New York Times

Tucker Carlson Exposed as an Anonymous Source Who Sucks Up to the Media He Hates

Posted by on June 21, 2021 at 5:54 pm. 1 Comments :

For years there has been a debate about whether the hacks on Fox News actually believe the lies they tell every day. Some people think they are just spreading disinformation because it advances their right-wing agenda. Others say they are just in it for the money. For the Murdoch family that runs Fox News there’s no doubt that it’s both. But the “entertainers” on the air could swing either way.

Tucker Carlson Fox News

However, a new report in the New York Times sheds some light on one of Fox’s primetime propagandists. Their Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, has emerged as the network’s foremost purveyor of unadulterated bullpucky. His strident tirades have run the gamut of conspiracy crackpottery from paranoid delusions that COVID vaccines don’t work and “they” aren’t telling you, to reckless accusations that the FBI orchestrated Trump’s Capitol Hill insurrection.

But the common thread that weaves through virtually every screwball notion Carlson disgorges is that the media is behind a coordinated plot to deceive innocent Americans by way of deliberate, manufactured falsehoods. To be fair, if he’s talking about Fox News, he’s 100% right. But suffice to say that he’s aiming his baseless invective everywhere else. And the report in the Times reveals that Carlson has been working both sides of the battle:

“Tucker Carlson of Fox News is a ‘go-to source’ for the US political media he claims to ‘hate’ and has called ‘cowards’ and ‘cringing animals not worthy of respect’ – according to a columnist for the New York Times.”

“Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, outed Carlson as ‘the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr Carlson himself)’.”

It’s good to know that while Carlson is mouthing off about how evil the establishment media is, he is simultaneously feeding them gossip behind the scenes. Never mind that most of what Carlson would have to divulge is probably untrue. After all, the lawyers for Fox News defended him (successfully) in a defamation suit by insisting that ‘no reasonable person” would believe anything he says.

So what’s in it for Carlson? Aside from the high he gets from pretending that he’s important and people care what he has to say, he also gets to build a shield against potential criticism. The Times reports that one of the news publications that Carlson spills to explained that “If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.” Which makes sense. Journalists aren’t in the habit of burning their sources.

Based on his past behavior, it isn’t surprising that Carlson would be so flagrantly two-faced as he lambastes the press at every opportunity. It’s fair to assume that he is likely dishing dirt about his colleagues from one side of his crooked mouth, while sucking up to his handlers for gentle treatment from the other. So Carlson is both a backstabber and a self-serving coward. Who would have thought it?

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.

Trump Delusionally Brags About His Social Media – That Has Cratered Since He Got Banned

Posted by on June 15, 2021 at 4:58 pm. NO Comments :

The mental meltdown of Donald Trump is continuing – even accelerating – seven months after Joe Biden beat him by more than seven million votes. In all that time Trump has never conceded defeat. But he has incited a violent insurrection and promoted numerous “fraudits” of election results that were already validated by every state election official, Democratic and Republican.

Donald Trump

Trump’s relentless and inflammatory promulgation of the “Big Lie” is what got him banned by Twitter and Facebook. That exile from social media has had a noticeably negative effect on Trump, both emotionally and materially. But true to form, Trump refuses to accept reality. On Tuesday he released a statement that illustrates just how badly demented he has become. It said that…

“Trump’s message can reach social media audiences comparable in size to those he commanded while still on Twitter and Facebook, a New York Times analysis published Monday found. In fact, the outlet found 11 of the 89 statements Trump has published online since he was banned from mainstream social media sites have attracted ‘as many likes or shares as the median post before the ban, if not more.'”

First of all, Trump is quoting, without attribution, an excerpt from an article in Forbes Magazine that was reporting on an analysis by the New York Times.

However, it’s apparent that Trump doesn’t have the comprehension skills to understand the meaning of the quote he posted. His own excerpt notes that only 11 of his 89 post-banning statements – or 12.4% -had received comparable attention. Which means that 87.6% failed to hit that threshold. And he’s bragging about that? A more complete, in context quote would have included this…

“Before the ban, the social media post with the median engagement generated 272,000 likes and shares. After the ban, that dropped to 36,000 likes and shares. Yet 11 of his 89 statements after the ban attracted as many likes or shares as the median post before the ban, if not more.”

