Trump and His MAGA Minions are ‘Working the Refs’ for the CNN Debate. Will CNN Fall for It?

The pre-game banter in advance of the big Biden/Trump debate has begun and is consuming an inordinate amount of airtime on every news network. For the most part that time is spent with partisans and pundits speculating wildly about how they think the debate will unfold and who will emerge victorious.

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Biden, Trump Debate

The Biden team has been conspicuously quiet throughout this promo extravaganza. That’s because the President is too busy being President for such games. And when he isn’t performing his duties as Leader of the Free World, he is preparing for the debate in a responsible manner by studying the issues and polishing his message. Meanwhile, Trump and his team are preparing by reenacting his rally rants, engaging in puerile propaganda, and demonstrating just how truly terrified they are of facing Biden.

SEE THIS: CNN Bumps Flaky Trump Flack, Giving Steve Bannon and Trump Another Excuse to Dump Biden Debate

Much of the focus of Trump’s tirades is aimed at the debate hosting network, CNN. That should come as no surprise as Trump has been attacking them for years as “fake news” and has relentlessly predicted their failure. Which, like every other Trump prediction, has not come to pass.

As debate night approaches, Trump and company are furiously laying the groundwork to explain why Trump is going to lose the debate to Biden. Among other things, they are accusing him of using performance enhancing drugs. Although if there were drugs that could improve a person’s intelligence and communication skills, shouldn’t we all be using them? Certainly every president should be required to use them.

SEE ALSO: WATCH: Trump’s ‘Doctor’ Ronny Jackson Tells Fox News What Kinds of Drugs Trump Could Be Taking

However, that isn’t the only objective of the StormTrumpers. They are also “working the refs.” They believe that by accusing moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of being biased against Trump before a single question has been asked, they can influence (i.e. intimidate) the moderators to alter their questions so that they can’t be criticized for allegedly favoring one candidate over the other.

What that means in practice is that they would formulate questions that are overtly hostile for Biden. In order to project a phony sense of “balance” they might require Biden – but not Trump – to comment on whether he is too old to serve. Or they might ask him about the conviction of his son Hunter, which has nothing to do with the presidency or the welfare of the American people. And again, they won’t seek any comments from Trump about his corrupt family that has been found liable for running a fraudulent charity, university, and for receiving billions of dollars from a Saudi prince.

Other biased questions that CNN’s moderators could be coerced into asking might involve Biden’s possession of classified documents, or his alleged profiteering from his White House position, or the flagrant lie that he supports open borders. Never mind that it is only Trump who deliberately stole and lied about having classified documents, willfully profited by extorting funds from foreigners, and brags about having killed a bipartisan immigration bill.

In light of all of that, it is patently absurd for Trump’s team to be working so hard to disparage the fairness of the journalists at CNN. Particularly when they have a virtual Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) covering for them 24/7. Although, they are not even satisfied with that level of glassy-eyed sycophancy. If Fox fails to behave with unflinching adoration, they get hit by Trump…

SEE THIS: TRUMP IS RIGHT! In a Mad Rage, Felon of Foy Declares that ‘Nobody Can Ever Trust Fox News’

One thing that can be relied on is that Trump, if he bothers to show up, will whine petulantly when he loses. He will blame everyone but himself. He will assert that the whole debate was “rigged” against him, just like the election, the polls, the trials, etc. That’s an argument that they are already planting in the press. GOP Speaker, MAGA Mike Johnson recently complained that he “expects that CNN is going to rig it as much as possible and make it as favorable as they possibly can for President Biden.” See? Everything is rigged. Trump isn’t is a loser. He’s a victim. And that’s something we’re supposed to want as a president?

CNN must resist these attempts to coerce them into skewing their moderation of the debate. It is perfectly acceptable to ask both candidates tough questions and seek responsive answers with directed follow-ups. But it is not acceptable to come down harder on one candidate because the other is a big, orange-hued baby who orders his cohorts to try to slant the playing field. Can CNN hold steady? We’ll see on Thursday.

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CNN Bumps Flaky Trump Flack, Giving Steve Bannon and Trump Another Excuse to Dump Biden Debate

One of the most destructive aspects of modern media has been its casual tolerance of flagrant dishonesty by deliberately deceitful politicians and pundits. They justify their submission to liars as a commitment to “balance,” a phony objective that obscures a proper journalistic commitment to truth.

