Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is Purposefully Spreading Fake Fear of COVID Vaccines

There has been some good news recently about the progress being made with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rates of new cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities have declined to the lowest rates seen in many months. And the Biden administration’s management of vaccine distribution and implementation has been extraordinarily effective.

Rupert Murdoch, COVID

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 50% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 30% have been fully vaccinated. This could bring about a state of herd immunity much sooner than previously estimated.

However, there are still some hurdles in the way. For one thing, The least vaccinated U.S. counties are, not surprisingly, mostly dominated by Trump voters. That is likely due to the recklessly negative propaganda promulgated by Fox News, where vaccine conspiracy theories proliferate. Tucker Carlson has been especially active in driving up anti-vax hysteria.

Joining Fox News is their sister publication owned by Rupert Murdoch, the New York Post. They have been engaged in a dishonest and deadly campaign aimed at magnifying doubts about the vaccines and frightening the public away from getting vaccinated. Case in point, the right-wing “news” paper published an article fear mongering about a college student in Cincinnati who died shortly after being vaccinated:

The Post’s own reporting eventually (four paragraphs in) admitted that there was no evidence that the death had anything to do with the vaccine. They later deleted both the article and the tweet promoting it. But they never issued a retraction or an apology, or made any effort to correct the record for those readers who were unnecessarily panicked. And what makes this irresponsibility all the more reprehensible is that this wasn’t the first time that the Post engaged in this sort of disinformation and perilously inflammatory – and flagrantly false – hyperbole. Just in the past few months…

  • December 29, 2020: Israeli man reportedly dies of heart attack hours after getting COVID vaccine https://trib.al/0JiXxwB
  • January 24, 2021: Californian dies hours after getting COVID-19 vaccine, prompting probe https://trib.al/MtcfP9f
  • February 7, 2021: Elderly man collapses, dies shortly after getting COVID-19 vaccine at Javits Center https://trib.al/GTMJC89
  • April 16, 2021: NJ man hospitalized after J&J COVID-19 vaccine placed on ventilator

In every one of those stories the Post either acknowledged that there were no connections between the vaccine and the fatality, or they failed to provide any evidence of a connection. It was simply their attempt needlessly scare people to satisfy some perverse, political agenda. Never mind that last December Rupert Murdoch jetted off to the U.K. to get vaccinated himself by their socialist National Health Service.

The New York Post is unambiguously acting as anti-health terrorists. They are endangering the lives of both those who will be dissuaded from getting vaccinated, and the rest of the nation’s population that will be vulnerable to the consequences of delaying herd immunity and increasing the opportunity for new variants to emerge. It is criminal deceit and there ought to be a price to be paid.

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. 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.

Fox News Embraces Trump Shill’s Dangerously Seditious Election Challenge

The bizarre and unpatriotic aspirations of Donald Trump, and his recasting of the already radically rightist Republican Party, continue to diverge ever further from the Constitution, and more ominously from sanity. That’s to be expected from Trump, whose tenuous grasp on reality has long been a major cause of concern. But the GOP’s willingness – and weakness – to march along in his goose-stepping spectacle raises the stakes considerably.

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Jeanine Pirro Fox News

Republicans in Congress are positioning themselves for a historic battle pitting democracy against authoritarianism. And the authoritarian side is being represented by such GOP “leaders” as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. They are supported by ten other Senate traitors, more than a hundred colleagues in the House republican caucus, and even out-going Vice-President, Mike Pence. Their futile plot is set to be implemented on January 6, the day that Joe Biden’s election will be certified by Congress:

“A group of Republicans has announced plans to reject electors from states they consider disputed if Congress doesn’t create a commission to investigate their claims of fraud. The effort, fueled by baseless allegations of voter fraud, drew support from Vice President Pence by Saturday night.” […]

“The statement calls for the creation of an electoral commission ‘with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed state.'”

For the record, the Congress has no authority whatsoever to create an investigatory “commission,” nor to impose a ten day audit of election returns. The session on January 6 is a ceremonial duty that merely affirms the election results already certified by all fifty states. The effort by these Republican extremists aims to challenge “disputed” electoral slates that do not exist. And they can’t succeed without both houses of Congress voting for their treachery. Of course, the Democratic-majority in the House is unlikely to play along with that.

