CNN Catches Donald Trump Stiffing The Veterans He Pretends To Love

Posted by on March 4, 2016 at 12:57 pm. 6 Comments :

Remember when Donald Trump was too chicken to face Fox News host Megyn Kelly in a Republican debate, so instead of participating in the last debate before the Iowa caucus he cobbled together a phony veterans benefit and pretended to raise money for the wounded warriors he professed to “love all over the place?” Well, a funny thing happened.

Donald Trump

CNN decided to look into the distribution of the reported six million dollars that was raised to see if any of the twenty-two charities Trump listed as recipients had actually received any donations (video below). Their report revealed that, more than a month later, only about $800,000 of the six million dollars had found its way to the intended veteran beneficiaries.

CNN was initially told by the Trump campaign that the information about the funds was on his website, but after extensive searching that turned out not to be true. So CNN’s Drew Griffin called all of the listed charities to ascertain whether they had received any donations. Only seven organizations reported receiving any money. Griffin reported that…

“We have been asking, other news organizations have been asking, where’s the accounting of this? It’s a big dollar amount but it’s not high math when you’re dealing with hundred thousand dollar checks and six million dollars in donations. It should be easy to do. Charity Navigator, one of the groups that follows charities, says the money should have been disbursed by now. We continue to ask, but get no answers.”

This may be one of the reasons that several veterans groups announced that they would refuse to take any of Trump’s money before the bogus telethon began. Many people regarded the event as a political stunt that insulted America’s veterans by using them as campaign props.

What’s more, of the alleged six million dollars raised, four million came from four of Trump’s wealthy pals making one million dollar donations each. That’s two-thirds of the total that Trump raised with four phone calls that he could have made at any time, but never bothered. He only reached out to these donors when he needed an excuse to ditch the Fox News debate and the fearsome Megyn Kelly.

It remains to be seen where the rest of the money is and when or whether it will be disbursed. This delay further affirms that Trump is as insincere an advocate of veterans issues as he is about virtually everything else to which he shamelessly panders. It makes the release of his tax returns even more crucial as he has been accused of not being as charitable as he claims and is evading the disclosure of that by not releasing those returns.

Trump has never been regarded as a philanthropist. In fact, he is rather infamous for being the least charitable billionaire in the United States. With his purported billions of dollars he could easily have made a donation for the whole six million all by himself and disbursed it overnight by cutting a few checks. The fact that he hasn’t tells us just how much he really cares about veterans. To him they are merely another issue to exploit in order to get his way.

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

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Yes, Donald Trump Did Make An Ass Of Himself At The Debate – Again

Posted by on March 4, 2016 at 9:01 am. 3 Comments :

In case you missed the latest Republican debate on Fox News, here is a recap of some the lowlights provided by the GOP front-runner, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump GOP

Moderator Chris Wallace opened with a question referencing Mitt Romney’s brutal takedown of Trump earlier that day: “[Mitt Romney] challenged you to answer with substance, not insults. How do you answer Mitt Romney, sir?” Not surprisingly, Trump responded with an insult: “Well look, he was a failed candidate, he should have beaten president Obama very easy.”

Trump was asked about his failure to disavow the support of David Duke, the KKK and other white supremacists. He came clean saying “I totally disavow the Klu Klux Klan. I totally disavow David Duke. I’ve been doing it now for two weeks, this is your — you’re probably about the 18th person that’s asked me the question. It was very clear.” That’s funny, because his previous reason for not doing so was that he didn’t hear the question due to a “very bad earpiece.” He has apparently abandoned that lie. And white supremacists continue to back his candidacy for reasons that are obvious to anyone who listens to him.

On the subject of how badly the discourse in the Republican campaign had deteriorated into infantile insults, Trump elected to sink even further saying “[Marco Rubio] referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee.” Something tells me that he is going handle this the same way he is handling his tax returns – by refusing to provide evidence (thank God). And something also tells me that he is just as dishonest about both subjects. His bellicose bullying is clearly overcompensating for shortcoming.

