Election

Trump Caught Red-Handed Lying About Biden Using a Teleprompter

Posted by on September 23, 2020 at 12:24 pm. 3 Comments :

Catching Donald Trump in a bald-faced lie is about as difficult as bench pressing a pool noodle. Washington Post fact-checkers have already caught him telling more than 20,000 lies since his inauguration. However, there are times when his fabrications are so distant from reality that they require special attention, because they reveal the extreme lengths to which Trump will go in order to spread his political manure.

Donald Trump Angry

Early Tuesday there was just such a case. In Trump’s morning tweetstorm – that produced twenty-five tweets before noon – there was one post that declared triumphantly that Joe Biden was “caught red-handed using a teleprompter.” This is an allegation that the Trump camp has been unsuccessfully – and with blatant dishonesty – trying to peddle for months. It’s an ironic line of attack considering that Trump regularly uses a teleprompter, but still can’t speak coherently. He recently bragged about how the United States would soon land an astronaut on Nars.

Trump’s latest lame attempt to malign Biden came in the form of a retweet from Jason Miller, the senior advisor to Trump’s reelection campaign. Miller in turn was retweeting Eric Trump, whose superpower is being impervious to the shame of ignorance. What Eric posted was a video that he snatched from another Trump campaign shill that supposedly showed Biden reading answers to questions during a Telemundo interview. Eric’s comment accompanying the video was “Unreal!” Which, of course, it was. Here is the tweet posted by Miller and retweeted by Trump:

The reason Biden wasn’t “pretending” to look at the interviewer was that he was looking at a monitor from which he was taking questions from Telemundo viewers. CNN’s fact-checkers debunked the teleprompter fiction saying that…

“Biden was not using a teleprompter during the interview. Here’s what happened: Telemundo set up a screen, to Biden’s left, for viewers to ask Biden their own questions; Biden was looking to the left because he was addressing his answer directly to a woman who had asked him a question about deportations. Midway through the answer, the screen showing the woman went black, so Biden said, ‘I lost that line.’ Díaz-Balart responded that Biden could just talk with him on the subject.”

All of this was easily verifiable by simply watching the interview. But that’s too much like actual, honest journalism for anyone associated with Trump. So instead, they make up their own perverse version of reality and disseminate that to their viewers who are so cognitively challenged that they will believe anything, no matter how preposterous. These are the same people who think that the coronavirus is a Democratic hoax.

Watching the Trump Klan go through these motions to disparage Biden as mentally unfit is becoming something of a joke. They are getting nowhere. In fact, in a recent poll by Fox News (yes, that Fox News) a majority of the American people said that it’s Trump who doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve. What’s more, Trump has been steadily trailing Biden in every national poll, as well as in most of the critical battleground states.

Trump’s vain determination to belittle Biden’s mental acuity is a strategy sprung from desperation. Trump knows he’s losing and is trying to claw his way out of the ditch he dug for himself. The problem is that these tactics are what got him there in the first place, and he’s only digging himself in deeper.

This will become all the more apparent during the first presidential debate next week. Trump has lowered the bar for Biden so much that Biden only has to show up and refrain from drooling. Meanwhile, Trump will exhibit his customary hostility, ignorance of facts, compulsion to lie, and tendency toward infantile outbursts. That’s not exactly a winning game plan.

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

Trump Reveals to Fox News His Plan to Get the Supreme Court to Declare Him President

Posted by on September 21, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 2 Comments :

This year appears to have a rather sadistic bent as it relentlessly piles on melodramas and anxieties. It’s not bad enough that we are suffering through a deadly pandemic that is being dreadfully mismanaged by Donald Trump. We are also having to deal with an economy in recession and civil unrest triggered by systemic racism. And all in an especially contentious election year.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

Adding to those national migraines is the tragic passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not only has America lost an iconic figure who has made innumerable contributions to civil liberties and equal justice, but it thrusts the nation into a bitterly partisan battle to replace her. Republicans are shamelessly contradicting their previous insistence that the president shouldn’t nominate a Justice during an election year. Apparently that principle only applies to Democratic presidents. The GOP is perfectly OK with nominations by an impeached president who still has multiple criminal and civil indictments hanging over his head.

