Pete Hegseth

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

Posted by on February 21, 2020 at 1:58 pm. 6 Comments :

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

Posted by on January 7, 2020 at 12:56 pm. 1 Comments :

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

Posted by on March 31, 2019 at 11:09 am. 4 Comments :

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.

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

Posted by on February 24, 2019 at 1:13 pm. 4 Comments :

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’

Posted by on January 1, 2019 at 8:24 am. 2 Comments :

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

Posted by on December 28, 2018 at 11:21 am. 4 Comments :

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.

An Ugly Celebration: Fox News Cheers the ObamaCare Ruling that Will Cause Millions to Suffer

Posted by on December 15, 2018 at 11:47 am. 5 Comments :

On Friday evening an ultra-conservative judge in Texas handed down an obtusely argued ruling that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. His reasoning hinged on the fact that Republicans in Congress, who have long aspired to kill the popular legislation, amended the law in a manner that rendered it invalid. This was a well orchestrated plot to kill a program that has helped millions of Americans and saved lives.

Fox News Donald Trump

So what was the reaction on Fox News? Well, it began with an early morning episode of Fox and Friends (video below) that should put to rest forever any doubt that these cretins are sadistic, uncaring, and filled with hatred for their fellow citizens. The program that Donald Trump watches religiously began with this exchange by co-hosts Ed Henry, Pete Hegseth, and Jedediah Bila:

Henry: Today, a little gift ahead of Christmas.
Hegseth: I already got a gift today. I got a gift last night.
Henry: It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Hegseth: Well, I don’t know what your gift was but …
Henry: I know what you meant. Obamacare is unconstitutional. That is what a federal judge is ruling in Texas. He said the Affordable Care Act is invalid as open enrollment closes today. What’s fascinating about it this is that the judge is saying that the whole law, the entire Affordable Care Act should in fact be torn down because the individual mandate demanding that you buy health insurance is unconstitutional.
Bila: It’s about time. I mean we’ve been having this debate for a long time. I was so happy to see this. This was completely unconstitutional from the start.

This is their idea of a Christmas “gift” that “keeps on giving”? This is something that they are “so happy to see”? Do they realize that millions of Americans depend on this program for critical healthcare? That means medical services and pharmaceuticals for people with potentially lethal illnesses. It means care for sick children and pregnant women. If ObamaCare is struck down then everyone with a preexisting condition will once again be shut out of the insurance market. It means that young people on their parents’ insurance plans will lose their coverage. It means the return of discriminatory pricing and the elimination of preventative care. And even for those who don’t have serious medical problems, it means much higher premiums.

Republicans have chanted “repeal and replace” for eight years, but in all that time have failed to offer their “replacement” for ObamaCare. Now the ACA could be lost with nothing to protect those who rely on it. And this makes the Foxies shiver with glee. Of course, it wasn’t just the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox News who threw a party for this ruling. Donald Trump tweeted his own holiday joy at seeing millions of people thrown into healthcare nightmare, calling it “Great news for America.”

Watching these grotesquely inhumane gasbags laugh about this ruling as a gift for Christmas is painful in itself. It almost makes one wish that they would have to go through this hardship themselves, or with a loved one. They have no concept whatsoever of empathy or concern for other Americans. But if there is any silver lining to this, it’s that there will be stronger demand for Medicare-For-All than ever before, and for the Democrats who support it.

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

Fox News Freak Out: Host Says of Democrats that ‘We’ve Always Known they Were Socialists’

Posted by on November 25, 2018 at 11:55 am. 3 Comments :

Now that the 2018 election is over, and the “Blue Wave” has swept more Democrats into office than at any time since Watergate, the 2020 election is lining up at the starting gate. Democrats have much to be hopeful for considering the historically low approval ratings of Donald Trump (who has never managed to reach 50%) and the Senate map that has twice as many Republican Nationalists defending their seats as Democrats.

Fox News, Donald Trump Baby

This of course means that Fox News is already chomping at the bit to canonize Trump and malign Democrats. And nowhere more than Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends, is the mudslinging perched at the ready to attack. On Sunday’s episode of the melodrama that Fox passes off as “news,” the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were on the edge of their sofa with excitement at the prospect of smearing those pesky liberals who won by a massive majority three weeks ago. They began by featuring a tweet thread by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) wherein he rejected the notion that Democrats would engage in a fight between moderates and progressives. But then the Foxies ignored that and rattled off their own bitterly partisan narrative.