Cue Fox News and their Senior Trump-fluffer, “Judge” Jeanine Pirro. She hosted Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, who has no expertise in constitutional law. And Navarro, as he is wont to do, went skidding perilously off the rails. He began by asserting that “the Democrat (sp) Party, as a matter of strategy, stole this election from Donald J. Trump.” And that led into this hideous exchange:

Navarro: They stole this. We can prove it. And other things… Breaking news: I would not be surprised to see a special counsel on this. And Vice-President Pence, he has the authority to give that ten day window to do what needs to get done, and I cannot imagine when you look at the facts he won’t vote the right way on that.
Pirro: And you know Peter, the interesting thing is that ten day window, it is something that they can change the date. January 20th cannot be changed. That’s constitutional. But this whole certification, the date can be changed.
Navarro: Well it can be changed actually. We can go past that date. We can go past that date. We can go past that date if we need to.
Pirro: Oh.

“Oh”? That’s a cute response by Pirro, an alleged judge, to a Trump administration official proposing a blatantly unconstitutional act. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution plainly states that “The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January [….] and the terms of their successors shall then begin.” That is not negotiable, nor subject to the legal shenanigans of anti-democratic authoritarians like Navarro and Pirro.

On Sunday morning Trump retweeted a random crackpot Internet troll agreeing with Navarro’s preposterous misreading of the Constitution. He also retweeted the screwball attorney, Sidney Powell, saying that “This ‘election’ was stolen from the voters in a massive fraud.” Never mind that she has never presented evidence of that in court, or that Trump’s own lawyers (Rudy Giuliani et al) threw her off their team for being even too deranged for them.

What’s more, both the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, Fox News sister newspapers also owned by Rupert Murdoch, have also come out in opposition to Trump, Navarro, Pirro, and the rest of the Fox News deceivers. The Post published a headline story exhorting Trump to Stop the Insanity and to “Give it up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s.” The Journal’s Editorial Board went on record saying that…

“President Trump’s last and worst shot at overturning the 2020 election will come on Jan. 6, as the new Congress meets in joint session to tally the votes from the Electoral College. Mr. Trump wants Republican lawmakers to lodge formal objections to Joe Biden’s electors, and this kamikaze mission already has a few volunteers.” […]

“Any challenge to Mr. Biden’s electors appears doomed, since upholding the objection takes a majority in both chambers. The Democratic House would use the opportunity to excoriate Mr. Trump a final time on his way out the door, and grown-ups in the Republican Senate are unlikely to play along.”

And with that Fox News stands alone in their overly zealous, slobbering support for the failed president who is already halfway out the White House’s backdoor. Well, almost alone. Trump still has Newsmax, OANN, and the rapidly dwindling phalanx of cult disciples who still haven’t gotten to the acceptance stage of their political death.

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.

Trump Stuffs 5 Lies (and 1 Truth) Into a Single Psycho Tweet Starring Stephen Colbert

Despite having lost some sixty court cases (including two in the Supreme Court), and being ridiculed repeatedly by reality-based observers, Donald Trump is continuing to rant incoherently about his delusional belief that he won the presidential election. He is terminally obsessed with having been decisively beaten by Joe Biden, someone he tried to malign as “sleepy” and “unfit for office.”

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Donald Trump

At this point it’s becoming somewhat comical to see each new complaint by Trump that the election was “rigged,” and “stolen” from him, despite failing to provide any evidence to the dozens of courts that ruled against him. And during his regularly scheduled Saturday morning tweetstorm Trump added to the cacophony of crazy with this surprisingly compact collection of falsehoods:

That’s five blatant lies crammed into one little tweet. Trump is getting good at that. In fact, he’s been “honored” by PolitiFact four years running for their “Lie of the Year” award (which Trump hysterically tried to pawn off on Biden) Just for fun, let’s break down this little gem of asininity:

“He didn’t win the election.”
The “He” here is, of course, President-Elect Joe Biden. Only a severely disturbed individual could make this claim after losing an election by more than seven million votes and 83 electoral college votes.

