Fox News Host Calls for a Full Federal Takeover of California and Declaration of Martial Law

Just in case anyone has not been convinced that Donald Trump has designs on becoming an imperialist totalitarian like his idol Vladimir Putin, he has lately been maniacally posturing to invade and annex several of America’s international allies, including Mexico, Panama, Canada, and Greenland.

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Jesse Watters, Fox News

Trump’s threats in this regard may just be pseudo-macho chest-thumping, or attempts to intimidate foreign leaders with militaristic taunts, or pandering to his MAGA cult that tingles when he pretends to be a tough guy, or maybe he really thinks he can get away with it. Whatever his reasoning, he has the unwavering support of his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, that is also his primary recruiting pool for his next White House administration.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

At the bottom of the pile of Trump-fluffing Fox News sycophants, is the network’s crass clown, Jesse Watters. And on Friday he delivered one his hallmark harangues that is littered with lies and perverse propositions. In response to the wildfire tragedies unfolding in Los Angeles, California, Watters floated a plan that his Dear Leader Trump would happily sign onto…

“This is biblical-level destruction. And the city of L.A. is hosting the Olympics in four years. There’s no way we can showcase L.A. to the world. A full federal takeover is needed. Invoke the Stafford Act. The state’s overwhelmed. Martial law might have to be declared.”

This sort of fascist dictatorial control is rapidly becoming the goto solution for every problem that Trump World encounters. Watters’ suggestion that the entire state of California be seized by the Feds would disenfranchise the millions of citizens in the state who repudiated Trump in November’s election. And his logic is patently absurd.

Watters is disparaging the efforts of state and local officials, as well as thousands of first responders who are working their arses off to save lives and property. And he’s concluding from that that the 2028 Olympics should be moved out of Los Angeles.

Great idea. Deprive the city of much needed revenue during a time of crisis following a natural disaster. You may notice that Watters never suggested anything like this after the hurricanes and tornadoes that sweep across Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, and the rest of the South every freakin’ year.

In addition to his comments above, Watters also made wholly unfounded accusations about California’s state and local officials. Mediaite reports him saying that…

“Primetime is calling for a federal takeover of California. […] We can’t wait for a recall election. This is an issue of national security. This is a public health emergency.”

[And…]

“The elected officials in California can’t be trusted. They’re criminally negligent. […] If they’re left in charge to rebuild L.A., they’re going to steal the money. Nothing’s going to get rebuilt.”

There is, of course, no basis for making those charges, other than the inbred biases of Watters and his knee-jerk hostility toward anyone who isn’t a fellow member of the Trump cult. And he is permitted to go on the air at Fox News with these slurs despite having no proof whatsoever. Remember, it was Fox News that was forced to settle a defamation lawsuit for $787 million due to lies they told about the 2020 election.

Maybe some of the innocent targets of Watters’ lies will step up to sue him and Fox over this new set of flagrant falsehoods. But rest assured that the residents of California will not sit by idly and let Trump invade their state to impose his tyrannical will on them, like he’s proposing to do to Panama, Canada, and Greenland. That would be a good way to get California to petition for secession.

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WHINE, WHINE, WHINE! Convicted Felon Trump Clings to Fox News Legal Hacks at Sentencing Hearing

It’s official! Donald Trump is a convicted felon. On Friday morning he was sentenced in the state of New York for having falsified financial documents in order to cover up his affair with an adult film star so that his infidelity would not impair his electoral prospects. He is thus the first convicted felon to be elected and serve as president of the United States.

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Donald Trump, Wah

Naturally, Trump’s response to this development was a bellicose burst of babbling about what a pitiful victim he is of some imaginary cabal of diabolical enemies determined to destroy him. His mental deterioration is escalating at a rapid pace as he prepares to reoccupy the White House.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Conference is the Best Evidence Yet that He is Positively, Irreparably Insane

Friday’s sentencing hearing featured Trump in a remote appearance complaining about his being given an “unconditional discharge,” which means that he would not be serving any time in prison or paying any financial penalty. Judge Juan Merchan explained that this was the only option available due to Trump’s reelection and the Supreme Court’s granting him immunity for virtually any crime he committed. But apparently, even that was too harsh a sentence for crybaby Trump. He whined to the court that…

“The top legal scholars and legal pundits in this country, the ones that are quoted all the time on television that are making their views felt and highly respected people, have said everyone, virtually everyone that I know of – I haven’t seen any to the contrary, not one – and these people are not exactly friends of mine, to put it mildly – but they all said this is a case that should have never been brought. It’s an injustice of justice. Very respected, Jonathan Turley, Andy McCarthy, Judge David Rivkin, a wonderful man who just passed away, by the way, Greg Jarrett, Elie Honig from CNN of all places, CNN said that.”

