Fox & Friends

Whut? Fox News Joins Donald Trump in Promoting the Deranged QAnon Conspiracy Crackpottery

Posted by on March 22, 2019 at 12:53 pm. 0 Comments :

The husband of Donald Trump’s senior counsel, Kellyanne Conway, recently posted a tweet with the psychiatric definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The nine enumerated criteria are a frighteningly perfect match for the obvious character flaws of our mentally infirm president. But can a cable television “news” network also suffer from this mental illness?

Fox News, Pepe

Fox New seems to be trying its darndest to prove that it is just as psychologically diseased as Trump, the president they created and adore. A recent poll revealed that Republicans who watch Fox News are mind-melded to Trump with near unanimity on policies and opinions. It’s an ideological embrace that exists only in cults wherein the followers are forced to believe everything – and only the things – that their leader tells them to.

There have been numerous examples of Fox News adopting flagrantly dishonest conspiracy theories such as the PizzaGate nonsense that alleged that Hillary Clinton and her accomplices ran a child sex/slavery ring from the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. And there was the Seth Rich matter that fantasized that Rich was a “Deep State” operative who leaked Clinton’s hacked emails and was later murdered by her assassination squad.

These are the sort of ludicrous myths that have sprung up around the Internet cesspools of right-wing hysterics like Alex Jones of InfoWars. But they were also embraced by the hosts of Fox News primetime programs like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. And now Fox has taken another leap into the abyss of wingnuttery that proves they can never be considered a legitimate news network.

On Friday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends First, “reporter” Carley Shimkus read a tweet from the anonymous Twitter account of QAnon76. The tweet itself was rather innocuous, defending Trump’s Executive Order that ostensibly protected free speech on America’s college campuses (it doesn’t actually do anything, except to divert the news cycle from all the other bad news Trump generates). However, QAnon76 is part of the larger “QAnon” movement that believes there is a secret society, headed by Trump, that is organizing to destroy the anti-Trump “Deep State” factions burrowed into the U.S. government. The Twitter account has more than 160,000 delusional followers.

It is not plausible that Fox News didn’t know who this was when they filled the screen with a graphic clearly showing the name of the tweeter. So it has to be presumed that they did it deliberately to advance their screwy, cartoon agenda. And they would be aligning with their Dear Leader, Trump, in this endeavor. Just this past weekend, Trump retweeted a video that was originally posted by the Twitter account of “Deep State Exposed,” another confirmed QAnon disciple who also posts manufactured videos of Trump assaulting journalists. And Trump actually met with a QAnon figure in the Oval Office last August.

So for anyone who wasn’t convinced that the metamorphosis of the Trump White House into a full blown conspiracy theory factory wasn’t complete, we can put those doubts to rest. And the same goes for Fox News, who are now unashamedly coordinating their message and mission with the craziest freakazoids on the InterTubes. This could pass for one of the most hilarious bits from The Onion if it weren’t all true – and bone-chillingly scary.

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

Is Donald Trump the President of the United States, or of Fox News Marketing and PR?

Posted by on March 19, 2019 at 2:49 pm. 0 Comments :

The torrid love affair between Donald Trump and Fox News has never been exactly secret. Fox has given him more free airtime than any other public figure. And he has granted them more interviews (40+) than all other news networks combined. And all of the exposure has been unceasingly adoring. Trump even had a weekly segment on Fox and Friends (Mornings with Trump) long before his presidential aspirations.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

The recent article in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer neatly sewed together much of the evidence proving that Fox News is not merely a conservative leaning network, but a blatantly biased propaganda mouthpiece for the President. And to demonstrate that it isn’t a relationship they are ashamed of, both Fox and Trump have escalated their fetishistic fondness for one another since the article was published. Trump, in particular, has unleashed a rash of promotions of Fox News and the shills who call it home. Just in the last four days Trump has posted ten videos from Fox:

  1. Lou Dobbs on Trump’s phony national emergency
  2. Lou Dobbs with cartoon pundits Diamond and Silk
  3. Outnumbered ranting about a “Witch Hunt”
  4. Jason Chaffetz exhibiting his undying Hillary Clinton fetish
  5. Fox and Friends pushing Trump’s idiotic vanity wall
  6. Maria Bartiromo obediently maligning the FBI
  7. Mark Levin spending seven minutes fluffing Trump with Bill Bennett
  8. Tucker Carlson doing the fake history of the Russia “hoax”
  9. Sean Hannity lying about a Democratic conspiracy against Trump
  10. Sean Hannity succumbing to his ludicrous “Deep State” dementia

Remember, this is the president who says that he doesn’t have time to watch TV because of all the documents that he has to read (as if he can read). But not only does he have plenty of time to watch TV, he even has time to feverishly post tweets of his viewing. And this doesn’t even count the numerous textual tweets that reference things he just saw on Fox News.

