Stormy Daniels

Fox News Finally Books Stormy Daniels’ Attorney for an Interview – And Buries it Near Midnight

Posted by on March 20, 2018 at 2:41 pm. 1 Comments :

In the weeks since Donald Trump was accused of paying off a porn star to cover up his affair, Fox News has labored to keep the story from getting any traction. The Washington Post reports that between March 5 and March 9, the network only mentioned Stormy Daniels’s name nine times in their primetime shows. That compared with 144 mentions on MSNBC and 141 mentions on CNN. And last week Fox News didn’t mention her once during primetime.

Fox News Stormy Daniels

This neglect did not go unnoticed by Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti. He told Ari Melber on MSNBC that “I haven’t received a single interview request, not one, from Fox News.” That’s after Avenatti appeared repeatedly on many other news programs and frequently broke new information. So his absence on Fox was undoubtedly deliberate.

As a result of Avenatti’s complaints, it can now be reported that Fox News was apparently shamed into reaching out to him with a request for an interview. Avenatti accepted the offer and will appear Tuesday night. But before anyone gets the idea that Fox is being fair and balanced, note that the offer is for a segment on “Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream,” a program that airs from 11:00 PM to midnight. So Fox is burying the interview on a late night show that frequently comes in third after MSNBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Don Lemon.

For a topic this important, it is journalistic malpractice to tuck it away in the wee hours. It would ordinarily be the sort of program that would bring Fox’s lips to watering. It has the tabloid salaciousness of sordid sex with an X-rated beauty queen, the intrigue of a political cover up, and the lawlessness of election tampering. If President Obama had paid off an erotica celeb to hide his tawdry promiscuity, Fox News would have turned it into twelve part mini series.

One has to wonder where the allegedly “news” focused programs on Fox are during all of this. Bret Baier and Shepard Smith have apparently declined to seek an interview with Avenatti. And even the primetime shills Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, who you would think would love to grill this “floozy’s” rep, are laying low. Could that really be the result of independent booking decisions on the part of all of these Fox anchors? Not likely. More plausible is that an edict has been declared from on high in Fox’s executive suites that Stormy and her advocates are verboten during any time period when people are actually watching?

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

This is certainly additional evidence that Fox News isn’t really a news network. They are not making editorial decisions based on news worthiness or even ratings. They are deep-sixing a huge story that has shown persistence in the news cycle for weeks. They are obviously trying to mute the criticism that they have avoided this story by airing the interview but burying near midnight with an anchor most people have never heard of. And all of this is being done to shield Donald Trump from the embarrassment that is his actual life. But unfortunately for Fox News – and thanks to the sex angle – this story is getting out no matter how badly Fox wants to crush it. Only their own regular viewers will be left ignorant, as usual.

Saturday Tweetstorm: Is Donald Trump TRYING to Get Himself Impeached?

Posted by on March 17, 2018 at 3:19 pm. 1 Comments :

When the President’s schedule was released for this weekend there was nothing on it. He wasn’t going to Mar-A-Lago, or a campaign rally in coal country, or to visit a bunch of wall prototypes in the California desert. He wasn’t occupied with Little Rocket Man or Russia’s assassinations in the U.K. And having just fired his Secretary of State, he is probably gonna avoid further dismantling his cabinet for a few days so he doesn’t appear to be unstable (too late). But this abundance of leisure time for Donald Trump is never a good sign. Idle tiny hands are the Devil’s plaything.

McCabe and Mr. Mueller

As expected, Trump filled the empty morning hours on Saturday with adventures on Twitter. Even after a year it is surprising and disturbing that the leader of the free world can occupy himself so frequently with mini-tantrums on social media. But there he was in the White House residence tweeting away. And the subject that was dominating his infantile thoughts was, as usual, himself.

Trump was clearly obsessed with the reaction to the firing of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Never mind that he likely directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to execute the petty and vindictive termination. The timing was obviously intended to deprive a twenty-year veteran of law enforcement of his rightfully earned pension. But the larger purpose was to discredit McCabe as a witness against Trump in the still unfolding legal melodrama. Unfortunately for Trump, though, his tweets only serve to exacerbate his guilt. For instance:

In this missive Trump is proving that the firing of McCabe was tied directly to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. A major target of that probe is obstruction of justice partly demonstrated by Trump firing FBI Director James Comey. And if Trump thinks he’s making points by referencing “the hard working men and women of the FBI,” then he’s apparently unaware that those worker greatly admire and support Comey and McCabe, and resent they way they’ve been treated. Which leads us to this:

Once again Trump is connecting recent events to the Mueller inquiry. However, he falsely asserts that the House Intelligence Committee cleared him when it is only the bitterly partisan Republican members who signed onto the committee’s disinformation report. And Trump’s accusations against the FBI don’t do anything to help his legal cause. Nor does the last of his morning tweets:

Trump’s moaning about “fake news” is just becoming tedious and a satire of itself. All he’s doing is reminding everyone that the press is reporting what is actually happening and that Trump hates it when they do that. And in this tweet he unwisely asks the questions “How many lies? How many leaks?” Which most people are already asking, but about Trump. But the best part is where Trump notes that “Comey knew it all, and much more!” Indeed he does. And he’s anxious to share what he knows with the American people.

Trump, on the other hand, is desperate to keep Americans from learning about what he has done, and is doing. That’s why his attorney is calling for an abrupt end to the Mueller investigation. It’s why his other attorney is trying to gag Stormy Daniels. At every turn Trump is focused on keeping his affairs (both sexual and political) secret. That’s what legal professionals call “consciousness of guilt.” And it’s what Trump displays with each new tweet he posts. It’s almost as if he has a legal death wish. He must hate the White House so much that he’s doing everything he can to get out of it. If only he knew how much we would all like to help him do that.