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Donald Trump, CNN

On Monday morning, Donald Trump dispatched his campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to unfurl a litany of lies on CNN. In her typical fashion, Leavitt attempted to dodge every substantive question and replace coherent answers with infantile insults.

SEE THIS: HYPOCRISY UNCHAINED! Trump Flack Whines that Biden’s Campaign is Making Trump’s Trial Political

Since the Trump team has no reality-based criticisms of President Biden, they have to rely entirely on childish personal attacks and wholly manufactured controversies that invariably complain that poor crybaby Trump is a victim of vast cabals that are “rigging” everything from elections to trials, and now to debates. On this occasion, Leavitt griped that Trump is…

“…knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years and their biased coverage of him.”

So why did Trump agree to this debate, with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators, and all the rules, when he’s convinced that they are all aligned against him? He can’t claim that he’s bravely entering the lion’s den if he does nothing but whine about it. Which is all that Leavitt was doing. To her credit, Hunt replied, “Ma’am, we’re going to stop this interview if you’re going to keep attacking my colleagues.”

Leavitt did not budge from her mission to malign Tapper and Bash. And true to her word, Hunt ended the interview. That’s exactly how a credible journalist should deal with determined liars. They should do it more often. In fact, they shouldn’t even invite people known to dispense blatant lies on their programs in first place.

This so outraged Leavitt that she scampered off to the safety of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” Internet show to unburden herself of the unpleasantness she endured on CNN. And Bannon provided precisely the sort of sympathy and consolation that Leavitt was seeking in the following exchange

Leavitt: CNN showed their hand with me on their network this morning. The fact that they cut off my microphone simply for repeating words that Jake Tapper himself has said. Lies about President Trump. […]

Bannon: CNN owes you an apology today. And if we don’t get that apology to Karoline Leavitt and to the Trump campaign and to MAGA today, President Trump should cancel this.

First of all, Leavitt was not simply repeating Tapper’s words. She was purposefully mischaracterizing them and sanitizing Trump’s noxious adoption of Hitlerian rhetoric. Surprisingly, an excellent example of this was posted by White nationalist Jack Posobiec…

Furthermore, Bannon’s threat that Trump should back out of the debate with Biden if MAGA doesn’t get an apology is a transparent excuse for Trump to chicken out. And the frequency with which Trump’s sycophants keep coming up with these excuses is the best evidence that he is scared witless and is desperately searching for an escape clause, or at least an explanation for why he’s going to lose. For instance…

WATCH: Trump’s ‘Doctor’ Ronny Jackson Tells Fox News What Kinds of Drugs Trump Could Be Taking

Trump’s Fear and Desperation Show as He Says Biden is Both ‘The Worst’ and ‘A Worthy’ Debater

SCAREDY TRUMP? Sean Hannity Concocts an Excuse for Trump to Chicken Out of Debate with Biden

Adderall J. Trump Thinks He Can ‘Demand’ Biden Take a Drug Test Before the Debates – Or What?

Fox News Floats Conspiracy Theory that Biden is Plotting to Assault Trump to Avoid Debating Him

Trump Calls Biden ‘the WORST Debater’ Despite Biden Crushing Him in the 2020 Debates and Election

Sean Hannity of Fox News is Already Making Excuses for Why Trump Will Lose Debates to Biden

That’s a pretty thorough campaign of complaining and excuse-making for someone who wants to present himself as a strongman taking on a senile commie. And it’s equally notable that Biden is the one who appears to be confidant and strong and mentally stable. He doesn’t need to do any of this pathetic whimpering because he knows his stuff. And he knows that Trump has always been a coward and weakling and he will be seen as such by the nation on Thursday’s debate.

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How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

The aftermath of the ill-conceived CNN town hall with Donald Trump affirmed the most pessimistic projections offered beforehand. Trump was himself. That is to say, he was a dishonest, hostile, bloviating bully. Is there any reason that CNN should have expected anything else?

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Trump Lies

The town hall was bad idea from the start. A reputable news enterprise would never provide such a forum to a candidate credibly charged with sexual abuse, tax fraud, election interference, and seditious conspiracy. Yet somehow CNN was comfortable with presenting this televised Trump rally, complete with an audience of “Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.” You have to wonder precisely what CNN offered Trump to get him to agree to appear on a network that he regards as “fake news” and insists that nobody watches.

