Fox News Brazenly Lies to Smear Democrats on a Mission of Mercy to Reduce Global Poverty

On a day when there is an abundance of newsworthy stories to report, Fox News went out of its way to deliberately spread false accusations aimed at Democratic members of Congress. While they could be reporting on the riots in Venezuela or the arrest of Trump pal Robert Kraft or the pending report from special counsel Robert Mueller or Roger Stone’s gag order, or the domestic terrorist that Trump won’t talk about, Fox News went a different way.

Fox News Lies

On their website, Fox News featured as their top story an article about some Democratic members of Congress who traveled to South Africa to attend the “Global Citizen: Mandela 100” festival honoring the historic activist and former South African president, Nelson Mandela. The festival was also a charitable event to raise funds and awareness of global poverty. But to Fox News it was a just a bunch of grifters on a holiday to catch Beyonce in concert.

Fox News, Beyonce, Democrats

The headline on Fox’s story read: “5 House Democrats took $60,000 trip to South Africa for Beyoncé concert, records show.” The clear implication that Fox intended readers to take away from this was that congress members were wasting taxpayer money to enjoy themselves on a vacation with superstar celebrities. But even their own article refuted that characterization in the first few paragraphs:

“Five members of the Congressional Black Caucus took a $60,000 trip to see Beyoncé and other stars perform in concert in South Africa late last year, according to congressional disclosure records.

“The lawmakers were U.S. Reps. Gregory Meeks of New York, Barbara Lee of California, Bobby Rush of Illinois, Terri Sewell of Alabama and Hank Johnson of Georgia, according to the data.

“They attended the “Global Citizen Mandela 100” concert from Dec. 1-3 to celebrate the centenary birth of the late Nelson Mandela and raise awareness of global poverty.”

The article also noted that there were no taxpayer funds spent on this trip. It was “paid for by Global Citizen, a nonprofit that lobbies for anti-poverty programs around the world.” And Rep. Sewall told the press that the trip “was pre-approved by the House Ethics Committee.” She further described the festival as “a platform for world leaders to speak out against racial injustice and inequity, and voice their support for international assistance for underprivileged populations.”

So this attempt by Fox News to disparage representatives who were working to address the critical issues of racism and poverty was portrayed falsely by Fox as a self-serving joyride at taxpayers expense. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone. The mission of Fox News has always been to disseminate propaganda that maligns the good works of decent people, particularly if they are honorable efforts to improve the lives of the underprivileged.

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

Fox News continues to be the mouthpiece for the Republican Nationalist Party, the Greedy One Percent (GOP), and the Cult of Donald Trump. They are the standard bearers for the elitist class who aspire to keep people oppressed. And what better way to do that than to denigrate the people and projects devoted to making life better for all people. To that end, Fox News works hard to manufacture headlines like the one above to assure that their audience remains insensitive, uncaring, and above all ignorant.

Fox News Was Born 22 Years Ago Today to Corrupt the Free Press and Become State TV

It seems like only yesterday that America had a president who didn’t shout rhetoric he stole from Stalin that the media is “the enemy of the people.” But those days are long gone and have been replaced by a loudmouth ignoramus who hates the Constitution and does everything he can to turn his cult followers against it.

Fox News Lies

It was twenty-two years ago that Fox News made its debut on cable TV promising to “change the way you look at the world.” And if what they meant was that you would now look at it through the lens of lies and ultra-partisan right-wing dogma, they were right. The network was the brainchild (i.e. Rosemary’s Baby) of an Australian newspaper baron (Rupert Murdoch) and an American media consultant for the Republican Party (Roger Ailes). It took about five years before the cable channel caught on, but once it did it corralled all of the nation’s conservative viewers into a single pen where they could happily wallow in the mud of a deliberately dishonest perversion of journalism.

Today Fox News has morphed into what can only be described as the State TV arm of Donald Trump’s White House. It is a co-conspirator in his efforts to turn the United States into a dictatorship that serves the wealthy and corporatist classes of the country. And its programming appeals to a audience that has been expressly dumbed-down by two decades of pablum and soap opera style melodrama.

So Happy Birthday Fox News. And may there NOT be many more to come. The past twenty-two years has already inflicted more than enough damage on the nation and the viewers/victims (mostly our grandparents and high school dropouts) who became virtual fake news zombies. They are lost to us now, but with each new generation comes hope for a clear-thinking, propaganda-free future.

