Robert Mueller

REALLY? Trump Says Fox News Polls ‘Have Always Been Terrible to Me’ – Let’s Go to the Tweets

Posted by on July 26, 2019 at 12:16 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s only been one day since Donald Trump was gleefully bragging about the results of a Fox News poll that said his approval on the economy was 52 percent. Never mind that the same poll showed him in negative territory on almost everything else, including overall favorability and most of his signature issues. Trump, like all narcissists, only sees what he wants to see.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

Today Trump is whining about additional results released from the Fox poll that show him getting crushed by Joe Biden. The poll also has him getting beat by Bernie Sanders and in statistical ties with Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. Naturally, this insult to his bloated ego incited a tantrum on Twitter aimed at maligning his own State TV network:

First of all, Trump’s reference to Fox News when he says they were supportive of him as “Proud Warriors” is an unabashed confession that he regards them as being the propaganda battalion of his political army. And their betrayal is an unforgivable sin that cannot be ignored. Consequently, he is now lambasting them as traitors who are part of the “Lamestream Media in Collusion with Crooked and the Democrat Party.” Proving, once again, that all it takes is one less than flattering remark for Trump to explode with outrage and accuse you of treason.

As for Fox News always being terrible for Trump, that is not an opinion that he has held with much consistency. To the contrary, he has often praised the Fox News polls and thank the network for their obedient adulation. For instance:

For each of these tweets Trump had to either misrepresent the actual poll results, or cherry pick them to feature only the parts that he liked. The one lauding 40 percent approval by African-Americans was an outright lie. The one about the FBI breaking the law was deceitfully manipulated by Trump. He combined several different responses into one to arrive at 58 percent. If the responses were split into fair groupings the result would be 38-51 against the assertion that any intelligence agency had broken the law. And the one bragging about a Fox News poll putting his approval at 50 percent was actually Fox News reporting on a poll by the notoriously biased Rasmussen.

What is abundantly clear is that Trump has been more than pleased with the results of Fox News polls in the past. But when one is less than adoring he flips out and insists that they have always had it in for him. That’s a sign of a severe mental infirmity consistent with narcissism, paranoia, and sociopathic disengagement from reality.

There is nothing about this latest Fox poll that is out of line with most other polls. Even Trump’s surveying savior, Rasmussen, shows Trump with a majority 51 percent disapproval. Notably, Rasmussen had Trump at 50 percent approval the day before the congressional testimony of Robert Mueller. And he has declined every day since. In Rasmussen’s poll!

So the public perception of Trump was not helped by Mueller’s damning affirmation of Trump’s criminal behavior. Trump wasn’t helped by the testimony that he welcomed and encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Nor was Trump’s reputation aided by Mueller’s explicit description of his actions as constituting obstruction of justice.

The fact that Fox News pollsters managed to produce a relatively accurate representation of the public mood has sent Trump into a fit of acrimony. He is flagrantly in denial of reality and flailing wildly in a attempt to reshape the world into one that loves him unconditionally. And to the extent that he fails at that, his critics, even friendly ones, become his bitterest foes. Every Trump supporter needs to remember that, no matter who you are or how worshipful you’ve been in the past, if you backslide for even a moment you become the enemy of the people. That’s life in the Cult of Trump.

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

Trump is Plunging Into a Desperate Dependence on Fox News that’s Downright Creepy

Posted by on July 25, 2019 at 12:09 pm. NO Comments :

In the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, Donald Trump has rushed to buttress the barricades of his propaganda crusade. In practical terms that means hyping the crap out of every Trump-fluffing shill he sees on Fox News. And he may have set a record for posting tweets that are flagrantly fawning by the bootlickers at his favorite cable “news” network.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Hate Again

In the few hours since the Mueller hearings concluded, Trump posted sixteen (16!) tweets referencing – and even explicitly thanking – Fox News and their stable of pro-Trump PR toadies. They included disseminating White House talking points about the hearings being “a disaster.” And there were the obligatory lies about “no obstruction, no collusion,” even though Mueller said precisely the opposite. He posted eight videos of segments from Fox that were nothing more than drooling sycophancy, and quotes from the devoutly anti-intellectual “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends.

There were also a couple of prideful postings of a new Fox News poll. Trump celebrated that the poll gave him a 52 percent approval rating on the economy. Never mind that the economy has been in the midst of the longest bull market in history that began ten years ago during the Obama administration. And it performed better in the last two years of Obama’s term than in the first two years of Trump’s.