So over all, Trump’s social media engagement declined 86% after his banning. More importantly, online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73% sans Trump. The Times analysis also looked at his 10 most popular posts with election misinformation before and after the social media bans. “Before the ban,” the Times found, “Trump’s posts garnered 22.1 million likes and shares; after the ban, his posts earned 1.3 million likes and shares across Twitter and Facebook.”

What’s more, the article noted that much of the engagement he currently receives is coming from postings of his statements by right-wing media like Breitbart and Fox News, as well as members of his cult following and his family. But those cannot be counted as new sources of engagement because they were doing the same same thing before he was banned.

Trump has posted several statements claiming that he is happy being ousted from the social media world and that he’s better off for it. But he was certainly upset with it when it happened. He called it an “insult” and “abuse” and and cried that “they shouldn’t be allowed to get away” with it. He was so distraught that he lamented that the didn’t shut down Facebook and Twitter when he was still in office. And he predicted that the social media titans would fail without him.

In the meantime, Trump did proclaim that he would return to social media with his own website that would far surpass Facebook and twitter. But his sorry excuse for a “communications platform” shut down after than less than a month due to low traffic and his embarrassment at being mocked for yet another failure.

Trump’s inability to grasp numbers has been exposed previously by his business failures. There aren’t many people who have had four casinos go bankrupt. He repeatedly misreports easily verifiable numbers for events like his poorly attended inauguration. More recently he lied about “thousands and thousands of boats” showing up to pay him tribute, when the video showed that there were at best a couple of dozen. And he also claimed, without any evidence at all, that “Massive numbers of dead people ‘voted’” for him in 2020, “far greater than anyone has known or seen before.”

Let’s face it, whatever part of Trump’s brain handles numerical information is acutely defective. And along with his pathological compulsion to lie about everything, the only thing we can rely on from Trump with any confidence is unadulterated bullpucky. And that’s exactly what we’ve been getting.

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.

GRIFTER EXPOSED: Trump Campaign Scam Defrauds Hundreds of His Supporters

Posted by on April 3, 2021 at 12:17 pm. 10 Comments :

No one who has paid attention to the career of Donald Trump will be surprised to learn that he is a shameless, recidivist con artist, callously deceiving and stealing from the very people on whose behalf he purports to be fighting. That’s been true throughout his presidency and for decades prior.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

Now the New York Times has published an extensive exposé on the corrupt and underhanded practices of Trump’s crooked campaign donation operation. The article goes into great depth documenting the deliberate deception that Trump and his Republican confederates engaged in to fleece his glassy-eyed cult disciples.

The article begins with a heartbreaking example of Trump’s cold-blooded greed:

“Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.

“It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen.”

However…

“…what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election.”

The form for making contributions to Trump’s campaign featured a pre-checked box that donors would have to find and uncheck in order to opt out of recurring donations. And even if they saw it, they would have to read through a confusing, fine-print disclaimer to understand the terms.

Consequently, hundreds (thousands?) of donors were purposefully misled. The campaign would eventually be forced to “issue more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors.” But even considering the inconvenience of refunding so many donors, Trump’s scam enabled him to benefit from what were effectively “interest-free loans from unwitting supporters.” He was even able to “use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election […] to help cover the refunds he owed.”

The for-profit organization that collected Trump’s donations, WinRed, operates differently from other campaign donation sites such as the Democratic-aligned firm, ActBlue, which is non-profit. According to the Times, WinRed “makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8 percent of the amount given. […] WinRed even made money off donations that were refunded by keeping the fees it charged on each transaction.”

