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

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.

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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

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FAST AND FURIOUS! Fox News is Already Lying to Their Cult Viewers that the Omicron Variant is Fake

This didn’t take long. Less than 48 hours after the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was reported, Fox News has begun their disinformation campaign to make sure that their already dimwitted viewers remain ignorant and at risk.

Fox News, Covid

On Saturday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes engaged in a discussion about the COVID pandemic and the new variant spreading rapidly in South Africa and elsewhere:

Rachel Campos-Duffy: The answer is more lockdowns, more lockdowns. More fear. And therefore, he doesn’t have to do his job of fixing the supply chain because we’ll just keep this whole thing going.
Will Cain: Always a new variant.
Pete Hegseth: Count on a variant about every October, every two years.
Cain: You’re probably right. However, they could speed up the variants. They could come more quickly.
Hegseth: [mimicking phone call] We’re gonna need a new variant here.

So according to these sick and sociopathic Super-spreaders, the Omicron variant is fake. Never mind that it is an international threat affirmed by science. To Fox it’s just a plot by President Biden and Democrats to control Americans. They apparently think it would be a good move politically to shut down businesses and schools; to throw people out of work after achieving the lowest number of unemployment filings in more than fifty years; and to cripple the economy that has been booming ever since Biden was inaugurated. With success like that these Fox News numbskulls think that Biden is now conspiring to put an end to all of it.

And yet, while the Omicron variant is fake to these Fox News pea-brains, over on the alleged “news” side of Fox, where fear mongering is job one, they found a way to treat it as a real threat: Blame it on immigrants. So now a “caravan” of Omicron-infected refugees are headed for the border. The bigotry emanating from Fox is just too predictable.

There is a multilevel idiocy to these remarks. First of all, Fox News has been at the forefront of COVID disinformation from the very start. Consequently, they are responsible for more people being unvaccinated. Studies show that Fox News viewers are significantly trailing viewers of other media in getting vaccinated. Additionally, most recent COVID deaths have been concentrated in red states and counties where Fox News is most viewed.

And if that weren’t bad enough, there is also the psychotic view among the cult of Fox News viewers – who are also Trump cult members – that the vaccines don’t even work. But by remaining unvaccinated they are actually increasing the chances for new and more dangerous variants to form.

And if even that weren’t bad enough, the very same people who believe the virus and the vaccines are all hoaxes by Democrats for reasons they can’t explain, also believe that Donald Trump deserves credit for the vaccines. Former Trump White House staffer, Stephen Miller was on Fox News Saturday saying that…

“If President Trump was still in office, by the way, we’d already have modified vaccines to deal with the new variants. Which is a great point. President Trump brought us vaccines in record time, which he made voluntary, not mandatory. And he’d have updates too.”

Really? Miller seems to think that Trump would have come up with a modified version of the vaccine before the new variant was even discovered. But he would still not advocate for people to get vaccinated because … FREEDUMB!

For the record, Biden has not made vaccines mandatory. He just highly recommends them and requires that people who choose not to get vaccinated be tested weekly. That’s a less strict policy than the one that Fox News imposes on their employees (including the Fox and Friends gang), where testing for the unvaccinated is required daily.

Fox News is continuing to breed the sort of ignorance that is getting people killed and preventing a return to some sense of normalcy. They are spreading lies intended to make life more difficult because they believe that it will harm Biden and help Trump. And their callousness with regard to all of the people who will suffer and die due to their political self interests is reprehensible. But that has always been the mission of Fox News, and it isn’t going to change. The rest of us will just have work harder to make sure they don’t succeed.

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

Fox News Hypocrite Embraces Cancel Culture When Florida Restaurant Bans Biden Voters

A couple of years ago Fox News popularized a thoroughly manufactured variant of political correctness that was labeled “cancel culture.” It referred vaguely to the criticism of any person or policy embraced by Fox News or their right-wing Republican confederates. And like the proponents of cancel culture, no hypocrisy was too great to prevent flinging it at who or whatever was the outrage of the moment.

