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a power monger who intends to hector Trump with subpoenas. In fact, the committee will be a bipartisan panel aimed at protecting taxpayer funds and ensuring that the people’s best interests are served. Pelosi’s announce says in part…

“We have no higher priority than making sure the money gets to those working families – struggling to pay rent and put food on the table – who need it most. The panel will root out waste, fraud, and abuse. It will protect against price gouging and profiteering. It will press to ensure that the federal response is based on the best possible science and guided by the nation’s best health experts.

“The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis will be bipartisan and have an expert staff. The committee will be empowered to examine all aspects of the federal response to the coronavirus to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being wisely and efficiently spent to save lives, deliver relief and benefit our economy.”

That hardly seems controversial. Both parties should be supporting the objectives of this committee. And yet, Republicans in congress are already complaining on partisan grounds. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wasted no time complaining that he thought the committee would be “really redundant,” and expressed his opposition to the appointment of Rep. Jim Clyburn as chairman. Greg Walden, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the select committee a “mistake,” and “costly.” Apparently he thinks that the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse, would be less costly.

The need for oversight of federal spending shouldn’t be so contentious. However, there are those who are simply averse to being held accountable. Notable among them is the President, who regards any practical supervision as an intrusion on his perceived authority. When asked about the lack of accountability in an early draft of the relief bill, Trump laughably told reporters that “I’ll be the oversight.” No one in their right mind would be comfortable with that. Trump is forbidden from running a charity after a court found that his family foundation was misusing funds. His “university” was shuttered, and he paid out millions in compensation, after it was ruled to be fraudulent. He’s declared bankruptcy at least six times.

When Trump signed the relief bill, he included a signing statement that disputed some of the oversight provisions, including the authority of a new inspector general to notify Congress if the executive branch was not providing requested information. That’s a move explicitly designed to conceal misconduct.

It’s also further evidence that Trump cannot be trusted to spend the relief funds honestly or fairly. This is, after all, the same guy who said that he would not return the calls of governors who he didn’t think treated him right. If anyone ever needed oversight, it’s Trump. But while his Republican comrades and, of course, Fox News, would let him run wild, the American people must not. And that is sufficient justification for this House Select Committee, despite whining from the right.

UPDATE: And, of course, Trump weighs in by calling the proposed oversight committee a “witch hunt,” because he knows that oversight will reveal his corruption.

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

Trump Shill Kellyanne Conway Visits Fox News to Launch Lie-Riddled Attack on Joe Biden

Posted by on April 1, 2020 at 1:48 pm. 5 Comments :

In recent days Trump and his surrogates in the White House and the media have been frantically trying to rewrite history. They are attempting to persuade people that Trump wasn’t negligently incompetent as COVID-19 was spreading, and that he always took it seriously. Never mind all the video of him belittling the threat as a minor problem that was a Democratic hoax and that it would soon disappear.

Kellyanne Conway, Fox News

Now Trump is saying that his handling of the coronavirus pandemic was “perfect” and that if “only” 100,000 to 200,000 Americans die he should be considered a hero. This is the same guy who said Barack Obama should resign when a single American doctor returned to the U.S. from Ebola-stricken West Africa.

Trump’s hypocrisy and dishonesty is nothing new. And it is abundantly evident in another “interview” on Fox News of Senior White House adviser, Kellyanne Conway (video below). Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Conway about Joe Biden’s suggestion that Trump should call President Obama for help. Conway spun that into an uninterrupted three minute rant attacking Biden and Obama, and lavishing undue praise for Trump’s objectively tragic handling of the coronavirus crisis. Conway began by unloading some of her trademark snarky animus:

“The President was asked that question. I think it’s really disappointing to have President Obama’s number two – who apparently doesn’t talk much to him – out there criticizing instead of saying “Hey, here’s what we did that we thought was effective.” Why doesn’t Vice-President Biden call the White House and offer some support? He’s in his bunker in Wilmington.”

