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

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.

Trump Inadvertently Admits He Caused Hundreds of Thousands of COVID Deaths

Having Donald Trump, a barely articulate. petulant crybaby, as president has produced innumerable instances of cringeworthy comments. Often his wrath caused him to say things that had very different meanings than what he intended. And Trump has continued his vengeance driven malaprops as ex-president. However, he has scaled up the idiocy quotient considerably.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

On Sunday, CNN aired a special presentation of interviews with several of Trump’s top advisors on his Coronavirus Task Force (which was little more than a propaganda vehicle to promote Trump). On Monday Trump issued a lengthy and rambling response to the program that was rife with the infantile Trumpisms we’ve come to know and dread. It went something like this:

There’s a abundance of aberrant asininity in that tirade. It starts in the first sentence where Trump reveals that he actually does watch “fake news” CNN, if only to keep track of his former pandemic advisors, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. Trump’s feelings were clearly hurt by the pair who he demeaned as “two self-promoters.” Which is rich coming from someone who famously plasters his name on everything and takes credit in the next paragraph for “saving the entire world.” Trump also accuses the doctors of “reinventing history,” another character defect that is more accurately attributed to Trump.

However, the most jarring part of that first sentence is Trump’s dismissal of what he calls “faulty recommendations,” that he “fortunately almost always overturned.” In other words, Trump is confessing that he rejected the advice of the experts that he hired to mitigate the deadly potential of the COVID pandemic. Therefore, Trump is conceding that the tragic results that took the lives of more half a million Americans are wholly his responsibility.

Trump has entirely absolved the others of blame. And since their recommendations were discarded by Trump personally, he is unselfishly taking all the “credit” for the horror that followed. For the record, the common sense, CDC approved recommendations that he overturned were replaced by his own favorite (albeit fraudulent) therapies that included injecting bleach, hydroxychloroquine, ultraviolet light, and herd “mentality” (sic).

This might be a good time to repeat that all of that was in the first sentence of Trump’s run-on statement. And it affirms the conclusions of a new study by a UCLA economist that “estimates that 400,000 people in this country died of COVID who could have been saved,” but for Trump’s ignorance, negligence, and deliberate malfeasance.

The rest of the statement was littered with lies, insults, and vain, undeserved tributes to himself. He bragged about having “developed American vaccines by an American President,” although he certainly had no role in developing the vaccines, and the first one approved (Pfizer) was developed in Germany without U.S. aid. He seemed to mourn only for those who suffered financial losses, rather than those who lost their health and/or lives.

Trump then went after Dr. Anthony Fauci for participating in a “fake interview” (whatever that means). Then Trump mocked the 80 year old doctor’s baseball throwing skills, as if that has anything to with with his medical expertise. It was just a cheap shot by childish loser. But it does make you wonder why every president since 1910 has thrown out at least one World Series first pitch during their presidency, with the exception of Trump. Trump also criticized Fauci for trying “to take credit for the vaccine,” which Fauci didn’t do. However Trump did take credit in the next sentence saying “I was the one to get it done.” It’s curious that Trump is so anxious to own the vaccine that he won’t promote to his dimwitted, anti-vax disciples, and which he got himself, but secretly.

Then Trump moved on to Dr. Birx, whom he labeled “a proven liar with very little credibility.” Birx has some serious mistakes and misjudgments to account for. However, they mainly involve her reluctance to tell the truth about Trump’s dishonesty and obstruction. Trump, meanwhile, lapsed into the pettiest of gossip about alleged private conversations that he can’t verify. And given his reputation as a pathological liar, nothing he says can believed without proof.

Trump’s whining statement is just further evidence of his bloated ego controlling his vindictive and vexatious outbursts. He has demonstrated his psychotic tendencies to lash out the people that he previously praised profusely when he hired them. They were always among “the best people” that he promised to surround himself with, but who he later disparaged viciously. They included top administration officials like General Jim Mattis, General John Kelly, General H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, Jeff Sessions, Anthony Scaramucci, and Rex Tillerson, to name just a few.

And let’s not forget the shining examples of bootlicking loyalty that Trump latched onto whose sterling reputations were scarred only by their criminal convictions of crimes against the United States. Among that crowd were Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Steve Bannon. Those “best people” all got pardons from Trump. Which only goes to show that the more you put Trump ahead of honesty, ethics, and patriotism, the farther you’ll go in Trump World.