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

LATE BREAKING: Trump posted another guilt-dripping tweet Saturday afternoon:

No matter how many times he says there was no collusion, it doesn’t make it true. There is abundant evidence of collusion and he knows it. That’s why he keeps telling the same already debunked lies. Like that the Steele dossier (of which much was verified) was the basis for the special counsel investigation (it wasn’t). Or that the FISA court was mislead (they weren’t). And if this is a witch hunt, they have already nailed nineteen witches (indictments) with five pleading guilty. And they’ve only just begun.

Good News for Trump: Sexual Predator Bill O’Reilly is Defending Him on ‘The Women Issue’

Posted by on March 12, 2018 at 12:34 pm. NO Comments :

The bad news about Donald Trump’s reprehensible conduct with women continues to escalate with new revelations every day. It’s not bad enough that he has at least sixteen women making credible allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against him. Nor have his own admissions of getting away with sexually assaulting women because he’s a celebrity tipped the scales against him in the minds of his glassy-eyed disciples. Now the scandal over his affair with porn star Stormy Daniels is heating up, while he tries to censor “60 Minutes” and she’s offering to return his $130,000 and rescind the questionable contract to silence her.

Bill O'Reilly Donald Trump

In this time of dire need, Trump might be consoled by having one of his long-time pals riding to his rescue. Bill O’Reilly has taken up the cause to shield Trump from the onslaught of persecution he’s been suffering at the hands of critics in the media. O’Reilly recognizes that Trump has been the real victim in all of this and he isn’t going to stand by and allow his buddy to be bullied by the press. O’Reilly’s defense comes in the form of tweets linked to articles on his almost totally ignored website:

So O’Reilly chose to begin by demonizing the women of America who are speaking out against mistreatment by repulsive men in politics and business. He thinks he’s smart to characterize women (and men) protesting abuse and advocating for equal opportunity as “radical and hateful.” That should play well on Main Street, USA. And then there’s this:

The prescient gifts that O’Reilly is bragging about are really just expressions of his own anger. He’s still mad that he was driven from his comfortable perch at Fox News by media reports of his heinous behavior. Both he and Fox paid out millions of dollars to cover up his deviancy. And both he and Trump have been the subjects of accusations by a variety of women. But is he really really sure he wants to remind everyone about that? Or this:

That’s just weird. Does O’Reilly think that Trump only recently became aware that his past is fair game for public discourse? And does he think that “the women issue” is just a cudgel with which to beat up on poor, innocent, men who like to grab women by the pussy? But the weirdest part is that O’Reilly seems to be suggesting that Trump will now have to start attacking the media. Where the heck has O’Reilly been for the past two years? Trump has been on a mission to destroy the free press in America and beyond. Even to the point of referring to the media in Stalinist rhetoric as “the enemy of the people.”

Probably the last thing that Donald Trump needs now is Bill O’Reilly’s help. O’Reilly is just another pervert in the Trump mold who has been banished to the deserted wilds of blogland as a result of his own acts of abuse and harassment. So it’s not especially surprising that O’Reilly would adopt this particular defense strategy. He’s really just relitigating his own crimes and using Trump as a surrogate. But both of them have earned condemnation and deserve to be ostracized and exiled from decent society.

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

Trump’s Lawyer Tries to Deflect Crimes with Desperate and Obviously False Attacks on the Media

Posted by on March 10, 2018 at 2:21 pm. 4 Comments :

The Stormy Daniels affair is turning into one of the most persistent scandals of Donald Trump’s presidency. And given the sheer volume of scandals, that’s really saying something. It doesn’t help that this incident involves Trump’s own personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 in hush money to keep Trump’s infidelity out of the news. Cohen is a long-time Trump toady who can always be relied on to prop up his pal, no matter how repulsive his behavior.

Michael Cohen

Having made himself the subject of the Stormy affair by asserting that he paid her from his own funds, Cohen is now as much an accomplice as he is an attorney. And his story that he ponied up the cash out of the kindness of his heart is falling apart. Consequently, he is adopting the tactics of his boss in order to deflect attention from his own potential criminal liability. On Saturday morning he tweeted this:

Cohen has somehow gotten the impression that the media is obsessed with his email account. In fact, they are just being responsible journalists by reporting that his contacts with Stormy were made using his Trump Organization email address. That’s relevant due to his prior insistence that the arrangements he made with Stormy had nothing to do with Trump and Trump knew nothing about them. By the way, that would be a violation of the New York Bar Association’s standards of conduct. An attorney may not take actions on behalf of a client without full disclosure and permission.

Having no other defense, Cohen is resorting to attacking the media on a completely different topic. And, much like Trump, his attack is rooted in deliberate falsification of reality. Cohen saying that he didn’t see reporting about the jobs numbers anywhere except for Fox News is really just a confession that he doesn’t watch anything but Fox News. Every other major news organization reported these numbers, as they do every time they are released. Just a few obvious examples:

So Cohen didn’t see or hear any of this? Is he blind and deaf? Or is he just a lying, propaganda sewer who parrots the anti-media bullshit of Donald Trump? If nothing else, he’s exposing his fear about the legal walls that are closing in around him. This painfully desperate tweet is evidence of his knowledge that he and his favorite client are going down fast. And there’s nothing he an do about it.

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