Election

Trump’s Tulsa Rally Troubles Go Way Beyond the Pitiful Turnout

Posted by on June 21, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 1 Comments :

Donald Trump had several weeks to plan his return to the campaign trail after three months of a COVID-19 enforced lockdown. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, a deep red city and state that should have guaranteed a capacity crowd of glassy-eyed disciples. but things didn’t work out exactly as planned.

Donald Trump, Tulsa Rally

According to the Tulsa fire department, Trump’s rally managed to pack in a measly 6,200 of The Donald’s dimwitted devotees. That’s less than a third of the 19,000 people the arena can accommodate. What’s more, Trump and his campaign bragged repeatedly about having a million requests for tickets and they projected that there would be an overflow crowd of 40,000-60,000 out side the arena where Trump would give an additional speech.

However, the attendance turned out to be far less than projected. The overflow crowd never materialized at all, leading to the cancellation of the outdoor activities. If Trump thought that this rally would be his opportunity to turn around his polling slump (he’s losing to Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as in the crucial swing states), he must be mighty disappointed this morning. And his disappointment generally translates into fury directed at the “losers” responsible for his humiliation. Because, of course, it’s never him.

On Sunday morning Trump campaign advisor Mercedes Schlapp was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. She was there to attempt to put a positive spin on the previous evening’s fiasco. That plan didn’t work out very well either (video below):

Wallace: Your campaign said that more than a million people wanted tickets to this rally, but we all saw the pictures last night. The arena was no more than two-thirds full, and the outdoor rally that had been planned for the overflow crowd was canceled because there was no overflow crowd. Question: What happened?
Schlapp: When it comes to understanding how the rallies work, it’s a first-come-first-serve basis. Basically what the one million RSVPs include, it’s an opportunity for us to gather data, to get information obviously.

Schlapp went on to make absurd excuses about people having been too frightened by protesters to show up. But she didn’t explain how more than 90% of the predicted hundred thousand rally-goers were scared off by a few protesters, who were kept blocks away from the arena by the police. She also bragged about the number of people who watched online which, of course, included many Trump opponents and other curious independents. To his credit, Wallace wouldn’t let Schlapp deflect, and reminded her that Trump is always talking about the attendance at his rallies as a measure of his popularity. But now he isn’t popular enough to draw supporters in the right-wing hothouse of Oklahoma.

Wallace also disputed Schlapp’s false assertion that protesters prevented anyone from attending. Schlapp actually wants people to believe that Trump’s supporters stayed home because they didn’t want to expose their families to protesters. But exposing them to a deadly virus apparently wasn’t a problem.

More importantly, Schlapp’s reply to Wallace revealed what she considered to be the primary objective for the rally and the reason it should be regarded as a success. “It’s an opportunity,” Schlapp admitted, “for us to gather data.” Indeed it is. Everyone who requests a free ticket to the event is required to provide their name and other personal identification. That’s all entered into a database that is later used to contact potential voters. Trump’s campaign chairman, Brad Parscale made the same admission prior to the Tulsa affair, tweeting that this would be the “Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time.”

There’s just one problem. There are reports that an army of Tik-Tok users requested tickets that they had no intention of using. It’s hard to estimate the precise impact of this Trump trolling project, but there were thousands of interactions with the prank on social media. So somewhere between the 6,200 people who showed up at the rally, and the million who allegedly requested tickets, there an untold number of fake respondents. That means that there is a significant amount of fake data currently residing in the Trump campaign database. And that’s on top of the fake data that was there before this event. [NOTE: News Corpse is in that database, despite never having provided any information] So when the campaign begins its voter outreach they will be wasting huge sums of money and effort on ghost voters.

In the end, the legacy of the Tulsa rally will be that it revealed the softening support for Trump’s reelection, while simultaneously flooding his campaign database with bogus info. But at least he had the opportunity to soak up some cheers from his hardcore fans, while reinforcing his reelection themes of being able to drink water with one hand, stopping coronavirus testing, and defending Confederate statues. WINNING?

