Media

Trump’s Press Secretary Plans to Turn the WH Briefing Room Into a Pro-Trump Propaganda Mill

Posted by on December 20, 2024 at 2:10 pm. NO Comments :

From the earliest days of Donald Trump’s political life he has had a love/hate relationship with the press. He loved when it brought him the attention that he craved. But he hated when it failed to exalt him as Gawd’s gift to humanity.

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Trump’s malignant narcissism is evident in nearly every public utterance he makes. And the common thread that weaves through all of his inbred hostilities is his abhorrence of the media that he regular refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” Just since the recent election, Trump has taken to threatening the national news networks with revocation of their broadcast licenses (which don’t exist), and the nomination of his devoted cult disciple, Kash Patel, who shares his animosity toward the press…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Free Press? His FBI Flunky Kash Patel Threatens to ‘Come After the People in the Media’

One of Trump’s primary goals for his reoccupation of the White House is to remake its relationship with the media. To that end, he dispatched his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to deliver a message via his Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News), regarding the restructuring of the White House Press Briefing Room. Leavitt openly explained precisely how she intends to poison the process by which the press informs the public about presidential affairs.

“I hope the legacy media will take a step back and realize that the American people haven’t listened to their lies. Trust in the legacy media is at an all-time low. And Trump ran in an untraditional media lane on the campaign trail. Big part of the reason he won. Because he sat down with podcasters and social influencers and new voices that the American people are clearly listening to. And as Trump’s press secretary, we’re gonna find new ways to bring those voices into the briefing room as well. Which I think will be a very effective way to continue to get the president’s message out to the American people.”

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https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1869937440485704102/

Leavitt is right that trust in the media is low. Although a big part of the reason for that is Trump’s constant whining about any criticism of him as “fake news.” Another reason is that much of the press has been too timid to call out Trump’s blatant lies and his inability to speak coherently on any subject. The result is that he gets to filibuster interviews with deceit, deflection, and gibberish. None of that inspires trust.

However, Leavitt is wrong to propose that the White House Press Room should open its doors to the sort of “podcasters and and social influencers” who kissed Trump’s – let’s say ring – during his campaign. The Press Room is not supposed to be an outlet for partisan propaganda. It is there to provide journalists with access to the president and his staff in order to inform the public.

Leavitt’s vision – and Trump’s – is to turn the Press Room into a propaganda mill where only those who have sworn allegiance to Trump will be able to ask questions that they know will illicit positive responses that glorify Dear Leader. That’s the recipe for fascism that is cooked up by the totalitarian dictators who Trump reveres and seeks to emulate.

If the press ever hopes to raise the level of trust that they receive from the public, they need to reject this new perversion of press relations with the White House. They need to condemn it as a farce that violates the Constitution’s First Amendment protecting freedom of the press. And they need to resist Trump’s efforts to subjugate them to the servitude of his ego. Will they rise to the occasion? Stay tuned.

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Trump Hurls Hate and Fear at All of the Media He’s Suing Following the ABC News Capitulation

Posted by on December 16, 2024 at 2:42 pm. NO Comments :

The forecasts of doom that have proliferated since Donald Trump managed to squeak by to win a second term occupying the White House are coming true even before he’s been inaugurated. And the reality is proving to be even worse than the predictions. He is promising to rule in the model of his totalitarian heroes, and his proposed Cabinet is a House of Horrors.

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Donald Trump

Last week ABC News agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump against the network for $15 million. The suit alleged that “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed Trump by asserting that he had been found liable for rape by the jury in the defamation case filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. However, it was the judge who, after the fact, said that Trump’s assault amounted to rape, as the term is generally understood. The jury only found that Trump was liable for sexual abuse. And Trump seems to regard being a confirmed sexual abuser as a victory.

SEE THIS: TRUMP WINS? ABC News Settles His Lawsuit Confirming that He Was Found Liable for Sexual Abuse

Following the ABC News settlement, Trump is already talking excitedly about his efforts to punish other media with vengeance-fueled lawsuits. It is his way of terrorizing the free press that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” So in an impromptu press conference Monday morning, Trump lashed out at the media in his typically hostile manner.

