Brian Kilmeade

UH-OH: Trump’s Fox News ‘Friends’ Admit He Has No Evidence and ‘No Shot At Success’

Posted by on January 4, 2021 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

For twenty-five years Fox News has aggressively pursued its mission to advance an extremist conservative agenda and the partisan interests of the Republican Party. And for the past four years that has meant propping up Donald Trump, the most corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent president this nation has ever produced. It’s a record rife with lies, propaganda, and an almost proud aversion to ethical journalism.

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Fox News Friends

Within that framework of deliberate disinformation, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends managed to stand out as Trump’s most loyal and shamelessly obsequious devotees. Prior to his election he even had a weekly segment on the program called “Mondays with Trump.” However, now that Trump has been booted from the White House, there have been some baby steps toward sanity in the realm of Trump’s “Friends” on Fox News.

This course correction may have something to do with Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior as he seeks to persuade his dimwitted cult followers that he actually won reelection by a landslide. And the release of his phone call threatening Georgia election officials to get them to falsify the election results probably didn’t help him.

Consequently, on Monday morning the Fox and Friends crew took a surprising turn by presenting their viewers with a relatively realistic analysis of Trump’s preposterous and unproven claims of election fraud. With regard to the efforts by Trump and his congressional confederates to challenge the Electoral College vote, co-host Brian Kilmeade acknowledged that “It’s got no shot at success.” Co-host Steve Doocy rebutted Trump’s bizarre assertions, including his claim of thousands of dead people voting, by noting that there are only two current allegations of it.

The brief segment went on to explicitly call out Trump’s weak case for election irregularities and his demand that he be crowned President-for-Life, as illustrated in these excerpts:

Doocy: That’s the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven’t really produced the evidence. […]

Kilmeade: I just worry about you have that along with the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn’t work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats in the big picture. And I just think it’s up to the president’s legal team to produce what they are telling them they have. […] So far there is no proof of it. […]

Doocy: There have been a number of the president’s supporters who have said things on TV or on social media that have, you know, clouded the waters where it’s like wow, thousands of dead people. Dominion machines and all that stuff. But interestingly enough, that information is never entered into a court because you cannot present information to a court if you do not have the evidence. And so far we haven’t seen the evidence.

Like WOW, indeed! The Fox News Trump-fluffers may have finally have come to the realization that Trump has utterly failed to produce the evidence that he keeps claiming to have. And while it’s one thing to rant on TV and Twitter about flagrantly fake election crimes, they cannot be introduced in court without exposing oneself to criminal charges. That explains why the sixty-plus lawsuits filed by – and on behalf of – Trump have result in defeat and dismissal.

There appears to be a mini-trend developing among some of the properties in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. His New York Post recently published a front page story exhorting Trump to “Stop the Insanity.” His Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote that Trump should “Give it up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s.” And a select minority of Fox News personalities have strayed slightly from their usual unflinching adoration of Dear Leader. That has caused Trump to viciously attack the network that made him president and to promote some even more sickly fawning media toadies like Newsmax and OANN.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking that the Murdoch worm has turned. Fox News’ “Judge” Jeanine Pirro just hosted a Trump flunky who proposed a blatantly seditious act, which she was happy to embrace.

Nevertheless. Trump’s desperate, delusional, and pathetic grasping at ludicrous conspiracy theories might be making some Foxies nervous. They may see that he’s engaged in a futile and impotent attempt to retain power to avoid the certain legal peril he faces as a civilian. And some of them may want no part of that. It’s likely that in the next few months Fox News will be trying on new personas for the post-Trump era. Eventually they will settle on flipping from a pro-Trump network to one that is virulently anti-Biden. And so it goes…

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.

The Victim-In-Chief? Fox News ‘Feels for’ Trump’s ‘Pain and Frustration’

Posted by on December 13, 2020 at 3:06 pm. 4 Comments :

Poor, poor Donald Trump. He’s the President of the United States of America, but apparently is as weak and impotent as a barnyard hog in a coma. He puts on airs of being a dominant alpha male, but whines like a colicky infant whenever he doesn’t get his way. He literally bragged that he is “the most fabulous whiner.” It’s a pitiful situation wherein this co-called “leader” needs to get sympathy from talking headcases on television.