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

Raging Malignant Narcissism: Trump Whines that ‘the Supreme Court Doesn’t Like Me’

Posted by on June 18, 2020 at 12:35 pm. 4 Comments :

With each new day there is new evidence that Donald Trump is descending into an abyss of paranoia and mental infirmity. These are symptoms of malignant narcissism, along with acute sociopathy, unchecked aggression, and delusions of grandeur. It is abundantly clear that Trump is unfit for office and represents an imminent danger to the nation and the world.

Donald Trump, Twitter

Trump is freaking out again on Twitter. This time his tantrum was triggered by the Supreme Court ruling that his attempt to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was “arbitrary and capricious,” and therefore unconstitutional. He unleashed a stream of tweets complaining about the decision without offering any legal basis for his position. However he did tweet this very revealing message:

Well, do you? More likely you get the impression that Trump internalizes everything as an attack on him personally. It’s the sort of obsessive whining that he has actually bragged about and has become emblematic of his irreparably fractured and intensely flawed personality disorder. He has also explicitly complained in the past that “All I see is hatred of me.”

One of the most consistent features of Trump’s character (or lack thereof), is how predictably and viciously he will turn against anyone who isn’t unflinchingly loyal and slavishly adoring. That has been observed in his broken relationships with former staffers (Kelly, Mattis, McMasters, Tillerson, Sessions, etc). It has also been seen in his love/hate relationship with Fox News.

Most recently Trump has turned against his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton. In a series of Thursday morning tweets, Trump ranted that Bolton’s book is “a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad.” Notice that Trump is again consumed with how things make him look. But his assertion that the book is “pure fiction” destroys his case that it contains classified material.

Trump also elevated his hostility toward the Supreme Court decisions into a bizarre screed about the Second Amendment tweeting that the decisions “are shotgun blasts into the face of people,” and threatened that “we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else.” This, of course, is simply a wild swing at corralling his most rabid base-dwellers with nothing but blatant fear mongering. Which is likely to work on the few remaining dimwitted Deplorables who worship him as their Messiah. However, the imagery of faces bloodied by shotgun blasts as an argument against the Court’s rulings is not likely to appeal to most Americans.

The Supreme Court has surprised many people with its decisions on DACA, sanctuary cities, LGBTQ+ rights, and the census. But the Court remains a conservative body with a 5 to 4 right-wing majority. Trump should be optimistic that most of their decisions will fall into the conservative camp on party line votes. But because he isn’t getting 100% submissiveness from the judicial branch, he is bellowing frantically about the loss of “everything” and begging his cult to support him at the ballot box in November.

The only problem with that, from Trump’s perspective, is that everything he is doing and saying is driving voters farther away from his candidacy, as well as those of other Republicans running for the House, Senate, and state and local offices. Right now Donald Trump is the best campaign ad that Democrats have ever had, even if it is painful to watch and live through.

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

Trump’s Feeble Effort to Reform Policing Validates the Protests He Condemned

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

Three weeks after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, America’s streets are still teeming with outraged citizens who are no longer willing to tolerate such injustices. It’s an unprecedented and sustained demand for change that has been fueled by a string of atrocities and populated by a truly diverse cross-section of Americans.

Donald Trump, Police

Conspicuously absent from this nationwide (worldwide) outpouring of grief and determination is the President of the United States, Donald Trump, whose only contribution has been to malign the protesters as “rioters,” “looters,” “thugs,” and even “terrorists.” Trump has repeatedly assaulted both the protesters and local governments with noxious threats of deploying the military against the American people. In Trump’s view these concerned citizens are enemies of the state simply because they oppose police brutality and are willing to act on their constitutional rights.

So for three weeks the people have clearly stated their intentions to compel meaningful change. And during that time, despite (or because of) his stubborn and bellicose opposition, Trump has seen his approval ratings decline into record low territory. The American people overwhelmingly support Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests lobbying for reform.

Consequently, Trump has pivoted in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of his 2020 reelection campaign. He has apparently been convinced that he needs to grab onto this whirling tornado of dissent and score some undeserved points for himself. To that end he has hurriedly patched together a pitifully weak policing reform initiative that fails to address many of the core issues and solutions.

