The Trump Cult Marches On As His Disciples Obey Their Master’s Call

Posted by on April 26, 2016 at 8:46 pm. 2 Comments :

The latest round of Republican primaries has returned the results that pretty much everyone expected. Donald Trump prevailed in the northeast corridor over his hapless GOP rivals who are only competing to challenge Trump at an open convention in July. The fact that Trump continues to pull out victories like this is evidence of how low the Republican Party has sunk into blind obedience to the overlord of reality TV celebrity worship. It’s behavior that they have learned faithfully from being loyal devotees of Fox News for so many years.

Fox Nation vs. Reality

Trump’s disciples don’t care that he is a flagrant racist who has demonstrated his prejudice against African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and women. They aren’t put off by his promises to commit war crimes against women and children in Syria and Iraq. They let slide that he isn’t bothered by being compared to Hitler. And no matter how much he lies they just brush it off and keep applauding like slap-happy seals (See the Trump Bullshitopedia) They even applaud when he insults them as mindless baboons or threatens to incite riots.

It is that sort of unquestioning devotion that forms the foundation of every successful cult. And those components were built into Fox News from its inception. In an effort to document this phenomenon, News Corpse published a collection of articles that highlighted the deception, propaganda, and outright lies disseminated by the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. The second volume of this series was dubbed “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult Of Ignorance.” Every chapter is fully verified by reputable sources and exposes the website for its shameful dishonesty and lack of ethics. It reveals the concerted effort by wealthy and powerful media fabulists that is aimed at crippling the intelligence of the willfully dimwitted. It is a great resource for proving to your Fox-deluded friends and family what a den of deceit it is. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

“Since then Fox Nation has evolved into an even more sheltered environment that has taken on many characteristics of culthood. It is a pattern they adopted from their parent, Fox News, where the slogan “fair and balanced” was an implicit condemnation of all other news sources as being neither. Recognizing that the prime directive of a cult is to convince your followers that your version of reality is the only true version and that all others are agents of deception, Fox segregated their disciples to prevent them from being contaminated by impure thoughts, otherwise known as facts.”

Stay to to News Corpse for more insights into the media and its incestuous intersection with politics. Be sure to like us on Facebook. And here is where you can get your copy of Fox Nation vs. Reality:

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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Rush Limbaugh Warns Of “A Nuclear Explosion” If Donald Trump Is Denied Nomination

Posted by on April 25, 2016 at 8:32 pm. 6 Comments :

Conservative pundits on TV and radio have proven to be painfully bad at punditry. Their predictions are notoriously distant from the reality that eventually unfolds. Just think about all of the things that were supposed to either destroy America, or turn it into a commie hellhole, if Barack Obama was elected (or reelected), that never came to pass. But there is one thing at which they are quite good: Scaring the bejeebus out of the wingnut faithful.

Rush Limbaugh

So it is unsurprising that the monster-mouth of the right, Rush Limbaugh, is unleashing alarms over the prospect of the Republicans being thrust into a contested convention. The threat, as imagined by Limbaugh, is that disappointed Trump supporters will freak out if their messiah is not crowned by an obedient assembly of delegates. Limbaugh speculates about a scenario wherein Ted Cruz manages to maneuver the delegate vote to a second or third ballot and then prevail over Trump. In which case, Limbaugh warns…

“If that ever happens, we are gonna see a nuclear explosion like you’ve never seen before. […] Holy smokes! The blowback that will happen then, the backlash? That will be the end of the Republican Party. […] It might make the Watts and Rodney King riots look like Romper Room when it was all over.”

This isn’t the first time that Limbaugh has presaged the end of the Republican Party. Two months before President Obama was reelected in 2012 Limbaugh said that “If Obama wins let me tell you what it’s the end of…the Republican Party.” Sadly, this was just another of the hundreds of times he’s been wrong. And during the same rant he was equally wrong when he said that…

“If Obama’s re-elected, it will happen. There’s no IF about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut-wrenching, but it will happen. The country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.”

