Mike Huckabee

Fox News Lauds Trump as ‘Unbeatable in 2024’ Following His Dystopian Campaign Announcement

Posted by on November 16, 2022 at 11:22 am. 7 Comments :

The “big announcement” that Donald Trump has been teasing for several weeks was unveiled Tuesday night before an audience of glassy-eyed cult devotees at Mar-a-Lago. It was a decidedly anti-climactic affair given that everyone knew what he was going to say, they’d all heard it many times before, and it was delivered with the energy of a sedated sloth.

Click here to Tweet this article

Donald Trump TV Set

Nevertheless, the Trump-fluffers on Fox News were exhilarated by his tedious performance. Dispelling the notion that Trump had lately fallen out of favor with the Fox News fascistas, the reaction to his campaign kick-off speech was drenched with unabashed adulation.

RELATED: Crybaby Trump Lashes Out at ‘Fake News’ for Reporting Accurately that He’s the Biggest Loser

Trump’s speech was reminiscent of his inaugural “American Carnage” address that painted the nation in a starkly depressing hue. It’s the same spectrum of hellishness that colors almost all of Trump’s visions of America, other than the utopian autocracy with him at the helm. And it was that vision that excited the Fox News crew.

While Fox News carried the first forty minutes of Trump’s hour-plus long speech, they broke into it so that Sean Hannity and his guests could tell their audience just how magnificent what they were watching was. It began with the co-host of Fox and Friends, Pete Hegseth, gushing that “This looks like Trump in as good a form as you have ever seen him.” That was followed by Hannity regurgitating an extended segment of the speech wherein he asserted that “Americans are suffering pain, hardship, anxiety, and despair.” Then he threw it to Fox News contributor, Mike Huckabee, for this mushy commentary…

“Sean, the construct of the speech is pitch perfect. If he keeps on like this tonight, he is unbeatable in 2024. Nobody can touch him. Not a Republican, not a Democrat. […] I’m telling you, this was an absolutely brilliant speech, the best I’ve heard him give in a long time. And he stays on this message, I agree with Pete, he stays and keeps it between the ditches, and this focus, he’s unbeatable.”

Seriously? If these people really think that this Trump speech is going to propel him to electoral victory in 2024, they are terminally delusional. This is precisely the sort of dreadful dialogue that resulted in Trump losing in 2020. It’s why 65% of registered voters don’t want him to run in 2024. And it’s why he failed to produce the fabled “red wave” in 2022.

RELATED: Trump’s Truthless Temper Tantrum Over the Midterm Election Results is Just So Trumpy

Trump’s speech was just more of the same tiresome bombast that he excretes incessantly at his cult rallies. He bragged about accomplishments that never occurred (border wall, jobs, economy, foreign policy). He falsely claimed success in the midterms. He floated a new conspiracy about his having lost in 2020, saying that “Many people think that China played a very active role in the 2020 election.”

Of course, Trump also ranted about how Democrats have destroyed the imaginary utopia that he thinks he left behind. He even repeated his paranoid delusions of being spied on by the FBI.

For some reason Trump left out any mention of the many crimes he committed, and the ongoing criminal and civil investigations (so helpfully enumerated by Hannity here). He didn’t mention the deadly insurrection he incited at the Capitol. He didn’t acknowledge the litigation against him for tax fraud in New York and election interference in Georgia.

However, in his whining about how awful America is, he noted that it was plagued by “blood-soaked streets” in “cesspool cities.” And he declared that he has “no doubt that it’s going to get worse.” That’s the same line he recently used at his cult rally where he fear mongered that “the streets of our once great cities are drenched in the blood of innocent victims.”

RELATED: Trump’s Fear Mongering Lies About ‘Streets Drenched in Blood’ Reach New Depths of Depravity

And all of that is what the cretins at Fox News regard as the sort of inspiring oratory that will guarantee Trump’s return to the White House. But only if he can stay on message. Which is not a skill that he is known for, to put in mildly.

The Foxies think that because Trump didn’t dwell on his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him, as he usually does, that he’s abandoned it. But rest assured that he will return to that theme before long. He can’t help it.

UPDATE: The Results Are In…
Trump’s Dreary Campaign Announcement Speech Drew Dismal TV Ratings

NOTE: Twitter 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.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Big Baby Lauren Boebert’s Pathetic Insult of Eric Swalwell Would Make a Kindergartener Cringe

Posted by on July 17, 2022 at 5:42 pm. 5 Comments :

You have to appreciate it when Republican blowhards conveniently provide the best evidence of their astonishing idiocy. And no one is more accommodating in this regard than Colorado’s QAnon representative, Lauren Boebert.