More importantly, the same poll showed that Trump was severely underwater on almost everything else, including most of his signature issues. For instance, favorability (45 approve – 51 disapprove), border security (44-52), immigration (41-54), trade (40-49), Iran (39-46), North Korea (39-49), and health care (38-51). But Trump was never very good at figuring out stuff as complicated as polls. Our “stable genius” in the White House can only comprehend surveys that are unflinchingly adoring.

The relationship between Trump and Fox News has always been an unethical convergence of media and politics. Fox News is the de facto State TV division of the Trump regime. At any given moment, Fox is either promoting Trump as the new Messiah, or attacking his critics as spawns of Satan. Although, Fox will sometimes complain that they are miscast as biased, and there are even some rare examples of independent thought.

But the biggest impediments to Fox News being perceived as “fair and balanced” (a ludicrous slogan that they abandoned two years ago) are Fox News and Donald Trump. They will always manage to reinforce their conspicuous and disgraceful perversion of the free press. Either Trump will come along to prove that Fox is his personal PR agency with the sort of tweeting frenzy he just unleashed, or Fox will fill their schedule with what can only be described as pro-Trump campaign ads disguised as news programs.

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

The Fox News/Trump Nationalist Party is not only unprecedented, it’s dangerous. It produces a false narrative among the cultists who adhere it that embraces hostility and division, excuses lying, encourages ignorance and willful obliviousness to bona fide national security threats, and turns a sector of the electorate into, essentially, advocates for America’s enemies. And it’s led by a Reality TV game show host who said that he has no time for TV, despite having plenty of time to post tweets of what he is supposedly not viewing.

UPDATE: It only took one day for Trump to figure out that the new Fox Poll was not good news for him. So of course, he lashed out on Twitter against Fox polls which he says “have always been terrible to me.” But don’t worry, the Whiner-in-Chief will return to slobbering over Hannity and Company before you know it.

Exoneration? Collusion? Obstruction? Trump’s Fate is Sealed By 3 Brief Exchanges with Mueller

Posted by on July 24, 2019 at 10:33 am. 4 Comments :

The day before special counsel Robert Mueller was to testify in Congress, Donald Trump made a point of telling reporters that “No, I’m not going to be watching. [adding that] Maybe I’ll see a little bit of it.” Instead, Trump spent much of the morning on Wednesday live-tweeting the hearings. And his commentaries were pretty much what would be expected of someone fraught with guilt and fear.

Robert Mueller Trump

The Mueller report was 438 pages probing Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia during his campaign and presidency, and his efforts to cover up those crimes. But Mueller was a reluctant witness whose testimony was restricted to merely affirming the contents of the report. Consequently, the hearings were not particularly compelling drama. Democrats read from the report and asked Mueller if their quotations were accurate. Republicans ignored the facts and focused on attempts to discredit Mueller and the investigation in its entirety.

Nevertheless, the contents of the report are damning enough without elaboration. The facts that point to Trump’s guilt with regard to conspiracy and obstruction are apparent in quantity and clarity. And Democrats on the House Justice Committee made great strides in presenting the legal arguments for Trump’s impeachment. Three exchanges in particular form the core of the case against Trump. Beginning with this:

Rep. Nadler: The President has repeatedly claimed that your report found that there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?
Mueller: Correct. That is not what the report said.

So Trump’s repetitive and tedious protestations that the report said there was “no collusion, no obstruction.” have been firmly repudiated by the report’s author, under oath. In another exchange, Mueller made it clear that Trump and his associates blatantly interfered with his investigation:

Rep. Demings: Lies by Trump campaign officials and administration officials impeded your investigation.
Mueller: I would generally agree with that.

Finally, there has been much debate over why Mueller didn’t indict Trump for the crimes that he documented in his report. Rep. Ted Lieu dived straight into that question and got a definitive response from Mueller:

Rep. Lieu: The reason that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president. Correct?
Mueller: That is correct.

(Note: Mueller corrected himself later in the day to say that he had misspoken and that his probe did not make a determination as to guilt or innocence. But that isn’t correct either. He explicitly said that Trump was not exonerated and enumerated at least ten instances of obstruction of justice. Also, his report did identify the OLC memo as an impediment to the special counsel issuing indictments of Trump).

These portions of Mueller’s testimony show that Trump is guilty of criminal acts, including his efforts to conceal those crimes. And all of this information was in Mueller’s report. But its delayed release, and misrepresentation by Trump’s shill at the Justice Department, William Barr, muddied the waters and deliberately doused the matter with confusion. That was as much a crime of obstruction of justice as anything that Trump did.

