Fox News

Trump’s Ignorance and Ego is Displayed in Loopy Lovefest With Hannity on Fox News

Posted by on April 20, 2021 at 11:00 am. 3 Comments :

Three months after being banished from the White House, Donald Trump has finally emerged from his Mar-a-Lago bunker for his first on-camera interview. Naturally, he canoodled with his long-time love interest, Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hannity was typically starry-eyed as he lavished praise on Trump as “working harder than ever” [on what?] and lobbed childish insults at President Biden.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

As has been the case with every other interview of Trump on Fox News, there was nothing newsworthy revealed. The questions were embarrassingly ingratiating and Trump’s replies were tedious regurgitations of his signature blend of whining and bragging (video below). “You’re gonna have the biggest tax increase you’ve ever seen,” Trump babbled. “Pro-life, second amendment, so many different things,” he insisted. But apparently he could only think of two. Then he segued to this mangling of history – and reality:

“Look, we got 75 million votes. That’s more than any sitting president in history by far. The word was that if we got 65 to 66 – we got 63 the first time and won. If you got 65 to 66 there was no way you lost. We got more votes – we got twelve million more votes than we got – and it’s never happened to another president.

“I don’t know if you know Sean, usually in a second term a president gets less votes. I got twelve million more. It’s the biggest that’s ever happened in history. From 63 to 75. Never happened before.”

Trump’s fascination with the election results is rooted in his desperate need to elevate his pitifully losing legacy. There is no truth – or coherence – to Trump’s assertion that “there was no way you lost” if you got 65 million votes. He obviously doesn’t grasp that the population of the country, and hence the potential vote count, is constantly increasing.

But even worse is his claim that no president has ever gotten more votes for a second term, or that his totals were “the biggest that’s ever happened in history.” For the record, every two-term president but one got more votes for their second term for the past half century:

Candidate 1st Term 2nd Term Difference
Nixon 31,783,783 47,168,710 15,384,387
Reagan 43,903,230 54,455,472 10,552,242
Clinton 44,909,806 47,401,185 2,491,379
Bush 50,456,002 62,040,610 11,584,608
Trump 62,984,828 74,216,154 11,231,326

Trump was not only lying about being the sole recipient of more votes for his second term, he also inflated the number of additional votes from about eight million to twelve million. And, of course, he completely erased the fact that Biden bested him by seven million votes (81,268,924). Biden’s enduring popularity is literally driving the right crazy.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to believe that he’s beloved by massive majorities of imaginary Americans. He thinks that he and his “Make America Great Again” agenda is essential for victories in 2022 and 2024, despite the losses of the White House and the Senate in 2020. What he still hasn’t absorbed is the reality that he lost the popular vote twice, never reached 50% approval in four years, was impeached twice, and remains the least popular president in history. But other than that, he’s real winner.

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.

Biden’s Popularity is Driving Fox News Crazy, Reporting Insane Distortions of Polls

Posted by on April 19, 2021 at 11:55 am. 2 Comments :

As President Joe Biden approaches the 100 day mark of his presidency, his critics at Fox News are struggling to find anything coherent to complain about. That’s a profound failure coming from the network whose CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, publicly declared that the network’s “job” is to be “the opposition” to the Biden administration. Apparently they are doing a lousy job.

Fox News, Joe Biden

Consequently, Fox News has had to resort to petty and embarrassing contrivances and manufactured “scandals” involving such political luminaries as Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. Yet somehow, these tactics haven’t produced the avalanche of anti-Biden sentiment that Fox News hoped for. As a result, the right-wing propagandists at Fox are attempting to misinterpret the mostly positive polling that Biden has enjoyed. Monday morning Fox contributor Liz Peek reported that…

“They want us to believe that Biden’s progressive juggernaut is wildly popular, and that the president’s obvious inadequacies are a figment of right-wing imagination. They want us to think that common-sense Americans are OK with having our schools closed and our borders open, that we are on board with declaring our country racist and allowing riots to wreck our cities. They want us to believe that Biden is way more successful – already – than President Trump ever was. It is not true. None of it.”

For the record, literally everything in that paragraph is a lie. No Democrat has ever suggested that closed schools are OK. Nor have they ever advocated for open borders. Nor have they declared the country racist (just the cretins like Tucker Carlson who are proudly racist and those who deny that it ever existed). And certainly no Democrat has ever supported “allowing riots to wreck our cities.”