Trump’s latest exercise in hypocrisy comes in the form a unilateral move that Republicans regarded as an act of dictatorship when President Obama did it. His new executive order (EO) – the 162nd of his presidency – is an attempt to upstage congressional efforts to legitimately reform police practices by appropriating initiatives proposed by Democrats. However, this EO will be less comprehensive and will not have the force of law behind it. It can also be reversed or watered down by another executive order.

Additionally, Trump’s EO is a blatant contradiction of nearly everything he’s said about “law and order” since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began. Virtually every public comment he’s made has condemned Americans who have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and unequal justice. He has never acknowledged the systemic racism that permeates many institutions, and this EO doesn’t do so either. But the fact that he felt it necessary to take this step is actually a validation of the demonstrations and proof that they were required to force forward movement on these issues.

Trump’s Rose Garden speech, before a nearly totally white audience, spent far more time praising the police than criticizing the injustice and violence that his EO was supposedly drafted to address. And of course, he politicized the event by applauding himself as the great emancipator. He also heralded imaginary achievements with the economy, the coronavirus, and other matters that have nothing to do with law enforcement reform. And only Trump could say that “We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country,” during a speech meant to ease concerns about racist cops. It was a painfully obvious screed of propaganda aimed at boosting his floundering reelection prospects and nothing more.

Simultaneously, Trump falsely asserted that President Obama and Joe Biden “never even tried” to do anything about systemic racism. In truth, every time Obama tried to advance those matters he was blocked by Republicans and accused of being racist himself. The Trump administration actually repealed Obama’s reforms by executive fiat, slashed funding for community policing, and refused to enforce consent decrees won in court by Obama’s Justice Department. Obama also impaneled a task force to study the problems plaguing policing in December of 2014. In March of 2015, they issued a detailed report with specific policy recommendations. At the time, Trump was tweeting about how Obama was anti-police:

That tweet was in response to Obama’s remarks criticizing the failure of grand juries to indict police officers for the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Five years later Trump is still avoiding the real issues, and still doing nothing to prevent future tragedies because he only cares about how he can further his own personal and political interests. And anyone who fails to recognize that now is a fully indoctrinated disciple of the Cult of Trump and, sadly, beyond help.

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

Trump Supporters are Burning Their Own Vote-By-Mail Applications to Own the Libs

Posted by on June 14, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

There seems to be no outer limit to the magnitude of idiocy achievable by Donald Trump and his legions of glassy-eyed disciples. They have built up an impressive tolerance for humiliation, which serves them well considering how often they subject themselves to it. Just continuing to support Trump amid his endless string of failures and his noxious persona is a feat of Olympic-grade stamina and tunnel-blindness.

Flaming Trump

However, a group of Trump cultists in Michigan are pulling out all the stops in the competition for the gold medal in Trumpian crackpottery. They have embarked on a campaign to eliminate the scourge of election fraud by constraining their own options for voting. As reported by the Detroit News…

“People burned letters informing them that they can vote by absentee ballot in future elections during a protest near Grand Rapids.

“The applications were burned Friday during an event called Operation Incinerator outside the DeltaPlex Arena in Walker. Many people had flags, shirts and signs showing support for President Donald Trump and Republicans.”

That’s right! They received forms permitting them to apply for mail-in voting ballots and gathered to hold a public bonfire into which they cast the offending applications. No one was requiring them to fill out the applications or return them. No one was hindering their freedom to show up at a polling place on election day to cast their vote. But their repulsion of having been given the choice to vote by mail was too much for them to endure.