“He lost all 6 Swing States…”
Trump is referring to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. They all certified the victory for Biden. Several of those states have Republican governors and/or legislatures.

“…by a lot.”
Once again, the margin of Biden’s victory in the electoral college was 306 to 232. That’s the same margin that Trump won with in 2016, and he called it a landslide.

“They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one.”
If Trump has any proof of this, for some reason he withheld it from the judges in the nearly sixty lawsuits he filed. He’s either concealing some secret, ingenious legal strategy, or he’s certifiably insane. I’m going with the latter.

“…and got caught.
HUH? Notice that Trump doesn’t identify anyone who was allegedly “caught.” That’s because nobody was “caught.” And nobody was “caught” because nobody did anything wrong.

The one thing that Trump got right in this tweet was his warning to Republicans saying “Don’t be weak fools!” That’s good advice for anyone. Particularly Republicans who have demonstrated unprecedented cowardice by supporting Trump’s ludicrous contention that he won an election that he so badly lost. But the GOP bootlickers are merely striving to emulate Trump who has cornered the market on both weakness and foolishness.

Finally, for some reason Trump posted a link to an article in the despicable Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The article, attributed vaguely to the “Post Editorial Board”, was a ridiculous criticism of Stephen Colbert’s interview of Joe Biden. They actually thought it was an insult to say that a comedian’s interview was a joke. And even worse…

“‘Late Show’ host Stephen Colbert actually managed to set a new record for wet media kisses delivered to Joe Biden in his long sit-down with the prez-elect.”

Seriously? A newspaper that’s part of the faux journalistic, Fox News/Murdoch, right-wing confederacy of conservative butt-kissers, is making this complaint about a late-night talk show host? Have they never seen Trump “interviewed” by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, or any of the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends? Those affairs are always utterly humiliating tongue baths that leave a telltale orange residue.

The Colbert interview, while not strictly journalism, was actually an entertaining and revealing look into a more personal side of Biden and the First Lady-elect, Dr. Jill Biden (videos below). Which is what entertainment shows are supposed to do. Even so, the buzzards who make up the Post Editorial Board could learn something about journalism from Colbert.

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.


Trump is Aiding and Abetting Russian Propaganda to Smear the Biden Family

There is a new “scandal” brewing in Trump World as they desperately search for a way dig Donald Trump out of his political abyss. The recent rash of feigned outrage stems from an interview by Senior Fox News Trump-fluffer, Maria Bartiromo. She gifted her platform to the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, a Trump appointee who has no experience in intelligence. And the the result was a made-for-State-TV segment intended to rescue a floundering campaign.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

The gist of the so-called scandal concerns a mysterious laptop computer that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. The New York Post reported that it was left with a computer repair shop in Delaware where the owner claims to have found “incriminating” e-mails that he passed on to Rudy Giuliani and the FBI.

The whole story was rife with contradictions, unverifiable claims, and outright falsehoods. It was so bad that when Giuliani first brought it to Fox News, they declined to air it with sources saying that…

“…the lack of authentication of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop, combined with established concerns about Giuliani as a reliable source and his desire for unvetted publication, led the network’s news division to pass.”

Fox anchor Bret Baier called the story “sketchy,” and Chris Wallace said it was “suspicious.” Nevertheless, the primetime Ministers of Trump Propaganda (Sean Hannity, et al) were more than happy to jump feet first into the bogus hit piece.

During the Bartiromo interview, Ratcliffe sought to rebut the debunking that threatened to defuse the budding scandal. He insisted that there was no evidence that the information about the laptop, and the data supposedly found on it, were the product of Russian disinformation. He blamed the allegation of Russian involvement on Rep. Adam Schiff, but in fact, it came from the FBI that is currently run by Trump appointee Chris Wray:

“Federal authorities are investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a person briefed on the matter said Friday.

“The FBI’s examination is tied to the New York Post’s reporting this week on the contents of a computer hard drive it obtained from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.”

What’s more, the associates who Giuliani relied on for his smear campaign have been positively identified as Russian intelligence operatives by Trump’s Treasury Department:

“Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, declared, ‘[Andriy ] Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.’ Previously, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told Congress that Derkach is ‘spreading claims about corruption’ as part of the Kremlin’s effort to undermine Biden’s campaign. And he worked with Guliani to do so.”