Making matters worse is Trump himself (as usual), who was “interviewed” twice in two days by Fox News. In a sit-down with Fox’s Mark Levin on Sunday night Trump whined that Fox News wasn’t sufficiently worshipful, and that they catered too much to Democrats. Are we sure that Trump even knows what channel he’s watching?

On Monday Trump visited the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. This is apparently his new regular gig that he leaked last week. It was there that he unleashed some wild speculations and disturbing revelations. When the subject to Ginsburg’s replacement came up, Trump led off with a thoroughly disgraceful allegation maligning the integrity of Ginsburg and her family:

Ainsley Earhardt: Then you have Ruth Bader Ginsburg who told her granddaughter on her death bed, allegedly, that her dying wish was to have the next president choose her successor. How do you think all this plays out?
Trump: I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi. I would be more inclined to the second. Okay, it came out of the wind. It sounds so beautiful. But that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe a Pelosi or Shifty Schiff. So that came out of the wind. Let’s see. I mean maybe she did and maybe she didn’t.”

Trump’s assertion is entirely without foundation – or decency. He is of such weak character that he can’t help politicizing this tragedy by invoking the names of his favorite foils in Congress. Rep. Schiff replied on Twitter, telling Trump that “This is low. Even for you.” But how difficult would it be to believe that Ginsburg had such feelings. She said so many times before. Unfortunately, Trump has an insatiable need to drag everything down to his loathsome level, even if it means desecrating the memory of a universally respected and honorable American. Even if it means despicably disparaging Ginsburg’s last wishes as a Democratic hoax.

Perhaps Trump can’t believe that Ginsburg would make what he curiously concedes is a “beautiful” statement (that “came out of the wind,” whatever that means) because it so far outside anything he is capable of. But he went on to expose his true agenda that reeks of the totalitarian aspirations for which he is well known:

“The bottom line is that we won the election. We have an obligation to do what’s right and act as quickly as possible. We should act quickly because we’re gonna have, probably, election things involved here, you know, because of the fake ballots they’ll be sending out. A terrible situation.”

Oh My! Our infamously inarticulate president is recognizing the threat of “election things” involved here. Never mind that those “things” are manufactured lies about mail-in voting that Trump has been telling for months without ever bothering to provide a scrap of evidence.

More importantly, Trump is confessing that his obsession with confirming a new Supreme Court Justice is rooted in his determination to steal the election. He is anticipating a legal battle for which he wants to make sure that he has a majority on the Court to rule in his favor and, if necessary, declare him the winner. This is the sort of court manipulation that is more common under dictators who pack their courts with subservients and sycophants.

What’s more, this is not an aberration or careless misstatement. Trump made similar remarks on Saturday at his latest cult rally and Super Spreader event in North Carolina. Worried about the prospect of there not being a declared winner on election night, Trump expressed his nefarious desire to put the decision in the hands of a court system that he has packed with allies:

“Now we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later.”

This is Trump’s way of disenfranchising citizens who vote by mail. If their ballots are postmarked on or before election day, but the ballot processing and counting is not completed until some time after, Trump wants all of those votes to be invalidated. He is literally calling for the suppression of voter’s rights. And since more Democrats vote by mail, it’s easy to see why Trump is pursuing this. It is just the logical progression of his yearning for unchecked tyrannical power. And it must be vigorously challenged if America is to remain a free democratic republic.

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

Impeached Presidents Should Not Be Able To Nominate Supreme Court Justices

Posted by on September 19, 2020 at 1:38 pm. 2 Comments :

The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is firstly a personal tragedy for her family, friends, colleagues, and the millions of people throughout the world who admired and were inspired by her intellect, her heart, and her fighting spirit. She is a historical figure whose impact has yet to be fully appreciated.