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Donald Trump

That’s what happened on Sunday morning as Fox News became the provider of consolation for our despondent wannabe despot. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends were so emotionally moved by the plight of Trump’s decisive electoral defeat that they found it necessary to relieve themselves of the inner aching they felt for the Commander-in-Grief. It went something like this (video below):

Rachel Campos-Duffy: I just feel for the President. I see the pain and the frustration. You do everything you’re supposed to do. You run the country well. You campaign your heart out, while the other guy’s in a basement. Then in the end, fraud and shenanigans at the local level, you’re robbed. We’ve all been robbed because when the elections don’t go well, when there’s fraud, when there’s these kinds of shenanigans, we all lose.
Pete Hegseth: Yeah. Frustrated, but remains undeterred. He called it rigged, a sham, a shame, a couple of times. He said ‘I worry about the country having an illegitimate president.’ And if 77% of Republicans and Trump supporters believe the election was stolen, where do you go from there?

Oh, the sorrow of this pitiful, unfortunate, Leader of the Free World. Never mind that Campos-Duffy’s characterization of Trump as having “done everything,” and “run the country well,” wasn’t shared by a majority of the American people. And set aside that Joe Biden’s campaign, for whatever flaws you might assign to it, was victorious. And don’t bother trying to justify the claims of “fraud and shenanigans” because there simply isn’t any evidence of it (Trump’s legal team lost in court 59 times so far for that very reason). These bootlicking sycophants still regard Trump – and America – as having been robbed.

In addition to the flood of empathy pouring out of these sensitive Fox Newsers, Trump himself is tormented by his tragic circumstance. He poured out to Fox’s Brian Kilmeade in yet another suck up “interview” on the network that Trump loves to hate and that some are now accusing of being complicit in the “Deep State” conspiracy to destroy Trump. He whined that…

“No judge has had the courage – including the Supreme Court – I am so disappointed in them. No judge has had the courage – including the Supreme Court of the United States has had the courage to allow it to be heard. The Supreme Court, all they did was say we don’t have standing. So they’re saying, essentially, the President of the United States, and Texas, and these other states, great states, they don’t have standing. They didn’t go into the evidence. If you would look at the evidence – thousands of pages of evidence – we have over a thousand affidavits from people that saw tens of thousands of ballots. But here’s the point: They’re winning these things on little technicalities, like a thing called standing. They’re saying the President of the United States does not have standing.”

Actually, many courts have heard Trump’s case, but then dismissed it because it was lacking in evidence and legal reasoning. And “standing” is not a “little technicality.” It is core principle of the law that requires a plaintiff to establish damage and/or loss. That means that, not only is the evidence considered, but also the claim that what the evidence shows produced tangible harm. Not a single court had found any of that.

What’s more, Trump seems to think that he should have standing just because he’s the President. That’s another example of his laughably poor grasp of elementary legal concepts. Plus, you have to wonder why Trump failed to produce any of the evidence he is crowing about in a courtroom. Most likely because it has no validity and would be tossed out, even by the Republican-appointed judges who have already ruled against him.

What Trump is demonstrating so plainly is that his facade of manliness is as fake as his invisible healthcare plan or his Mexican financed border wall. And despite his insistence that he is smarter than anyone in the known galaxy, he can’t even prevail over a rag-tag crew of jelly-bellied socialists. He’s having trouble facing the fact that he was outsmarted and beaten decisively by a candidate that he portrayed as “sleepy” and “unfit to serve.” So the question then is: What does that make Trump?

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.

‘COVID 4 ALL’: The Healthcare Plan From Trump and Fox News

Posted by on December 4, 2020 at 5:01 pm. 1 Comments :

The United States is notching ever higher records for coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths with each passing day. And experts predict that this winter it is likely to get worse before it gets better. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is furiously tweeting deranged rants about having won an election that he decisively lost to Joe Biden. In fact, Trump’s last 100 tweets have all been about what he calls the “election hoax,” but not one tweet about the pandemic that is hurting so many millions of Americans.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

Naturally, Fox News is fulfilling its mission to serve as Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda. They are supporting his delusional election victory fantasies. They malign Biden and other Democrats at every opportunity. They are even attacking Dr. Fauci. But worst of all, they persist in disinforming the American people about the deadly pandemic that is ravaging the nation. No wonder studies have proven that watching Fox News actually increases coronavirus fatalities.

