Trump is Frantically Looking to Hire Fox News People to Staff His Flailing Press Office

The controversy over Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey continues to unfold. And the President insists on making matters worse with comments that are implicit admissions of impeachable offenses. For instance, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he asked Comey if he was a subject of an FBI investigation. He also asked Comey to pledge an oath of loyalty and threatened him with releasing secret tape recordings. All of these could be regarded as ethical breaches sufficient to warrant an impeachment inquiry.

Donald Trump Sean Spicer

While the core story is as disturbing as anything that’s come out of Washington in decades, there are spin-offs that are equally unsettling. Among them are recent reports concerning the toxic status of Trump’s White House Press Office. Sean Spicer and company have been taking a severe beating over their inability to communicate a consistent, coherent message. They have lost credibility among their peers and, apparently, their bosses as well. On Friday Jeanine Pirro of Fox News asked Trump if Spicer’s job was secure. He pointedly declined to give a straight answer.

Trump is so upset that he actually proposed eliminating the daily press briefings and communicating via Twitter. He also suggested that he might just hold weekly press conferences by himself. An article in the Associated Press noted that Trump “increasingly sees himself as the White House’s only effective spokesperson.” While the absence of regular press avails would ordinarily be an unprecedented insult to the public trust, in the case of this White House it hardly matters. Very little of substance, or truth, is derived from their daily get-togethers.

Now there are reports that Trump is sending out feelers to reshape his press operation more to his liking. In the same AP article there was a line that revealed where Trump’s thinking is headed for the near future:

“Trump is mulling expanding the communications team and has eyed hiring producers from Fox News, according to one White House official.”

That should fix everything. When your press office isn’t lying well enough, get yourself some professionals to do it. For the record, Trump has already tapped Fox News for several administration appointments. Former Foxies on the White House payroll currently include K.T. McFarland, Ben Carson, Sebastion Gorka, Heather Nauert, Richard Grennell, and Jonathan Wachtel. There has never been an administration that was so packed with people from a major news enterprise. And now that’s going to get even worse.

Among the rumored changes is one that predicts the departure of Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Trump insiders are telling the media that Trump “wants Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle to take his place.” Guilfoyle was an attorney who is currently a co-host of Fox’s right-wing gab-fest, The Five. She has never been a journalist and has no experience in press relations. That surely won’t bother Trump who regards inexperience as an asset. Trump may also appreciate Guilfoyle’s admiration for Vladimir Putin, who she thought would be a better president than Barack Obama. And if you don’t believe the anonymous sources speculating about Guilfoyle, the story broke two days earlier on Alex Jones’ Infowars. So that should settle it.

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

By bringing in Fox News producers and presenters, the White House press office would take on a new identity as an overtly partisan purveyor of propaganda. So one might ask, what’s the difference? Well, it would also cement Trump’s image as a TV character who relies on the fakery of entertainment values over honest journalism. And it would reinforce the relationship between Trump and Fox, which is already a marriage of political convenience and ideology. But most of all, it would abandon any hope of securing the respect of the American public or the world at large. It would turn the press office into a punchline. And considering that the Trump administration is already a bad joke, they don’t really have that far to go.

Irish Lives Matter? Fox News Celebrates Racism On St. Patrick’s Day

Leave it to Fox News to turn the most slammin’, sloshin’, party holiday of the year into an opportunity to demean a civil rights movement devoted to saving lives and improving relations with society’s institutions.

foxnews-stpatricks

Today’s episode of “The Five” opened with an extended segment of the panel’s tribute to St. Patrick’s Day by parading an array of everything they could find that was painted green, including donuts, milkshakes, and tacos. But it didn’t take long for them find a way to devolve into the offensive rhetoric that is the hallmark America’s rightist wingnut network. Somehow a light-hearted discussion about green beer and leprechauns led to the following exchange between Juan Williams and Kimberly Guilfoyle:

Juan Williams: Irish people were stereotyped and denigrated for a long time.
Kimberly Guilfoyle: And the Irish got over it. They don’t run around going Irish Lives Matter

This is one of those times when screaming at the TV just isn’t sufficiently satisfying. Guilfoyle actually believes that there is a coherent equivalence in America today between the current state of prejudice experienced by African-Americans and the Irish. She thinks that her snide mockery of Black Lives Matters makes a cogent point about civil rights.

Guilfoyle would be right if the Irish were being gunned down in the streets while unarmed for trivial alleged crimes. She would be right if the Irish were subject to institutionalized racism during encounters with law enforcement. She would be right if driving while Irish was a thing. But since none of that exists in reality, she’s just another Fox News bigot trying and failing to disparage a movement that is working hard to resolve real problems.

Fox News, of course, has a history of being openly biased, and St. Patrick’s Day has been the springboard for it before. A couple of years ago the Guinness Beer company made a principled decision to skip New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade because the LGBT community was prohibited from participating. That led Rupert Murdoch to tweet

“Where will this end? Guinness pulls out of religious parade bullied by gay orgs who try to take it over. Hope all Irish boycott the stuff.”

At the time, News Corpse spelled out all the reasons that tweet exposed Murdoch as being either senile or drunk. Not the least of which is his ludicrous suggestion that Irish Americans, or any other celebrant, is going to abstain from drinking the most famous Irish beer in the world on St. Patrick’s Day. And as if to rub it in that Murdoch is a raging fool, last year Ireland voted to legalize same-sex marriage and gays proudly marched in this year’s parade.