Click here to Tweet this article

Lauren Boebert

On Saturday Boebert appeared on Mike Huckabee’s program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. During her slushball interview, Boebert thought she had devised a clever way of insulting Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. Boebert was obviously proud of herself when she said that…

“Unfortunately, [Swalwell] only acts tough on Twitter so I’ve actually tried to have conversations with Eric “Smells Not So Well” and it doesn’t really work out. He bee-lines away from me. And so maybe I’m intimidating. I’m not sure. But he actually compared me to the horrible mass shooter in Highland Park. He put a picture of me with a firearm, and said ‘Let’s start drawing straight lines.’”

REALLY? Boebert thinks it’s funny to distort the name of a congressman in a way that maligns his grooming. That’s the sort of insult that children learned to stop making before they graduated to elementary school. But Boebert thinks that she landed a harsh burn. And Huckabee, as well as his allegedly “Christian” audience laughed heartily.

For his part, Swalwell didn’t waste much time or thought on Boebert’s asinine outburst. He merely retweeted it with a meme from the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You,” clarifying that he isn’t intimidated by Boebert (an utterly ridiculous suggestion). He just doesn’t like her. Which most members of Congress can relate to.

Ordinarily this would be an event of such minor significance it would be ignored by the media and the public. However, in this case it is emblematic of a disastrous transformation of the Republican Party into an entity that embraces, and even exalts, this kind of gross stupidity. It is a reflection of the same sort of childishness that Donald Trump exhibits with his puerile nicknames (i.e. Adam “Schitt,” “Sleepy” Joe, Sen. Jeff “Flakey,” Al “Frankenstein”)

The Republican Party is fully engaged in a crusade to dumb down the nation. They want an electorate like the one that Trump described when he said that he “>loves the poorly educated.” Because who else would vote for them. And Boebert has picked up that baton and is running with it. It might have been a pretty funny premise for satirical movie, but when the characters have responsibility for trillions of dollars and massive armories, the humor quickly dries up.

NOTE: Twitter 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.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Trump Celebrates the Season with Blatant Christmas Lies and Rancid Antisemitism

Posted by on December 17, 2021 at 12:24 pm. 1 Comments :

“Tis the season to be…” jawing hatefully about Jews and spewing self-serving falsehoods about Christmas. At least that’s how Donald Trump is spending his yuletide days as he makes the rounds of right-wing media to keep himself uppermost in the minds of his cult disciples.

Donald Trump, Santa, Coronavirus

Trump might be worried about the fact that his holiday “Sexual Predator Tour” with Bill O’Reilly is the season’s biggest flop. Or he may be trying to deflect from the news that his Fox News propagandists have revealed his dereliction of duty as his StormTrumpers assaulted the Congress. Or maybe he is upset at having his flagrant deceptions about the January 6th insurrection that he incited being “honored” with PolitiFAct’s “Lie of the Year” award.

Whatever the reason, Trump took to the airwaves to try to restore his irredeemably tattered reputation. And predictably, his desperate efforts only made things much worse. It began with an appearance on the Trump-fluffing Newsmax network for a softball interview with Mike Huckabee, a former GOP governor and pastor. Huckabee began by falsely claiming that “Americans went through a long period where people quit saying ‘Merry Christmas.’ It was all ‘Happy Holidays.’ You deliberately changed that.” To which Trump replied…

“When I started campaigning I said ‘You’re gonna say Merry Christmas again…They are saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again. That was a big part of what I was doing.”

So Trump is bragging that he sought to force people to recite a salutation that many of them don’t subscribe to. And this is something he regards “a big part” of his fetid White House occupancy. He was also proud of his theocratic order to “cancel” anyone who disagreed with his religious mandate saying “Don’t shop at stores that don’t say ‘Merry Christmas.” And he added absurdly that “Whether you’re Muslim, whether you’re Christian, whether you’re Jewish, everyone likes Christmas.” Like a mental patient having a vocal seizure, Trump said “Merry Christmas” eight times in this brief clip.