Rubio hit Trump again on his record as a businessman who failed repeatedly and had the benefit of a generous inheritance. Trump continued to evade the issue, changing the subject to the “small” loan of a million dollars that he received from his father. Someone needs to ask him directly how much he received from his father’s estate when he died. Published reports put the amount as high as $200 million.

Trump gave a long, and nearly incoherent, answer when asked when he will start having his clothing lines manufactured in the U.S. He eventually said that he wouldn’t do it because it wasn’t financially feasible because China, Japan, and Mexico “make it impossible for clothing-makers in this country to do clothing in this country.” Of course, the truth is that there are many domestic clothing manufacturers and Rubio made that point by noting that all of the clothes on his website are made in the U.S.

Trump was asked if he would authorize of The New York Times to release the tapes from an interview that included off-the-record remarks. He declined saying that “I have too much respect for that process to say ‘just release everything.’ I would not do that.” He seems not to grasp the concept. Being off-the-record is purely a concession to the interviewee. It is not a process or a promise to the journalist. If he releases the reporter from the agreement, the reporter would be thrilled to publish the material. Trump is obviously trying to blame his refusal to release the material on an imaginary “process” because he’s afraid of what it will reveal about him.

Trump was asked about his flip-flopping, including the time he said that he would have invaded Afghanistan, which he said that he would not do the day before. His explanation was that “Well, on Afghanistan, I did mean Iraq.” The only problem with that is that the full statement he made opposing the Afghanistan invasion was this: “We’ve made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place. That thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave. Just as I said that Iraq was going to collapse after we leave.” He could not plausibly have meant Iraq instead of Afghanistan if he included Iraq in the comment as another example of invasions he opposed.

And then there was this bizarre exchange with co-moderator Bret Baier:

Baier: Mr. Trump, just yesterday, almost 100 foreign policy experts signed on to an open letter refusing to support you, saying your embracing expansive use of torture is inexcusable. […] So what would you do, as commander-in-chief, if the U.S. military refused to carry out those orders? […] the military will refuse because they’ve been trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders.
Trump: They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me.
Baier: But they’re illegal.
Trump: Well, look, you know, when a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center, and his family gets sent back to where they were going — and I think most of you know where they went — and, by the way, it wasn’t Iraq — but they went back to a certain territory, they knew what was happening. The wives knew exactly what was happening. They left two days early, with respect to the World Trade Center, and they went back to where they went, and they watched their husbands on television flying into the World Trade Center.

First of all, Trump is revisiting a lie he has told before about the wives of the 9/11 hijackers. Only two of the terrorists were married, and their wives never came to the U.S. in the first place, so they never flew back to that “certain territory.” Secondly, Trump completely dodged the question as to how he would coerce the military to commit war crimes, which is what he is proposing when he says that he would bomb the families of terrorists. Soldiers are actually duty-bound to refuse to follow unlawful orders.

And this is current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president. As frightening as is the prospect of such an ignorant, dishonest, wannabe dictator becoming president, it is even scarier that there is a sizable faction of Republican voters who support him. This affirms my theory that Trump is just a symptom, his followers are the disease.

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


Mitt Romney Scorches Donald Trump – Heads Explode At Fox News

Posted by on March 3, 2016 at 11:13 am. 7 Comments :

This morning there was an unprecedented attack by a former Republican presidential candidate on a current front-runner for the GOP nomination. Mitt Romney’s speech was a well constructed and impassioned plea to Republican voters to reject Donald Trump, whom Romney called a phony and a fraud. Romney’s speech covered a panoply of Trump’s abhorrent remarks and disastrous proposals. Video of Romney’s address is below, along with some select quotations. But first…

Mitt Romney Donald Trump

The response by Fox News immediately following Romney’s speech was swift and decidedly hostile to Romney. Fox host Jon Scott impaneled three guests to discuss the uncommonly harsh criticism of Trump. All three of them bashed Romney and predicted that the ensuing controversy would benefit Trump. It was a lock-step, unified condemnation of Romney in defense of Trump that didn’t bother to address a single substantive point from the address.