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.

Sean Hannity Trolls a Year Old Comment By Dr. Fauci, Ignores His Own Idiocy

The deadly lies by Donald Trump and his media confederates about the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in the tragic deaths of more than half a million Americans. And yet, they continue to brag that their negligence and incompetence has prevented unnecessary fatalities. It’s a charade that masks a psychopathic disregard for the welfare of human lives.

Fox News Sean Hannity

Topping the list of the Trumpian COVID deniers is Sean Hannity of Fox News. From the very start he has been defending Trump’s reckless downplaying of the severity of the pandemic (to which Trump admitted) and regurgitating his flagrant falsehoods. The degree to which Hannity advanced these lies resulted in a study that confirmed that higher rates of coronavirus deaths could be directly linked to watching Hannity.

On Tuesday Hannity thought he would post another of his attempts to “own the libs” by plucking a year old comment by Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, completely out of context. Hannity tweeted that…

Of course, Hannity was demonstrating his notorious dishonesty and compulsion to distort reality. Dr. Fauci’s statement was far more nuanced than Hannity’s deceitful editing implies. What Dr. Fauci actually said in February of 2020, before much was known about the virus, was that…

“Right now there’s no need to change anything you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. The risk is low, but that could change.”

He went on to say that there could be a major outbreak, but that it was just not possible to know at that time.

Hannity, on the other hand, made some comments around the same time last year that totally perverted any resemblance to the facts. He told his viewers that the whole matter was a plot by Democrats to hurt Trump. He assured them that there were zero virus deaths in the United States, and that there was nothing to worry about because Trump was handling everything perfectly.

That was 500,000 deaths (and 28 million cases) ago. And now Hannity has the nerve to criticize Dr. Fauci who quite correctly assessed the situation at a moment in time – being careful to make that clear – and who is informed by the knowledge that scientists understand that things change as new data is acquired.

Hannity, on the other hand, ignores facts in favor of fallacies that advance his self-serving agenda and benefit his political idols. And his perceptions remain stuck in ideological concrete no matter how much new information is introduced, or the harm that his stubborn commitment to outdated information will cause. Just like Trump, he ls literally killing his dimwitted followers.

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.

Dr. Fauci Tells Rachel Maddow How the Trump Admin ‘Blocked’ Him From Her Show

The differences between the negligent, incompetent, and wantonly corrupt administration of Donald Trump, and that of the incoming Joe Biden administration have been evident in just the few hours that Biden has been President. The stench of ego-driven criminality has been replaced by the refreshing fragrance of experience and compassion. And America has heaved a massive, collective sigh of relief.

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Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, Censored

Among those relieved by the passing of the Trump era is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the widely respected expert on infectious diseases. His presence on Trump’s phony Coronavirus Task Force – that was nothing more than a thinly veiled reelection campaign operation – was awkward, to say the least. He frequently had to cover his face in shame as Trump dispensed pure idiocy and flagrant falsehoods. Often he was ignored or even uninvited to the press briefings altogether.

Those times are over. Dr. Fauci was interviewed Friday for the first time on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. It was the sort of enlightening hour of useful information that the public sorely needs during these troubling times. And Dr. Fauci was clearly pleased to have the opportunity to communicate with Maddow and her audience. In fact, he addressed his prior absence from the show during this exchange:

Maddow: Dr. Fauci…The country really trusts you in particular, but we’ve seen this sort of disappearance of, and sort of muzzling of, these other senior folks within the government. Do you think that we’ll have more access to you, both the press and the public?

Fauci: I’m positive of it. I’ve been wanting to come on your show for months and months. You’ve been asking me to come on your show for months and months, and it’s just gotten blocked. Let’s call it what it is: It just got blocked because they didn’t like the way you handle things, and they didn’t want me on. I mean it was just so clear when we sent it down. “Why would you want to go on Rachel Maddow’s show?” “Well, because I like her and she’s really good.” “It doesn’t make any difference. Don’t do it.”

I don’t think you’re going to see that now. I think you’re going to see a lot of transparency. You might not see everybody as often as you want, but you’re not gonna see deliberate holding back of good people when the press asks for them. We were assured that that’s the case. And that goes along with what you were mentioning before about different types of pressures that were put on. It was a tough situation. It really was.

