Hillary Clinton

Trump’s Lies are Crushed By Senate Intel Vice-Chair: ‘There’s Plenty of Evidence’ of Collusion

Posted by on March 3, 2019 at 2:35 pm. NO Comments :

Donald Trump has been stuck in a frantic and tedious loop of whiny denials for the past couple years. It consists primarily of him impotently proclaiming his innocence with regard to his nefarious associations with Russian operatives in an effort to steal the 2016 presidential election. For the most part his factless proclamations have only served to make him look more guilty.

Mark Warner, CNN

Among his most persistent citations of innocence has been a repeated reference to remarks by the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr. Last September Burr told reporters that he had not seen any direct evidence of collusion or conspiracy with Russia on the part of the President. Note that he did not say it didn’t happen, only that his committee had “no hard evidence” of it. But that was enough to trigger Trump into making multiple identical tweets on the subject. It began on Sep 12, 2018, and continued on Feb 7, 2019, and Feb 8, 2019 and Feb 9, 2019 and Feb 10, 2019 and Feb 22, 2019 and Feb 25, 2019.

Some of these tweets were Trump unleashing his standard “Witch Hunt” rants, and others were retweets from the likes of Sean Hannity. But they all said exactly the same thing incorrectly quoting Sen. Burr: “No Collusion!”

Well, on Sunday morning Trump’s favorite proof that he was a squeaky clean paragon of virtue fell apart. Sen. Mark Warner, the Vice-Chair of the Intelligence Committee appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and explicitly contradicted Trump’s distorted version of events. His remarks could not have been more clear:

“Anyone who says there’s no evidence of collaboration – there’s plenty of evidence. […] The notion that there’s no evidence is just factually wrong. Just in the public domain there are literally reams and reams of evidence of Russian outreach to Trump officials and clear interest from Trump officials, including the President’s own son, welcoming the opportunity to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.”

Warner outlined a small portion of the evidence that was just revealed during the recent House Oversight Committee’s hearing with Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. He cited three pieces of evidence from Cohen’s testimony:

“One, the fact that Donald Trump and Michael Cohen mislead the American public for months about the whole notion of trying to continue to get a Trump Tower project going in Moscow. […]

“The second is the evidence that Mr. Cohen put out that he was in the presence of Donald Trump when Roger Stone called indicating that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange from Wikileaks, indicating that Wikileaks was about to drop a bunch of very damaging information about Hillary Clinton. […]

“And finally we have this whole question wherein Mr. Trump knew about the meeting in Trump Tower that included Don Jr, Jared Kushner, the campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Clearly a meeting that was not about Russian adoption, but was about the idea of turning over dirt on Hillary Clinton.”

For good measure, Warner’s counterpart in the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, spoke on the same issues on CBS’s Face the Nation, saying that “there is both ‘direct evidence’ and ‘abundant circumstantial evidence’ of collusion with Russia.” He elaborated:

“They offer that dirt. There is an acceptance of that offer in writing from the president’s son, Don Jr., and there is overt acts in furtherance of that. That is the meeting at Trump Tower and all the lies to cover up that meeting at the Trump Tower, and apparently lies that the president participated in.”

So this should put an end to the fallacy that there is no evidence against Trump for conspiracy with Russia. Quite the opposite is true. There are mountains of evidence. And that’s even the position of the Vice-Chair of the Senate committee that Trump is so fond of citing on his own behalf. But don’t expect this to end Trump’s plaintive wailing that he’s innocent. When has reality ever interfered with his determination to disgorge obvious lies to shield himself from the consequences of his criminal behavior?

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

https://youtu.be/x4qhUWYnMNo?t=195

Trump’s 2 Hour CPAC Freak Out (Only on Fox News) Exceeds Even His Own Standards for Lunacy

Posted by on March 2, 2019 at 5:03 pm. 4 Comments :

Just when you thought you could never use the preface “Just when you thought” again when referring to Donald Trump, he makes an appearance at the Wingnut-Palooza festival, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Scheduled for a fifty minute address, the long-winded, rambling President spoke for a little over two hours.

Donald Trump

The entire speech was lousy with lies, insults, and imaginary recitations of events that obviously never took place outside the confines of his diseased mind. He revisited Hillary Clinton’s emails, his inauguration crowd size, and some totally incomprehensible blathering about tariffs that goes back to the eighteen hundreds. He even took some time out to hump the American flag.