The post-speech analysis on Fox was followed by the regularly scheduled program, Outnumbered. And guess what? The reaction was identical to the three panelists who preceded them. Guest co-host Eric Bolling got the ball rolling by complaining that if Romney were sincere about his critique he should have come out with this speech sooner. Having failed to do that everything he said should be dismissed now. The rest of the cast of co-hosts generally agreed that because Romney lost the election in 2012 his electoral advice should be forever after ignored. But co-host Andrea Tantaros had the most cutting rebuke when she implored voters to tell Romney to “take it and shove it.”

After Outnumbered, Fox News continued their Romney-bashing with another panel of two contributors who both dismissed Romney as ineffective and irrelevant. The consistency of the stance against Romney was so thorough that, by all appearances, it could only have been planned in advance. There was clearly a directive sent down to the newsroom from the ivory tower office of Roger Ailes to trash Romney and defend Trump. Nothing else could explain the uniformity of thought by so many Fox personalities. And it is that type of uniformity that Fox News has always sought to ensure in order to manipulate the cultish disciples that watch the network.

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

Update: Romney predicted in his speech that Trump would respond “with every imaginable low road insult.” He called that one right. When Trump spoke at a rally in Portland Maine, he was obsessed with Romney’s 2012 loss and ignored every substantive issue that Romney raised. Then Trump proceeded with his robo-speech extolling his greatness and his promise to build a wall. And, of course, every cable news net covered live in its entirety despite the absence of any news value.

Here is the video of Romney’s speech, followed by some select quotes from the transcript that capture the tone of Romney’s warnings about a Trump presidency.

If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession. […] even as Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.

But wait, you say, isn’t he a huge business success that knows what he’s talking about? No he isn’t and no, he doesn’t. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. […] A business genius he is not.

Trump’s bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies. Insulting all Muslims will keep many of them from fully engaging with us in the urgent fight against ISIS.

[T]his is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity. […] There is dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War while John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.

Dishonesty is Trump’s hallmark: He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq. Wrong, he spoke in favor of invading Iraq. He said he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11. Wrong, he saw no such thing. He imagined it. His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader. His imagination must not be married to real power.

Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics. [..] Now imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does. Will you welcome that?

The audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play a hundred thousand times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media.
There are a number of people who claim that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. There is indeed evidence of that. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign, and on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row.

We will only really know if he is the real deal or a phony if he releases his tax returns and the tape of his interview with the New York Times. I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns. I predict that he doesn’t give much if anything to the disabled and to our veterans. I predict that he told the New York Times that his immigration talk is just that: talk.

Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.

Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.

Not a bad rant for a Republican, conservative, establishment, one-percenter.


Fox News Admits That The Media Is Rooting For Donald Trump

Posted by on March 2, 2016 at 7:30 pm. 2 Comments :

Yesterday News Corpse published an article on The Trump Effect that laid out how the media has a profit motive to keep Donald Trump in the race. The article included a quote from the CEO of CBS who confessed that, with regard to Trump, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” In other words, their lust for profit has a higher priority than their love of country.

Donald Trump News

So what happened on Fox News last night could not have happened at better time. On the Kelly File, host Megyn Kelly did a segment with the Fox News media correspondent and host of Fox’s MediaBuzz, Howard Kurtz. The discussion began with Kelly asserting that “a lot of the media, they love Trump.” That’s an understatement, particularly after exploring the Trump Effect and the profound financial incentive the media has to extend his place in the limelight. They are doing everything they can to keep his face in front of voters and maintain his electoral viability. Which led to this revealing exchange:

Kurtz: Now Cruz has made this argument in recent days, and Marco Rubio as well, that the media has focused so much attention on Donald Trump. They love Donald Trump. They’re rooting for Donald Trump. At least until the fall.
Kelly: But they do. If you look at the numbers even on the nightly newscast — the time they devoted just in the past night — last night to Donald Trump vs the other two, it was six minutes Trump, I think seven seconds, Rubio. I mean, the disparity was remarkable.
Kurtz: There’s a clear imbalance. And we’ve all had banners awaiting Trump news conference, which shows how he can hijack the news cycle. But a lot of that attention has been negative.