SEE THIS: Trump Spills that CNN Made Him ‘a Deal I Couldn’t Refuse’ to Get Him to Do Their Town Hall

Predictably, the program failed on every level. It was neither informative on Trump’s policies, nor revealing of his principles. It merely rehashed everything that everyone already knows about him. The moderator, Kaitlan Collins, made some attempts to fact-check Trump, but not nearly enough. It was so useless that even some of CNN’s anchors and analysts were repulsed. Immediately following the town hall, Jake Tapper gave a scathing summation that concluded that “We don’t have enough time to fact-check every lie he told.” So why air it in the first place?

CNN’s media correspondent, Oliver Darcy, tweeted that “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.” And that was just the beginning. CNN published an article enumerating 8 takeaways from Trump’s CNN town hall.” And each one affirmed Trump’s unfitness for office. The article began by noting that Trump…

“…showed on Wednesday night that he is very much the same person Americans came to know in 2016, throughout his four years in office, and in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat. […] When he wasn’t calling women names, airing old grievances or attempting to rewrite history, the former president largely dodged questions and follow-up inquiries [and that] Unsurprisingly, the mostly Trump-loyal audience lapped it up.”

Considering that analysis from CNN itself, what was the point of the whole thing? It didn’t advance the public’s knowledge or ability to assess Trump’s candidacy. The 8 takeaways were all examples of Trump’s ignorance and artifice. Let’s explore them little deeper…

  • “Trump makes dismissive comments about [E. Jean] Carroll.”
    Trump “denied the accusations and again said he had never met Carroll. [and the audience] laughed at his jokes and other dismissive comments about Carroll.” He also called her a “whack job,” defaming her anew.
  • “Trump says GOP should be willing to blow up debt ceiling.”
    Trump “insisted that default would be preferable to a result that doesn’t stop the government ‘spending money like drunken sailors.'” He also laughed off his hypocrisy about opposing using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge while he was president.
  • “Trump is vague on federal abortion ban.”
    “Trump repeatedly ducked questions about whether he would sign into law a federal abortion ban, as well as after how many weeks into a pregnancy abortion should be made illegal.” He also lied that Democrats support infanticide.
  • “Trump doesn’t say if he would back Ukraine in war with Russia.”
    “Trump refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to prevail in its war with invading Russia.” He also refused to criticize his BFF, Vladimir Putin, for the war crimes of slaughtering civilians.
  • “Trump says he’d pardon January 6 rioters.”
    “Trump demonstrated no remorse for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol [and] said he was ‘inclined to pardon’ many of the pro-Trump rioters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the Capitol.” He also insulted law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol as “thugs.”
  • “Trump suggests family separation immigration policy could return.”
    Trump said “When you say to a family that if you come, we’re going to break you up, they don’t come.” He also declined to take responsibility for destroying families.
  • “Trump repeats election fraud lies.”
    “Trump repeated his lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election [and] would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election.” He also hyped debunked conspiracy theories about stuffed ballot boxes and fraudulent votes.
  • “Trump uses same name-calling tactics.”
    “When Collins pressed Trump about documents he took from the White House, he said: ‘You’re a nasty person.'” He also repeated his infantile “crazy” Nancy Pelosi insult.

Not mentioned in the article was a particularly disturbing response by Trump with regard the classified documents that he stole and hoarded at Mar-a-Lago. He offered ludicrous misrepresentations of the Presidential Records Act to justify his security breach. Responding to Collins’ inquiry as to whether he had shown the documents to anyone, Trump replied, “Not really.” Which is a long ways from “No.” He elaborated that he “had the right” to show them to anyone he wanted to. This is a near confession to criminal espionage.

RELATED: On Fox News Trump Confesses that He Stole Classified Documents, Despite Hannity’s Coaching

A good indicator of how awful the town hall was is who celebrated the event afterwards. Media Matters collected the rave reviews from elated right-wingers. And on his floundering Twitter scam, Truth Social, Trump himself expressed his delight with the appearance, along with 18 posts from his ecstatic supporters who all considered it a triumph. Congratulations, CNN.

However, it wasn’t only CNN who thought that this noxious affair was a disgraceful embarrassment to journalism. The Hollywood Reported compiled reactions from a broad array of media analysts who concurred that the network “failed journalism and our country.” And there are more critiques here via Media Matters. Even President Biden weighed in saying pointedly that “It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that?”