The New York Post’s story has been the talk of the Trump Cult. Trump himself has tweeted about it repeatedly since its publication. He called it the “smoking gun” proof that Biden is “a corrupt politician,” and that it’s “the second biggest political scandal in our history!” But the actual reporters were less convinced by the material they had assembled themselves. They wouldn’t even allow the Post to attach their names to the story:

“On Sunday night, the New York Times reported that the New York Post had a difficult time finding a reporter to put their byline on the story amidst internal concerns about its dubious sourcing. The Times reported that the staff writer who mostly wrote the story, Bruce Golding, refused put his name on the report because he doubted its credibility.” […]

“The story’s bylines eventually went to Emma-Jo Morris, a former associate producer on Fox News show Hannity, who joined the Post as an editor this year and had yet to publish a story with her byline, and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a Post reporter since 2014. According to the Times, Fonrouge only learned her name was on the story after it was published.”

So this story is so untrustworthy that its own authors don’t believe it. It is filled with contradictions and implausible allegations that were sourced to Russian intelligence operatives. And this is what Trump and Fox News and the rest of the Confederacy of Deplorables thinks will bring about the end of Joe Biden. But it isn’t quite working out that way. In fact, they’re about to learn something about how the boomerang effect works.

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

Fox News Boss Rupert Murdoch Predicts Biden Will Beat Trump in a Landslide

In the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election, the bad news for Donald Trump just keeps piling up. Every new poll that is published shows him falling farther behind Joe Biden, including those that are devotedly biased toward Trump. He’s losing in most of the critical battleground states. His crazed rhetoric keeps descending into an abyss of dementia. He’s even threatening to go to war against aliens (from Mars, not Mexico).

Rupert Murdoch Donald Trump

Now the chairman of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, is predicting that Trump is going to lose to Biden in a landslide. This is an election year defection that should rattle the rafters of Trump’s campaign operation. Murdoch has been a reliable supporter of Trump for years (even if that support has been reciprocated). And his cable network is Trump’s de facto Ministry of Propaganda. According to the Daily Beast (via Talking Points Memo)…

“Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has predicted privately that Democratic nominee Joe Biden will defeat President Donald Trump in the presidential election in a landslide victory, the Daily Beast reported Thursday.

“The Australian-born billionaire who has been an influential supporter of the President in the past has remarked to close associates that Trump is his own worst enemy, according to the Daily Beast. Murdoch suggested to at least three Daily Beast sources that Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic poorly and ignored advice on how to better manage it, which has created a never-ending crisis for his administration.”

The suggestion that Trump has “handled the COVID-19 pandemic poorly” is a gross understatement. The deaths of more than 216,000 Americans, along with 7.5 million infected, many of whom will have permanent disabilities, is better described as mass murder. And it is Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance, that is directly responsible. And Trump’s newly adopted position on “herd immunity” would guarantee more than two million fatalities according to epidemiology experts.

Murdoch’s opinion on the likely outcome of the presidential race does not immunize him from criticism for his years of disseminating lies aimed at Democrats. He is not endorsing Biden. He is merely expressing his analysis of the direction of the campaign. But the harm that Fox News has done to the nation under his direction is immeasurable.

That’s especially true with regard to the coronavirus pandemic that Murdoch is suddenly so worried about. Fox News has been relentlessly supporting and advancing Trump’s tragically misguided view that COVID-19 is nothing to be concerned about. They say that it’s no worse than the flu and will disappear like magic (never mind that thousands are still dying every week). And they continue to air, and positively comment on, Trump’s Coronavirus Super Spreader Rallies wherein he recklessly repeats these lies that will undoubtedly bring more suffering and grieving.