Co-host Pete Hegseth demonstrated his low comprehension skills by insisting that the 2020 Democratic nominee for president is going to be “a far-left progressive.” Never mind that the Democrats could nominate noted conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and the GOP would still label him as a far left radical. Republicans aren’t interested in honest assessments, only what they think will have a negative electoral impact. But then co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy (a former cast member on MTV’s The Real World, and wife of GOP congressman Sean Duffy) let loose what the GOP really believes (video below):

“A lot of people mocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I think the moment she came out and proud as a socialist, and caused the other members of the caucus – all of them basically took their masks off and said ‘Yep. We’re there too.’ We’ve always known they were socialists. So I think what’s really important here is that 2020 is gonna be an honest election between socialism and American capitalism.”

Really? Campos-Duffy actually thinks that all of the Democrats who might run for president in 2020 are masked socialists? However, she and her Fox News comrades have known it all along. That’s actually an accurate representation of Fox’s long held bias that has earned them the State TV label that was recently affirmed by the discovery that Fox’s former president, Bill Shine, now works for Trump is being paid simultaneously by both.

What’s more, notice how Campos-Duffy characterizes capitalism as “American,” but leaves off any such judgment of patriotism when she mentions socialism. That’s typical of Fox News and the right who routinely ignore the fact that many of the core principles of American society are rooted in socialism. That includes everything from public libraries and schools to Medicare and Social Security.

Campos-Duffy went on to say that she hopes Democrats nominate a progressive, which she said “means socialist.” Co-host Griff Jenkins then chimed in to say that the 2018 election proved that there are no “blue dog” Democrats who are moderates or conservatives. And of course, Hegseth agreed saying that “You’re totally right. And there will be no more ‘code talk,'” by which he meant Democrats hiding their clandestine socialist conspiracy.

But they are deliberately misleading their willfully ignorant audience. The Democratic Party is far more diverse in every way than the Republican Nationalists, and that includes political ideology. In fact, there are even many right-leaning Democrats who Fox News has been crowing about for their opposition to Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House. So they are contradicting their own narratives.

Whoever the next Democratic nominee for president is, it will be someone who far surpasses the flagrantly idiotic, racist, narcissistic, criminal, treasonous, rage-aholic, fear fetishist who is occupying the White House now. And if it’s someone who recognizes the benefits of broad ideologies – including socialism – it will be the will of the people that got that person the nomination. And, hopefully, the White House. It’s called democracy. Get used to it Republicans, because your authoritarian, gerrymandering, voter suppressing ways are coming to an end.

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

Trump Brags About the ‘Great Honor’ of Record Approval in a Fox News Poll that Doesn’t Exist

Posted by on November 4, 2018 at 10:58 am. 5 Comments :

Trying to analyze the presidency of Donald Trump gets harder with each passing day. The primary difficulty is attempting to discern whether Trump is lying or stupid or suffering from senile dementia. The unarguable signs of one or more of all three of these Trump deficiencies are evident in nearly everything he says. Although, in the end, it hardly matters which one stands out at any given time because they are all alarming and unacceptable traits in an American president.

Donald Trump

Case in point: On Sunday morning Trump awoke and took to his twitter machine to communicate directly with his Deplorable cult disciples. He re-tweeted some twenty previous tweets from last week, including the most flagrantly racist campaign ad ever produced. And mired in that muck of mainly endorsements of Republican Nationalist Party candidates was this display of Trump fluffing his own ego:

Any conscious observer would recognize right off the bat that there is something terribly wrong with this tweet. Trump’s actual approval rating among African-Americans is in single digits. A recent Washington Post poll put the number at three percent. Even a Trump-friendly Fox News poll last month reported that all non-white respondents combined totalled only Twenty-nine percent approval.

However, an even more troubling part of this tweet is Trump’s assertion that the forty percent approval among African-Americans came from a Fox News poll. The only problem with that is that no such poll exists. So this is Trump either lying, being too dumb to understand simple news reporting, or sinking into a blissful dementia.

There is, however, some evidence that stupidity is the cause of this particular mental failure. There was a segment on Trump’s favorite Fox program, Fox and Friends (video below), wherein contributor Deroy Murdock cited a poll that did put Trump’s African-American approval at forty percent. The program blasted a full screen graphic of this “news” to introduce the Murdock interview. But right at the bottom of the graphic was an attribution of the polling data to Rasmussen Reports, the notoriously right-leaning survey outfit that exists only to give conservatives some positive poll results when reputable pollsters have none. Murdock repeated the number in the interview, but neither he nor co-host Pete Hegseth bothered to identify the utterly non-credible source.