Trump began his rant about suing the media (at 30:33 in the video below) with an inane threat to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll that showed him losing the election, which he called “fraud” and “election interference.” Then he went to discuss his lawsuit against CBS News saying that…

“We’re filing one on 60 Minutes, where they took Kamala’s answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer. And they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview. […] And that was fraud. and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News.

Of course, none of what he said is remotely true. 60 Minutes did nothing more than to make routine edits for time and clarity. Nothing they did impacted the content or context of the interview. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that the license for CBS – and ALL broadcast networks – be revoked. [Note: The federal government does not license networks, only individual stations]. And he was just getting started. He continued…

“We’re involved in one, which has been going on for a while very successfully, against Bob Woodward, where he didn’t quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes. Which he wasn’t allowed to do.”

Once again, Trump is lying. Woodward taped his conversations with Trump for the book, RAGE!, and used them for that purpose. Furthermore, he quoted Trump verbatim, and has the tapes to back that up. In the book Woodward documented how Trump lied and downplayed COVID when he knew just how deadly it was. But he still wasn’t finished. He went on…

“And we have one very interestingly on Pulitzer, because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax, and they were exactly wrong.”

This may be the most absurd lawsuit of them all. Trump isn’t suing the New York Times or the Washington Post. He’s suing the Pulitzer committee at Columbia University, who are entirely within their rights to award prizes as they see fit. What’s more, Trump claims that the articles documenting his unsavory associations with Russia “turned out to be a hoax,” that “now everybody admits.” Which could not be farther from the truth. Even the Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee report affirmed the Trump/Russia connections.

SEE ALSO: GEEZ! Trump is STILL Obsessed With the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax’ that is NOT a Hoax

Trump also spent some time flattering his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. He babbled that…

“Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right. Tucker [Carlson] got it right. Jesse [Watters] got it right. Laura [Ingraham] got it right. Jeanine [Pirro] got it right. A lot of people got it right. They didn’t get anything. They gave it to reporters that got it absolutely wrong. And now everybody admits it was a hoax. And I want them to take back the Pulitzer prizes and pay damages. […]

I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department, or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it. But we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The only things that any of them got right, at least from Trump’s perverse perspective, was their unwavering adoration of Trump and conformity to his worldview. And any deviation from that will result in punitive measures that will be carried out by his administration, overseen by his nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, who has sworn to “come after the people in the media.”

Will the media allow this unconstitutional persecution of the free press to proceed? Hopefully the surrender by ABC News isn’t the consensus answer to that question.

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Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

Posted by on December 5, 2024 at 2:42 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump fashioned his campaign to reoccupy the White House as an appeal to the common man and all those who have been forgotten by entrenched government bureaucracies. That message resonated with a tiny majority of voters who were either too naïve to detect his blatant lies, or too indoctrinated into the cult to care that they were being lied to.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Now a month has passed since the election and Trump’s real intentions are all to clear to anyone who isn’t in a self-induced coma. Those real intentions are evident in the people he has chosen to serve in his administration. And it isn’t exactly a roster of working class heroes. In fact, this nation has never seen a more disgraceful batch of unqualified bootlickers and shameless self-promoting elitists. But then, what more could be expected from the disgraceful, unqualified, bootlicking, self-promoting elitist who chose them? Trump is still doing what he does best…

SEE THIS: MAKE IT STOP! Crybaby Trump Continues His Infantile Whining Weeks After Winning the Election

On Wednesday CNN’s Harry Enten did a segment that revealed some of the characteristics that are most broadly shared by Trump’s circle of sycophants. And as anyone with more than a handful of functioning brain cells could have predicted, it’s a group that has nothing in common with the common citizens of America. To the contrary. Enten’s analysis shows that Trump’s team thus far is dominated by billionaires, Mar-a-Lago patrons, and Fox News hosts and contributors.