Kelly had finally admitted something that has been true for more than half a year – that the coverage of Trump by the media has been wildly out of proportion to the rest of the candidates of both parties. While Kurtz only mentioned that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had complained about this, last December Bernie Sanders told Chris Cuomo of CNN about a study that showed that Trump received 81 minutes of airtime on ABC News in 2015 while Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds.

The response by Kurtz to Kelly’s revelation, however, was painfully oblivious to reality. First of all, he tried to blame Trump for the imbalance by accusing him of “hijacking the news cycle.” Which makes you wonder if Kurtz knows the definition of “hijack.” Trump did not storm the studio and force the news producers at gunpoint to put him on the air. They did that all of their own accord. It was more of a gift from the press than a hijacking by Trump. If the media didn’t want to put him on then he wouldn’t be on, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Just ask Bernie Sanders.

Following that absurd portrayal of events, Kurtz then attempted to conflate two completely different issues. By veering off to say that “a lot of that attention has been negative,” he was changing the subject from the free airtime that Trump got to the amount of time spent discussing him. But that isn’t the problem that was raised by observing how much time Trump got every time he gave a stump speech. The cable news networks seem to cut to him live whenever he holds a rally. And, of course, they don’t do that for anyone else. That’s the problem, and Kurtz appeared not to want to acknowledge it.

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

The most striking part of this whole segment, though, was how both Kelly and Kurtz spoke about the media as if it were a detached entity that had nothing to do with them. However, the truth is that Fox New is the network that is most responsible for the coverage imbalance that they both concede exists. No network gives Trump more airtime than Fox News. And on Fox, no candidate receives as much airtime as Trump. So it was a bit disorienting to hear these two pretend that the Trump Effect was just some vague theory that was floating around and impacted all of the media equally. They may have come closer to representing reality by admitting that the media roots for Trump, but they continue to lie about their decidedly prominent role in the cheering section.


The Trump Effect: Bad For America, But ‘Damn Good’ For The Media

Posted by on March 1, 2016 at 9:15 pm. 7 Comments :

Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, was speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, when he decided to reveal one of the sad truths of modern media that is well known to insiders. It’s something that is representative of the core principles (or lack thereof) of a once noble profession that has been co-opted by greed and the corporate craving for power. With reference to the campaign of Donald Trump, Moonves was caught bragging about the cash cash cow he was unashamedly milking.

Moonves: Who would have thought that this circus would come to town. It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. That’s all I got to say. So what can I say? The money’s rolling in, this is fun.

Donald Trump

Make no mistake, this is an admission by Moonves that his lust for profit is a higher priority than his love of country. Worse still, this pursuit of wealth, in Moonves’ view, is actually fun, even as it’s harmful to the rest of the nation and his fellow citizens. That is a form treason. Yet Moonves admits that despite Trump’s campaign being divisive, hostile, racist, ignorant, and detrimental to the well being of the United States, he gladly welcomes the damage it will do so long as CBS rakes in more cash.

And CBS isn’t alone in harboring these traitorous ambitions. The whole of the corporate media industry is guilty of the same self-interest. It’s why even MSNBC airs Trump’s stump speeches live in their entirety when they don’t do it for any other candidate. And it’s the result of the consolidation within the business that has thrust the profit motive over patriotism. These new multinational conglomerates have no incentive to be loyal to any nation, or to any anything other than their next quarterly earnings report. The one exception to this may be Fox News, whose owners and management are just as committed to pushing right-wing propaganda as they are to enriching their themselves.

The profit incentive for the media has a toxic effect on democracy. It produces reporting that is driven by motives other than honestly informing the public. What Moonves is putting on display for all to see is the damage that can be done when a news enterprise can be justifiably suspected of distorting their stories in order to fatten their wallets. Moonves was literally rooting for Trump specifically because his brand of melodramatic demagoguery draws more eyeballs to the advertising the network is now selling for inflated rates.

Moonves: I’ve never seen anything like this and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry, it’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going. […] “I’m not taking any sides, I’m just saying for us, economically, Donald Trump’s place in this election is a good thing.