Fox News, Fake News

On Wednesday morning’s episode of Outnumbered on Fox News, the panel introduced a segment about the DeBary Diner in Florida. The restaurant had gained local notoriety for posting a sign in the window that told anyone who had voted for Joe Biden to “take your business elsewhere.” This was received enthusiastically by the Fox News crew. The sign read in full…

“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere.”

Gee, they seem nice. Never mind that they are blaming Biden for a bombing carried out by terrorists, while Biden had actually presided over an unprecedented airlift of more than 120,000 people – Americans and Afghan allies – to safety out of Afghanistan.

Although the sign is actually the sort of hospitality one might expect in state that is currently the nation’s hot zone for the coronavirus, and whose governor couldn’t be more pro-COVID if he tried (and he is trying). It’s a state where asking patrons to wear face masks to protect themselves and others from a deadly virus is tantamount to communism, but banning them based on who they voted for gets a big thumbs up

When co-host Pete Hegseth was asked to comment on the subject he babbled an entirely predictable endorsement of the restaurant’s anti-Biden policy. He said that…

“Yeah, it’s a free country for now, and she’s expressing a sentiment and speaking for a lot of people. And ultimately a statement like that is a guttural scream that ‘I love my country. I love the troops that defend it. And I don’t respect those who don’t stand by that.’ So customers can make a choice and I actually think this will lead to a lot more business for her than those that turn turn away,

Right. It’s a free country , except if you voted for the “wrong” person. Then you can be denied service. And that’s acceptable to Hegseth, even though denying service to people without masks is abominable. But what’s even worse is that Hegseth is contradicting remarks made on Fox News back in July of 2018, when a restaurant declined to serve Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The person contradicting Hegseth was … that’s right… Pete Hegseth:

“What does it say about the left that they stand in solidarity with a business that kicks out a paying customer just because of their political position?”

So to summarize, according to Hegseth, it’s utterly contemptible for a restaurant to refuse service to a single Republican based on her specific political ideology and actions. However, it’s perfectly fine, in fact laudatory, to ban everyone who voted for a Democratic president regardless of what their positions are on any specific matter. Good to know.

For the record, Republicans are the most frequent abusers of cancel culture. For instance, a frenzy of censures were imposed on disobedient Republicans who were deemed to have betrayed Dear Leader Trump. They include Sen. Bill Cassidy, Sen. Richard Burr, Sen. Ben Sasse, Sen. Pat Toomey, Rep. Liz Cheney, Rep. Peter Meijer, Rep. Fred Upton, Rep. Tom Rice, and Gov, Doug Ducey, so far.

Trump himself could be crowned the King of Cancel Culture. He has called for boycotts of mostly American companies that ticked him off on numerous occasions. Here’s a batch of ten that include Harley-Davidson, CNN, Apple, Fox News, and AT&T. And here’s a batch of nine more including Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Citigroup, Cisco, and Merck.

Clearly the GOP has not been vaccinated for hypocrisy. And the shameless example provide by Fox’s Hegseth tells the tale of a network that simply doesn’t care about consistency or intellectual integrity. The only thing that matters on Fox News is whether they can use some wild allegation to attack their political foes.

Their viewers don’t seem to care either, or they are just too dimwitted to notice. Which is by design at Fox News, where they deliberately keep their audience in a cognitive stupor by administering a constant flow of fear and falsehoods.

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.

Fox News is Still Fomenting Violence and Making Excuses for Trump’s Terrorists

The day after Donald Trump sent his terrorist goons to assault the United States Capitol, and the American people’s representatives as they tried to do perform their Constitutional duties, there is still a whiff of chaos and treason in the air around Washington, D.C. The perpetrators have not been apprehended and many of their enablers in the Republican Party continue to espouse the dangerous lies that motivated the insurrection.

