Republicans

The Daily Show Hysterically Skewers Trump and Republicans for Blatantly Lying About Tariffs

Posted by on April 4, 2025 at 1:36 pm. 1 Comments :

Two days after “Liberation Day” (as Donald Trump likes to call the day he imposed his disastrous tariffs on the world), the stock market is once again in a tailspin, erasing much of the gains from the past few months and depleting the savings of millions of investors and especially retirees. It’s the worst decline since March of 2020, during COVID. And it’s a wholly self-inflicted economic apocalypse that Trump somehow regards as proof that everything is – in his own words – “going well.”

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Donald Trump Circling the Drain

Sure it is. It’s going to be just fine if you happen to have a few billion dollars and can spend your days playing golf and sailing on your superyacht. The rest of us need to just STFU and put our blind faith behind Dear Leader Trump who, despite having bankrupted four casinos, and presided over the last stock market crash, and has embraced the world’s wealthiest robber barons (Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Putin, etc.), is hailed by the MAGA cult as an infallible messiah.

SEE THIS: TRUST IN TRUMP? That’s the Only Solution Offered By the Trump Cult to Counter His Disastrous Tariffs

As is often the case, the truth about many of America’s most prominent catastrophes has been summed up in the insightful political satire of The Daily Show. Host Michael Kosta did a better analysis of Trump’s tariff fiasco than much of the mainstream media. He began by putting the blame for the nation’s ills where it belongs… On all of us.

“Whether you like it or not, Republicans don’t want to hear your bitching, because we all knew this was coming.”

[Plays clip of MAGA media hacks saying that everyone knew prices would go up]

“That’s right voters. You can bellyache all you want, but we all knew what we were voting for. Trump was very honest during the campaign that tariffs would drive prices higher, right? Right? RIGHT?”

[Plays clip of Trump promising that tariffs would not drive prices higher]

“Okay, technically he said prices wouldn’t go up, but in his defense, he was lying. And you should have known that, so that’s on you.”

See? It’s the fault of voters for not knowing that everything Trump says is a lie. And sadly, in this regard, Kosta is actually making a good point. The people who voted for Trump had mountains of evidence, compiled over dozens of years, that he couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about anything. And yet, they voted for him hoping that this time he would come through and fulfill the promises that he made, despite having no idea how to do so, or any record of having done it in the past.

The question going forward is whether those voters will believe anything that Trump is saying now. He continues to defend his horrendously harmful policies, even insisting in an all-caps post on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”

That declaration is wrong on so many levels. First of all, he has already said that he would change his tariff policies for any country that agrees to make concessions. Secondly, never changing the policies, if he held to that, would mean permanent tariffs and permanent higher costs for American consumers. Third, this comment was meant to assuage the concerns of potential investors, who already don’t trust him and regard him as unreliable and unstable. For good reason.

So Trump’s declaration that his policies will never change is not only another lie, it would be devastating if it happened to be a rare instance of him telling the truth. Which, to be fair, he has done on occasion. For instance, on Friday morning he posted a comment on Truth Social that was surprisingly honest, saying that “Trump is Purposely Crashing The Market.” Of course he is. Because…because…be…oh f*ck it!

Trump actually posted this on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that "Trump is Purposely Crashing The Market."There…Feel better now?

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T17:10:53.997Z

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Trump and MAGA Rep FREAK OUT that ‘Monsters’ at NPR and PBS ‘Hate Christians and America’

Posted by on April 2, 2025 at 3:10 pm. 1 Comments :

Conservative Republicans have been trying to kill off NPR and PBS for decades. There is nothing that they hate more than an informed and educated populace. But their obsession with eliminating public broadcasting has never been more pronounced than it is today, during the second coming of Donald Trump, who famously gushed that “I love the poorly educated.”

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Donald Trump, Censorship

It’s no wonder why Trump feels such affinity to those without the basic elements of intellect and critical thinking. Such people are the most easily manipulated and are the best candidates for indoctrination into hive-mind cults where everyone is expected to think alike. Trump’s Chief-of-Staff, Susie Wiles, said so explicitly on a recent episode of Lara Trump’s Fox News program…

SEE THIS: Lara Trump’s Interview of Her Sugardaddy-in-Law’s Chief-of-Staff on Fox News is Pure Cult Dogma

With all of the swirling catastrophes circling the newly minted Trump 2.0 (SignalGate, annexations of Greenland and Canada, inflationary/recessionary Trump Tax/Tariffs, unconstitutional deportations, mass firings of critical federal workers/services, etc.), the regime is desperate to deflect to matters that they think they can spin in a more positive direction.

