Jen Psaki

Jen Psaki Schools Newsmax Shill on the History of Systemic Racism in America

Posted by on April 16, 2021 at 12:08 pm. 9 Comments :

There really needs to be more stringent criteria for who is granted press credentials in the White House Briefing Room. Without some standard for experience and professionalism you wind up making Press Secretary Jen Psaki waste time with questions that are nothing more than pre-scripted, fact-averse hit pieces.

Jen Psaki

Friday morning provided a perfect example of this “gotcha-ism” when Psaki was confronted by the new White House correspondent for Newsmax, Emerald Robinson. She recently joined Newsmax after her stint at One America News Network (OANN). So her journalism pedigree is pitifully lacking in journalistic integrity. Robinson sought to corner Psaki with a loaded question that totally warped reality:

“The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, talking on Wednesday said that essentially white supremacy is woven into our founding documents and principles. The statement is getting widely criticized as essentially parroting Chinese Communist Party talking point. So is the President going to remove her from her position as the representative before that body?”

The first thing you might notice is that Robinson is painfully ignorant about American history and the nation’s founding documents. Most Americans know that the this country’s originating “principles” permitted slavery and that the Constitution counted African slaves as three-fifths of person. There was also a little thing called the “Civil War” that addressed racial issues in America. And even today’s headlines are filled with examples of the systemic racism that persists.

In addition to those glaring omissions, Robinson also revealed her rookie reporting skills by trying to give her question more credibility by asserting that the Ambassador’s comments were “widely criticized.” By whom? Her bosses at Newsmax? The Republicans she shills for? Capitol insurrections out on bail?

What’s more, it is patently absurd to associate the remarks by Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield with the Chinese Communist Party. Just because a foreign adversary says something similar to an American diplomat doesn’t mean it isn’t true. If a Chinese diplomat criticized America’s early racial bigotry, they would have been stating something that is unarguably true. In fact, it would still be true if they said it today. Psaki had a quick retort that should have put the matter to rest:

“Is POTUS going to remove an African-American woman with decades of experience in the foreign service who’s widely respected around the world from her position as Ambassador to the U.N.? He’s not. He is proud to have her in that position. She is not only qualified, he believes she is exactly the right person in that role in this moment in time.

“I have not seen her comments. I will say that there is no question that there has been a history of institutional racism in this country, and that doesn’t require the U.N. Ambassador to confirm that.”

Unfortunately, Robinson wasn’t satisfied and persisted with her ludicrous line of questions to ask “does the President think our founding documents are racist?” Psaki declined to dignify the inquiry further, saying simply that “most people recognize the history of systemic racism in our country.” And if Robinson needs any additional evidence of American racism, all she has to do is watch her network and note the rampant racism that emanates from its programs every hour of every day.

Early on the Biden administration expressed its intent to manage press relations in a manner that would be starkly different from the hostile work environment fostered by Donald Trump. There would be no more barking at reporters and insulting them as “enemies of the people.” Biden “promised not to allow outlets to use the briefings to spread baseless conspiracies,” and vowed that “Organizations or individuals who traffic in conspiracy theories, propaganda and lies to spread disinformation will not be tolerated.”

It’s time to make good on those promises. There is no way that Newsmax should be entitled to a White House press pass. They don’t conduct responsible, honest journalism. And they don’t aspire to professional standards of ethics. They are unabashed purveyors of propaganda who seek only to malign their ideological foes and advance the ultra-rightists for whom they work. And by the way, all of that applies equally as well to Fox News.

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

GOP Senator Whines That Biden Isn’t as Stark Raving Mad as Trump

Posted by on April 12, 2021 at 12:52 pm. 7 Comments :

The election of Joe Biden as President has profoundly changed the White House culture and the national political environment. And it’s not just because he is articulating and implementing an agenda that advances the interests of the American people, and that they overwhelmingly support. It’s also because Biden isn’t a narcissistic, pathological lying, sociopath like his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, King

The Republican Party had a chance to distance themselves from the insanity that Trump excreted so excruciatingly. Instead they chose to embrace him with more devotion than ever, despite the fact that he has become America’s Biggest Loser. Republican members of Congress have been making the mandatory pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Dear Leader’s – let’s just say ring.