"Jonathan Turley, Andy McCarthy … " –Trump during his sentencing hearing today: But Fox News says I'm innocent

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-10T16:02:45.198Z

Of course, Trump’s sappy soliloquy was light years removed from reality. There were many legal scholars, on television and elsewhere, who found the charges against Trump to be warranted. He only bothered to mention by name a few who are regular fixtures on Fox News. And if he really believes that those were “everyone that I know of” and that “I haven’t seen any to the contrary, not one,” he is sicker than anyone could have previously imagined. for some accurate analysis, he might want to refer to the highly respected Andrew Weissmann, Neal Katyal, Joyce Vance, or Harry Littman, to name a few.

Trump’s Fox News pundits are staunch devotees of his MAGA cult. Contrary to his claim that they are not his friends, they are longtime Trump-fluffers who have spent years shamelessly defending him on the network that serves as his Ministry of Propaganda. And which also serves as his recruiting pool for his new Cabinet and administration.

SEE ALSO: Trump Names Two More Fox News Flunkies to Join His MAGA Media Infested White House

As for Trump’s fox News pundits being “highly respected,” their analyses were aired on the same Fox News that had to shell out 3/4 of a billion dollars for lying on Trump’s behalf about his “big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” from him.

Trump followed up his sentencing hearing with a comment on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, where he dismissed the hearing as “a despicable charade.” He wrote that…

“The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers. […] Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax. […] And I’d just like to explain that I was treated very, very unfairly. And I thank you very much.”

Apparently to Trump, his being sentenced for 34 felonies is a pathetic loss for Democrats. Perhaps so, since he was spared prison time that he deserves, and is headed for the White House to renew his assault on democracy and America. But it is hardly a win for him to make history as the first convicted felon president.

Trump actually makes a good point about “wasting 6 years” on his prosecution. But he fails to grasp that it was all his fault for having committed his crimes in the first place. And he is intent on wasting even more time by appealing the sentence that he says was “very, very unfair.” Indeed it was. Because if it were fair he would have been incarcerated long ago like any other defendant. Instead, Trump resorts to his natural state of whining petulantly. Which is something that he has proudly bragged about…

“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.”

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Fox News Embraces Dear Leader Trump’s Imperialist Plans to Invade and Annex Greenland and Panama

This week Donald Trump held a press conference that will stand the test of time as testimony to just how mentally diseased he was prior to the start of his second occupation of the White House. It was an hour plus of pure bullpucky and puerile propaganda. In other words, it was exactly the same as every other press conference he has held.

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Among the subjects he mangled were his obsession with filling up on filthy fossil fuels, pardoning his StormTrumpers who assaulted Congress, whining about efforts to bring him to justice for numerous treasonous felonies. And his recent maniacal fetish for confiscating the territories of American allies.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Conference is the Best Evidence Yet that He is Positively, Irreparably Insane

While every rational observer recognizes that Trump’s fixation on American expansionism is a dangerous escalation of hostilities with which he is emulating his heroes, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Adolf Hitler of Germany, Trump’s official Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, is taking him seriously and marching in lock-step with his malevolent machinations. On Wednesday’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes gave Trump their hearty endorsement.

Ainsley Earhardt (co-host and Sean Hannity’s fiancée): Well, Greenland, strategically, it makes sense. Because it’s the halfway point between our country and the U.K. So it would make sense to have that for war purposes, if we ever got to that point. Also, we have a big space facility there as well. As far as Panama Canal, we built it. 1941 we built it. [Note: it was completed in 1914]. In the seventies it was renamed. [Note: No it wasn’t]. And he wants to take that back. It makes perfect sense. And Gulf of Mexico, if it became Gulf of America… But to me the biggest thing that he said, the biggest accomplishment in the beginning, would be getting these hostages back.

Earhardt’s reasoning is something short of coherent. If the United States were justified in taking over any country that is halfway between itself and some other ally, is there any nation on the planet that would be safe from our cravings of conquest? For instance, France is halfway between the U.S. and Japan. Australia is halfway between the U.S. and India. So let’s take them all over, shall we?