What’s more, instead of reporting on the health crisis, Fox News is deflecting to ludicrous conspiracy theories about Biden and his family. Most recently they are obsessing over a baseless story in Murdoch’s New York Post that purportedly connects Biden to some sort of chicanery in Ukraine. Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that the story has no evidence of any wrongdoing, or even that what they allege is unlawful. The Post’s story has been documented to be aligned with Russian propaganda aimed at disrupting the U.S. election. So Murdoch, Fox News, and Trump (who has been tweeting about this and raising it during his cult rallies) are now actively abetting Russia’s efforts to interfere with our election. As reported by David Corn in Mother Jones:

“The key point of the article was predicated on false information that [Rudy] Giuliani has been spreading for a long time—and that appears to be linked to a Russian disinformation operation that the Post neglected to note in its article. That is, the Post piece, based on an unproven smear, is in sync with Moscow’s ongoing effort to influence the 2020 election to help President Donald Trump retain power.”

Corn poignantly notes that “The New York Post has provided all reporters a wonderful tutorial on how to be a useful idiot for Russia.” And the same goes for Fox News since they are plastering this story all over their air. Which makes Murdoch’s lament about Trump’s floundering reelection campaign utterly meaningless. It doesn’t immunize him from the guilt of having helped Trump to spread lies along with a deadly virus. He is as responsible for the tragic consequences as Trump, because he’s been right by his side as Trump led America down a deadly path. And if Trump does lose in a landslide, Murdoch can take at least half the credit for it. As well as the blame for all the harm that Trump’s has caused in the past four years.

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

Trump Resorts to Racist Fear Mongering to Draw the Votes of Suburban ‘Housewives’

It never fails. Whenever Donald Trump is cornered by events that expose his disastrous mismanagement of the people’s business, he falls back on the Republican Party’s established, all-purpose defense mechanism: Racism. It’s a tactic that has been employed for decades by the GOP, but never with such knee-jerk consistency as by Trump.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Trump is currently juggling multiple crises, including a raging pandemic that has already taken the lives of more than 143,000 Americans, civil unrest across the nation, economic recession and historic unemployment, and the only problems that Trump actually care about, his disintegrating public image and the approaching presidential election.

So naturally Trump has made a typically tone-deaf, self-serving, executive decision to inflame more racial animus. On Thursday morning he tweeted that…

It’s notable that Trump’s tweet attempts to appeal to an archaic demographic of “Suburban Housewives,” a degrading label that died decades ago along with anachronisms like “the little woman.” But more importantly, Trump is brazenly trying to frighten suburban women and families with thinly veiled inferences to marauding hordes of dark people moving into their exclusive neighborhoods.

This is a purely political desperation ploy that Trump is taking in the wake of polling that shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. Specifically with regard to the suburbs, polls show Biden handily beating Trump by a 52-43% margin. A recent CNN poll found that Biden was leading Trump 63-34% among suburban women.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to scare suburban women with nightmares of neighborhood diversity. But it may be the first time that he’s explicitly blamed Biden for it. However, Trump’s link to an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is hardly justification for this scare tactic.

The article is headlined “Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs.” However, it describes a part of the Fair Housing Act that was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 – fifty-two years ago. The mangling of facts like that in this article shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that it was written by Betsy McCaughey, the woman who coined the deceitful term “death panels” when she lied about Obamacare a dozen years ago. More recently, she appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that “The number of deaths from the shutdown may exceed the number of deaths from the coronavirus” That was more than 100,000 deaths ago. In her article McCaughey claims that…

“Biden’s plan is to force suburban towns with single-family homes and minimum lot sizes to build high-density affordable housing smack in the middle of their leafy neighborhoods — local preferences and local control be damned.”

There is nothing remotely resembling any of that in the law. The specter of high rises in the suburbs is a fiction formed entirely in McCaughey’s mendacious mind. The truth is that the law seeks to advance the goal of “Diverse, inclusive communities with access to good jobs, schools, health care, [and] transportation.” Oh, the horror of it all.

So contrary to Trump’s alarmist warning about how this will “destroy…your American Dream,” the law actually guarantees it for more Americans. What Trump is hoping is that his fear mongering will reverse the trend of suburban women voting for Biden. But that isn’t going to be easy if he all he has are racist lies about good government and labels that disparage and belittle the very people to whom he’s trying to appeal.