Those gracious and honest remarks also reveal the dangerous censorship by Trump of critical information necessary for the preservation of life during a deadly pandemic. Trump never cared about the welfare of the American people, particularly if it contrasted with his own narcissistic self-interest. Dr. Fauci said as much in another interview on CNN (where he had also been barred by Trump from appearing) when asked…

John Berman: Did the lack of candor over the last year and lack of facts, in some cases, cost lives?
Fauci: You know, it very likely did… When you start talking about the things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.

In the weeks, months, and years to come, we are going to learn more and more about how unconscionably destructive Trump was for the nation and the world. And the damage he’s done will not be repaired overnight. But at least we won’t be seeing the sort of suppression and deliberate disinformation going forward that was so painfully prevalent while Trump was occupying the White House.

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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.

Fox News Boss Murdoch Gets COVID Vaccine While Tucker Carlson Spews Anti-Vax Lies

The clock is ticking on Donald Trump’s inevitable eviction from the People’s (White) House. And in his remaining days Trump is wholly consumed with futile legal gambits and his burning obsession to overturn the decision of the American people and convince the nation that he actually won the presidential election by a landslide. Mental illness is truly a devastating disease.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson

Meanwhile, Trump has abandoned any and all pretenses to governing the country. That’s especially evident in his callous neglect of the coronavirus pandemic that is rapidly escalating in severity. The threat to millions around the world has even reached the top of the elitist crowd, including Fox News chairman, Rupert Murdoch. It was reported Friday that he managed to slip ahead of the line to get himself vaccinated in England.

“A convoy of Range Rovers delivered the 89-year-old billionaire to a dedicated vaccine centre in Henley, Oxfordshire, where normal hours are understood to have been extended at the last minute.”

That’s right, Rupert Murdoch, whose network has repeatedly downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic, mocked solutions such as mask wearing and social distancing, promoted quack cures like hydroxychloroquine and bleach, and propped up the irresponsible lies of Trump and his Republican confederates, will be safe and secure thanks to the socialist National Health Service of the U.K. It’s good to know that wealthy octogenarians are protected from this disease so that they can oversee their media empires that place the rest of the nation/world in peril.

And that’s precisely what Murdoch’s network did on Thursday night. Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News program was largely devoted to coronavirus lies and propaganda. And he focused much of his screed on conspiracy theories related to the emerging vaccines. Carlson smugly disparaged anyone who had positive things to say about the vaccine and mocked people describing their experience getting vaccinated. He also made a point of overemphasizing any of the very few and minor reports of side effects, asserting that they were proof that the vaccine shouldn’t be trusted. Nor should the doctors and experts who advocate for the vaccine that he says is being sold to an unwitting populace (videos below):

“So, how are the rest of us supposed to respond to a marketing campaign like this? Well, nervously. Even if you’re strongly supportive of vaccines, and we are, even if you recognize how many millions of lives have been saved over the past 50 years by vaccines, and we do, it all seems a bit much. It feels false, because it is. It’s too slick.”

Get it? Don’t buy the sales pitch that is being directed at you by medical professionals and epidemiologists. They are all out to get you. And their purpose is nothing less than complete control of your bodies:

“In this country, we control our own bodies. They are always telling us that. But no. Suddenly, the rules have changed. On the question of the corona vaccine, our leaders definitely are not pro-choice. Their view is do as you are told and don’t complain. No uncomfortable questions. Those are not just suggestions, they are rules and Silicon Valley aims to enforce them. […] So whatever you do, don’t say this is social control because if you do, the richest and most powerful people in the world will act in perfect coordination to shut you down immediately.”

So it isn’t just evil doctors. The plotters also include power hungry techies like Bill and Melinda Gates. Carlson is claiming that the vaccine’s proponents are engaged in some sort of plot to enforce “social control,” and that any divergence from that plot will be dealt with harshly. He claimed that vaccine advocates are lying and threatening people to get them to comply. However, he never supplied a single example of any of those alleged lies and threats. Nor could he support his preposterous claims that people would be forced to take the vaccine.

