Bill Weld

Donna Brazile Tells Trump-Fluffing GOP Chair to ‘Go to Hell’ Live on Fox News

Posted by on March 3, 2020 at 11:30 am. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party’s penchant for hypocrisy is legendary. They profess to advocate family values while supporting Donald Trump, an adulterous president who is on his third wife, all of whom he has cheated on. They disingenuously embrace patriotism while enabling Trump’s treasonous aiding and abetting hostile foreign governments that attack our democracy. They claim to have faith while idolizing an irreligious narcissist who calls himself “the Chosen One.”

Donald Trump

On Tuesday morning Republicans were apoplectic over a segment on Fox News where Donna Brazile lashed out at the GOP for interfering in Democratic politics. That’s something that Trump himself has been spending a remarkable amount of time on (mostly advancing the mission of Vladimir Putin). Never mind that no one takes his inane analysis of Democrats seriously. And why should they? His rancid animosity toward fellow Americans who don’t happen to worship him is the core of his moronic commentary.

So on Fox’s America’s Newsroom co-host Sandra Smith prefaced her question for Brazile by playing a clip of Republican National Committee Chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, speculating about how the Democratic primary is progressing. McDaniel said that…

“It’s leading toward a brokered convention which will be rigged against Bernie [Sanders] if those super delegates have their way.”

Following that clip, Smith threw the question to Brazile for her response. And it was a doozy:

“First of all, I want to talk to my Republicans. Stay the hell out of our race. I get sick and tired of listening to Republicans tell me and the Democrats about our process. They don’t even have a process. They are canceling primaries. They have winner take all. They don’t have the kind of democracy that we see on the Democratic side. And for people to use Russian talking points to sow division among Americans, that is stupid.

“So Ronna, go to hell! We are not trying to prevent anyone from becoming the nominee. If you have the delegates to win, you will win. This notion that Democrats are somehow out there trying to put hurdles or road blocks before one candidate, that’s stupid.

“I know what’s going on. They are scared of Democrats coming together to defeat Donald Trump. They need to be focusing on what we’re focusing on in the Democratic Party. And that is preventing foreign interference in our elections. And stop using Russian talking points, Madame Chairwoman.”

OUCH! That is precisely how Democrats should reply to the preposterous analyses that Republicans put out about Democrats. Brazile hit every salient point. The GOP is canceling primaries because they seem to be afraid that some of their cult members will wander off and vote for Bill Weld. Fox News has, to date, refused to even interview Weld. Trump is exposing his weakness. Brazile also noted that McDaniel was parroting Russian talking points. Actually, they are more than talking points. They are part of an orchestrated strategy to create discord and chaos. And Brazile forcefully defended the Democratic Party’s neutrality. The main proponents of the conspiracy theory that the primary is rigged are Trump and Putin.

This attempt by Fox News to ambush Brazile is just another reason why Democrats should never appear on Fox. They have only one objective, and that is to harm Democrats. In this case it backfired on them in a big way. But it is still giving Fox and their Trump-fluffing surrogates the opportunity to condemn Brazile for her alleged incivility. But just to put that hypocrisy in context, see the video below that compiles Trump’s frequent use of profanities that apparently doesn’t bother the pure as virgins GOP or Fox News.

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

Trump is Whining (Again) About Fox News Poll Where He’s Losing to Every Top Democrat

Posted by on February 28, 2020 at 12:35 pm. 2 Comments :

There is one thing that can be reliably assumed about Donald Trump at any given moment in time. He is probably whining. That’s pretty much his resting state of mind. He is without a doubt the most cowardly crybaby ever to occupy the White House. He even admitted it on national TV in 2016, saying that “I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine, because I want to win. I am a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win.” Duh!

Donald Trump Pacifier Fox

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump is wailing about a new poll by Fox News that shows him losing to every top Democratic in the race. The poll has Biden beating Trump 49% to 41%. Sanders 49-42. Bloomberg 48-40. Warren 46-43. Buttigieg 45-42. And Klobuchar 44-43. Notice that Trump never scores higher than 43% in any of these match-ups. So an obviously rattled Trump pounded out this frantic tweet:

For the record, most of the 2016 polls, even those by Fox News, were pretty accurate. They showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump by about 3%, which is precisely what happened. Remember, these are polls of voters, not the electoral college, and Clinton won the popular vote by 3,000,000 votes. FiveThirtyEight rates Fox News pollsters (Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research) a respectable “A-“.