For his part, Trump unleashed a tweetstorm of eleven posts aimed at further distorting the truth that he knew would be revealed in the hearings. And for good measure, they included two predictably biased assessments that he attributed to Fox News. He baselessly accused Democrats of “fabricat[ing] a crime” to “try pinning it on a very innocent President.” Which is funny, in a sad and pathetic way.

He also threatened Mueller not to deny under oath that he had sought an interview for the job of FBI Director. Of course Mueller was asked about that during his testimony, and he did deny it. And Trump banged out another of his substanceless and impotent rage-tweets:

This is not the behavior of an innocent man. Trump is so obviously and thoroughly consumed with fear that it can’t help but ooze from every orifice in his body. And he has good reason to be afraid. He knows what he did. And knows the consequences when everyone else finds out. And so we can expect him to continue these tirades, and even ratchet them up as the law gets ever closer to holding him accountable.

UPDATE: At the beginning of the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing with Mueller, Chairman Adam Schiff extracted some profound and damning revelations about Trump’s crimes:

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

SO WHAT? Fox News Trump-Fluffer Read the Mueller Report and (Surprise) Found Nothing

Posted by on July 23, 2019 at 10:32 am. NO Comments :

The desperation of Donald Trump seems to be escalating with each new day and frantic tweet. This may be exacerbated by the upcoming congressional hearings featuring testimony by special counsel Robert Mueller. That has clearly been dominating what precious little comprehension capability Trump has. It has overtaken his obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “The Squad,” which he has only been exploiting as a method of distraction anyway.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Strange

On Monday Trump demonstrated just how frightened he is of the Mueller hearings. He tweeted a quote from Fox Business anchor Trish Regan that, for some bizarre reason, he thinks should settle the debate on whether Mueller found any evidence of collusion and/or obstruction of justice:

This may be one of the most supremely useless tweets Trump has ever posted. It is substantively vacant, providing no information whatsoever to support its premise. And it’s exactly the sort of biased propaganda that makes Fox News such a disreputable source for anything other than Trump happy talk.

In the segment, Regan summed up her perspective on the entire Mueller investigations saying that it was a “lousy thing to do to the American people and the President of the United States.” And her guests were equally as servile to Trump’s ego. Jenna Ellis Rives, a Trump 2020 campaign advisory board member, said that the 95 Democrats who voted to impeach Trump should all be impeached themselves. For casting votes? Pete Hegseth, of Fox and Friends, said that Democrats are hoping that Mueller will “slip up” during his congressional testimony. How? By letting the truth about Trump’s crimes slip out?

It requires a massive amount of self-delusion to conclude that there is nothing in Mueller’s report that incriminates Trump. There’s plenty. Including evidence of conspiracies by Trump and his associates with unsavory Russian characters. And Mueller enumerated at least ten instances of obstruction of justice. But most damning for Regan – and by extension, Trump – is that even some at Fox News have seen the light. You have to wonder why Trump didn’t post quote-tweets about these comments:

Bret Baier, the Chief Political Anchor on Fox News, offered his analysis after Mueller’s public statement. Baier blasted Barr’s misrepresentation of the Mueller report saying that it was more nuanced than Barr’s portrayal and “In fact, it was almost exactly the opposite.” He elaborated saying:

“I was struck by the tone and tenor of those remarks as he laid out his case wrapping up this report. This was not, as the president says time and time again, ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’ It was much more nuanced than that. […] He said specifically that if they had found that the President did not commit a crime on obstruction, they would have said that.”

Fox News Senior Legal Analyst, Andrew Napolitano, has made a number of observations that provide legal confirmation of Trump’s guilt. For instance:

“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump […] The president’s job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

And then there was this:

“While there was some evidence of collaboration between Russian agents and the Trump campaign – like 127 telephone communications between them – there was not enough evidence to establish the crime of conspiracy.” […]

“If the subject of a criminal investigation tells the people that work for him to lie to the FBI and falsify evidence so that the FBI will not find out whatever the subject does not want them to know – as Mueller said Trump did between ten and eleven times – that is obstruction of justice and it is for a corrupt purpose.”