On Friday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends delivered yet another segment that trivializes the coronavirus. This time they melded it with lies about Biden as well. Co-host Brian Kilmeade sought to criticize Biden’s recent remarks about his intention to ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his administration. That’s a small sacrifice that is estimated will save up to 70,000 lives and would culminate just as vaccines are expected to become available to the general public. Apparently that’s too much to ask of the pseudo-patriots who believe that such a request is an imposition on their freedom to infect and murder their fellow Americans. Here’s just a taste of Kilmeade’s rant:

Let’s breakdown this dishonest, dystopian diatribe.

“You people want to go down with a fight, that’s the American spirit.”

Kilmeade is apparently referring to the mask resisters and the bar owners who refuse to participate in a real world solution to this health crisis. So Kilmeade glorifies violence as a response to common sense public safety regulations. He continued…

“Number one, the President-elect, if he becomes President of the United States…”

Notice that Kilmeade is questioning whether Biden will ever be sworn in as president. He’s pacifying the Trump cultists who still believe that millions of votes were manufactured by thousands of conspirators who managed to keep the whole criminal conspiracy secret without even a shred of evidence escaping. He continued…

[Biden] “…cannot mandate masks for 50 states.”

Here Kilmeade is inventing an outrage where none exists in reality. Biden has never proposed mandating masks for all 50 states. What he’s proposing are mandates for federal facilities and requests for cooperation from governors and for citizens to voluntarily comply. He continued…

“Thirty seven states already have mask mandates.”

This is actually true. That’s a milestone that should be acknowledged for Fox News. However, Kilmeade thinks that 37 states are enough, even though it means that 13 states – all with Republican governors – still do not have mask mandates. That means tens of millions of people in states where the pandemic surge is at its highest point. But Fox isn’t concerned about that. He continued…

“Nobody’s gonna make you put a mask on in your car, or sit alone on a beach, or in your backyard. So good luck with that.”

This is another strawman argument that isn’t being proposed by anyone. He continued…

“We’re already doing almost everything they told us to do. So I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

This is half true. Kilmeade certainly does not know what Biden is talking about. As for the other half, Many Republicans and Trump supporters are pointedly not doing what they are asked. And at the beginning of this rant Kilmeade praised them for it as a demonstration of the American “fighting” spirit. He continued…

“The election’s over, as they try to find out what actually happened.”

Finally, Kilmeade threw in a last jab at the election results. Notice that, even though he concedes that the election is over, he contradicts himself by implying the opposite – that we still don’t know what happened. We do. Trump lost!

This segment is typical of what Fox News presents to its viewers throughout the day. They simply don’t care that their lies are producing more grief and hardship, so long as it reinforces the lies dispensed by Trump. The negligence, incompetence, and deliberate malfeasance of Trump has resulted in an unprecedented human catastrophe. And Trump is personally responsible. But so are the Republican politicians who haven’t had the guts to oppose him. And so are the bootlickers at Fox News who have eagerly backed him up.

And let’s not forget the glassy-eyed disciples in Trump World who blindly embrace everything he says. They are the sheep who allow him to pretend to have a base of support to carry out his atrocities. They nod along obliviously very much like this inadvertently accurate meme posted by the MyPillow con artist and Trump backer, Mike Lindell:

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.

Fox News is Already Speculating About Super Trump Beating COVID-19

Posted by on October 2, 2020 at 11:53 am. 2 Comments :

The news that Donald Trump and the First Lady have tested positive for COVID-19 came as a surprise Thursday night, but not because it could not have been predicted. Trump’s disregard for practicing the most rudimentary safety guidelines stipulated by his own health experts (Dr. Fauci, CDC, Surgeon General, etc.) provided a reliable foreshadowing of what has now occurred.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

The nation sends its thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. Never mind that Trump didn’t share that concern for the more than 200,000 Americans who have already died (and seven million plus infected). This is a nation with compassion that exceeds the callousness of its current “leader.” It’s just so sad that so many had to suffer because of Trump’s negligence and vanity to refuse to promote the sort of behavior (social distancing, mask wearing, etc.) that would have saved tens of thousands of lives. Even now, his administration has still not adopted a consistent, coherent strategy for the safe reopening of businesses and schools.