Enten made the rather obvious observation that “Trump is someone who feeds on people being loyal to him.” And none are more devoted than those who spend much of their time on Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. Including…

  1. Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Defense)
  2. Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence)
  3. Stephen Miller (Deputy White House Chief of Staff)
  4. Michael Waltz (National Security Adviser)
  5. Lee Zeldin (Environmental Protection Agency administrator)
  6. Elise Stefanik (Ambassador to the United Nation)
  7. Tom Homan (Border “Czar”)
  8. Mike Huckabee (Ambassador to Israel)
  9. Sean Duffy (Secretary of Transportation)
  10. Sebastian Gorka (Deputy Assistant to the President, Director for Counterterrorism)
  11. Janette Nesheiwat (Surgeon General)
  12. Monica Crowley (Assistant Secretary of State and Chief of Protocol)
  13. Keith Kellogg (special Envoy to Ukraine)
  14. Marty Makary (FDA Commissioner)
  15. Kimberley Guilfoyle (Ambassador to Greece)

    16. LATE ADDITIONS:

  16. Tammy Bruce (State Department Spokesperson)
  17. Morgan Ortagus (Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace)
  18. Leo Terrel (Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights)
  19. Dan Bongino (Deputy Director of the FBI)
  20. Sara Carter (Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy)
  21. Jeanine Pirro (Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia)

It would have been useful if CNN and other media had informed their viewers that Trump’s campaign promises were unadulterated bullshit before election day. Far too many voters bought into the lies, and now they will suffer as a result. Many of the more purposefully ignorant deserve to suffer. The problem is that the rest of us are going to suffer right along with them.

Our only hope for the next four years is if Democrats in Congress obstruct the worst impulses of Trump and his comrades. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the press to do their job and call out the Trumpists when they endeavor to betray the interests of the American people in service to the privileged upper-crusters.

Although a fair measure of the responsibility for getting politicians and the press to work on behalf of the people belongs to the people themselves. We have to let them know what we want, and that there are consequences if we don’t get it. Preserving democracy is hard work, but it’s worth it.

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Trump’s Free Press? His FBI Flunky Kash Patel Threatens to ‘Come After the People in the Media’

Posted by on December 1, 2024 at 12:54 pm. 1 Comments :

It is becoming more apparent every day that Donald Trump has abandoned any pretense of presidential leadership or responsible governing, He is now fully committed to a juvenile campaign of trolling his perceived enemies, “owning the libs,” and exacting retribution for wrongs he believes he has suffered.

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What else could explain the collection of crackpots that Trump has nominated to positions of considerable power in his emerging administration? It is no wonder that Trump is refusing to allow his nominees to undergo FBI background checks. So far the weirdo roster includes a brain-wormed, anti-vax, conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a blatantly unqualified, sexual deviant, Pete Hegseth, as Defense Secretary, and an alleged pedophile with no legal experience, Matt Gaetz, (who has already been dropped for being even too ridiculous for the MAGA-philes) for Attorney General? The only apparent prerequisite for a job in Trump’s White House is unflinching adoration for Trump and an apprenticeship at Fox News.

SEE THIS: Trump is Stacking His Cabinet with Fox News Trump-Fluffers

However, Trump may have outdone himself with his latest proposed nominee. He is putting the name of Kash Patel up to be the Director of the FBI. As usual, Patel has little to no experience for the job he is being tasked to preform. What he has is an extraordinarily brown nose and a record of performing any evil or illegal stunt that Trump asks of him. That includes being a relentless election denier, covering up Trump’s theft of classified documents, and being an accomplice in Trump’s attempts to stage a violent coup on January 6, 2021.

There are a multitude of examples of Patel’s manifest unsuitability to serve in the upper echelon of federal legal affairs. But one particular example stands out. During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room, Patel spoke about what he would do if put in a position of power. And it had nothing to do with fighting crime or making the nation safer. He ranted that…

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

Yes, indeed. That IS why they are tyrannical dictators. Patel’s first priority is to persecute the free press that accurately reported on Trump’s serial criminal activities. This would be an implementation of Trump’s visceral hatred of the free press that he calls “the enemy of the people.” He has already sought to suppress the media by filing innumerable, meritless lawsuits against a variety of news organizations. He has even threatened to revoke the licenses of the networks. Licenses that, by the way, do not exist, so therefore, cannot be revoked. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t do damage in other petulant ways.

In addition to his assaults on the media, Trump intends to retaliate against honorable officers and prosecutors who brought January 6th insurrectionists to justice. He is focused intently on inventing crimes related to Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged.” And he will seek to legally terrorize upstanding FBI operatives who recovered the stolen classified materials that Trump lied about hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago home/hotel.