Last week Trump’s viewing was sufficiently disturbed that he plaintively pleaded with Fox News to return Jeanine Pirro, who Fox briefly suspended due to her flagrantly racist comments about Muslim representative Ilhan Omar. He also stood up for Tucker Carlson whose past bigotry, and boorish profanity, was revealed in recordings from his radio guest spots with Bubba, the Love Sponge.

These promos for Fox News are pure puffery on behalf of the President for his favorite bootlicking broadcaster. It is wholly unprecedented in American politics. And the marketing executives at Fox News must be thrilled. The question is whether Trump is volunteering this assistance to Fox, or if Fox is directing it.

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

Trump and Fox News Seek to Deflect from Michael Cohen Testimony By Accusing Democrats of Infanticide

Posted by on February 27, 2019 at 10:33 am. 6 Comments :

On Wednesday morning the long anticipated testimony of Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, began before the House Oversight Committee. His prepared opening statement revealed that he intends to provide both testimony and documentary evidence that Trump is “a racist, con man, and cheat.” This has predictably triggered Trump who retweeted an absurd comment that did nothing but expose his flagrant fear of the truth.

Fox News, Laura Ingraham, Planned Parenthood

The fear of Cohen’s testimony has also infected Trump’s sycophantic defenders at State TV (aka Fox News). But their strategy for diverting attention away from the hearing has devolved into one of the most repulsive and dishonest series of accusations ever made, even by the low standards of the Trump era Republican Nationalist Party.

The onslaught began the night before the hearing with Fox’s primetime host, and devoted white supremacist, Laura Ingraham. In a segment that featured a chyron saying that the “Left Wants to Destroy Everything Traditional,” Ingraham practically drooled while asserting that “”Hitler, just like Planned Parenthood, practiced and defended mass extermination.”

So it’s Ingrahams’s position that individual women who choose to exercise their Constitutional rights regarding difficult health decisions are the equivalent of a murderous dictator who purposefully engaged in genocide? And this is the issue that Ingraham needed to raise on the eve of the Cohen testimony? Clearly her intent was to inflame a hostile fury among Fox’s viewers with the hopes of inciting an anger that would cloud their perspective of the pending hearing. And she wasn’t alone.

The following morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends broached the very same topic with the help of Trump’s White House counsel, Kellyanne Conway. And even though the subject of the segment was spelled out in the chyron reading “Michael Cohen Testifies on Capital Hill Today,” Conway unleashed a searing assault on Democrats that was completely false and defamatory:

“[Democrats] are for infanticide. They are for late-term abortion, taxpayer funded abortion, mid-term pregnancy abortion, sex selection abortion – when you don’t want another daughter, fine – just find out the sex of the baby and then exterminate it. Guess what? Now they’re for post-birth abortion.”

None of that is remotely true. However it is provocative and incendiary and intended to whip up a hysteria among the Deplorables watching Fox News that would shove aside any real discussion of the Cohen hearing. But these attempts to suppress any leakage of the news from the hearing only affirm just how terrified they are of the truth getting out. It’s a tactic that drips with fear. And it will work pretty well on Fox News viewers. Unfortunately for Trump, that is an ever-shrinking sector of the population.

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

HUH? Fox News’ Math-Challenged Hosts Declare that Free Market Salaries are Communism

Posted by on February 24, 2019 at 1:13 pm. 4 Comments :

The disease that infects the talking headcases at Fox News is apparently degenerative and causes its victims to decline ever further into the abyss of cognitive infirmity. This is especially true of the “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, whose combined IQ has yet to break the grass ceiling.