However, Peek’s reference to Biden being “way more successful – already – than President Trump ever was” is demonstrably true. In four years Trump has nothing substantive to show for himself. He failed at everything that he defined as his top priorities. His border wall was never completed or paid for by Mexico. He didn’t eliminate the national debt. He never brought jobs back from foreign countries, but he did lose more of them than any president in modern times. And he presided over the loss of more than half a million America lives due to his negligence and incompetence. His only “accomplishment” was the passage of a tax bill that overwhelmingly benefited corporations and his wealthy pals.

Biden, on the other hand, ushered through a two trillion dollar pandemic relief and stimulus plan. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accords. He signed numerous executive orders reversing much of the damage done by Trump. He is advancing historic infrastructure legislation. He’s moving forward expeditiously on reforms for immigration, gun safety, and voting rights. And he effectively managed COVID vaccine programs that have already resulted in 30% the country being fully vaccinated.

To support her flawed analysis that Biden is broadly unpopular, Peek cited a Gallup poll that found that only “32% of the nation is “satisfied” with the way things are going, while 67% is dissatisfied.” What she left out was that the same poll showed only 11% satisfied at the end of Trump’s term three months ago. All this proves is that Americans are notoriously unsatisfied, but that Biden produced a 21 point increase in short order.

Further distorting reality, Peek cherry-picked a poll that shows Biden with a plurality approval of 48%, which is pretty good in these divisive times. But then she spins it negatively because the “strongly approve” number is only 34%, which is still pretty good. She neglects to note that many other polls show Biden’s approval comfortably above 50% and as high as 61%. And his policies – including on the economy, jobs, terrorism, immigration, and COVID-19 – are similarly favored by significant majorities.

Interestingly, Peek notes that a majority of Biden voters said they were voting against Trump rather than for Biden. That’s nice of her to concede that Trump is widely despised. She also pointed out that voters approve of Biden’s jobs plan, but only if it’s paid for “through higher corporate taxes or hiking taxes on high earners.” Which is another helpful concession on her part that Trump’s tax scam was a disaster, and that the nation wants the rich to pay their fair share.

In the end, after dismissing the obvious distortions and lies, Fox’s analysis is fairly positive for Biden. That’s how difficult it’s been for them to land a punch against this President, even in spite of all the dishonesty they pack into the effort. If they were smart they would back off until there’s a realistic issue to whine about. Something will always come up. But the operative word there is “smart,” which may be too high a bar for anyone at Fox News.

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.

‘What Fox News Has Created is a Market For Crazy’ – Truth Bomb From Down Under

Posted by on April 18, 2021 at 11:39 am. 5 Comments :

The vast majority of the American people recognize that Fox News is a deceitful cabal of propagandists bent on advancing the interests of radical Republicans and Trump cultists. Never mind the ratings. While Fox Entertainment is leading the other legitimate news networks, that’s only because they have a near monopoly on the right-wing fringe. Their actual penetration into the population at large is only about one percent.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

Nevertheless, Fox News is deliberately dividing the nation on behalf the corporations and wealthy elites they represent. And they have an impact because other media parrots their partisan rhetoric and helps to disseminate their lies. But they aren’t fooling everyone, and especially not the leaders of foreign countries that have their own problems with Rupert Murdoch’s media.

Case in point, on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday morning, Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia, Murdoch’s birthplace, explained to host Brian Stelter why Fox News is so dangerous (video below). And he wasn’t mincing words:

“What Murdoch has delivered largely through Fox News in the United States is exactly what Vladimir Putin wanted to achieve with his disinformation campaigns. Turning one part of America against another. So exacerbating the divisions that already exist in American society and undermine the trust Americans have in their Democratic institutions. That was the objective of the Russian disinformation campaign. And that is exactly what is being delivered by Fox News, and by other players in that right-wing populace media ecosystem.”