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

However, it would be naive to pretend that this grievous loss isn’t also a blow to the hopes and dreams of those Americans who value gender and racial equality and the Constitution’s protection for the rights of people over corporations and against the authoritarian aspirations of rogue “leaders.”

Justice Ginsburg was a guardian of the principles that ensure freedom for all Americans. Her loss would be staggering under any circumstance. But to lose her while an ignorant, sociopathic, narcissist is salivating over the prospect of replacing her with an unqualified, neanderthal wingnut is especially painful. The thought of Donald Trump selecting one of his pre-chewed right-wing Stepford judges to take the place of a bona fide superhero of constitutional jurisprudence is excruciating. And Trump’s undisguised glee at having this opportunity is salt in our wounds:

What’s missing from this statement is any hint of reality. Trump was not “put in this position of power and importance” by the American people. They voted against him by a record margin. He was installed by an archaic Electoral College that is anathema to democracy. What’s more, Americans are not proud of Trump. Quite the opposite. He is regarded as a buffoon who is only interested in himself and his puerile pleasures of golfing, tweeting, watching Fox News, and exacting revenge on his perceived enemies.

What Trump is calling an “obligation” is actually just another attempt to steal a seat on the Supreme Court on behalf of his neo-fascist associates in Congress, tunnel-blind evangelicals, and corporate overlords. Trump is violating the precedent set by his GOP confederates who refused to even give a hearing – much less a vote – to an Obama Court nominee during an election year.

Were there any justice in this world, a president who has been impeached ought not to be able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. Furthermore, impeached presidents with close ties to numerous felons (and pending indictments of his own) should be prohibited from nominating any judges or agency heads or bull manure shovelers. Although, if you’ve ever seen Trump speaking at one of his cult rallies you’d know that shoveling bull manure is something that he is actually pretty good at.

Unfortunately, the last thing we can expect from Trump, or any Republican, is integrity or consistency. They will shamelessly march forward to breach their own precedents without regard to the brazen hypocrisy of their actions.

Consequently, Democrats need to up their game. First of all, they need to win back the White House and the Senate. Then they must abolish the filibuster. Then they need to expand the Supreme Court to fifteen seats. And finally, they need to advance to statehood Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. And it wouldn’t hurt to collapse North and South Dakota into a single state. Seriously, do we really need two sparsely populated Dakotas?

After completing these steps we can begin to restore the nation’s honor and respect for the constitutional principles that empower our democracy and enable our freedoms. We can bring justice to bear on those who betrayed the country in pursuit of greed and power. And we can heal the divisions that Trump deliberately created and exploited in order to advance his self-serving agenda.

It won’t be easy, but it wasn’t easy for Justice Ginsburg to wage a lonely fight for decades either. She should be our inspiration today. And we should be the custodians of her legacy and her last request: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

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

UH-OH: GOP Accuses Biden of Cheating By Being More Intelligent than Trump

Posted by on September 18, 2020 at 12:17 pm. 2 Comments :

This week both Donald Trump and Joe Biden held nationally televised town halls. The difference between these two events could not have been more stark. Any voter who saw both broadcasts would likely – and ironically – agree with something Trump tweeted Thursday: “At no time before has there been a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, & two agendas for the future.” Can’t argue with that.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Trump had his town hall on ABC with George Stephanopoulos and spent 90 minutes repeating many of the same lies he’s been telling for months. He utterly failed to exhibit the slightest bit of knowledge on any subject, stumbling awkwardly off topic on virtually every question in order to hew closely to the tiresome talking points that litter his cult rally rhetoric. At the same time, he displayed a callous disrespect and lack of empathy for questioners who challenged his dishonest muttering, or for the millions of Americans they represented.