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

Trump’s Manic Obsession to Undo Obama’s Legacy is Helpfully Exposed By Fox News

The return of three Americans held as prisoners in North Korea can be celebrated by the whole country, regardless of political affiliation. We can all feel a bit of the gratitude that they and their families are feeling today. But we must not pretend that this bit of micro-diplomacy guarantees the success of the broader mission for which Donald Trump has recklessly built up expectations with comments like his tweet on Thursday flaunting an ambitious goal to “denuclearize that entire peninsula.”

Obama Fox News

We must also not forget that Trump’s strutting bravado with regard to North Korea is a symptom of the same mental defect that motivated him to violate the terms of our pact with Iran, and five other nations, to prohibit them from developing nuclear weapons. So even if he strikes a deal with North Korea (which is by no means certain), it’s one step forward, two steps back.

There is, however, an obvious string of commonality that weaves through everything Trump does. In almost every public statement he’s made about Iran, he’s inserted a jab at President Obama over the multinational agreement that Trump has called “one of the worst deals ever negotiated in American diplomatic history.” Likewise, he regularly bashes Obama for not having terminated North Korea’s nuclear weapons program during his term. Note that there are good reasons for not rewarding the Kim regimes that Obama and every other American president have observed.

Trump’s fetish with all things Obama extends to nearly every initiative he’s pursued as president. Even Fox News has noticed this all-consuming psychosis. They recently did a story calling the scuttling of the Iran deal the “latest Trump move to dismantle key Obama policies.” The story noted that:

“Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement marks just the latest development in the president’s ongoing effort to undo predecessor Barack Obama’s legacy — including trying to dismantle Obamacare while making drastic changes to U.S. immigration and military policies. […] Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has repealed or rescinded dozens of regulations, executive orders and international agreements implemented by the Obama administration over the eight years of his presidency. That effort began three days after Trump was inaugurated.”

Indeed. Trump’s sole motivation appears to be to unravel everything that Obama successfully implemented. Although it’s a bit surreal to see Fox News articulate it so explicitly. Trump’s gnawing jealousy has him on a single-minded path of destruction. It’s why he installed cabinet heads whose sole objectives are to weaken, and eventually eliminate, the departments they run. It’s a fact that is so transparent that even Fox News is comfortable reporting it. They posted a tweet listing the deliberate damage that Trump is doing to the Obama legacy:

Ironically, the items in that list are all examples of harm that Trump is doing, not just to Obama’s legacy, but to America. Polls show that most voters are in favor of the Democratic/liberal position on every single one of the those issues. Trump is working furiously against the interests of the people. So Fox News is posting what amounts to a campaign ad for voting Democratic in 2018. And while Fox is also continuing their regular broadcasts of repulsive opinions by heinous pundits, we might just pause for a moment to thank them for this inadvertent gift. But don’t expect to get any more between now and November.

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

Fox News Posts Trump-Fluffing Propaganda Video: This Is What State-Run TV Looks Like

Donald Trump has managed to survive one year as the alleged President of the United States. It’s actually quite an accomplishment considering that he has produced almost nothing but decline, catastrophe, hatred, and embarrassment. Any other political figure would have crumbled under the weight of such failure, but that’s only because other leaders have had at least some measure of dignity and/or shame.

Donald Trump Fox News

On this solemn anniversary Trump is mired in a government shutdown of his own making. It was through intentional neglect of duty and purposeful self-interest that Trump has found himself in this dilemma. Simultaneously, he’s staring down special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into his collusion with Russia, financial corruption, and obstruction of justice. And he repeatedly displays a sort of racist Tourette’s Syndrome, blurting out bigoted slurs and insults uncontrollably.

In the midst of this presidential apocalypse, Fox News is coming to Trump’s rescue with a slickly produced propaganda video that aims to portray everything as hunky dory. In the view of Fox News there is no crisis in Washington, no controversy over healthcare or immigration, and the world is a paradise of peace and harmony. It’s the happy-face flip-side of the racist, dystopian campaign ad Trump put out yesterday. Just feast your eyes on this and take comfort that your country is in tiny, but good hands:

The video covers a lot of territory. But most of it is in Trumpian Fantasyland. It boasts about Trump’s recent tax reforms that mainly benefit corporations and the rich. It includes a sound bite from Trump saying that his plan was “the biggest tax cut and tax reform in the history of our country.” It wasn’t. Even President Obama had larger cuts, twice.