As usual, Trump’s desperation has led him to yet another fiasco. He has chosen to escalate the war on public broadcasting to an unprecedented level. On Monday Trump posted a comment on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social that raged about the “MONSTERS” at NPR and PBS…

“REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT ‘MONSTERS’ THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!”

The sickness and hatred that is Donald Trump and MAGA…They are OBSESSED with killing the "MONSTERS" – NPR & PBS.

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T19:10:08.508Z

That’s right! It’s about time that somebody fought back against the “monsters” that produce Sesame Street, Antiques Roadshow, All Things Considered, and This Old House. Who can deny that they “so badly hurt our country” and must be defunded? And if that weren’t bad enough, a congressional Trump flunky, Brandon Gill (TX-MAGA), chimed in with the following complaint…

The idea that we’re spending so much of our hard earned tax dollars promoting values that we find repulsive is wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this. Let me remind you that Katherine Maher and the entire staff at NPR, I think it’s worth noting, they don’t just disagree with you. They hate you. They hate Christians. They hate conservatives. They hate this country.”

Rep. Brandon Gill says NPR must be defunded because it is "promoting values that we find repulsive" and everyone who works there hates Christians, conservatives, and America.

— Right Wing Watch (@rightwingwatch.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T17:37:10.037Z

Rep. Gill didn’t bother to provide any examples of the “repulsive” values that have him so worked up. So either they are too repulsive to even discuss, or more likely, they don’t exist anywhere outside of his cartoon brain. And his assertion that the entire staff of NPR hates Christians, conservatives, and America, is straight out of the most perverse dregs of wingnut dystopian dementia.

It is troubling to consider that the likelihood of defunding these American institutions is frighteningly plausible. The Republican majority in Congress is devoted to obeying every command from their Dear Leader Trump. Even if it means canceling treasured programs, maligning honorable people, and trashing the Constitution’s First Amendment protections of freedom of the press.

The hysterical rage mongers of the right care only about retaining their grip on power by any means they deem necessary. And attacking public broadcasting serves a dual purpose for these radical lunatics: It helps them to channel attention away from the even more grotesque endeavors that that they are engaged in, and it leads to a more ignorant, compliant base of cult followers.

The good news is that they cannot possibly succeed. They are weak and witless and far fewer in number. The majority of Americans are not as blind and malleable as the MAGA minions. We will resist their efforts to control and subjugate us. And our resolve will see us through. LFG!

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Mob Boss Trump Taps JD Vance as Finance Czar of the Republican National Committee (RNC)

Posted by on March 18, 2025 at 3:15 pm. 2 Comments :

The regime of Donald Trump is undergoing some period of panic as their cult senses the deterioration of its grasp on power. Trump’s polling, like the stock market over which he is presiding, is in a severe decline. So he is circling the wagons in order to stave off the disaster that he fears.

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Donald Trump, JD Vance, Dr. Evil, Mini-Me

The bunker mentality that is driving Trump is manifesting in his ever more reclusive behavior. He spends very little time outside of his safe spaces at the White House and Mar-a-Lago. He conducts business almost exclusively by phone. He dispatches his flunkies – Elon Musk, Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, etc. – to perform the duties that a president would ordinarily take on himself. And he relies on the MAGA media to disgorge the propaganda necessary to keep his flock in line.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Anti-Press Secretary Talks More to Fox News than to Reporters in the White House

The latest example of Trump’s burrowing defense can be seen in the appointment of his vice-president, JD Vance, to the position of finance chair of Republican National Committee (RNC). This appointment was announced in an exclusive report by – who else? – Fox News…

Vice President JD Vance will serve as the Republican National Committee’s finance chair, telling Fox News Digital that he will work with the party to ‘fully enact the MAGA mandate’ and grow the Republican majority in Congress in 2026.

“This is the first time in the history of the GOP that a sitting vice president will serve in the role.”

Trump’s wing man, Vance, told Fox News that he is looking forward to his new job so that he can “fully enact the MAGA mandate and President Trump’s vision.” For the record, the MAGA “mandate” is a measly 1.5% margin of victory over Kamala Harris. And Trump’s “vision” consists primarily of fattening his wallet, getting revenge against his critics, and exalting himself. All at the expense of the welfare of the American people – and the world.

Trump putting his VP in charge of the fundraising arm of the GOP comes with some blatantly egregious conflicts of interest. While the Party apparatus is already gamed to solicit money from self-interested individuals, lobbyists and, corporations, assigning your VP as the point person for collecting that money places an extra layer of coercion on those you are squeezing for cash. It makes it just that much harder to say no, when the collector is the president’s consigliere.