At some point you have to wonder if he is ever embarrassed by his perpetual idiocy. But back to the main point, this new spiel is just the latest threat of violence projected for the Republican National Convention coming up in Cleveland in July. Trump himself predicted riots if he arrived at the convention with more delegates than his opponents, but short of a majority, and was beaten out of the nomination by a better organized candidate. His stooge, Roger Stone, publicly declared that he would be distributing the names and hotel room numbers of delegates that didn’t fall in line behind Trump.

Limbaugh’s warning came with a caveat that if Cruz or Kasich or anyone else rose to assume the nomination it would not be due to, as Trump whines, a rigged system or someone stealing the election:

“It’s not because anything’s illegal. Everybody’s taking advantage of the rules. [but] The words would not be there to explain to people what happened […] and people wouldn’t put up with it.”

So even Limbaugh accepts that it is within the rules to lobby for delegate support and make a case to nominate someone other than the top delegate winner. But at the same time he reveals his opinion that his fellow Republicans are unable to understand the process and that they are too dense for it to be explained to them, leading to them resorting to mayhem.

What’s funny about this is that Limbaugh is so upset by the possibility of riots ensuing at the GOP convention. However, he had a completely different view a few years ago when he openly advocated for violence at the Democratic convention in Denver in 2008 in a tirade he titled “Screw the World! Riot in Denver!“ he said that his dream was for…

“…a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that.”

So while Limbaugh had such fervent hopes for violence that never materialized (or was even plausible) at a Democratic convention, he is now fraught with anxiety about the potential for violence at a Republican convention. There’s a kind of karmic justice in that. It is also typical of right-wingers who so often use projection to disparage their perceived enemies, but later find themselves the victims of their own evil yearnings.


More Proof That Donald Trump Thinks (Correctly) That His Followers Are Imbeciles

Posted by on April 25, 2016 at 11:59 am. 1 Comments :

A few months ago News Corpse published an article illustrating the disrespect that Donald Trump has for his legions of dimwitted followers. His open contempt for the little people that flock to his hate-filled revival meetings was expressed in a Q&A with a supporter who wanted to know how Trump would handle terrorism. Trump responded that “You don’t want to hear how I’d handle it.” Of course they don’t. They’re too dumb to understand a substantive answer, even if Trump were smart enough to give one.

Donald Trump

This morning Trump demonstrated how he is changing his image to be more “presidential” by railing against John Kasich for the disgusting way he eats pancakes. That’s the depth of the discourse on issues that Trump is capable of, and it perfectly reflects the intellectual capacity of his audience. And Trump knows it. That’s why he said the following this weekend:

“You know, being presidential is easy — much easier than what I have to do. Here, I have to rant and rave. I have to keep you people going. Otherwise you’re going to fall asleep on me, right?”

Right! Trump is acknowledging that his supporters are low attention span blockheads who can’t concentrate unless they are being subjected to the neanderthal ranting and raving that is the hallmark of a Trump rally. But what’s truly pathetic is that they cheer him even while he’s insulting them as shallow peons who require vulgar stimulation to remain awake. It’s a perverse sort of political masochism that excites Trump’s submissives as well as the dominant, dictatorial tendencies of Trump.

For the record, if it were easy for Trump to be presidential he would not have spent the last ten months insulting women, African-Americans, Muslims, and his GOP colleagues. He would not have brazenly lied more than any candidate in modern history (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). And he would not have repeatedly embarrassed himself by acting like a buffoon and affirming the most repulsive behavior of the past few decades, including that he wants to bang his daughter.

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

The fact that an elitist, narcissistic, billionaire, born into wealth and privilege, inspires such demented reverence on the part of his lowbrow, glassy-eyed disciples is a troubling sign for the Republican Party. The frightening thing is that the rest of the Republican field is jockeying to attract these same cretins. So regardless of what happens to Trump, the GOP constituency will remain infected by his diseased mindset and the party regulars will have adopted his crackpot platform. That’s a stain that will be hard to wash away.