The organizers of this pyro-protest called themselves “Operation Incinerator,” and they posted the announcement of their crusade on Facebook saying “Together we will gather and burn all of the taxpayer funded applications, illegally sent to us from [Secretary of State] Benson. When you receive your unsolicited application, ‘harvest it’ and bring it with you.” This demonstration – attended by nearly half a dozen devotees – was inspired by Trump’s repeated and baseless attacks on mail-in voting as being rife with fraud. He specifically singled out Michigan and issued a tweet threatening the state:

As with almost everything Trump says, these assertions are utterly false. [Note: Trump first tweeted this saying falsely that actual ballots were mailed out. He deleted that tweet and re-posted the one above specifying that it’s only applications] It is certainly not illegal for the Secretary of State to send out these applications. However, it would be illegal for Trump to withhold federal funds in retaliation. Not that he cares about that. It’s reminiscent of his threat to withhold funds from Ukraine unless they helped with his reelection campaign. In fact, he was impeached for it.

Trump’s campaign against mail-in voting has been in progress for some time. He has ranted without a sliver of evidence that mail-in voting will produce “the greatest Rigged Election in history,” with “thousands of forgeries.” He has also posted hypocritical remarks that approve of mail-in voting for seniors, the military, and himself, but not for any other citizen. And as part of this voter suppression effort, Trump has been attacking the United States Postal Service and advocating for its demise. His bizarre and fabricated arguments stretch into his personal contempt for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

Now that Trump supporters have taken it upon themselves to join his anti-voting campaign, perhaps Democrats should give them some encouragement. These cretinous losers should be applauded for their determination to limit their own voting options. They are actually helping to raise the collective IQ of the electorate by not participating. So News Corpse has created an advertisement to spread this message to Trump supporters around the country. Feel free to retweet it, post it on Facebook, and otherwise cause it to be disseminated everywhere. If this is how they want to march toward November’s election, we should respect their wishes and lend them a helping hand.

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

Trump Refuses to Confirm that He Would Leave the White House Peacefully

Posted by on June 13, 2020 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday Joe Biden was interviewed by the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. In the closing minutes of the segment he asked Biden whether he had given any thought to speculation that Donald Trump might not leave the White House voluntarily if he lost the election. It’s a question that has been asked many times considering Trump’s already disgraceful record of disrespect for the Constitution.

Donald Trump, White House

Biden’s response to Noah’s question was direct and punctuated with relevant facts. He began by predicting that “This president is going to try to steal this election.” That hardly stretches the imagination since that’s what Trump did in 2016, and he is already laying the groundwork to do so in 2020. Trump has flatly stated his belief that all mail-in voting is fraudulent and shouldn’t be counted. And he has his Senate lackeys holding kangaroo hearings aimed at smearing Biden with manufactured allegations. Biden elaborated on his reply saying that he has confidence that the military will uphold the Constitution if necessary:

“I was so damn proud. You have four [chairman of the Joint] Chiefs of Staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are.’ I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The following day, Trump was interviewed (again) by Fox News (video below). Anchor Harris Faulkner conducted yet another televised tongue-bath enabling Trump to lie, deflect, and filibuster incoherently. Her last question for Trump addressed Biden’s remarks on the Daily Show, and produced this bit of surreal theater:

Faulkner: [Biden] said that he believes that you will steal the election, and if you don’t win he thinks that military will escort you from the White House.
Trump: Look, Joe’s not all there. Everybody knows it. And it’s sad when you look at it and you see it for yourself. He’s created his own sanctuary city in the basement of wherever he is, and he doesn’t come out. And certainly if I don’t win, I don’t win. I mean, you go on, do other things. I think it would be a very sad thing for our country.

It’s notable that Trump begins his response by launching into an attack on Biden’s mental health. It’s also pure projection, since Trump is the one that is showing actual signs of dementia. It’s also laughable that Trump attempts to characterize his utterly unqualified diagnosis as “sad” after having made innumerable jokes about it for months. And it wasn’t Biden who retreated to a real basement bunker when he felt threatened by peaceful demonstrators, and then lied about.

More importantly, Trump’s comments regarding leaving office have been twisted by the press into an assurance that he would quietly leave the White House if he loses to Biden in November. But that is not quite what he said. Trump merely stated that “if I don’t win, I don’t win.” So his departure from the White House would be reliant on his acceptance of having lost. But when has Trump ever admitted to having lost anything? He still thinks that he won the popular vote, had record breaking attendance at his inauguration, and was “totally exonerated” by the Mueller report.