Fox News, Pete Hegseth

Donald Trump’s favorite morning show has a long history of hysterically offbase utterings. Their ratio of wrongness is in the stratosphere. Which is probably why Trump loves it so much. And a stinging example of this dumbassedness was aired on Sunday morning in a segment (video below) that was trying to make Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look dumb. They failed miserably.

The segment was a response to the recent announcement by Ocasio-Cortez that she would be paying all of her congressional staffers a living wage of at least $52,000 per year. The thought of people being treated with respect, and compensated fairly for their work was just too much for the Fox Newsies, so they concocted an argument that they were certain would slay the newest Democratic monster at their gates. It went a little something like this:

Griff Jenkins: Get a load of this. A tweet went out yesterday. She said “Leadership begins at home,” whatever, or however she put it. She’s basically announcing that she is going to ‘redistribute’ the money appropriated to her congressional office to make sure that the entry level staffers get a fair share of money.

Heaven Forbid! Whatever will become of our country if the representatives we elect to serve our interests start actually behaving in accordance with our values? Notice how Jenkins worked in the term “redistribute,” in order to invoke the memory of some imagined socialist nightmare. Never mind that redistribution of wealth is common in free societies (even capitalist ones) where some measure of equity is sought through taxation and public assistance. In fact, the Trump Tax Scam was textbook redistribution, except it went from the working class to the wealthy.

Jenkins then went on to “Fox-plain” what was so terribly wrong with Ocasio-Cortez’s salary plan. He failed to observe that it was completely in line with the free market decision making of any employer. Instead, he complained that in order to pay entry level staffers a little more, she would have to pay her chief of staff a little less. Holy Crap! Anything but that. Our nation was built on the principle that the elitists at the top should receive all the benefits and the peons should be grateful for scraps. And this is when Jenkins’ co-host chimed in to agree:

Pete Hegseth: She said, “Everyone in my office will be paid a living wage. So I’m going to pay $15 an hour.” Which means your entry level intern is making fifty-two grand, while your chief of staff, who has a very important role in a congressional office, now is capped at eighty, as opposed to the actual market rate on Capitol Hill, which is closer to $150,000. So everyone’s between 52 and 80. It’s actually socialism and communism on display.”

You have to wonder how much Hegseth is getting paid, since being able to do simple math is apparently not a requirement for his job. His claim that $15.00 an hour would be $52,000 per year is only off by $20,800. But more importantly, his contention that an employer choosing to set salaries as she sees fit is tantamount to communism proves that he is as bad at political science as he is at math.

Employers make these decisions based on multiple factors, including experience, recruiting, workplace morale, retention, and yes, even personal values. But according to Hegseth, all employers should be bound by externally imposed rules that may not satisfy their business goals. That’s actually closer to communism than anything Ocasio-Cortez has done. And it’s closer to assholery than anyone spewing opinions on television should be allowed to get away with.

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

Trump Freaks Out Over Fake Fox News Report that 42 Million Latin Americans are Invading the U.S.

Posted by on February 10, 2019 at 10:23 am. 2 Comments :

The prospects of Donald Trump getting the funding he craves for his idiotic vanity wall along the southern border are declining with each new day. Even he recognized in a whimpering tweet that the bipartisan congressional Conference Committee hashing out a compromise bill are leaning toward a skimpy sum that couldn’t be used for any actual wall building.

Fox News, Immigration

So naturally Trump is lashing out in the irrational and childish manner for which he is well known. His purpose, of course, isn’t to inspire a constructive dialogue, but to incite fear, hatred, and division. And he employs his usual bag of tricks to achieve those ends, mainly consisting of whining and lying. On Sunday morning he tweeted that:

It goes without saying that Trump’s assessment of the situation is entirely devoid of facts. What he describes as a looming disaster is actually just a set of hypotheticals that he has taken completely out of context. The Gallup poll he’s citing is much more nuanced than in his simplistic retelling. And, as usual, he didn’t provide a link to it for fear that people would be able to see the truth for themselves.

The poll asked a broadly hypothetical question of residents in Latin American countries about whether they would like to immigrate and, if so, what country would be their preferred destination. The survey results said that twenty-seven percent would like to immigrate, and that thirty-five percent of those would choose to go to the United States.