Vance has already distinguished himself in Trump’s eyes with his belligerent assault on Ukrainian President Zelenskyy during a White House visit. In the course of what was supposed to be a routine diplomatic affair, Vance chastised Zelenskyy for being “disrespectful” by failing to grovel sufficiently before Dear Leader Trump.

SEE ALSO: Was Trump’s Ambush of Zelenskyy Preplanned, Including Stacking the Press Pool with Kremlin Hacks?

For its part, Fox News composed their exclusive report on Vance’s RNC job in their typically fawning style. The story included some predictably positive quotes from Trump and current RNC chair, Michael Whatley. But they didn’t bother to seek responses from any Democrat or nonpartisan political analysts. As always, “fair and balanced” means unabashedly one-sided to Fox News.

So now the Vice-President of the United States, someone whose duties are supposed to be to serve the country, is also the Principal Panhandler for the Republican Party. And the role he is filling for the GOP replaces in part their previous co-chair, Lara Trump, who now has a primetime program on Fox News. So that revolving door swings both ways.

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Trump is FREAKING OUT About His Coming Recession and Is Begging Weaselly Republicans for Votes

Posted by on March 8, 2025 at 1:30 pm. 2 Comments :

Last week the economy got bad news from multiple fronts. The monthly jobs report showed that the nation added fewer jobs than economists expected in February, the first full month under Trump. Also, the stock market suffered its worst decline in six months, partly due to Trump’s incompetent machinations with tariffs.

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Donald Trump

Many of the signals from a variety of economic indicators are pointing to the likelihood of a recession triggered by Trump’s gross mismanagement of the booming economy that he inherited from President Biden. But despite the abundant evidence that Trump has horrendously botched his responsibilities as the country’s financial steward, his fluffers at Fox News have been predictably covering for his incompetence.

SEE THIS: Fox News Trump-Fluffer Insists that the Coming Trump Recession Has Nothing To Do With Trump

Those efforts by Fox News notwithstanding, Trump is feeling the heat from a nation that is growing more disturbed by the hour by Trump’s utter failure to fulfill his campaign promise to fix everything on day one of his reoccupation of the White House. His policies have only succeeded in making things worse. And his resulting flip-flops reveal how lost he is and incapable of coming up with a solution.

Consequently, Trump is resorting to what he knows best: Whining on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, and seeking to coerce his MAGA minions in Congress to supplicate themselves to his desires. He posted a message that is little more than begging for votes to pass an interim Continuing Resolution, because Republicans can’t manage to put a passable budget bill on the floor.

“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (‘CR’)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week. Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order. Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen. We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right. VERY IMPORTANT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Note that Trump is now reversing course on his prior opposition to CRs. He knows that a new budget won’t get enough votes, even from his fellow Republicans. And he has lowered himself to begging for votes (“Please!”) that his party is reluctant to give him. They know that in order to achieve the goals that Trump and GOP leaders have articulated, they would have to make huge cuts to popular programs like Medicare and Social Security. And at least some of them don’t appear to be willing to do that.

So now Trump is asking for more than one day to deliver his Trumptopia. He’s asking for at least six months. However, even that may not be sufficient if forecasts of recession come to pass. And with the dismantling by DOGE of the governmental agencies that provide so many of the services that keep the economy humming, it’s difficult to see any relief from the purposeful sabotage over which Trump is presiding.

Making matters even more difficult for the Trump regime, his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, is starting TO waver. Greg Sargent at the New Republic published an article titled “Fox News Suddenly Starts Panicking About Trump’s Economy: ‘Weakening!’“ It begins…

“Fox News figures are willing to propagandize on President Trump’s behalf on pretty much every horror that he throws our way. Do Fox personalities back Trump when he sells out our allies in tandem with murderous tyrant Vladimir Putin? Yes, indeed. Do they support Trump when he tries to purge federal workers by the thousands to corruptly replace them with loyalists? Enthusiastically. Do they stick with Trump when he declares himself above the law, explicitly using the language of world-historical dictators to do so? Without reservations.

“But it turns out there are limits. One topic Fox personalities are not quite as willing to run interference for Trump on is the economy. And with signs mounting that Trump’s economy is hitting the skids, they are beginning to sound the alarm.”

Sargent provides some examples of the slippery slope emerging at Fox. They include…

“Maria Bartiromo practically shouted that ‘the jobs picture is weakening!'” [and]

“‘I think the boom times are over,’ Fox anchor Charles Payne declared.” [and]

“‘We are sliding towards a recession,’ Newt Gingrich fretted on Fox News.”