Therefore, Trump could just say that the election was tainted by fraud and that he didn’t really lose. Consequently, in his diseased mind, he wouldn’t be required to leave. He would simply invent some “alternative facts,” challenge the results, and insist that he was victorious. That is what would initiate the process of involuntary removal to which Biden was referring. And it’s why the American people have to be vigilant and not allow Trump to usurp power in violation of the Constitution. Or to even let him get away with suggesting it, as Fox News did.

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

Trump Embarks on a Desperate Campaign to Frighten Suburban White Women

Posted by on June 12, 2020 at 12:50 pm. 3 Comments :

The prospects for Donald Trump’s reelection continue to sink into an abyss of his hostility, division, and lies. His mounting anxiety is threatening to submerge him into a deep and depressive self-delusional state as he retreats to his bunker, unable to comprehend the magnitude of hatred that America has for him.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Every recent poll shows that Trump is significantly trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. And he’s even losing support from groups that he once regarded as reliable, such as evangelical voters. His own Republican party members are increasingly repulsed by his angry and childish outbursts. And now he’s worried about a demographic group from which he had support in 2016: Suburban women. Trump tweeted this plaintive yearning on Friday morning:

There’s a lot of wrong in that brief query. First of all, Trump is exacerbating the racist overtones of his candidacy (and his life) by overtly addressing a segment of the electorate that he believes is sympathetic toward him: white women. He’s blatantly fear mongering in order to scare people into voting for him. Secondly, Trump is clinging to the racial anxieties of white voters generally by referring to “defunding the police” without putting that phrase into context. Every Democrat in public life has affirmed their support for reforming police departments – not abolishing them – in a way that refocuses their duties and their budgets on crime and safety, leaving other more personal matters to the social workers, drug counselors, and mental health professionals who are better prepared to handle them.

Finally, Trump is ignoring the reality that the suburban women he relied on four years ago have long since left his camp. A recent poll by CNN found that among these voters Joe Biden is crushing Trump 63 to 34%. And for those who aren’t convinced that CNN’s pollsters are fair, the results were nearly identical in a Fox News poll, giving Biden a 57% edge over Trump’s 29%. In both polls Biden has a nearly 30 point advantage.

It’s difficult to see how Trump can overcome this deficit of support. Particularly when he is bleeding support from so many other critical voter groups. So he’s resorting to the sort of filthy campaign tactics that are familiar components of his diseased persona.

Trump is pretending to be the tough guy (while cowering in his bunker) by deploying the military against peaceful American citizens engaged in constitutionally protected demonstrations. He’s slandering Biden and other Democrats with infantile insults. He’s advancing bizarre conspiracy theories from the Internet’s most abhorrent cretins occupying its outer fringes. And this is how Trump thinks he’s going to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate in order to prevail in November? Yeah, right!

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

America is Exhausted: Joe Biden Should Embrace Trump’s ‘Sleepy Joe’ Nickname

Posted by on June 11, 2020 at 12:16 pm. 4 Comments :

The presidency of Donald Trump has been marked by failure after failure. His tax scam provided benefits only for corporations and the wealthy. His tariffs burdened American businesses and consumers with higher costs. His foreign policy focused on embracing our enemies (Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un) and alienating our allies.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Furthermore, Trump’s negligence and ignorance with regard to the coronavirus pandemic resulted in more than 112,000 deaths (so far). It produced an economic catastrophe that is only just beginning. And his inbred racism is inflaming social unrest throughout the country. Trump’s nauseatingly unpatriotic response to this is to deploy the American military against American citizens.

One of the few skills for which Trump has been recognized has been his instincts for marketing and branding. It comes with having been a reality TV game show host for fourteen years. He has a way of connecting with the most dimwitted demographic in American society with infantile nicknames and insults. It’s important to note that he isn’t impressing anyone with either intelligence or insight. He’s just adept at appealing to the lowest common denominator, a demographic category to which he also belongs.