For the record, people were neither prohibited nor inhibited about saying “Merry Christmas” in the years prior to Trump’s unfortunate candidacy and election:

Following his visit with Huckabee on Newsmax, Trump called into the ironically named “Unholy” podcast. It was there that he felt comfortable enough to repeat some of the overtly anti-Semitic views he has held for decades. Without prompting, Trump unleashed this mess of bigotry:

“People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress. And today I think it’s the exact opposite. And I think Obama and Biden did that. And yet in the election they still get a lot of votes from Jewish people. Which tells you that the Jewish people, and I’ve said this for a long time, the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel. I mean, you look at the New York Times, the New York Times hates Israel, hates them. And they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times. I mean, the Sulzberger family.

Trump’s assertion that “evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews” is not only a disgusting lie, but it fails to note the reasons for evangelical support for the Jewish state. Their interest is based on the biblical prophesy that Jesus will return after the the apocalypse and the annihilation of Israel. They are literally rooting for Israel’s destruction.

Even worse is Trump’s claim that “It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress.” Trump is rehashing an old trope that Jews control the government. But oddly, he seems to be suggesting that that was a good thing and he laments that Obama and Biden put an end to it.

When Trump whines about Jewish people not liking Israel, what he is really complaining about is that they don’t like him. He even expressed his dismay that he could only pull about 25% of the Jewish vote. Then he closes with another old anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the media (i.e. the New York Times), and therefore, the media should be promoting what Trump mistakenly thinks are Jewish interests.

These heinous remarks by Trump are nothing new. They represent the views he has espoused for many years. And the Republican Party is fully on board with this blatant prejudice. It is a repugnant platform that delights the neo-Nazi and racist hate groups that comprise so much of Trump’s cult and the GOP base. And it is sad that Trump would exploit the holiday season to advance these loathsome views.

NOTE: Twitter 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. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. 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.

Pro-Trump Fox News Guest Inadvertently Affirms that Trump has Been a Racist All His Life

Posted by on July 19, 2019 at 2:50 pm. 2 Comments :

Ordinarily Donald Trump’s nauseating scandals are quickly pushed out of the ever-shortening news cycle by even worse scandals. It’s a tactic that Trump has studiously employed from the start of his scandal-riddled administration. But the recent ruckus created by his brazenly racist comments about four Democratic congresswomen of color has had real staying power. Mostly because of Trump’s foolishness and flip-flopping.

Donald Trump

The righteous criticism that Trump has received for telling American citizens to “go back” where they came from continues to be a top story. After he tweeted his insults, he presided over one of his cult rallies where the audience chanted “Send he back.” The next day Trump tried to disown those chants by lying about how they started and what his response was. The day after that he tried to disavow his disavowal. Probably because he didn’t want to be seen as disparaging his followers. After all, a recent poll shows that the more racist Trump is, the more Republicans love him.

Throughout this controversy, Trump has been defended by his Republican confederates and the StormTrumping pundits on Fox News. And on Friday he got a testimonial that may not be all that complimentary. Radical Christianist Mike Huckabee (father of former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders) was interviewed by Fox’s Heather Childers when the subject of Trump’s racism was broached. Huckabee’s perverse defense was that…

“If Donald Trump had been a racist all these years, don’t you think it would have come out somewhere in the life that he’s lived which has been about as public as any elected official has ever lived. And the fact is, a person doesn’t just suddenly become a racist at the age of 72, having not been one up until that point.”

That’s exactly right. And what a surprising morsel of insight from such a noxious Trump-fluffing shill. It would be extremely unlikely for a 72 year old like Trump to turn into a flaming bigot overnight. There would have to have been some evidence of it earlier. So what Huckabee is saying is that if Trump was not a racist before, than he isn’t one now. Well, let’s take a look at Trump’s very public life to see for ourselves:

  • He had a strict “no colored people” policy in his apartment buildings.
  • He advocated the death penalty for the Central Park 5, even after they had been found innocent.
  • He told business associates that he didn’t want any black accountants.
  • He was an avid Birther (believing that Obama was not an American).
  • He refused to renounce KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.
  • He said there “fine people on both sides” of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.
  • He imposed a ban on Muslim immigrants.
  • He said that a Latino judge could not be neutral.
  • He called black athletes “sons of bitches.”
  • He labeled Haiti and Africa as “shithole countries.”

That isn’t even a comprehensive list. There are many other examples of Trump’s flagrant bigotry. He has indeed lived a life of personal and professional bias against black and brown people. And the history of that life is confirmation of Huckabee’s assertion Trump did not suddenly become a racist. He has been one for decades. And he follows in the footsteps of his father who attended Klan rallies in New York. This surely was not Huckabee’s point, but it tells the real story of Donald Trump’s long-festering racism.