The only thing this tells us is that there is significant dissatisfaction with life in many of the Latin American countries. Who didn’t already know that? Much of the region is burdened with poverty, violence, and corrupt governments. Also, who is surprised that the U.S. would be a popular destination? Would Trump prefer it if our country was regarded as slime hole that no one wanted to move to? Although it does seem like that’s what he’s trying to turn it into.

Trump’s ignorance is further demonstrated by his omission of other relevant data on international migration. In another recent Gallup poll it was found that an even larger percentage of Europeans (41%) also say they would like to move to another country. Similarly, the top migrant destination worldwide is the U.S., with 158 million people – more than three times the number from Latin America alone – expressing an interest in moving here. For some reason, Trump didn’t bother to mention the potential invasion of America by Europeans. I guess that isn’t an issue for him and his white-wing Republican Nationalist Party.

It’s also notable that Trump didn’t come to rant about this after doing some deep research on his own or consulting his “experts” in the State Department. As usual, he was simply live-tweeting what he had just watched on Fox News. His favorite morning program, Fox and Friends, did a segment wherein the “Curvy Couch” potatoes featured this distorted take on the Gallup poll. And shortly thereafter Trump’s tweet appeared.

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

This is more proof that Fox News constitutes the “brain trust” of his administration. And, as a result, the nation is mired in the ignorance and bigotry that fills Fox’s programming 24/7. It’s a dangerous recipe that combines the ultra-rightist media with government power to poison the minds of the Deplorables who are most vulnerable to such lies and propaganda. And this Cult of Trump, with its State TV Ministry of Information, will continue to do harm until Trump and company are migrated to where they belong: Federal prison.

HUH? Fox News Doofus Thinks that the Democratic Women at the State of the Union Like Trump

Posted by on February 6, 2019 at 6:19 pm. 4 Comments :

Anyone who has spent any time watching Fox News is well aware that it is a blatantly biased mouthpiece for conservative Republicans in general and the President in particular. It is often referred to (by me) as “State TV” because of its devoted support for everything Donald Trump does and says. And when they aren’t furiously defending the President, they are viciously attacking his critics.

Fox News Friends

That creates plenty of opportunities for them to embarrass themselves with painfully ignorant rants and diatribes that are entirely devoid of facts, logic, or reason. Their hosts and guests are notoriously ill-informed or deliberately dishonest. But every now and then they outdo themselves with comments that are so profoundly stupid it’s hard to comprehend they could make them without the aid of some powerful psychotropic medications. And Wednesday morning, following Trump’s State of the Union address, there was just such an event.

During the speech, Trump pointed out that there were more women serving in the current session of Congress than ever before. That brought the mostly Democratic women in the audience to their feet as they cheered and congratulated themselves on their victories. This startled Trump who said that “You weren’t supposed to do that.” It’s hard to tell if he was referring to their applause or to the fact they got elected. But it was Fox News who really excelled at misunderstanding what had taken place. Steve Doocy, co-host of Fox and Friends, opened the program with this bit of celebration on Trump’s behalf:

“How do you like him now? Well the ladies of the freshman class of the Democrat Party seemed to like the President a lot last night. They gave him a standing ovation when he was talking about how many women were in the workforce and how many of them were elected in this past election.”

Holy Crap! Is Doocy having a stroke? Does he really believe that these Democratic women were standing up for Trump? The whole reason the were all wearing white was to make a statement that was critical of the Trump/GOP agenda that is rife with misogyny and discrimination. And their outburst was an obvious expression of satisfaction for having achieved so many electoral victories on behalf of women, and at the expense of Trump and the mostly Republican men they defeated.

They were protesting Trump, not applauding him. It’s one thing for Trump to misunderstand this reaction. He is a malignant narcissist who is mentally incapable of recognizing any derogatory sentiments aimed at him. His sickness results in his only seeing how much everyone – in his warped mind – loves and admires him. But watching these Fox News hacks so badly mangle reality makes one wonder if they are also severely delusional, or just determined to distort reality for their audience of Deplorables no matter what depths of absurdity they have to sink to. Either way, it exposes them as utterly useless as commentators on current events or more pointedly, the complexity of politics. But then, we always knew that about them.