UPDATE: CNN’s ratings for the town hall were unimpressive. They drew about 3 million viewers, which would be an average night for Fox News primetime, and not uncommon or a special news event on CNN. But those viewers are unlikely to stick around. If they came for Trump they are predisposed to hate CNN, and will be further put off by Collins’ questioning of him.

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Jon Stewart Laments that There is Too Much Focus on Donald Trump

It has been six years since Jon Stewart left his post at the Daily Show, disappointing millions of Americans who got humor, insight, and solace from his take on the media and its impact on society. He left a vacuum that still hasn’t been filled by his successors in the comedy world during times when political satire was needed more than ever.

Donald Trump, Jon Stewart

Now Stewart has returned to television with a show on AppleTV+ that looks to be a bit more serious. And to promote his new venture, he is making the rounds on the PR circuit, including an appearance on Sunday’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on CNN.

Tapper did an extended interview (video below) of Stewart that touched on many subjects and provided him with a platform to express his ideas about contemporary media and politics. There was much to admire in his commentary. But there was a brief moment where Stewart may have drifted slightly off the mark:

“I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation. And de-escalation is the antidote to all this nonsense. And I don’t mean civility, and I don’t mean non-partisanship. I mean focusing on things that are more urgent and elemental in people’s lives and really hammering away at those things.”

Stewart is making a good point about the need to “hammer away” at the issues that really impact people’s lives. There is a bizarre tendency at some media outlets – particularly Fox News – to feature pseudo-culture jamming trivialities like gay Legos, or Chick-fil-A Sauce Shortages, or the infamous Dandelion-Gate.

However, to say that “media does a terrible job at de-escalation” is to suggest that the media regards its job as de-escalating and is failing at it. To the contrary, right-wing media actually considers it their mission to escalate controversy, and they are really quite good at it. They are profoundly successful at stirring up hostility and division which, in turn, acts as a magnet that compels viewers to be viscerally afraid and to stay perpetually tuned in so that they can satiate the addiction that the media itself created. A bigger misstep by Stewart, though, was his assertion that…

“I think we make a mistake focusing this all on Donald Trump […] He has just been an effective vessel.”

If Trump is a “vessel,” then he is a super-tanker loaded to the brim with a toxic cargo that he’s intent on polluting the entire planet with. While it would be a great relief to never again have to be assaulted by Trump’s visage or voice, as long as he is being dredged up by his cult followers and the wingnut press, we need to be vigilant and cognizant of the massive harm that he is capable of inflicting.

While Stewart’s point that Trump is not the originator of the noxious ideas he espouses is correct, he is far and away the most prominent dispenser of them. No one else in Republican politics commands the blind loyalty and propensity for violence that Trump does. And if anyone has the potential to lead an anti-democratic revolt, manned by armed, dangerous, fanatical zealots, it’s Trump.

Consequently, Trump must remain squarely in our focus. That doesn’t mean having the media donate unlimited hours of uninterrupted coverage for his hate-filled cult rallies, like they did in 2016. It doesn’t mean offering his tainted and ignorant perspective of every issue. And it doesn’t mean focusing solely on Trump. What it means is exposing his lies, nefarious intentions, and unsavory relationships, at every opportunity.

Along with an aggressive progressive agenda that benefits all Americans, there must be a focus on stopping Trump and Trumpism. His rancid rhetoric must be neutralized and his authoritarian aspirations quashed. Failure to do so will allow his neo-fascism to spread and fatally infect the nation. Jon Stewart is one of the best voices to achieve a positive end. Let’s hope he stays in that fight.

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
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CNN’s Jake Tapper Goes Off on Biden for ‘Scolding’ Willfully Deceived Vaccine Refusers

For the majority of Americans who have done the sensible and responsible thing by getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, their obstinate counterparts who reject the vaccine (and science) are a mortal threat. They are putting both the health of people and the nation’s economic health at risk. And the President, as well as the American people, aren’t having it.

Joe Biden, Tweet

On Thursday President Biden addressed this threat with both blunt language and substantive policy. His plan to increase the rate of vaccinations by, among other things, directing large companies to require that their employees either get vaccinated or have weekly tests would provide greater protection for the population at large. Predictably, this was met with scorn by right-wing politicians and pundits. Especially Fox News (who Biden called out in his speech) where they maligned Biden as a “tyrant” who “declared war on millions of Americans.”