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

Fox News Alert: Donald Trump Works Really Hard at Putting the White House in Total Disarray

Posted by on July 22, 2018 at 10:50 am. 2 Comments :

Well, the rat is out of the bag. We finally have confirmation that Donald Trump’s White House is a swirling pit of ineptitude, staffed by morons who don’t know what the hell is going on. What’s more, they’re proud of it and they think it proves that they are dedicated overachievers. And these revelations are not insults thrown by partisan lefties. They’re straight from the horse’s ass: Fox News.

Jeanine Pirro Fox News

On Saturday’s episode of Justice with Judge Jeanine Pirro the “judge” hosted former Arkansas governor/Christianist minister, Mike Huckabee. In the course of their discussion, that was predictably bashing liberals, Huckabee decided to unveil some truths that are usually kept behind the dark curtain of rabid conservatism (video below). He said that:

“Here’s what I think people don’t understand about Donald Trump: he doesn’t sleep a lot, he works harder than anybody I’ve ever seen, he has so much going on that even his own staff cannot keep up with all that’s going on.

“I used to have a chief of staff and she would often say ‘If I know everything that’s going on, there’s not enough going on.’ Well let me assure you, in the Trump White House there is nobody that knows everything that’s going on because nobody can keep up with that much stuff.”

Is he kidding? This is Huckabee’s assessment of the laziest man in Washington. Trump has played golf for about a third of his presidency. He doesn’t attend or read his presidential daily briefings unless they have pictures or happy news about him. He refuses to prepare for critical events like summits with Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin. He holds meaningless photo-ops with his cabinet and for bill signings. He never seems to know about the corruption of his own senior staff. He wastes time traveling to friendly red states to hold ego-fluffing rallies. And he spends countless hours (his “Executive Time”) watching cable news. Mostly Fox News, of course, where he gets his intelligence reports, political strategies, policy updates from Sean Hannity.

What’s more, if it’s true that nobody knows what’s going on, then that only exposes the White House as incompetent and unable to fulfill its mission to serve the people. It also means that Huckabee’s own daughter, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is one of those who doesn’t know what’s going on. So how the hell can she inform the press of the administration’s activities? Not that she ever has any intention to.

We should probably be thankful to Huckabee for his candid assessment of a White House in disarray. That’s been painfully obvious to any conscientious observer, but we don’t often hear Trump’s insiders admitting it. Another word for not knowing what’s going is “ignorance.” And the ignorance of Trump’s staff is clearly not due to Trump’s allegedly dynamic schedule. It’s due to his own inability to comprehend the complexities of his job and his deliberate efforts to withhold pertinent information from more intelligent and experienced professionals. And that’s at least partly due to the need to keep his financial corruption and collusion with foreign enemies secret.

Much of Saturday’s program was consumed by Pirro whining about incivility in politics. That’s rich coming from perhaps the most vitriolic screecher on television. Pirro has been barking out contemptuous scorn at President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and every other left-of-center American for years. Just last week she complained about being “treated like a dog” by Whoopi Goldberg on The View. But she conveniently forget to mention that she called the whole cast of the show an epithet that rhymes with “sock cucker.” And then she has the nerve to say that:

“The level of hatred toward the 45th president of the United States is beyond anything we’ve seen in American history…Now Donald Trump is the target of vitriol so papable it’s simply frighten…It’s almost impossible to have a rational discussion that doesn’t turn into a food fight.”

Let’s just set aside that she appears to be drunk (“so papable it’s simply frighten”?) Her contention that Trump has been the victim of more vitriol than any other president is ludicrous. Barack Obama, who was accused of being the founder of ISIS and the Kenyan-born spawn of Satan, might have something to say about that. Or maybe John Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln, whose lives were cut short by rather vitriolic assassins.

Pirro had some help from her another guest on the program who was equally delusional about who in America is uncivil. Trump’s senior counsel, Kellyanne Conway showed up to assert that Trump “is a president who believes that diplomacy and conversation is better than hostility and conflict.” Seriously? The president who encouraged his supporters to assault protesters and opffered to pay their legal fees; who has disparaging and infantile nicknames for every opponent; and who goads unstable tyrants into nuclear confrontations? That president believes in diplomacy?

At least Pirro had a brief moment of self-awareness in the opning paragraphs of her new book, Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy. She writes that “We know what the liberal media think of Trump voters: They’re deplorables, idiots, rednecks, and people who cling to God, guns, and religion. To those charges, I plead guilty–guilty and proud!” So Pirro is guilty, even proud, of being a deplorable, idiot, redneck. That explains a lot.