But none of that matters because Trump’s complaints aren’t rooted in reality to begin with. He has often criticized Fox News polling in the past when they delivered bad news. And he routinely complains that Fox has “always been terrible to me.” But he’s ignoring all the times he praised Fox for surveys that had more positive results.

RELATED: Are Trump’s Cult Rallies Breeding Grounds for the Coronavirus?

Trump’s perspective is always colored by whatever he views is in his best interest at the moment. It’s a bizarre psychosis that springs from his malignant narcissism. If someone compliments him, they are a rock solid ally. If someone criticizes him, they have always been a bitter enemy. He simply has no grasp of the nuances of fluid, human interactions. And he will use whatever data he finds most beneficial, even if he has to make it up. For instance, Trump also tweeted this Friday morning:

The problem with that is that it was a retweet that is several days old and does not reflect a “new” Rasmussen poll. In fact, the most recent Rasmussen poll has Trump at only 47%. What’s more, he has never had 95% GOP approval, no matter how many times he tweets it.

Despite Trump’s disappointment with Fox News, he just scheduled a town hall on the network for next Thursday. It will be one of the rare occasions where Trump will be interviewed on Fox by someone other than Sean Hannity or one of the other devoted Trump-fluffers. Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will host the affair. However, their previous interviews with Trump were dominated by softball questions and no substantive follow ups.

What’s peculiar is why Fox News is having this town hall at all. Trump is running virtually unopposed, so what’s the point in providing a platform when there isn’t a primary contest in progress? The only plausible reason is that Fox wants to make sure that Trump isn’t overshadowed by the Democrats who are engaged in a heated primary. In other words, it’s free advertising for Trump.

What Fox isn’t doing is offering the same thing to Bill Weld, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts who actually is running against Trump in the GOP primary. Both Fox News and Trump are pretending that Weld doesn’t exist. The party has canceled several primaries so that Trump doesn’t have to face an opposing candidate. And Fox has refused to to even book Weld for an interview.

If Trump is as confidant of his 2020 prospects as he keeps insisting, then why is he suppressing this primary opposition? For the same reason he is whining about the Fox News poll. He is scared. He recognizes the political risk that he faces if the economy falters. And his moaning notwithstanding, he does realize that polls reflect the tenor of public opinion, and that opinion now is decidedly – and appropriately – anti-Trump.

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

Devotion to the Cult of Trump Risks the GOP Having No Presidential Candidate in 2020

Posted by on October 3, 2019 at 12:23 pm. 2 Comments :

Time is running out. It’s running out for Donald Trump as Congress is on a fast track toward impeachment. And as the walls close in around him, he is becoming ever more unhinged and incoherent. He’s even taken to crying “coup” about the constitutional process for considering the removal of a corrupt leader. It’s a sad spectacle that diminishes the stature of the nation.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

But time also running out for the Republican Party that seems to have no strategy for a post-impeachment electoral landscape. As the prospects for impeachment grow by the hour – mainly due to Trump’s own panicky and desperate outbursts – the GOP continues to fortify their bunker as it is under siege from all directions. Even the Senior Legal Analyst at Fox News, Andrew Napolitano, is now saying that Trump’s “conversation [with Ukrainian President Zelensky] manifested both criminal and impeachable behavior.” Nevertheless, Republicans are all in on Dear Leader Trump and if he goes down, well dammit, they’re all going down with him.

The 2020 election is just a little more than a year away. Deadlines will soon be expiring for challengers to declare their candidacy. So what happens if Trump is impeached and the Republican Party has no one on the ballot running against whoever the Democratic nominee is? Pence will not automatically become the GOP’s candidate. There is a process for determining that which we all know as primaries. But the Republican National Committing has been working to cancel primaries in order to stifle any opposition to Trump. They also recently tightened the rules to “squelch dissent at the Republican National Convention next year.”