The video also praises the Trump administration’s assault on regulations that protect the American people from predatory financial institutions, dangerous workplaces, and toxic water, air, and food. Somehow these attacks on average Americans are viewed as positive by Fox News. The network also regards the “chip[ping] away at ObamaCare” as another Trump “success.” And the same goes for Trump’s record on judicial appointments. The video brags that “When Trump took office he inherited more than 100 federal judicial vacancies.” However, that was due to the unprecedented obstruction of Mitch McConnell in the GOP controlled Senate, who denied Obama his Constitutional right to nominate justices and judges. Even so, Trump only had twenty-three judicial confirmations.

Finally, the Fox News love-fest credited Trump with defeating ISIS. Never mind that he did absolutely nothing to alter the military operations that were put in place by the Pentagon during Obama’s administration. ISIS had been losing ground for months prior to Trump’s inauguration. And the Iraqi army was mainly responsible for recapturing territory from the terrorists, with training and air support from the U.S.

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

Like any well crafted commercial, this video ended by repeating Trump’s branding, “Make America great again.” Tacking that slogan onto the end was exactly what any marketing executive would have done if the video were for Diet Coke or Toyota. There is only one way to describe this video: Pure propaganda. When a media enterprise produces such cringeworthy flattery on behalf of a political figure they are supposedly covering, it can’t be taken seriously as journalism. It’s proof that the network is a totally owned and operated subsidiary of the White House that shamelessly panders to our Narcissist-in-Chief. And in the process Fox News is deliberately misinforming the public and advancing the ignorance and division that is the hallmark of the Era of Trump.

Trump Shill: If You Get Your News From Fox News You Probably Like the GOP Tax Scam

Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are hurtling headlong into passage of tax bill that will materially alter the tax code in ways that harm most Americans. It is flagrantly biased in favor of corporations and the wealthy with toxic provisions that will sabotage healthcare and cripple Social Security and Medicare. The GOP refused to hold hearings on the bill or even allow Democrats to review it prior to voting. Much of it was written by corporate lobbyists. And without any justification for their haste, Republicans are ramming it through before the already strong opposition becomes impossible to ignore.

foxnews-mulvaney

As usual, whenever Republicans require a boost in propaganda they turn to Fox News. They know that they can present whatever bullshit they want and that there will be no one to challenge their lies. They took advantage of that Thursday morning when they sent Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, to the studios of Fox and Friends to pimp the tax bill. He received precisely the welcome that he expected as co-host Steve Doocy offered up a softball for Mulvaney to hit out of the park. Surprisingly, Mulvaney took a wild swing that landed in foul territory (video below):

Doocy: People don’t like to pay taxes so you would think that this would be a good story for you. And yet, Mick, the Quinnipiac poll came out and shows that fifty-five percent of Americans don’t like it, as opposed to twenty-six percent who do. Can you explain to me why people don’t like the idea of a tax cut?
Mulvaney: Sure, because if you turn to any channel besides this one, all you’re going to hear is bad news about this particular bill. […] No one is focusing, as you folks do, on what’s good for people in this bill. So if you get your news here, you probably like it because your focused on what’s good for you. But if not, you don’t.

So the only reason Mulvaney had for people not liking the bill was that they weren’t watching enough Fox News. Or worse, they drifted from their “news” teet at Fox and were exposed to actual facts and honest scrutiny. Doocy was taking a chance by citing the Quinnipiac poll which he correctly quoted as showing a historic disapproval rating, especially for something being pitched as a tax cut. The poll provided an explanation for that which Fox News left out entirely. Nearly seventy percent of those polled said the bill favors the wealthy and only twenty-one percent think that it will help the middle class. In other words, people can see through the GOP spin and recognize a fraud when it’s right in front of their faces.

However, what was most interesting about Mulvaney’s response was that he explicitly admitted that Fox News was a pit of partisan bias where viewers would get only the conservative perspective peddled by the White House. He praised the “Curvy Couch” potatoes for being sycophantic hucksters upon whom he could rely to spew the government line. Just like state-run TV outlets are supposed to do. Heaven forbid that the American people might ever get an unbiased analysis of this bill that contained actual facts derived from independent experts. That isn’t what Fox News was created for, and it surely isn’t what they did this morning. Welcome to the American Pravda, now proudly out of the propaganda closet.

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 Becoming The Propaganda Ministry Of The Trump Administration

The relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News goes back years. Long before he was running for president he had a regular segment on Fox and Friends called “Mondays with Trump.” It served as the launching pad for his eventual campaign and a platform from which he could attack President Obama. In addition to that free political infomercial time, Trump was close friends with Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Roger Ailes.