It would be a monumental waste of time to do an analysis of the whole brain dump that Trump unloaded. But there are a few moments that set the tone for an afternoon of utter idiocy. Let’s begin with Trump’s descent into the sort of profanity that right-wingers would roast any Democrat for engaging in. Having something to do with the Reagan administration forty years ago, he said that:

Don’t bother trying to figure out what he’s talking about. Just move on to the next part where Trump exhibits his fear of the future that holds puts him in extreme legal jeopardy. He predictably attacked special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “Witch Hunt,” and asserted falsely that one of Mueller’s team was running the Clinton Foundation (that he calls the Hillary Clinton foundation). He also said that another team member “has perhaps the worst reputation of any human being I have ever seen.” Seriously, that’s as specific as he got. Then he repeated one of his favorite lies that former FBI Director James Comey and Mueller are best friends. In the real world they are at best acquaintances. They had dinner once and have never visited each other’s homes.

But perhaps the most offensive portion of today’s Trump tirades was when he tried to emulate the McCarthyist rhetoric that insinuated that America’s enemies infiltrated the government and the Congress:

“We have people in Congress right now that hate our country. And you know that. And we can name every one of them if they want.”

So now Trump has a list of America-haters that he can (but won’t) make public. If the list has any accuracy at all, his name will be at the top of it. After all, he’s the one that openly expresses his love for Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and any other foreign dictator he has met. And somehow Trump wandered off at the end into an immigration rant that questioned how these members of Congress did in “their country.” What countries he’s talking about remains a mystery.

This CPAC speech is officially Trump’s longest to date. For two hours, he managed to entertain the Deplorables at the conference. But the good news is that the damage was limited to the convo attendees and to what’s left of the audience at Fox News. Fox proved their devotion to the President by being the only cable news network that aired the speech live and uninterrupted. They have truly earned their reputation as State TV. But unfortunately for them and Trump, their audience is rapidly shrinking in the face of strong competition from MSNBC, led by the top rated program on cable news, the Rachel Maddow Show. And that, at least, is good news.

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

Plead the 25th: Trump Disgorges an Insane Tweetstorm About an Imaginary Michael Cohen Book

Posted by on March 1, 2019 at 10:46 am. 4 Comments :

Like Clockwork. Whenever Donald Trump is the most fearful about his snowballing legal peril, he lashes out from his Twitter throne with the most deranged and groundless spasms of utter nonsense he can contrive given his obviously advanced mental infirmity. And on Friday morning he didn’t disappoint. The fury that he unleashed only affirms just how recent events have driven him to near incapacitation.

Donald Trump

Trump just returned from Vietnam where he engineered an historic failure to achieve any of the progress that he promised prior to his meeting with his girlfriend (“We fell in love”), Kim Jong Un. As Jimmy Kimmel put it, “Trump literally got more done in his summit with Kim Kardashian.” And while Trump was embarrassing America abroad, his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was dishing on him in a hearing before the House Oversight Committee. His testimony was so damaging that even the senior judicial analyst at Fox News recognized that Trump could be liable for as many as four felonies.

It’s at times like these that Trump totally freaks out and decides to go public with his delusions and make things even worse. The following tweets are some of the best arguments that Trump is suffering from senile dementia and needs to be evaluated for a possible invocation of the 25th Amendment. He starts off with this pile of blathering falsehoods:

First of all, nothing about this was either “new” or “just released.” In fact, the Daily Beast reported on a proposal for a book by Cohen last May. It was tentatively titled “Trump Revolution: From The Tower to The White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump.” But it was scrapped due to his legal problems that were beginning to spin out of control. Also, why is Trump always so obsessed with people writing him “love letters,” ala Kim Jong Un? And then Trump tweets that:

Congress cannot demand something that doesn’t exist. There was never a book published or even submitted to the publisher. So it’s impossible to figure out what Trump is referring to that is so head spinning. But it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the pitch for the book featured a vastly different characterization of Trump than the one that Cohen is presenting now. A year ago he was still shilling for the President and telling what he now concedes were lies. The difference between his statements then and now is that now he’s making them under oath. Nevertheless, Trump continues:

No – It’s clear that Trump does not see. The case for his conspiracy with Russia is stronger than ever. And there is still no evidence of any wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, even after thousands of hours of investigations by a Republican congress. If there were, Trump’s Justice Department would have brought indictments. What’s more, the only reason Trump’s finances are being scrutinized is that there is so much evidence of criminal activity. If this is a “Witch Hunt” then it’s already found a vast coven of witches. And finally:

How does Trump know what Cohen’s book manuscript shows? Does he have a copy? Why doesn’t he just release that to the public? Perhaps because it doesn’t exist. Even the prospective publisher said that he never received a manuscript. And Trump shouldn’t be portraying others as lying “on a scale not seen before,” considering the documentation of his lies since taking office that now exceed over 8,000. As for Lanny Davis (who is not Hillary Clinton’s lawyer), why does Trump care what he has to say? He is representing Cohen and will surely take positions that advance Cohen’s interest. And he’ll probably be more effective than Trump’s legal team headed by the always entertaining Rudy Giuliani.

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

So Trump is once again displaying the signs of a man consumed by fear who has no idea how to respond to the numerous and legitimate allegations swirling around him. So he posts incoherent tirades on Twitter that are filled with lies and slander. And for some reason he thinks this will be helpful. Well, he’s kind of right. It will be very helpful to special counsel Robert Mueller and the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

Donald Trump’s Latest Psycho Tweetstorm: The Best Reason Yet to Invoke the 25th Amendment

Posted by on January 12, 2019 at 11:05 am. 1 Comments :

The rapidly declining mental state of Donald Trump has been the subject of untold numbers of articles and analyses, including by professionals who view the President as a malignant narcissist who is a danger to the nation and the world. But there is no better indicator of the hazards Trump’s psychoses represent than his own frenzied ravings on Twitter.

Donald Trump, Padded Cell

When Trump gets a full head of steam, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the tsunami of lunacy that he unleashes. It’s pointless even to try. Take for example his outburst on Saturday morning. He was triggered by a report in the New York Times (which isn’t failing, it’s enjoying record success) that disclosed the existence of an FBI investigation into whether Trump was/is an asset of the Russian government.

There is abundant evidence to support that contention. Including his open infatuation with Vladimir Putin; his attacks on the media; his maligning of our allies in NATO and the European Union; his opposition to sanctions on Russia; his rejection of American intelligence in favor of information from Putin and the Kremlin; his refusal to accept that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election; his firing of FBI Director James Comey and others; his chumminess with Russian operatives in the White House; his threats aimed at his own cabinet for pursuing legitimate investigations into Russian espionage against the U.S.; and so much more.

However, to hear Trump tell it, it’s all a paranoid conspiracy against the greatest president of all time who who is being attacked for his awesomeness and purity of heart. After reading the article in the Times (or having excerpts read to him), Trump mounted his Twitter machine and disgorged a steady stream of manic gibberish, almost all of which he has previously unfurled in numerous episodes of derangement. But reading it all of a piece is shocking, and not a little frightening. So buckle up:

Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!

…Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. After the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation, where she was interviewed on July 4th Weekend, not recorded or sworn in, and where she said she didn’t know anything (a lie),….

….the FBI was in complete turmoil (see N.Y. Post) because of Comey’s poor leadership and the way he handled the Clinton mess (not to mention his usurpation of powers from the Justice Department). My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop……

…..who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats – leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more) by Crooked Hillary Clinton, her Campaign, and the Democratic National Committee. Just Watch!

I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!

Lyin’ James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more, all disgraced and/or fired and caught in the act. These are just some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President. Part of the Witch Hunt. Remember the “insurance policy?” This is it!

This sounds more like a mental patient who has been hospitalized after running through the streets naked shouting at random cars and store mannequins, than a president. He is consumed with paranoia and a devout belief in his superiority and goodness. And his perceived enemies are unambiguously evil, omnipresent, and determined to destroy him. That isn’t the profile of a world leader. It’s the diagnosis for a psychopath. And for the sake of the nation – and the planet – Trump needs to be removed from office and placed in a facility where he can either get medial attention, and be punished for his obvious crimes.