On the other hand, during the CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, Biden was plainly well acquainted with the issues that are uppermost on the minds of the American people. And he articulated his views with a minimum of error. What’s more, he reaffirmed why he is often praised for his compassion and ability to relate to the common man and woman. His performance exposed Trump’s infantile taunts of “Sleepy” Joe, and his baseless insinuations about Biden’s mental acuity, as wholly outside of reality. Which is a place where Trump must feel comfortable considering how often he goes there.

Consequently, the Republican Confederacy of Trump-Fluffers sprung into action to malign Biden’s town hall presence. Since they can’t allow the public to simply observe Biden speaking coherently, the rightist slander squadron deployed to accuse him of cheating, implying that he must have had prior access to the questions. A representative example of this desperate attack line came from the disgraced former Fox News host, and serial sexual predator, Bill O’Reilly:

REALLY? Just to be clear, what O’Reilly and the rest of the right are accusing Biden of is being smart enough to anticipate that he would be asked questions about such topical matters as the coronavirus, jobs, voting, healthcare, the economy, policing and race, and climate change. They seem to think that only a super genius would have been able to figure that out. Obviously Trump wasn’t able to do it.

Plus, at the same time that these wingnuts are insisting that Biden couldn’t possibly retain knowledge about pressing matters that he’s dealt with for decades, they are also suggesting that he is capable of memorizing a slate of questions – and the answers – that he was allegedly provided beforehand. That alone would require a fair amount of mental dexterity that Trump could never muster.

So now Biden is “guilty” of being more intelligent than Trump (a low bar, to be sure). But this is consistent with the Republican mindset that intelligence is an elitist trait that should disqualify one from public service. They malign universities as centers of left-wing indoctrination. They refuse to respect the guidance of doctors, scientists, and other experts in professional fields. And they cling to Trump’s prideful ignorance as the leader who famously declared that he “loves the poorly educated.” And why shouldn’t he. Without them he’d have no cabinet – or voters.

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

Trump Knows He’s Losing and It’s Driving Him Crazy(er)

Posted by on September 17, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 5 Comments :

There is an almost pitiable factor to the very public descent of Donald Trump into an abyss of anxiety and debilitating terror. His fragile mental state is so obviously decaying before our eyes as he unleashes ever more bizarre rants and transparent, implausible falsehoods.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

There may never have been a more conspicuous case of a public figure sucked into a downward spiral of emotional decomposition than what we are witnessing with Trump. He has been reduced to whining about an election that he’s already concluded he’s lost even though it’s still more than a month away. By his own estimation, the election has been rigged against him and the results will therefore be invalid. And not a single person has yet to cast a vote.

Trump is venting his rage at having lost in advance in an avalanche of tweets that all say essentially the same thing: “I’m a hapless victim of people having the audacity to vote against me.” He is baselessly warning that the “election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” and imploring to anyone who might be listening to “Stop Ballot Madness!” For instance…


So Trump wants to interfere with states’ rights in order to demand that all voters be forced to go to the polls amidst a deadly viral pandemic. He asserts that it would be “like always before” even though mail-in voting has been a part of the electoral process for decades.


For the second time Trump is threatening some unspecified “MAYHEM” if people vote the same way they have been for years. And he also repeats the vague admonition that these states had better obey him “before it’s too late.” Or what?


Now Trump is repeatedly alleging, without any evidence, that foreign countries will disrupt our election if voting by mail is permitted. But the only foreign interference that has been documented is that conducted by Russia with Trump’s cooperation. Also notable is that all three of the tweets above were flagged by Twitter for dispensing misinformation.


And to top it all off, Trump is now trying to persuade his cult followers to vote by mail themselves, after having declared the whole thing an invitation to fraud and espionage.

These attacks on mail-in voting are simply Trump’s way of priming his deplorable disciples for what he clearly realizes is a historic electoral defeat. Rather than display some measure of dignity and patriotism, Trump is determined to incite civil unrest as he advances his aspirations for authoritarian tyranny.