Sargent closed saying that…

“Trump’s overall political project is heavily dependent on an enormous network of propagandists and other pliant institutional players to sustain itself [and] to keep alive the fiction that it’s producing dramatic results.” […]

“If the public continues to sour on his economic performance, the deep cuts to government will look less about efficiency and instead appear maliciously, dangerously incompetent [and] they’ll sound like what they truly are — the rantings of a genuine wannabe dictator.”

Fox News may be unalterably worshipful of Trump, but they are also proponents of right-wing economic policies and the corporate interests that push them. So if Trump continues to lose Fox News due to his fumbling on the economy, he will have an even harder time corralling his GOP flock. And if that happens, the whole MAGA sandcastle will crumble. And it couldn’t come a moment too soon.

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Trump Spends New Year’s Eve Whining About Whether the Senate Will Confirm His Noxious Nominees

Posted by on December 31, 2024 at 2:03 pm. 3 Comments :

Another year is coming to a close and people all over the nation and the world are celebrating the promise of what a new year will bring for them, their families, and their country. It’s a time when everyone is filled with somber reflections on the past and uplifting hopes for the future.

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Joe Biden and Donald Trump on New Year's Day

Well, almost everyone. True to form, Donald Trump is plagued by his persistent fits of distemper and hostility aimed at the armies of perceived enemies that he imagines are converging to destroy him. While others are preparing for parties and good times with loved ones, Trump generally celebrates holidays like these with infantile attacks on the conspirators plotting against him, such as his message last year…

“HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of the Radical Left Democrats, Marxist Lunatics, China loving Coco Chow and her Obedient Husband, Mitch, and Clueless RINOS, who are working so hard to DESTROY our once great Country.”

SEE TRUMP’S 2023 NEW YEAR: Trump Starts 2023 with a New Year’s Eve Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago but Nobody Came

Heartwarming, isn’t it? This year Trump continues to focus on the tribulations of his miserable existence. For someone who is always bragging about his wealth and success at everything he does, he sure seems to complain a lot. And on New Year’s Eve morning Trump was furious that the Senate, whose constitutional duty it is to provide “advice and consent” to presidential nominees, actually has the audacity to plan confirmation hearings. Trump raged that…

“We just won a Historic Landslide and Mandate from the American People, but Senate Democrats are organizing to improperly stall and delay the confirmation process of many of our Great Nominees. They will try all sorts of tricks starting very soon. Republicans must not allow them to do that. We have a Country to run, and many big problems to solve, mostly created by Democrats. REPUBLICANS, BE SMART AND TOUGH!!!”

Let’s begin to unpack that harangue by noting that Trump’s claim to have “won a Historic Landslide and Mandate” is a flagrant lie. The margin of victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris was a mere 1.6%, one of the narrowest margins in modern history. Consequently, the only mandate he has is in his ego-warped, cartoon brain.

The remainder of Trump’s rant addresses his outrage that Democrats in the Senate, and even a few Republicans, intend to hold confirmation hearings to assess the suitability of Trump’s Cabinet and White House nominees. And no wonder he’s upset. His nominees are profoundly unqualified, inexperienced, and utterly unfit for the jobs that Trump nominated them to perform. Many of Trump’s nominees are, in fact, downright hostile toward the departments they are being asked to run. For instance…

  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, advocates terminating most of the experts at the Food and Drug administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services.
  • Kash Patel, his nominee for FBI Director, has promised to go after the media as well as members of the Bureau for imaginary crimes against Trump.
  • Pete Hegseth, his nominee for Secretary of Defense, has advocated on behalf of soldiers convicted of war crimes.
  • Pam Bondi, his nominee for Attorney General, says she will prosecute the U.S. attorneys under her in the Justice Department.
  • Linda McMahon, his nominee for Secretary of Education, has called for the Education Department to eliminated.

In Trump’s mind, the hearings themselves are “improper” and meant to stall the consecration of his blindly loyal apparatchiks. He believes that Democrats are engaging in “tricks” by inquiring into the qualifications of Trump’s flunkies. And he is beseeching his fellow Republicans to prohibit the Senate from fulfilling their Constitutional duties.

These are the demands of an aspiring authoritarian who seeks unchallenged power and unflinching fealty to Dear Leader. And the fact that Trump is obsessing over this on a day that most other Americans are celebrating the new beginnings of a new year tells you just how serious he is about exalting himself as the this new year unfolds.