In the current presidential campaign, Trump has taken to referring to his Democratic opponent as “Sleepy” Joe Biden, a label that Trump hopes will convey some sort of mental infirmity. Unfortunately for Trump, it applies more accurately to Trump himself than to Biden. Trump has been peddling this branding since April of 2019, with no discernible impact on Biden’s campaign. To date he has tweeted it 113 times. Yet every poll still shows Biden with growing leads nationally, as well as in most of the crucial swing states.

Nevertheless, Trump persists with this campaign despite its being about as effective as a flyswatter against a rhinoceros. So this might be good time for Biden to grasp a hold of the moniker and lob it back at Trump. Biden could say something like this…

Am I “sleepy”? Well, I sure as hell am tired of listening to Donald Trump’s lies about virtually everything. Yeah, I’m tired of him lying about me, but more importantly, I’m tired of him lying to the American people about his record of failure, bigotry, and imaginary achievements. I’m tired of him dividing Americans from one another at a time when we need to be united more than ever. I’m tired of seeing thousands get sick and die due to his ignorance total lack of competence or compassion.

And that’s not all. I’m tired of watching our country lose respect internationally and become the laughingstock of the world. I’m tired of seeing our leadership on issues like climate change, nuclear disarmament, and trade, be abandoned to foreign competitors. And if listening to Trump babble on and on about himself doesn’t make you sleepy, you might have a serious sleep disorder.”

That’s just for starters. It should also be pointed out that Trump’s banal and repetitive rhetoric could put a meth addict to sleep. He repeats more often than episodes of Friends. And his cult followers have been asleep from day one, in a hypnotic stupor – a cognitive coma – that shields them from facts, truth and reality.

So yes, Joe is sleepy. America is sleepy. And Trump is the nation’s sedative. But we are developing a resistance (that’s right, resistance) to Trump’s injections of verbal anesthetics. More Americans are waking up every day, and we’re ready to flush Trump down the drain in November.

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

And now for a bit of comic relief:

Apocalypse Wow! Trump is Bleeding Evangelical Support

Posted by on June 10, 2020 at 1:02 pm. 5 Comments :

From the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations he has disingenuously exploited America’s faith community. Never mind that he’s a thrice married adulterer and sexual predator. Or that he robs and cheats without remorse. Or that he is greedy, prideful, envious, wrathful, gluttonous, and profane. His pandering to supposedly devout Christians has been a hallmark of his political persona.

Donald Trump Messiah

America’s evangelicals were all to willing to prostrate themselves before their new Messiah. Not because he represented their spiritual ideals, but because he promised to deliver on their right-wing political agenda. If he could seat some ultra-conservative judges and abolish safe and legal abortions, they would abandon their faith and reward him with their votes.

Well, those days may be behind us. A new poll by Politico has some bad news for Pastor Don. Despite Trump’s success in appointing unqualified, but radical right-wing jurists, his support among the Jesus weasels has fallen into the depths of political Hades. He cannot get a majority of voters to buy his alleged religiosity. Even worse, majorities of the faith community don’t buy it either:

“Only 27 percent of registered voters in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll said they somewhat or strongly agree that Trump himself is religious, while 55 percent somewhat or strongly disagree. Among subgroups, just over a third of all Christians view the president as religious (50 percent do not), while 23 percent of Catholics and 18 percent of independents see him that way.”

The poll went on to show that among evangelicals, Trump could convince only 40% that he was one of them. In fact, the only demographic groups that did regard Trump as an actual Christian were conservatives (55%) and Republicans (60%). Proving that the whole charade was purely a political strategy that gained no ground outside of the rabidly partisan crowd.

It’s notable that this survey was conducted after Trump’s photo-op outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. Obviously, very few people, including believers, were fooled by Trump standing awkwardly in front of a boarded-up church, scowling as he held a bible upside down, and declining to say a single word. And the reports of how he cleared the way for this farce by having law enforcement beat and teargas peaceful demonstrators probably didn’t win any hearts or minds either.