Trump posted his announcement about Patel on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, saying that…

“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. […] He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”

First of all, Trump cannot unilaterally announce that Patel “will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Only that he is being nominated. The Senate must confirm the nomination before Patel can assume the post. And due to the highly controversial nature of this nomination, there is some doubt as to whether the narrowly divided Senate will provide their consent.

Secondly, Trump’s announcement explicitly cites one of the best reasons to block Patel’s confirmation. The role he played in trying to hide Trump’s unsavory and well documented associations with Russian officials and operatives was arguably as treasonous as Trump’s own actions. There was no “hoax” with regard to Trump and Russia. And Patel didn’t uncover any wrongdoing. He participated in it.

The opposition to Patel’s nomination isn’t coming solely from Democrats. Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, said that “The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.” And Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his book that he “categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director,” telling Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that it would happen “over my dead body. Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the bureau.”

It is also notable that for Patel to assume the directorship of the FBI, the current Director, Christopher Wray, would have to resign or be fired by Trump. Wray, by the way, was appointed by Trump in 2017, after he fired James Comey for not sufficiently sucking up. A shortcoming that Wray may soon be punished for by Trump.

The unmistakable path toward tyranny that Trump is traveling should alarm every American who cherishes the principles this nation was founded on. His flagrant efforts to silence the media is his way of insuring that he gets away with his authoritarian takeover. But with the Patel nomination, he may be overreaching. And that could give a couple of Republicans in the Senate the courage to stand up to him and for democracy. And that’s all it would take to sink the nomination of Patel.

Ironically, Trump’s overreach may actually stiffen the spines of Republican senators after they get a taste of independence by rejecting Gaetz and possibly Patel. They may just have the integrity to also ditch Kennedy, Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and some of the other more reprehensible nominees. That may be a lot to hope for, but if we the people make our voices loud enough, they might actually hear us and do the right thing.

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YIKES! Trump’s Press Briefing Room Could Be Populated By Fawning Sycophants and MAGA Trolls

Posted by on November 30, 2024 at 2:03 pm. NO Comments :

As the administration of Donald Trump continues to take shape, the vile nature of the beast is becoming unmistakable. Although he campaigned on “draining the swamp,” it is clear that his true intention is to fill it to the brim with toxic sludge. That would explain his proposed department heads whose total lack experience compliments their preposterous policies.

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Donald Trump, Newspapers, Baby, Hate

Among Trump’s ill-considered staffers are the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr at Health and Human Services, Matt Gaetz at the Justice Department (now succeeded by Pam Bondi because Gaetz was TOO sleazy), and Pete Hegseth (whose own mother castigated him as an “abuser” of women) at the Defense Department. The “qualities” Trump’s nominees share are primarily unwavering fealty to Trump, and having served previously on Fox News.

SEE THIS: Trump is Stacking His Cabinet with Fox News Trump-Fluffers

The nightmare roster of Trump’s Cabinet should not deflect our attention from other critical White House offices that Trump is determined to debase. For instance, Trump is reported to be planning an overhaul of the White House Press Briefing Room. His animosity toward to the media is well known, repeatedly referring to it in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” His hatred of the free press is further evident in his serial lawsuits and threats against news enterprises that have committed the offense of telling the truth about him.

The latest wrinkle in Trump’s anti-media campaign is his focus on restricting who will be admitted into the Briefing Room. Politico is reporting that…

“‘Both the strategy and the press briefing room will likely look a whole lot more like the media consumption habits of the American voters of today versus the 1980s,’ said a Trump official granted anonymity to discuss plans still in the works. ‘I could very well see a press briefing room where Maggie Haberman sits next to Joe Rogan.'”

Oh Great! Trump wants to replace reputable journalists with fawning sycophants and MAGA trolls. To be sure, there are some serious problems with the way that mainstream media has covered Trump over the past few years. They have been far too felicitous, too timid with regard to calling out Trump’s pathological lying, and too quick to normalize or “sane-wash” his incomprehensible babbling.

However, that’s not a reason to ditch the media. It’s a reason to fight to reform it. Even in its current state the media has provided significant information about Trump’s criminal activities and his associations with nefarious players, including agents of hostile foreign adversaries.

We can wave goodbye to any of that sort of reporting if Trump has his way and the national newspapers and television networks are replaced or overshadowed by people like Rogan, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Nick Fuentes, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, etc.