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

Rupert Murdoch

Fox News Hysterically Flubs Their New Year’s Eve Infomercial For Donald Trump

For weeks Fox News heavily promoted their New Year’s Eve special that would feature an appearance by Donald Trump to ring in the new year. This programming strategy is another affirmation that Fox is not even pretending to be fair and balanced anymore. But the real problem for Fox was that the segment was complete dud as both entertainment and advocacy.

Donald Trump Fox News

The hosts, Eric Bolling and Kimberely Guilfoyle, could not have been more annoying and obsequious. And The Donald was barely coherent. Combine that with technical glitches and missed cues and you have a evening of humiliation and unintentional comedy as exemplified in this exchange:

Bolling: The big question is, Donald Trump, New Year’s resolution 2016, campaign related, what are you gonna go for next year?
Trump: Well, we’re gonna have a great time next year. We’re gonna have an amazing year. We’re gonna make America great again. And we’re gonna do everything in our power to make sure that happens.
Guilfoyle: I see my friends there, Donny and Vanessea. It’s great to see the whole family and Ivanka. And Melania looking so gorgeous. I gotta tell ya, she would make an amazing First Lady of America.

Guilfoyle: If we call in 2017 to come ring in New Year’s, are we calling the White House and can we get the call through?
Trump: Well, I hope you’re gonna be calling the White House and I promise you will get through. You’ll always be invited and we’re gonna do something really special. We’re gonna make a lot of amends for the mistakes that have been made over the years.

Presumably he means mistakes like ending two wars, making health care accessible to millions, cutting the deficit by two-thirds, and bringing the economy back from the worst catastrophe since the Great Depression. But what these nitwits failed to realize is that on New Year’s day in 2017 President Obama will still be the president and residing in the White House. It may seem like a small point, but it is emblematic of the inbred ignorance of the Fox News yakkers and their buffonish guest, Donald Trump.

This inane chatter went on for nine minutes and served as little more than an infomercial for Trump. No other candidate was given this prime broadcast time as the calendar flipped a page. And he was in full campaign-mode, asserting that he would be Hillary Clinton’s “worst nightmare” and repeating his campaign branding and slogans ad nauseum. Given another chance to come up with a New Year’s resolution he again said only that he would “make America great again,” to which Guilfoyle’s trained puppy response was “Good choice.” I’m really starting to wonder when Trump will turn his slogan into a jingle and have a tie-in with Pepsi or McDonalds (McDonald Trump? I’m lovin’ it).

To top it off, Bolling and Guilfoyle let the Trump family ramble on for so long that they actually missed the New Year’s countdown. The right side of the screen showed the clock tick to zero while the Trump’s were still hogging the slimelight. Then, to cover their fumbling of the most important part of the evening, they initiated their own fake countdown after the new year had already begun. Seriously, these cretins had just one thing to do right on this broadcast, which was the countdown to the new year and they blew it in order to cater to Donald Trump’s lust for attention. Watch and laugh – and have a happy new year.

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

The Fox News War On Women Presents: Boobs On The Air

Yesterday’s broadcast of The Five on Fox News featured a brief segment (video below) wherein Kimberly Guilfoyle delivered a rather inspiring tribute Maj. Maryam Al Mansouri, a female fighter pilot from the United Arab Emirates who led the UAE’s forces in attacks on ISIL.

Guilfoyle aimed her comments directly at the terrorists saying “Hey ISIS, you were bombed by a woman.” She highlighted the poetic justice of religious extremists who won’t even allow women to drive cars, getting blown away by a competent, accomplished female soldier from an Arab nation. Unfortunately, the response from her male colleagues on the program was somewhat less dignified.

Fox News

The panel’s resident troll, Greg Gutfeld hurled a stereotypical insult at the Major saying that “The problem is, after she bombed it, she couldn’t park it.” Then Eric Bolling chimed in with a demeaning and sexist query, “Would that be considered boobs on the ground?” And all Guilfoyle could do was plaintively ask why they were ruining her piece.

If that were the only example of offensive, juvenile, anti-woman behavior by Fox News jerks it would be bad enough. But this came shortly after Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends made “jokes” about the lesson from the video of Ray Rice beating his girlfriend into unconsciousness is that he should have taken the stairs where there were no cameras to capture his assault. It came after Fox News “psycho” analyst Keith Ablow belittled First Lady Michelle Obama’s efforts on behalf of healthier children saying that “How well can she be eating. She needs to drop a few.” It came after Fox’s Anna Kooiman introduced right-wing YouTubers, the PolitiChicks, as “A lot of hotness on the couch this morning.”

The pattern of demonstrating such brazen disrespect for women is a familiar part of Fox News programming. They regard women as little more than eye candy for their predominantly old, male viewers. Fox CEO Roger Ailes has been reported as insisting that his female anchors wear skirts and show leg. But to carry this boorishness over to demean a woman who is putting her life on the line against terrorists is especially repulsive. Sadly though, it is not unexpected from Fox News.

For more repulsiveness and dishonesty from Fox…
Get the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

[Update] The following day Bolling made an apology of sorts. He said…

“I realized some people didn’t think it was funny at all. I said sorry to my wife and I apologize to all of you as well.”

So he was only apologizing because the joke wasn’t funny, not because it was brazenly offensive and demeaning to women and soldiers? And the “apology” was only directed to his wife and Fox viewers, but not to the pilot or others he insulted? Typical Fox avoidance of responsibility and ethics.