Exactly! And Turnbull’s commentary applies just as much to Donald Trump as it does to Fox News. The talk of “collusion” during the first impeachment of Trump barely scratched the surface of the conspiracy that engulfed Trump, Russia, and Fox News. They were (and still are) all working toward the same ends: Turning Americans against each other and their country. Turnbull continued saying that…

“What they have created is a market for crazy. They’ve become unhinged from the facts. It is now, basically, they’ve worked out that you can just make stuff up. Everyone talks about and complains about social media. But what is being done by curated media, mainstream media – including, and in particular, Fox News – has done enormous damage to the United States.”

The evidence of the ultra “crazy” market that Fox News created is all too apparent in the Trump insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. It is apparent in the adoption of QAnon insanity by many on the right, including the QAnon supporting primetime host, Tucker Carlson. And it couldn’t be more obvious than when Fox News denies that the GOP is the party of QAnon.

Turnbull concluded by asking whether America is “a more divided country than it was before, thanks to Murdoch’s influence?” The answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” Murdoch is a foreign-born domestic terrorist who has never had the best interests of the nation at heart. To the contrary, he has spent his lifetime attempting to pervert democracies in order to empower the oligarchs and enrich himself.

The harm done by Fox News is extensive and destructive. And Trump is just as responsible for it as Murdoch and his treasonous media manipulators. They have been executing the agenda of Vladimir Putin, who couldn’t be more pleased with the efforts by Trump and Fox News. And they must be called out at every opportunity for their betrayal.

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.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is Purposefully Spreading Fake Fear of COVID Vaccines

Posted by on April 17, 2021 at 11:22 am. 2 Comments :

There has been some good news recently about the progress being made with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rates of new cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities have declined to the lowest rates seen in many months. And the Biden administration’s management of vaccine distribution and implementation has been extraordinarily effective.

Rupert Murdoch, COVID

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 50% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 30% have been fully vaccinated. This could bring about a state of herd immunity much sooner than previously estimated.

However, there are still some hurdles in the way. For one thing, The least vaccinated U.S. counties are, not surprisingly, mostly dominated by Trump voters. That is likely due to the recklessly negative propaganda promulgated by Fox News, where vaccine conspiracy theories proliferate. Tucker Carlson has been especially active in driving up anti-vax hysteria.

Joining Fox News is their sister publication owned by Rupert Murdoch, the New York Post. They have been engaged in a dishonest and deadly campaign aimed at magnifying doubts about the vaccines and frightening the public away from getting vaccinated. Case in point, the right-wing “news” paper published an article fear mongering about a college student in Cincinnati who died shortly after being vaccinated:

The Post’s own reporting eventually (four paragraphs in) admitted that there was no evidence that the death had anything to do with the vaccine. They later deleted both the article and the tweet promoting it. But they never issued a retraction or an apology, or made any effort to correct the record for those readers who were unnecessarily panicked. And what makes this irresponsibility all the more reprehensible is that this wasn’t the first time that the Post engaged in this sort of disinformation and perilously inflammatory – and flagrantly false – hyperbole. Just in the past few months…

  • December 29, 2020: Israeli man reportedly dies of heart attack hours after getting COVID vaccine https://trib.al/0JiXxwB
  • January 24, 2021: Californian dies hours after getting COVID-19 vaccine, prompting probe https://trib.al/MtcfP9f
  • February 7, 2021: Elderly man collapses, dies shortly after getting COVID-19 vaccine at Javits Center https://trib.al/GTMJC89
  • April 16, 2021: NJ man hospitalized after J&J COVID-19 vaccine placed on ventilator

In every one of those stories the Post either acknowledged that there were no connections between the vaccine and the fatality, or they failed to provide any evidence of a connection. It was simply their attempt needlessly scare people to satisfy some perverse, political agenda. Never mind that last December Rupert Murdoch jetted off to the U.K. to get vaccinated himself by their socialist National Health Service.

The New York Post is unambiguously acting as anti-health terrorists. They are endangering the lives of both those who will be dissuaded from getting vaccinated, and the rest of the nation’s population that will be vulnerable to the consequences of delaying herd immunity and increasing the opportunity for new variants to emerge. It is criminal deceit and there ought to be a price to be paid.

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 Hacks Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro Really Don’t Get the Supreme Court

Posted by on April 15, 2021 at 4:03 pm. 2 Comments :

President Biden’s quiet competence and managerial success is befuddling his critics among the press and partisan Republican politicians. Consequently, they continue to have so little to do that they are making up pseudo-controversies to pass the time. It’s really pretty pathetic.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro

Their desperation has lead to tawdry displays of hostility related to relative trivialities. If they aren’t “canceling” their former Big Business allies, they are whining that Biden is neglecting such vital presidential duties as tweeting and yakking with cable news bootlickers.