Just imagine the sort of questions that the aforementioned Trump-fluffers would ask of his doting press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Following his imposition of inflationary tariffs, they would ask how quickly his policy will make all Americans wealthy? After Ukraine falls due to Trump withholding aid, they would inquire as to how much better life will be under Russian rule. As more women and others suffer and die as a result of his weakening or repealing Obamacare, they will seek to learn more about his proposed raw milk cure for the new pandemic.

The purpose of hosting journalists in the White House Press Briefing room is to hold the administration accountable and gather information to keep the nation’s citizens informed. But under the reign of Trump it would shift to disseminating pure propaganda intended to disinform, and exalt Dear Leader.

This will make the job of real journalists that much harder. Not just because gathering relevant news will be more difficult, but because breaking through the wall of official propaganda will be a challenge. We will need to come up with new ways to to communicate and to validate the news. And the White House will become an obstacle to those goals. Is the media in its present form capable of operating in this new environment? They – and we – better be.

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The Daily Show Skewers MAGA Rep Nancy Mace for Supporting Trump and Other GOP Sexual Predators

Posted by on November 23, 2024 at 1:23 pm. NO Comments :

There is a lot to be worried about now that Donald Trump is about to reoccupy the White House. His Cabinet and staff nominations thus far are a nightmare rotation of hacks, halfwits, and hopelessly felicitous followers of the Trump cult. Many of this motley crew were recruited from Fox News, because Trump’s foremost prerequisite for hiring is that he has seen the candidate slobbering over him on TV.

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Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

At times like these it becomes necessary to have some emotional escape in order to maintain some measure of mental health and to reenergize for the battles ahead. And since laughter is the best medicine, it ought to be prescribed in large doses. That’s where programs like The Daily Show come in. And it also helps that they are often better sources for news than much of the traditional media.

SEE THIS: The Media Still Doesn’t Get the Danger that We – and They – Are In, But the Daily Show Does

This week The Daily Show host, Desi Lydic, addressed the purely performative attacks on transgender Rep-Elect Sarah McBride by Republican Nancy Mace (SC-MAGA). Lydic noted the inherent prejudice of Mace’s hate speech as well as her blatant hypocrisy. And she names names. Lydic lashed out at Mace saying that…

“Yes, of course, you just want to protect women from hypothetical predators. That would play a lot better if you weren’t trying to get actual predators into the highest levels of government. Pete Hegseth, RFK, Matt Gaetz.”

Lydic goes on to play a video clip of Mace complaining about men in women’s spaces, followed by a clip of serial predator Trump bragging about invading the private spaces of women…

“I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it.”

That sounds conspicuously similar to Trump’s boast that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p*ssy.” He truly believes that he has the right to sexually harass and assault women at will. And Mace is perfectly fine with this, so long as it doesn’t involve a transgender woman in the ladies restroom. Funny, but I never hear people like Mace talk about trans men in the ladies restroom…

Mace’s obsession was evident in her 36 hour marathon posting of more than 250 tweets on this subject. However, one thing that she neglected to mention in all of that was her position on LGBTQ+ rights just three years ago when she said that…

“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against. I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ. Understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.”

That’s quite a reversal. What changed? Was it that she decided that sucking up to Trump was more important than standing up for equal rights? Or was it just her ploy to get more airtime on Fox News?

More importantly, will the rest of media display the journalistic integrity of The Daily Show by exposing Trump and his Cabinet cretins as the sexual deviants that they are?

Hopefully the Senate will exercise their constitutional duty of advice and consent to prevent these sleazeballs from attaining positions of power. And not just because of their utter lack of morals. But also because they have zero experience for the jobs they have been nominated to do by the Sleazeball-in-Chief.

Although Trump isn’t gonna make it easy for them. He’s considering foregoing the routine FBI checks for proposed presidential appointments. Because he knows his nominees won’t pass. Even worse, he has called for Congress to abdicate their role by closing up shop and allowing him to make recess appointments. These are the tactics of a totalitarian dictator, which is what Trump aspires to be.

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Fox News Asks Biden’s Press Sec if He Apologized to Trump for Saying He’s a Threat to Democracy

Posted by on November 13, 2024 at 2:57 pm. NO Comments :

The unfortunate outcome of the presidential election last week is already sending spine-chilling reverberations across the political landscape as the ghastly consequences of another Donald Trump occupation of the White House become impossible to ignore.