The Chief News Anchor and Managing Editor of the Fox News breaking news division, Shepard Smith, also weighed in with remarks that undermined Trump’s attacks on the Mueller probe. Specifically, Smith pointed out that the dossier by Christopher Steele was not the tainted documented that Sean Hannity and others have tried to paint it as:

“While the U.S. intelligence community has not confirmed parts of the dossier, there are elements of it that are confirmed true. No part of it, to Fox News’ knowledge, has been confirmed false.”

Given those comments by the most senior people at Fox News, Regan’s mushy remarks seem even more absurd and obsequious. And Trump’s promotion of them is simply more proof of the narcissistic fetish that defines his warped personality. It’s a certainty that we will be seeing more of this from Fox StormTrumpers like Sean Hannity as Trump’s fortunes continue to decline. In fact, be prepared for it to get even worse as Trump’s mental state deteriorates.

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

The Fear in Trump’s Tweets is Off the Charts ‘Bonkers’ as the Mueller Hearing Looms

Posted by on July 22, 2019 at 1:43 pm. 1 Comments :

On Wednesday the Congress will finally hear from special counsel Robert Mueller. His first-hand account of the conclusions from the investigation he led should settle the debate on whether Donald Trump’s tedious mantra of “no collusion, no obstruction” has any basis in reality. What are the odds that Mueller will agree with Trump’s assessment of the probe as a “witch hunt” or a hoax?”

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

In the runup to the hearings, Trump is behaving with a profound sense of dread. He is lashing out at critics, whining about “presidential harassment,” and reanimating insults and lies directed at Mueller, including those log-ago debunked about Mueller having had business disputes with Trump and being former FBI director James Comey’s best friend. He’s making painfully obvious attempts at distractions with harangues aimed at Democrats and bragging about his imaginary accomplishments. He’s also deploying his extraordinarily lame defense team to take up his cause in the press. Which is doing more harm to him than good.

In the latest Trump tweetstorm, he is proving that anyone who thought he had hit bottom was too optimistic. There either is no bottom for Trump, or he has a remarkable ability to keep digging. He began the morning with this wild-eyed rant:

So Trump is reviving his assault on the Washington Post which, for some reason, he keeps associating with Amazon, an online retailer that most Americans love. And naturally he calls it “fake news” only because he doesn’t like that it is reporting verifiable facts. However, this particular criticism actually boomerangs on him. He’s admitting that he either doesn’t have, or doesn’t listen to, any advisors. And he mocks his own lack of comprehension skills by deny that he reads “reams of paper” to educate himself about presidential matters. Why would he consider that a negative? Clearly he wants to avoid that anyone regard him as thoughtful and informed, which is why asks rhetorically, “does that sound like me?” No, it certainly doesn’t.

Then Trump continues with a tweet that accuses the media of being “out of control” and “bonkers.” He says they “constantly lie and cheat” and “no longer care what is right or wrong.” These, of course are classic examples of projection. They apply more accurately to him than to any of the media he is impotently targeting. And his criticism doesn’t even make sense. He’s complaining that the Democrats are trying hard to “get their views out their (sic) for all to see.” And that’s bad because…? He then follows that up with a tweet that simply repeats his tired Stalinist-inspired rant that the media is “the Enemy of the People!” And finally he gets to the root of his nightmares:

Trump is still afraid to let the American people learn about his potentially treasonous associations with Russia during his campaign and into his presidency. That’s odd considering he insists that Mueller’s report “totally exonerated” him. You would think he would be thrilled to have Mueller tell that story to the public. You might also think he’d tire of his perverse fetish with Hillary Clinton, her emails, and the outright lies about Strzok and Page.

The truth, however, is that the Mueller report did find evidence of conspiracy with Russia and multiple instances of obstruction of justice. No matter how many times he says otherwise, he can’t erase the facts. Even the chief political anchor at Fox News, Bret Baier, said that “This was not, as the president says time and time again, ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’” And Fox’s Senior Legal Analyst, Andrew Napolitano, said that “Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump [and that] ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

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

That’s why Trump is afraid and flailing with distractions, lies, frothing diatribes, and the desperate embrace of Fox News and other fawning sycophants. He knows what he did. And he knows what the consequences will be when everyone else knows. So he has to shut down any dissent or disagreement with his cult-approved narrative. But unfortunately for Trump, the only people buying this are his Deplorables. The rest of the country is getting closer to demanding impeachment every day.

Trump Flack Giuliani: Mueller Shouldn’t Testify Before Congress Because – Total Exoneration?