Throughout the past eight months, Fox News has been Trump’s accomplice in misinforming the public about the very real risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic. And that role hasn’t changed now that the President is among its victims. On Friday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends engaged in their typical banter, exalting Trump and maligning his critics. And in the course of their daily propaganda production, co-host Brian Kilmeade had this to say:

“Let me take it to another level. People think – and there’s a lot of people out there who say that ‘If I get it I die.’ Seven million people have it, it’s terrible. Now what if the most famous person in the world gets it and in ten days it’s back out? Doesn’t that also send a message that you could say whatever you want in stats and graphs but I give you an example of somebody who’s in that danger age of 74 who is out there, gets it, and beats it? Could that also send a message?”

Fox Business host Stuart Varney initially suggested that people might become more cautious about following safety guidelines and be more resistant to the opening of bars, restaurants, etc. But he quickly shifted course and agreed with Kilmeade that a rapid recovery by Trump would “mitigate concern about the virus.” And they clearly regarded such a relaxation of concern as a good thing.

There is so much wrong with that attitude. First of all, people need to be concerned about a virus that has killed 200,000 Americans and counting. Any “mitigation” of concern is a sure path to more deaths. Secondly, if Trump recovers quickly, that tells us nothing about how the virus would affect anyone else. How many Americans have teams of physicians and first-class hospital facilities catering to their exclusive needs 24/7?

What Kilmeade is suggesting is that the “message” of a rapid recovery by Trump is that it affirms the belief among his cult disciples that Trump is omnipotent; a Superman in the White House who can rescue us from any and all threats. It’s a dangerously tunnel-blind faith in the false divinity of someone who has more in common with a sociopath than a savior.

For several weeks Trump has tried to distract the nation from the tragic consequences of the pandemic that he so badly mismanaged. He’s tried to shift the public discourse to civil unrest, the Supreme Court, phony assertions of election fraud, and whatever other manufactured controversy he recently saw on Fox News. But now the coronavirus is back at the top of the news cycle, and likely will remain there for the remainder of the campaign. And if there is anything positive to take away from this, it’s that it may result in people becoming more committed to safer behavior. And that alone could save thousands of lives.

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

Trump Whines that Chris Wallace of Fox News is ‘Controlled By the Radical Left’

Posted by on September 24, 2020 at 12:56 pm. NO Comments :

As Election Day draws nearer, Donald Trump continues to descend into a psychotic abyss that exhibits the frantic tangle of his fear and desperation. It’s become serious enough that the American people can’t help but have noticed. Much of the evidence of his mental infirmity is revealed in his increasingly bizarre insistence that the election is rigged against him and that he will refuse to accept the results.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

Adding to the cornucopia of crazy that is Trump these says is how he expresses his roller-coaster, love/hate relationship with his own Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News). Trump has been making almost daily appearances on the network, partly because his cult rallies and phony press conferences are no longer being carried live by every network.

On Thursday morning Trump got another tongue bath from Brian Kilmeade on his Fox News radio show. Among the topics discussed were his disappointment that Fox News polls show him losing to Joe Biden (as do all other polls). Fox’s pollsters are “incompetent,” Trump complained to Kilmeade. “They were one of the most far off of all polls,” Trump lied. “They don’t like me, I can tell you that. The worst polls are usually Fox.” Actually, Fox’s polls are generally pretty accurate and in line with the mainstream of credible polling.

Trump also continued his recent rash of ranting about voting by mail. Never mind that he’s currently imploring his cult followers to do so. But in his latest Fox gripe session, he told Kilmeade that “These [mail-in] ballots are a horror show.” He then went on to weave an entirely made up story about discarded ballots:

“They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots. Eight ballots. In an office yesterday in a certain state. They had Trump written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can. And this is what’s gonna happen. This is what’s gonna happen. And we’re investigating that.”

Notice that in a matter of seconds Trump increased the number of trashed ballots thirty percent, from six to eight? By sundown there will have been 8,000 of them. NBC News asked the White House for confirmation of this garbage story, but the response they received failed to back up Trump’s obvious fabrication.