Really? Fox News Debuts The Anti-Climate Change Armadillo

Posted by on April 24, 2016 at 1:28 pm. 3 Comments :

In its continuing effort to disinform its viewers on the indisputably real threat of climate change (as documented by 97% of the scientists who study it), Fox News invited the notorious climate denier, Marc Morano, to deliver one of the most absurd and dishonest arguments against the facts to date (and to plug his new propaganda film).

Fox News

On Fox & Friends Sunday morning, host Steve Doocy introduced Morano as an expert on climate science and took a swing at President Obama in the process (video below):

Doocy: The Obama administration bypassed Congress and signed a U.N. treaty on climate change. But many hailing the decision are the same people who swore doomsday was upon us decades ago and many of those scenarios never came true.

First of all, Doocy’s assertion that the Obama administration bypassed Congress is the sort of deliberate falsehood that Fox uses to smear the President as an out of control tyrant. In reality, the “Paris Agreement,” signed by Secretary of State John Kerry, was part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that was ratified by the Senate in 1992. The Congress has no role whatsoever in the follow-on agreements to a treaty already ratified.

Secondly, Doocy’s contention that those supporting the Paris Agreement had made prior warnings that never materialized is also false. For one thing, he provides no names to back up his claim. And virtually everything that has been warned about climate change has, in fact, come to pass. 2015 was the hottest year on record, and 2016 is already poised to surpass that.

But what made this segment remarkable was the absurdity of how the argument was presented. Morano brought in a stuffed armadillo, in a cage for safety (?), to illustrate his fairy tale that the beleaguered beast was burdened by global cooling in the seventies and warming today. Once again, no evidence was provided to support the claim that “We were worried about a coming ice age” in the 70s. However, the global cooling fallacy has long been used by climate deniers, even though it was based on a single magazine article and was never advanced by anyone in the science community.

For the record, Morano has been lying about climate for several years despite the fact that he has no background at all in science. Just like Sarah Palin, who recently bragged that she is “as much a scientist” as Bill Nye (which is demonstrably untrue), Morano is as much a scientist as Palin.

Morano began his career as a Republican operative who worked for the Senate’s stupidest climate denier, Jim Inhofe. Morano’s resume also includes stints with Rush Limbaugh, the ultra-conservative CNSNews, and he was one of the original “swiftboat” liars who smeared Kerry’s service as a Vietnam veteran. He has a purely political past that in no way prepares him to comment on climate science. And with today’s partnership with a stuffed armadillo, Morano continues to turn an important issue into the sort of silliness that a Fox News viewer can understand, never mind that it is completely untrue.

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


Republicans Are Frantically Trying To Force Themselves To Believe Donald Trump’s Lies

Posted by on April 23, 2016 at 3:15 pm. 1 Comments :

What’s happening today in the Republican primary for the GOP nomination for president is unprecedented. The front-runner in the race is purposefully lying about himself and admitting that he is lying. When Donald Trump says that “At some point, I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored,” he is in effect confessing that everything he has been doing up until that point has been a charade.

Dogshit Donald Trump

This isn’t the first time that Trump has openly revealed the dishonesty of his campaign tactics. He was asked by Fox News in February when he would start to act more presidential and he answered “Pretty soon.” Of course, that answer was evidence that he was not presidential at the time, but that his “act” would change at some unspecified time in the future. So as soon as he thinks he’s ready to stop acting like a crass and boorish buffoon he’ll suddenly transform into a respectable diplomat, something he has never been in decades of a very public life.

To expand on his overt phoniness, Trump also told an NBC town hall that “I did some things, and I’ve said some things in fun. I’ve said it as an entertainer.” He apparently has no reluctance to exposing himself as character in his own reality show. And his new campaign chief, Paul Manafort, backed him up saying that “The part that he’s been playing is now evolving.”

So it’s obvious, and admitted, that Trump is merely playing a part at his rancorous rallies filled with rancid insults, undisguised threats, crybaby whining, and childish blathering. And now he expects everyone to believe that he will simply change into a dignified leader who won’t embarrass the nation on the world stage. That’s a lot to ask. But sadly, many in the media are already falling for it.