So it’s up to the American people to prevent such an outcome by producing the sort of landslide victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (and Democratic senators and congresspersons and state representatives) that will make it impossible for Trump’s impotent accusations of fraud to be taken seriously. That means unwavering commitment and hard work. Because the clearer it is that Trump is a loser, the more insane his assaults on his political foes – and America – will become. Stay Strong!

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

Fox News Poll: Majority Say Trump Doesn’t Have the ‘Mental Soundness’ to Serve

Posted by on September 13, 2020 at 2:14 pm. 8 Comments :

For the past several months Donald Trump has been trying to portray Joe Biden as mentally unfit to perform the duties of the presidency. Trump acts out his inner infant by referring to Biden with childish nicknames like “Slow” and/or “Sleepy” Joe. It’s an embarrassing display of desperation by an emotionally stunted candidate who relies entirely on lies and fear mongering.

Donald Trump

However, Trump’s frantic campaign of lame insults has not taken hold among America’s voters. He is behind in every national poll, as well as in most of the critical battleground states. Think about that. Trump is losing bigly to a candidate that he says is not only mentally deficient, but also a radical socialist bent on destroying America. If you can’t beat someone like that, you might as well give up.

In the latest Fox News poll (which Trump has a love/hate relationship with), Biden is beating Trump with a majority of likely voters (51-46%). Biden’s favorables are positive (54-45%), while Trump’s are underwater (46-53%). Biden is also leading on an array of the issues most important to the electorate. According to Fox News…

“Likely voters trust Trump over Biden on just one issue: the economy, by 5 points. Biden is favored on racial inequality (+12), coronavirus (+8), health care (+8), Supreme Court nominations (+7), and immigration (+7 points). Voters also trust Biden over Trump on ‘policing and criminal justice’ (+7), while the two are rated about evenly on ‘maintaining law and order’ (Biden +2).”

Trump has been especially obsessed of late with what he is characterizing as a nation besieged by violent insurrectionists like Black Lives Matter (a peaceful equal justice advocacy movement) and Antifa (a figment of Trump’s imagination). So it’s particularly notable that Biden is regarded by voters as the better candidate on policing and Trump’s adopted catch phrase, “law and order.” His hysterical rhetoric is having zero effect on voters, or worse (from his perspective), it’s alienating them and driving them in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the most noteworthy finding in this poll is that voters regard Biden as more fit mentally than Trump. The poll shows a majority of 51% attesting to Biden’s mental soundness. Conversely, Trump has a majority of 51% worried about his mental infirmity. This poll replicates the results of similar poll by Fox News two months ago. So once again, Trump’s barrage of malicious slander has failed to turn voters against Biden. Instead, his prepubescent pettiness appears to have splashed back in his face.

Another poll by ABC/Ipsos has more bad news for Trump. In addition to a broad majority (65%) disapproving of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic (which he was caught lying about), the poll found that “Most Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin (61-37%), think Biden has more respect for those who serve in uniform than Trump does.” So Trump has utterly failed to convince anyone of his phony devotion to the military. That isn’t surprising considering he’s a five-time draft dodger who insults POWS, steals from veterans’ charities, and thinks fallen soldiers are “losers” and “suckers.”

Trump’s tantrums are having the opposite effect of what they intended. Everything that he has embraced as the core issues of his propaganda output is turning out to be more advantageous for Biden. This should be a slap upside the head to those who believed that Trump was a marketing genius. The truth is that he’s a bumbling failure who can be expected to ruin any project that he so incompetently mishandles. It should be abundantly clear now that everything he touches turns to …let’s just say… bull manure.

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

Trump Wonders ‘How Different My Life Would Have Been’ if He Weren’t a Treasonous Swine

Posted by on September 12, 2020 at 1:48 pm. 2 Comments :

While it seems like this could be said about pretty much every week lately, this past week was one of the worst for Donald Trump. Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, exposed Trump for having known just how deadly the coronavirus is, but lying about it to the American people. An article in The Atlantic revealed Trump’s disregard for America’s war dead as “losers” and “suckers.” And his polling versus Joe Biden continues to decline, as does his fundraising.