Carlson went even further to malign the reputation of Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he called “Lord Fauci” and complained that the media would not allow any criticism of the infectious disease expert. He said that Dr. Fauci was “ordering you around like an animal” so that “you wouldn’t notice how incompetent” he is. He said that Dr. Fauci’s “credibility has been significantly degraded.” This, Carlson said, is because Dr. Fauci warned people that gathering in groups during Thanksgiving would increase their potential for exposure to the coronavirus and result in a “surge superimposed on a surge.”

Carlson then claimed that no such surge has occurred. However, the actual data shows that the U.S. is currently experiencing higher rates of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, than at any time since the virus first appeared. Carlson is flagrantly – and dangerously – lying. And they are the same lies that were recently told by his Fox News colleague, Laura Ingraham.

This would be a good time to note that Fox News lawyers have successfully argued in court that Carlson and other Fox crackpots could not be held liable for their lies because “no reasonable person” would take them seriously. The problem with that argument is that if Fox’s viewers were reasonable, they wouldn’t be watching Fox. Consequently, there should be real consequences for the harm done by Carlson and the others at Fox News who deliberately spread false and harmful disinformation. But at least Rupert will be okay in his Oxfordshire mansion while his media lackeys are getting tens of thousands of others killed.

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. 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 Aims Ludicrous Attack At Dr. Fauci, Thumps Trump Instead

For most of the last eleven months, Fox News has been pretending that the coronavirus was nothing to be worried about. They opposed responsible limitations on social and business activities and mocked safety protocols like wearing masks. Those are positions they share with Donald Trump whose gross negligence, incompetence, and deliberate malfeasance has resulted in the preventable deaths of more than 270,000 Americans.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

Consequently, studies have proven that watching Fox News actually increases coronavirus fatalities. The same finding was shown in a study specifically focused on Sean Hannity. But never let it be said that Tucker Carlson wasn’t up to a challenge to determine which Fox News host is the worst blight on society.

On Wednesday evening, Carlson aired a segment prompted by a new report that places the introduction of the coronavirus to the U.S. a few weeks earlier than previously thought. The report published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that “SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized.”

This news triggered Carlson’s hyperactive outrage sensors that lit up with alarms pointing at renowned epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci. And in an effort to malign the good Doctor’s reputation, Carlson played a video from January 22:

Dr. Fauci: From what I can see right now they are really being much, much more transparent than what happened with SARS where they really kept back information for a while. It was embarrassing to them. They’re really transparent now. They put the sequence of the virus up on the public database right away. So in that respect they’ve been transparent.
Carlson: “They’re really transparent now,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci. Now, in a well-functioning country, a line like that would make certain that you’d never work in public policy again.

First of all, Dr. Fauci was explicit in noting that his comments represented “what I can see right now,” and addressed specific database information with which China had been transparent. What’s more, little was known about the origins and the spread of the virus in those early days, and even now the knowledge of it continues to be fluid and expanding. But Carlson is dishonestly holding Dr. Fauci to a narrowly tailored statement made eleven months ago.

If Carlson truly believes that having made the remarks that Dr. Fauci made in January disqualify him from public service, then he must have the same opinion about Trump. Beginning in January, Trump was far more obsequious toward China and its president Xi Jinping. And without any of the qualifications that Dr. Fauci used. Trump simply expressed his unreserved praise and admiration for Xi, and did so on multiple occasions:

As late as February 29, Trump was still impressed that “China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down.” And in his own remarks, Trump relentlessly downplayed the known dangers of the virus:

  • “We have it very much under control in this country.”
  • “It’s going to be just fine.”
  • “It’s one person coming in from China.”
  • “We’re doing a great job with it.”
  • “It’s going to have a very good ending for us.”
  • “We’re in great shape.”
  • “We have 12 cases – 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.”
  • “Just stay calm. It will go away.”
  • “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
  • “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

Most of those remarks were made when Trump already knew they were lies. He revealed in tape recorded comments to Bob Woodward – for his book RAGE! – that he knew just how dangerous the virus was, saying that…

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff. […] I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down.”

So while Carlson is surely to arrogant, oblivious, and steeped in Trump-worship to notice, his analysis clearly paints Trump as a reckless source of disinformation who has surrendered his right to engage in any public service role, including (especially) as president. That’s something that most Americans already knew, and contributed to Trump’s reelection defeat. But for Carlson and his viewers it’s a rather new concept. Too bad most of them are too far gone to comprehend it.