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

Shocker: Trump Embraces Obama and Clinton on Immigration, But Wildly Misquotes Them

Posted by on January 6, 2019 at 10:52 am. NO Comments :

The Trump Shutdown continues into its fifteenth day with no sign of resolution. Trump is actually becoming even more cemented into an increasingly bizarre stance that makes less sense every day. His raving tantrums on Twitter are filled with nonsense and lame memes that utterly fail to advance the dialog. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and the new Democratic majority in Congress are ignoring his plaintive and desperate whining.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

Trump’s recent comments claim that the idiotic vanity wall he’s so obsessed with will save billions of dollars. In addition to that, he insists that the new trade agreement (USMCA, which has not been ratified by the Senate) will effectively result in Mexico paying for the wall (or fence, or steel slat, or gold-tasseled drapery, or whatever). So the cost is being covered twice, but Trump is still demanding that Americans pay for it. He also claims that most of the people hurt by the shutdown support his position on the wall. But also that they are mostly Democrats. So he thinks that most Democrats are on his side of the great wall debate.

No one who has been paying attention really expects Trump to make sense anymore. It’s a given that he’s out of his mind and unfit for the office of a president (or a chicken coop). But on Sunday morning Trump went a bridge too far by embracing two of his most hated political foes: President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

You have to wonder what his Deplorables will think about him elevating the people that they have been trained to despise so vehemently for the past two years. Now Trump is hailing their vision and advocacy of rational immigration reforms. There’s just one problem. Trump is totally misrepresenting what both of them said and believe on the subject. For instance, here is what Obama went on to say after the out-of-context excerpt Trump posted. He was speaking in support of a 2006 immigration reform bill in the Senate:

“The bill the Judiciary Committee has passed clearly strengthens enforcement. To begin with, the agencies charged with border security would receive new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants.”

Notice that there is nothing about a wall. He is advocating what all Democrats still want twelve years later: border security via smart reforms that actually address the problem. Not a wall that ignores the fact that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants enter the country through valid checkpoints.

Obama went to say that “while security might start at our borders, it doesn’t end there.” He made the case for an earned path to citizenship saying that “we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society.” That’s hardly the policy that Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party are proposing.

As for Clinton, Trump also misrepresented her remarks made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Although she was somewhat open to “a barrier,” her full answer to a question from a voter quickly diverted to our need to deal with undocumented immigrants already in the country:

“I do think you have to control your borders. But I think that it’s also true that we need to do more to try to, number one, deal with the people who are already here, many of whom have been here for decades.”

Clinton explicitly mocked the notion of a wall at one point saying that it wouldn’t solve the problem. “I don’t care,” she said, “how tall the wall is or how big the door is.” She went on to advocate for providing more resources to the immigrants’ countries of origin in order to improve living conditions, reduce crime, and obviate the need for them to leave in the first place.

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

If Trump was really interested in a rational, workable solution he would adopt the positions taken by Obama and Clinton, rather than distorting what they said for cheap political points. That would be the way out of the Trump Shutdown and relief for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are the innocent victims of Trump’s ego-driven wall fetish. That is, if he actually cared about them.

The GOP Outrage Over Rashida Tlaib is Overflowing with Hypocrisy – Trump has Said Much Worse

Posted by on January 4, 2019 at 11:22 am. 3 Comments :

The new Congress has been gaveled into session by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and it is already making progress on the issues that the American people have wanted addressed, but were suppressed by the Republican Nationalist supplicants to Donald Trump. First up is ending the Trump Shutdown. But also on the list of priorities is election reform, restoring fairness to taxes, infrastructure funding, and the long overdue oversight of Trump’s criminal campaign and administration.

Donald Trump

So what is the biggest issue for the GOP? A new congresswoman said a naughty word. Rep. Rashida Tlaib was speaking to group of supporters Thursday evening and dropped an F-bomb when referencing her intention to seek the impeachment of Trump for his many crimes. Her language was raw and, by conventional standards, inappropriate for a public servant. And that sentiment was expressed by nearly every leader on the Democratic side of the aisle. But that didn’t stop Republicans from gasping in horror and fainting from the sheer shock of such insolence.