Posted by on July 21, 2019 at 10:23 am. 3 Comments :

This coming Wednesday, special counsel Robert Mueller will be testifying before Congress in an effort to bring some clarity to the report that was released three months ago. These hearings are essential for the public to have a complete understanding of Donald Trump’s crimes, particularly considering the flagrantly deceptive summaries and commentaries on the matter by Trump’s lapdog at the Justice Department, William Barr.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump

So naturally Trump and his team of dissemblers is mounting another crusade to prevent the people from learning the truth. His attorney, Rudy Giuliani made the media circuit on Sunday to argue that Mueller should not testify at all:

“‘He shouldn’t really [testify]. He already put out his report. He made his 10-minute statement and then said he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore because it’s not proper,’ Giuliani said Sunday on John Catsimatidis’s radio show, referring to a press conference Mueller gave on his report that he said would be his final word on his two-year probe.

“‘But somebody must’ve persuaded him that he should comment some more. He’s already commented more than any prosecutor has ever commented about a case he didn’t bring.'”

This is a brazenly fear-based attempt to muzzle Mueller. Which is peculiar since Trump has said repeatedly that the special counsel’s report “totally exonerated” him. You have to wonder why Trump is so scared of these hearings that, according to him, would prove his innocence. He even said that Mueller had acted honorably.

Giuliani’s remarks are also packed with lies. While Mueller was reluctant to testify, he never said that it would improper. And he was not “persuaded” to comment. He was subpoenaed. And the notion that he’s commented more than any other prosecutor is simply ludicrous. Every other special counsel has testified to Congress following their investigations.

Of course, Trump has also lashed out at Mueller as a corrupt, conflicted pawn of angry Democrats. He literally can’t keep his stories on Mueller straight. At times he is consumed by a panicky fear of Mueller that manifests itself in crazed tweetstorms wherein he has insisted that Mueller should not testify before Congress. He even went so far as to whine that Congress “has no right” to see the Mueller report at all.

Giuliani’s position is nothing new. Not only has he said this before, Republicans in Congress have actually argued against their own right to interview Mueller. And their constituents, mainly consisting of Trump Deplorables, also expressed their opposition to releasing the full Mueller report. They are, in effect, advocating to remain ignorant. And they are doing a damn good job of that.

There’s a reason that Trump, and Giuliani, and the Deplorables are so frightened. The Mueller report contains abundant evidence of Trump’s guilt. Although it found “insufficient evidence” to bring charges against Trump, that’s very different than finding no evidence. Also, Mueller explicitly declined to clear the president of any wrongdoing over allegations of obstruction of justice, for which he cited ten instances. What’s more, Mueller said in his report that he couldn’t indict Trump due to a dubious Justice Department memo advising against indicting a sitting president. That memo is not law and has never been tested in court.

Finally, Trump’s dread of Mueller, and what he might say, is surely exacerbated by the fact that even some of his confederates at Fox News see guilt in the Mueller report. Fox’s Senior Legal Analyst, Andrew Napolitano, said that “If the subject of a criminal investigation tells the people that work for him to lie to the FBI and falsify evidence … that is obstruction of justice and it is for a corrupt purpose.” On another occasion, Napolitano said that “ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.” And Giuliano is utterly incapable of countering these conclusions with his weak, lame, and frantic cry that Mueller be barred from congressional testimony. It’s an a position that is both dishonest and desperate. And it’s all they’ve got.

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

Trump in a Panic Sweat Posts 13 Lie-Riddled Tweets About – Get This – Hillary’s Emails

Posted by on July 13, 2019 at 12:31 pm. NO Comments :

There is nothing more telling than a Donald Trump Tweetstorm. It reveals what he’s most afraid of and what is consuming his fevered and demented imagination. So it shouldn’t be dismissed when he posts a flurry of thirteen tweets by the disreputable and dishonest StormTrumpers at Judicial Watch. Particularly when the content of those tweets are predominantly the ancient right-wing obsessions over Hillary Clinton’s emails. Are these people serious?

Donald Trump Sweating

Unfortunately, the conservative junkies who are still addicted to fables about Clinton’s emails are deadly serious. They are feeding a fetish that borders on being a psychotic compulsion. And they bring it up whenever they feel threatened by the onslaught of inconvenient facts that challenge their demented world view. And Trump is among those suffering from this manic neurosis.