Donald Trump Fox News

This parasitic partnership served both the ego of Trump and the greed of Fox. Consequently, it’s not especially surprising that it would continue into his presidency. However no one could have predicted the depths it would reach. From the outset of the nascent Trump administration, he has used the right-wing network as a virtual farm team. The only other comparably rich pool of potential White House recruits was Goldman Sachs. This week two new Foxies became the beneficiaries of Trump’s job creation program.

Heather Nauert was most recently a co-host and news presenter on Fox and Friends. Now she has been tapped as spokeswoman for the State Department. This is her first government job.

Following her to Trumpville is Fox contributor Richard Grennell. He served as Director of Communications for the U.S. representative to the United Nations from 2001 to 2008 before signing on at Fox. That means he was the key spokesman throughout the Iraq war debacle. Now Trump is nominating him to be the ambassador to NATO. What’s peculiar about this is that Trump has repeatedly criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq that it was Grennell’s job to defend. And now Trump wants to put him at NATO, an organization Trump said was outdated.

These two Foxugees are joining three former colleagues already on Team Trump. K.T. McFarland, Ben Carson, and Sebastian Gorka. There would have been four but Monica Crowley withdrew from the National Security Council after being exposed as a plagiarist. She’s back at Fox now. Appearing on Hannity Tuesday night she whined that she had been the victim of “a straight up political hit job.” She also said that her publisher backed her up but, in fact, they halted all sales of her book.

Still more Fox personnel have been considered for administration roles. Trump appears to be building a de facto Ministry of Propaganda out of the White House. All of the elements are falling into place. He’s assembled a cast of characters that has experience in developing fiction and defending the indefensible. Now on the inside they can be counted on to continue showering him with praise and deflecting criticism.

On the other side of this partnership, Fox News is well positioned to take advantage of their unique circumstance. They can expect to be excluded from Trump’s tirades against “fake news.” More importantly, the network’s corporate parent can count on Trump to shepherd through regulations that benefit the company. Fox would love to have the FCC relax TV station ownership caps so they can monopolize markets by buying up more stations. Also high among the priorities of Fox’s CEO Rupert Murdoch, is scuttling the merger of competitors AT&T and TimeWarner. That’s actually a good idea, but not for the selfish reasons Murdoch harbors.

Finally, how can Fox News fairly cover an administration that’s lousy with its own former employees? This presents a conflict that is unprecedented. Those involved are closely associated with one another, and they likely expect to return to Fox after their government service. So neither will want to antagonize the other for fear of hampering future opportunities.

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

Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” is being kept by draining it right into the White House. The stench of corruption stemming from his unsavory connections to Russia now has a media machine to mask the odor. It’s the sort of thing that one observes in the regimes of dictators. There has never been anything similar in the United States. It’s up to what’s left of the independent press to make sure it doesn’t take hold. So we may be in big trouble.

Alarming New Law Could Allow ‘Voice Of America’ To Turn Into Trump’s Pravda

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is a federal agency with seventy-four years of history. It was created to produce pro-western news stories for distribution around the world. It was intended to advance democracy and counter propaganda in countries suffering from stiff censorship and suppression of free speech.

Donald Trump

The BBG manages outlets like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, among others. However, its mission of late has been muted by bureaucracy and mismanagement. In an effort to address these problems Congress passed a reform bill that would phase out the bipartisan board and replace it with a CEO to be appointed by the president.

These reforms were not considered especially controversial when they were proposed. They even received some bipartisan support in Congress. However, with the election of Donald Trump, some of the initiative’s backers are having second thoughts. As Politico reported:

“President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network.

“Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.”

Trump and his cohorts have demonstrated that they are not above lying to manufacture narratives that support their interests. Consequently, the new BBG could wind up being a version of Trump TV that is “financed by taxpayers to the tune of $800 million per year.” And with other recent legislation, there’s nothing to stop this agency from airing its broadcasts in the United States. This is troubling because the reformed board could produce propaganda aimed at American citizens and distribute it through conventional media and news programming.

Now some people might be thinking “So what? Isn’t that what Fox News already does?” And they would be right. Fox News is the de facto PR division of the Republican Party. And with the elevation of Trump to the White House, Fox becomes the President’s official mouthpiece. However, another production entity with a nearly billion dollar budget should not be dismissed. It’s programming could be distributed to hundreds of small TV stations throughout the country who could air it for free. This would expand the reach of the right’s propaganda to millions of new households.