Furthermore, Earhardt’s suggestion that it would make sense to take over any country where the U.S. has military assets would likewise lead to taking over nearly half the planet. And the Gulf of Mexico was named that before the United States ever existed. And as Mexico’s president said, it would make more sense to rename parts of the Western U.S. “America Mexicana.”

Earhardt concluded her babbling with her opinion that Trump’s comments about the hostages currently being held by Hamas in Gaza were his “biggest accomplishment,” which of course, he has not accomplished. What Trump said about that in his press conference was simply a bombastic, pseudo-macho threat that if the hostages are not released before his inauguration, “It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out.”

On this Trump is uncharacteristically correct. “It would not be good for anyone.” Particularly the hostages, who would likely be murdered at the first sign of any Trump led attack. That would be followed shortly by hundreds (thousands?) more fatalities of both innocent Gazans, Israelis, as well as any American soldiers involved. And it would put any hopes of cessation of hostilities or peace agreements much farther away.

Joining the Fox and Friends embrace of Trump’s imperialistic yearnings was Jesse Watters. On his Tuesday night program he explained why he supports Trump’s plan to annex Greenland, saying that “The fact that they don’t want us to take them over makes me want to invade. I want to quench my imperialist thirst.” Which is even stupider that Trump’s explanation that “we need Greenland for national security purposes. People don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it.”

In the meantime, Trump would then be saddled with wars in Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East. Which will surely fulfill Trump’s campaign promises to put a halt to illegal immigration, create jobs, and bring down the price of eggs America. Right?

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Two New Crockumentaries About January 6th and Melania Show Trump’s Efforts to Rewrite History

Tomorrow is the four year anniversary of one of the darkest days of America’s history. On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump was so obsessed with unlawfully retaining power after he lost reelection that he sent his MAGA goons to the Capital to undermine democracy and the Constitution.

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Donald Trump Insurrection

The result was a deadly insurrection that put 140 police officers in the hospital, caused millions of dollars in damage, and threatened the lives of members of Congress, their staffs, and even his own Vice-President, Mike Pence. And four years later, Trump is still deliberately lying about the riots that he incited and describes in glowing terms, saying that “there was a beauty to it and a love to it that I’ve never seen before.”

SEE THIS: On Fox News (Again) Trump Says January 6th Was a ‘Day of Love’

Now Trump is promising to pardon the nearly 1,500 rioters, most of whom pleaded guilty to charges ranging from disturbing the peace to seditious conspiracy. He continues to perversely refer to them as “patriots” and “hostages” who were merely exercising their First Amendment rights.

Sadly, on the eve of the January 6th insurrection’s anniversary, two new “crockumentaries” have been announced purporting to tell the story of Trump and his abhorrent assaults on the principles that define America. And if the old saying that “history is written by the winners,” is true, the history written by Trump about himself and January 6th will be pure pulp fiction.

The first film was the subject of a gala affair that Trump held at Mar-a-Lago this weekend to celebrate, John Eastman, one of the chief architects of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election that he lost decisively to Joe Biden. The party, which for some reason was kept secret, and from which the press was excluded, was revealed by the hosts of “The Weekend” on MSNBC. It’s peculiar that an event announcing a film premiere would be kept under wraps. What were they trying to hide?

Perhaps they had a problem with the public finding out that they, and the film, were honoring Eastman, whose role in attempting to deploy fake electors contributed to his being disbarred. Or maybe they didn’t want publicity about the guests at the affair that included Rudy Giuliani – another disbarred Trump lawyer, Michael Flynn – a Russian asset, Jeffrey Clark – who Trump tried unsuccessfully to install as an acting Attorney General, and ex-con, Peter Navarro.

Then again, maybe they just didn’t want anyone to hear the embarrassingly ignorant remarks that Trump made at the event. Unfortunately for Trump, his remarks were revealed anyway. And they were typically devoid of reason or factual basis. He rambled that…

“I’m a big fan of John Eastman. Ya know, he was right. He happened to be right. That’s why they changed the law and nobody wants to talk about that…They said [Mike Pence is] not allowed to do it. He’s not allowed to do it. And they convinced him he’s not allowed to do it – our vice president. Then right after the election they changed the law so he can’t do it.”