Speaking of cable news bootlickers, the variety that has been polishing Donald Trump’s Tecovas, Fox News, is presently aghast at the thought of Democrats exploring the possibility of expanding the Supreme Court. A bill just introduced in the House suggests an increase from nine to thirteen justices.

There are plenty of rational arguments pro and con for this initiative but, somehow, the blowhards on Fox News evaded anything remotely resembling rationality. Tucker Carlson invited his Fox colleague “Judge” Jeanine Pirro on his program to mangle the issue beyond recognition (video below). The segment established with certainty that neither have any idea what the Supreme Court is. Pirro began by ranting that…

“This will change the United States dramatically. The left will have the ability to have in court – which is essentially nothing more than a legislative leaning body – that will approve of all of the issues that they are trying to make across the board in the United States. We will no longer have a Supreme Court that is based on the number of justices depending on who the president is. And it will all be leaning toward the person who is in office and who has the power. This is madness! It’s madness! As if the country isn’t lost enough.”

It truly is madness that Pirro thinks the Supreme Court isn’t already – and always has been – an institution significantly influenced by politics. That’s by design. The Constitution gave the power to nominate justices to the president and the responsibility of confirmation to the Senate. Both of which are political entities. However, she goes way too far to insist that the Court is just a legislative body. It absolutely is not. It has no power to draft legislation. It’s role is to ascertain whether laws, or specific applications of them, are consistent with congressional intent and the Constitution.

Pirro further misses the mark by claiming that an expanded Court unfairly serves one side of the political divide. In fact, it would be less likely to because there would be more diversity of opinion. Although the Court would still, contrary to Pirro’s musings, be made up of justices appointed by whoever is president. Where on Earth does she get the notion that that would change?

For his part, Carlson agrees with Pirro’s badly warped misinterpretations. He accuses Democratic proponents of expansion of saying “No more pretense. It’s purely a political body that rubber stamps our agenda.” And that’s different than the current Court, how? He claimed that an expanded Court would no longer be impartial, or be viewed that way. By whom? If he isn’t aware that the current justices aren’t already viewed as beholden to the political ideologies of the presidents who appointed them, he must be near comatose. Which leads to Pirro’s elaboration on her prior comments saying that “the people who are in power…”

“…are determined to make sure that their agenda is passed because you’ve got the president, and you’ve got the Congress, and now you’ve got the Supreme Court. […] We will lose our respect for that court as nothing more than a political legislative body. An imprimatur, if you will, for the Democrats.”

Really? And what does she think the present Court is “an imprimatur” for? She must know that Justice Gorsuch was only confirmed because Republicans in the Senate refused to consider an Obama nominee (Merrick Garland) for a year in order to give that nomination to the next president who they hoped would be a Republican (It was worse. It was Donald Trump). She must also know that Justice Kavanaugh was rammed through the Senate despite credible allegations that he was a boozing, sexual predator. She must also know that Justice Barrett was confirmed even though the opening she filled became available shortly before an election, which was the reason Republicans gave for not confirming Garland. Does she think that the present Court is well respected by most Americans? Carlson doesn’t think so. He closed the segment by lamenting that Democrats…

“…don’t care what you think. Which is not the way we think of democracy. In a democracy our leaders care what we think, by definition.”

If acting in a manner consistent with what the people want is how you show that you care what people think, then Carlson should be supporting the broadly popular President Biden. He should have supported the COVID relief and stimulus bill. He should be supporting the jobs and infrastructure bill. And he shouldn’t be feigning outrage over a proposal to expand the Court simply because Democrats – who the people elected – would have the first shot at nominating the new justices.

It is Carlson and Pirro who are the ones abandoning any pretense of impartiality in favor of being purely political. And they are doing it in such a way as to demonstrate their ignorance of democracy and the role of the Supreme Court. But would you expect any less of them, or of anyone else at Fox News?

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.

https://twitter.com/TVNewsHQ/status/1382615603370934272

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

Has Fox News Blacklisted the Sex Scandal Plagued Trump Toady Matt Gaetz?