In a addition to the press, who have forthrightly stated that ratings are more important than the welfare of the country, the Republican Party is trying to gather the nerve to pretend that they can tolerate a Trump candidacy. While some factions of the GOP are stumbling over themselves to resist him (i.e. the #NeverTrump movement), the remainder are engaging in a form of self-delusion to get to a point where they don’t vomit at the sound his name.

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

They realize that July is rapidly approaching and the prospect of Trump emerging from their convention with the nomination is not as preposterous as it once seemed to be. Now they have to decide whether it would be crazier to step away from a candidate that has sunk to lower depths in favorability than any candidate in history, or to fall in line behind him and suffer record losses. They also have to decide if they want to be associated with a flaming bigot who revels in his ignorance of both domestic and foreign affairs.

That might seem like an easy question for most people, but for Republicans they are struggling with it. The choice between integrity and patriotism over a racist wannabe dictator is not so simple for them. And if you were going to place any bets, I would suggest that you lean toward the party standing behind Trump because, when all is said and done, he isn’t so different than the rest of them. And he certainly isn’t very different from the right-wing constituency that is propping Trump up with victories from Montgomery to Manhattan.


That’s A Wrap: Hollywood’s Closet Conservatives Close Their Covert Club

Posted by on April 22, 2016 at 4:19 pm. 2 Comments :

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Friends of Abe (FoA) is an exclusive society of right-wing celebrities who pretend to be secret so as to protect themselves from imaginary discrimination in Hollywood. Never mind that many of them make public appearances on behalf of the supposedly secret group and with names like Kelsey Grammer, Tom Selleck, Bruce Willis, and Clint Eastwood, they aren’t exactly nobodies who can’t find work in movies and TV.

Friends of Abe

Now it appears that the FoA is being disbanded. A report by the Guardian reveals that the organization has decided to dispense with their activities just as the 2016 election season is heading into the homestretch. The networking group will cease to host regular gatherings where they can complain about their careers, bitch about high taxes on rich folks like themselves, fret about ISIS coming after them, hate on immigrants, whine that more Americans have access to health care than ever before, and blame President Obama for those, and every other, catastrophe they think is destroying America. The announcement was made in an email to members that said in part…

“Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website. Today, because we have been successful in creating a community that extends far beyond our events, people just don’t feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night, and fewer people pay the dues that help us maintain that large infrastructure.”

That’s some pretty powerful spin. Did you catch it? They are saying that due to their unparalleled success nobody is paying any dues or showing up for their events. And to think, I used to believe that declining revenue and attendance were signs of failure. Shows you how much I know.

As it turns out, the FoA is suffering from the same sort of internal rancor that is devouring the Republican Party from the inside, and for the same reason: Donald Trump. As the Guardian notes, “infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy, among other factors, had drained commitment.” It goes on to expose an environment described by one the founders as a “civil war in slow motion,” and laments broken friendships and the loss of a sense of solidarity.

Trump basks in the glory of being a wrecking ball on the right. He has splintered the GOP into factions including the #NeverTrump movement and the well-financed anti-Trump “Our Principles” Super PAC. Party regulars have likened the emergence of Trump to political suicide, or at least threatened to commit suicide themselves if he gets the nomination. As for the Storm-Trumpers, they cling so tightly to their messiah that they promise to wreak havoc at the RNC convention and abandon the GOP entirely if the crown is not passed to Trump as God intends.

Even Fox News has been run through the Trump meat grinder. He has bitterly castigated the network as being full of dopes, and dummies, and boring lightweights who can’t function because of their menstrual cycles. He has even called for a boycott of the network that he says is totally unfair to him, despite the fact that they have given him far more airtime than any other candidate. The same animosities that drove the break up of the FoA can be observed in the hallways of Fox News.