Currently there are three Republicans, other than Trump, running for the GOP nomination: Bill Weld, Joe Walsh, and Mark Sanford. The only reasonably qualified candidate among them is Weld, a two-term governor of Massachusetts. But other Republicans with qualifications and national name ID are keep their distance. They include Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, and former Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.

All of this leaves Trump feeling pretty cocky. He tweeted Thursday that he has “95% Approval Rating in the Republican Party.” Which won’t help him in the least if he’s found to be guilty of impeachable crimes. After all, he isn’t President of the GOP. His national approval rating is still mired in the low 40’s (it’s never hit 50). And even his favorite pollster, the utterly disreputable and biased Rasmussen, shows him dropping six points in the last week (to 47) as impeachment heats up.

The Cult of Trump is in full force in the Republican precincts of America. They simply will not stand up for the principles of law and order and patriotism that they once heralded as their party’s brand. Not if that means going against their totalitarian boss. So if Trump is impeached, and there is little or no time to field alternatives in the primaries, the party may wind up invoking some arcane rule and shoving whatever candidate the party elites choose down the throats of their voters.

And Trump isn’t making it any easier for them. On Thursday morning, Trump admitted to a national television audience that he asked Zelensky to interfere in an American election by digging up dirt on Joe Biden. That’s actually one of the anticipated articles of impeachment. And to add fuel to this dumpster fire, he added a request for China to do the same. Let that sink in. Trump wants China – a nation known for its corruption and absence of any ethical legal system – to conduct an investigation/smear campaign on an American citizen and candidate for president. That should go down well with voters. And still the GOP is marching lock-step with Trump, even though he may not even be their candidate next year. The whole party seems to be as confused and incompetent as Trump.

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

Fox News Smears Democratic Debate Host Rachel Maddow in a Fit of Hysterical Hypocrisy

Posted by on June 27, 2019 at 3:59 pm. NO Comments :

The first night of the 2020 Democratic primary debate was a refreshing departure from the infantile politics of the Donald Trump era. There was no childish name-calling; no hostile outbursts; no hateful displays of misogyny, racism, or other forms of bigotry; no narcissistic delusions of grandeur; and no shameless lies. Remember when politics used be like that?

Rachel Maddow, Fox News

However, Trump himself was watching and couldn’t help injecting his unique brand of loathsome immaturity. He began with a typically whiny criticism in a one-word tweet that just said “BORING.” Probably because it lacked the histrionics of a kindergarten full of cholicky crybabies like Trump. And it went downhill from there. He later mocked a brief technical glitch that lasted about six seconds. And he followed that up with a fake video of the glitch.

It didn’t take long for State TV (aka Fox News) to weigh in with their own “fair and balanced” debate analysis. It consisted of a report by their media correspondent Brian Flood, and was headlined “PEACOCK PROPAGANDA? Media critics blast NBC over far-left opinion host Rachel Maddow’s role at Democratic debate.” It’s cute that Fox News still has the gumption to criticize other networks for being biased. But this report really stretched the boundaries of idiocy.

First of all, Flood quoted four “media critics” for his article. All four of them from ultra-rightist outlets that could be relied on to despise MSNBC and Rachel Maddow regardless of how they performed. They included Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV, the noxious Accuracy in Media, the venerable wingnuts at the Media Research Center, and the Daily Caller, a website founded by Fox’s own Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson.

Flood began his rant by lying about Maddow being “too biased for The New York Times.” In fact, the Times only indicated that they would prefer their reporters sticking to programs that were focused on news without opinion. Flood failed to mention that the Times had the very same restrictions on almost every program on Fox News.

Then Flood tried to portray Maddow’s debate questions as a “softball fest” because she asked about things like climate change and the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. Of course these are serious issues that every candidate should address. Particularly Democratic candidates because these are the issues that are most important to their constituents.

Holding candidates accountable on the subjects that matter most to the electorate is apparently being too soft according to Flood and Fox News. But then again, Fox is the network that has been working overtime to spin the Mueller report as having exonerated Trump when it explicitly said that it didn’t. And lately they have been frantically trying to sweep the latest allegations of rape against Trump under the carpet.