Finally, Trump sought to suck up a bit by complimenting Fox News Sunday anchor, Chris Wallace. However, in Trump’s warped mind, a compliment is bragging about having delivered high ratings for interviews he did with Wallace. “Because,” as Trump said to Kilmeade, “it’s all about ratings.” Trump went on to say what he really thinks of Wallace:

“I would be willing to bet that he won’t ask Biden tough questions. He’ll ask me tough questions. It’ll be unfair, I have no doubt about it. But he’ll be controlled by the radical left. They control him.”

That’s right. Trump thinks Chris Wallace, a seventeen year veteran of Fox News, is controlled by the radical left. As is Rupert Murdoch. And Joe Biden. And they’re all in cahoots with George Soros. It’s conspiracy, I tells ya. And woe be to us all if Trump weren’t here to expose it.

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

Fox News Spins Ludicrous Comparison of 9/11 to the Coronavirus

Posted by on September 11, 2020 at 2:43 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s the 19th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It was a day that shook the nation, and the world, in a profoundly painful way that woke many up to the reality of our vulnerabilities. And on this solemn day there have been some respectful remembrances and thoughtful condolences for the victims, their families, and for the first responders who sacrificed so much.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

Of course, there have also been some grossly inappropriate attempts to hijack this day for political and/or personal advantage. Donald Trump was notorious for that when he bragged on the day of the tragedy that his building in Manhattan had just become the tallest in the city:

It should come as no surprise that Fox News joined in on the brazen exploitation of horror. On Friday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends aired a segment that drew a preposterous comparison between 9/11 and the coronavirus pandemic. Co-host Brian Kilmeade unleashed this nauseating rant (video below) that had no basis in reality or even sanity. “New York is attacked,” Kilmeade began. “America is under siege.” And he continued…

“But at the same time, New York kept moving. In a very short time the stock market was open. People were still getting into subways. People still went to work. At the same time keeping an ear to the news to find out what’s next as we would mobilize in a matter of months and kill almost every single person that was involved in this. The first generation of Al Qaeda.”

“That’s what’s different now. This, we stopped. And America looked around and go ‘What do we do?’ We knew who the enemy was then. Here we’ve got this invisible virus that the Chinese are responsible for, but it doesn’t look like that’s an attack. “

Kilmeade is earning his reputation for being the stupidest man on Fox News. He apparently doesn’t realize that people were comfortable returning to the subways after 9/11 because they were in no danger of contracting an airplane crash from another passenger. Their coworkers were unlikely to infect them with a collapsing skyscraper.

Kilmeade is likewise unaware that the reason we “stopped” this time is because COVID-19 is a highly transmissible infectious agent for which there is no vaccine or treatment. His attempt to draw parallels between these two events is simply pathetic, but not at all unexpected from Fox News.

In addition to his absurd correlations and xenophobic insults aimed at China, Kilmeade also made some blatantly false statements. While America was attacked, we were not under siege. There was no invading army and no subsequent assault. The stock markets remained closed until September 17, the longest shutdown since 1933, which Kilmeade characterized as “short.” We did retaliate against the Taliban that was harboring Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, we did not kill “every single person that was involved.” Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, wasn’t killed until ten years later.

Finally, Kilmeade’s description of Americans looking around wondering what to do utterly fails to explain why that’s so. It’s because we have a president who lied to the people about the peril this virus posed. Trump knew how deadly it was and purposefully withheld that information in order to advance his reelection prospects. He repeatedly downplayed the danger, oversold the development of a vaccine, and mocked those who advised and practiced safety guidelines such as social distancing and facial masks.

Trump also contradicted the experts and disseminated falsehoods about unproven cures such as hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach. Even worse, he embraced quacks who ranted about “demon sperm” and spread crackpot conspiracy theories that only a fraction of those reported to have died from COVID-19 were actually its victims.

Is there any wonder why some Americans were baffled about what to do? Even now there are those who believe that the coronavirus is (as Trump has said) a hoax. Never mind the nearly 200,000 graves (6,400,000+ infected) and the grieving families and friends of those stricken. The confusion that Kilmeade referenced is almost entirely the fault of Trump. The remainder of the guilt lies with Kilmeade, and his confederates at Fox News, who continue to cover for him.