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

Willfully Blind: Fox News Wonders ‘Where is the Russia Collusion?’ in Roger Stone Indictment

Posted by on January 25, 2019 at 11:32 am. 1 Comments :

The walls continue to close in around Donald Trump and his criminal enterprise. And these aren’t the border walls over which he orchestrated history’s longest government shutdown. On Friday morning one of Trump’s longest known and closest associates, Roger Stone was arrested on seven counts that include lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. Charges that Trump would be wise to study up on.

Donald Trump, Roger Stone

The arrest and indictment of Stone was not unexpected. In fact, Stone himself had predicted it in May of last year. Most observant followers of the Mueller investigation have known for some time that Stone was a target of the probe and that he likely ran afoul of the law. Even Trump acknowledged Stone’s complicity and praised him for clamming up about the case in a tweet that could have been written by an old-school mob boss:

Meanwhile, Fox News immediately went to work fulfilling their mission to shield Trump from any and all criticism. In a series of reports they downplayed any significance of Stone’s indictment, presenting it with exactly the same framing as Trump did in his knee-jerk tweet:

For the record, no one “alerted CNN to be there.” They noticed some unusual activity at the Grand Jury and surmised that an indictment might be imminent, so they sent a crew to Stone’s home in Florida. And you have to wonder which drug dealers Trump was referring to who were treated better than Stone who was released a couple of hours after his arrest. As for the “Greatest Witch Hunt,” it surely is the most successful with dozens of indictments and guilty pleas, some by top officials in Trump’s campaign.

Steve Doocy, co-host of Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends, was dumbstruck by the charges against Stone. But more importantly, he couldn’t understand how anyone would see any hint of collusion in the charges against Stone:

“When you look at the seven counts from the Grand Jury – obstruction of an official investigation, false statements to Congress, and perhaps witness tampering – once again, where is the Russia collusion?”

Where is the collusion? It’s everywhere. It’s in each and every one of the charges Doocy just itemized. The obstruction of justice is specifically related to Stone’s efforts to cover his involvement in conspiring with the Russia-affiliated WikiLeaks to acquire and publish emails stolen from Hillary Clinton and her team. The false statements to Congress were specifically related to his denials of such involvement. And the witness tampering was also connected to his attempts to intimidate his co-conspirators into keeping quiet about these crimes committed on behalf of Trump.

The position of Fox News is remarkably tunnel-blind, even for them. Some pundits have even said that these indictments are good news for Stone and Trump. Because it’s always such good news to have one of your closest confidants arrested for multiple felonies. The narrative at Fox is that because the word “collusion” wasn’t spelled out in the text of the indictments, that there wasn’t any. But that is a fool’s interpretation considering that each of the indictments explicitly address the criminal conspiracy in Trump World.

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

No doubt Fox’s cult-bound audience will buy into their narrative, as will Trump. But that is a small minority of the population at large, and the more new revelations about the Russia probe come out, the more the American people are turning against him. He is currently sitting at record lows of approval (37%), and even his favorite pollster, the thoroughly biased Rasmussen, has him at 54% disapproval (46% strongly disapprove). So Fox’s viewers are, once again, living in a manufactured world that bears no resemblance to reality. They are going to be shocked when all the facts are finally revealed. Unless Fox claims that they are “alternative facts” and that it’s all “fake news.” Which you can bet on.

Fox News Airs Ruth Bader Ginsburg Obituary Pic – What Would They Say if CNN Did the Same to Trump?

Posted by on January 21, 2019 at 7:02 pm. 5 Comments :

You wanna talk about “Fake News”? The most consistently dishonest news network, and Donald Trump’s personal State TV media division, Fox News, made a terrible mistake on Monday morning. They ran a graphic that implied that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.

Donald Trump, Obituary Pic

This is not only a bad mistake, it is a morbid revelation that Fox News keeps such graphic materials handy and ready to broadcast at a minutes notice. To be fair, all news outlets have obituaries prepared in the event of the death of any famous person. They keep the files handy so that the news can be announced quickly without having to create it from scratch on the spot. But it is unusual for them to be queued up for live airing unless the person has been reported to be on their deathbed.