Trump must not be allowed to prevail in this wholly un-American perversion of democratic principles. The American people must resist his assault on our Constitution and the liberties it provides. And the resistance begins right after we’re done partying and celebrating the turning of the calendar’s page. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

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Pete Hegseth’s Lawyer: His Misconduct Was Due to Stress, So Let’s Make Him Secretary of Defense

Posted by on December 27, 2024 at 4:07 pm. 1 Comments :

The Cabinet of Donald Trump is shaping up to be an even more frightening version of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with all of the twists and turns of that psychological horror story populated by inmates of an asylum.

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Pete Hegseth with Drunk Emoji

If Trump gets the Republicans in Congress to capitulate to his commands, the U.S. government will be run by incompetents and sycophantic flunkies who have little to no experience for the jobs they are tasked to perform. They include Kash Patel at the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard heading Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, in charge of healthcare, and a madhouse of MAGA minions who have scant relationships with the lives of average Americans.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

Featured in this cast of circus psychos is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth has zero experience managing anything on the scale of the Pentagon. But he has had a presence on Fox News where Trump found and recruited him. He also has a history of managerial failure, excessive drinking, and alleged sexual assault. Which makes him an ideal candidate for a job in the Trump administration. They have so much in common.

On Friday morning Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, was interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN. It was a revealing discussion during which Parlatore offered up a peculiar defense of his client in the following exchange…

Parlatore: The FBI background check is really going to strip away the false allegations and focus on just what the evidence is. And the evidence is he didn’t do any of these things that he’s been accused of.
Brown: But he’s also openly admitted he’s a changed man from several years ago. So how does that square? If you’re saying he didn’t do any of it, but he’s a changed man?
Parlatore: I’m saying he didn’t commit any of the misconduct they’re alleging. The sexual assault, totally false. All of this stuff at CVA (Concerned Veterans for America) where they said that he was climbing on the stage at a strip club. Yeah that happened, but it was somebody else. […] The fact that earlier in his life when he was a young recent combat veteran who came home and dealt with the demons by drinking too much, that’s not uncommon.

In order for Parlatore’s denials to be valid, you would have to dismiss the testimony of the woman who filed the police report against him, as well as all of Hegseth’s colleagues and coworkers who witnessed his shenanigans at the strip club, and suffered through his mismanagement of organizations like the CVA, that he brought to near bankruptcy.

The core argument that Parlatore is making is that Hegseth behaved badly because of the stress he encountered during his military deployment. He goes on to say that Hegseth overcame his problems because “that which drove him to drink is not driving him anymore.” Perhaps that’s because he’s been a weekend host on a Fox “News” program for the past eight years. So the stress of combat wasn’t affecting his behavior.

However, if his duties in the military were sufficiently stressful to result in years of drunken depravity, how might the stress produced by running the entire Pentagon – with an $850 billion budget and the responsibility of millions of soldiers and civilians, none of which he has any experience with – affect his ability to cope emotionally and to refrain from the deviancy of his past? Surely there’s no stress involved in any of that, right?

Parlatore also claimed that Hegseth’s excessive drinking wasn’t a “drinking problem.” Which is reminiscent of the Tom Waits lyric “I don’t have a drinking problem. Except when I can’t get a drink.” Although he did promise to abstain if he were to be confirmed. Which suggests that he is still drinking, but is willing to stop if he’s handed the nuclear codes. That should not fill any senator with confidence that Hegseth would be up to the job. The question is: Will Republicans vote to confirm him anyway?

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MAGA Republicans Killed the Intel Agency that Monitors Disinformation From Russia, China, Etc.

Posted by on December 26, 2024 at 1:47 pm. 2 Comments :

The week before Christmas, the razor-thin Republican majority in Congress tried three times to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government from shutting down. They finally succeeded on the third try after purging the bill of funding for a variety of programs that are critical to the welfare of the American people and to national security.

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Trump Lies

While passing the stripped-down version of the legislation was necessary to avoid falling off a fiscal cliff, the deliberate malfeasance of the GOP leaders in the House of Representatives must not be overlooked or dismissed as standard operating procedure. Even though it was standard for the incompetents who comprise the MAGA caucus in Congress.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

One of the programs that was excised from the CR that is not getting much attention was the funding for a State Department Agency responsible for monitoring foreign disinformation. Al Jazeera reports that…

“A leading United States government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department has said, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.

“The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.”

If anyone is wondering why Republicans would oppose an agency that is intended to keep track of nefarious foreign operatives spreading lies about matters of national security, just ask the old question that is posed whenever something untoward occurs in government: “Who benefits.”