First of all, Conway is correct when she said that Trump was asked that question. But she left out that Trump’s response was to arrogantly dismiss the notion that he should call Obama. “I don’t think I’m going to learn much,” know-it-all Trump said. “And, you know, I guess you could say that there’s probably a natural inclination not to call.” Secondly, Biden has already provided a detailed plan of what he would do were he charged with these responsibilities. And he warned of the potential harm of a pandemic – and Trump’s unfitness to respond – as far back as January 29, in a USA Today op-ed. Conway’s disingenuous suggestion that Obama or Biden call Trump makes even less sense when you factor in Trump’s personal animus toward them. In a recent tweet Trump wrote that “The Obama/Biden Administration is the most corrupt Administration in the history of our Country!”

After Conway’s flagrantly political diatribe, she added that Trump & Co. “aren’t talking politics at all” and that Trump’s critics seem “small” and “shrill.” And as if that wasn’t politically belligerent enough, she elaborated:

“I would ask Vice-President Biden why he can’t call and lend a hand. And isn’t it a time – doesn’t he think that he would actually do better by calling here and trying to help. But really, what would he say? What would he have to say? Our President’s made clear that we inherited a bad and broken system. And that’s true. The testing ecosystem and the surge of supplies that we’ve been able to do in short time is impressive.”

So not only did Conway ignore Trump’s open hostilities, she even shot down her own argument by saying that Biden would have nothing to say if he did call. Conway also reiterated the well-debunked lie that Trump “inherited a bad and broken system.” That’s the painfully lame excuse Trump has been using to absolve himself of guilt for having screwed up so badly and cost so many lives. The truth is that the Obama administration left Trump with a fully operational pandemic plan, and they briefed the incoming Trump team on it in detail. But Trump ignored those warnings and later eliminated the pandemic response team at the National Security Agency.

This is the quality – or lack thereof – of the Trump regime’s justifications for mishandling the COVID-19 crisis. And it’s emblematic of Trump’s dangerously egocentric refusal to concede that Obama, or Biden, or anyone other than himself, might have something to contribute to mitigating the disastrous consequences of his ignorance. He continues to reinforce the impression that all he cares about is himself, and that he believes that he alone can conquer any problem. That sort of malignant narcissism is what what got us into this trouble, and, if Trump is unimpeded, it’s only going to make things worse.

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

Messiah Trump Takes Credit For Saving the World: ‘Nobody Thought We Should Do It Except Me’

Posted by on March 30, 2020 at 2:37 pm. 5 Comments :

Donald Trump is fond of portraying himself as a pillar of strength who is unafraid to confront any obstacle or foe. However, his routine behavior exposes that facade as an obvious fraud. His knee-jerk defensiveness when challenged, along with his infantile insults aimed at critics, are ready evidence of his smoldering fear of being revealed as an impotent bully.

Donald Trump Messiah

One of the best indicators of Trump’s withering weakness is how tightly he clings to the bootlicking sycophants at his State TV network, Fox News. On Monday morning he made his 77th appearance on Fox News as president. But he has not permitted a single interview on CNN or MSNBC. What, you might ask, is he afraid of? This latest visit was a phone in to Fox and Friends, a program that he used to have a regular Monday gig on: Mondays with Trump. And, not surprisingly, the discussion was a full-on Trump-fluffing festival of fawning and flattery (Twitter video thread below).

Trump led off by falsely accusing the Obama administration of leaving him with an “empty shelf” of medical supplies. He compared it to the equally false and absurd assertion that the Pentagon had no ammunition when he took office. This is just Trump’s way of vilifying Obama, a president he knows he can never measure up to. He did the same thing this morning to another of his perceived enemies, Nancy Pelosi, about whom he said “She’s a sick puppy in my opinion. She really is. She’s got a lot of problems.” He called her San Francisco district a slum and bizarrely said that she “lost” the impeachment game. Does he not know that he was – and is – impeached?

What’s more, Trump took personal credit for saving the world. In a self-exalting rant based on nothing but his fertile imagination, Trump claimed that he stopped “thousands” of very, very sick people coming in from China, and that…

“…nobody thought we should do it except me. And I stopped everybody. We stopped it cold. It had never been done before. […] and if I hadn’t done that you have seen deaths like you had never seen before.”

So Trump wants people to believe that he defied the foolhardy dopes who consider themselves experts, and who all disagreed with him, and he single-handedly implemented a policy that saved untold souls. This is the sort of deranged thinking that can only come from someone who previously called himself “the Chosen One.”