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Fox News

Trump himself has still not condemned the violence. In fact, in a video that Twitter removed, Trump actually embraced it and told the terrorists that he loved them. Twitter also deleted Trump’s last tweet before his account was suspended for putting the nation at risk. In that tweet Trump excused the violence saying that…

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

WRONG! These are the things and events that happen when a sociopathic, narcissistic, aspiring authoritarian dictator stages a coup in order to maintain his illegal grip on power and avoid certain criminal indictments.

There has been a broad condemnation of Trump from across the political spectrum in America and around the world. However, from Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) there has been a steady drumbeat of support, rationalization, and even condemnation of others for Trump’s wrongdoing. Chief among the Trump apologists is Tucker Carlson, who devoted his Primetime White Nationalist Hour to making excuses for Trump and his treasonous brigades (video below). Carlson began by sympathizing with the delusions of the rioters:

“Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy. You can call them conspiracy theorists. You can kick them off Twitter. But that won’t change their minds.”

The reason that some Americans believe the election was fake is because people like Carlson, and others on Fox News, have endorsed and amplified Trump’s flagrant and repeated lies on the subject. But Carlson is correct in saying that their minds won’t be changed. And his sanctimonious monologue didn’t even attempt to do that. In fact, he just made things worse:

“What happened today will be used by the people taking power to strip you of the rights you were born with as an American. Your right to speak without being censored. Your right to assemble, to not be spied upon. To make a living. To defend your family, most critically.”

So the lesson Carlson takes from this purposeful act of sedition is that the government that these traitors sought to overthrow truly is their enemy and is determined to squelch their freedoms and kill their families. That is not how you deescalate the irrational tensions of insurrectionists. That’s how you incite them to further violence.

Carlson closed by saying that “We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault. It is their fault.” So Carlson is validating the terrorists by affirming that had a good reason to commit terrorism. And besides, it isn’t their fault anyway. It’s the fault of the democratically elected government that they oppose and hope to topple.

Fox News is wholly complicit with the evildoers of Trump World. They immediately joined the chorus of Trump cult disciples who sought to blame the insurrection on Antifa. Never mind that they had zero evidence of that, or that Antifa doesn’t even exist. Fox News also tried to draw outrageously false equivalencies between these traitors and the millions of citizens who protested institutional racism and police brutally.

Fox News hosts minimized the riots by characterizing them them as protests that “got a little out of hand” by “passionate” people “who love our country.” Pete Hegseth of Fox and Friends justified the terrorists saying that “They were there to support the President of the United States and to defend our republic.” “I understand what this country represents,” Hegseth said. Adding that “I see how the left is trying to tear it down. And I see one man in Donald Trump who’s been willing to fight undeterred.”

That’s precisely the problem. Trump and his confederates are determined to start a fight that they hope takes the form of a civil war. And they are undeterred by reason, facts, decency, or patriotism. They are committed to betraying the country in favor of a tyrannical dictatorship led by a megalomaniac with no moral core.

And Fox News is at the center of Trump’s communications strategy to disinform the dimwitted and lead them into submission and oppression. So when anyone proposes that Trump must be removed from office and prohibited from serving again, they have to include Fox News if the nation hopes to avoid the next aspiring dictator.

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-Fluffers at Fox News Say the Media and Democrats are the ‘Agents of Russia’

A new report has revealed that Russia is, as expected, interfering in U.S. elections on behalf of Donald Trump. The report discloses that congressional intelligence committees were briefed on this threat within the past couple of weeks.

Fox News Friends

Upon learning about this, Trump became irate. Not because Russia was trying to subvert America’s democracy again, but because Democrats in congress were among those who were told about it. Obviously Trump is very concerned that Russia’s efforts on his behalf be concealed from the people and their representatives. And as a consequence of this “betrayal” of unflinching loyalty to Dear Leader, Trump fired Joe Maguire, the Director of National Intelligence, and installed a sycophantic bootlicker with zero experience, Rick Grenell, in his place as acting director. Then, of course, Trump took to Twitter to lie about the whole thing:

First of all, this wasn’t launched by Democrats. It was Trump’s own DNI chief who compiled the intelligence and informed Congress, as he was required to do by law. But more troubling is the fact that Trump is, once again, absolving Russia of any responsibility for their blatant acts of cyber-espionage. Just as he did after the 2016 election, Trump is taking Vladimir Putin’s side and declaring that the charges of election interference are a hoax. And on top of that, he falsely accuses Democrats of manufacturing the charges for political gain.