Chief among the obedient faithful is the Senate’s number two Republican, John Cornyn of Texas. And to demonstrate his loyalty to Hair Trump, Cornyn posted a tweet that he intended as a slam on Biden. It said that…

“The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters. […] Invites the question: is he really in charge?”

First of all, it needs to be noted that Cornyn’s tweet was cut and pasted, without attribution (plagiarism?), from a Politico article by White House Correspondent Eugene Daniels. But more to the point, Cornyn is apparently appalled that Biden doesn’t regard his duties as President to be ranting endlessly on Twitter and posting clips of himself on Fox News (between rounds of golf at his own resorts). In Cornyn’s acutely warped Trumpism, Biden is neglecting his job by spending all of his time actually doing it.

The excerpt from the Politico article was not meant to be critical. It was merely descriptive of a president who isn’t a pompous braggart that needs to be the center attention at all times; who isn’t at war with the free press; and who expresses himself with simple honesty. Biden views the presidency as a sacred duty to serve the people, rather than his own ego. And he sought to be a relief from the reality TV melodrama of the Trump era. That point was made by Daniels later in the article:

“During the campaign, the Biden team sold themselves as a return to calm. Their commitment to that pledge since taking office makes clear that it wasn’t just a show for voters but an actual strategy. It is a head-spinning departure from four years of President Donald Trump, who was his own surrogate and aspiring assignment editor, tweeting changes to policy and taking the typically adversarial relationship with the press to a full-on war. […] But Biden aides believed that simplicity and restraint was the best approach. He won the election.”

The stance by Biden and his administration is a deliberate departure from the madness of Trump & Company. What’s more, it is what the American people want and voted for in droves. Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, stated it succinctly when Cornyn’s comments were raised at the daily White House briefing:

Reporter: Sen. John Cornyn has called Joe Biden’s tweets “unimaginably conventional” and said that his comments were “largely scripted” and questioned whether he was really in charge. Does the White House have any reaction to that?
Psaki: Well I can confirm that the President of the United States does not spend his time tweeting conspiracy theories. He spends his time working on behalf of the American people.

Working on behalf of the American people? What an original concept. The Republican Party might want to consider that sometime. That’s if they can stop working on behalf of the wealthy, the kleptocracy, and the Messiah of Mar-a-Lago long enough to care about the nation more than their party or themselves.

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

Jen Psaki Draws Lame Attack By Shamelessly Dishonest Right-Wing Media Org

Posted by on April 8, 2021 at 11:51 am. 1 Comments :

The desperation of the conservative propaganda machine is blowing up. They have nothing substantive for which to criticize President Biden. They failed miserably to smear his broadly popular COVID relief and stimulus plan, that even a majority of Republicans supported. And they are suffering the same fate with Biden’s infrastructure bill and their tone-deaf efforts to make it harder to vote.

Fox News, Jen Psaki

Republicans are making an epic blunder by not only opposing such highly favored policies, but by voting unanimously against them despite the public’s overwhelming support. That is going to backfire on them badly in the upcoming 2022 election cycle.

So in place of developing policies that the American people actually like, the right is frantically trying to misrepresent the positive things that Democrats are doing. For example, the radical rightists at the Media Research Center (NewsBusters) just went after Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. They tweeted a video that they claimed showed Psaki “blame[ing] the Trump administration for the crisis at the border that has happened exclusively under Joe Biden’s watch.”