What Trump is referring to is his efforts to pressure Pence into unlawfully refusing to certifying Biden’s election. Which, in fact, he was not allowed to do, according to the Constitution. And the law that was changed afterward was the Electoral Count Reform Act, which Congress amended in a bipartisan vote to prevent future anti-democracy plotters from exploiting the vagaries in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

The other announcement of a Trump film was made by Fox News. It revealed that filming had begun on a documentary about Melania Trump. She would also be serving as the executive producer, which poses some questions about its credibility and dedication to neutrality and transparency. More likely, it is blatant propaganda and another project to extract money from the Trump Cult by the Grifter-in-Chief.

What Fox News didn’t bother to report was that the Melania biopic is being directed by Bruce Ratner, about whom the Associated Press reports, “marks the first project that Ratner has directed since he was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including actor Olivia Munn, in the early days of the #MeToo reckoning in November 2017.”

How appropriate for a Trump family project. It fits in nicely with Trump’s own reported sexual misconduct, that includes his being ordered to pay more than $80 million for the defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll. And also his 34 felony convictions for falsifying financial records, aka “hush money” payments, to adult actor/producer Stormy Daniels. And there’s more where that came from. Which should provide an abundance of material for future documentaries. Hopefully honest and accurate ones.

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Trump Names Two More Fox News Flunkies to Join His MAGA Media Infested White House

One of the best measures of someone’s character and commitment to principle is the company they keep. And applying that yardstick to Donald Trump always reveals a man profoundly lacking in the sort of integrity, morality, or decency that should be required in a national leader.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Trump being a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, who fraternizes with foreign dictators and neo-Nazis, ought to have been enough to convince voters that he is utterly unfit to serve as president. Unfortunately, the power of cults to capture weak minds is difficult to resist for the gullible troglodytes who actually prefer that their leaders lie to them in order to make them feel safe in their ignorance and bigotry.

SEE THIS: IT’S A CULT! Poll Shows Republicans Trust Trump More Than Their Own Pastor

As Trump prepares to reoccupy the White House he is assembling an administration replete with conspiracy crackpots, billionaires, and ultra-partisan bootlickers. And unsurprisingly, many of them are talking heads that he poached from his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. It is an unprecedented collection of media minions and devoted television toadies taking positions in a presidential administration – 17 of them so far…

  • Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Defense)
  • Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence)
  • Stephen Miller (Deputy White House Chief of Staff)
  • Michael Waltz (National Security Adviser)
  • Lee Zeldin (Environmental Protection Agency administrator)
  • Elise Stefanik (Ambassador to the United Nation)
  • Tom Homan (Border “Czar”)
  • Mike Huckabee (Ambassador to Israel)
  • Sean Duffy (Secretary of Transportation)
  • Sebastian Gorka (Deputy Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism)
  • Janette Nesheiwat (Surgeon General)
  • Monica Crowley (Assistant Secretary of State and Chief of Protocol)
  • Keith Kellogg (special Envoy to Ukraine)
  • Marty Makary (FDA Commissioner)
  • Kimberley Guilfoyle (Ambassador to Greece)
  • Tammy Bruce (State Department Spokesperson)
  • Morgan Ortagus (Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace)

The last two names on that list were just added by Trump this week. In his announcement for Bruce, Trump cited as her “qualifications” that she was a political analyst who “understood the power and importance of ‘MAGA’ early on,” and “saw the lies and fraud of the Radical Left.” Which are not exactly the sort of skills sought for a competent and fair person to communicate with the press.

Trump’s announcement for Ortagus was even more outlandish. It read more like a reprimand and a warning for a poorly performing employee. He said that “Early on Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson. These things usually don’t work out.” Oh great. So let’s put her in charge of something inconsequential, like Middle East Peace operations.

In neither of Trump’s announcements did he bother to mention that both of these nominees were contributors on Fox News. Either he’s deliberately hiding that information, or he regards it as unfavorable. He does, after all, have an ongoing love/hate relationship with Fox News.

In addition to these announcements on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, Trump responded to to the news that he will sentenced next week for his 34 felony convictions in the New York “Hush Money” case. Trump posted four unbearably long, unreadable, and lie-riddled rants whining about the whole of America’s justice system, and specifically President Biden, and the judges, prosecutors, and victims involved in his felonious crime sprees. They are too interminably long and deranged to make anyone else suffer through, but here are a few annotated excerpts…

Trump: “Every Legal Scholar and Pundit…have unequivocally stated that the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt is a nonexistent case.”
Note: When Trump refers to “Every Legal Scholar” he means only those who suck up to him.