Posted by on April 15, 2021 at 11:46 am. 2 Comments :

The political prejudices of Fox News are getting tested by current events that put the right-wing “news” network in a decidedly uncomfortable position. It was revealed last month that Republican representative Matt Gaetz (Q-FL) is under investigation by the Department of Justice for serious felonies including sex trafficking of a minor, prostitution, drug use, and financial corruption.

Fox News, Matt Gaetz

As a result of these charges, Fox News has had to adapt their ordinarily knee-jerk, pro-GOP editorial mission to keep from awkwardly aligning itself with the perversion and criminality for which Gaetz is accused. Never mind that Fox News didn’t have any trouble aligning itself with such criminality when it was committed by the serial sexual predator, Donald Trump. Gaetz isn’t Trump and doesn’t get the same measure of absolution from the Trump Ministry of Propaganda.

On March 30, 2021, Gaetz was interviewed on Fox News by Tucker Carlson. The entire segment was provided as an opportunity for Gaetz to defend himself from the allegations against him. Fox’s participation in this self-serving dialogue is hardly unexpected considering the network’s affinity for Gaetz as one of Trump’s most zealous supporters among Republicans in Congress. But even at the conclusion of that interview, Carlson exclaimed that it was “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.” And it would be hard to disagree.

However, that interview with Carlson was also the last time that Gaetz has appeared on Fox News, or even been the subject of any sympathetic stories. That was three weeks ago. This is the network that has shamelessly defended Derek Chauvin, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Capitol insurrectionists, the Confederate flag, QAnon, Alex Jones, and Vladimir Putin, to name a few. But they now appear to be reluctant to defend Gaetz. That says something about the depth of the muck that Gaetz is wallowing in.

Gaetz’s GOP colleagues in Congress are equally afraid to be associated with him. Only a couple of his closest friends in the House – Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene – have bothered to stick up for him. Even Trump offered tepid support. It remains to be seen if the Fox News blackout will continue for any length of time. But the fact that they have snubbed him in this, his hour of need, is a significant rejection that has to hurt. Especially when everyone else that would be considered an ally has been running for the hills.

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.

Tucker Carlson of Fox News Says ‘Vaccines Don’t Work and They’re Not Telling You’

Posted by on April 14, 2021 at 11:50 am. 11 Comments :

For more than a year now, Fox News has been working diligently to exacerbate the deadly consequences of COVID pandemic. Along with Donald Trump, they have downplayed the severity of the crisis and maligned the experts who sought to protect the public’s health. In fact, studies have proven that watching Fox News actually increases coronavirus fatalities.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Coronavirus

No one at Fox News has been more guilty of these disinformation crimes than Tucker Carlson. He has promulgated lies and promoted medically preposterous conjecture. He has disparaged knowledgeable professionals like Dr. Fauci. He has denied the value of vaccines even while his boss, Rupert Murdoch was butting in front of the line to get his.

On Tuesday night Carlson took another leap down the rabid hole. In a monologue that will surely result in higher mortality rates, Carlson demonstrated how pitifully ignorant he is and unable to grasp simple medical concepts (video below). He ranted that federal health authorities…

“…recommend you continue to wear your masks when you go outside. How long will this continue? Well, according to the Yahoo news, experts say it is ‘not entirely clear when it will be considered okay for people who are fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks.’

“At some point – no one is asking this but everyone should be – what is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives? Honestly, what’s the answer to that. It doesn’t make any sense at all. If the vaccine is effective, there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact.”

Honestly, what doesn’t make any sense at all is Carlson’s arrogance in believing that his conclusions about public health have greater validity than doctors who have spent their lives studying it. The guidance for safe behavior is fluid due to evolving science and study. Public health professionals are right to always provide the most cautious appraisals so as not to incur unnecessary harm.

Remaining masked after being vaccinated is simply the best advice to protect oneself and others. It doesn’t mean that the vaccines don’t work. Carlson is too stupid to grasp that. so he continued to sum up saying that…

“So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well, you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots. But what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one.”