PBS White House correspondent, Yamiche Alcindor: The Family Reunification Task Force is saying as of now that they haven’t reunited any families because they’re still sorting through the system. Can you talk a minute about why they haven’t been able to reunite families. What are the concerns and challengers that are even more pronounced than what you thought they were gonna be?
Psaki: Sure. First we can’t overstate how complex this challenge is. The prior administration didn’t have have a system in place to track the children and parents who were separated. They also, of course, separated them themselves. But the task force has been in place for about two months. The focus right now, at this period of time, has been about reviewing thousands of records. And a significant number of issues have come up in these existing files, including incorrect dates and names.[…] They’ve also identified 5,600 new files that were not reviewed and have begun the process for checking those files. The task force is also working closely with the ACLU to process identified families so we can reunite them as swiftly as possible. They’ll have a full report that’s due on June 2nd.

It could not be more apparent that both the question and the eloquently delivered answer were explicitly related to the abhorrent family separation policies of the Trump administration. It had nothing to do with the alleged border “crisis” that Fox News and the GOP have been trying so hard to spin into a scandal. The family separation policies were wholly devised and implemented by Trump’s team. It was never the position of Biden, or the Obama administration either.

So the News Blusters are lying with the abandon of … well … Republicans. They have to know that what was discussed in the video that they themselves posted was about a policy that was exclusively Trump’s and that Biden had nothing to do with.

This sort of gaslighting is typical of the rightist disinformation squads. They are so bereft of a positive message, or a factual, coherent, negative take on Biden, that they have to invent controversies that exist nowhere in reality. It’s the sort of intellectual vacancy that produces weeks of ludicrous reports about the “canceling” of Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. And it eventually descends to this depth of depravity from Fox News:

“White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki got snippy with a reporter on Wednesday who questioned why Vice President Kamala Harris had time to visit a Chicago bakery amid the lingering border crisis she has been tasked to deal with. The exchange between Psaki and New York Post reporter Steven Nelson came during a press briefing at the White House.”

Does this look “snippy” to you?

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

HOLY SHHH: Trump’s Baseball Boycott Babble on Newsmax is Totally Incoherent

Posted by on April 6, 2021 at 4:29 pm. 2 Comments :

The current news cycle is bursting with critical issues that are important to the American people. We are still in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Congress just passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill and is considering infrastructure legislation that could run up another $2.2 Trillion. A nationally significant trial is in progress in Minneapolis deciding the fate of the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd. But right-wing media has other priorities.

Donald Trump, Insane, Straight Jacket

Naturally networks like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN are only concerned with matters that they can spin to bash President Biden and other Democrats. So their top stories aren’t any of those itemized above. Instead, they are obsessed with the notion that Biden might have had something to do with Major League Baseball moving their All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. That relocation was wholly the decision of the MLB, due to Georgia passing a bill designed to suppress the voter rights of Democrats in general, and people of color in particular.

In an especially revealing example of the intellectual vacancy of the conservative position, Trump called in to Newsmax to rant about his displeasure with America’s pastime. Which led to this bizarre exchange:

Heather Childers: So, should we boycott baseball?
Trump: Well, I am just not interested in baseball for the last number of years. It’s just not appropriate. You want to find a game. It’s on every channel, and yet you can’t find anything. It’s the weirdest thing. It used to be a nice easy thing to follow. And you know what I mean by that. It was on one network and it was nice and good and beautiful. Today you don’t even know what the hell you’re watching. So I would say “Boycott baseball?” Why not?

WUT? So now Trump thinks that baseball is “not appropriate”? And he can’t find a game on TV because it’s on every channel? It’s abundantly clear that Trump doesn’t know what the hell he’s saying. But he still concludes that the sport must be boycotted in order to make it “nice and good and beautiful” again. This is the same guy who has been demeaning Biden as struggling cognitively. (although even a Fox News poll shows that most voters say that Trump is the one who is mentally unsound).

[NOTE: Heather Childers is a former Fox News presenter who once wondered in a tweet whether Obama threatened To kill Chelsea Clinton.]