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

Fox News Defends Slave Owners: ‘It Doesn’t Mean They Were Terrible People’

Posted by on June 26, 2020 at 1:23 pm. 10 Comments :

There is a bitter controversy spreading across America like a viral pandemic. The nation’s past is being held to greater scrutiny as a result of repeated incidents of unarmed black Americans being murdered by the police. This evidence of systemic racism has boiled over into a much needed dialog on what values our country ought to be preserving and encouraging.

Fox News, KKK

Citizens have been pouring into the streets to express their anger and their refusal to tolerate the prejudice that presents itself in the form of “historical” statues. These monuments were intended to pay tribute to leaders of the treasonous Confederacy. In some cases these statues have been ripped from their pedestals or otherwise defaced. Donald Trump has taken the side of the traitors (while accusing others of treason) and is calling for the arrests and harsh punishment of the protesters. On Friday morning he even tweeted “Wanted” posters. He is doing far more to persecute these demonstrators than he has ever done to hold actual racist murderers accountable for their crimes.

Those making arguments in favor of maintaining these statues barely disguise their racist motives. They assert that it’s a matter of preserving history. But we do not erect statues of traitors and criminals as historical markers. If we did there would be statues of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray. Statues are honorific, not history lessons. And removing them doesn’t erase any historical data. The South’s rebellion to preserve slavery is still recorded in history books and documentaries, as it should be.

Cut to Fox News (the network that is literally killing people). On Friday’s edition of Fox and Friends, the now social distancing “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham to discuss these issues. Co-host Brian Kilmeade led off with this wholehearted embrace of what Trump once called the “very fine people on both sides” of the racial hatred debate. “These people were right,” Kilmeade began, and “Those people were wrong. But it doesn’t mean they were terrible people. They were people of their times.”

Really? Kilmeade is defending the slave holders who were wonderful folks who just liked to own and brutalize other human beings as if they were cattle. What’s so terrible about that? As “people of their times,” how could they be faulted? How are they any different than the Nazis who were people of the 1940s in Germany? How are they any different than the KKK and the white nationalists in America today who are merely people of these times?

Here’s a creative way some Bulgarian artists dealt with the Russian oppressors of their times:

The fact that Kilmeade considers that a valid argument is precisely what’s wrong with Fox News and those who align themselves with their heinous political ideology (including Trump and his Deplorables). When it was Sen. Graham’s turn to contribute to this dialog, he didn’t bother to renounce what had been said so far. In fact, he elaborated by attacking the protesters in even more loathsome terms (video below):

“The people doing this hate our country. They hate the way we were founded. They hate capitalism. They have no respect for religion. They have no respect for diversity of thought. These people are the most radical people known to America. We’re at war with them politically. They want to destroy America as we know it. They hate America and every symbol of our country from the flag to the statues.

They hate. They want to turn us into a socialist nation. They want to destroy the family unit as we know it. And I tell you what, to the listeners out there. You may not believe you’re in a war, but you are, politically, and you need to take sides, and you need to help this president.”

Sound familiar? This is the dehumanizing rhetoric of the Old South that regarded people as animals and property. In Graham’s view, they have no rights, no decency, no family values. They represent everything that is unholy and against the country as seen by Graham and his ilk. And the only solution, according to Graham and his Fox News cohorts, is (civil) war.

Make no mistake, Graham and Fox News speak for Trump. Not that anyone outside of their bubble believes them, or that Trump needs their help. He’s been saying the very same things himself. This is the diseased mindset of people who still haven’t accepted that the South lost. They still want the statues that honor traitors. They still want to fly the Confederate flag. They still want to oppress African-Americans and others they regard as non-white deviants. And they are terrified that they are losing the battle to retain their delusions of superiority. Which, thankfully, they are.

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

PROOF: Trump is Lying About Vote-By-Mail Fraud to Suppress Turnout

Posted by on June 1, 2020 at 12:26 pm. 2 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has been accelerating his disinformation campaign to delegitimize mail-in voting. Never mind that it has been in practice since the Civil War, is used extensively by members of the military, and millions of people have voted safely for decades with only extremely rare incidents of misuse.