So apparently Trump was engaged in his customary practice of watching hours and hours of Fox News and happened to see this bogus story on how much African-Americans adore him. Then he had to immediately share this falsehood with his (many fake) Twitter followers. It’s cute that he feels “honored” by the imaginary approval that he thinks he has among a demographic group that almost universally despises him and his racist agenda. But it’s disturbing that he continues to have such an acutely distorted perception of the nation he is supposedly leading.

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

Trump Mindlessly Parrots Fox News Lies About ISIS Mixing with Migrant Refugee Caravan

Posted by on October 22, 2018 at 12:41 pm. 2 Comments :

One of the most frequent personal observations expressed by Donald Trump is his insistence that he is a bottomless vessel of boundless knowledge. He claims that he knows more about defense than his generals; more about climate than scientists; and more about the law than his army of lawyers. He may be right about the latter considering that Rudy Giuliani is the head of his laughably inept legal team.

Donald Trump Fox News

However, the evidence of Trump’s brilliance must be buried deeper than the Mariana Trench. He is wrong more often than a chimpanzee predicting the stock market. Although it’s hard to know whether his mistakes are due to common ignorance or, more likely, to flagrant lying. And so much of what he professes to know absolutely is just stuff he heard on Fox News, another disseminator of poorly manufactured fabrications. It’s a sign of his acutely shallow intellect that he relies so heavily on the alternative facts of a TV network staffed by proud foes of intelligence.

Nevertheless, that’s where Trump got his latest bit of bullpucky regarding the nearly 7,000 migrants marching toward the United States in hopes of escaping the poverty and violence in their home countries. Trump posted a tweet on Monday morning that was chock full of falsehoods with racist overtones:

Trump is so enamored of his ability to invent cute nicknames for the objects of his wrath that he came up with one for imposing crises. But the “National Emergy” that he’s panicking about is a figment of his overactive imagination. Especially the part about the “unknown Middle Easterners” allegedly mixing in. Trump appears to have absorbed this non-fact from the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. Co-host Pete Hegseth ranted incoherently about the migrant “caravan” in a segment that backed up Trump’s asinine proposal to deploy the military to confront peaceful, unarmed, refugee families. But the centerpiece of this nonsense was the allegation that members of ISIS were infiltrating the marchers (video below):

Hegseth: You got the president of Guatemala saying to a local newspaper down there just last week, they caught over a hundred ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan or other processes.
Steve Doocy: Are we sure that’s true?
Hegseth: He talked to their local newspaper, we don’t know it, it hasn’t been verified. But even one poison pill is too many in a caravan.

Virtually none of that is true. To begin with, President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala didn’t talk to a local newspaper. He made remarks at the Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America, an event whose attendees included Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Secondly, President Morales was not talking about ISIS fighters caught in conjunction with the migrant caravan. In fact, the caravan had not even begun when Morales spoke at the Conference. Thirdly, there is no evidence whatsoever that any apprehensions of terrorists were ever made. And finally, in his remarks Morales said that the alleged terrorists had all been deported, in which case they would no longer be in the country or able to sneak into the caravan. Therefore, no National Emergy.

From that basket of nothingness, the ultra-conservative shills at Judicial Watch published a thoroughly false report that implied that Morales had revealed an ongoing effort by ISIS to clandestinely enter the U.S. by disguising themselves as migrants. That work of fiction was picked up by Fox News, and then blasted out by Trump to his millions of Deplorable Twitter followers. And to reiterate, none of it was true. But that didn’t stop Trump from doubling with another inane tweet:

Let’s just set aside the fact that Congress had drafted a comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform bill, but Trump’s stubborness to compromise killed it. Now he’s imploring his cult followers to “think of and blame the Democrats” whenever they see refugees seeking asylum in America. Note that he doesn’t want you to think of the hardships they’ve suffered, or even the impact on the U.S. by their being granted asylum. He sees this a purely political matter and he’s exploiting these human tragedies to try to offset the expected Republican losses in the upcoming midterm election.

What’s worse is that Trump’s response to this is to threaten to cut off aid to the countries these refugees are fleeing. So the inhumane conditions that led to their exodus will now get exponentially worse and more of them will take the risks to escape. That’s the sort of thinking that can only come from someone steeped in ignorance and hatred. It’s the thinking of television pundits whose expertise is in celebrity gossip. And sadly, it’s typical of what America has been having to tolerate for as long as Trump has occupied our White House.

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