Unfortunately, over at CNN there was additional criticism of the President from a rather bizarre angle. Jake Tapper hosted a segment (video below) wherein he complained that Biden was taking the wrong approach by “scolding” the unvaccinated. He characterized them as victims of the liars in government and the press. While it is true that Republicans, Fox News, and their confederates have been flagrantly lying to the American people, it is naïve to portray them as victims. They have the same access to the truth about the COVID pandemic as everyone else. They just willfully choose to believe what are easily provable lies. Nevertheless, Tapper had this to say about it:

“I don’t think scolding is the approach. There are these purveyors of misinformation out there, and they’re not just on the right. Robert Kennedy Jr. is one of the most notorious ones. And I haven’t seen the president or anyone say, look, people, like, he’s scolding the people that are being lied to as opposed to the liars.

“Instead of saying there are a bunch of people trying to get your money, trying to get you attention, trying to get your votes, trying to get your views and clicks, they are lying to you. Instead of shaming the liars and trying to educate the people being lied to, he’s scolding the people being lied to. And again, as with the election lie, you can get mad at the people who believe the lies, but the villains are the liars.”

Tapper is correct that there are “villains” who are lying to people and that they deserve to be castigated for their reckless and potentially deadly dishonesty. But that’s the only part he got right.

It was wrong to describe Biden’s tone as “scolding,” when it was, in fact, appropriately caring as he implored the resisters to do the right thing for themselves and everyone else. It was also wrong to pretend that there was some equivalence between the long-running, fringe, anti-vaccine campaign by RFK, Jr, and the establishment Republicans and conservative media who are exacerbating the problem.

Tapper also claims not to have seen anyone criticizing or “shaming the liars” who have misled the resisters. Really? There has been significant amounts of such criticism whenever someone at Fox News, or some self-serving Republican hack, has expressed their hostility to vaccines and the need to get more people to partake of them. Biden even addressed it in his speech on Thursday saying that, “to make matters worse, there are elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”

However, as guilty as the vaccine disinformers are of putting the nation at risk, the people who choose to believe them are not mere victims. They purposefully ignore and/or rebuke the truth about vaccines. They are hardened in their opposition to the facts, instead preferring to believe Facebook quacks, Fox News hacks, and political whacks.

Credible doctors, politicians and pundits have been trying for months to get the resisters on board. They’ve tried every type of persuasion imaginable, including education, appeals to compassion, profiles of resisters who died, and even cash rewards. If they haven’t been convinced by now, exactly what does Tapper think will finally convince them? Furthermore, isn’t Tapper’s position condescending to the resisters, implying that they are too stupid figure out that they are being lied to? While that may be true, how will it help his argument to succeed?

So yes, Tapper is correct about the guilt of those disseminating lies. But he is too easy on those consuming them. There is nothing remotely credible about Tucker Carlson’s paranoid ranting that vaccines don’t work and “they” won’t tell you. Nor are Sean Hannity’s efforts to plant doubts about the vaccine rooted in facts. But it is consistent with the rest of the rightist media that deliberately steers people away from life-saving guidance by medical experts. And the unvaccinated are not being forced to believe it. They a choosing to do so, freely.

Tapper might want to listen to Biden’s speech again and pay close attention to his appeal. Particularly this part that displays his empathy for all of the people of the country, and his genuine desire for everyone to be safe from the ravages of the pandemic:

“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see? We’ve made vaccinations free, safe, and convenient. The vaccine is FDA approved. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot. We’ve been patient but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us. So, please, do the right thing.”

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
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Sen. Collins Lets Slip that ‘There Were Many Communications with Trump’ on January 6th

The investigations into Donald Trump’s culpability for the riots in Washington, D.C., on January 6th have barely just begun. So far there has been a one hearing that featured four law enforcement officers who were assaulted by Trump’s Insurrection Brigades. Naturally, Fox News immediately set out to malign the officers.

Donald Trump Insurrection

There is still much be learned as the investigation continues. The documentary and testimonial evidence is growing by the day. In that regard, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine helpfully added herself to the list of witnesses. On CNN’s State of the Union, Collins was questioned by host Jake Tapper about the House Select Committee that is probing the Trump-incited mob violence that sought to disrupt Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty to certify the election.