Donald Trump, Vote By Mail

Nevertheless, Trump is obsessed with what he is falsely maligning as a process rife with fraud. He has zero evidence to support that claim, but facts were never very high among his priorities. Instead, he simply tweets his flagrant lies hoping that repetition (such as this and this and this and this and this) will persuade the dimmest of his cult followers to buy into his fictional narrative. Take this one tweet for example:

Notice that Trump is focused solely on the partisan argument that Republicans need to oppose mail-in voting. Ironically, he’s admitting that greater access to the ballot box is detrimental to the GOP, which is actually true. That’s the real reason that Trump and his confederates are so worried about it. They know that they must suppress the vote in order to win.

However, that doesn’t stop Trump from taking advantage of mail-in voting when he determines that it’s in his interest to do so. Recent fundraising letters sent out by his campaign explicitly encouraged his supporters to request mail-in ballots and use them. “For the FIRST TIME EVER,” it reads, “every single eligible voter can now request a primary ballot and safely vote for President Trump from the comfort of their own home.” Well, is that special? It’s safe and so convenient and free of any potential for fraud. What’s more, Trump himself appealed to his glassy-eyed disciples to “Make sure you mail in those ballots before election day..”

So it’s clear that Trump is a flaming hypocrite on this issue. He wants his Klan to vote by mail, but is working furiously to prohibit it for everyone else. His ludicrous claims that Democrats favor it because they intend to cheat fall apart in light of these remarks.

Equally ludicrous are his shills on Fox News who back his lies. On Monday morning Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends suggested that Trump add the words “in my opinion” to avoid making his lies about election fraud controversial. Huh? How does that in any way change the fact that he’s fear mongering about election fraud with allegations he’s made up from thin air?

This is typical of the right-wing effort to suppress the vote and prevent Americans from exercising their most precious right as citizens. It’s what Republicans have been trying to do for decades. They know that the majority of the American people support progressive principles, and if they vote the GOP (Greedy One Percent) will suffer the consequences of their unpopular, self-serving, elitist agenda. But Trump cannot pretend that he’s ideologically opposed to voting by mail after having been caught promoting it. And we the people cannot let him forget that.

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

Math-Challenged Fox News Shills Callously Dismiss 100,000 American Deaths

Posted by on May 26, 2020 at 1:16 pm. 5 Comments :

At this point no one is surprised by Donald Trump’s heartless indifference to the tragic loss of nearly 100,000 Americans (so far), not to mention the 1.7 million who have been sickened, some with permanent disabilities. He refuses to acknowledge his direct responsibility for the pain and suffering that has resulted from his negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance. And he continually proves that all he cares about is himself.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

However, it would a grievous mistake to allow Trump’s loathsome inhumanity to become normalized just because of its frequency. But that’s precisely what Trump hopes will occur. And despite his recent vicious attacks of late, his mouthpieces at State TV (aka Fox News) are stepping up their campaign to achieve that goal.

On Tuesday’s episode of Trump’s favorite morning lie-fest, Fox and Friends, co host Brian Kilmeade took a valiant stab at flagrant Trump-fluffing during a segment discussing the death toll of COVID-19 (coronavirus). Naturally, Kilmeade and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were determined to downplay the catastrophic human consequences of Trump’s ineptitude. When addressing the magnitude of the pandemic’s destruction, Kilmeade launched into his propaganda spiel (video below):

“We definitely noticed the seriousness when almost 100,000 Americans die, but what I took from Dr. Siegel’s math was 0.3%, not even 3%, 0.3% — we’ve shut down an entire country for 0.3% of those who get it, lose their lives.”

It’s bad enough when Trump and his media sycophants purposefully lie to spread their disinformation, but these remarks are pitifully stupid. Let’s begin with the fact that 100,000 deaths is actually about 6% of the total population of infected persons in the United States (1,700,000). So Kilmeade is only off by 2,000%.

What’s more, Kilmeade’s argument is that, because the death toll is so low (according to his fractured math), the nation shouldn’t be subject to restrictions intended to impede the spread of the coronavirus. He is even suggesting that there should never have been such restrictions in the first place since the risks were so minimal. We’ll set aside for now that Fox News regards 100,000 deaths as trivial. Apparently none of the deceased were members of their families. But he actually believes that the mortality rate would be the same even if there were no restrictions at all from the start.