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

Hysterical Impeachment Syndrome: Now Trump is Attacking Both CNN and Fox News

The severity of Trump’s psychotic breakdown is leading him to ever more bizarre outbursts and tantrums. As his mental infirmity declines, his incoherent raving accelerates. In just the past few days this has manifested in absurd threats to sue Nancy Pelosi, nauseating mimicry of orgasms, and hypocritical assaults on the business affairs of wealthy, politically connected children.

Fox News, Impeach Trump

As the inevitability of impeachment nears, Trump is spewing inanities like a schizophrenic on the street corner shouting gibberish at passing cars. It’s a pathetic display that only reinforces how critical it is to remove him from office as quickly as possible. He even conceded it himself in a carelessly worded tweeted that said “Impeach the Pres.” Another example of his derangement was evident in a Tuesday morning tweet where he whined…

Trump is cryptically referring a so-called exposé by notorious truth distorter James O’Keefe. As usual, O’Keefe’s imaginary “blockbuster” was a colossal bust. But that didn’t stop Trump – and Fox News – from hyping the heck out of it. With specific regard to Jeff Zucker, CEO of CNN parent WarnerMedia, Trump is actually trying to start the rumor he’s tweeting about. No one else has even mentioned Zucker resigning. And it’s a far cry from Trump’s previous opinion of Zucker when he said that Zucker “would be a great choice” to take over CNN. It’s fair to say that Trump will be gone before Zucker will.

In addition to this weak thrust at CNN, Trump is also throwing impotent swings at his very own State TV network (aka Fox News). Last week Fox News released the results of a poll that showed a majority of voters (51%) favoring Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. That set off the Snowflake-in-Chief who tweeted that “Whoever their Pollster is, they suck,” and that “Fox News doesn’t deliver for US anymore.” Nevermind that the Fox poll was in line with several others released at the same time. Trump, though, is continuing to malign Fox’s polling with another tweet on Monday that said…

It goes without saying that Trump is making this up. There was no “announcement” that the poll was incorrect. Consequently, there was no need to mention any correction, or to make one. What Trump’s diseased brain was mangling was an article in the rightist New York Post that took issue with the poll’s methodology. But the Post’s analysis was as shallow as puddle in a heat wave. Fox used a breakdown that represents an accurate sampling of the electorate, and one that most other pollsters use. Furthermore, Fox’s methodology used the same breakdown they used in previous polls where Trump’s impeachment was not favored. That makes this poll useful for tracking how the mood of the electorate is changing.

With Trump firing off hostile rhetoric at both CNN and Fox News he’s revealing just how sensitive he is to any criticism, even from friendly sources. He’s also narrowing the media outlets he trusts to lavish blind praise on him. It’s a sign that he knows his coverage is bound to get worse as new evidence of his criminality comes out. At some point, Fox is going to get jealous of the other news enterprises getting all the scoops, and start reporting some of their own. So it’s just a matter of time before Trump jumps off the cliff of sanity and buries himself in a crater of wrath and rancor as his defenses are drained of any ability to affect his unavoidable downfall.

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

Trump Gives A Big F.U. To The Media And The Public With A Virtual Press Blackout

Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election two weeks ago. Since that time he has failed to hold a press conference to address the nation he will be representing. This is the longest period a president-elect has gone without a post-election press conference in forty years. But it’s worse than that because he actually hasn’t had a formal press conference since July. Do you suppose there might be a reason for that?

Donald Trump

Speculation could start with the fact that Trump has been more openly hostile to the media than any politician in recent memory. At his rallies he has called them dummies, losers, sleazy, liars, and more. He has not been the least bit shy about expressing his white-hot hatred for the Fourth Estate. He overtly threatened the press with lawsuits and other retribution. That included revoking the press credentials of media outlets he felt were too critical of him. In return, media advocates condemned his reckless behavior as “an unprecedented threat to press freedom.”

However, there are more substantive motives for Trump avoiding press scrutiny. The swarming torrent of scandals swirling around him pose serious risks to his nascent presidency. It begins with his election that is tainted by allegations of voter suppression and his loss of the popular vote. It continues with at least a dozen women who are charging him with sexual assault. Then there are his unsavory connections to Russia and its efforts to interfere with the election.