However, one of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats will criticize themselves when they deserve it. Republicans will defend the most disgusting behavior rather than condemn a fellow Republican, especially Donald Trump. After all, Trump is the guy who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” but still got the GOP nomination for president. And that’s not all. Trump currently has fifteen instances of F-bombs on his Twitter feed, Including this one:

And Trump has not been shy about uttering profanities of all varieties in public. Here is a speech Trump gave that had multiple profanities. Pay particular attention to how he referred to his intention to levy tariffs on China:

In addition, Trump has recently tweeted some raw insults aimed at Democrats he is clearly afraid of. He referred to the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, as “Adam Schitt.” And that was followed a few weeks later by a tweet where he called Sen. Richard Blumenthal “the dick.”

Of course, there has been almost no criticism of Trump by his GOP colleagues for bellowing out the very same words that Republicans are now in such a tizzy about because a freshly minted Democrat said them in a private gathering. The GOP is less a political party than it is a cult where there leader is incapable of any wrongdoing. But the same behavior by their foes is a capital offense. This is how the GOP wants to start the new year with new leaders in Congress. And it’s an obvious attempt to distract the public from the government shutdown, and other failures, that they are wholly responsible for.

As for the underlying issue of impeachment that inspired Rep. Tlaib’s comments, that is something that is going to unfold in due time no matter what Trump has to say about it. Special counsel Robert Mueller is getting closer to releasing a report with his findings. And prosecutors in New York, Maryland, Washington, D.C., California, and other states are also investigating Trump for potentially impeachable crimes. Which has lead to Trump posting another of his plaintive whines that he’s innocent of everything:

There is so much wrong with that it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, Trump was elected with only 46.1% of the vote, and with three million fewer votes than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Secondly, there is abundant evidence of collusion and/or conspiracy with Russia by Trump and his closest associates and family (and no collusion by Democrats).

What’s more, the first two years of Trump’s presidency has been rife with failure. He’s driven up the national debt by more than two trillion dollars. The stock market suffered it’s first negative year in a decade. There has been little or no progress on any foreign policy objective. The Climate crisis is getting perilously close to the point of no return. America’s roads and bridges are crumbling. The nation is more divided than ever. And of course, his idiotic vanity wall is still a figment of his diseased imagination.

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

But by all means, let’s forget about all of that pull out our hair over some cursing by an excited new congressperson. And in the meantime, continue to keep the government shut down, forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans to go without pay for untold weeks or months. All because Trump’s ego is too fragile to cope with the reality that no one wants his stupid, racist wall. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And that’s exactly how the GOP is proceeding. There is no better proof that they couldn’t care less about this nation or its citizens.

A Tale of Two Foundations: Trump’s Sham is Shutdown, George Soros is FT’s ‘Person of the Year’

Posted by on December 19, 2018 at 11:10 am. 1 Comments :

The real picture of Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of self-serving corruption got another section colored in on Tuesday. The New York Attorney General found that his Trump Foundation was a criminal enterprise devoted to enriching himself with other people’s donations (Here’s a quick primer on Trump’s scam foundation). Trump was forced to agree to shut it down under the supervision of the court.

George Soros, Donald Trump

Despite Trump’s concession to the indisputable facts, Trump lashed out in fit of conspiracy mongering, blame-shifting, and paranoia on Twitter. However, he never rationally refuted what the NY Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, called “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation.” The ruling went on to declare that Trump’s sham included…

“…unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”

What’s more, the lawsuit Trump faces continues to seek millions in restitution and prohibits Trump and his evil spawn from serving on the boards of other New York charities. Imagine that: Trump is barred from running a charitable foundation, but not from serving as president. There’s something horribly wrong with that picture.

And naturally, while making lame excuses for himself, Trump had to interject his obsessive animus toward his long-standing foes by taking a swing (and a miss) at the Clinton Foundation. There is really no comparison since the Clinton Foundation is a model for philanthropic enterprise and has received the top ratings from charity watchdog groups.

Meanwhile, another Trump nemesis, George Soros, was named “Person of the Year“ by the Financial Times. Soros is a true self-made billionaire (as opposed to Trump’s accident of birth and incompetent business skills), who is also renowned worldwide for his philanthropy. The Financial Times opened their tribute to Soros saying:

“The Financial Times’s choice of Person of the Year is usually a reflection of their achievements. In the case of Mr Soros this year, his selection is also about the values he represents. He is the standard bearer of liberal democracy and open society. These are the ideas which triumphed in the cold war. Today, they are under siege from all sides, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia to Donald Trump’s America.”