Trump: “Justice Merchan, who is a radical partisan, just issued another order that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it.”
Note: Trump being reelected with 34 felonies is “the end of the Presidency as we know it.”

Trump: “I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME!”
Note: The charges against Trump were not made up by the judge or Biden. They were established by a Grand Jury made up of citizens who examined the voluminous evidence against him. Then a trial jury found him guilty unanimously on all 34 counts.

Trump: “There has never been a President who was so evilly and illegally treated as I.”
Note: There has never been a president who has committed more crimes than Trump. And nothing about his prosecution was evil or illegal.

Rest assured that the Fox News faction in Trump’s administration will continue act as propagandists and apologists for Trump and his nefarious, anti-American agenda. In other words, they will continue to do exactly the same things that they’ve been doing for years on Fox News. Except now taxpayers will be footing the bill.

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Word of the Day: FLAWGIC – The ‘Flawed Logic’ Employed by Trump and His Dimwitted Disciples

Donald Trump is not known for having a well developed capacity for rational expression or comprehension. After all, he is the self-proclaimed “stable genius” who delivers deranged sermons on cancer-causing windmills, nuking hurricanes, and Hannibal Lecter. He believes that injecting bleach will cure COVID, and that tariffs are paid by foreign governments rather than domestic importers and, eventually, consumers.

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Donald Trump, Mocking Disability

Consequently, it will surprise no one that Trump and his MAGA flunkies can now be recognized for their use of what we at News Corpse are calling “Flawgic” – a portmanteau of “flawed” + “logic.” [Note to Trumpists: a portmanteau is a new word formed by combining two existing words] Flawgic has become a regular component of the discourse in Trumpian circles, along with his grossly distorted perceptions of political reality.

SEE THIS: WTHolyF? Trump Says Democrats Want to Ditch the Popular Vote in Favor of the Electoral College

This weekend a couple of confirmed Trump-fluffers were kind enough to offer examples of flawgic that perfectly illustrate their meaning. Let’s begin with one by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who had the following exchange with CNN’s Dana Bash about the obvious potential for conflicts of interest that Elon Musk presents as Trump’s government efficiency czar…

Bash: One of the criticisms and concerns is that [Elon Musk] has billions tied up in government contracts. You don’t see a conflict of interest here?
Sununu: Everyone has a conflict of interest.
Bash: But that’s a pretty big one
Sununu: The guy’s worth $450 billion today. I don’t think he’s doing it for the money. He’s doing it for the bigger project and the bigger vision for America. He doesn’t need the dollars…He’s so rich, he’s removed from the potential financial influence of this.

Right! Because billionaires all got that way by not caring about making money. And when they became billionaires, they cared about it even less. So why not put them in charge of regulating the agencies that regulate their own businesses? And Trump’s businesses as well. After all, every billionaire has abandoned any aspiration for their own self-interest and devotes themselves exclusively to the welfare of others less fortunate than they are. Right?

That would explain why Musk and Trump are now advocating on behalf of well paid, highly skilled foreign technology workers rather than the Americans they have pretended to be the champions of. Meanwhile, they vent venomously about mass deportations of low paid foreign workers in agriculture, construction, and healthcare jobs, that Americans refuse to do.

What’s more, Sununu is excusing the wealthy from the burden of obeying laws that the rest of us have to comply with. In his view, they can violate conflict of interests laws at will because of their purity of purpose and lack of motivation to grease the wheels of government in order to enrich themselves further.

The other notable example of flawgic came during a Fox News interview of Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, who presented a unique defense of Trump’s dangerously hostile and preposterous ideas about invading and/or annexing American allies such as Panama, Mexico, Canada, and Greenland. O’Brein said that…

“The Kingdom of Denmark owns Greenland. And they’ve got an obligation to defend Greenland. So president Trump says “If you don’t defend Greenland, we’ll buy it, and we’ll defend it. But we’re not going to do it for free.”

Is O’Brien really arguing that any country that is unable to defend itself from an attack by Russia or China should be taken over by the U.S.? That could apply to almost every country in the world. It’s a proposal that reeks of the “master race” superiority of fascist regimes who regard themselves as the saviors of all mankind. It also destroys the concept of national sovereignty and international alliances for mutual defense, such as NATO, an extraordinarily successful treaty agreement that Trump is itching to drag America out of unless they send kickbacks his way.