As for Fox News, their White House correspondent, Peter Doocy, was the victim of yet another “Psaki Bomb” after he asked Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki about the MLB situation:

Doocy: Is the White House concerned Major League Baseball is moving their All-Star Game to Colorado, where voting regulations are very similar to Georgia?
Psaki: Well, let me refute the first points you made. First let me say on Colorado, Colorado allows you register on election day. Colorado has voting by mail where they send to 100% of their people in the state who are eligible. […] I think it’s important to remember the context here. The Georgia bill is built on a lie.

The right-wing press is not the least bit concerned about the voting rights aspect of this story. They are only worried about whether the corporations, that conservatives used to regard as reliable sources of support and donations, are now cowering under the weight of supposedly fearsome Democratic bullies. Consequently, people like the GOP Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, are lambasting corporations and threatening to revoke the tax benefits that Republicans have showered on them for decades.

Donald Trump has even weighed in to direct his cult followers to boycott not just baseball, but Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, UPS, Merck, and numerous other companies that had the audacity to stand up for voting rights when their customers demanded it.

Nevertheless, conservatives are adamant that somehow all of this is Biden’s fault. The Republican National Committee even tweeted that Biden ordered the MLB to move the All-Star Game. But the funny thing about that is that the video they posted proved that he did no such thing. He merely expressed his support for a decision that they were making themselves. But right-wingers have never let themselves be bogged down by reality before. Why should they start now?

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Poor Peter Doocy Whines that Biden Didn’t Let Him Ask a Loaded Fox ‘News’ Question

Posted by on March 27, 2021 at 11:45 am. 2 Comments :

The fact that Fox News continues to wonder why they aren’t respected as a journalistic enterprise is actually further evidence of why they aren’t respected as a journalistic enterprise. A real news organization would recognize how far removed they are from credible journalism. But Fox seems to be either completely unaware of it, deliberately dishonest about it, or desperately in denial.

Fox News, Peter Doocy

On Friday Fox News demonstrated perfectly why no one takes them seriously as a news source. Following President Biden’s press conference on Thursday, which suffered Fox News’ predictable, knee-jerk criticism, the right-wing propaganda network focused intently on the most significant news produced by the event: Mean Mr. Biden didn’t call on Fox’s pouting Peter Doocy for another one of his petty inquisitions. But Doocy wasn’t having it. So he complained to the manager (press secretary Jen Psaki), who promptly ate his lunch:

Doocy: Any time that the President has an event where he’s given a list of reporters to call on, Fox is the only member of the five networks in the TV pool that has never been on the list in front of the President. And I’m just curious if that is an official administration policy.
Psaki: We’re here having a conversation, aren’t we? And do I take questions from you every time you come to the briefing room? Has the President taken questions from you since he came into office?

Psaki responded to Doocy like he was wayward child, which was entirely appropriate. Any other news organization would have been embarrassed by such a petulant display of hurt feelings. What’s worse is that Doocy wasted his time in the White House Briefing Room to register his self-serving complaints, rather than asking substantive questions that might actually address important issues. He could have saved his whining for a private conversation with Psaki. But he wasn’t through yet. He later made the same lament on air:

“The President would have a list, usually of about five people, and those are the ones that he would call on […] If he decides to just stick to the list, then we are left out.”

So this is the clearly the overarching issue in America today, at least on Fox News. It must be resolved before considering any discussion of the COVID pandemic, immigration, voting rights, or mass murders. And Doocy’s confederates at Fox agree. Media Matters reports that “Eleven different programs have combined to mention how Biden did not call on Fox White House correspondent Peter Doocy at least 24 times.” They included Jesse Watters calling Biden “chicken,” and Sean Hannity complaining that Doocy didn’t get to ask his “important” questions. Even Donald Trump brought it up in his “interview” with Laura Ingraham.

No one at Fox News bothered to mention that the New York Times didn’t get called on either. And they didn’t whine about it afterward. And Fox conveniently forgets that, if anyone was chicken it was Donald Trump. He never once gave CNN or MSNBC an interview in four years as president. And he’s already done four phone-ins with Fox News from his Mar-a-Lago bunker since leaving office.