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Fox News, Joe Biden, Fake News

The shape of Trump’s Cabinet has become deplorably clear in the past few days. His nominees so far reflect his inherent corruption, ignorance, aspirations of autocracy, and the shallowness of a former reality TV game show host. Most of his picks are closely associated with his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News.

SEE THIS: Trump is Stacking His Cabinet with Fox News Trump-Fluffers

Trump has not yet named his choice to be his press secretary. But rest assured that it will be a brazenly dishonest purveyor of self-serving falsehoods. In the meantime, we should appreciate the press secretary currently serving President Biden, Karine Jean-Pierre.

At Wednesday’s daily White House press briefing, the noxious odor of Fox News wafted into the room as a reporter from their business network, Edward Lawrence, was called upon to ask a question. True to form, it was a preposterous question that had nothing to do with any matter of concern to the American people. Instead, he sought to manufacture a melodrama out of the morning meeting that Biden had with Trump…

Lawrence: We saw a unified front related to a transition in the Oval Office meeting. But a lot was said on the campaign trail like ‘Trump is a dangerous threat to our country and our democracy. Was there an apology today?
Jean-Pierre: I’m sorry? Apology from whom? I’ve answered this a couple of times with respect to democracy in the past week. The President is always going to feel obligated to be honest with the American people. What he says still stands. And it’s not just him. You heard this from former [Trump] staffers.

Biden had nothing to apologize for. He told the truth about Trump. And as Jean-Pierre went on to note, is was Trump’s own close associates who were the ones that raised the question of his threat to democracy. It was his White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly, his Defense Secretary, Gen. James Mattis, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and others who said that Trump was a fascist who praised Hitler. Trump himself made statements that were overtly threatening to democracy, such as branding his critics as “the enemy within.”

Lawrence’s question also neglected to mention that Trump used the very same language aimed at Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, who he said, without a shred of evidence, were threats to democracy. But Lawrence didn’t bother to ask whether Trump apologized. Unrattled by Lawrence’s purposeful provocation, Jean-Pierre gave a calm and coherent response…

Jean-Pierre: What we also want to be very clear about is listening to the will of the American people. There was an election. It is important to respect our institution. It is important to respect the free and fair election. And that’s what this President is doing.

America needs to prepare itself for what’s to come in the White House Press Briefing room. Axios is reporting that Trump is expected to “shake it up.”

“Trump’s first administration tried to ban outlets it saw as unfavorable from off-camera press briefings. That included the New York Times, Politico, CNN and BBC.” […]

“Any efforts to expand access to daily press briefings to pro-Trump outlets, such as Steve Bannon’s War Room, would need to come at the expense of existing outlets.”

So get ready for briefings that feature folks like Bannon, Alex Jones, and Laura Loomer. The “mainstream” media reporters from the New York Times and CBS and NPR will all be banished as “fake news.” And Trump’s press secretary is likely to be someone like his former attorney Alina Habba or his daughter Tiffany. Which means the rest of the media had better grow a spine and be prepared to protect the very notion of a free press.

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Trump’s Prospective CIA Director [Now FBI Director], Kash Patel: We’re Gonna Come After the People in the Media

Posted by on November 9, 2024 at 1:00 pm. 4 Comments :

The nightmare scenarios that were contemplated prior to Donald Trump prevailing on Tuesday were never given the proper consideration that they deserved. Most politicians and pundits downplayed the most serious consequences of a second occupation of the White house by Trump. And the media engaged in new reality-distorting shenanigans that came to be known as “sanewashing,” the practice of cleaning up Trump’s spine-chillingly abhorrent, and mind-numbingly incoherent, commentaries to make them appear to be almost rational.

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Donald Trump, Constitution

However, the grim truth always emerges eventually. And as Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Trump showed us who he is repeatedly during his last term in office and throughout this year’s campaign. And who Trump is is a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, financial fraudster, pathological liar, and aspiring dictator. But despite the abundance of evidence, many people managed to gloss over it and vote him in anyway.

SEE THIS: What Is America? Who Votes For This?