Sununu and O’Brien are not crackpot QAnon types who rant anonymously online. They are supposedly reputable Republicans who reflect the ideology of the party. And yet they will appear on television and disgorge this sort of nonsense with a straight face. That’s what has become of the GOP in the Era of Trump. Everyone is required to sink to the same depths of depravity as Dear Leader. No matter how cowardly, humiliating, or shameful.

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MAGA Republicans Killed the Intel Agency that Monitors Disinformation From Russia, China, Etc.

The week before Christmas, the razor-thin Republican majority in Congress tried three times to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government from shutting down. They finally succeeded on the third try after purging the bill of funding for a variety of programs that are critical to the welfare of the American people and to national security.

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While passing the stripped-down version of the legislation was necessary to avoid falling off a fiscal cliff, the deliberate malfeasance of the GOP leaders in the House of Representatives must not be overlooked or dismissed as standard operating procedure. Even though it was standard for the incompetents who comprise the MAGA caucus in Congress.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

One of the programs that was excised from the CR that is not getting much attention was the funding for a State Department Agency responsible for monitoring foreign disinformation. Al Jazeera reports that…

“A leading United States government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department has said, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.

“The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.”

If anyone is wondering why Republicans would oppose an agency that is intended to keep track of nefarious foreign operatives spreading lies about matters of national security, just ask the old question that is posed whenever something untoward occurs in government: “Who benefits.”

In this case it is fairly clear that Donald Trump is among the prime beneficiaries of the shuttering of the GEC. He has received an incalculable amount of help from Russian disinformation and propaganda in all three of his campaigns for president. That includes promotion of his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” from him, as well as their pushing disparaging lies about President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris in order to sabotage their electoral prospects.

What’s more, Trump has long been a staunch advocate of Russia and his hero, Vladimir Putin. While he frequently insults American leaders in the most vile terms, he has never said anything derogatory about Putin. He doesn’t want to cut off the flow of support he gets from Vlad. Which is why he wouldn’t want a government agency pointing out all of the dishonest propaganda that emanates from Russian sources. And his MAGA minions in Congress cooperated by defunding the agency.

It’s notable that Fox News covered this story with their typical heaping of right-wing bias. Their headline declared that the “State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ accused of censoring Americans shuts its doors.” However, the “accusations” referenced in Fox’s headline all happen to be from extremist MAGA Republicans, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk, who was quoted in the article saying that the GEC is the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation.”

These are the cheerleaders of “America First.” Well, make that “Blame America First.” Like Trump, they routinely shoot down the United States, particularly when it is in conflict with Russia or China. And they have both ideological and financial reasons for doing so. Trump and Musk are heavily invested in China’s economy. The last thing they want is an agency exposing the malevolence of their political and business partners.

When the Trump administration is officially sworn in, it will have people in place to further their fealty to their foreign propaganda outlets. Most notably, Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has zero experience in intelligence, but is notoriously close to Russian operatives. And there is also Trump’s choice to run the CIA, John Ratcliffe, who worked with Trump and Russian intel to smear Hillary Clinton. And then there’s Kari Lake, Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who promises to turn the Voice of America, which it oversees, into America’s propaganda network.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump’s allies in Congress would seek to obstruct American efforts to expose Russian and Chinese disinformation. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it should worry everyone. Trump’s affinity for foreign dictators is well known. And now Congress is helping him to cover up how his foreign pals are continuing to help him by giving them a free hand to spread propaganda. Hopefully independent media watchdogs will be up to countering their efforts, because in Trump world they will be rooting for them.

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Trump-Humping Hack Wants to Ban Everyone But Peter Doocy of Fox News From White House Press Room

The MAGA media mob is growing more aggressively authoritarian with each passing day. The prospect of Donald Trump reoccupying the White House has them bursting with confidence that their Project 2025 plot to infest the U.S. government with unabridged neo-fascism can proceed unchallenged.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, White House

Leading their agenda for the Trump regime is an effort to purge the White House press corps of any and all reputable journalists and others who are not fully indoctrinated Trump cultists. They are determined to banish reporters who might cause trouble by actually reporting the truth about Trump and his administration’s corruption and malfeasance. And they aren’t shy about their nefarious intentions…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Secretary Plans to Turn the WH Briefing Room Into a Pro-Trump Propaganda Mill

Among those seeking to Trump-itize the White House press corps is long-time Trump flunky, Hugh Hewitt. On a recent episode of his podcast, Hewitt floated this preposterous suggestion that is staunchly aligned with the approach to the press that is favored by the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un…

“With the exception of Peter Doocy, I would ban everyone from the White House press room who has been there for the past four years because they are obviously of no use to the country. They didn’t tell us the number one thing, which is that he’s not competent. Why in the world would Trump let them in? […] ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, those five brands are broken beyond broken after this expose. Is there any way you could trust anything that they say?