With cheerleading like that, how can anyone watch this campaign coverage and be confidant that they are being told the truth. Clearly, the media has a profit motive to keep Trump in the race, and even boost his chances of securing the Republican nomination in order to keep the register ringing straight through to November and beyond. The other candidates are being deep-sixed because they can’t pull in the big bucks the way The Donald does.

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

This isn’t democracy. There may not be a word for what this is. We could call it a capitalocracy to illustrate the fact that the worst elements of capitalism are what determines who our leaders will be. We may as well stop having elections and just give prospective candidates their own TV shows and the one with the highest Nielsen ratings becomes president. Oh wait a minute. That’s pretty much how Donald Trump got to where he is today.


SURPRISE? Journalist Assaulted By Security At Donald Trump Rally (Video)

Posted by on February 29, 2016 at 4:44 pm. 3 Comments :

What happened today at rally for Donald Trump in Radford, Virginia could have been predicted by a Psychic Hotline operator. It is the inevitable result of a steady stream of hatred coming straight from the putrid mouth of a crybaby candidate who doesn’t know when he will start “acting presidential.”

Donald Trump

Chris Morris, a photographer for Time, was covering the rally when he sought to get pictures of a protest in the audience. He was stopped by a member of Trump’s security detail (there is some confusion as to whether it was Trump’s staff or Secret Service) and words were exchanged. The incident rapidly accelerated into an assault when the security man grabbed Morris by the throat and threw him to the ground.

Trump’s supporters were cheering wildly as this was occurring, and Trump himself was on stage egging them on. He even sarcastically said “Isn’t fun being at a Trump rally?” Morris was briefly placed under arrest and ejected from the rally, but he was later allowed to return. He gave a statement to a local television reporter describing how the incident unfolded.

What is notable about this is that an outbreak of violence aimed at journalists was bound to happen. As Trump stated today, this is his idea of fun. But his feelings about reporters have been articulated on many occasions prior to this. It is a staple of his stump speech to insult the press covering him. He points to them and stirs up the hatred in his audience by calling them dummies, liars, and scum, and disparages the news operations that employ them as dishonest and failing.

Trump’s previous attacks on the media have included throwing a Univision reporter out of a rally, calling Megyn Kelly of Fox News a “bimbo,” and grotesquely mocking the physical impairment of a disabled reporter. And then there was the time that his lawyer issued a mob-style threat against a reporter to scare him off of a story. This pattern of behavior was detailed last month by Eric Boehlert of Media Matters who wrote that…

“It’s sad that Donald Trump is normalizing so many unsavory traits with his presidential push this season. He’s normalizing bigotry and xenophobia in the campaign arena, for instance. He’s also mainstreaming the manhandling of the press.”

The violence that simmers just barely below the surface at every Trump rally was bound to flare up as Trump escalates his attacks on the press. Just a few days ago Trump declared that if he were president he would “open up our libel laws” so that he could sue them like they have “never been sued before.” That amounts to a proposal to repeal the First Amendment.

Trump’s campaign has relied on a constant barrage of hatred, and the media is not exempt from that. He even said as much at a rally last month when he literally said “I hate some of these people, I hate ’em.” But it got worse when he added “I would never kill them. I would never do that.” Then reconsidering said “Uh, let’s see, uh…” before concluding that he wouldn’t. He had to think about it. And his glassy-eyed disciples thought it was all very funny.

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

What we learn from all of this is that Trump is an unstable megalomaniac who isn’t shy about inciting violence. There have already been incidents wherein protesters were harmed while Trump stood by smiling and even encouraging it. Now it is journalists who are the targets. That’s a tactic that was used with some success by the Nazi regime. So Trump has made it crystal clear that hates reporters. In fact, he hates them so much that he would very likely favor using the Second Amendment to destroy the First.

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Proud Racist Donald Trump Just Can’t Quit His KKK Supporters – Or Quit Lying About Them

Posted by on February 28, 2016 at 1:22 pm. 6 Comments :

The campaign of Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president has been littered with racial prejudice and animus from the day he announced his candidacy. What’s remarkably unique about Trump is that conventional politicians, when confronted with allegations of racism, will deny the charges and defend themselves as unbiased. Needless to say, Trump is not conventional, but his tolerance of white supremacists goes way beyond his phony claims to political independence. In fact, he is openly enabling the white supremacist movement.