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. 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.

RAGE: Bob Woodward Book Reveals that Trump Deliberately Lied About the Coronavirus

For months after the coronavirus was known to spreading throughout the United States, Donald Trump was pretending that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. He claimed it was no more dangerous than the common flu. He insisted that that he had it under control. Now, after more than 190,000 Americans have died, we have some evidence of just how dishonest Trump was with the American people.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

A new book is being released next week. And RAGE, by Bob Woodward is already creating a tsunami that pulls the veil from Trump’s lies. Excerpts are beginning to be reported by the media. And they are nothing less than shocking. For instance, as reported by Robert Costa of the Washington Post…

“‘This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,’ national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. ‘This is going to be the roughest thing you face.'”

“Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly. ‘You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,’ Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. ‘And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.'”

“At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than a seasonal flu, predicting it would soon disappear, and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control.”

“Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. ‘I wanted to always play it down,’ the president said.”

“Fauci at one point tells others that the president ‘is on a separate channel’ and unfocused in meetings, with ‘rudderless’ leadership, according to Woodward. ‘His attention span is like a minus number,’ Fauci said, according to Woodward. ‘His sole purpose is to get reelected.'”

Most of this has been known to those who have been paying attention for the past six months. It was easy to conclude from Trump’s behavior and public comments that he was lying to advance his political interests. But for the first time we have Trump himself confessing to this outrageous and deadly dishonesty. And to make matters worse, there are tapes (see below).

This is an abhorrent betrayal of the American people by a president who clearly couldn’t care less about who gets hurt. And he’s still doing it. He’s still playing it down with demands that schools reopen, that professional sports and other large public events resume, and that the country returns to a pre-virus lifestyle before it is safe to do so. And it’s still “his sole purpose…to get reelected.” Anyone still not convinced that Trump is a narcissistic sociopath is just a devoted cult follower who wants to be be deceived.

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

SHAM, WOW! Trump Turns the White House Into His 2020 Campaign Infomercial Agency

In these times of the COVOD-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, Donald Trump has taken to calling the American people “warriors.” Never mind that Cadet Bone Spurs is conscripting them involuntarily to service for which he steadfastly refuses to enlist. It is a noxious analogy for a public health crisis that requires leadership to align national resources and to promote rational behavior, not some pseudo-macho allusions to combat. If this were war, Trump would have to be listed as Missing In Action.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump’s latest official action to address the crisis was an executive order advising governors to declare churches as “essential” businesses. He threatened to override any state executive who failed to obey his command – an authority that he doesn’t have. In the meantime, Trump spent the past two days on his own golf course, including Sunday when the Pastor-in-Chief might otherwise have gone to one of those essential churches.

So with more than 1.5 million Americans infected and close to 100,000 dead, you might be wondering what became of the much vaunted White House Coronavirus Task force. Trump launched it to great fanfare, appointing Vice-President Mike Pence to lead the effort. The most prominent function of the group was to hold daily briefings ostensibly to update the public on the status of the pandemic and the progress made to mitigate the harm.

You’ll recall that – in true reality TV game show host fashion – Trump cast himself as the star of the show, hijacking attention from the experts who the American people really wanted to hear from. He then spent a couple of hours every day distorting the facts, bragging about imaginary achievements, shifting blame for failures to others, and yelling at and insulting reporters. It was a bizarre spectacle that even Trump’s allies could see was hurting Trump and the Republican Party. But Trump’s malignant narcissism would only allow him to see an image of himself as a beloved figure whose every act was perfect.

It was clear that Trump was using these briefing as a replacement for the cult rallies that he could no longer use to bask in the glory of his glassy-eyed disciples. He justified his role by citing the Nielsen ratings, which he was egocentric enough to believe were due to his glorious presence. In reality, viewers were tuning in to hear Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health professionals. The more people saw of Trump, the more repulsed they were. Eventually, his staff was successful in persuading him to stop exacerbating the damage.

Now we have confirmation that these briefings were just an extension of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. They were, in fact, nothing more than campaign infomercials. We know that because as soon as Trump stopped featuring himself as the lead character, the briefings themselves came to an end. It’s been two weeks since the last of what were daily briefings. If their purpose was actually to provide information to the public, they would have continued. Obviously, that was not their purpose. Without Trump the briefings had no point to this White House. What’s more, the supporting cast of doctors and administrators also became irrelevant as their presence in the media was immediately curtailed. And what we saw of them was mostly restricted to Fox News.