The truth is that Trump not only failed to save lives, he is unarguably responsible for the loss of thousands of Americans due to his negligence, incompetence, and ego. He was determined to underplay the threat presented by COVID-19 (the coronavirus) because he was afraid it would negatively impact his reelection prospects. He wasted at least a month lying to the public that there were few people infected and that the number would soon be zero.

In the interim Trump, who is no longer able to satisfy his voracious ego at his cult rallies, has hijacked the Coronavirus Task Force briefings and turned them into de facto campaign events. Never mind that his presence there is nothing but a distraction. He has no relevant knowledge or expertise to contribute, so he spends an hour or two lying with abandon and shamelessly boasting about things he hasn’t done.

Trump’s narcissism is evident in everything he does. And that is particularly true with regard to the briefings for which he has cast himself as the star. Which explains why he has been hyping the Nielsen ratings as if they were an indicator of his popularity. They are not. Both Trump supporters and opponents tune in to the briefings to get information. But in Trump’s diseased mind, any attention paid to him is proof of his glorious awesomeness. It’s what feeds his belief that he alone can fix everything. After all, he’s the Chosen One.

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

WTF? While Americans Suffer, Trump Brags (and Lies) About TV ‘Ratings’

Posted by on March 29, 2020 at 1:54 pm. 5 Comments :

Well, it had to come to this. With more than 132,000 cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus) confirmed in the United States, and 2,300 plus deaths, Donald Trump is showing us what really matters to him. He isn’t expressing condolences to those who have lost loved ones. He isn’t implementing a coherent strategy for combating the pandemic. He isn’t even adhering to the social distancing orders his own task force is recommending.

Donald Trump TV Set

Nope. What matters to Trump now – and always – is his ratings. Trump’s ego is voracious. Throughout this ordeal he has spent more time paying tribute to himself than he has executing a national plan. Whenever he does address things his administration is doing, he prefaces those remarks with superlatives that applaud his actions as “the biggest,” “the most,” and “the best ever.” He simply cannot describe any effort on his part without asserting that it broke some imaginary record for fabulousness.

On Sunday morning Trump went even further to essentially admit that he’s exploiting this pandemic as a means to get free airtime to promote himself and his 2020 reelection campaign. In a flurry of frantic tweets, Trump shamelessly boasted about the ratings for the televised Coronavirus Task Force briefings. He began with a typical swipe at the media that he despises saying that “The Lamestream Media wants us to fail. That will NEVER happen!” And that “Polls are showing tremendous disapproval of Lamestream Media coverage of the Virus crisis. The Fake News just hasn’t figured that out yet!”

Trump’s assertion that the media (which he is now maligning as “lamestream” ala Sarah Palin) “wants us to fail” is not supported by reality. And Trump, as usual, doesn’t provide a single example to prove that reckless claim. Reporting accurately that Trump’s response is failing is not the same as wanting it to fail. As for polls on the public’s approval of coverage of the pandemic, they predominantly show that the majority of Americans don’t trust Trump on the subject of the virus. Even worse for Trump’s fragile ego, Americans trust the media more than they trust Trump. And then there was this:

Notice that Trump refers to the ratings of “my news conferences.” That is not what these briefings are supposed to be, They are supposed to be opportunities to keep the public informed and have questions answered by experts. They should be used to educate the public honestly about current circumstances, and to disclose what the government is doing to keep them safe. But Trump has never been a source of reliable, truthful information. As an example there’s the quote in this tweet from an unnamed “lunatic” whose existence is doubtful. That’s particularly ironic since just yesterday Trump was mightily perturbed about the use of unnamed sources.

However, Trump had only just begun saluting his ratings prowess. Not satisfied with his earlier accolades to himself, Trump unleashed a four-tweet rant quoting an article in the New York Times. Or should I say misquoting? The first tweet stated that…

“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise…”

However, here is what the article actually said with the parts Trump excised in bold:

“President Trump is a ratings hit, and some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing.

“Since reviving the daily White House briefing — a practice abandoned last year by an administration that bristles at outside scrutiny — Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.'”