The fact that Carlson can’t think of another explanation just proves how intellectually vacant he is. And he’s apparently not embarrassed to admit it. But even worse is his promulgation of the conspiracy theory that the ever-present “they” know that the vaccine is a hoax and are deliberately keeping it a secret. Seriously? That’s what Carlson and Fox News want to foist on a nation that has already suffered the loss of more than half a million people?

The damage that Fox News is doing is hitting their own viewers hardest. Their audience is made up predominantly of elderly white men, a group that is more vulnerable to severe consequences should they contract the coronavirus. A new Monmouth poll finds that “21% of Americans claim they will never get the vaccine if they can avoid it […] 43% of Republicans versus just 5% of Democrats saying this.” You can safely assume that most of those vax-deniers are Fox News viewers.

Meanwhile, at CNN, Dr. Fauci was asked to respond to Carlson’s nonsense. He said that…

“Yeah, that’s just a typical crazy conspiracy theory. […] I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. […] It’s certainly not helpful to the public health of this nation, or even globally. You know, I don’t want to get into arguments about Tucker Carlson, but to me it’s just — you know, it’s counter to what we’re trying to accomplish to protect the safety and the health of the American public.”

This might be a good to remind everyone that Fox News defended Tucker Carlson from a defamation lawsuit by arguing – successfully! – that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.” In other words, Carlson is a known liar whose commentaries can be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of an unhinged crackpot. He is also guilty – along with Fox News – of negligent homicide and mass murder. Hopefully they will eventually be held to account.

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.

HUH? Fox News Hack and GOP Senator Say Corporations are ‘Kind of Scary’

Posted by on April 12, 2021 at 4:53 pm. 3 Comments :

The hypocrisy of the Republican Party is a remarkably resilient toxin that has infected the American body politic. They have abandoned any sense of reason or rationality. And if they have to contradict even their longest held “principles” (to the extent they exist) in order to sustain whatever outrage they are peddling, they’ll do it in a flash.

Fox News, Censorship

The GOP has always had an affinity for big business and the wealthy elitists who reign over it. But now they are experiencing a sea change due to events in Georgia and Texas and some other red states that are drafting and passing legislation aimed at suppressing the votes of Democrats in general, and people of color in particular.

This trend began when Georgia passed a series of suppressive bills that reduced ballot access, made voting by mail more difficult, and even criminalized giving water to voters waiting in line. Subsequently, some companies in Georgia responded to the protests of their customers by renouncing the anti-voting bills. Major League Baseball moved their All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. And Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, and others let the GOP politicians in Georgia know that there would be consequences, including cutting off campaign donations.

This corporate revolt has spread as similar bills spread to other states. And now the corporate world’s best friend, the Republican Party, is shocked and appalled and ready to strike back. They have even threatened to revoke the preferential tax codes that the GOP had previously given them (Oh no, not that!). The GOP Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has called for corporations to get out of politics. Well, except for their financial support.

On Monday, Lisa Boothe, a Fox News contributor, expressed what has become the new mantra of the GOP with regard to their Big Business ex-allies:

Really? People like Boothe never thought it was scary when corporations shoveled funds into their campaign war chests. They never thought it was scary when those corporations spoke out against fair taxation. They never thought it was scary when corporations campaigned against reproductive rights or civil rights or environmental protection or regulations that protected the safety of food, water, or workplaces. They never thought it was scary when those corporations backed their candidacies for public office. And they certainly never think it’s scary when Fox News, itself a monstrous corporation, gets entwined in politics every minute of every day.

Boothe’s tweet was followed less than an hour later by a similar posting from the GOP Senator from Missouri, and insurrection proponent, Josh Hawley. He repeated the same message about how the corporations he once loved have turned evil:

Not to be outdone, Fox News primetime host, Laura Ingraham, devoted her entire opening segment on Monday night to a monologue demanding that “conservatives have to rethink their relationship with Big Business,” because “Corporate America has gone all-in on helping Democrats secure a permanent majority.” Right, because Democrats have always been Corporate America’s favorite party. Elaborating, Ingraham disgorged the ludicrous theory that corporations are intent on “protecting liberals’ grip on power.” “Democrats,” Ingraham babbled, “know their agenda is gonna crush working class Americans. They hate it when wages go up.” Which is why Democrats are the party fighting for a higher minimum wage and an end wage disparities due to race and gender, while Republicans steadfastly oppose that.