Donald Trump Swine Pig

So what is a perpetually unpopular president (he’s never hit 50%) do to turn around his floundering campaign? In Trump’s case he resorts to moldy complaints about having been impeached due to an imaginary “witch hunt” and whining about his perceived persecutors:

When Trump says that “now we find out” something, he means that he just finished watching Sean Hannity on Fox News. Indeed, on Hannity’s Friday night program he discussed the “wiping” of phones with Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany (video below). “Now we learn what Mueller’s team was doing,” McEnany lied. “Several dozens – think about that – several dozens of devices returned damaged, wiped clean, some of them intentionally so.”

What Trump and McEnany are too ignorant to know (or too dishonest to admit) is that the federal government requires that phones and other electronic devices used by those with access to confidential and classified materials be either thoroughly cleansed of the data, or physically destroyed. A State Department official addressed this issue with regard to Hillary Clinton’s phones. He told WIRED magazine in 2016 that…

“‘…department security policies mandate that all electronic devices are cleared of sensitive or classified information prior to reuse or disposal.’ Some devices are wiped and reused, in other words, while others are destroyed as part of the recycling process.”

So the shock expressed by McEnany, Hannity, and Trump is really just confirmation of how woefully ill-equipped they are to do their jobs.

But Trump had only just begun to deceive. He went on to characterize the Mueller Report as a “scam,” saying that that “has now been determined.” Notice that he doesn’t say who or what determined it. That’s because he’s making it up. In fact, the Department of Justice Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found that the investigation was proper and was not motivated by political bias. Furthermore, the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee concluded pretty much the same thing.

All of this proves that Trump’s petulant whimpering and victimhood are the product of a weak and frightened man who is conscious of his guilt. And his plaintive yearning for a different life are really just the regrets of an inept criminal who is upset at having been caught.

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

Trump Wasted Millions of Donors’ Dollars on Himself and Other Idiocies

Posted by on September 8, 2020 at 12:23 pm. NO Comments :

The Tribulations of Trump are continuing to descend into the Mariana Trench of political campaigns. His polling has remained steadily behind Joe Biden for months. In fact, he has never led. And on top of the widespread disapproval and personal disgust that Americans have for Trump, he is demonstrating his notorious inability to manage anything competently.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

In a flurry of frantic morning tweets – more than 60 before noon – Trump rambled incoherently on on a variety of subjects. More often than not he retweeted others who were adopting the primary theme of Trump’s 2020 campaign: Fear and Racism. Among these tweets were a couple that were attempts to respond to recent reports that his floundering campaign financing was going the same route as his four bankrupt casinos. Which may explain why Trump recently pulled his advertising in critical battleground states.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, just collected a record $364 million in donations in August. And he is outspending Trump for ads by more than 10-to-1. These facts triggered Trump’s anxiety which led to a defensive tweet saying that…

That is wrong on so many levels. First of all, the Trump Virus could not have cost his campaign anything. More likely it saved money because he was unable to hold his massive cult rallies. Furthermore, he should not be spending campaign funds to counter reporting on his failures in office. Those are official duties, not election activities As for having more money than he did in 2016, that’s only because he relied on a compliant and irresponsible media to cover his every word, which is not happening (as much) this time around.

It should be noted that Trump’s promise to “put up” his own money is a lie he has been telling for years. In his original candidacy announcement he bragged that he didn’t need any donations at all because he would self-fund his campaign. He didn’t. While he did loan the campaign some money, he paid himself back all of it with funds from his donors.

The real reason for Trump’s financial woes is his own incompetence and inability to manage anything bigger than a lemonade stand (if that). To start with, Trump’s mobster mentality has resulted in his tendency to skim profits off the top of all monies received. At least $17 million of donors’ contributions were paid to Trump owned businesses since 2016.