The error occurred during Trump’s favorite program, Fox and Friends. Shortly afterward, co-host Steve Doocy acknowledged the mistake and apologized saying:

“We need to apologize. At the beginning of Ainsley’s interview with a professor, a technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a date on it. We don’t want to make it seem anything other than that was a mistake. That was an accident. We believe that she is still at home recovering from surgery. Big mistake in the control room.”

No kidding. The thing is, if this had happened on any other network with – for instance – a graphic of Donald Trump, Fox would have devoted half the show to it and insisted that it was a deliberate slur for which the network should be immediately shut down and the people responsible stripped of their citizenship and deported.

Following that, it would be picked up on subsequent programs throughout the day until it reached the peak of frenzy during Fox’s primetime block. Then Sean Hannity would declare that the whole thing was actually a threat to assassinate Trump and he would call for the arrest of the CNN anchors and executives.

Fortunately, this happened on Fox News so all that was required was a ten second acknowledgement and then we would never hear another word about it. No explanation for how it occurred. No word on who was responsible or what the consequences would be. And no comment from Ginsburg, the victim of this blunder, or any attempt to deliver a personal apology. But rest assured that the next time CNN or the New York Times misspells Melania’s name (as Trump did), there will be hours of attacks on what they call “Fake News.” And Trump himself would weigh in with his condemnations of “the enemy of the people” hoping for his demise.

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

Trump and Fox News Vainly Pretend that Polls Support The Border Wall and the Trump Shutdown

Posted by on January 15, 2019 at 3:39 pm. 1 Comments :

Desperation drives people to extreme and untenable measures. And that must be where Donald Trump and Fox News find themselves today as they try in vain to spin reality into something that resembles support for their positions on the Trump Shutdown and his idiotic vanity wall. With public opinion veering off into a bruising opposition to the Trump agenda, they are purposefully lying about recent poll results.

Donald Trump

On Tuesday’s episode of Fox and Friends, co-host Steve Doocy introduced a segment about the border/shutdown with a reference to a new poll by Quinnipiac University. He was almost giddy about reporting the good news that this poll allegedly propped up the President and his standing in the eyes of the American people:

“There’s a Quinnipiac poll that essentially supports what the President has been saying all along for about the last month. And that’s fifty-four percent of you, according to Quinnipiac, say ‘yes,’ there is a crisis at our southern border.”

So there you have it. The debate can now be put to rest and the Democrats in Congress should immediately surrender and give Trump everything he wants. Right?

Well, no. Because the poll had some additional insights that make this tidbit fairly irrelevant. For instance:

“American voters support 63 – 30 percent a Democratic proposal to reopen parts of the government that do not involve border security while negotiating funding for the Wall, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today. Every party, gender, education, age and racial group supports this idea except Republicans, who are opposed 52 – 39 percent.

“Voters oppose 63 – 32 percent shutting down the government to force funding for the Wall, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University National Poll finds. Again, Republicans are the only listed group supporting the shutdown, 67 – 24 percent.

“The GOP is losing the battle as 56 percent of American voters say President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are responsible for the shutdown, while 36 percent say Democrats are responsible.

“Voters remain solidly opposed to a wall on the Mexican border, 55 – 43 percent, and reject every argument for the Wall.”

The poll also revealed that fifty-nine percent say that the wall “is not a good use of taxpayer dollars.” Fifty-five percent say that it “would not make the U.S. safer.” Fifty-nine percent say that “it is not necessary to protect the border.” And fifty-two percent say that it “is against American values.” What’s more, the fifty-four percent who agree that there is a crisis at the border may not be in agreement with Trump’s definition of “crisis.” They may be concerned about the welfare of the refugees who are seeking asylum, and the children who were separated from their parents by the Trump administration.

Additionally, by a wide margin of 46-32 percent, voters said that Trump’s Oval Office address was “mostly misleading.” And they believed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer more than Trump by 46-36 percent. Only 2 percent say Trump’s address changed their mind. Sixty-five percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency to fund the wall. And yet Trump is just as deceitful about these survey results as Fox News is. He tweeted that:

As usual, Trump doesn’t provide any source for those fictional numbers. But if he bothered to do any research he would discover that every poll is pretty much in sync with this one from Quinnipiac. Even an op-ed on the Fox website noted Trump’s precarious standings and warned that he “needs to end the shutdown now” if he “wants to have even a chance of winning in 2020.”. And, of course, Trump is lying about Democrats not wanting border security. They just don’t want his stupid wall and, like most Americans, they know it won’t enhance security. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Russian asset in the White House would tell his followers the truth for a change?