The symptoms of Trump’s mental disorder were on full display Saturday morning. The thirteen retweets of Judicial Watch propaganda must have seemed like the perfect antidote to the realities in the news that were so unpleasant for him. He just lost another one of his unethical cabinet flunkies (a record breaking achievement), Alexander Acosta, due to his relationship with pedophile rapist Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, Trump had his own relationship with Epstein who he said was a terrific guy.

Trump is also weathering a storm of criticism due his policy of caging children in inhumane conditions. And he is dreading the upcoming congressional testimony of special counsel Robert Mueller. All of this is taking place as the 2020 presidential campaign is beginning with Trump losing in the polls to all of the top Democrats. Consequently, Trump, in a fit of sheer desperation, completes his re-tweetstorm with a comment of his own:

We are sadly witnessing the shameful spectacle of a president making explicit accusations of criminality about an honorable, lifelong public servant in law enforcement. Even worse, this is a charge that has been debunked repeatedly when Trump has made it in the past. Most recently Trump attacked Mueller on this during an “interview” (more of a tongue bath) with Fox News Trump-fluffer Maria Bartiromo in June:

“Mueller terminated them illegally. He terminated the emails, he terminated all of the stuff between Strzok and Page. Robert Mueller terminated their text messages together. He terminated them. They’re gone. And that’s illegal. That’s a crime.”

Setting aside the cognitive dysfunction that Trump thinks texts can be “terminated,” everything else in that comment is provably false. And Trump surely knew that his charges were false because they were refuted when he made the very same remarks last december:

In fact, this lie was shot down by the Inspector General of Trump’s own Justice Department. It was reviewed by fact checkers who unanimously concluded that it was false. And it was rated as “Pants on Fire“ by PolitiFact, who wrote that:

“First, a new report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog suggests the roughly 19,000 messages slipped through the cracks due to technical glitches with the FBI’s data-collection tool on Samsung devices, not because Strzok and Page went around the system.

“Second, perhaps most importantly, while the messages were initially not captured, they have since been recovered. Trump’s claim gives the false impression the texts are still unaccounted.”

Trump’s fear is obviously getting the better of him. It shows in his rambling, disoriented speeches, his glassy-eyed engagement with the press while his helicopter whirs in the background, and these rabid outbursts on Twitter.

In addition to the Mueller-related tweets, and the Hillary bashing, Trump also posted three tweets that comprised nearly half of Sean Hannity’s Hour of Lies on Friday night. His Twitter feed is becoming the Internet’s channel for Fox News reruns. Which Fox surely appreciates since they stopped posting on Twitter entirely last November. Trump is, in effect, the PR executive for Fox News. And Fox pays him handsomely for that with nauseatingly fawning tributes 24/7. It’s a mutually beneficial, albeit sick and dishonest, arrangement.

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

Trump’s Cowardly Scheme to Upstage the Mueller Hearing is Stymied by House Democrats

Posted by on July 12, 2019 at 12:29 pm. 1 Comments :

For more than two years Donald Trump has exhibited signs of mortal fear whenever the subject of his unsavory connections to Russia were brought up. That’s especially true with regard to mentions of special counsel Robert Mueller and his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Donald Trump Robert Mueller

Most of the time Trump has endeavored to lie about and malign Mueller in the harshest terms, calling him corrupt, conflicted, dishonest, and even treasonous. He tried to prevent Congress from ever seeing the Mueller report (and the public as well). Although on a few peculiar occasions Trump tried to butter up Mueller with faint praise in order to validate his delusional assertion that the final report exonerated him. Never mind that even Fox News’ Senior Legal Analyst and Chief Political Anchor didn’t buy that delusion.

A few weeks ago the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees scheduled hearings to get Mueller’s testimony on the record. It was a necessary step to inform the public, most of whom have not read the Mueller report in full (like many members of Congress) and are not familiar with its conclusions that identify criminal activity on Trump’s part and multiple instances of obstruction of justice. The hearings were set of July 17.

Shortly after that announcement, Trump announced that he would be holding another one of his Deplorable Cult Rallies in North Carolina on the same date. That was surely no coincidence. Trump was plotting to steal the media’s attention from the congressional hearings that he obviously feared. This is a tactic that he has used before. When he refused to participate in a Republican primary debate on Fox News because he was afraid of Megyn Kelly, he held a phony “charitable” event on the same day. And he often tries to manipulate the press with releases intended to distract from coverage of other news that he fears.

Now the Democrats in Congress are discussing delaying the Mueller hearing for one week. That would mean that Trump’s deliberately competing rally would not interfere with the Mueller hearing after all. Trump would either have to reschedule his rally also, or schedule an additional rally a week later. Either way it would make him look brazenly opportunistic and self-serving.