This sort of thievery is entirely on brand for Trump. It is, in fact, the hallmark of his unethical business life. It’s certain to remind people of his fraudulent Trump University, his phony, egocentric charity, his blatant lies about raising funds for veterans, and his bankrupt casinos.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the rampant and brazen treachery of his brief political life. Those lies include Trump’s deranged insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he continues to this day. It was that Big Lie that led to Trump inciting the deadly Capitol riots and insurrection that he recently claimed was all “hugs and kisses” and “posed zero threat.” And worst of all, was Trump’s deliberate dishonesty, negligence, and incompetence, with regard to the COVID pandemic that resulted in the deaths of more than half a million Americans. And for all of that and more, there needs to be a moral and legal reckoning for Trump and all of his enablers.

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.

Deranged Trump Statement About ‘Trump’s Biggest Fabrication, Election Fraud’ – NYT

Posted by on March 20, 2021 at 3:39 pm. 5 Comments :

Donald Trump may not be able to tweet anymore, but he does have sycophantic, right-wing, media bootlickers to disseminate his whining lies and outrages. On Sunday Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller did just that with a statement from the ex-prez that was jam-packed with moldy oldies from his tedious repertoire.

Donald Trump, Insane, Straight Jacket

The message that Trump found so compelling he had to reach out to MAGA Land was just another of his “Big Lie” rants. It proves that he’s still obsessed with misleading his glassy-eyed disciples. It also proves that he reads the New York Times despite insisting maniacally that it is “fake news”:

“The New York Times did a story today saying that various Republican groups, many of them outstanding, are rallying on false claims that conservative activists are finding that the best way to raise money and to keep voters engaged is to make Donald J. Trump’s biggest fabrication, Election Fraud, their top priority.”

That’s the beginning of the run-on rant. And I defy anyone to figure out what the heck it means. He seems to be agreeing that the claims endorsing him as the best way to raise funds are false. It also sounds like he’s accepting the Times’ characterization of his election fraud lies as valid.

But Trump wasn’t finished. The rest of the statement was equally as incomprehensible. He included all his favorite and baseless complaints about “illegitimate elections,” “gutless” judges, and of course “rigged” elections. As usual, he didn’t provide any speck of evidence to prove any of his wild assertions. He’s just repeating the same bullpucky that he’s been peddling for months, and that resulted in a violent insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.

Trump may be pleased that a lot of money is being raised over this issue, but he’s not mentioning his efforts to prevent those funds from going to the Republican Party. That’s because he’s only interested in how much he can scam his ignorant cult followers for to fatten his own bank account.

And with everything else that’s going on in the country, it’s telling that this is the only issue that motivated him to have an aide compose an incoherent statement. Look for more of this sort of petty nonsense in the days ahead. It’s all that Trump has left since leaving the White House, and his businesses failing, and prosecutors getting ever closer to indictments.

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.

Hard Evidence that the Trump White House Planned the Capitol Insurrection

Posted by on February 1, 2021 at 1:46 pm. 9 Comments :

Next week the Senate will take up the Donald Trump impeachment trial. Most analysts predict that the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction will be too high a hill to climb. That’s a fair assumption since most Republicans would be willing to let Trump off the hook even if he sprayed the Senate chamber with an AK-47.

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Donald Trump, Prison

The GOP doesn’t seem the least bit concerned that Trump incited a seditionist mob to assault the Capitol and threaten to assassinate them and their colleagues. In other words, Republicans are comfortable knowing that they were the targets of Trump’s murderous hordes and they are now insisting that Congress “move on” and forget the whole treasonous and deadly debacle as if the insurrection was just a case of mass jaywalking.

However, the argument for Trump’s conviction just got stronger with the disclosure of his White House’s involvement in the attack. The New York Times is reporting that…

“…a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial. […and that…] interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos, and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign … summoned and directed by the departing president … in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.”

So more evidence of Trump’s orchestration of the Capitol insurrection is emerging every day. What’s more, one of the organizers of the rally, Dustin Stockton, a hard-right gun activist, was interviewed by the Times and told them that…

“…he was surprised to learn on the day of the rally that it would now include a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Before the White House became involved, he said, the plan had been to stay at the Ellipse until the counting of state electoral slates was completed.”