The congressional managers of the bill insist that their reforms preserve a “firewall” that prohibits political influence from the White House or the new CEO. They maintain that journalists would still have a free hand to produce their own stories. But if the new CEO was inclined to throw his weight around, he could still bully his subordinates into submission. Plus he could hire journalists that were pre-screened for right-wing, ideological purity. Imagine someone like Stephen Bannon (Trump’s Strategic Advisor and former chairman of Breitbart News) in that role. And Roger Ailes, former CEO of Fox News, is looking for work after having been fired for sexual harassment. He and Trump are best buddies.

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

Both Democratic and Republican members of the current board have expressed concerns about the reforms. They recognize the potential for abuse without strict oversight. The Washington Post notes that, “If Congress’s intention was for US broadcasting to rival the Kremlin’s, it may well get its wish.” And what would make Trump happier than to emulate his hero in Russia with his very own version of Pravda?

SO F*CKING WHAT? Trump Tweets That He’ll Hand Business Over To His Fully Conflicted Kids

America’s Robber Baron-Elect, Donald Trump, disgorged himself on Twitter again in a pre-dawn diatribe. This one sought to allay the fears of his extensive conflicts of interest by repeating his prior insufficient explanations.

Donald Trump

Here are the tweets he fired off in his sleepless rant:

Once again, he seems to think that handing his businesses off to his kids removes the potential for corruption. All it does is appoints his kids as the executors of his worldwide graft and bribery operations. He still has complete knowledge of his assets and what government measures would benefit them. Family members cannot be characterized as a “blind trust” and most of his properties around the world have his name plastered on them in gold.

Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel is already playing host to foreign dignitaries. These guests have admitted that they booked the venue to ingratiate themselves to the President-elect. Consequently, Trump could be in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause immediately after taking the oath of office.

Trump casually asserts that he is not mandated by law to divest himself, but that’s not what the Constitution says. He further states that it is only “visually important” to avoid conflicts of interest. Actually avoiding them doesn’t appear to be on his agenda. That suggests that if he can effectively hide his crookedness it would be OK. If he really believes that the presidency is “a far more important task” than his real estate ventures, then why won’t he divest?

There is, perhaps, something more significant in his tweets than the old news that he is promoting his Trumpkins. That’s the announcement that he will hold a press conference on December 15, to address the subject. Trump has not held a press conference in the three weeks since Election Day. That’s the longest period a president-elect has gone without a post-election press conference in forty years. But it’s even worse than that because he hasn’t had a formal press conference at all since July. In fact, with only four exceptions, he hasn’t been interviewed on a non-Fox News outlet in nearly six months. This was so egregious that Fox News even reported it.

It’s not for lack of newsworthy discussion topics. By avoiding the press Trump has evaded questions on serious issues that impact the nation. For instance, an election that is tainted by allegations of voter suppression and his loss of the popular vote. At least a dozen women who are charging him with sexual assault. His unsavory connections to Russia and its efforts to interfere with the election. Payment of $25 million to settle a lawsuit to compensate the fraud victims of his phony Trump University. His cabinet and administration appointees who are affiliated with radical racist organizations. And, of course, his growing list of ethically compromising conflicts of interest.

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

Now he says he will hold a press conference. The last time he said that he ended up staging an infomercial for his hotel, steaks, and other sundry QVC-esque commodities. Trump enjoys screwing with the press almost as much as lying to it. Consequently, we ought not to expect him to keep his word about the purpose of this gathering. In fact, we should not necessarily expect there to be one at all. Stay tuned.

Trump Caught Disseminating False, Anti-Clinton Disinformation From Russian Media (VIDEO)

One of the most peculiar and disturbing elements of Donald Trump’s campaign for president is often dismissed as fanciful meanderings. However, there is abundant evidence of Trump’s entanglements with members of the Russian oligarchy and government. Those relationships include both financial and political dealings that raise serious questions. And now there is new evidence of a connection between Trump and Russian media.

Donald Trump

Trump’s Kremlin Connection

Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald has been doing yeoman’s work as an investigative journalist on the Trump beat. He has written well-documented articles uncovering the shady finances that characterize the Trump empire. And now he himself emerges as part of a story that ties Trump to Russian propaganda. At a rally in Pennsylvania (video below), Trump told his glassy-eyed followers that he had found a smoking gun email from Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. The email, Trump said, contained an admission that the tragedy in Benghazi could have been prevented, but for Clinton’s negligence.