Naturally, Fox News was right there to prop up Trump’s anti-American babbling. On Friday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes went even further than Trump to malign Democrats and the press as “Agents of Russia” (video below). “Alright let’s be clear about what this really all is,” co-host Pete Hegseth began. “This is all an attempt to discredit President Trump. That’s it. Delegitimize him all the way.” Then he elaborated saying that…

“Every single Democrat that parrots what they’re saying, they’re working together, they are the agents of Russia. This is what Russia wants! They want to sow discord and misinformation and delegitimize our republic, destabilize it because they’re not our friends and they know that when we’re strong they’re in a worse position – which they’ve done for years before President Trump. This is what they do.

“The Democrats, the media, fell for it. And the keep falling for it because they hate Trump so much they’re willing to parrot what the Kremlin is saying. They are the agents of Russia. Not Donald Trump, not this White House. It is the people that are spinning this.and continuing to drive this narrative.”

There’s a lot of derp to unpack in those two paragraphs. To begin with, Hegseth is asserting that talking about the Russian campaign to help Trump win reelection is “what Russia wants.” That’s clearly the opposite of reality. Russia’s intentions were to covertly disrupt the election, while benefiting Trump’s candidacy. What Russia wants is for people to talk about Russia’s innocence and how corrupt and dishonest American intelligence agencies are. Which is exactly what Trump and Fox News are so helpfully doing.

Hegseth also contends that Democrats and the media “fell for” Russia’s plot to get them to uncover the Russian plot. How insidious! And idiotic. It goes without saying that Russia did not intend to get caught and have their spying be broadcast around the world. That notion is almost as stupid as Hegseth’s next comment that Trump haters – Democrats and the media – are parroting “what the Kremlin is saying.” That could only be true if the Kremlin were saying that Russia is meddling in U.S. elections and that their actions are illegal and intolerable. That’s what Democrats are saying, but it is plainly not what the Kremlin is saying.

If anything, it is Trump and Fox News who are parroting the Kremlin. They are all saying that Russia isn’t doing anything wrong and any claim to the contrary is misinformation. Trump and his Reich-Wing confederates are unified in disputing what even his own intelligence agencies have proven to be true.

The purpose of this deceit is to pacify Trump’s ego. He thinks any validation of Russia’s attempts to steal the election, no matter how accurate, are personal attacks on him. Consequently, Trump will insult America’s intelligence professionals and he will take Putin’s side in denying the reality that Russia is aggressively trying to undermine U.S. democracy. And Fox News, as always, will obediently march along in lock-step with Trump’s reckless and treasonous lies.

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

Fox News Host and Trump-Fluffer Wants the U.S. to Be More Like the Terrorists

The White House narrative on Iran is falling apart. Donald Trump claims that he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani due to intelligence that indicated he represented an “imminent threat” to the U.S. But reports from the Pentagon do not confirm the charge and officials say that any evidence is “razor thin.”

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, when asked to substantiate the allegation, Trump’s press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said that she couldn’t. She merely repeated the baseless speculation that American lives were saved. She also complained that people wouldn’t simply trust Trump and take his word about the whole affair. That, of course, is the wholly warranted result of his having lied non-stop throughout his presidency. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also failed when asked to provide confirmation that Iran was plotting attacks on the U.S. In fact, he resorted to a completely different “justification” that relied solely on past events.