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

Obama’s Press Briefings Were Tongue Baths – Says Trump’s Tongue Bath Team on Fox News

Posted by on May 26, 2018 at 4:21 pm. 2 Comments :

Barack Obama has now been out of office for sixteen months. But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from obsessing over him and making poorly constructed comparisons that only reveal his insecurity and jealousy. Naturally, Fox News is right there to stroke Trump’s fragile ego with positive affirmations and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

Obama Fox News

On Saturday Trump’s favorite TV show, Fox and Friends, interviewed radical Chrisianist Mike Huckabee, whose daughter is the President’s press secretary. In the course of this segment Fox News reported comments made by Obama in jest at a recent tech conference. Obama said of his presidency that:

“There wasn’t any malicious intent, which is why I didn’t have scandals, which seems like it shouldn’t be something you brag about. But actually, if you look at the history of the modern presidency, coming out of the modern presidency without anybody going to jail is really good. It’s a big deal.”

Indeed. While it can hardly be claimed that the Obama years were free of error, there were precisely zero indictments or convictions of people associated with his administration in eight years. Obviously the same cannot be said of Trump in only a little over one year. But this unarguable fact became the subject of ridicule by Huckabee and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox (video below). When asked to comment, Huckabee said of Obama that:

“There were a lot of scandals. The difference was there wasn’t a scrutiny. And you can’t have the kind of scandals that you normally see in Washington if you don’t have a press corps that is doing their job of being a watchdog. In the case of the Obama administration, the press wasn’t a watchdog, they were a lap dog. […] A White House press briefing was a tongue bath.”

That analysis might require an extended pause for laughter. This is an ultra right-wing Obama hater complaining to America’s premiere Trump-fluffers that the press wasn’t tough enough on Obama. All that these Fox and Friends hacks do every day is slobber over Trump with their tongues hanging out and their tails wagging. It would be like Hannibal Lecter taking a waiter to task after finding a hair in his soup. (For the 1990’s pop culture challenged – the dude eats people).

Huckabee sought to debunk the truthful characterization of Obama’s presidency as scandal-free by rattling off what he claimed were bona fide scandals. They included:

  • The delivery of “palettes of cash” to Iran in conjunction with their agreement to scale back their nuclear weapons program.
    That was actually the return of funds that belonged to Iran that had been sequestered while sanctions were in place.
  • The murders of American diplomats in Benghazi.
    After years of congressional investigations and hearings, run by Republicans, it was determined that there was no wrongdoing on the part of anyone in the Obama administration.
  • Allegations that the IRS discriminated against conservative charitable organizations.
    This was debunked when it turned out that they didn’t treat conservatives any differently than they treated liberals. Not one conservative charity was denied its tax exempt status.
  • The so-called Fast and Furious gun running operation.
    This was actually a project that began in the Bush administration.

So giving it their best effort, Huckabee and Fox News were unable to cite a single verifiable scandal that occurred under Obama’s watch. And it wasn’t like Obama had the sort of friendly Congress that Trump has today. Republicans were in charge throughout most of his term. But they still failed to find sufficient evidence to indict or convict anyone from the Obama White House. Contrast that with the dozens of indictments that special counsel Robert Mueller has already obtained, along with five guilty pleas. And to be sure, there are more to come.

The spectacle of Huckabee appearing on State TV (aka Fox News) and trying to make the case that Obama got a free ride is just plain hysterical. If he had said it on any other network it might have been slightly less ridiculous. But saying that the media was overly deferential to Obama on a network that is so flagrantly pro-Trump is the reason that political satire is so hard to do these days. The skewed reality of Fox News and people like Huckabee are just way to funny for comedians to compete with.

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

How The F*ck Can Fox News Report On Trump With These Glaring Conflicts

Posted by on November 29, 2016 at 11:41 am. 9 Comments :

When Donald Trump was running for president he insisted that he knew “all the best people.” He promised that his administration would benefit from his connections in the business community. He argued that the typical government bureaucrats were failing and that fresh blood was needed. So how is that working out?

Donald Trump Fox News

To date, Trump’s appointees have been decidedly unimpressive. Almost none of them have experience in the fields for which they have been nominated. What’s more, they are firmly rooted in the same governmental swamp that he said he would drain. Politicians and billionaires are quickly filling up his cabinet and advisory slots. But there’s something even more troubling that many of his candidates have in common.