And that’s not all. Just a few days ago Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit to compensate the fraud victims of his phony Trump University. His cabinet and administration appointees are affiliated with radical racist organizations. And he has a growing list of ethically compromising conflicts of interest. There has never been a president who has more brazenly used the office for personal gain.

No wonder Trump is avoiding the media. By going four months without taking questions from the press corps, Trump has evaded scrutiny over these and other issues. This may benefit his efforts to silence criticism, but it is a disservice to citizens and to democracy.

Sadly, the media seems to be all too willing to go along with him. Even after the atrocious way that Trump treats the press, they continue to cater to his whims. Very little mention is made of his extended refusal to face the media. That is decidedly different from the treatment that Hillary Clinton received when she went a few weeks without holding a press conference. Even though she did conduct hundreds of interviews with individual reporters, she was hounded and criticized. Fox News displayed a running clock of the days since her last press conference. And there was rampant insinuations of her having something to hide. Where is that criticism for Trump, who is no longer merely a candidate, but president-elect?

When asked when he might hold his first post-election press conference, his spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, would say only “Soon.” She dodged any more specific answer saying that he was too busy with his transition activities. Does she expect him to be less busy when he’s the leader of the free world? What’s more, he wasn’t too busy to convene a private, off the record meeting with the heads of the major media corporations and some leading news anchors. The New York Post revealed some of what took place in that meeting, and it wasn’t pretty:

“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.

Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said “I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,” the source said.

The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.

A second source confirmed the fireworks.

To be sure, that account was from the notoriously bombastic New York Post. Some other reports described the get together with less intensity. But while the Post may lean toward melodrama, the others may be more interested in preserving access to the administration. All things considered, the Post’s account sounds more like the Trump we have all come to know.

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

The old fallacy of the “liberal” media is further undermined by these events. Trump is getting far more favorable treatment than Clinton did under similar circumstances. More importantly, he is getting away with suppressing coverage of his scandalous activities. The media is supposed to hold politicians to account, but they are failing to do their job. If this keeps up for the next four years America will be buried in tabloid irrelevancies. Trump’s improprieties will be state secrets. And the National Enquirer and Breitbart News will become the dominant media and serve as America’s Pravda.

UNBELIEVABLE: Trump Offers Serial Liar As His ‘Witness’ To Refute Sexual Assault Charges

Everyday there seem to be more women coming forward with credible stories that they were sexually assaulted by Donald Trump. In his defense he has resorted to maligning the accusers as liars and condemning the press for reporting their allegations. He even asserts that they must be lying because they aren’t attractive enough for him.

Donald Trump

Trump promised to provide proof that his accusers’ stories are false. He told followers at his rally that “We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time – very soon.” However, the “proof” that he spoke of has turned out to be something less than credible. In fact, it’s downright preposterous.

Trump is citing a report by the New York Post (a Rupert Murdoch publication) that a witness has come forward to refute Jessica Leeds, who claims that Trump groped her on a plane. Anthony Gilberthorpe is an Englishman who says that he was on the same flight with Trump and Leeds, but saw none of what Leeds asserted. In fact, Gilberthorpe alleges that Leeds was the aggressor and that she confessed to him her desire to marry Trump.

However, Judd Legum of ThinkProgress did some digging on this claim and found it to be riddled with logical holes. Beginning with the fact that Gilberthorpe is 54 years old, which means that he was about eighteen at the time. The likelihood that a thirty-eight year old woman would confide this to an eighteen year old boy she didn’t know is a bit of a stretch. What’s more, Gilberthorpe has no explanation for why he was flying first-class on an American domestic flight. Neither does he have any evidence of it.

Furthermore, what Legum reports about Gilberthorpe’s past brushes with tabloid fame is most revealing:

“In 1987, for example, he told newspapers in England that he was engaged to fashion designer in California named Miss Leah Bergdorf-Hunt. ‘Both our families are delighted,’ he told The Gloucester Express. It was later revealed that he was not engaged. Also there was no Miss Bergdorf-Hunt. He invented the whole thing.”

And that:

Gilberthorpe also contends that, as a young man, he was ‘paid to recruit underage rent boys for orgies attended by ministers from Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.’ There is no evidence to support his salacious claims.