With this testimony it is no longer possible for Trump’s Republican apologists to argue that Trump had no knowledge of the looming threats that would unfold shortly after his inflammatory speech wherein he warned his cult disciples that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” It’s no longer possible to pretend that his conspicuous delay of any response wasn’t intended to permit the atrocity to proceed. It’s preposterous to dismiss his post-riot affinity for the rioters, when he confessed that he loved them, as anything but his approval of their criminal hostilities.

As a coda to Trump’s nefarious malfeasance, his Acting Defense Secretary, Chris Miller, issued a memo advising the National Guard that they were NOT authorized “to be issued weapons” or “protection equipment;” or to “interact physically with protesters;” or to “deploy any riot control agents;” among other measures that effectively tied their hands and gave free rein to Trump’s insurrectionists to storm the Capitol.

If the Senate Republicans had any smidgen of integrity or patriotism they would vote to convict Trump without reservation or hesitation. But relying on the integrity of today’s GOP is riskier than French kissing a Trump support at one of his Coronavirus Super Spreader rallies. We’ll see soon if they can muster up the courage to be patriots.

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. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. 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 Lies While Whining that the NY Times is Lying About His Taxes

Posted by on September 28, 2020 at 1:58 pm. 1 Comments :

The bombshell revelations about Donald Trump’s taxes published by the New York Times are both shocking and disturbingly expected. Anyone who has been paying attention to Trump’s flagrantly criminal behaviors will not be surprised to learn that he has been cheating on his taxes for decades.

Donald Trump

Nevertheless, it’s jarring to discover the extent of Trump’s illegal financial dealings. His massive indebtedness is not merely a legal and ethical failing, it makes him a national security threat as someone who is vulnerable to pressures from foreign adversaries. What’s more, his failure to pay his fair share is an insult to the millions of Americans who are forced to pick up the slack. And it is monumentally hypocritical because it deprives the military, law enforcement, healthcare, and every other public service of scarce funding, while he’s trying to take credit for supporting those services and simultaneously cutting their budgets.

On Monday morning Trump lashed out against the New York Times in a series of dishonest and incoherent tweets. The only thing this outburst succeeded in achieving is establishing how desperate and scared Trump is. The tweetstorm began with a familiar Trumpian rant:

“The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..”

As is often the case with Trump, he couldn’t make a logical argument if his life depended on it. Here he is saying that the information in the Times’ story was illegally obtained, which would suggest that it consists of authentic documents. But if the documents are authentic, then they aren’t fake. And if they’re fake, then they aren’t illegal. And notice that Trump asserts that he “paid many millions of dollars in taxes,” except for some unspecified credits. So he he isn’t really denying that he only paid trivial amounts after the credits, just as the Times reported. Then he goes on to say that…

“…..Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets. Much of this information is already on file, but I have long said that I may release….”

Here Trump is saying nothing substantive at all. His assertion that the Media hasn’t looked at his assets is simply absurd. And his claim that he’s “under leveraged” isn’t borne out by any evidence. The truth is that he is mired in debt, with hundreds of millions of dollars owed to unknown parties who could easily take advantage of his vulnerability. But Trump still wasn’t through. He added that he may release his…

“…..Financial Statements, from the time I announced I was going to run for President, showing all properties, assets and debts. It is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!”

Indeed, he has been saying that for four years, without ever fulfilling that promise, or intending to. But now he is also bragging that he is “the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000” salary. That is a flagrant and easily disproven lie. George Washington. Herbert Hoover, and John Kennedy all donated their salaries to charity. Trump, however, donated his salary right back to various government agencies (i.e. Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, etc.). Which is actually illegal.

Trump’s intention was to lavish himself with undeserved praise for not taking funds from taxpayers. However, he conveniently leaves out that he earns many millions more than his salary from foreign governments and other conflicted political parties who are paying for leases in Trump properties and stays at his hotels and resorts. Additionally, Trump benefits from the government paying the expenses for himself, his staff, and the Secret Service, when they travel with him on his frequent visits to his resorts and utilize ancillary services (i.e. dining, travel, communications, golf carts, etc.). This income far exceeds his presidential salary.