Indeed, Trump’s America is a regression toward the authoritarian regimes of the past that he openly admires. Trump abhors open societies wherein wannabe dictators like himself are denied the power they crave. And while Trump strives to use his position for personal gain, Soros has suffered as a result of what FT says is his “long commitment to openness, media freedom and human rights.” That suffering recently hit an extreme when he received a mail bomb from a right-wing domestic terrorist. But if that weren’t enough, he has also been falsely accused of collaborating with Nazis, although he was just fourteen years old when they occupied his native Hungary.

Fox News has been a major contributor to the coordinated hate campaigns against Soros. Their top hosts frequently portray him as something akin to the Antichrist, and as someone who is responsible for everything they regard as evil. Trump himself has exacerbated the hate-mongering aimed at Soros. Just a couple of months ago he tweeted a blatant lie that Soros was funding “very rude elevator screamers” who were protesting the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He has also been accused of funding the Central American refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. That charge was cited as a possible motive in the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October. Even Facebook’s CEO went after Soros in a despicable, anti-Semitic disinformation campaign.

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

However, through it all Soros has remained a steadfast champion of freedom and charity. His Open Society Foundation is the beneficiary of $32 billion of his own money. Those funds are being put to work in more than 100 countries to support democracy, transparency and freedom of expression. Thats a striking contrast to the corruption and greed of Trump’s phony charitable efforts. And it’s fitting that the recognition of Soros by the Financial Times comes the day after Trump is fingered as a crook by the NY Attorney General.

Bonus Tweet from Clinton Foundation executive:

Trump Blatantly Lies About Russian ‘Witch Hunt’ According to the Journalist He Misquoted

Posted by on December 18, 2018 at 12:18 pm. NO Comments :

With each new day Donald Trump demonstrates evermore fear and desperation due to the mounting evidence of his collusion and conspiracy with Russia to undermine an American election. He behaves precisely the way one would expect a guilty man to behave, by distorting facts, distracting from the issues, and maligning his critics. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so troubling and dangerous.

Donald Trump

On Tuesday morning Trump went to new extremes to absolve himself of any liability for his felonious actions. In a series of frantic tweets, Trump presented what he said was a case for his innocence made by journalist Michael Isikoff, co-author with David Corn of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Isikoff was interviewed by John Ziegler, however, Trump got his analysis of Isikoff’s remarks from Fox News, as usual. But what Trump tweeted (here, here, and here) was far removed from reality:

“Russia Dossier reporter now doubts dopey Christopher Steele’s claims! “When you get into the details of the Steele Dossier, the specific allegations, we have not seen the evidence to support them. There’s good grounds to think that some of the more sensational allegations…..”

“….WILL NEVER BE PROVEN AND ARE LIKELY FALSE.” Thank you to Michael Isikoff, Yahoo, for honesty. What this means is that the FISA WARRANTS and the whole Russian Witch Hunt is a Fraud and a Hoax which should be ended immediately. Also, it was paid for by Crooked Hillary & DNC!”

“Michael Isikoff was the first to report Dossier allegations and now seriously doubts the Dossier claims. The whole Russian Collusion thing was a HOAX, but who is going to restore the good name of so many people whose reputations have been destroyed?”

There is a whole lot of wrongness in there to unwrap, starting with Trump’s typically childish insult of Steele as “dopey.” More to the point. Trump falsely asserts that the FISA warrants are a fraud even though none of this addresses them. What’s more, the Steele dossier was not a primary source of evidence for granting the warrants. Also, Hillary Clinton didn’t pay for the dossier. Her campaign paid Fusion GPS to do research and they hired Steele.

So Trump is attempting to use Isikoff’s comments as absolution for his crimes. But Trump left out the most critical parts of the interview. Those omissions were pointed out by the interviewer, the interviewee, and his co-author. Isikoff had plenty to say about Trump’s adventures with Russia that the President failed to mention. For instance:

“In broad strokes, Christopher Steele was clearly onto something. That there was a major Kremlin effort to interfere with our elections. That they were trying to help Trump’s campaign. And that there were multiple contacts between various Russian figures close to the government and various people in the Trump campaign. That much, I think, has been established by the public records.”