Collins told Tapper said that she “fought very hard” for an independent, bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection. But she failed to note that it was her Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, whose opposition killed it. Then she goes on to complain about the Select Committee not being bipartisan, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi placing two Republicans on the panel. It was GOP House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who refused to seat three other Republicans.

Tapper pointed out that two of McCarthy’s GOP picks for the Committee, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, were “election liars,” and Jordan is likely to be called as a witness. To which Collins replied that, “There were many communications with [then] president Trump that day.”

https://twitter.com/JanNWolfe/status/1421831094656282625

Really? Who would that be? We know about Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan who, by their own admissions, spoke with Trump. Although both are declining to reveal the substance of their conversations. But if there were “many” others, then maybe Collins needs to be subpoenaed as a witness to disclose what she knows about those members of Congress. Were they calling Trump to plead with him to call off his insurrectionist brigades? Were they calling to plot strategy for the attempted coup after the assault on Congress?

These questions must be answered. And now Collins has woven herself into the investigation as a material witness. We know that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to subvert democracy. It is imperative that he be held accountable to restore faith in the American experiment. But all of those who were complicit in the domestic terrorism that Trump incited must also be held accountable. Including members of Congress who aided and abetted Trump’s treason.

Consequently, Collins must now be required to disclose what she knows, under oath, before the Committee. The seriousness of the crimes committed by Trump cannot be overstated. He was recently described as a war criminal by Carl Bernstein. And his accomplices must not be allowed to escape responsibility.

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
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Where’s Trump? And Why Isn’t He Ordering His QAnon Troops to Stand Down on March 4?

It has been less than two months since Donald Trump’s Insurrectionist Brigades attacked Congress and the very heart of American democracy. Five people died, and many dozens more were injured. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric in the months and hours prior to the attack clearly show that his role was instrumental in inciting the violent mob.

Trump Charlotsville

Now there is another threat that looms over Washington, D.C. The same criminals who conducted the traitorous riots on January 6th are threatening more violence for March 4th. CNN reports that…

“US officials on Wednesday alerted lawmakers to a potential threat against the US Capitol on March 4, for which security has been enhanced as a precaution, less than two months after the Capitol complex was stormed and lawmakers’ lives were threatened by rioters.

“Information provided by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned of increased chatter among extremists, including members of the Three Percenters extremist group, discussing possible plots against the Capitol on March 4, a date that conspiracy theorists have focused on, according to sources familiar with the matter.”

This news raises more questions about where Trump stands in this war against America. We know that he did nothing to stop his seditious supporters on January 6th. And he’s being equally negligent now. Jake Tapper of CNN raised this question, asking Republican congressman Michael McCaul whether Trump has a responsibility to intervene:

Tapper: It seems to me that, whether we’re talking about the attack on January 6th or this possible attack tomorrow, President Trump – these people, these attackers worship him. They love him. They think that they’re doing this in his name. Do you think Donald Trump should be saying more forcefully, clearly. ‘I’m not gonna be inaugurated tomorrow. Joe Biden was elected fair and square.’ That could potentially quell a lot of these violent threats.
McCaul: President Trump has the responsibility to tell them to stand down. This threat is credible. It’s real. It’s a right-wing militia group that believes that because the original inauguration date was March 4th until the 20th Amendment passed, they think that this is the true inauguration day and that President Trump should be inaugurated tomorrow. And that is the threat we face right now.

Exactly! And yet, Trump is nowhere to be found. He could have a significant influence on the glassy-eyed disciples of his perverse cult. They are awaiting his orders. He could prevent more violence and harm. But he’s holed up in his Mar-a-Lago bunker and, not unlike his gross and deliberate inaction on January 6th, he’s probably enjoying the prospect of a horde of StormTrumpers breaking down doors, smashing windows, and shedding blood.

All Trump needs to do is stand before a camera and insist that his goons stay home and refrain from any violent activity. But Trump isn’t making that simple gesture. Why do you suppose that is?

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
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Trump Shill McEnany Visits Fox News to Drop Another Flagrant Election Fraud Lie

Next week the Electoral College will certify that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. But even as this date approaches, and the outcome is unquestionably certain, Donald Trump continues to babble incoherently that he was the winner “by a landslide.” It’s position that just gets more pathetic every day as Trump affirms his departure from reality and psychotic deterioration. Unfortunately, he’s also veering closing to open advocacy of violence.