So Trump left out crucial information, but still put his edits in quotation marks. That is both dishonest and unethical. It should also be noted that viewers who both support and (mostly) oppose Trump watch these briefings. So the ratings are not an indication of Trump’s popularity. What’s more, they air on multiple networks simultaneously and, therefore, are not comparable to any single network program rating such as The Bachelor. Moving on to the second tweet…

“…On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News…”

And now for the actual quote from the article with relevant edits in bold:

“Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites. […] And the audience is expanding even as Mr. Trump has repeatedly delivered information that doctors and public health officials have called ill informed, misleading or downright wrong.“

Most Americans would probably be interested in the fact that Trump is regarded as ill informed by doctors and public health officials. But Trump decided that they shouldn’t know that. Then, in the third tweet Trump said that Fox News…

“…alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom…”

Really? Does Trump really want to associate his pandemic briefings with sitcoms? In the fourth tweet Trump said that…

“…The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus. Michael M. Grynbaum @NYTimes”

Now don’t be surprised, but Trump left out pertinent information about this as well:

“The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus, versus 72 percent of Democrats.”

What this tells is something we already know if we’ve been paying attention. Donald Trump is an egocentric, malignant narcissist who will lie about all things great and small in order to exalt himself. And he couldn’t care less about the suffering of the people, about whom he rarely expresses any sympathy or condolences. In this Sunday tweetstorm Trump has proved that he is only interested in his ratings. And that, sadly, explains why he has failed so tragically to protect the nation from a pandemic that could have been averted.

UPDATE: A reporter from the ultra-right OANN asked Trump about speculation that networks would cease coverage of these briefings and if his ratings were connected to that. After complimenting the question, Trump replied that “I don’t want high approval ratings from this.” Yeah, right. So what were these tweets all about?

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

Trump-Fluffers at Fox News Make Excuses for His Hijacking the Coronavirus Briefings

Posted by on March 27, 2020 at 1:42 pm. 7 Comments :

Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has exhibited an unprecedented hostility toward the media and the very concept of a free press as enshrined in the Constitution. He repeatedly refers to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” Trump is currently suing several news organizations and has recently threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of stations that air ads critical of him. And in his flaming paranoia, he is convinced that the media is a collective entity that is unified in a covert mission to destroy him. “All I see,” whines Trump about every major news network (including Fox News), “is hatred of me.”

Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Trump’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, has never held a press briefing since her appointment in July of 2019. However, she makes frequent appearances on Fox News, but no other network. Trump has been deservedly criticized for his shuttering of the White House from scrutiny by the press. But he believes that his rambling “Chopper Talks“ suffice as an alternative to an orderly exchange of information and timely disclosures regarding White House activities. They are not. They are simply opportunities for Trump to rant incoherently and to berate his perceived foes in the press corps.

With the advent of an international pandemic, Trump is producing a daily, self-serving, reality show in which he is cast as the star attraction. It is a blatantly obvious attempt to exploit the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis for his own political benefit. These are nothing more than replacement vehicles for the cult rallies and campaign affairs that can no longer be held due to the risk of exacerbating the pandemic.

Not surprisingly, the press has been critical of this crass exploitation and many journalists are advocating that they not be covered, at least until after Trump’s remarks have been fact-checked and other extraneous campaign content is edited out. This has now caused Fox News to claim that there is some hypocrisy on the part of the press for first complaining about the administration’s abandonment of daily briefings, and now complaining that they are taking place. An op-ed on Fox’s website misconstrues that:

“The mainstream media were clamoring for regular press briefings from President Trump and his administration long before the coronavirus crisis escalated. Former press secretary Sarah Sanders stopped the daily routine in early 2019 and they eventually came to a halt altogether — much to the chagrin of many media members.

“But after Trump and his coronavirus team, including Vice President Mike Pence, Dr. Anthony Fauci, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams and Dr. Deborah Birx, began providing them on a daily basis in late February, some media figures said their networks should stop airing them, leading critics to question the sudden about-face.”

What Fox News is missing is that the press was never “clamoring” for staged events where Trump would lambaste the media, brag shamelessly about things he hadn’t done, and lie his asinine head off for two hours. They merely wanted his press secretary to do her job and be accountable to the public that the press represents.