Still, we can’t rule out Trump changing his calendar in order to thwart the congressional testimony of Mueller. His fear is a powerful motivation for much of his behavior as president. He proved that again just yesterday with this trembling tweet:

And last week Trump unleashed this desperate and frightened tweet:

One thing we’ve learned from Trump is that there is no bottom to the barrel of his sleazy behavior. He will pull out all the stops to sabotage the public’s right to know about his criminal activities. If it isn’t a competing rally, it could be an escalation of his abhorrent deportation crusade, or an attack on Iran, or a pardon for Jeffrey Epstein, or an executive order remanding all immigrant children to Epstein’s Palm Beach Detention Center and Spa. Don’t laugh. With Trump anything is possible.

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

The Fake Fox News Story About Seth Rich Was Planted By Russia and Promoted By Hannity

Posted by on July 9, 2019 at 2:27 pm. 6 Comments :

Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News has just published an extensive investigative report revealing that the bogus story about the murder of the Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was originally planted by Russian intelligence. (Insert SHOCKED! face here). This was a completely fabricated piece of actual fake news that was prominently pushed by Fox News, and particularly Sean Hannity.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, Vladimir Putin

The article by Isikoff went into stark detail about the origins of the callous claims that Rich was actually the source of hacked emails the were published by Wikileaks. Those who told and spread these lies had no compassion whatsoever for the family that was grieving the loss of a loved one. Likewise, they didn’t care that they were disseminating falsehoods created by Russian spies intended to disrupt an American presidential election. Isikoff reported that…

“The conspiracy claims reached their zenith in May 2017 — the same week as Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in the Russia probe — when Fox News’ website posted a sensational story claiming that an FBI forensic report had discovered evidence on Rich’s laptop that he had been in communication with WikiLeaks prior to his death. Sean Hannity, the network’s primetime star, treated the account as major news on his nightly broadcast, calling it ‘explosive’ and proclaiming it ‘might expose the single biggest fraud, lies, perpetrated on the American people by the media and the Democrats in our history.'”

“In fact, the Fox story was a ‘complete fabrication,’ said [U.S. attorney Deborah] Sines, who consulted with the FBI about the Fox News claims. There was ‘no connection between Seth and WikiLeaks. And there was no evidence on his work computer of him downloading and disseminating things from the DNC.'”

In an interview on MSNBC, Isikoff elaborated on what his investigation uncovered (video below):

“The timing is so interesting here. The week that this breaks on Fox News, in the story they later had to retract and acknowledged didn’t ‘meet their editorial standards,’ Sean Hannity is shouting it from the rooftops. What’s going on that week? It’s the week that [special counsel Robert] Mueller was appointed. It’s the week [FBI Director James] Comey was fired. It’s when the Russia story was blowing up.”

Isikoff noted that Hannity’s guest was Trump’s attorney for the Russia affair, Jay Sekulow. He had just been hired by Trump, but Hannity left that fact out of the segment. Together they were pushing the phony Rich story as a means to undercut the Russia narrative.

Fox News later issued a mushy retraction that admitted no fault. They said they would conduct an internal investigation to ascertain where they went wrong, but any findings from the alleged investigation remain undisclosed. However, Hannity never conceded any wrongdoing at all. To the contrary, he insisted that his “reporting” was accurate and would continue:

“I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com, I retracted nothing. For those accusing me of pushing a conspiracy theory, you are the biggest phony hypocrites in the entire world. This issue, it’s so big now that the entire Russia collusion narrative is hanging by a thread. […] These are questions that I have a moral obligation to ask, and I will do the mainstream media’s job like I have most of my career.”

True to form, Hannity never did retract his lies about Rich. But he did delete all of his tweets about Rich (you can still see them here). He is exhibiting the same dishonesty, arrogance, and stubbornness as his bestie in the White House, Donald Trump. They both will cling to the most ludicrous assertions, even after they have been proven to be utterly false. The truth plays no part in their determined propaganda crusades. And neither does patriotism, as both Hannity and Trump have now been been shown to be willing confederates (aka “useful idiots”) of covert Russian operations.