In this case it is fairly clear that Donald Trump is among the prime beneficiaries of the shuttering of the GEC. He has received an incalculable amount of help from Russian disinformation and propaganda in all three of his campaigns for president. That includes promotion of his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” from him, as well as their pushing disparaging lies about President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris in order to sabotage their electoral prospects.

What’s more, Trump has long been a staunch advocate of Russia and his hero, Vladimir Putin. While he frequently insults American leaders in the most vile terms, he has never said anything derogatory about Putin. He doesn’t want to cut off the flow of support he gets from Vlad. Which is why he wouldn’t want a government agency pointing out all of the dishonest propaganda that emanates from Russian sources. And his MAGA minions in Congress cooperated by defunding the agency.

It’s notable that Fox News covered this story with their typical heaping of right-wing bias. Their headline declared that the “State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ accused of censoring Americans shuts its doors.” However, the “accusations” referenced in Fox’s headline all happen to be from extremist MAGA Republicans, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk, who was quoted in the article saying that the GEC is the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation.”

These are the cheerleaders of “America First.” Well, make that “Blame America First.” Like Trump, they routinely shoot down the United States, particularly when it is in conflict with Russia or China. And they have both ideological and financial reasons for doing so. Trump and Musk are heavily invested in China’s economy. The last thing they want is an agency exposing the malevolence of their political and business partners.

When the Trump administration is officially sworn in, it will have people in place to further their fealty to their foreign propaganda outlets. Most notably, Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has zero experience in intelligence, but is notoriously close to Russian operatives. And there is also Trump’s choice to run the CIA, John Ratcliffe, who worked with Trump and Russian intel to smear Hillary Clinton. And then there’s Kari Lake, Trump’s nominee to run Voice of America, promising to turn it into America’s propaganda network.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump’s allies in Congress would seek to obstruct American efforts to expose Russian and Chinese disinformation. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it should worry everyone. Trump’s affinity for foreign dictators is well known. And now Congress is helping him to cover up how his foreign pals are continuing to help him by giving them a free hand to spread propaganda. Hopefully independent media watchdogs will be up to countering their efforts, because in Trump world they will be rooting for them.

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UH-OH: Even Fox News Calls Out the Unelected Billionaire ‘Calling the Shots’ in Place of Trump

Posted by on December 19, 2024 at 2:31 pm. 0 Comments :

After weeks of tense negotiations, Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives agreed on a bipartisan bill to fund the government and avoid a devastating shutdown that would cause severe harm to millions of Americans. So naturally, that effort was sabotaged by the two most divisive and destructive dimwits in American politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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Fox News Sad

The torpedoing of the Continuing Resolution was aided and abetted by the spine-deprived GOP Speaker of the House, MAGA Mike Johnson, who obediently nixed his own bill at the behest of his puppet masters. As a result, he will maintain his record of having presided over the most unproductive Congress in modern times.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Least Productive Ever

The spectacle of a couple of billionaires bullying Congress into abandoning its obligation to the Constitution and the people is a nauseating devolution of the great expectations for American democracy. It most resembles the melodramatic inanities of reality TV wherein pathetic contestants vie for supremacy by playing idiotic games. And in this season it appears that the Celebrity Apprentice will be Trump, who is now noticeably subservient to his financial benefactor, Musk.

This swapping of roles is not something that has been observed only by Democrats and other Trump critics. On Thursday morning Stuart Varney of Fox News delivered a commentary that could have been composed by Bernie Sanders. He said in part…

“Think about this: Nobody voted for Elon Musk. But with the support of Donald Trump he called the shots on shutting down the government, and he’s calling the shots on trimming the fat in government. In fact, he has influence on just about every aspect of policy, including who should take which job in the Cabinet.

“We have never seen anything like this before. No previous administration has allowed an unelected outsider this degree of power. Of course it’s all a function of Musk’s relationship with the president-elect. They’ve been inseparable for months. He practically lives at Mar-a-Lago. And they seem to be in agreement on everything. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the richest man in the world, and threw over $200 million into Trump’s campaign.”

What Varney is describing is the undermining of democracy by an unelected, foreign-born, oligarch with the resources to buy a weak narcissist who is desperately trying to stay out of prison and retain some measure of perceived power. Musk is not constitutionally able to be president, so he’s settling for the next best thing: controlling the president. That relationship, however, could make things complicated for Trump’s former significant other. And that isn’t Melania…

What was once the Republican Party is now fully indoctrinated into the Musk/Trump Cult. Some GOP members of Congress are even suggesting that Musk be elected Speaker of the House. So if the GOP is not satisfied with the level of idiocy that is presently in place, they have options. A competent Speaker must be someone with extensive knowledge of how the House operates. Musk doesn’t have a clue. So while Johnson has proven to be a disaster, Musk would be even worse.