There have also been bizarre and self-serving expenditures that could not be justified in any reputable campaign operation. For instance, Trump’s campaign bought more than $1 million in TV ads to air in Washington, D.C., where the he has no chance of winning. These ads were bought only to pacify Trump who needs to see himself on TV as much as possible.

In addition to that, there was a “six-figure purchase of magnet-lined pouches used to store the phones of donors during meetings so that they could not record and leak the president’s comments.” In other words, Trump is spending his donors’ money on his own paranoia and fear of people hearing what he actually says.

No wonder his campaign is going broke at the most critical time. And no wonder he hasn’t even released his August financial reports. Politicians don’t delay good news, so draw your own conclusions as to why Trump is holding back. [Update: Trump finally released his fundraising for August, for some reason exclusively to Fox News. The $210 million is not insignificant, but it is far less than Biden’s $364 million] None of this looks good for his future reelection prospects. However he still has weapons in his arsenal. Like sabotaging the Postal Service and suppressing the vote by closing polling places or dispatching “poll watchers” to intimidate voters.

Which is why Democrats need to remain vigilant and energized in order to achieve victory. Trump is capable of anything legal or, more likely, otherwise. It will take nothing less than total participation, determination, and concentration to get across the finish line first. And we’ll need a landslide to avoid Trump’s post-election shenanigans. So no let up is allowed, people. This is for real!

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

Trump is Running for Reelection as President of Fox News

Posted by on September 7, 2020 at 1:26 pm. NO Comments :

Labor Day is often regarded as the official kickoff of the presidential campaign season. The party nominating conventions are over and many states are preparing to begin early voting and vote-by-mail operations. So it isn’t surprising to see Donald Trump abuse the power of his office to hold yet another “press conference” at the White House that is nothing more than a reelection rally at taxpayers expense (which the media really needs to stop covering).

Donald Trump Fox News

This alleged press conference was one of the most unfocused to date by Trump, who spent it unleashing a smorgasbord of familiar grievances. He ran the gamut from Barack Obama spying on his campaign, to the election being rigged, to Nancy Pelosi blocking pandemic relief, to Joe Biden being “clueless” and “stupid,” to the economy recovering, to coronavirus being cured. He even gave Vladimir Putin another pass for poisoning political opponent Alexei Navalny.

Virtually everything Trump asserted during the hour plus harangue was demonstrably false. The U.S. intelligence community has investigated the probes into Trump’s collusion with Russia and found that, not only is there zero evidence of Obama spying, there is ample proof of Trump’s misconduct. The only election rigging that has been uncovered is that done by Trump himself, who even committed a felony by telling his cult followers to vote twice. Pelosi passed a relief bill months ago that has been sitting on GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s desk as he refuses to negotiate. The economy is in recession. The coronavirus is still taking the lives of more than 1,000 Americans a day. But Putin remains the only person in Trump’s world that doesn’t have a derogatory nickname.

Trump’s list of grievances should sound familiar to anyone who watches Fox news. It’s a rehashing of the core issues that dominate Fox’s daily programming. [To see just how integrated Trump is to Fox News check out Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter] Not only do all of the Fox hosts and commentators disseminate the very same propaganda, but Trump is on almost as often as the network regulars to deliver the same spiel. And for the most part, Fox News is the only network that routinely airs Trump’s events live and uninterrupted. That is likely gnawing at the Narcissist-in-Chief who has become accustomed to being the center of attention all the time.

The result of this blanketing of Trump on Fox’s air alone is that his most brainwashed supporters are getting their brains an extra scrubbing on a regular basis. But his message isn’t going out to anyone else. That’s a big problem as the campaign season unfolds. In 2016, Trump didn’t have to spend much money because the media covered everything he did. Without that free advertising, 2020 is shaping up to be a much more difficult environment for him. There is even speculation that he is already running out of money.