REALLY? Hewitt thinks that only the most partisan hack in the press room, Peter Doocy of Fox News, should remain there, and everyone else be cast out? That would make for a pretty dull daily press briefing with only Doocy asking questions of Trump’s predictably dishonest press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Although they could fill the empty seats with Trump-approved asses such as Hewitt, Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, etc. That way they would be assured of fielding only friendly questions, to which they would still provide non-answers that were mostly lies and smears.

What’s more, Hewitt is so appalled by the media that he can’t understand how anyone “could trust anything that they say.” So his solution is to limit the media outlets to the one that was found to have lied so horribly that they were forced to pay a settlement of nearly a billion dollars.

SEE ALSO: Fox News is Still Pushing the Lie that the 2020 Election Was Stolen that Cost Them $787 Million

The specific complaint that triggered Hewitt’s rant was his view that the media – except for Doocy – didn’t properly cover what he believes was President Biden’s diminished mental capacity. But even if you give him a pass on that brazenly biased perspective, he’s leaving out something that would be just as relevant. And that’s the obviously diminished mental capacity of Trump. Here’s how the Daily Show presented it by using Fox News attacks on Biden, but showing Trump video instead…

These cretins don’t have any appreciation for the traditional purpose of the Press Room, which is to provide journalists with access to the president and his staff in order to inform the public, not to become a partisan propaganda mill where only those who have sworn allegiance to Trump can participate. But that’s precisely what Hewitt wants. And it’s also what the Trump media team want. The only problem they face is that it isn’t what the American people want. But if they pursue this strategy, they will find out soon enough.

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UH-OH: Even Fox News Calls Out the Unelected Billionaire ‘Calling the Shots’ in Place of Trump

After weeks of tense negotiations, Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives agreed on a bipartisan bill to fund the government and avoid a devastating shutdown that would cause severe harm to millions of Americans. So naturally, that effort was sabotaged by the two most divisive and destructive dimwits in American politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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The torpedoing of the Continuing Resolution was aided and abetted by the spine-deprived GOP Speaker of the House, MAGA Mike Johnson, who obediently nixed his own bill at the behest of his puppet masters. As a result, he will maintain his record of having presided over the most unproductive Congress in modern times.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

The spectacle of a couple of billionaires bullying Congress into abandoning its obligation to the Constitution and the people is a nauseating devolution of the great expectations for American democracy. It most resembles the melodramatic inanities of reality TV wherein pathetic contestants vie for supremacy by playing idiotic games. And in this season it appears that the Celebrity Apprentice will be Trump, who is now noticeably subservient to his financial benefactor, Musk.

This swapping of roles is not something that has been observed only by Democrats and other Trump critics. On Thursday morning Stuart Varney of Fox News delivered a commentary that could have been composed by Bernie Sanders. He said in part…

“Think about this: Nobody voted for Elon Musk. But with the support of Donald Trump he called the shots on shutting down the government, and he’s calling the shots on trimming the fat in government. In fact, he has influence on just about every aspect of policy, including who should take which job in the Cabinet.

“We have never seen anything like this before. No previous administration has allowed an unelected outsider this degree of power. Of course it’s all a function of Musk’s relationship with the president-elect. They’ve been inseparable for months. He practically lives at Mar-a-Lago. And they seem to be in agreement on everything. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the richest man in the world, and threw over $200 million into Trump’s campaign.”

What Varney is describing is the undermining of democracy by an unelected, foreign-born, oligarch with the resources to buy a weak narcissist who is desperately trying to stay out of prison and retain some measure of perceived power. Musk is not constitutionally able to be president, so he’s settling for the next best thing: controlling the president. That relationship, however, could make things complicated for Trump’s former significant other. And that isn’t Melania…

What was once the Republican Party is now fully indoctrinated into the Musk/Trump Cult. Some GOP members of Congress are even suggesting that Musk be elected Speaker of the House. So if the GOP is not satisfied with the level of idiocy that is presently in place, they have options. A competent Speaker must be someone with extensive knowledge of how the House operates. Musk doesn’t have a clue. So while Johnson has proven to be a disaster, Musk would be even worse.