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

But don’t jump to conclusions yet. This announcement of defeat may be a ruse to throw everyone off the trail of the FoA’s true mission. They may just be pretending to break up so they can return to their former state of obscurity from which they can launch wingnut missiles at Democrats and other liberal foes in anonymity. Yesterday they posted a message on their Facebook page that cryptically presaged this announcement:

“Friends of Abe mentioned in the media again…sheesh, we’re becoming about as ‘secret’ as Mount Everest. I will concede that the author is correct, in that sides have certainly been drawn regarding Trump. But the organization will survive, even if, for the time being, fewer people are being let in.”

That sounds like a tactical retreat. Not that they would be any more effective as guerrilla-style activists fighting in the shadows. Having twice the impact of zero impact is still zero impact. We’ll know more shortly as the FoA Facebook page currently has a cover photo that says they will release an official statement on the Facebook page in the next twenty-fours. Maybe that statement will include an explanation for why an organization whose first rule is (borrowing from The Fight Club) “Never talk about Friends of Abe,” has a Facebook page to begin with.

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Racists On Fox News React To The Harriet Tubman $20.00 Bill

Posted by on April 21, 2016 at 3:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Like clockwork, all that needs to happen is for some news event to address something involving race that can be tied to the Obama administration and the bigots come slithering out from the crevices in the floor. The latest example of this is the long overdue initiative to place a woman on U.S. currency. The woman selected for the honor is the heroic former slave and abolitionist, Harriet Tubman. Oh, and she just happens to be black.

Fox News

Leading the way, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News delivered a commentary (video below) that portrayed the decision to put Tubman on the $20.00 bill as an “awful” idea that amounts to “dividing the country.” Van Susteren blasted the plan in the most insulting terms, saying that “The Obama administration went stupid, and went stupid for no reason.” Then she offered her own alternative to put Tubman on a non-existent $25.00 bill instead, saying that it would be “the smart and easy thing to do.”

First of all, what would be smart or easy about minting a new bill just for the purpose of putting Tubman on it? It would waste millions of dollars to design, produce, and maintain, despite the fact that there is no demand for a denomination that’s $5.00 more than the twenty. That would make it a pretty stupid thing to do. And the only thing that is making any of this divisive is the right-wingers like Van Susteren who insist on dredging up controversy where there need not be any.

What’s more, segregating Tubman to a new, unwanted denomination smacks of a form of the “separate but equal” philosophy that was really just an excuse to practice discrimination. Van Susteren is effectively saying that Tubman isn’t fit for the currency that the rest of us white folk use. That reasoning has also been adopted by Ben Carson and Donald Trump who have both advocated for an even more devalued denomination for Tubman: the $2.00 bill.

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

Not surprisingly, the response to Van Susteren’s commentary by the cretins at the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, was an avalanche of racism. This has become a predictable aftereffect of any race-related news story (see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community). Here are just a few examples of the bigoted opinions that Fox fans are comfortable expressing when they are among their own kind:

Fox Nation Comments


Watch: How The Media Is Falling For Donald Trump’s Pretend Presidential Persona

Posted by on April 20, 2016 at 2:36 pm. 2 Comments :

Last February I wrote an article that detailed the gross perversion of presidential demeanor exhibited by Donald Trump. The article began by stating that…

“It is safe to say that Donald Trump is the most profane, classless, cretin who ever ran for president. He is an embarrassment to his party and to the nation. His remedial English, hollow policy pronouncements, and incessant boasting, are cartoonish in nature. Even Fox News mogul, Rupert Murdoch, agreed when he tweeted ‘When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?’“

Donald Trump

Trump’s own answer to that question came during a February interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace when he offered the vague response, “Pretty soon.” Now, following the New York primary, the media appears ready to accept that Trump is changing his tune and preparing to put on a show by acting presidential. The key word there is “acting.” Trump does not believe that a presidential bearing is a component of one’s character. Rather it is a role one plays like a contestant on a reality TV show.

The naivete of the media’s new appraisal of Trump’s allegedly softer tone is based solely on his victory speech in New York last night. Indeed the speech was shorter than the windy, rambling marathons that he usually makes people suffer through, and it was devoid of the standard insults that routinely pepper his tantrums on the stump. Consequently, the media declared that there has been a major attitude adjustment by Trump.