Hawley, Boothe, Ingraham, and the rest of these ultra-rightist hypocrites have apparently forgotten how supportive they were when corporations would “get together to plan how to control legislation” that favored the corporations and the Republican political power base. They must have forgotten about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a confederacy of corporate lobbyists and state legislators that work together to draft legislation on behalf of its corporate members.

For the record, what triggered Boothe and Hawley at this time is that a group of “more than 100 top corporate leaders“ got together to discuss how they should respond to the Republican voter suppression movement and the GOP’s threats of reprisals. It’s a voluntary association driven by the reaction of the American people to the red state anti-voter initiatives. And contrary to Hawley’s reference to “oligarchy” it wasn’t started by the corporate titans, but by Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean of the Yale School of Management.

Corporations will always have their own best interests at heart. But it is decidedly better for the world when they are pursuing those interests due to free market pressure placed on them by their customers, than by the greed that motivates their executives and shareholders. And it’s the fact that these recent events are marketplace-driven that is so objectionable to the Republican Party. They simply can’t stand it when the people decide to rule. They don’t like it when people rule by voting in record numbers. And they don’t like it when people convince corporations to behave like good corporate citizens.

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 Attempts (and Hysterically Fails) to Contrive a Fake Biden Scandal

Posted by on April 11, 2021 at 11:21 am. 11 Comments :

Ever since the presidential election last November, Fox News has been at its wits end (admittedly not a long walk) trying to tarnish Joe Biden. They have attacked his marriage, slandered his dogs, accused him of plotting to “take down America,” and crowned him as the King of “Cancel Culture” (a role that more accurately describes Donald Trump). In the meantime, the GOP has hitched it’s wobbly wagon to America’s Biggest Loser.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump Baby, Fake News

However, despite the evidence of the untimely demise of Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head (they have their priorities), Fox News has been utterly incapable of concocting any tales of impropriety that can stick to the wily Biden. Their impotent schemes just keep serving up more humiliation for Fox than for their would-be target. And an outstanding example of Fox’s failure to launch came Saturday evening in the form of a tweet by Trump’s former Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, Dan Scavino:

Oh My! The necessity for immediate ethics investigations is rarely advocated by anyone associated with Trump. And for good reason. Trump presided over an administration that was an ethics black hole. But Scavino’s outrage was so intense that he had speak up. His tweet linked to a Fox News article that revealed the sordid circumstances surrounding a Biden website mishap:

“The White House said Thursday that a link to a page on the Biden campaign website in the WhiteHouse.gov fact sheet for the president’s $2 trillion-plus spending plan was put there in error. The link was included on the words ‘more likely’ deep in the body of the 25-page document. The line where it was included said, ‘People of color and low-income people are more likely to live in areas most vulnerable to flooding and other climate change-related weather events.’ The link was eventually taken down.”

Good Lord! The horror of this malfeasance truly needs to be explored in more detail. Fox News reported that a Republican congresswoman, Victoria Spartz, uncovered the travesty. She posted her own tweet excoriating the Biden White House and announcing her letter of disapproval dispatched to the Office of the Special Counsel:

You’ll notice that Biden’s White House Director of Digital Strategy, Rob Flaherty, responded promptly with an acknowledgement of the error and its correction. That’s something that the Trump White House never would have considered, no matter how depraved the offense.

This whole affair, however, requires a closer look. The video provided by Spartz shows that the errant link to a Biden campaign donation page was buried deeply on the White House website’s page that detailed his “American Jobs Plan.” It would take a committed reader to peruse the page all the way down to the naughty link (which has, indeed, been removed).

But that’s not the end of this tawdry tale. Had anyone clicked on the link that Scavino and Spartz were so offended by, they would have been taken to a page on the old Biden campaign website that had information about his climate agenda. While that was not a donation page itself, it did have links to a page where donations could have been made. There was just one one problem. When arriving at that page there was a message that said…

“You have attempted to make a contribution to a fundraising page that has no active recipients: either the page’s owner has removed all committees or organizations from the page, or we have concluded processing contributions for these committees or organizations.”

So to recap, 1) Scavino was appalled by a Fox News story about… 2) …an irate GOP representative who… 3) …complained about an allegedly improper link that… 4) …lead to nowhere. Somebody call the Dead Link Police! Why isn’t the FBI all over this criminal conspiracy?