More to the point, Kilmeade is missing entirely the fact that the death toll is “only” 100,000 precisely because there were tough restrictions on risky behaviors, implemented by state governors in spite of Trump’s opposition. Had that not been the case there would have been many thousands of more fatalities. A recent study by Columbia University found that if the mitigation efforts (social distancing, face masks, etc.) were in place even one week earlier, it would have saved 36,000 lives.

The pressure being applied by Trump and Fox News to “reopen” the economy is, by all accounts, premature and dangerous. Every public health expert, including those on Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force, are warning that a second wave of infections – and subsequent deaths – is almost certain. That’s particularly true if Trump’s call to stand down is followed by everything from businesses to churches to schools to his own upcoming Republican National Convention (that’s having its own problems getting off the ground).

Consequently, any further loss of life will be directly attributable to the Fox News Ministry of Disinformation that is lying to the American people. And Fox will share that dubious “honor” with Trump and the Republican confederacy that continues to enable what he himself called “American Carnage.”

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

Science FICTION: Now Fox News Says Coronavirus ‘Was Not and Is Not a Pandemic’

Posted by on April 13, 2020 at 12:47 pm. 5 Comments :

The United States is suffering through the slow torture of a painful unprecedented calamity. But enough about Donald Trump. The American people are enduring a hardship of mammoth proportions that is threatening both their health and economic welfare. It’s a challenge that requires a shared resolve to stare clear-eyed into the abyss of a frightful future.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Coronavirus

For the most part, Americans have been meeting this challenge with courage and a determination to prevail over the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Victory demands facing their troubles honestly and not being afraid to recognize difficult truths. It’s too bad that these efforts are made all the more difficult by the ignorant and dangerous misinformation that is disseminated by Trump and Fox News.

On Monday morning, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends interviewed former Reagan Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett, a Fox contributor. His profoundly idiotic remarks made it hard to connect him with any office where education was involved. Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Bennett to comment on the 22,000+ deaths so far. This is what Bennett – and Fox News – are still shoving down America’s throat (video below):

Bennett: Now they say 60,000 people will die. 61,000 is what we lost to the flu in 2017 and 2018. The flu […] If you look at those numbers and see the comparable, we’re gonna have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.

“For this we scared the hell out of the American people. We lost 17 million jobs. We put a major dent in the economy. We closed down the schools. You heard Dr. Oz say we didn’t have to do that. We shut down the churches and so on. You know, this was not and is not a pandemic. But we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this.”

Kilmeade: Well, it is labeled a pandemic.

The measure of mendacity in those comments is hard to quantify. Let’s start with Bennett’s trivialization of the deaths attributed to COVID-19. His comparison of the coronavirus to the flu is absurd. The 61,000 deaths from the flu occurred over the course of a year. And he chose a particularly bad year. The 2018-2019 season saw half that many flu deaths. The 60,000 estimated deaths from the coronavirus would be over a few months. Also, the fatality rate for the coronavirus is much higher.

What’s more, the lowered projections are only because many states implemented their own “Stay at Home” orders and other precautionary guidelines that Trump foolishly neglected. Those guidelines must remain in effect if we are to avoid much higher rates of fatalities. But Bennett is advocating dropping those guidelines, which would result in a second wave that could be even worse than the first.

Bennett’s assertion that COVID-19 “was not and is not a pandemic” is beyond stupid. It’s a wholly dishonest attempt to deceive people that could end up costing many more lives. Kilmeade’s weak interjection that the virus is “labeled” a pandemic is hardly sufficient to correct the record. It is not “labeled” a pandemic. It IS a pandemic. That would be like saying that Hurricane Katrina was merely labeled a hurricane.

It would be bad enough if this interview took place in early February when Trump and the rest of his right-wing enablers were still saying that it was “totally under control,” with only five victims and it was “going down to zero” in a couple of days. But airing this now, after half a million Americans were infected and 22,000 died, tells us that Fox News still isn’t through misinforming the public about the risks of this pandemic. And if Fox News isn’t through, then neither is Trump.

Indeed, Trump is currently forming plans to “reopen” the country by May 1, a date that no health expert has endorsed. But then, his only considerations are for his bank account and his reelection prospects.

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