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Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump

However, it isn’t just Trump who is suffering from this deeply delusional defect. It has spread like an epidemic throughout Trump World. His dimwitted cult disciples are fully indoctrinated into believing that a cabal of thousands of coup conspirators have “stolen” the election without leaving behind a single shred of evidence. And Trump’s remaining dead-ender confederates in the White House persist in propagating a victory that exists only in his diseased mind.

Chief among those stubborn Trumpians is his combination press secretary and campaign mouthpiece, Kayleigh McEnany. She spent some quality time Monday night with Senior Fox News Trump-fluffer Sean Hannity where she tried to pass off a provable lie about alleged voting irregularities:

“This happened in the places where it needed to happen. Which is why the four metros, the only four where Joe Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton, were Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Detroit. The four he needed in the four key states.”

McEnany’s disinformation appears to have been cribbed from a tweet by the ultra right-wing pollster, Rasmussen. Their tweet linked to an article by the notorious Internet conspiracy crackpot, Gateway Pundit, who sourced his info to the website Townhall. Of course, the article was utterly fictional. Even Townhall later disclaimed their own post. But the presence of blatant falsehoods have never stopped McEnany, or Hannity, before. CNN’s Jake Tapper put it succinctly this weekend when he described his standards for booking Trump administration guests:

“There are some people that are just so mendacious I just wouldn’t put them on air. Kayleigh McEnany, I’ve never booked her. Jason Miller from the Trump campaign, I would never book him. These are just people, they just tell lies the way that most people breathe. There was no value in that. […] This is what she does. She tells lies all the time. She can’t acknowledge reality.”

For the record, USA Today conducted a study of “the country’s 10 largest cities — or the counties in which they’re located, if data by city was not available — plus Detroit, Milwaukee and Fulton County, where Atlanta is located.” It found that Biden actually did outperform Clinton in 10 of those 13 locations:

  • Chicago by 19,613 votes
  • Philadelphia by 20,150 votes
  • Milwaukee by 6,004 votes
  • Houston by 210,279 votes
  • San Antonio by 128,902 votes
  • San Diego by 226,849 votes
  • Dallas by 137,496 votes
  • San Jose by 103,574 votes
  • Phoenix by 337,867 votes
  • Atlanta by 84,093 votes

As further evidence of how far off McEnany et al are, Biden actually appears to have underperformed Clinton in Detroit. Another study conducted by the conservative National Review confirmed USA Today’s study. They found that “Biden improved his margin of victory compared to Clinton in 31 of 36 urban counties.” They also found that “There’s no evidence that swing states had more than 100% voter turnout.”

McEnany’s penchant for poisoning her diatribes with untruths is well known. She began doing it on day one of her employment as Trump’s press secretary, ably filling the deceitful shoes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Following Tapper’s public rebuke, McEnany spitefully turned to Twitter to hysterically claim that she doesn’t lie. Which is just another lie in her ample supply of prevarication.

But if McEnany is really so offended by people accurately pointing out her aversion to truth telling, she just might want to take this advice…

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.

Watch as Trump’s Incompetence and Hostility to the Free Press is Exposed

Every day there is new evidence of how Donald Trump neglected to act responsibly to prevent the loss of thousands of American lives. This week we learned that “Top White House advisers as well as experts deep in the Cabinet departments and intelligence agencies all sounded alarms and urged aggressive action to counter the threat from the coronavirus, but President Trump remained slow to respond.”

Trump TV

We also learned, through the release of a series of Red Dawn emails that circulated in the White House, just how determined Trump was to ignore the warning signs of imminent disaster. Even America’s preeminent expert on pandemics, and a member of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, responded with stark honesty on CNN’s State of the Union to the question of whether fewer lives would have been lost had Trump acted sooner:

“You could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously no one is going to deny that … But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back [in February].”

In other words, Trump & Co. allowed a pandemic to spread so that they wouldn’t lose money or risk hurting his reelection prospects. In will be interesting to see if Dr. Fauci survives this truth telling when Trump is told about it. (UPDATE: Trump retweeted a post calling for him to fire Fauci).

In another demonstration of the invaluable service that the media is capable of providing, CNN’s Jake Tapper delivered an editorial examining the Trump administration’s plan (or lack thereof) for dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. The segment (video below) included a compilation of Trump’s badgering of reporters and his impotent attempts to intimidate the White House press corps. Tapper led off by noting that “Trump is taking questions from reporters nearly every day, but that does not mean he’s answering them.”