There is something of a Stepford quality to the uniformity of opinion by so many reporters after a single speech that had no visible elements of newsworthiness. Nevertheless, the lock-step march of the media to advance a false narrative that Trump is suddenly a composed and diplomatic figure is in full swing. Never mind that today, just a few hours after the New York speech, Trump was in Indiana mouthing off about “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Crooked Hillary” Clinton (he said nothing about “Dogshit Donald” Trump). He couldn’t even go twenty-fours without reverting to his revolting self.

Donald Trump is a vulgarian by birth. His parents shipped him off to military school in his youth because they couldn’t cope with his belligerent behavior. He grew up to become a bully who uses lies and threats to achieve his selfish goals. He isn’t going to become a diplomat overnight by virtue of his herculean will.

For supposedly intelligent and skeptical journalists to believe that Trump could stop being what he has been his whole life is a sad testament to the state of the media. They would not only have to dismiss his entire biographical history, but also what they’ve seen with their own eyes for the past ten months. They need to realize that, even if Trump behaves like a princess at high tea for the next few months, it is just an act and that he will revert to form when he no longer needs to pretend.

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

It is bad enough that there are voters who are so delusional that they can’t see through Trump’s deceit and hypocrisy, but the media, who have been among the targets of Trump’s hostility, should know better and be better prepared to present a realistic analysis of the political environment. So the question is: After rushing to air commentaries about Trump’s alleged affability following the speech in New York, will they correct the record following his bile-filled speech in Indiana? Don’t hold your breath. The media has already admitted that ratings are more important than journalistic ethics or the welfare of the nation. They aren’t going to abandon that stance to be honest about the fact that Trump has never been presidential, and he never will be.

Extra Bonus: See how Ralph Wiggum of the Simpsons predicted the Trump campaign back in 2008.


Morning Joe, Fox News, And The Curse Of Dumb Glenn Beck Comparisons

Posted by on April 19, 2016 at 1:39 pm. 5 Comments :

There is nothing more embarrassing than a public figure so desperate for attention that he uncorks painfully shallow op-eds that only demonstrate why he gets so little attention. That’s the situation that MSNBC’s Morning Joe Scarborough finds himself in now after he penned a column for the Washington Post with unsolicited advice for Megyn Kelly of Fox News. The column is headlined “Megyn Kelly, Fox News, and the Curse of Glenn Beck.”

Morning Joe Scarborough

Scarborough’s column purported to be a stab at career guidance for Kelly, Fox’s trending primetime star anchor. He made note of her recent comments regarding her future with Fox News. Kelly said that, while she is happy at Fox, it also causes “brain damage,” and that she has not decided what she will do when her current contract expires.

Scarborough thinks that Kelly would be making a terrible mistake were she to leave Fox News, the network that built her into a household name for news junkies. He may be right, but not for the ludicrous reason he floated:

“If Kelly wants to leave Fox News for family reasons, good for her. But if Kelly is thinking of escaping Roger Ailes and Fox News because she thinks she has outgrown the man and his star-making machinery, I humbly offer a friendly suggestion: Call Glenn Beck.”

First of all, calling Glenn Beck for advice on anything is never a good idea. Beck would sell you worthless gold coins and replace your health insurance with prayer. Beck is the man who thinks that God speaks to him about political matters and has told him the world is ending so many times that either God is a pathological liar or he is hilariously fucking with Beck.

More to the point, Scarborough’s suggestion is based on the catastrophe that Beck’s career has become since leaving Fox and, therefore, Kelly should avoid a similar disastrous fate. But Scarborough has completely misread the disparate media landscapes facing Beck and Kelly.

Glenn Beck was fired from Fox News with no place else to go in cable or broadcast media. His dismissal was the result of his outlandish and offensive behavior on his show that resulted in an advertiser boycott that stripped the program of any significant revenue. He was cast aside as damaged goods and had few prospects other than the Internet’s wingnut underground and his remaining radio fans.