While the rules of the House do not require the Speaker to be an elected member, there are other concerns that are being neglected. For instance, the Speaker is second in the presidential line of succession, after the vice-president. But the Constitution would not permit Musk to be promoted to the presidency. So the job would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate. And if Democrats were to regain the majority in 2026, that would be Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. If not, it would be 91 year old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

In the meantime, the nation is being run by billionaires who couldn’t care less about the government shutting down because it won’t affect them in the slightest. And what they do care about – getting richer, lowering their own taxes, and eliminating pesky regulations that protect the environment, workers, and America’s middle and lower income families – would be theirs for the taking. Congratulations MAGA. This is what you voted for. I hope you like being subservient to the oligarchs.

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GOP Oversight Chair Excuses Trump’s Corruption Unless Bank Records Prove It – Well, Guess What?

Posted by on December 18, 2024 at 2:05 pm. 2 Comments :

As Donald Trump prepares to reoccupy the White House, every American that hasn’t been indoctrinated into the MAGA cult is aware that he is setting new precedents as the first president to be a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist, who has advocated terminating the Constitution, and incarcerating his political foes.

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Trump Penthouse Phone

That’s not exactly a record that would instill pride in either the officeholder or the people he purports to represent. To the contrary, it’s a resume of shame that would, and does, produce nausea in patriotic citizens. It would also spur responsible public officials to keep a tight rein on a leader who is as disposed to criminality as Trump has been.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Refusal to Sign the Required Ethics Agreement is His Virtual Promise to Violate It

On Wednesday morning the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, was interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN. Comer is the prime antagonist in the long-running persecution of President Biden and his family. After years of sensationalized probes that failed to produce a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing, Comer is now dismissing any inquiry into Dear Leader Trump’s blatantly unlawful enterprises, as he affirms in the following exchange..

Brown: Do you have any concern if [Trump] doesn’t divest about present future President Trump using public office to enrich himself and his family? I mean, if he doesn’t divest, would that concern you?
Comer: I think the most important thing is transparency. And with respect to tax records, I come from a banking background. Tax records don’t mean anything. If you want to know whether someone’s doing something corrupt or not, get their bank records because bank records don’t lie. People cheat on their taxes all the time. Most important thing is the bank records. And I think as long as President Trump is transparent, I think the American people will give him a pass on honest business activity. But if it ever comes out that they’ve got secret deals or whatever, then that that could potentially be a problem, obviously.”

It’s interesting that Comer warns against using Trump’s tax records because “People cheat on their taxes all the time.” Is he implying that Trump cheats and, therefore, his tax records should be ignored?

More to the point, Comer asserts that nothing Trump does should be investigated because he’s such a pure paragon of transparency, and that his bank records would confirm that. However, in 2020 the New York Times reported that Trump had a secret bank account in China that he failed to reveal in his official financial disclosure forms. The Times discovered the account in his tax returns that they got from an undisclosed source because Trump repeatedly refused to make them public like every other president in modern times…

“President Donald Trump’s tax records show he has pursued expansive business projects in China for years and even maintains a Chinese bank account, The New York Times reported […] An analysis of Trump’s tax records by the Times shows that the President holds a previously unreported bank account in China that was not included on his public financial disclosures.”

So according to the criteria specified by Comer, there should be immediate hearings into Trump’s finances by Comer’s Oversight Committee. Trump has obviously not been as transparent as Comer implied. And that’s been the case for many years. Here are a couple other examples of Trump’s deceit with regard to his finances…

NOPE! Eric Trump Lies that Daddy Gave All Foreign Money Made at His Hotels to the Treasury
As reported by NPR last year… “Documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee show extravagant spending from foreign leaders at former President Donald Trump’s luxury hotel in Washington, D.C., which the committee says could have violated his oath of office by distorting U.S. foreign policy for personal financial gain.

“Government officials from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and the People’s Republic of China collectively spent over $750,000 at the Trump International Hotel during his presidency.”

[And…]

Trump earned as much as $160 million dollars from foreign sources while president. A more expansive investigation by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that… “Throughout his time in office, President Trump, his family and his Republican allies repeatedly assured the public that his refusal to divest from his businesses wouldn’t lead to any conflicts of interest […] When it came to foreign conflicts of interest, Trump and his company pledged to pause foreign business. They did not.”

Not surprisingly, the most frequent contributors to Trump’s coffers were from the Middle East and China.