The real question isn’t why Biden didn’t call on Fox News. It’s why would he ever do so? You’re only supposed to call on journalists during a press conference. In a world where journalistic integrity was honored, Doocy and his ilk wouldn’t even be allowed on the press room. And the fact that he and his Fox gripers are making such a big deal of this is only further proof that they don’t deserve to be treated as bona fide reporters.

Biden’s press team recently articulated certain principles that, if followed, would result in having to ban Fox News from White House briefings. Which would surely make them more informative. In the meantime, enjoy this video where the Daily Show “FOX-splains” Biden’s 37,268 scandals so far in his two months of being president:

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

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

DumbFox: Press Secretary Psaki Torpedoes Doocy of Fox News – Again!

Posted by on March 10, 2021 at 5:42 pm. 6 Comments :

The best evidence that Fox News is not a credible news enterprise is the fact that they don’t have any actual journalists on staff or news bureaus. They never break stories, just disgorge biased commentaries about stories from other sources. Their programs are hosted by entertainers and opinion mongers.

Jen Psaki

One of the worst examples of “reporting” comes from Fox’s Peter Doocy. Not only does have no journalism education or training at all, he’s a product of nepotism, being the son of Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy. And Fox News named this low achiever a White House correspondent following the election of Joe Biden.

Doocy has has attended the daily White House press briefings that have been reinstated by Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki after the Trump administration halted them. His performance there has been, to be generous, underwhelming. His questions are purposefully loaded, but poorly constructed and easily rebutted. And there is no better example of that than his question on Wednesday that resulted in this exchange (video below):

Doocy: You’ve been telling migrants for a month now that now is not the time to come. But they are coming in bigger numbers every day. So do you have a messaging problem?
Psaki: I would say that in the last administration we had a morality problem. Children were being pulled from the arms of their parents and kids were being sent back on a treacherous journey. That’s not the approach of this administration.

Nice try Doocy. Psaki’s instant response effectively defused Doocy’s attempted gotcha. And she did it by reminding people of the “morality problem” that was integral to virtually everything Trump did.

The notion that an American president has a “messaging” strategy of any kind with migrants is bizarre. They are not the audience for presidential communications and can’t be expected to comply with advice or demands that emanate from the White House. They didn’t during the Trump administration, and they won’t now. They are often desperate people driven by fundamentals of humanity like fear, poverty, and hopes for a better life. Doocy doesn’t comprehend that. But Psaki does. She elaborated saying that…

“We made a policy decision that that was the right, humane step to take. But I think it’s also important for people to understand that the vast majority of people who come to our border are turned away, are sent back to their country. We’re talking here about unaccompanied children. What our focus is on is ensuring that there are safe places for these kids to go where they have access to educational resources, health and medical attention, legal assistance as needed, and that we can expedite the vetting so that they can get to families and sponsors where they have their cases adjudicated.”

That’s the difference between an administration that has compassion for people in distress, and the Trump model that was based on fomenting hatred and division. It’s the difference between understanding the value of immigration versus an America First xenophobia. It’s the difference between seeking solutions rather than political wedge issues. And Psaki is masterfully demonstrating how a competent, caring, knowledgeable press secretary does her job. Something we haven’t seen for four long years.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

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

Stupid Reporter Tricks: Question About ‘A Lot of Americans,’ Turns Out to Be Just Trump

Posted by on March 6, 2021 at 12:48 pm. 8 Comments :

Joe Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, has brought back the daily press briefings that were canceled during the anti-press administration of Donald Trump. This White House no longer believes that the press is “the enemy of the people.” But that doesn’t mean that the questions posed are going to be particularly enlightening.