What Trump is giving them instead is an interminable bitchfest that is intended solely to advance his reelection prospects and feed his voracious ego. This is particularly offensive considering the briefings that Trump is hijacking for his own purposes is supposed to be dedicated to informing the public about a deadly and growing pandemic.

If Trump had any real concern for the nation he would leave these Coronavirus Task Force briefings to the experts and stop wasting time with his lies and petulant attacks on reporters. Then he would reinstate the daily White House press briefings with the press secretary. It’s questionable that even under those circumstances we would get much useful or honest information considering how integral lying is to this administration. But at least we would avoid the endless tantrums and dangerous disinformation that Trump is disseminating with things as they are.

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

Wannabe Dictator Trump Threatens to Revoke Licenses of Stations that Air Critical Ads

Posted by on March 26, 2020 at 4:15 pm. 5 Comments :

As Americans sees the rising number of their fellow citizens becoming victims of COVID-19 (coronavirus), they are simultaneously losing confidence in the “leadership” of Donald Trump. From the beginning he downplayed the threat that the virus represented, insisting that the number of those affected was small and that it would shortly be zero. He could not have been more wrong. On Thursday the number of cases in the U.S. surpassed China.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

And while the virus infections and fatalities go up, Trump’s mental state spirals down. He is sinking into a defensive posture that resembles closely the behavior of paranoid authoritarians who perceive enemies all around them. And one of the most common reactions by such persons is to clamp down on what they believe is a hostile media. Thursday’s Coronavirus Task Force (which he really has no business attending) opened with Trump accusing the press of being “corrupt.” That’s nothing new for someone who has repeatedly referred to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”

More troubling is that now Trump is going after a progressive group that produced an ad recounting Trump’s failure to respond to the budding pandemic. Priorities USA compiled some of Trump’s own dismissive statements and juxtaposed them with a chart showing the virus’s rate of growth. This upset Trump and resulted in a “cease and desist” from the Trump campaign organization. Here’s the ad that triggered President Snowflake:

It’s bad enough that Trump would try to intimidate a political group by infringing on their First Amendment rights. But it’s even worse than that. The Trump campaign is actually threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of any television station that airs the ad. That’s a fascist strongman’s solution to pesky critics who dare to speak out. According to a report in Bloomberg News, Trump’s campaign warned that…

“Failure to remove the ad ‘could put your station’s license in jeopardy’ before the Federal Communications Commission, the campaign said in the letter. ‘Your station has an obligation to cease and desist from airing it immediately to comply with FCC licensing requirements.'”

First of all, let’s establish the fact that the stations do not have any obligation to comply with the Trump campaign’s request that they do not air the ad. That request has no legal standing, and would likely fail to succeed if tried in court. The ad is comprised of Trump’s own words, and they were presented in a manner that reasonably represents their meaning. However, the campaign appears to suggest that the campaign has some ability to influence the FCC, a federal regulatory agency whose members are appointed by the President. That would be a wholly improper arrangement and an unlawful abuse of power on the part of the White House. What’s more…

“The FCC doesn’t appear to have grounds to act against the stations for airing contentious ads, said Jack Goodman, a Washington broadcast attorney, said in an interview. The ad ‘is core political speech’ protected by First Amendment guarantees of free speech, Goodman said.”

The primary complaint by Trump’s campaign concerns an audio clip of him referring to criticism from Democrats, saying that “This is their new hoax.” Trump asserts that he wasn’t referring to COVID-19 itself, but to the Democrats criticism. However, in the full context of his remarks he is itemizing events that he considered to be hoaxes. They included the investigation of Russia’s efforts on behalf of his 2016 presidential campaign, and his impeachment over his attempts to coerce the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. In both of those incidents his allegations of a hoax referred to the charges themselves, not criticism from Democrats. So why would his meaning be any different for the third item in that list?

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to use the courts to prohibit free speech. He is currently suing the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN for defamation. Trump is known for filing lawsuits – or threatening to – to harass his foes. But this time he has the power of the presidency to bolster those threats with punishment from agencies that are beholden to him. It’s the sort of authoritarianism that he so admires in his pals Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. But it is anathema to American democracy and he must not be allowed to get away with it. So feel free to circulate the ad above, far and wide.

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