Donald Trump

Today on CNN’s State of the Union, Trump was interviewed by Jake Tapper who asked him about former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke’s endorsement of his candidacy. Tapper specifically inquired as to whether Trump would “unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don’t want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?” Trump answered saying that…

“Well just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”

In that short and babbling statement Trump said “I don’t know” or “I know nothing” seven times. That might have been the most honest he’s ever been about himself, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s lying, something he does with pathological zeal (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). First of all, why would you need to know anything about white supremacists, other than that they are white supremacists, in order to say that you condemn them and don’t want their votes? What more does Trump need to know about them to repudiate their bigotry?

More to the point, Trump’s desperately repeated denials contradict his prior statements about David Duke. Way back in August of last year Trump was asked by Bloomberg News reporters about Duke’s endorsement and he responded saying that…

“I don’t need his endorsement; I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement.”

Well, apparently Trump knew who Duke was after all. At least he knew last August, and he frequently boasts that he has “the best memory in the world.” At that time Trump’s response as to whether he would repudiate the endorsement was “Sure, I would if that would make you feel better.” So his “repudiation” was only an attempt to satisfy what he sarcastically thought the reporters wanted, not a sincere expression of disapproval. And the obvious explanation for that is that he doesn’t disapprove. His whole campaign is proof that he seeks out and embraces the support of avowed bigots.

News Corpse has documented prior statements by Trump that affirm, if not his racist pride, at least his acceptance of the label. On one occasion he pointedly refused to deny that he is “a racist and a neo-fascist.” And then there was the time that he said that he is “not bothered by comparisons to Hitler.” What’s more, Trump’s Twitter feed is jam-packed with racist comments and retweets, including a blatantly obvious hate monger named WhiteGenocideTM. Even today Trump retweeted approvingly a quote by the fascist dictator Mussolini from a Twitter user named IlDuce2016.

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

This embrace of of the most repellent brand of hate mongering and the leading proponents of white supremacy is unprecedented in mainstream American politics. The Republican Party ought to take a stand and banish Trump from their ranks. However, that will probably not happen because the GOP has been harboring these racists for decades. They believe that these hate groups are critical to their electoral competitiveness, and they’re right. Trump did not create the affinity between the GOP and the KKK, he is merely saying out loud what they have always stood for.

Update 2/29/16: Trump is now piling lies on top of lies. In an interview today on NBC’s Today Show, Trump tried to blame his failure to disavow Duke on CNN’s “very bad earpiece.” He said…

“I’m sitting in a house in Florida, with a very bad earpiece that they gave me, and you could hardly hear what he was saying. What I heard was ‘various groups.’”

If you re-read the his response above, he explicitly mentioned David Duke and white supremacists several times. It could not be more clear that he heard every word of the question and responded to it with specificity. At no time in the interview did he appear to have had trouble hearing this or any other question. This excuse is not only brazenly dishonest, it is pathetically lame.


Hating Fox News: Now Even Republicans Think The GOP PR Network Sucks

Posted by on February 27, 2016 at 1:27 pm. 1 Comments :

Since it’s inception, Fox News has pursued its mission to advance a far-right political agenda and provide a friendly platform for Republican politicians. They openly disparaged Democrats and promoted fake “scandals” that were often invented in their own editorial meetings. Their pretensions to being “fair and balanced” were quickly revealed to be a cheap facade and, to the extent that they continue to push it, they are mercilessly ridiculed.

Fox News

Now, after twenty years of investing in their conservative propaganda machine, it turns out that the core constituency to whom they have been shamelessly pandering has an increasingly negative view of the network. A new YouGov survey of brand buzz shows that Fox News is not at all well thought of by the Teabagger contingent they covet:

“By mid February, FNC’s perception by Republican adults 18 and over had reached its lowest point in more than three years, and has declined by approximately 50% since January of this year.”

The survey places the favorability of Fox News at a mere seventeen (out of 100). And that’s just among Republicans. The ranking for the population at large is actually below zero. YouGov notes that this precipitous decline occurred simultaneously to the emergence of Donald Trump as a leading candidate in the Republican presidential primary.