Finally, Flood posted a flurry of tweets that criticised Maddow and MSNBC. They included frequent Fox News contributors like Mollie Hemingway, Jonah Goldberg, and Dan Bongino. Every one of them are virulent opponents of all things liberal or Democratic. Is it any wonder that Flood’s article concluded that “media critics” were universally negative toward the debate? He didn’t bother to ask anyone who was independent or left leaning.

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

It would be interesting to see how Fox News would handle a Republican primary debate. But it doesn’t appear that we’ll have the opportunity, even though there is a credible candidate running against Trump. Bill Weld is the former two-term Republican governor of Massachusetts, but he can’t even get a town hall or an interview on Fox News. Did they get an order from Trump to bury Weld? What do you suppose they are afraid of? Other than – obviously – Rachel Maddow.

Here’s a Solution for Trump’s Whining that ‘Something Strange is Going on at Fox News’

Posted by on May 21, 2019 at 1:27 pm. 1 Comments :

The single most predictable expression emanating from Donald Trump at any given moment is his relentless, childish whining. If he isn’t whining about the Mueller investigation, he’s whining about something a Democrat said, or the “fake news,” or Hillary Clinton’s emails, or invading caravans of refugees at the border, or China, or Iran, or worst of all, Obama. And that’s the short list.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Strange

A new entry into Trump’s parade of targets for his whine-feasting is one that many might not have expected. Although no one and nothing is safe from his wrath because all it takes is one slip up and you’re on his shitlist. But his recent attack on Fox News certainly raised some eyebrows.

During his latest cult rally in Pennsylvania, Trump ricocheted from one random nuisance to another with his typical flair for incoherence. He threatened to have his Attorney General, William Barr, investigate Democrats and the FBI for treason. He “joked” about serving five terms as president. And he accused Joe Biden of “deserting” Pennsylvania by moving to Delaware with his parents – when he was ten years old. This is a new wrinkle on his abhorrent policy of separating families. And then he unleashed this brilliant bit of paranoid mush (video below):

“What’s going on with Fox, by the way? They’re putting more Democrats on than Republicans. Something strange is going on at Fox, folks! Something very strange. […] Somebody’s gonna have to explain the whole Fox deal to me?”

Somebody’s gonna have to explain nearly everything to Trump. But more to the point, that was Trump’s response to the town hall Fox News aired on Monday with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. But more importantly, it was Trump’s admission that he regards Fox News as his personal publicity shop where only his views – and those of his GOP allies – are authorized to be broadcast. And if Fox should dare to stray from Trumpian orthodoxy, they are officially guilty of betraying the cause of white-wing nationalism, and him personally. He did exactly the same thing after the Bernie Sanders town hall on Fox.

Trump is actually right in an odd way. Research by Media Matters found that Democrats do appear on Fox News with some frequency. In fact, that occurs far more often than the cowardly Republicans appear on CNN or MSNBC. Trump himself is the King of the Cowards. He has not done an interview with either of those networks since becoming President.

Part of the reason that Fox News is hosting more Democrats than usual is that the Democratic primary field currently consists of twenty-four candidates. However, there is solution to this foreboding problem. Since Trump believes that there are too many Democrats taking up airtime on Fox News, all they need to do is schedule some more Republicans to even out the alleged imbalance. At the moment there is only one other Republican challenging Trump for the GOP nomination. That’s former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld.

As the chief executive of a large state that generally skews blue, Weld should be considered at least as viable a candidate as Buttigieg, the mayor of a small town in rural Indiana. Although Weld is taking on an incumbent president, that shouldn’t be a consideration for a legitimate, independent news network. If Fox News isn’t a Trump-fluffing propaganda operation, they should have no problem inviting Weld to do a town hall.

On the other hand, if Fox fails to offer an invitation to Weld, they are conceding that they are in the tank for Trump and will abide no opposition. To date there is no indication that any such invitation has been proffered. This seems like a perfect opportunity for Weld to approach Fox and insist that he be given the same consideration as Buttigieg, Sanders, and Trump. He is a serious contender with a platform that resonates with millions of Americans. And he would satisfy Trump’s call for Fox News to book more Republicans. So it’s time for Fox to step up and try to prove that they have at least a sliver of journalistic integrity. That, of course, may be too much to ask.

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