Now the propagandists of Trump World are trying to spin his threat to destroy cultural sites as appropriate and lawful military targeting. Never mind that it is an explicit violation of both U.S. and international law. On Fox News Tuesday morning, Pete Hegseth of Fox and Friends sought to demonize rational Trump critics as treasonous saying that “I think with friends like these Democrats, who needs the Iranians” (video below). He went on to complain that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “out of her mind” for tweeting correctly that Trump had proposed committing war crimes. And then he unleashed this grotesque commentary:

“I don’t care about Iranian cultural sites, and I’ll tell you why. If they could, if Iran could, if you understand the Islamic Republic of Iran, of Islamists, if the could, if they had the power, they would destroy every single one of our cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it.”

This is a bizarre argument even if you ignore his stuttering introduction. Hegseth is saying that it’s acceptable to behave like terrorists because terrorists behave that way. He is, in effect, advocating that the U.S. adopt the tactics of terrorists. What’s next? Would Hegseth approve of Americans beheading prisoners of war? Would he favor sending suicide bombers into the lobbies of hotels where Muslims were guests? Would he support flying planes into skyscrapers in Tehran? After all, the terrorists do that, so why shouldn’t we?

The question is, did that disgusting illogic come from Trump, or did Hegseth plant it in Trump’s befuddled head? Because the President said pretty much the same thing on Monday:

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

This is representative of Trump’s total absence of morality. He and his cult followers believe that they can commit any crime they like with impunity. And they will also tell any lie to support their atrocities. For instance, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Monday that Democrats were “mourning the loss” of Soleimani. She was challenged repeatedly to provide a single example of that reckless and hateful assertion, but went into hiding rather than respond.

This tendency to endorse such repugnant acts shows how far Trump and his regime have diverged from any semblance of civil society. It marks them as aspiring terrorists themselves because, if they approve of these tactics, what separates them from the heathens they pretend to oppose? They believe that any act, no matter how heinous, is justified if your enemy would do it. But the American people, whose principles are in tact, would surely disagree and admonish Trump that “It doesn’t work that way.”

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

The Ludicrous Fox News ‘3 Mexicos’ Chyron Wasn’t Nearly as Bad as What They Actually Said

On Sunday Morning Fox News set out reestablish their status as the supreme purveyors of rank idiocy. And they accomplished that goal with a graphic presentation of both their stupidity and racism. This feat occurred during another one of their regularly scheduled segments demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants from south of the border.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

While the three co-hosts of Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends rattled on about the alleged “crisis” on the border, there was a graphic that said “Trump Cuts U.S. Aid to 3 Mexican Countries.” Of course, there aren’t three Mexican countries. That’s just Fox’s way of disparaging all brown people in Central and South America as being the same undesirables. However, as bad as that careless foul-up was – and even given their hurried correction – what they actually said during the segment was even worse. And that can’t be dismissed as a mistake.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1112352119900770305

The piece started off with Pete Hegseth summarizing everything wrong that Fox disseminates regarding immigration:

“Cutting payment – aid payment – to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over the fact that those countries have been unable to contain the flood of migrants heading through Mexico to our southern border. So yesterday we talked about potentially shutting down the southern border … this is a big move. This is one of the few punitive measures the executive branch has still, to these countries to say ‘get it under control.'”

First of all, the migrants from Central America are fleeing the poverty and violence that threatens them and their children. Cutting humanitarian aid will only make it more difficult for these countries to resolve the problems they have with crime and scarcity. So any thinking person would understand that Trump’s actions can only exacerbate the problems he’s pretending to want to solve.

Jedediah Bila then added that Trump “came in strong” with his tweets threatening to close the border and gushed that “It seems to me he’s standing tall on this issue. He’s not backing down. I don’t blame him.” And Ed Henry chirped along in worshipful harmony saying “Yeah, it might take drastic measures.”

Trump’s notion of cutting aid is only surpassed in reckless ineptitude by his intent to close the border. That will in no way advance a solution to the problem, but it will severely harm American businesses and workers. Even Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have ridiculed the idea. And the complaint by the Foxies that the three Mexicos have been unable to “contain the flood of immigrants” ignores Trump’s own whining that it’s the U.S. that hasn’t been managing what he considers to be a national emergency. Hence his wall fetish.