That should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the long-festering feud between Trump and Fox. He has blasted Fox as being “totally unfair” to him – a delusional complaint considering that they have given him far more airtime than any other candidate, after having created his candidacy in the first place.

Trump engaged in a painfully public quarrel with Fox’s Megyn Kelly who he called a “lightweight” and a “bimbo.” This led to his pledge not to appear on Fox News (which he has since revoked), and a call to boycott the network. Trump later refused to participate in a GOP debate on Fox because he was frightened off by Kelly’s presence as a moderator. His Twitter disciples fell in line with the boycott rhetoric and flooded his feed with promises to turn off Fox. Which, in the end, will be of benefit to everyone.

There is no question that Trump’s war with Fox has bled the network of its once loyal base. The YouGov survey documents a trend that has been in place for at least a couple of years. In 2013 Fox News had completely dropped out of the YouGov BrandIndex’s top ten GOP brands, when the it had been number one in 2012. News Corpse addressed that sinkhole at the time saying that…

“…a lot has taken place that has deteriorated the bonds that Republican viewers had with their daddy network. They lost an election that Fox had assured them they would win in a landslide. They launched numerous investigations into alleged scandals that, despite Fox’s endless hype, failed to catch on with the public or to prove any malfeasance on the part of the president they despise. They pursued a doomed strategy to shut down the government and threaten to throw the nation into default in an effort to reverse time and make ObamaCare disappear. And they continue to suffer through a relationship with the acutely demented Tea Party whose disintegrating appeal hasn’t stopped them from launching pernicious primary challenges that will inevitably benefit Democrats.”

Not much has changed since then. Fox News continues to belch out fringe fabrications and flagrant falsehoods intended to keep their wingnut viewers misinformed. The only real difference is that now they have in Donald Trump a candidate who is articulating their most abhorrent positions out loud.

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

Where Fox News once tried to disguise their elitist, racist, authoritarian biases and hate-speech with rhetorical dog whistles, Trump uses bullhorns to achieve the same ends. The problem for Fox is that Trump’s diatribes are just as often aimed at them as at the liberals that Fox was created to destroy. And the aftermath may end up being the epitaph of the GOP. So there is some good news after all.


Fact Checkers Scorch Donald Trump’s Lie-Riddled Debate Performance

Posted by on February 26, 2016 at 3:01 pm. 3 Comments :

Last night’s debate on CNN showcased once again that the field of Republicans is jam-packed with whimpering, infantile candidates who are wholly unprepared to lead a bunny hop, much less lead a nation. It’s hard to imagine that, after watching that spectacle, anyone can picture any of these colicky brats with America’s nuclear missile launch codes.

Bawl-Apalooza

As usual, Donald Trump dominated the brawl with his trademark insults and incessantly repetitive branding (“Make America build a wall of guns for Jesus, losers”). At this point it would probably be easier to list examples of Trump saying something truthful than to enumerate the many outright falsehoods he spews. But it wouldn’t be as much fun. Here are some of the blatant lies, as documented by Factcheck.org, that are contributing to the ever-growing Trump Bullshitopedia:

  1. Ted Cruz nailed Trump in an exchange where Trump denied that he had ever said he favored a health care plan that would be paid for by the government. In fact, that’s exactly what he told 60 Minutes just last year when he said that “Everybody’s gonna be taken care” and that “the government’s gonna pay for it.”
  2. Marco Rubio got his shots in by revealing that Trump had lost a million dollar lawsuit over his hiring of foreign workers. Trump whined that Rubio was “totally wrong,” except that he wasn’t.
  3. Trump claimed that he could not release his tax returns because they are being audited. This lie has several layers. First of all, he has been saying for months that he would release his tax returns “soon” without ever mentioning any audits. It seems like a convenient fabrication someone just thought of to try to get people to stop asking the question. Secondly, there is nothing preventing him from releasing his returns even if there is an audit in progress. And finally, he claims that he has been audited continuously for the past twelve years, so this lame excuse could actually mean that he will never release his tax returns because the audits could go on for years to come. – – – As an addendum to the tax return/audit lies, Trump told CNN that he believes the IRS may be auditing him because he is a “strong Christian.” Really? He thinks the IRS has it in for Christians? And how did they know he was one twelve years before he ever said anything about his alleged faith?
  4. Another feather in Cruz’s tri-corner hat was earned when he challenged Trump’s assertion that he had “never discussed” Libya or advocated removing Gadhafi from power. He apparently forgot that time he discussed it on his own website saying that “I can’t believe what our country is doing. Gadhafi, in Libya, is killing thousands of people…We should stop this guy…Immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out.”
  5. Here’s an oldie that has been debunked many times. Trump is fond of lying that Americans and American businesses pay the highest taxes in the world. That just isn’t true. It’s not even close.