While the rules of the House do not require the Speaker to be an elected member, there are other concerns that are being neglected. For instance, the Speaker is second in the presidential line of succession, after the vice-president. But the Constitution would not permit Musk to be promoted to the presidency. So the job would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate. And if Democrats were to regain the majority in 2026, that would be Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. If not, it would be 91 year old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

In the meantime, the nation is being run by billionaires who couldn’t care less about the government shutting down because it won’t affect them in the slightest. And what they do care about – getting richer, lowering their own taxes, and eliminating pesky regulations that protect the environment, workers, and America’s middle and lower income families – would be theirs for the taking. Congratulations MAGA. This is what you voted for. I hope you like being subservient to the oligarchs.

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Trump Hurls Hate and Fear at All of the Media He’s Suing Following the ABC News Capitulation

The forecasts of doom that have proliferated since Donald Trump managed to squeak by to win a second term occupying the White House are coming true even before he’s been inaugurated. And the reality is proving to be even worse than the predictions. He is promising to rule in the model of his totalitarian heroes, and his proposed Cabinet is a House of Horrors.

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Last week ABC News agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump against the network for $15 million. The suit alleged that “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed Trump by asserting that he had been found liable for rape by the jury in the defamation case filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. However, it was the judge who, after the fact, said that Trump’s assault amounted to rape, as the term is generally understood. The jury only found that Trump was liable for sexual abuse. And Trump seems to regard being a confirmed sexual abuser as a victory.

SEE THIS: TRUMP WINS? ABC News Settles His Lawsuit Confirming that He Was Found Liable for Sexual Abuse

Following the ABC News settlement, Trump is already talking excitedly about his efforts to punish other media with vengeance-fueled lawsuits. It is his way of terrorizing the free press that he refers to in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” So in an impromptu press conference Monday morning, Trump lashed out at the media in his typically hostile manner.

Trump began his rant about suing the media (at 30:33 in the video below) with an inane threat to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll that showed him losing the election, which he called “fraud” and “election interference.” Then he went to discuss his lawsuit against CBS News saying that…

“We’re filing one on 60 Minutes, where they took Kamala’s answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer. And they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview. […] And that was fraud. and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News.

Of course, none of what he said is remotely true. 60 Minutes did nothing more than to make routine edits for time and clarity. Nothing they did impacted the content or context of the interview. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that the license for CBS – and ALL broadcast networks – be revoked. [Note: The federal government does not license networks, only individual stations]. And he was just getting started. He continued…

“We’re involved in one, which has been going on for a while very successfully, against Bob Woodward, where he didn’t quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes. Which he wasn’t allowed to do.”

Once again, Trump is lying. Woodward taped his conversations with Trump for the book, RAGE!, and used them for that purpose. Furthermore, he quoted Trump verbatim, and has the tapes to back that up. In the book Woodward documented how Trump lied and downplayed COVID when he knew just how deadly it was. But he still wasn’t finished. He went on…

“And we have one very interestingly on Pulitzer, because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax, and they were exactly wrong.”

This may be the most absurd lawsuit of them all. Trump isn’t suing the New York Times or the Washington Post. He’s suing the Pulitzer committee at Columbia University, who are entirely within their rights to award prizes as they see fit. What’s more, Trump claims that the articles documenting his unsavory associations with Russia “turned out to be a hoax,” that “now everybody admits.” Which could not be farther from the truth. Even the Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee report affirmed the Trump/Russia connections.

SEE ALSO: GEEZ! Trump is STILL Obsessed With the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax’ that is NOT a Hoax

Trump also spent some time flattering his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. He babbled that…

“Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right. Tucker [Carlson] got it right. Jesse [Watters] got it right. Laura [Ingraham] got it right. Jeanine [Pirro] got it right. A lot of people got it right. They didn’t get anything. They gave it to reporters that got it absolutely wrong. And now everybody admits it was a hoax. And I want them to take back the Pulitzer prizes and pay damages. […]

I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department, or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it. But we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The only things that any of them got right, at least from Trump’s perverse perspective, was their unwavering adoration of Trump and conformity to his worldview. And any deviation from that will result in punitive measures that will be carried out by his administration, overseen by his nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, who has sworn to “come after the people in the media.”

Will the media allow this unconstitutional persecution of the free press to proceed? Hopefully the surrender by ABC News isn’t the consensus answer to that question.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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Thanks so much for your support.