There’s just one small problem. The relevant text in the email was not by Blumenthal. It was actually an out-of-context excerpt from an article by Eichenwald. Blumenthal was merely forwarding the article to Clinton’s team. As it turns out, the Russian-controlled Sputnik news agency had published a bogus story. They misreported Eichenwald’s words as having come from Blumenthal. Upon being advised of the error, Sputnik later deleted the article which had not been published anywhere else.

Here’s where it gets weird. If the article was only published briefly by a news outlet tied to the Russian government, how did Trump get a hold of it? Or, as Eichenwald framed it:

“This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin?”

Good question. The Sputnik article was only online for a couple of hours before Trump and his people could have gotten it. Sure, that might be long enough for some Breitbart-affiliated, alt-right, fruitcake to have seen it and forwarded it to Trump Tower. However, the timeline is pretty narrow. It suggests that a pathway from Sputnik, or other Russian media, to Trump is pretty well greased.

It’s a relationship that has erupted previously. Such as the time Trump appeared on RT (the Russian-controlled cable network) to badmouth President Obama and Hillary Clinton. In that program he also defended Russia from allegations that they were responsible for hacking Democratic email accounts. Those allegations later became formal charges by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security . Trump also made a public request that Russia continue hacking Democrats in order to find Clinton’s deleted emails, promising that their efforts would be rewarded. And at Sunday’s debate Trump again tried to exonerate his Russian pals. He ridiculously implied that there might not have been any hacking at all. You have to wonder whose side he’s on.

What’s more, long before Trump gave his speech in Pennsylvania, the truth about the deleted Sputnik article was available. Nevertheless, Trump went forward with his rant that repeated everything in the piece that was wrong. Granted, almost everything Trump says is wrong, but in this case the source is a dubious outfit known as a Kremlin mouthpiece. Whether deliberately or otherwise, Trump is acting as a syndicator of propaganda from the Politburo. Even worse, he’s syndicating propaganda that didn’t even meet the standards of the original Russian source who confirmed it was false and deleted it. No worries. It’s still good enough for Trump. That’s just reason #15,784 that Trump is unfit to be President of the United States.

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

Watch Trump lie about the hacked email:

UPDATE: Fox News did a segment on this and actually framed it HONESTLY! Someone check Hell for ice. This may be telling us something about Fox’s analysis of the electoral outcome.

Fox News

Fox News War Mongering EXPOSED: Former Exec Confesses ‘My Job Was To Sell The War’ In Iraq

The flagrantly right-wing bias of Fox News is no longer in doubt by anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the network’s aggressive propagandizing. Most of the network’s anchors, contributors, and guests lean so far to the right that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to be associated with it. And yet, their own pride of ideological leaning is carefully hidden under a veil of phony fairness and balance.

Fox News

That’s why it was surprising to find a public admission of political spin from a high level Fox insider buried in a story on a completely different subject. Last week Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine published another article in his investigative series that contributed to the downfall of Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. Sherman is also the author of the Ailes biography The Loudest Voice in the Room.

The sexual harassment scandal that led to the humiliating ouster of the most powerful man in media had been steadily escalating. Dozens of women came forward to tell their painful stories of abuse. One of those women was Laurie Luhn who worked for Fox News for more than twenty years. The circumstances of her harrowing experience are spelled out in excruciating detail in Sherman’s article. But little noticed was this paragraph buried deep withing the article that revealed something unrelated to the abuse:

“As she was promoted through the ranks at Fox, Luhn worked harder and harder to please Ailes. She zealously promoted the network’s right-wing agenda. ‘I was very proud of the product. I was very proud of how we handled 9/11. Very proud of how we handled the run-up to the Iraq War,’ she said. ‘My job was to sell the war. I needed to get people on the air that were attractive and articulate and could convey the importance of this campaign. It was a drumbeat.'”

As the Director of Bookings for Fox News, Luhn saw her job as “selling the war” in Iraq. And she clearly recognized the benefits of seeking attractive, articulate salespeople to move the product. The “drumbeat” to which she refers was evident every day as the network hammered its advocacy of a war that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. This was much more than a typical news slant to sway public opinion. This was a blatant effort to steer the nation into an international conflict that has had disastrous results from which we are still suffering today.

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

These revelations turn the Luhn story into a much more complex affair. While she was on a daily mission to help her employer embroil the country in an immoral and illegal war, she was also a victim of unconscionable behavior from her despicable boss. There is no excuse for what Ailes allegedly did to her and the many other women making similar allegations against him. But there is a strange and sad irony that these heinous acts resulted in Luhn providing one of the most potent examples of how Fox News deliberately deceived the American people and unleashed an era of war, terrorism, and misery on the world.