Jen Psaki

We can rely on Fox News to ignore the Biden presidency (as they have been doing thus far). Likewise, Fox will continue to be antagonistic toward Biden and the Democrats (as their CEO admitted is the network’s mission). But they won’t be alone. On Friday CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang had an interesting framing for her questions:

Jiang: A lot of Americans are saying that, you know, the [immigrant] surges are happening under President Biden’s watch after he reversed some previous policy. So does the administration take any accountability for what’s happening?
Psaki: Who are the Americans?
Jiang: Well, I know you don’t want to answer to him, but the former President just released a statement saying that, “The Biden Administration must act immediately to end the border nightmare that they have unleashed onto our nation.”
Psaki: Former President Trump? We don’t take our advice or counsel from former President Trump on immigration policy, which was not only inhumane but ineffective over the last four years.

OUCH! That was a rookie mistake trying to pass off Trump as “a lot of Americans.” The White House press corps needs to come better prepared than that for future interactions with this press secretary. Psaki obviously isn’t the airhead propagandist that they became accustomed to under the Trump regime.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Fox News Obsesses Over Biden Press Conferences – That They Refuse to Air

Posted by on March 6, 2021 at 10:16 am. 3 Comments :

For four years Fox News covered virtually every public utterance by Donald Trump live and uninterrupted. They aired his cult rallies, his Coronavirus Task Force briefings, his staged, photo-op bill signings, his random and rancid rants, his lie-riddled “chopper talks,” and more. The network could have been re-branded as a 24/7 Trump Channel.

Donald Trump Fox News

Now that Joe Biden is residing in the White House, Fox News has adopted an entirely different editorial approach to covering the President of the United States. And it isn’t just the blatantly negative bias against Biden that Fox’s CEO recently admitted is the core of their mission. That bias is remarkably strained because Fox has so little of substance to complain about. Consequently they focus on absurd and irrelevant distractions like Biden’s dog, Neanderthals, Mr. Potato Head, and Dr. Seuss. That’s emblematic of Fox’s editorial priorities.

Meanwhile, there has been a flurry of verbal venom aimed at Biden for his alleged reluctance to face questions from the press. However, while he hasn’t held a formal news conference, he has taken questions on numerous occasions addressing such critical and diverse subjects as containing the COVID-19 pandemic, and providing relief and stimulus; racial equity; climate change; healthcare; and immigration.

Clearly Biden has a lot on his plate following the calamitous tenure of Trump. These are matters of profound importance that need to be tackled with an appropriate sense of urgency. There will be plenty of time for press conferences once the nation’s stability and security have been restored. Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, has indicated that a press conference will be scheduled before the end of March. But that hasn’t calmed the dread that is consuming Fox News. For the past few days they have demonstrated just how obsessed they are with this non-scandal as seen in these headlines:

  • Hidin’ Biden – still no presidential press conference but Dems like basement strategy
  • White House ‘protecting’ Biden by not scheduling press conferences: Karl Rove
  • Biden team ‘has zero confidence’ that ‘absentee president’ can handle press conference
  • Biden still hasn’t held a press conference after 43 days in office
  • Psaki says Biden will hold press conference ‘before the end of the month’
  • Kayleigh McEnany: Biden vowed ‘transparency’ but has still not held a solo press conference

How many times do they have to do the same story? McEnany, Trump’s fourth and final press secretary who has already been hired by Fox News, “bragged” about Trump’s availability to the press saying that “He was always willing to take questions, always willing to go to the podium, always willing to stop on his way to the helicopter.” What she left out was that Trump spent most of that time lying and insulting the reporters.

On another segment McEnany wondered “Where’s Joe? It’s been 41 days.” Her new Fox colleague, Sean Hannity, similarly asked “Where is our commander-in-chief? You know, that new guy?” But what has the pungent stench of hypocrisy is that Fox News wouldn’t cover Biden’s press conferences if they were being held.

To date Fox News has not aired a single White House press briefing, which the Biden team has returned to doing daily. Nor have they aired a single press conference by the White House COVID-19 Response Team. Recall that Fox News aired every similar event during the Trump administration. Fox didn’t even air the congressional hearings on the January 6th Trump Insurrection.