Fox News had a singular role in manufacturing the Trump candidacy. They gave him more airtime than any other candidate and broadcast his stump speeches for hours without interruption. And now they are supplying him with a roster of personnel to take prominent positions in his administration. Here are the Fox News candidates for Trump’s White House (so far). All of them have been on the Fox payroll:

  • K.T. McFarland: She has already been named as a Deputy National Security Advisor.
  • Ben Carson: He is reported to have been offered the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  • John Bolton: He is up for Secretary of State, although he is lately being eclipsed by Mitt Romney. And you can throw Fox’s Newt Gingrich into this stew as well.
  • Sarah Palin: If you can believe it, she is in line for Secretary of the Interior.
  • Laura Ingraham: This media-hating pundit could be Trump’s next press secretary.
  • Monica Crowley: (See Laura Ingraham).
  • Mike Huckabee: This former Fox host is being considered for Commerce Secretary.
  • Scott Brown: After losing senate races twice he is now looking at the Veterans Administration.
  • Pete Hegseth: This Koch brothers cohort is also rumored for VA head.
  • Anthony Scaramucci: He is a Wall Street fund manager who is already on Trump’s Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee.
  • Eric Bolling: Currently a c co-host of The Five, he is said to be under consideration for something at Commerce.
  • Donald Trump: That’s right. Trump himself had a recurring role on Fox & Friends for years with his “Mondays With Trump” segment.

[Update: Fox correspondents Heather Nauert and Jonathan Wachtel have been hired by Trump’s State Department]
[Update II: Trump nominates Fox contributor Scott Brown to be ambassador to New Zealand]

With so many of their own personnel potentially joining the Trump administration, how can the network fairly cover him? OK, that’s a dumb question. They have never fairly covered him. But still, they would now be in the position of having to critically assess the performance of their own former employees. These are people with whom they have long standing relationships and affinity. They are also people who are likely to return to the network at some point in the future. That fact alone could impact the behavior of both Fox and their alumni. Some have already left Fox and returned when they had brief political conflicts (Carson, Gingrich, and Brown).

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

Never fear. Fox will find a way to cope with this burden. However, that will probably be to continue their mission as Propaganda Ministry for the Republican Party. Only now Fox will be an official arm of the White House under Trump. They will be America’s Pravda serving the interests of a megalomaniac and his team of apple polishers.

A Cloud Behind Every Silver Lining: GOP Candidates And Fox News Slam Iranian Prisoner Release

Posted by on January 16, 2016 at 1:02 pm. 6 Comments :

The news this morning that up to six Americans incarcerated in Iran have been released ought to be met with gladness and relief. These people have suffered for more than a year as prisoners convicted of dubious crimes. Today their families got the news they have been hoping for and are gathering to celebrate freedom.

Fox News Alert

Sadly, that celebration is not being shared by Fox News or the Republican candidates for president. Their lock-step determination to find fault with President Obama no matter the circumstances takes precedence over actual events or the national interest of the country. These “patriots” will never miss an opportunity to run down America or make it look bad in the eyes of the world.

So despite the fact that Fox News has been using the Iranian prisoners for months to accuse President Obama of weakness, they are now framing the release as a hostage swap that benefits the Iranians. Fox reporter Catherine Herridge described it as “short-term elation, but long-term pain.” Fox contributor John Bolton called it “a diplomatic debacle for the United States.” In reality, it’s just another example of the Fox News lose/lose approach to reporting on the President. If he were to cure cancer they would complain that it was a socialist attack on pharmaceutical companies that cost hard-working oncologists their jobs.

And the circus of GOP aspiring presidential clowns could not rush to a microphone quickly enough to criticize the freedom arranged by the Obama administration. From their reactions you might have thought that the news was reporting that Americans were captured rather than freed.

Ted Cruz: We don’t know the details of the deal that is bringing them home. And then it may well be that there are some very problematic aspects to this deal.

Marco Rubio: We should not be involved in swaps. These things should never happen is my point. […] I think this has created incentives for more governments to do this around the world.

Donald Trump: I will tell you, it’s a disgrace that they’ve been there for so long. It’s a disgrace. Remember that. A total disgrace.

Mike Huckabee: They should’ve been released before we ever sat down at the negotiating table.

Chris Christie: We shouldn’t have to swap prisoners, these folks were taken illegally in violation of international law and they should have been released without condition.

Jeb Bush: I would say … if you do not release them, that there’s going to be military action, that that’s an act of provocation, an act of war.