Since the cancellation of The Task Force Briefing Hour(s), Trump has created new campaign programming by showing up at various corporate facilities where he did nothing but parade around – without a face mask – pretending to be relevant. These events had no purpose other than as photo-ops for a figurehead president who has nothing better to do.

If anyone needs further evidence that Trump’s only concern about the coronavirus was with regard to how it affects him, they need look no further than his Twitter feed. This weekend he posted dozens of tweets that covered subjects that ranged from nauseating accusations that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough is a murderer, to a Fox News assertion that President Obama would soon be in prison. He also whined about Joe Biden, mail-in voting, Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi, the hydroxychloroquine miracle drug, his floundering polls, Jeff Sessions, and the Russia “hoax.”

However, in all of that garbage heap of hostility, self-promotion, disinformation, and infantile insults, there was one subject he didn’t address even once. That, of course, was the pandemic and its catastrophic effect on the American people. NOT.EVEN.ONCE! And that should tell you all you need to know about what this “president” cares about.

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

ORANGE CRUSHED: More Americans Trust CNN than Either Trump or Fox News

In recent days Donald Trump has been exhibiting surging symptoms of acute paranoia, anxiety, and desperation. Two days ago he posted a near record 124 tweets in one day. They ran the gamut of his typical fetishes from ego-drenched bragging about imaginary achievements, to vicious insults aimed at his perceived enemies, to delusional assertions of non-existent crimes committed by political adversaries. If Trump were on a street corner reciting the content of his tweets he would be quickly escorted to the nearest asylum for observation.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

On Tuesday morning the out of control tweetstorming continued with Trump posting another 32 twantrums, all before 10:00am. While this behavior is not unheard of for Trump, there is clearly something that has triggered this escalation of hysterics. And more than likely it has something to with his downward spiraling approval ratings and the polls that show him losing to Joe Biden nationally, as well as in most of the crucial swing states. Trump’s hijacking of the Coronavirus Task Force briefings backfired badly as his lies and belligerence turned off most Americans who were more interested in getting useful information about the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

A new poll is now affirming that what remains of Trump’s already tattered reputation has taken a series of severe blows. His overall approval is still underwater (45%) and has never exceeded 50% at any point during his accidental presidency. What’s more, a paltry 36% of the American people trust the information Trump provides about the coronavirus. That compares to 74% who trust the Centers for Disease Control, 67% who trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, and (and this has gotta sting) a majority of 55% who trust CNN, 19 points higher than those who trust Trump. That’s in line with previous polling that found the same preference for what Trump refers to is Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”

There is some more worrisome news for Trump in the details of this poll. The support for Trump is tightly bound into his base, which at this point is more of a cult. How else would you explain that Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples trust him more (84%) than they trust Dr. Fauci (61%)? As reported by CNN

“Republicans are more apt to say that they trust the information they get about coronavirus from Trump (84%) than they are to say they trust the information they get from Dr. Anthony Fauci (61%), the nation’s top infectious disease expert, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (72%). Among Democrats, just 4% say they trust the information they get from the President, well behind the 81% who say they trust Fauci or the 80% who trust the CDC. Overall, CNN (55% trust) inspires far more trust than Fox News (35%), with those figures also divided by party.”

Democrats are plainly more persuaded by science than by partisan hackery and political lie factories. Can’t say the same for Republicans. And the American people have made their choice with regard to news sources. While Fox News is still higher rated, that’s only because their audience is glued to the right-wing propaganda network day and night, while the majority of the country gets their news from a variety of more credible sources, both national and local.

Trump surely has many reasons to be mired in a crushing meltdown. His polling is in the gutter. His reelection prospects are fading. The Supreme Court is hearing cases that could result in his finally having to reveal his tax returns. And he is rightfully being held accountable for the suffering and death caused by his negligent and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Not that he cares about that. What’s boiling his thinning blood is that, in addition to those other triggers, he knows that the American people – and the people of the world – see him as a failure and a clown who was never fit to be a leader. And that is the sort of judgment that weighs most heavily on narcissists with unchecked delusions of grandeur, like Trump.

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