Another accomplice in this deception is Fox News and its related enterprises. The New York Post, which published the first Gilberthorpe story, is a corporate cousin to Fox News. Fox News also had its own story on Gilberthorpe. And Fox’s website, Fox Nation, plastered the Post’s story to the top of their home page. It was a coordinated effort to advance the Gilberthorpe mythology across the Fox news platforms. And in none of these accounts were the facts about Gilberthorpe’s past reported, nor his motivations explored.

It’s apparent that Trump and Fox News are working cooperatively to promote an alleged witness with serious credibility problems. In conjunction with that they are seeking to disparage the women who have had the courage to come forward. No wonder women are often reluctant to tell their stories. When they do they are assaulted again with insults and attacks on their reputation.

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

As for Trump, he is resting his defense on the word of a publicity-hungry, pathological liar. Well, at least they have something in common. But the desperation that this shows on Trump’s part only makes his denials less believable. Either he and his campaign did nothing to vet Gilberthorpe’s story, or they were complicit with his fabrications. We report, you decide.

Fox ‘News’ Reports That ‘Obama Endorses Trump’ But Leaves Out Some REALLY Important Details

The week-long Republican National Convention is over and what most people will remember from it is that Melania Trump is plagiarist and that Donald Trump thinks the America is in the grip of a dystopian nightmare. There is little evidence that the typical polling bump that these events generally produce will occur. That is in large part due to the fact that depressing harangues intended to frighten voters are more likely to alienate than inspire. That’s why Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan was “Morning in America” and not “Mourning in America.”

Consequently, Fox News has had to scramble to manufacture anti-Democratic plot lines in advance of the Democrat’s convention this coming week. So far they have latched onto the story about the hacked DNC emails implicating the party in efforts to undermine the Bernie Sanders campaign. It’s rather humorous to see Fox, and their roster of right-wingers, feigning concern for the unfairness shown to Bernie – as if they care.

In the absence of any other news with which to malign the Democrats, Fox News began running a story that they got from their sister publication, the New York Post. It is a trivial bit of tabloid gossip that Fox is elevating to scandal status via brazenly misleading promos. The phony Fox headline is “Obama Endorses Trump.”

Obama Endorses Trump

Any of the poor saps who were watching this story unfold on Fox & Friends discovered after the commercial break that the Obama referenced in the promo was not President Barack Obama, but his brother, Malik. Why this would be of interest to anyone is a mystery. The Obama brothers have not been close for many years and Malik has made a career out of exploiting his family ties and denigrating the President. Nevertheless, Fox found this to be a significant development and ran the story several times throughout the day.

What Fox failed to mention were the reasons that Malik gave for favoring Trump. The article in the Post says that Malik was “annoyed that Clinton and President Obama killed Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, whom he called one of his best friends,” and that “what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party’s support of same-sex marriage.” The Post quoted Malik as saying that “I feel like a Republican now because they don’t stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me,”

Malik Obama is such a strong advocate of “traditional” marriage that he has entered into it at least three times (and as many as twelve, by some reports). And unlike Trump, whose three marriages were consecutive, Malik’s are concurrent (i.e. he’s still married to all of them).

The Post also reported another part of Malik’s past wherein he created a dubious charity that ran afoul of the law, noting that it was “an off-the-books operation that hadn’t registered with the state of Virginia or, as it claimed, had tax-exempt status from the IRS.”

No wonder Malik Obama is a big fan of Donald Trump (And Trump is a fan of Malik too). They both collect wives for a hobby (and on top of that Trump is a serial adulterer who wants to bang his daughter). They both oppose marriage equality (although Trump has been known to swing both ways – on the issue, that is). They both admire brutal dictators (Trump has been known to praise Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and others). And they both make up charities that end up being exposed as self-serving scams.

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

The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox & Friends never mentioned any of those things as they struggled to find relevance in this pathetic story. The only takeaway from this that has any import is that Malik Obama and Donald Trump were cast from the same loathsome mold. Other than that, this ludicrous story has no bearing on President Obama, Hillary Clinton, or the election. It is more a reflection on Trump and Fox News than anything else.