Among the atrocious concepts that clog Trump’s cranium, are his yearnings to impose on America the visceral animosity he harbors toward the free press that he has maligned, in Stalinist terms, as “the enemy of the people.” He has filed innumerable, meritless lawsuits against a variety of news organizations, and threatened to revoke the licenses of the networks. Licenses that, by the way, do not exist, so therefore, cannot be revoked.

Given the current state of affairs, this would be a good time to recall what Trump flunky, Kash Patel, articulated in December about what would become the agenda for the press if Trump were to be reelected. In an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” plodcast, Bannon and Patel shared the following exchange…

Bannon: Kash, I know you’re probably gonna be head of the CIA. But do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions?
Patel: Yes. We got the bench for it Bannon. And you know those guys – I’m not gonna go out there and say their names right now so the radical left-wing media can terrorize them. But the one thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go round is we gotta put in all America patriots, top to bottom. And we got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection. We got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA, everywhere. […]

We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re gonna come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re gonna come after you.”

And there you have it. Patel is explicitly declaring his intention to use national security government agencies to assault the media. He is unabashedly proclaiming a policy to “come after” journalists and their employers who were critical of Trump, particularly on matters related to his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” from him.

Patel held a number of national security posts in the previous Trump administration, including Chief of Staff to Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller. He is now considered to be on Trump’s short list of nominees to be his CIA Director. [UPDATE: Patel was later named FBI Director] This makes his threats the all more disturbing. The CIA is prohibited from conducting operations against American citizens on American soil. So in addition to these threats breaching the Constitution’s First Amendment protection of the free press, they would be violations of federal law regarding intelligence operations.

Not that Patel or Trump give a whip about breaking the law. Trump has already been convicted of 34 felonies and has 54 more pending. Patel was compelled to testify before Congress where he took the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating himself. And Trump’s plans for his Injustice Department are just as bad as those for national security…

SEE ALSO: Trump AG Prospect Savors ‘Glorious’ Plans to ‘Put Kids in Cages’ and Migrants ‘In the DC Gulag’

The trepidation that at least half of the American people feel about Trump reoccupying the White House is well founded. His proposals to implement the biggest mass deportation operation in history, slap inflationary tariffs on all imported goods, and cozy up to foreign tyrants, is not idle blather. He is showing us who he is. And his Cabinets appointments will validate the horrific regime that he intends to reign over.

Which makes it all the more imperative for Americans who cherish the privileges of our constitutional democracy to be ready to resist and fight back against Trump’s attempts to impose an autocracy with him sitting atop it in a golden throne. These may be seem like dark days, but we are the source of a brilliant light if we choose to be.

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The Media Still Doesn’t Get the Danger that We – and They – Are In, But the Daily Show Does

Posted by on November 7, 2024 at 12:29 pm. 4 Comments :

One of the recurring themes of the Kamala Harris campaign that was highlighted in nearly every speech she gave was the insistence that “We are not going back.” And even though it appears on the surface that we are indeed regressing to a grim past, she was right. Losing the election does not mean that we have lost the will to advance the principles of democracy and freedom.

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Donald Trump TV Set

It seems impossible to imagine that voters, given the choice between a respected prosecutor and public servant, or a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and wannabe dictator, would choose the latter. But that’s what happened on Tuesday night. There are as many plausible explanations for that major malfunction of democracy as there are pundits proposing them. And in the days ahead they will all be examined. But for now the nation must answer a couple of deceptively…

…SIMPLE QUESTIONS: What Is America? Who Votes For This?

In the meantime, we remain burdened with an aspiring authoritarian-elect and a media establishment that doesn’t realize the risks they face, which led to the abhorrent state we find ourselves in today. And for anyone who doesn’t grasp the direness of this situation, note that Donald Trump, in his victory speech Tuesday night, went out of his way to make his hostility to the free press clear, saying that “I told JD [Vance] to go into the enemy camp. He just goes: OK. Which one? CNN? MSNBC?”

Throughout the 2024 election season, Trump expressed his deep animosity toward the media, including his official Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. But for some reason, the media rarely defended itself and the unique provisions in the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects it.

However, there was a guardian of the free press that was found in an unlikely – although increasingly common – place. And it proves the not-very-old adage “I get my comedy from Fox News and my news from Comedy Central.” The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic delivered a monolog that, in addition to being hilarious, was more honest, and more profound, than most of what was seen on the mainstream media. She said in part that..