Trump has never been very good at articulating his religious beliefs. He was unable to cite a single passage of scripture when asked. He often mangles the biblical parables he attempts to misappropriate. He frequently displays his utter ignorance of spirituality with bizarre responses to simple questions. For instance, he was once asked if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, which all Christians must do to receive salvation for original sin. He responded by saying that he didn’t need to because he has never done anything wrong:

“I’m trying to lead a life where I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. […] Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?”

So in addition to referring to himself as “The Chosen One,” Trump sees himself as infallible. What’s more, his orientation to faith is strictly wound around himself. He was recently asked whether he’s “grown in his faith” since becoming president. Trump replied, “I think maybe I have, from the standpoint that I see so much that I can do. I’ve done so much for religion.”

Everything in Trump’s narcissistic world revolves around Trump. So it isn’t surprising that his most reliable base of support is crumbling beneath his feet of clay. Another recent poll found that his support among evangelical voters declined a whopping 20% since March. At this rate the only people supporting Trump will be his family, the white nationalist militias, and a smattering of Deplorables who are still trying to figure out how to peel a banana.

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

Crybaby Trump Obsessively Clings to Bogus 96% Approval

Posted by on June 8, 2020 at 1:43 pm. 4 Comments :

This is a good time to remember the old saying that repeating the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result, is the definition of Trumpism (aka insanity). And Donald Trump is helpfully continuing to affirm the wisdom of that proverb with tedious, all-caps repetitions of moldy oldies like “LAW & ORDER,” “MAGA,” “OBAMAGATE,” and the venerable “FAKE NEWS!”

Donald Trump Pacifier Fox

Among Trump’s most often regurgitated banalities is one that he is convinced will juice his popularity by the force of some imaginary crowd appeal. Trump believes that if he can convince people that others are bewitched by his irresistible charm, then they too will fall under his spell. So he tweets ad infinitum…

There are two very serious flaws in Trump’s logic. First of all, He doesn’t have 96% approval among Republicans, and he never has. It’s notable that as often as he tweets this, he has never once included a source or a link to any poll that would confirm it. And he tweets it quite often. He began this BS back in February of 2019, when the number he made up was only 93%. We’ve had some inflation. Just this year Trump has tweeted this phony stat 28 times (more than once a week). On 17 of those tweets the percentage of his GOP approval was 95%. The other 11 were inflated to 96% for no discernible reason other than ego gratification.

Secondly, Trump is placing undue significance on his GOP approval. The percentage of voters who identify themselves as Republican is a paltry 28%. So Trump could have 100% of them and it still wouldn’t amount to much. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to win an election.

For the record, a new CNN/SRSS poll puts Trump’s job approval among his own party members at only 88%. What’s more, the poll also shows Trump’s overall approval at a pitiful 38% (57% disapproval). And in a head to head match up with Joe Biden, Trump comes out behind by 14 points (Biden 55%, Trump 41%). That represents a gain by Biden of four points since last month’s poll, and a loss by Trump of five points.

Trump is desperately trying to dismiss these results. Naturally he condemns them as being the work of “Fake News” CNN, and goes further to add a wildly irrelevant assertion that “The Dems would destroy America!” That, of course, is from the poll in Trump’s diseased brain.

However, Trump wasn’t satisfied with throwing around his own unsupported malarkey. So he later tweeted that he had “retained [a] highly respected pollster” to “analyze” CNN’s survey. Needless to say, Trump’s pollster is a notoriously biased right-winger who mangles the numbers beyond recognition. Trump isn’t interested in conveying an honest presentation of reality. His only objective it to muddy the waters and pacify his anxious cult followers.

The truth is that, not just one, but every single poll, including Fox News and Trump favorite Rasmussen, shows Biden leading significantly. The RealClearPolitics poll of polls shows Biden with an average lead of 7.8%. And Trump’s support is cratering among Republican notables. There are presently eleven generals and/or admirals that have publicly renounced Trump (Mattis, Kelly, Allen, Powell, Myers, Dempsey, Thomas, Hayden, McRaven, Stvridis, and Mullen). And a growing number of former Trump voters are pledging to support Biden this November.