Clearly these folks would have preferred a full-on war with Iran rather than diplomacy. They would have opted to send more Americans to fight and die in a Middle East quagmire. And the fact that the Obama administration successfully negotiated the freedom of our Americans in Iran is greeted with rancor instead of praise. It was the same reaction they had to the sailors who were held briefly after drifting into Iranian waters. The right-wingers considered it an act of war and were rattling their swords in hysterics. Obama resolved the matter with a phone call and the sailors went on their way in few hours. Just imagine if one of those cretins were actually president during these incidents.

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

At the very least the Fox News/GOP knee-jerks could have joined the families this weekend to appreciate their long-awaited reunion with loved ones, and returned to their partisan vitriol on Monday. But that’s not how Republicans, or Fox News work.

The Republican Crisis Recycling Center: Syrian Refugee Edition

Posted by on November 17, 2015 at 3:34 pm. 17 Comments :

In what is being described as the worst refugee crisis since World War II, the plight of displaced Syrians continues to be a daunting humanitarian problem that is putting pressure on nations around the world to find a compassionate solution.

The United States is among those nations, but it is battling opposition from within. Not surprisingly, it is the Republicans and other conservative politicians and pundits who are adamantly against allowing Syrian refugees safe harbor in America. So far, more than half of the state governors are on record as opposing resettlement of Syrians in their states, and all but one of them are Republicans. [Legal note: These constitutional fetishists are unaware that they do not have the authority to dictate immigration policy, which rests with the federal government]

The GOP’s arguments against welcoming these refugees are consistently based on the fear that terrorists will clandestinely slip in among the legitimate migrants. While there is very little evidence of that occurring, it remains the favored excuse of the refugee opponents. The typical refrain goes something like this:

  • We must immediately prohibit those people from entering the United States.
  • Those being let in will include terrorists.
  • If our leaders won’t protect us they should resign.
  • It’s not our problem. Let others in their own region deal with it.
  • We can’t be humanitarians. We have to protect ourselves first.

Oh, sorry. Those were actually the reasons that Republican politicians and pundits opposed letting people from West Africa into the country last year during the Ebola outbreak. The degree of hysteria expressed by the wingnut contingency at that time was deafening. For their trouble they earned PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award for 2014. It was a well-deserved tribute to their deranged insistence that Americans were going to be infected by the millions, and those who were fortunate enough to avoid the disease would be slaughtered by terrorists. Some of these fear mongers, like Glenn Beck and Fox News’ Keith Ablow, accused Obama of deliberately orchestrating this mass extinction of the U.S. population.

And while we’re on the subject, those were also the very same excuses the rightists gave for opposing the resettlement of Latino children. When thousands of kids were stranded in the Southwest they were treated like a plague and accused of being disease carriers, or having associations with drug traffickers or terrorists.

Let’s just call it the “Republican Crisis Recycling Center” where they repurpose their standard complaints to fit whatever outrage they are currently trying to push.

Republican Crisis Recycling

This might be a good time to point out there were never any outbreaks of Ebola in the U.S., nor did any of the kids who were eventually placed in foster homes blow up any pizza parlors. The irrational hysteria of the rightist fear merchants never materialized as they predicted (hoped?). And all of the available evidence points to the same results if we welcome the Syrian refugees in to America. There are, in fact, already some 2,000 Syrian refugees who have resettled here since 2011, and in four years they have done nothing but try to put their tattered lives back together.

Donald Trump was among those who exploited the Ebola crisis and charged that infected persons would be pouring across our southern border. Now he is doing the same to Syrians who he is convinced are serving as a “Trojan Horse” for terrorists. His plan is to acquire a parcel of land in Syria and make it a “safe zone” for the refugees. All 4,000,000 of them? It would have to be a city the size of Los Angeles. And no matter how good a builder he fancies himself, he isn’t going to construct such a metropolis overnight. These people need housing and food and medicine and all the other necessities of life, not a tents in the desert.

Sadly, that’s the sort of dumbfounded thinking (with an emphasis on the dumb) that dominates the Republican mindset. Another example is Mike Huckabee’s suggestion to only allow Christian refugees in. President Obama called that religious test “shameful.” How he would differentiate the Christians from the Muslims and others, he did not say. I suppose he could tattoo a number on all the Muslims to identify them for rejection. Then he can help Trump load 11,000,000 Latinos into train cars to deport them to “safe zones” in Central America for his reprise of Operation Wetback.