Given their disinterest in what President Biden has to say – unless they can distort it to make him look bad – the complaints by Fox News about press conferences are irrelevant and should be ignored. We know that when Biden does hold a press conference, Fox will be covering the “canceling” of a Muppet, or a shady pillow huckster, or some other ridiculous, politically partisan, culture war demagoguery. It’s what they do.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Joe Biden Ends Trump’s War on Truth and the Free Press – and Zings Fox News

Posted by on January 21, 2021 at 12:36 pm. 4 Comments :

The not-so-old adage that “elections have consequences” has proven once again to be an insightful admonition to those who would defy democracy and the indefatigable will of the American people. Donald Trump found this out the hard way by narrowing his appeal to an impotent minority of racists and far-right extremists, rather than seeking to broaden his base by reaching out to the reality-based community.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Among the consequences that Trump will suffer, in addition to his humiliating electoral defeat, are a rapid undoing of his worst policy initiatives (i.e. climate change, immigration, healthcare, etc.), the expulsion of his most despicable appointees throughout his administration (i.e. Justice, Defense, Intelligence, EPA, etc.), and an avalanche of of both criminal and civil lawsuits (tax/financial, sexual harassment/assault, defamation, etc.). Trump may have less time available for golf and television as a private citizen than he did as the alleged “president.”

Joe Biden’s inauguration speech was surprisingly well received considering his reputation for something less than soaring oratory. Even Chris Wallace of Fox News said that it was “the best inaugural address I ever heard.” But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Fox News has turned over new leaf. Sean Hannity watched the same address and described our new president as “the weak, the frail, the cognitively struggling Biden.” Clearly Hannity was viewing it through his manure-caked eyeglasses.

While Biden touched an many subjects of great importance to the American people (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, international relations, and his commitment to national unity), he included some specific passages that foretold a renewed respect for the free press. Gone is Trump’s Stalinist yowl that “the media is the enemy of the people.” In Biden’s inaugural address he correctly observed that “We face an attack on democracy and on truth.” Then he pointedly made these profound remarks:

“Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And, we must reject a culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”

“Manipulated” and “manufactured” facts are another way of saying “alternative” facts (h/t Kellyanne Conway). It’s also a nod to what Fox news has done throughout Trump’s occupation of the White House.

“There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders – leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation – to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”

This is another shout out to Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News), where “Lies told for power and for profit” is embedded in their corporate mission statement.

“But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do.”

Here Biden is being generous by lumping Fox News in with legitimate sources of news. Even Fox doesn’t call what they do “news.” It is literally a part of their entertainment division. And it isn’t going to get any better in the post-Trump era. They have already announced programming changes that shift more airtime to their ultra-conservative opinion hosts.

For his part, Joe Biden is making good on his promise to restore truth and decency to the White House press corps and its relationship with the media. Early on in his term Trump abandoned daily press briefings. He went weeks without holding any. And when he did, they were filled with lies and self-serving blather. His press secretaries were a confederacy of dishonest spinners (Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany) whose flair for flagrant falsehoods was famous.

Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, held her first press briefing on Inauguration Day. She told reporters that her goal was to “bring transparency and truth back to the American government.” Elaborating, she said that…

“I have deep respect for a free and independent press in our democracy and for the role that all of you play. As I noted earlier, there will be moments when we disagree and there will certainly be days we disagree for extensive parts of the briefing even perhaps. But we have a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”

That’s a refreshing upgrade from the bellicose bundle of belligerence that stained Trump’s hostile and childish tantrum throwing tirades whenever he engaged the press. It’s a return to the more productive encounters that provide opportunities for political leaders to communicate with the public, while simultaneously allowing journalists to confront those leaders on the public’s behalf. And if both the President and the press pursue those as their goals, the nation can only be better off for it.

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