When all is said and done, Fox News continues to say and do the most preposterously illogical things in their mission to frighten and disinform their audience of Deplorables. And sadly, at that they happen to be quite good.

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

HUH? Fox News’ Math-Challenged Hosts Declare that Free Market Salaries are Communism

The disease that infects the talking headcases at Fox News is apparently degenerative and causes its victims to decline ever further into the abyss of cognitive infirmity. This is especially true of the “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, whose combined IQ has yet to break the grass ceiling.

Fox News, Pete Hegseth

Donald Trump’s favorite morning show has a long history of hysterically offbase utterings. Their ratio of wrongness is in the stratosphere. Which is probably why Trump loves it so much. And a stinging example of this dumbassedness was aired on Sunday morning in a segment (video below) that was trying to make Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look dumb. They failed miserably.

The segment was a response to the recent announcement by Ocasio-Cortez that she would be paying all of her congressional staffers a living wage of at least $52,000 per year. The thought of people being treated with respect, and compensated fairly for their work was just too much for the Fox Newsies, so they concocted an argument that they were certain would slay the newest Democratic monster at their gates. It went a little something like this:

Griff Jenkins: Get a load of this. A tweet went out yesterday. She said “Leadership begins at home,” whatever, or however she put it. She’s basically announcing that she is going to ‘redistribute’ the money appropriated to her congressional office to make sure that the entry level staffers get a fair share of money.

Heaven Forbid! Whatever will become of our country if the representatives we elect to serve our interests start actually behaving in accordance with our values? Notice how Jenkins worked in the term “redistribute,” in order to invoke the memory of some imagined socialist nightmare. Never mind that redistribution of wealth is common in free societies (even capitalist ones) where some measure of equity is sought through taxation and public assistance. In fact, the Trump Tax Scam was textbook redistribution, except it went from the working class to the wealthy.

Jenkins then went on to “Fox-plain” what was so terribly wrong with Ocasio-Cortez’s salary plan. He failed to observe that it was completely in line with the free market decision making of any employer. Instead, he complained that in order to pay entry level staffers a little more, she would have to pay her chief of staff a little less. Holy Crap! Anything but that. Our nation was built on the principle that the elitists at the top should receive all the benefits and the peons should be grateful for scraps. And this is when Jenkins’ co-host chimed in to agree:

Pete Hegseth: She said, “Everyone in my office will be paid a living wage. So I’m going to pay $15 an hour.” Which means your entry level intern is making fifty-two grand, while your chief of staff, who has a very important role in a congressional office, now is capped at eighty, as opposed to the actual market rate on Capitol Hill, which is closer to $150,000. So everyone’s between 52 and 80. It’s actually socialism and communism on display.”

You have to wonder how much Hegseth is getting paid, since being able to do simple math is apparently not a requirement for his job. His claim that $15.00 an hour would be $52,000 per year is only off by $20,800. But more importantly, his contention that an employer choosing to set salaries as she sees fit is tantamount to communism proves that he is as bad at political science as he is at math.

Employers make these decisions based on multiple factors, including experience, recruiting, workplace morale, retention, and yes, even personal values. But according to Hegseth, all employers should be bound by externally imposed rules that may not satisfy their business goals. That’s actually closer to communism than anything Ocasio-Cortez has done. And it’s closer to assholery than anyone spewing opinions on television should be allowed to get away with.

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

A Happy New Year Message from Donald Trump: ‘Some Things Never Get Better and Never Change’

Well, somehow we all made it through another year. And this one was particularly challenging with a president who is most notable for his dishonesty, callousness, ignorance, and unconstrained ego. Donald Trump is testing this American experiment in democracy and he’s really putting it through the wringer. Along with his State TV (aka Fox News) division, the nation is either getting stronger or withering away.