And also that:

“The Trump campaign and its campaign operatives, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, were active in ways that was clearly inappropriate and that they shouldn’t have done. And that they concealed this from the voters.

“And the Moscow Tower project going on in June of 2016, with direct conversations between Michael Cohen and an assistant to Dmitri Peskov, a press secretary to Vladimir Putin, was incredibly significant, concealed from the voters, and gives the lie to Donald Trump’s repeated statements during the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia. That nobody connected to his campaign had any contacts with anybody in Russia.

“I mean, the President during the campaign, as a candidate, seriously mislead the American public about what was a very important issue. And that was the questions about what the Russians were up to and his own dealing with the Russians. So all of that is true.”

What more needs to be said? Isikoff clearly stated that Trump was deeply involved with Russian figures and that he lied about it repeatedly. But Trump ignored all of that and distorted Isikoff’s words to say the opposite, and ironically, thanked him for his honesty. That tells you all you need to know about Trump’s aversion to honesty and his determined intent to mislead and spread falsehoods at every opportunity. It’s in his nature, and we can expect it to continue until he is removed from office. Hopefully in handcuffs.

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

Trump Wants to ‘Work with Democrats’ on Healthcare After Calling Them ‘Crazy’ and ‘Treasonous’

Posted by on December 17, 2018 at 12:37 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party got exactly what they wanted for Christmas: A federal court ruling that the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is unconstitutional. Trump’s PR division at State TV (aka Fox News) literally celebrated the decision as a Christmas “gift.” And although many legal experts predict that the ruling will be overturned, The Trump administration is giddily slopping it up and basking in the afterglow of millions of Americans losing their healthcare coverage.

Medicare For All

In the meantime, Trump is gloating at what he mistakenly believes is a final victory in his war against all things Obama. His immediate responses to the ruling were to brag about having predicted it, followed by totally disingenuous calls for the two parties in Congress to work together to craft a brand new healthcare bill from scratch:

Never mind that Republicans had eight years to offer a replacement healthcare bill but could never do so. Now, to these insensitive remarks that ignore the suffering that millions of Americans would be forced to endure if ObamaCare were to actually be revoked, Trump added another on Monday morning:

The notion that Trump really wants to work with Democrats is laughable on its face. He has been the most hostile president to the opposing party in modern times. He has not simply disagreed with Democrats on policy or advocated for the positions of Republicans. Trump has lashed out with malicious and personal insults aimed at the party and individual members. More than two years after the election he is still shrieking at Hillary Clinton over matters that have long been resolved. And his seething hatred for Democrats still dominates most of his thoughts. For instance:

  • Trump declared that Democrats “…want Open Borders and Unlimited Crime.”
  • Trump said that “Anybody that votes for a Democrat now is crazy.”
  • Trump inexplicably claimed that “The Democrat plan would obliterate Obamacare – It will destroy Medicare.”
  • Trump even accused Democrats of being traitors for not applauding him at the State of the Union address: “Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

So now that Democrats have won majority control of the House of Representatives, Trump is feeling harmonious. Now that whatever leverage Trump had has been eroded due to the multiple criminal investigations encircling him and his crime family, he is pretending that he wants to work with Democrats to restore healthcare benefits that he and his GOP accomplices have deliberately sabotaged. Yeah, right. And this is all going down simultaneously with his threats to shut down the government over his idiotic and useless border wall.

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

There is one thing in Trump’s latest tweet that has a ring of truth to it, although not in any way that he intended. When he says that “A confirming Supreme Court Decision will lead to GREAT HealthCare results for Americans,” he may be right. Because it could lead to the implementation of Medicare-for-All. It’s already a program whose popularity is growing by the day. And with the GOP putting ObamaCare in jeopardy, more Americans, and their representatives, are going to insist on the protection of their rights and the pursuit of what’s best for their families. So we may owe Trump and his comrades some thanks for advancing universal healthcare and pushing the United States into the ranks of the rest of the civilized world.

Sunday’s Trump Tweetstorm Calls First Amendment Illegal, ‘Should Be Tested in Courts’

Posted by on December 16, 2018 at 10:13 am. 3 Comments :

If it’s Sunday, this Donald Trump’s regularly scheduled Twitter tantrum. Like clockwork, the President is firing off nearly incoherent messages that attack his critics, lie about easily verified matters, and promote his favorite source of propaganda, and the PR division of the Trump White House, Fox News. It’s a display of desperation that only serves to make him appear more guilty and afraid of the coming consequences of his criminal acts.