Trump has recently pulled ads in critical battleground states. Joe Biden, meanwhile, just collected a record $364 million in donations in August. And he is outspending Trump for ads by more than 10-to-1. What’s more, it’s telling that Trump hasn’t even released his August financial reports yet. That generally portends bad news. Politicians don’t delay good news.

Trump apparently thinks he can win this race by appearing almost exclusively on Fox News and running on a platform developed by Fox’s most devoted Trump-fluffers. That’s a preposterous strategy. On its best night Fox draws about one percent of the nation’s population. If Trump is only seen on Fox News, whose viewers are already supporting him, he can’t possibly expand his base beyond the worshipful audience of Foxic true believers. And there aren’t enough of them to win an election.

However, Trump could run for President of Fox News. He has all the qualifications. He is obnoxious and arrogant and convinced of his own magnificence. He has a profound ignorance of the world and the issues that are most important to voters. He is completely at ease lying about things that are easily proven false. And he is comfortable subjugating himself to others with real power. The one thing that may stand in his way is all the times he has attacked Fox News and predicted their downfall. Not that Fox seems to mind. They take it like a battered spouse and ask for more.

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

Trump’s Fascist ‘Law and Order’ Rhetoric is Making Things Worse: POLL

Posted by on September 6, 2020 at 12:43 pm. 5 Comments :

The reelection prospects for Donald Trump have been mired in an abyss of doom for months. Joe Biden is crushing him in every national poll as well as in most of the crucial swing states. And the post-convention polling has only gotten worse for Trump. That, of course, is not a reason to become complacent or to work less vigorously. Victory is not assured until the votes are counted.

Donald Trump heil

Trump, however, has a real problem. He can’t campaign on the economy, which is in recession. He can’t campaign on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been a model of deadly negligence and incompetence with deaths nearing 190,000. He can’t campaign on character, because…well, because he’s Donald Trump. So that leaves only one path available for him to stagger down: Fear and division.

Consequently, Trump has wholly embraced a campaign theme centered on terrorizing the American people. The catch phrase most often associated with him is “law and order,” which he has tweeted 52 times so far this year alone. He is painting a hellish picture of the nation as being engulfed in flames with violent insurgents occupying vast territories of major cities and threatening to invade the serenity of white suburbia.

These dystopian delusions have been the core of Trump’s campaign strategy for weeks. He mostly has been maligning the demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism. According to Trump “These are not acts of peaceful protest but really domestic terror.” And now we have some evidence of just how badly his tactics are failing. A new poll by ABC News/Ipsos has found that…

“Over half of the country — 55% … said they think Trump is aggravating the situation, while just over one in 10 Americans, 13%, said they think he is making it better.”

Thirteen percent barely amounts to a third of his base support, so even most of his cult followers don’t think he’s making things better. The poll goes on to ask a series of questions related to public safety and which candidate for president is best suited to handle the crises that the nation faces. The results show that “Between the two candidates, more Americans trust Biden over Trump to…”

  • Keep the country safe, 55%-42%
  • Keep their families safe, 56%-42%
  • Care more about them, 59%-38%
  • Unite the country, 64%-33%
  • Handle the protests across the country, 59%-39%
  • Address racial discrimination, 64%-34%
  • Manage the COVID-19 response, 60%-38%
  • Reduce violence in the country, 59%-39%

Nevertheless, Trump is still relying on an imaginary horror story about rampant crime to juice his campaign. An analysis by HuffPost found that out of “73,000 ads they aired from July 1 to July 26 … 85% of them dealt in one way or another with public safety.”

The fact that none of this is working for Trump may have something to do with his having pulled all of his television advertising. That’s a peculiar thing to do in the week following his national nominating convention and in the last lap toward election day. He either realizes that his campaign strategy is a complete bust, or he’s run out of money. Either way it’s a very bad omen for the future of his campaign and his presidency. Which, ironically, is a very good omen for America and the world.

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