Megyn Kelly, by contrast, is the jewel in Fox’s primetime lineup. She frequently beats Bill O’Reilly’s ratings and is featured regularly in magazine profiles that are pure puffery. More importantly, she is in demand by every network who would leap at the opportunity to steal the popular and rising star from Fox to bolster their own networks and to deprive Fox of a proven ratings draw. None of this is a reflection on the quality of Kelly’s work, which is sorely lacking in credibility and ethics. It is just a real world observation of her success on a conservative network that rewards blind loyalty to rightist partisanship.

In short, Kelly is contemplating a departure from Fox at a time when her stock is valuable and rising. Beck left Fox as a loser who was dumped for being too insanely right-wing for the avowed centerpiece of right-wing media. But Scarborough thinks that these two situations are comparable and that Kelly should be nervous about becoming the next Beck. That’s nonsense.

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

Scarborough is once again illustrating why he is such an inferior analyst. He can’t see past his own biases. In this case his leanings are to genuflect before the divine Roger Ailes, whom Scarborough repeatedly praises in this article. It’s hard to see this column as anything other than Scarborough posting his resume in a public plea for Fox to hire him. And it comes complete with a pledge of loyalty that he wouldn’t abandon them the way that traitor Kelly is threatening to do, and that he gladly take her time slot. That would probably help MSNBC more than it would help Fox.


Stupid Polling Tricks: New Yorkers Hate Donald Trump But He Thinks They Adore Him

Posted by on April 18, 2016 at 4:05 pm. 5 Comments :

The Republican Party must be ready to gnaw off its leg after ten months of Donald Trump stinking up the place. He has engaged in bitter battles with his GOP opponents and the Republican National Committee. He has assembled the worst record on honesty of any candidate in decades (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). And he’s done this while offending virtually every voter constituency in the nation. That may account for the public’s aversion to him as evidenced in this poll from Fox News (that’s right, Fox News). But, as if that weren’t enough to produce an enduring nausea, Trump is also dumb as fence post. And he’s making the most of it.

Donald Trump Stupid

Trump has shown that he has no grasp of the issues that face the country. He rarely responds to a question with anything resembling coherence, much less substance. What he does say is a third grade level simplification that would shame an actual third grader. And he is not only ignorant of policy matters, he doesn’t have the vaguest idea of how the political system works. He has spent most of the last week whining about a delegate process that has been known to every candidate for years.

This weekend Trump demonstrated again how shallow his understanding of campaign matters is. He gleefully tweeted about a poll that blared the headline: “BOOM! Trump Holds 66% Favorable Rating in New York – Leads Hillary Clinton by 19 Points in Empire State.”

Anyone who reads that tweet and thinks there is anything remotely associated with reality in it should not be allowed use pointy scissors. A cursory examination reveals it to be a complete farce. The polling organization is Liberty Opinion Research, a little known conservative operation with no discernable credentials. Its president is Nick Langworthy, who is also the chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee and has endorsed Trump for president.

Digging into the internals of the poll shows that the respondents were narrowly drawn to achieve a positive result for Trump. They are an exclusive lot that is 94% white, 61% conservative, and 48% of them are 66 years or older. So what you have is a bunch of old, right-wing, white guys expressing their devotion to an old, right-wing, white guy.

Trump seems to enjoy posting links to dubious polling that falsely heralds him as the second coming. Last February he linked to a ridiculous poll that claimed that he “leads big with Latinos.” And back in December he did the same thing with a laughable survey that said that “minorities are lining up behind” him. I guess when you appeal to a dimwitted throng of cult worshipers you can say anything.

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

For the record, Clinton is beating Trump by 21.2% in the RealClear Politics average of polls for New York. So the preferences of the people of New York are not in doubt. It isn’t even close. But Trump is dumb enough to believe that the voters in his home state adore him, when they obviously do not. And his glassy-eyed disciples will also cling to his tweet as if it were the gospel truth. It would be comical if it weren’t so pathetically sad.