Donald Trump, Robert Mueller, New Year

To hear Trump tell it, there is little to cheer about going forward. He literally tweeted the most pessimistic New Year’s message ever, saying that “Throughout the ages some things NEVER get better and NEVER change […] and it will ALWAYS be that way!” What an inspiring thought on the eve of a new year.

But if that wasn’t enough, Trump later posted a New Year’s video that reinforced his delusional, all-consuming obsession with himself (video below). He leads off by congratulating himself because, in his diseased mind, “there’s never been an administration that’s done more than the Trump administration.” If you recall, that’s what he said at the United Nations a few months ago where the ambassadors of world laughed in his face. Such a proud moment for America.

That was followed by a litany of his alleged achievements that were nothing of the sort. He praised an economy that is “doing great” despite this being the first time in ten years that the stock market finished in the red for the year. He lauded rising wages that are the result of Democrats increasing the minimum wage across the country over the objections of Trump and the GOP. He thanked himself for trade deals and treaties that are either ineffective, non-existent, or downright destructive. And of course, he ranted incoherently about his idiotic vanity wall saying that without it there are no borders, and therefore no country. So what has been taking up all this real estate between Mexico and Canada for the past two and a half centuries?

Finally Trump closes with some of his familiar campaign gibberish. It may be his way of convincing himself that special counsel Robert Mueller isn’t real, you know, like Santa Claus. And he stutters out a New Year’s wish that focuses exclusively on him:

“We’re gonna win. We’re gonna win all the way. We’re gonna win at everything we do. So happy new year. And let’s enjoy the next year. And then we’re gonna enjoy the following year. And then we have four more. And everything is going to be so beautiful.”

Trump knows his audience is too dumb to get any message without being pummeled with it at least three times. Hence his repetition of the imaginary “winning” mantra. And he makes sure that the only years that he singles out for future enjoyment are those wherein he’s eligible to still occupy the White House. Never mind that most Americans will only enjoy those years if he’s been removed and, preferably, incarcerated. That would indeed be beautiful.

And to top off the night, Pete Hegseth of Fox News did a typically sycophantic phone-in interview of Trump from Times Square. It featured all of the expected Trumpian hogwash with some slobbering adoration from Hegseth. And it was all politics, no partying. Trump did his routine border wall blather, lashed out at Democrats, and for some reason boasted that “Nobody knows more about technology than me.” And he further applauded himself for “producing better than I actually said.” If he means producing more division and hatred and trouble for our country, he’s right. And as if to prove that point, Trump posted a deranged, all-caps tweet New Year’s morning that continued to malign the press and insult anyone who doesn’t sufficiently idolize him:

The year ahead is going to be as challenging as the one that just came to an end. As Mueller gets closer to nailing Trump and his crime family, he will get more belligerent and deranged. He will escalate his hostility and lies. So stay positive, engaged, and hopeful for the coming year and ultimately the return of justice, democracy, and sanity to America. And have a HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY.

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

Fox News Badgers Trump’s Chief of Staff Mulvaney to Take Even More Extreme Positions on the Wall

It’s day seven of the Trump Shutdown, and Fox News is determined to hold Trump’s feet to the fire. Not for his responsibility for creating this havoc and hurting hundreds of thousands of Americans. But to insure that he doesn’t bend on the radical principles that Fox News holds dear.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

On Friday morning Fox and Friends interviewed Trump’s Acting (one of many) Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney (video below). For the most part it was a friendly get together among like-minded Trump shills. However, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were fired up over the possibility that the President might commit the unforgivable crime of compromising with Democrats in Congress.

Mulvaney tried repeatedly to characterize the Democrats as having “left Washington” to avoid the debate on Trump’s idiotic and useless vanity wall. But this Congress is still run by Republicans. They control whether the Congress stays in session or not. And it is Republicans who made the decision to stop working until next year. Democrats had no say in the matter.