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

Trump Suffers Fit of Hysterical Projection Syndrome in Desperate Attack on Joe Biden

Posted by on July 6, 2019 at 12:24 pm. NO Comments :

For nearly two and a half years Donald Trump has been a walking textbook of debilitating psychoses. He has displayed symptoms of malignant narcissism, dementia, senility, paranoia, and antisocial personality disorder (aka sociopathy). He is a sexual predator and a bully who resorts to infantile behaviors when angry or afraid. And a group of psychiatric doctors and academics at Yale University deemed him “too mentally ill to serve.”

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Now a new diagnosis can be made that describes Trump’s relentless determination to accuse others of what he does himself. The surest indicator of whether Trump has committed a crime is when he blasts out charges at someone else for the same criminal activity. And when that tendency reaches absurd levels of mania, as it so often does with Trump, we can call it Hysterical Projection Syndrome. And history will record Trump as Patient Zero for this malady. He presented a perfect example of it on Saturday morning with a frantic tweet (of course) aimed at Joe Biden, which we can break down to fully observe the depths to which Trump’s illness have driven him.

First of all, there’s no way Trump wrote this tweet. Too many syllables. More to the point, Trump begins by disparaging Biden as “a reclamation project” who is “not salvageable.” Both of those terms are thinly veiled insinuations about his age. Trump has also attached one of his childish nicknames – Sleepy Joe – to Biden. However, while Biden is 76 years old, Trump is 73 years old. And he is the laziest president in history. It has been reported that he doesn’t start his work day until 11:00 am, after his morning routine (executive time) of watching Fox News. And he has played more golf (at his resorts from which he profits) than any president before him.

Secondly, Trump says of Biden that China is “begging for him.” We’ll set aside the fact there is no evidence to support that charge. Trump is implying that China likes Biden and wants to deal with him. But that’s exactly what Trump says about his own relationship with China’s Xi Jinping. How can he criticize Biden for allegedly having the sort of relationship that he brags about having himself?

Third, Trump says that Biden “deserted our military.” Again (and as is true about almost everything Trump says) there is no support for that charge against Biden. Although there is abundant support for it against Trump. He is a five-time draft dodger. He insulted all POWs for having been captured. He denigrates Gold Star families who are not Trump sycophants. He terminated healthcare and other services for vets. And he deported veterans who served in combat despite not being citizens.

Fourth, Trump also baselessly said that Biden deserted law enforcement. However, it is Trump who has viciously attacked the FBI, the Department of Justice, and others in law enforcement. Notably, he does that primarily to tarnish their reputations when he is the subject of an investigation – of which there are many. Trump is against cops for the same reason bank robbers are: They make it harder for him to get away with his crimes. So he goes ballistic. His vile attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller have included charges of lying, corruption, conflict of interest, and even treason.

Fifth, Trump also said that Biden deserted healthcare. Of course, he was at President Obama’s right hand when the Affordable Care Act was passed. Trump, on the other hand, has worked hard to sabotage it and is currently supporting a lawsuit that could result in killing it entirely. He has no plan to replace it or to preserve the most popular provisions, including coverage for those with preexisting conditions.

Sixth, Trump complains about the national debt, which is rising to a record $22 trillion dollars under his administration. Much of that is due to his own tax bill that provided corporations and the wealthy with steep and undeserved tax cuts. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Trump could add roughly the same amount of debt as Obama over two terms. However there’s a big difference between the two. Obama took office in the depths of the Bush recession when deficit financing was required to spur the recovery.

Trump, on the other hand, inherited a booming economy, which is the best time to pay off debt. But he nevertheless managed to increase it without any discernible gain. As Forbes Magazine (not exactly a bastion of liberalism) reported, “Trump’s deficits as a percent of GDP will exceed any other President’s during a time of economic expansion.” And the stock market, which Trump likes to use as a gauge of his success, performed far better during Obama’s term. The S&P 500 rose 66.2 percent under Obama, but less than half that (31.1%) under Trump.

Finally, Trump closed this tweet with the exclamation that Biden “Won’t win!” Well, that may be true. He may not even be the Democratic nominee. But the likelihood that Trump will win is pretty low considering that he is currently trailing all of the top Democratic contenders. And his approval rating is historically low. He is the first president ever to never crack 50 percent in approval.

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

That’s a lot of flaming wrongness by Trump in one little tweet. And all of the whining about Biden actually applies much better to Trump. It’s important to acknowledge just how delusional he is as we approach the coming 2020 election. Trump’s psychological infirmities need to be a part of the campaign for all Democrats. He must be exposed as not just another callous and greedy Republican, but as an incompetent whose ignorance, hostility, and mental imbalance puts the whole nation – and world – in danger.