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

What the right seems to forget is that these refugees are fleeing the same violence and terrorism that we are fighting in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. They also seem to forget the values embodied in their faith that calls for compassion, service, and brotherhood. And finally, they quite easily forget the example of America’s principles expressed by the gift from France that beckons to the world…

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore; send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

[Addendum:] Jesse Watters of Fox News managed to connect the refugee crisis with the Ebola outbreak. On The Five he said “Obama has imported dangerous things into this country since he got there. He’s imported socialism here, He’s imported Ebola into America. He’s imported illegal aliens. Remember he brought all of the Ebola victims into this country?” All of them? This is the sort of idiocy that permeates the racist right-wing ideology on issues that go far beyond the current problem with refugees.

Huckabee’s Response To “Trashy Women” Gaffe Just Makes Things Much Worse

Posted by on January 29, 2015 at 10:07 am. 8 Comments :

Last week Mike Huckabee, prospective GOP presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor, pastor, and Fox News host, revealed his views about women during a radio interview. His remarks have stirred up a mess o’gritty squabbling about what appeared to be an insult directed at his former Fox News colleagues.

Mike Huckabee 2016

Click here to SHARE this On Facebook

Huckabee was responding to a question about whether he went through any “culture shock” when he came to New York to do his program on Fox News. He answered saying…

“Absolutely a cultural shock. … I thought, man, this is a different planet. And I came more and more to realize that the cultural divide is significant. It’s one of those things where in a business meeting that you might have in the South or in the Midwest there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the f-bomb and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting.

“In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women do it. And you know, you are just looking around, saying, my gosh, this is worse than locker room talk. This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman, and for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume that this is a very, as we would say in the South, that’s just trashy.”

Following the interview, Huckabee was criticized for apparently insulting the women at his former network. However, he hit back saying that…

“I never said anything derogatory about the people at Fox News. I talked about the overall coarseness of conversation and gratuitous profanity that I hear in places in what I call the bubble zoo like New York, Washington and Hollywood. But, clearly, the reporters who took those headlines and made those stories up made ‘em up out of thin air. It’s an outright lie.”

That denial was picked by conservative media who also accused liberals of making up the quote and posting what they said was the whole statement to prove their contention. However, they left out the question that Huckabee was asked which explicitly referenced Fox News:

“So you were a successful governor there, and you’ve been doing a very successful talk program on Fox News. That means you went from the frying pan to the fire.”

So it could very easily be interpreted that Huckabee was responding directly to the query about his move from Arkansas to Fox News in New York. It could also be interpreted as being meant more generally about what Huckabee calls “Bubbleville” (as opposed to “Bubbaville”). Therefore, it was certainly not made up and there is no justification for calling it a lie. In Huckabee’s defense, the best that he could say is that he answered a bit clumsily.

The big problem that no one is talking about is that if we take Huckabee at his word that he was not referring to the women at Fox News, than he is asserting that the insult was meant to apply to an even larger group of people who inhabit America’s big cities. Huckabee is, in effect, making a broad assertion that everyone – men and women – in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, etc., are trashy. How is that better?

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The truth is that Huckabee is continuing in the mold of Republicans who have an innate hostility toward women in general. He regards them as being a separate class of citizen that must behave differently than men to be considered respectable. And while he denies that he was referring to the women of Fox News directly, he is still insulting them because they are also women who live in New York. There is simply no getting around this for Huckabee. He was even called out by Fox’s Megyn Kelly who told him on behalf of the women at Fox that…

“I do have some news for you before I let you go. We are not only swearing. We’re drinking, we’re smoking, we’re having premarital sex, we have birth control before we go to work, and sometimes boss around a bunch of men.”

Kelly’s admission reveals that Huckabee was, in fact, lying when he said that he never heard the women at Fox use bad language. That is nothing new for him. He was recently embroiled in a controversy wherein he complained about Beyonce being a bad influence, but gave Ted Nugent a pass, and even performed with him on his show. Then, reacting to the hypocrisy, he said that Nugent had changed the lyrics for that performance, which the videotape shows to be a lie (Also, Huckabee has never complained about the constant stream of vulgarities from his pal, Nugent). On another occasion he went full-birther during a radio interview, but afterward gave an excuse that was likewise proven to be false.

For a former Christian minister who professes to want to lead a moral revival in his quest for the presidency, he has sorry record of adhering to the truth. After all, not lying is one of the Ten Commandments, and Huckabee can’t manage to abide by it.