Nevertheless, Trump soldiers on in his belligerent, childish, egocentric way. He has no idea what a fool he’s making of himself as he ignores the tenor of the electorate by becoming ever more hostile. His proclamations of authoritarian rule are only thrusting him further into the abyss of political toxicity. His negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance, is proving to be disastrous with regard to his handling of the social unrest, the coronavirus pandemic, and the recessive economy. And in his narcissistic stupor Trump refuses to see, or at least acknowledge, that for him it’s all downhill from here.

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

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Trump-tanic: Sinking Hopes for 2020

Posted by on June 5, 2020 at 1:38 pm. 12 Comments :

It is abundantly clear that Donald Trump, America’s first reality TV game show host to serve as president, learned everything he knows about communications from his shallow experience in the world of television. Everything he says – whether good news or bad – has the stench of a sleazy infomercial. And Trump pumps out his propaganda as if he’s peddling Sham-Wow rags to the trailer park crowd.

Donald Trump, Republican, GOP

On Friday morning Trump held what he called a press conference, although he left after making a statement and took no questions at all. He greeted the press corps with strange praise saying that “I noticed you’re starting to get much closer together. Looks much better.” What Trump failed to mention was that the chairs were originally arranged in compliance with social distancing guidance, but before the press arrived Trump’s staff rearranged them to put everyone closer together, and more at risk. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Trump only crawled out from his bunker to crow about a new set of jobs numbers indicating that some of the millions of Americans who became unemployed due his negligent and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic had returned to work. Trump presented this data as a “Mission Accomplished” moment, despite the fact that the unemployment rate is still at historic highs (13.1%) and more than 20 million Americans are still not working. And in a bizarre conflation of concepts, Trump praised the economic news as somehow being beneficial to George Floyd, the African-American man who was murdered by police last week. Trump beamed that…

“Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

Really? Even if the jobs numbers are accurate (and with the Trump administration that’s a risky assumption), the unemployment rate for whites declined from 14.2% to 12.4%. But for African-Americans it rose from 16.7% to 16.8%. What a great day for George.

UPDATE: As it turns out, there was a huge miscalculation in the unemployment rate. The real number is closer to 20%, which is near a record high and is what analysts predicted.

Earlier in the day, Trump displayed a measure of anxiety in his standard way: by firing off a frantic tweetstorm. This is how he lets the world know when he’s scared, planting himself on his Twitter throne and blasting out an incoherent stream of invective and flagrant distortions of reality (aka lies). And on Friday morning Trump was busy not being president as he rattled off a record 131 posts on Twitter. Most of them (115) were retweets of Republican senators. And most of those were promoting 13 of the senators running for reelection in competitive races. Some of the most at-risk GOP senators who got shout-outs from Trump were Martha McSally (AZ), Tom Cotton (AR), Cory Gardner (CO), and Thom Tillis (NC). Eighteen others were either in close races or held safe Republican seats. Democrats only need four seats to flip to take control of the Senate.

For some reason Trump didn’t bother to help out his pals Mitch McConnell (KY) or Lindsey Graham (SC), who are both facing strong Democratic challengers. He also left out Susan Collins (ME), who is struggling survive, and Kelly Loeffler (GA), who is embroiled in an insider trading scandal.

The bottom line is that Trump wouldn’t cough up more than a hundred tweets featuring senators running for reelection five months before election day – and during an ongoing pandemic – and while there is nationwide civil unrest – unless he was worried about losing both the presidency and the Republican majority in the Senate. If he is worried, it may be the first thing he’s gotten right in three and a half years. The likelihood of Democratic victories for the Senate and the White House increase every day as Trump’s failures drive his approval ratings ever lower. and his toxicity is rubbing off on his party confederates. At some point they are going to flee like the proverbial rats that they are. And that will leave Trump all alone and trembling in his bunker.

UPDATE: Today Trump hit a new record of a staggering 195 tweets (including 161 retweets) in a single day. That’s About one tweet every four minutes for 13.5 hours.

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