As an added bonus, here is an item that isn’t technically a lie, but is frighteningly repugnant. At a post-debate rally Trump reminded his cultish followers about how bitterly he hates the media. And then he disclosed what he would do to his enemies in the press given the opportunity:

“One of the things I’m gonna do if I win… I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money…With me they’re not protected because I’m not like other people…So we’re going to open up those libel laws, folks, and we’re gonna have people sue you like you’ve never been sued before.”

In other words, Trump intends to repeal the First Amendment and, through his power as president, threaten and attack the press. Thin-skinned crybabies like Trump may not like any negative attention they get, but it is a Constitutional right for the media to have the freedom to express themselves. And like most rightist Republicans, they only revere the Constitution (or the bible) when they can interpret it to coincide with their preconceptions. It is the way cultists operate. See Fox News…

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


The Plaintive Wailing Of A Republican Party Crumbling Under The Weight Of Donald Trump

Posted by on February 25, 2016 at 3:19 pm. 7 Comments :

As this wacky election season continues to spiral out of control, the sound of an increasingly impotent Republican Party scratching at the door is becoming ever more noticeable. The so-called establishment candidates are falling to the wayside as a creature manufactured by reality TV lumbers across the GOP landscape, flattening its hopes like cardboard models being trampled by a carrot-topped Godzilla.

Trumpzilla

In the frantic chaos that ensues, the Republican National Committee is exhibiting signs of desperation. Party chair Reince Priebus has mounted a backroom campaign to convince everyone that he has everything firmly under control, a claim that has evoked nothing but laughter. Politico is reporting that Priebus is…

“…stating in private meetings that the party has sway over its at times unwelcome front-runner because it has tools Trump will need to use to win a general election — voter data and field, digital and media operations that a nominee typically inherits from the party infrastructure.”

“Dangling access to these resources, Priebus thinks he can help steer Trump toward partywide policy goals and away from the inflammatory rhetoric that Republican officials see as divisive and dangerous.”

Well, that ought scare the savage Trumpzilla into bowing to the supremacy of the party that he has been running against for eight months. The lunacy that Priebus thinks Trump cares about the RNC’s “resources” is almost as absurd as his belief that Trump would ditch his potty-mouth politics, or that he doesn’t already espouse the wingnut policy goals of the party at large. If Trump cared about partnering with the RNC he would not be repeatedly threatening to abandon the party and run as an independent. He wouldn’t be accusing them of distributing illegal solicitations. He wouldn’t be criticizing their debate audiences as being deliberately stacked against him.

Even setting aside the hostility that exists between the RNC and The Donald, the GOP’s services are not exactly state of the art. Last year it was revealed that the Koch brothers were building their own campaign machine that includes many of the services that are typically performed by a political party. The Koch operation was said to be angling to replace the party’s electoral architects by building and distributing the voter access tools and outreach capability.

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

With the Koch’s running election services and Fox News running PR, you might be wondering what purpose the RNC serves. A lot of political operatives and analysts are wondering the same thing. Under the direction of Priebus the party has become less of a factor than in previous years. It has struggled with Trump’s candidacy from the beginning when his refusal to rule out a third-party run resulted in a loyalty oath that all candidates were required to sign (and which Trump has already hinted he might break). It would be wishful thinking to imagine that Trump would suddenly buckle under to a weakened GOP that’s begging him to play nice.