There is only one priority for Donald Trump: Himself! He will always put his own personal and financial interests above those of anyone else, and especially above those of the country that he has never served. That’s why his negligent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in so much suffering and tragedy. It’s why the economy has slumped into a recession. It’s why he cozies up to foreign dictators and alienates America’s allies. And it’s why he must not be allowed to continue in office where he will surely betray the country again.

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

After Russia Put Bounties on U.S. Troops, Trump Struck Back – At WH Leakers

Posted by on July 7, 2020 at 12:40 pm. 6 Comments :

Among the criticisms most often leveled at Donald Trump is that he has been a negligent president who spends the bulk of his time on self-serving trivialities like golf, Twitter, and watching Fox News. As it turns out, that may be an unfair analysis. Trump isn’t nearly as lazy as the past three and half years of his slothful lethargy and dereliction of duty would indicate (and he calls Joe Biden “Sleepy”?).

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

There are certain activities that Trump engages in with a surprising vigor. The aforementioned tweeting and his ego-stroking cult rallies are both good examples. But now there is another undertaking that puts a real bounce in his step, bone spurs and all. As reported by Politico…

“The Trump administration has opened an internal investigation to try to uncover who leaked intelligence about Russians paying the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers. The administration maintains the story is overcooked and the leaks cherry-picked despite a steady stream of follow-ups from media outlets across the globe. The administration has interviewed people with access to the intelligence, and believes it has narrowed down the universe of suspects to fewer than 10 people.”

Really? So Trump learns that Russia is paying bounties to kill American troops and, after repeatedly denying that he was ever briefed on the matter (a flagrant lie), he decides that he’s going to do something about it after all. But what he’s going to do is not to repudiate or punish Russia for its assault on U.S. soldiers. He is too beholden to Vladimir Putin for that. Nope. It’s to initiate a search within his own White House to find anyone who might have played a part in the story being made available to the American people. Because betraying the armies for which you are Commander-in-Chief is okay, but informing the public of the truth is something that Trump simply cannot abide.

Trump’s latest obsession with ferreting out traitors on his staff is troubling for another reason. Since the Russian bounty story was published, Trump has insisted that it was made up by the “fake news” media in order to hurt him and his reelection prospects. He tweeted that…

If Trump actually believes that, then how could he have found ten suspects who he now thinks might have leaked a made up story to the press? Surely the press wouldn’t need a source at all if they invented the whole thing, as Trump alleges. But in Trump’s diseased brain everything his is a hoax if it casts him in a bad light (impeachment, climate change, racism, the coronavirus, etc.). Yet he still demands that the perpetrators of the thing that never happened be punished.

This is further evidence that Trump is suffering from severe psychological impairments. His malignant narcissism and paranoia are devouring what remains of his cognitive faculties. Trump has been exhibiting these symptoms for quite a while. In March News Corpse reported on his tweet that whined that “all I see is hatred of me.”

There’s a shipload of derp in that twantrum. First of all, he’s confessing that he compulsively consumes news on six television networks and two newspapers that he feverishly disparages as “enemies of the people.” However, the most unambiguous sign of a psychotic breakdown in Trump’s paranoid assertion is that, if hatred is all he sees, then he doesn’t see any of the facts about the crises in the U.S. and internationally. He doesn’t see any of the people’s economic distress. He doesn’t see any of the consequences of a surging pandemic. He doesn’t see the crushing anguish of victims or the inspirational acts of heroes or any of the human stories that define us as a people. He sees only what he perceives as hatred directed solely at him.

It’s a painfully narrow tunnel through which Trump’s vision is constricted to only what impacts his own welfare. And he has a debilitating fear that his welfare is threatened by everything and everyone around him. Trump is plainly unwell, as many of his close associates have attested to. And his paranoid delusions are accelerating.