Yet Mulvaney still accused Nancy Pelosi of orchestrating the shutdown and leaving town because she doesn’t want to appear weak. That’s a classic case of projection when it’s Trump who is transparently afraid of looking weak in the eyes of Fox News. Both houses of Congress had previously agreed on funding bills to keep the government of open. But then Trump was triggered by Fox News reports that he was breaking his promise to build a wall. And even though he also promised that Mexico would pay for it, he still felt it necessary to punish American taxpayers by shutting down the government.

What stood out in the interview was the ferocity of the Foxies in pushing Mulvaney to take ever more extreme positions on the wall and the shutdown created to force it down the nation’s throat. Here are the questions that Mulvaney was hectored with by the Fox crew::

Pete Hegseth: He says he’ll close it all down because of these ridiculous immigration laws. Is he willing to go that far?

Mulvaney replied that Trump is willing to go all the way. We’ll see. But it was predictable that the first question was so full of anti-immigrant bias.

Hegseth: It was $25 billion dollars was possibly on the table. Now it’s five […] Mr. Mulvaney, a lot of Trump supporters feel like five is already a compromise, $5 billion. So to now float out there $2.5, $2.7, wouldn’t that look like a cave on this key issue.

Mulvaney surprisingly admitted that the $25 billion figure was “smoke and mirrors.” And the only real “cave” here is Trump to Fox News.

Griff Jenkins: Hold on. The American people wanted a wall. What deal then now is President Trump willing to accept that is anything short of that wall?

According to Mulvaney, nothing. “That’s why the government is closed.” As for what the American people want, a new poll by Reuters/Ipsos shows that only thirty-five percent said they backed including money for the wall in a congressional spending bill. And only twenty-five percent said they supported Trump shutting down the government for it.

Rachel Campos-Duffy: But let me ask this. We’re talking about money – $5 billion, $1.5 billion, $2.7 billion. Why isn’t there other things on the table? DACA for example. Is that being negotiated?

Mulvaney said that it is, but there’s no evidence of that from the White House. Plus it would be atrocious for Trump to exploit DACA applicants as bargaining chips for a wall nobody wants (even though he’s done that before).

Hegseth: Mr. Director, Nancy Pelosi calls the wall immoral ineffective, and expensive. We know it’s effective. We know $5 billion is not expensive in Washington dollars. In taxpayer real dollars we know it is. But the morality of it. Tell that to the family of Corporal Singh. Tell that to the family of Kate Steinle. The moral thing to do is to keep it shut down until you get a wall. Trump supporters are going to expect that. How attuned are you to the reality that a compromise that makes it look like Republicans are cavin’ again – Here we go. Democrats always … No. That is a real thing that has to be factored in.

Mulvaney insists that “We’re not compromising.” But this question was loaded with bigotry and lies. There are no credible experts that believe the wall would be effective. Most undocumented immigrants came legally through border checkpoints. And by raising the Singh and Steinle issues, Hegseth is once again implying that all immigrants are potentially murderers. The facts show that immigrants commit crimes a lower rates than American-born citizens. So Hegseth shouldn’t be talking about “the moral thing to do,” especially since he opposes all reasonable gun reforms to prevent the massacres of American citizens by American citizens.

Hegseth: The President’s floated the nuclear option. Is that a possibility in the Senate?

“I wish all options were open,” said Mulvaney. But even Mitch McConnell has ruled this out.

Campos-Duffy: If he’s there, why doesn’t he do an Oval Office address? […] Why isn’t he using all the tools at his disposal?

On this Mulvaney fired back saying that Trump knows what he’s doing, and how to do it, better than they do. Because Dear Leader is infallible and only wants to protect his weak and frightened children.

And that’s what passes for a fair and balanced interview on Fox News. The program’s hosts badger their guest with opinionated viewpoints aimed at pushing him toward their radical perspectives. And the guest complies with answers that feed right into the craziness of their right-wing agenda. But in the end none of this matters because Trump will only tweet something that contradicts them and himself and makes no sense. And his glassy-eyed cult followers will lap it up like gruel and be grateful for whatever morsels he tosses to them.

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