Devin Nunes

Fox News Business Network Has Fully Transitioned From Financial Reporting to Trump Shilling

Posted by on January 8, 2018 at 11:03 am. 2 Comments :

When Fox News began in 1996, the intention was to develop an overtly partisan, right-wing network that would skew the news to the ultra-conservative views of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. After achieving that goal they set their sights on a business network that would eventually do the same thing.

Fox News Bartiromo

The Fox Business Network was never aimed at providing useful financial information. When it launched they put Neil Cavuto at the helm, a move that can only be interpreted as advancing the same conservative biases that infest his daily program on Fox News. And the execrable Lou Dobbs has long been a fixture on the channel. Three years ago they hired Maria Bartiromo who had been a financial correspondent on CNBC for twenty years. But it’s obvious now that Bartiromo has been inducted into the Fox mindset as she shamelessly disgorges wingnut propaganda.

On her Sunday program, Sunday Morning Futures, Bartiromo interviewed Republican inquisitioner Trey Gowdy on a subject that Fox News and the GOP have been desperately trying to revive: Hillary Clinton’s crime-riddled past (video below). Never mind that she has been the target of blatantly prejudiced investigations for twenty years that haven’t turned up a hint of wrongdoing. With all of Donald Trump’s illegal entanglements, the GOP needs to find ways to muddy the public discourse.

The questions that Bartiromo asked Gowdy are all that is needed to observe how hopelessly biased she is. Each one was a leading question that implied criminal intent to Clinton. As if Gowdy needed any help in turning his partisan innuendo into outrageous allegations. Here are the severely slanted questions Bartiromo asked verbatim:

“Do you now have the documents that you have been requesting to best assess whether or not there was a massive abuse of power by the FBI around the election last year?”

“So where does this lead? I mean, you’ve been stonewalled since August. You’re finally getting documents last week and this week week that you’ve been asking for since August. We know for example when you look at the Hillary Clinton side of things, her IT manager, Brian Tagliano, initially said he never deleted anything to the FBI. He told the FBI ‘I didn’t delete anything.’ Then apparently has an ‘aha’ moment and says ‘Oh wait, yes. I did delete emails.’ After we know that those were actually recovered. And he gets immunity. So he gets immunity despite the fact that he lied to the FBI, deleted emails, and didn’t tell anybody that there were these emails that existed.”

“Peter Strzok, when he was texting his girlfriend, Lisa Page, said that we need an insurance policy in place. Now Congressman, we have been hearing bits and pieces of this so-called Russia probe, so-called collusion between Trump and the Russians, with absolutely zero evidence. Was that the insurance policy? Peter Strzok essentially saying to his mistress, ‘Look, we’re just gonna keep on investigating Donald Trump should he win.'”

“Americans want to see the rule of law. If we cannot trust the FBI, the CIA – by the way, the IRS. We know what the IRS did a year ago, or two years ago. Then what is the point of the freedoms of America?”

“Let me ask you this because we’ve been watching this Russia probe. How long is this gonna go on? Because we still haven’t had any evidence of any collusion. When is it appropriate for Bob Mueller to come out and say ‘Yes, definitively there is no collusion here. But what I have uncovered is collusion at the top of the FBI between the FBI leadership and Hillary Cliinton.”

“We can’t have confidence if nothing is ever being done and there isn’t any accountability here. Obviously you have been searching for the truth. Devin Nunes is searching for the truth. But people are questioning the head law enforcement individual.

These are the sort of questions that hardly require answers. The response is built into the inquiry. Particularly notable is the question that seeks to put words into special counsel Mueller’s mouth implying collusion on Clinton’s part. And asserting that Gowdy and Nunes are truth-seekers is painfully delusional. They are among the most acutely biased Republicans in the country. But Bartiromo regards them as more credible than the nation’s top law enforcement professionals. Yet this is the unethical posture that Bartiromo has taken in order to serve her masters at Fox News and in the Trump administration. It’s downright embarrassing and more than a little nauseating.

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

Desperate Trump Tweets Threat To Investigate Debunked Clinton/Russia Uranium Deal

Posted by on March 27, 2017 at 8:46 pm. 4 Comments :

The walls are losing in around Donald Trump. Allegations concerning his unsavory connections to Vladimir Putin and Russia continue to accumulate. His closest associates are being investigated by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. The 2016 election was tainted by revelations of meetings between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives. And the Justice Department has already certified that Russia interfered with the election in an effort to harm Hillary Clinton and Boost Trump. The FBI is currently investigating the Trump campaign’s complicity.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

In the heat of all that, Congress is under fire for failing to hold independent hearings on the mounting scandals involving Trump and Russia. GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has himself been implicated in shady behavior. He reportedly met with a secret “source” at the White House prior to holding a press conference last week. At the presser Nunes released information intended to help the President evade further scrutiny. Then Nunes returned to the White House to brief Trump without ever sharing his information with the committee.