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

UH-OH: Fox News Speculates that Trump is a Loser Who Might Drop Out of the Race

Posted by on June 29, 2020 at 12:56 pm. 1 Comments :

The downward spiral into which Donald Trump is descending may finally be beginning to sink in, not just to Trump, but to the right-wing media propagandists who are struggling to shore up his sickly presidency. With each day there is news that contributes to the terminal prognosis of Trump’s floundering reelection campaign. And the accumulating sense of doom has become impossible to ignore.

Donald Trump

Trump himself is well aware of the dilemma he faces as every national poll shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden. Even worse, polls of the seven most crucial swing states (Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and Minnesota) are also showing Biden leading. So Trump has fallen back on his customary dismissal of the media and the independent firms they hire to conduct their surveys:

Trump is certainly “sorry,” but not for the reasons he states. He’s a sorry excuse for a leader who resorts to petulant whining whenever he doesn’t get his way. And he’s surely sorry that everyone from the New York Times to Fox News is reporting how thoroughly the American people have rejected him. Even his favorite pollster, the rabidly biased Rasmussen, has Trump’s approval rating at 42%, matching lows as far back as January of 2018.

These numbers have Trump repeating his oft-mentioned lie that he has 95% approval within the Republican Party. Not only is that untrue, it’s irrelevant. He is not the president of the GOP. What’s more, Republicans represent a measly 28% of the electorate. Which is hardly enough to secure a victory in November.

The conditions for Trump’s campaign have deteriorated so badly that close associates are speculating as to whether he might drop out of the race entirely rather than suffer defeat. Politico is reporting the prospect of Trump’s renowned cowardice, along with comments from insiders who say that…

“The president has privately come to that grim realization in recent days, multiple people close to him told POLITICO, amid a mountain of bad polling and warnings from some of his staunchest allies that he’s on course to be a one-term president.”

And as if that weren’t bad enough, Fox News is joining those with suspicions of Trump running away from an expected rout. Fox host Trace Gallagher prefaced a question to Trump surrogate John Sununu (video below) saying that “President Trump’s poll numbers declining in recent weeks […] is leading some speculation that if his support keeps falling, the president might drop out of the race.” And Fox News featured a graphic during the segment that warned of a “rough polling stetch” (sic) for Trump.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Polling

Whether there is any chance of Trump bailing is an open question. He has a reputation as a coward who flees from any trouble that confronts him. But he also has a stubborn streak and a massive ego that can overwhelm his fears. In the end it makes no difference because either outcome would be similarly humiliating for Trump. His malignant narcissism prevents him from accepting that he is less than the manifestation of perfection. And that will result in his eventual downfall being all the more debilitating when it comes to pass.

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

Trump Fails to Renounce ‘White Power’ Tweet in Official Response

Posted by on June 28, 2020 at 11:51 am. 3 Comments :

The White House Deflection Shields are on full force this morning as Donald Trump is faced with some of the most damning evidence of his despicable negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to date. He has turned to his customary tactic of hurling insults, shifting blame, and denying reality. In other words, it’s the same old Trump who is only concerned with himself and his image.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Following the publication of the New York Times story about Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops, Trump tweeted that “Nobody briefed or told me” about the matter. Then he casually dismissed it with his tedious whining about “fake news.” There is virtually zero chance that this sort of intelligence report would not have been conveyed to the president. But even if Trump were not lying, the contention that he wasn’t told makes matters even worse. It would mean that his intelligence apparatus is dangerously inept and that Trump was ill-informed about the welfare of the troops he is allegedly commanding.

What’s more, Trump continues to downplay the increasing severity of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic as its spread throughout the nation accelerates. He triples down on his defense of Confederate traitors and the offensive statues paying tribute to them. He obsessively watches his “shadow cabinet” advisors on Fox News. And then he goes golfing. This is how Trump is handling the duties of his office at a time of extreme crises and distress for the American people.

In addition to these disturbing examples of Trump’s dereliction of duty, he is also reaffirming his most abhorrently racist tendencies. He tweeted a video Sunday morning that featured his MAGA supporters shouting “white power” as they paraded in their golf carts through The Villages retirement community:

https://twitter.com/danielnewman/status/1277285058546720769

Trump’s comment in the tweet , which he deleted a few hours later (but is preserved here), thanked “the great people” expressing these repugnant views. That’s reminiscent of his praise for neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” and the corroborating views of his Fox News sycophants who last week defended slave owners saying that “It doesn’t mean they were terrible people.”