Lest anyone think that Trump’s fiscal malfeasance is all in the past, take a look at his latest vehicle for enriching himself via shady self-dealing…

The Grifter-In-Chief: Will Donald Trump Divest From His Bribery Platform, Truth Social?
“Surely he is not planning to divest from any of the businesses that he didn’t divest from last time. […] Trump’s Truth Social, via its parent corporation, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. It is therefore available for any crooked scheme-ster to shovel shiploads of cash into, enriching the other shareholders, of which Trump is the biggest.

No one should expect Trump to change his nefarious ways now. And Comer’s hypocrisy amounts to the willful wearing of blinders in the hopes of avoiding observing Trump’s illegal activities. But he knows. And so does everyone else whose eyes – and minds – are not glued shut. The only question that remains is whether others in Congress or the press will seek to bring him to justice.

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Trump and the GOP Affirm Their Reputations as Moronic Hypocrites After Hunter Biden’s Pardon

Posted by on December 2, 2024 at 2:30 pm. 0 Comments :

Trying to find hypocrisy or stupidity on the part of Donald Trump and his MAGA minions is about as difficult as trying to find stolen classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. They are virtually everywhere. And making the task even easier is that Trump et al seem to be intent on festooning their foolishness with flags and flashing red lights.

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Trump: I only pardon the best people.

The news that President Biden has issued a pardon for his son Hunter has ignited another firestorm of performative outrage on the part of the Trumpists. All of a sudden they are determined to take the sort of principled stance that has never been a part of their persona. They are now expressing their shock and dismay over what they are falsely insisting is a display of immorality on the part of the President. Never mind the obvious moral decrepitude of their own Dear Leader Trump…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Refusal to Sign the Required Ethics Agreement is His Virtual Promise to Violate It

There could be some reasonable criticisms of Biden’s decision to pardon his son. For instance, he could have waited until after Hunter’s trials and sentencing. Then he could have just commuted the sentence if there was one. But the Trumpian critics never get close to any reasonable arguments.

Since the ethically deficient fish stinks from the head, let’s begin this examination of MAGA morality with Trump’s response to the pardon. Late Sunday evening Trump posted the following message on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social…

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

Seriously? Hunter Biden did not hurt anyone but himself with his violations of tax reporting and his misstatements on a form when purchasing a gun. And he made restitution by taking full responsibility and paying all his back taxes and penalties. He certainly didn’t storm the Capital causing millions of dollars of damages. He didn’t assault police officers, putting 140 of them in the hospital. He didn’t threaten the lives of members of Congress and their staff, and even the Vice-President.

In short, there is no rational comparison between Hunter’s actions and those of Trump’s January 6th insurrectionists. And there is no justifiable argument to grant the rioters pardons. For Trump to even bring it up is preposterous and an insult to the victims that his mob attacked in an effort to undermine American democracy. However, the criticisms of the pardon by the MAGA crowd were equally as devoid of reason. There were three main categories of that criticism.

First of all, they characterized the pardon as an unprecedented abuse of presidential power. In order to make that complaint, they had to ignore the points that Biden made in his official statement that Hunter was the subject of selective prosecution. Even more egregious, they had to ignore Trump’s pardons of his criminal accomplices, including Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Charles Kushner, Dinesh D’Souza, and dozens more.

Secondly, they claimed that Hunter’s pardon would justify Trump pardoning others in the future, including the January 6th insurrectionists. However, Trump has been promising to pardon them for years, and long before Biden pardoned his son. Trump doesn’t care about justifications, and wouldn’t bother with them. He does what he wants irrespective of what anyone else – or the law – has to say about it. If Biden had not pardoned Hunter, Trump would still pardon the January 6th mob, and many others who don’t warrant pardons.

Thirdly, they are yammering about whether Biden lied about his intention to pardon Hunter. He didn’t lie. He changed his mind. And with good reason considering the vengeance seeking extremists who have explicitly targeted Hunter (Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, etc.) that have been nominated to serve in Trump’s Cabinet. Patel, Trump’s proposed FBI Director, has stated unambiguously that Hunter is guilty – not allegedly guilty – of crimes that he has never been tried for, and for which their is no evidence of guilt.

When Trump’s Republican comrades can accept that they are all flaming hypocrites for supporting someone who has been convicted of 34 felonies, and has been adjudicated as a rapist with dozens of other accusations of sexual harassment and assault, and has been ordered to pay nearly half a billion dollars in penalties for financial fraud, and has been prohibited from operating any charities in New York, and has been caught hoarding classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago home/hotel, and has attempted to overthrow a fair and legal election… then they can maybe have something to say about President Biden and his son, Hunter. Until then, STFU!

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