What followed was a stream of examples of Trump lashing out at journalists who were simply doing their jobs. But his childish put downs were pathetic at best, and they only served to reveal his barely veiled fear. He called seasoned reporters “third rate.” “disgraceful,” and “nasty.” He interrupted them before they could complete their questions. And his answers, more often than not, dodged the substance of the questions.

This just adds to the argument that Trump should not even attend these briefings. He has no useful knowledge or experience to offer. To the contrary, he most often unleashes blatantly false “information” that his own advisers have to later refute. He wastes valuable time either attacking legitimate journalists who are asking pertinent question, or embracing propagandists whose questions are nothing more than overt suck ups.

There is only one reason that Trump is showing up at these briefings, and that is to advance his reelection prospects. He has turned what should be a vital information channel into a crass campaign PR affair. Then he tries to make a preposterous argument about the ratings, saying that they are indicative of his alleged popularity.

Tapper summed up his remarks by asking Trump another question that he surely will not answer: “Attacking journalists who ask questions does not make those questions go away. It only reveals that you might not have the answers. Again, sir, respectfully, what is the plan for a way out of this? Do you have one?” If Trump responds to that question at all, it will likely be in the form of tweet that merely says “FAKE NEWS” in all caps without ever referencing the original question about whether or not he has a plan. But that hardly matters. The American people already know the answer to that question.

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

Trump’s Heinous Attack on Tom Steyer, a Jewish Democrat and Target of the MAGABomber

Already? It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to back off of his obviously disingenuous calls for unity and peace following the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In fact, it took less than twenty-fours. On Sunday morning Trump could no longer contain his regnant impulses, so he let loose on Twitter in a display of rancid anti-Semitism and a heinous disregard for human life.

Donald Trump

The latest target of Trump’s hostility is billionaire Tom Steyer, a prominent Democratic donor and vocal critic of the President. Trump’s tweet was both hostile and dishonest. In other words, business as usual for our loathsome, Pathological-Liar-in-Chief. The offensive tweet ignored every moral principle that a conscientious leader would ordinarily have. It said:

Let’s break that down. First of all. Trump is admitting that he lied when he said that he doesn’t watch CNN. He often quotes from segments on CNN and criticizes their coverage of him. But in this tweet he plainly admitted that he watched the whole interview. Trump also lied about not having seen Steyer before. Almost a year ago to the day, Trump tweeted about the “Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me.” Indeed, Steyer is the founder of Need To Impeach, which has already accumulated more than 6.1 million signatures of Americans seeking to remove Trump from office due to his well documented treasonous behavior and repeated violations of law.

Trump’s infantile compulsion to insult people was evident again with an absurd characterization of Steyer as “wacky,” “crazed,” and “lunatic.” Whatever you think of Steyer’s opinions, his demeanor is always composed and dignified. Trump is just projecting a description of himself onto someone for whom it is plainly unfitting. What’s more, Trump is revealing his jealousy of Steyer, who is a true self-made billionaire (unlike Trump, who got, millions from his father), with a peculiar and unsupported reference to him “running out of money.” And then, of course, Trump alludes to Steyer as being a potential rival in 2020, which Steyer has never affirmed.

In the interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union (video below), Steyer made a strong case refuting the false equivalency that conservatives allege with regard to violence against political leaders. He argued that there may have been perpetrators on both sides, but only one side has been flagrantly advocating the sort of hostilities that result in real, physical harm. And Trump is at the helm of that advocacy with his calls to assault protesters, his support for “body slamming” journalists, and his labeling political opponents, and the media, as enemies.

However, the worst part of Trump’s tweet is that he posted it just days after it was revealed that Steyer was a recipient of a mail bomb from the now infamous “MAGABomber.” Trump has not expressed any sympathies directly to any of the targets of that virulently pro-Trump domestic terrorist, including two former presidents. But now he is overtly attacking one of those targets. Additionally, Steyer is half-Jewish, which makes Trump’s tweet even more reprehensible considering the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue the day before.

It seems that every day Donald Trump exposes more of the noxious hatred and ignorance that is the core of his character, or lack thereof. And with this one tweet he has reaffirmed his relentless dishonesty, his insensitivity toward people who have suffered tragedies, and his brazen bigotry. You have to admit that he has a unique talent for being the worst human being to ever occupy a place of power in the United States. And that’s an accomplishment that surely fills him with pride.

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