“Yeah, it’s official. America has elected its first criminal president before electing its first female president. What a day for proud felonists.”

And…

“Just think about what happened here. America voted this guy out in 2020. And what has he done since then? He tried to overthrow the government, he was convicted of 34 felonies, he spent an entire campaign promising vengeance against his enemies.”

And…

“Seems the only people you can’t blame for Trump’s victory are Black women and people in comas.”

And finally…

“Honestly, I don’t really care why she lost, I care why he won. We have spent so much time diagnosing Donald Trump and what his actions say about him. He’s a dictator, he’s a fascist, he’s a malignant narcissist whose blood type is fryer oil.

“But it’s pretty clear that America is the one that needs the diagnosis, because whatever’s wrong with him, we f**king love it. In this moment Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people and it might be time to take a good f**king hard look. And I’m sorry. I told myself that this show would be uplifting tonight and give people hope and inspiration, but unfortunately, I’m too depressed. And quite frankly, very, very, hungover.”

Exactly! There will be scads of speculation about what Harris, or Democrats, or even a lazy, weak, greedy, complicit, press might have done wrong. But ultimately it was the voters who chose to pull the lever for the ignorant, profane, mentally infirm, lying, criminal, who caused hundreds of thousands of avoidable pandemic deaths, incited a treasonous insurrection, and whose closest associates labeled him a fascist and noted his praise for Hitler.

To be sure, those voters were influenced by the media that failed in its obligation to inform the public. And that failure was evident in the desertion by viewers that indicates just how dissatisfied they are with the quality of the news they are getting. Considering the feeble response by the media to existential dangers posed by Trump and his MAGA movement, it’s no wonder that American is tuning out.

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Trump Says ‘I Don’t Mind’ If ‘Somebody Would Have to Shoot’ Through the Media at His Cult Rally

Posted by on November 3, 2024 at 11:01 am. 2 Comments :

The evidence of Donald Trump panicking is becoming less possible to ignore with each day as the election comes to a close. Along with his standard derogatory slurs about anyone – Democratic or Republican – who isn’t unwaveringly worshipful of him, he is ramping up grossly violent rhetoric that runs the risk of inciting real harm to innocent people.

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Donald Trump AR-15

Last week Trump spoke menacingly about Liz Cheney, maligning her as a “war hawk,” but asserting that she would fold under pressure. In what some people have interpreted as a thinly veiled desire to see her shot by firing squad or in battle, Trump said “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Whatever the interpretation, it is profoundly inappropriate and reeks of the violent desires he harbors for those he perceives as enemies. However, this particular outburst suggesting cowardice on Cheney’s part is especially ludicrous considering the fact that Trump dodged the Vietnam draft with five deferments for phony bone spurs. He’s even to scared too debate Harris a second time.

SEE THIS: Trump Confesses to Bouts of Rage and Gluttony After Liz Cheney Reports His Reaction to January 6

At his cult rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Trump went off script to discuss the state of his security. In the description of the protective glass barriers that shield him on his stage he noted that there was an opening that provided an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up pointing out to his audience of glassy-eyed cult disciples. He said that…

“I have a piece of glass here. And I don’t have a piece of glass over there. And I have a piece of glass here. But all we really have over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind. I don’t mind that.”

It is difficult to imagine that this would not be seen as anything but an invitation to the more unbalanced members of his innately hostile hoard to shoot the reporters in the press risers who are covering his rally. And this is not an isolated incident.

Trump has been saying for years that the media is “the enemy of people.” He has threatened to revoke the licenses of any news network that criticizes him [Note: News networks are not licensed by the federal government]. The most recent such threat by Trump was triggered by the interview of of Kamala Harris by “60 Minutes” on CBS. But he didn’t constrain his rage to just that one network.

MORE HERE: Tyrant Trump Demands ALL TV News Licenses Be Revoked and Kamala Harris Concede the Election

Trump is proving that his hatred for any media that hasn’t pledged its allegiance to him is more than just emblematic of his infantile character. It is downright reckless. And his inability to refrain from this sort of rhetoric during his campaign runs the risk of getting somebody killed. Just imagine what he would be capable of if he were reelected and had the “immunity” granted to him by the Supreme Court. And after these remarks, will the press continue to “sanewash” his rancid rhetoric?

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