Donald Trump

Leading off Trump’s parade of polemics is a tweet that reinforces Trump’s long-held aversion to free speech and the First Amendment of the Constitution. We are all familiar with Trump’s denouncement of the press in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people,” and his projectile vomiting of invectives at journalists who have the audacity to report what he actually does and says. And now we have Trump literally threatening to legally censor the media for doing its job:

Does Trump really think that Saturday Night Live is a news program that can be put alongside NBC News as a provider of coverage of his administration? Apparently any media entity that fails to kiss up to the Snowflake-in-Chief is subject to his hostile harangues. But this tweet goes even further to demand that the press be constrained by some legal authority to prostrate itself to what he believes is fair. Every president has had to undergo criticism from both journalists and satirists, but Trump’s skin is way to thin to take it. That’s common for cowards and tyrants who feel the need to control society and suppress those who don’t sufficiently worship Dear Leader.

The rest of Trump’s morning meltdown was equally disturbing. He babbled nonsensically about text messages by former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. His rant was lifted from the ultra-rightist webzine The Federalist, which failed to understand the agency’s report regarding the disposition of those texts:

Trump agreed with the Federalist’s phony assertions that the messages were deleted and lost. They weren’t. The agency recovered and preserved them after a temporary tech glitch. But this triggered his knee-jerk outcry of “Witch Hunt” which he continued in another tweet:

What Trump calls “breaking in” is more commonly referred to as the accumulation of evidence by law enforcement. And the subject of the investigation, Trump’s lawyer, complimented the FBI as “extremely professional, courteous and respectful,” and later pleaded guilty to the charges against him. What’s more, Cohen unambiguously fingered Trump as being the facilitator of the crimes in his case. That’s surely what Trump is really mad about.

As for the bit about Hillary Clinton’s server, she voluntarily gave the FBI a complete copy of it, so they had no need to take physical possession. But having no legal ground to stand on, Trump resorted to dredging up old stories about his nemesis, President Obama.

Trump is falsely claiming that Obama’s immigration policies were “far worse” than what the Trump administration has done by grotesquely seperating children from their parents (which he’s still doing, and even justifying it). That’s demonstrably untrue. It was only Trump’s policy to charge every asylum seeker with felonies that resulted in the separations. And if that obvious attempt at misdirection wasn’t sufficient to deflect attention from his problems, Trump also tried this one:

Really? Ken Starr? He headed up the persecution of the Clintons twenty years ago, and after finding no evidence of any crime, started to dig into Bill Clinton’s sex life. He’s hardly a credible source for anything having to do with Trump’s criminal behavior. And naturally, Trump saw Starr’s comments while watching Fox News.

This frantic outburst on Twitter is just the latest example of a mind that is utterly warped by the trepidation of being caught having committed a historic crime spree. And in utter distress due to the gloomy fate that awaits him, Trump is lashing out like the wounded vermin that he is. And while every untrue utterance he made is bad enough for the nation to be worried about his mental degradation, his calls to punish the press are the most troubling.

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

Trump is acting out the behavior of a fallen dictator desperately trying to hang on to whatever power he has left. But with the walls of justice closing in around him, he has nowhere to hide. A recent report notes that every entity that he has headed – the Trump Org, Trump Foundation, Trump campaign, Trump transition team, Trump inaugural committee, and the Trump White House – are under investigation. When he does go down, he’s going to go down hard.

LATE BREAKING: Trump must not be very busy presidenting today because he posted four more tweets this afternoon (so far).

One was a demand to watch a Fox News interview of conspiracy crackpot Jerome Corsi.

Then two more (here and here), also triggered by Fox News, were about former Trump advisor, and confessed felon, Michael Flynn being “persecuted” by Robert Mueller. Of particular note was Trump saying that Jeff Sessions “should be ashamed of himself” for allowing the “HOAX” to get started. So should Trump’s new Acting AG Whitaker also be ashamed for not stopping it?

And finally, Trump added a tweet that was just boilerplate “Witch Hunt” bashing and denying his collusion. You know, like all innocent people do obsessively.