As an addendum to this melodrama, the Fox News article that started it all also segued into an attack on Biden’s jobs/infrastructure initiative. They wrote that…

“Biden’s spending plan, formally titled the American Jobs Plan, is being sold as an infrastructure proposal and has broad support from most Democrats in Congress, though there are some that appear reluctant to back it as one massive bill. Republicans uniformly oppose the plan and say most of it is not actually spending on infrastructure but instead designed to bolster assorted liberal priorities.”

For the record, the Biden plan (like his COVID relief/stimulus plan before it) is broadly popular among the American people, including Republicans, despite being “uniformly opposed” by the knee-jerk obstructionist GOP members of Congress.

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.

GOOD NEWS: Republicans Bet Future on the Century’s Biggest Loser, Donald Trump

Posted by on April 10, 2021 at 4:34 pm. 11 Comments :

The Republican National Committee has just announced that Donald Trump will be a featured a speaker at their party retreat on Saturday. The retreat, by the way, will be held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, so it will not only be propping up his ego before an audience of drooling sycophants, it will be filling his pockets with cash.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

The fact that Republicans are still so anxious to enrich Trump is a testament to the power of his con artistry. This comes after he angrily instructed his cult followers not to donate to the GOP, but to him instead. And then he ripped those donors off by deceiving them about what (and how much) they were donating.

But that isn’t the worst of it. By embracing Trump as the banner carrier of the Republican Party, they are hitching their wagon to this century’s biggest loser. Following two terms of Bush, then two terms of Obama, Trump promptly flamed out after only one term. And it was a spectacularly disastrous term that saw more than half a million Americans die due to Trump’s negligent and incompetent mishandling of the COVID pandemic.

Trump was also the first president in history to be impeached twice. He is the first president in decades to leave office with fewer people employed than when he started. He exploded the national debt by cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. He advanced the nuclear aspirations of both Iran and North Korea. He withdrew the U.S. from the international Paris Climate Change Accords. And he incited deadly riots in Washington, D.C. by insurrectionist mobs.

Nevertheless, as reported by Fox News, Republicans are still addicted to Trump’s brand of divisiveness, dishonesty, and his bullheaded attachment to willful ignorance:

“In his keynote address to GOP donors at his Mar-a-lago resort, the former president is expected to lay into President Biden on issues like cancel culture, proposed gun restrictions and especially for the record-breaking surge of migrants crossing the southern border.”

So The Trump-loving GOP has three top priorities for their future electoral agenda. The first will be “cancel culture,” a Fox News buzzword that holds little meaning to most Americans. Secondly will be opposition to sensible gun safety reforms that most Americans – including many Republicans – support. And third will be immigration, an issue that is near the bottom of the American people’s concerns, despite the efforts of the GOP and Fox News to fear monger and spread racist “white replacement” conspiracy theories. Fox’s report continued with quotes from Trump’s draft speech:

“I stand before you this evening filled with confidence that in 2022, we are going to take back the House and we are going to reclaim the Senate–and then in 2024, a Republican candidate is going to win the White House,” Trump says in the prepared remarks provided to Fox News. Trump is expected to accuse Biden of putting “America Last,” sowing cancel culture wars and not delivering on his promise to unite the country.”

In other words, the same old vacant political rhetoric that is slathered in lies and utterly devoid of any factual basis. Trump also takes a swipe at Biden as not “hav[ing] the energy, the capacity, or the stamina” for the job. Never mind that a Fox News poll found that that voters considered Trump as the “mentally unsound” candidate.

The GOP had an opportunity to get out from under that orange mop-topped anchor, but have decided to stick with the devil they know. Democrats may want to send their Republican counterparts a “thank you” card for making Trump the face of their party for the foreseeable future. It really is the best thing that can happen for Democratic hopes to secure their congressional majorities and hold on to the White House in 2024.

UPDATE: As expected, Trump delivered an ego-drenched oratory focused almost entirely on his delusional “Big Lie” insistence that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him. In the process he trashed leading Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell (as a “dumb son of a bitch”) and former VP Mike Pence (as a “disappointment”). And this self-serving insult fest was at a GOP pep rally intended to motivate party regulars prior to the upcoming election season. Nice work, Donnie.

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.