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

Trump’s Braintrust (Fox News) is Pushing Him to Declare a National Emergency to Get His Border Wall

Posted by on January 11, 2019 at 12:07 pm. 4 Comments :

The presidency of Donald Trump has distinguished itself for its hostility to the media and the Constitution’s protection of a free press. His tedious whining about “fake news” and his Stalinist references to the media as “the enemy of the people” are evidence of his desire to poison the public’s minds in order to suppress criticism of him and his administration.

Donald Trump, Fox News

That said, no president has ever been more closely intertwined with a media enterprise than Trump is with Fox News. Before his election he was a regularly scheduled contributor to Fox and Friends with a segment called “Mondays with Trump.” He limits his interviews to Fox News on a nearly exclusive basis. His administration is infested with former Fox News staffers. They include: Deputy Chief of Staff, Bill Shine, who was the president of the network before being fired for mishandling incidents of sexual harassment; ambassador to the United Nations nominee, Heather Nauert, a former Fox host; National Security Advisor, John Bolton, an ex-Fox contributor.

In addition, Trump employs current Fox News anchors as his de facto cabinet, getting advice on everything from the economy to military engagements, to taxes and more. Sean Hannity is reported to talk with the President almost every night before bedtime. Lou Dobbs is often on conference call during Oval Office meetings. Jeanine Pirro is a favorite consultant on legal matters. And Trump is frequently live-tweeting whatever he happens to be watching on Fox, day and night.

Recently, Trump was prepared to sign a bipartisan bill to keep the government open. But when Fox Newsies heard that it didn’t provide funding for his idiotic vanity wall, they went berserk. Subsequently, Trump reversed course, and now we find ourselves in what is about to become the longest government shutdown in history. Which makes it all the more troubling that many of Trump’s Fox faves are now imploring him to declare a national emergency as a tactic to fund the wall that has nothing to do with any emergency, and that most Americans oppose. For instance, as reported by Media Matters:

Sean Hannity: So, with the president speaking, I’m guessing he’s going to declare a national emergency. […] victims of crime happening in this country, that should be enough of a national emergency.

Lou Dobbs: This is the president of the United States. He says a wall should be built; that it’s a national emergency. At that point, the nation should rally behind him. […] It is a national emergency, it is a crisis, and there could be no rational disputation of that.

Lou Dobbs (again): I really believe that the way forward here is for him to declare a national emergency, and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country.

Stuart Varney: I think this total refusal to negotiate has pushed the president to the point where he has to declare an emergency on the border.

Rush Limbaugh: And so they empowered the executive branch with the National Emergencies Act. He can confiscate private businesses, if he wants. All he has to do is declare it a national emergency.

Gregg Jarrett: The National Emergency Act authorizes the president to declare an emergency, and nobody can second-guess him. He has unfettered authority. […] he can use the military, redirect them for construction of an unauthorized project, whatever it is, the president wants it to be. That can be the barrier wall, and nobody can stop him from doing it.

Bob Bianchi (Fox guest): To me, politically, it makes perfect sense. [for Trump to] invoke my powers as the president under the National Emergency Act and under one of these sub-acts that allows me to move funds around to build this border wall.

Tom Fitton (on Tucker Carlson Tonight): It is a national emergency when we have a thousand plus miles of unsecured border in our southern area without any ability to figure out who’s coming across. We know the terrorists are targeting [the] southern border.

Considering how gullible Trump is, and how easily influenced he is by his Fox News brain(?) trust, it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll declare a national emergency. However, contrary to the ravings of Trump and Fox, he does not have unfettered authority to do so. It will undoubtedly be challenged in court. And since the facts don’t support any claim to a crisis, he’ll almost certainly lose. In the meantime, millions of people are hurt and the nation is stifled by Trump’s ignorance and ego. Hopefully that can all be avoided by Congress waking up and doing the right thing. But given the abdication of its civic duty, Mitch McConnell’s Senate has to be considered a long shot.

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