In the midst of this, Trump has now engaged in a pitifully obvious attempt at diversion. He posted the following tweets Monday evening:

Under the circumstances, asking the Intelligence Committee to investigate the Clinton’s is a transparent act of desperation. Especially since the Committee under Nunes’ control has zero credibility. In addition, the matters Trump cited have all been investigated by numerous legal and congressional entities. There was no wrongdoing found by the Clinton’s or President Obama. PolitiFact summed up the findings in a comprehensive analysis last year after a prior accusation by Trump. They rated Trump’s accusations “Mostly False” and said in part:

Russia’s nuclear energy agency, which also builds nuclear weapons, bought a controlling stake in Uranium One. The company has mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity.

So, to be clear, the 20 percent is capacity, not uranium that has been produced.

Given that Russia doesn’t have the licenses to export uranium outside the United States, it was likely more interested in Uranium One’s assets in Kazakhstan, the world’s largest uranium producer, our colleagues said. […]

The State Department did approve the Uranium One deal, but it didn’t act unilaterally. It was one of nine U.S. government agencies, plus independent federal and state nuclear regulators, that had to sign off on the deal.

And as FactCheck.org noted in a related fact check, while any of the nine agencies could have objected to the deal, only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it.

So there was nothing untoward about the deal in the first place, and Clinton didn’t have the power to approve or reject it anyway. Consequently, Trump’s only motivation could be to divert attention away from his potentially treasonous activities. It’s a pathetic scheme that is so clumsy it can’t possibly work. And that is the most damning proof of his desperation and fear. Stunts like this are only likely to exacerbate his situation.

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

So keep tweeting, Mr. President. Your outbursts merely serve to dig you in deeper. They certainly won’t have any effect on the law enforcement professionals examining your activities during and following the campaign. And as the evidence continues to expose your malfeasance you will lose even more support from your fellow Republicans in Congress. You know, the ones you just insulted because they didn’t buy into your phony healthcare scam.

Press Secretary Spicer Won’t Deny That Trump Planted An Alibi For His Wiretapping Lie

Posted by on March 23, 2017 at 3:24 pm. 1 Comments :

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump tweeted that he had “Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower.” But he never bothered to provide any evidence of the charge. To the contrary, he cited sources that were either lacking any credibility or didn’t back him up. Nevertheless, he has continued to push the phony story despite being repudiated by both Democrats and Republicans.

Donald Trump Lies

On Wednesday, Devin Nunes, the GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, made a public statement asserting that he had received information about surveillance in Trump Tower. He didn’t identify the source of the information, nor who was being surveilled. But he did say that there may have been “incidental” data involving Trump or his team that was picked up. In a follow up on Thursday he was asked if the source of this information was the White house. Nunes gave a meandering response that notably did not include a denial.

Later, during Thursday’s White house press briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer was asked to comment on the same matter. That resulted in this peculiar exchange:

Question: Chairman Nunes today refused to definitively rule out that he received the information he announced yesterday on surveillance, that he got that from the White House. So will you rule out that the White House, or anyone in the administration, gave Chairman Nunes that information?

Spicer: I don’t know what he actually briefed the President on, but I don’t know why he would come in to brief the President on something that we gave him. I don’t know that that makes sense. I did not sit in on that briefing. I’m not… It just doesn’t… So I don’t know why he would brief the Speaker and then come down here to brief us on something that we would have briefed him on. It doesn’t really seem to make a ton of sense. So I’m not aware of it, but it doesn’t really pass the smell test.

You’ll notice that Spicer danced around the response but never ruled out that the information came from Trump. He merely expressed confusion as to why that would have happened. Of course, the reason is obvious. Trump had a vested interest in Nunes making a public statement that could be twisted into a validation. To date, Trump has still not provided any support for his reckless accusation that Obama wiretapped his phones. Now it appears that two of Trump’s defenders have blatantly refused to deny that the White House concocted their own alibi.

Why would both Nunes and Spicer be so conspicuously reluctant to give a straight forward denial that Trump planted his own story? All they would have to say is “No, the President didn’t do that.” Instead they leave open the possibility that Trump is once again acting as his own PR rep. And that’s something that really doesn’t pass the smell test.

[Update: A new report alleges that Nunes met his “source” at the White House the day before his press conference. This advances the planted alibi theory.]

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