White House spokesperson Judd Deere frantically issued a statement in an attempt to clean up Trump’s latest mess. Deere said that…

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

Really? The “white power” chant occurred in the first ten seconds of the video. It’s hard to imagine how anyone, even someone as cognitively challenged as Trump, could have missed it. And if all he saw other than that was “tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters,” he must have a mental filter that edited out all the people shouting “F*ck Trump!” and asking “Where’s your white hoods?” All things considered, it’s surprising that Trump ever thought it was a good idea to post this video. In fact, it’s possible that he deleted it because of the criticism of him, not the racism.

What we didn’t hear from Trump’s spokesperson, or Trump himself, was any denunciation of the racist epithets so viciously bellowed by those unashamed bigots. There was not one word indicating that Trump disapproved of that hateful rhetoric. Perhaps he was worried about alienating his equally racist supporters and Klan pals. The entire statement said only that he hadn’t heard it and that he’s a big fan of those who said it. And that pretty much settles the question as to Trump’s flagrant racism. If he can’t repudiate this painfully obvious bigotry, then he simply doesn’t want to.

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

BAD FOR AMERICA! Trump Delights In the Suffering of American Workers and Business

Posted by on April 6, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 3 Comments :

In times of crisis, the American people want and expect their leaders to exhibit wisdom and compassion. Difficult problems require both intelligence and judgment to resolve, and at least the appearance of sympathy for the hardships facing the average citizen. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is just such a circumstance. Unfortunately, the United States is currently stuck with Donald Trump who has none of these qualities.

Donald Trump Climate Change

The single most reliable feature of Trump’s character (or lack thereof) is his unflinching determination to always do only what is best for him. This selfishness is evident in his reckless and greed-driven proposals to “reopen” the country before any public health expert considers it safe. It’s obvious in his obsession with the polls and TV ratings that define his self-worth. There is virtually nothing that Trump addresses in his Coronavirus Task Force briefings (that he has hijacked and turned into 2020 reelection events) that isn’t directly attached to his personal welfare.

On Monday morning, while the nation was trying to cope with ever more troubling news concerning the spreading pandemic, Trump was, as usual, manning his Twitter machine and pounding out dangerous falsehoods, childish platitudes, and tributes to himself. Among the tweets that he posted was one that was particularly offensive:

What’s “bad for America” is a president who repeatedly maligns the free press in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” It’s fair to say that it’s also bad when a president is so stupid that he doesn’t understand that all businesses are presently struggling due to a virtual economic shutdown made necessary by Trump’s negligence and incompetence. Among the businesses that are experiencing financial difficulties are those owned by Trump. In fact, many are currently closed and his net worth has declined by thirty percent.

However, what’s truly repulsive about this tweet is that Trump is openly gleeful that American media companies are being hurt financially along with the rest of the country. These are businesses whose mission is to keep the American people informed, sometimes at great risk to themselves. This is especially difficult when the president is a pathological liar. But they are also businesses that employ tens of thousands of Americans. Clearly Trump couldn’t care less about these people, their families, and communities.

It’s further proof of Trump’s ignorance that he doesn’t know whether the press is suffering financially because of the quality of their reporting or the impact of a global pandemic. Trump is just exploiting the issue to bash the media, which prior to this coronavirus outbreak was having a banner year in both viewership and revenue. And it must be driving him crazy(er) knowing that according to most polls, the American people still trust the media more than they trust Trump.

It’s that public disapproval that is likely contributing to Trump’s downward spiraling emotional state. Not only has Trump not enjoyed a sustained “rally round the flag” polling bounce, he is at a four month low (44%) with his favorite, unabashedly biased, right-wing pollster, Rasmussen. That’s gotta hurt. But it shouldn’t hurt so much that it drives Trump to celebrate the misfortune of thousands of American workers. That’s on Trump.

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