Fox News Vigilantes, Lara Trump and ‘Judge’ Pirro, Issue Call to ‘Arm Up’ to Shoot Migrants

There is a harrowing pattern of advocating violence that is indelibly integrated into the modern, Donald Trump diseased, Republican Party. It was evident in Trump’s rhetoric that glorified hostility toward his critics at his his cult rallies. It was inbred in his attacks on Democrats and the press as “the enemy.” And it recently manifested horribly at his Capitol Hill Insurrection.

Fox News, Lara Trump

As if all of that weren’t bad enough, now his progeny is joining in the reckless call for innocent blood. And Fox News is, of course, the bullhorn for this abhorrent talk. On Saturday’s episode of Justice with “Judge” Pirro, her guest was Eric Trump’s wife, and Fox News contributor, Lara Trump. The discussion was filled with the typical animus of the televised Hate Channel. However, it devolved into a vile assault on the already troubled community of migrants. And then Lara Trump dug even deeper…

“I don’t know what to tell people that live on the Southern border. I guess they better arm up and get guns and be ready, and maybe they’re gonna have to start taking matters into their own hands.”

Lara Trump, with the assistance of Fox News, is now openly advocating murder and vigilantism. The victims of Trump’s dangerous and heartless proposal would be refugees from Central American countries fleeing violence and poverty. Most of them are women and children. What’s more, how would the untrained, fear-driven vigilantes know the difference between refugees and Latinx U.S. citizens? They wouldn’t know or care. Its a recipe for more unspeakable savagery and grief.

This is the sort of racist hate mongering that produced that mass murder of 22 mostly Latinx shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019. The shooter confessed to “targeting Mexicans,” and his writings mirrored the xenophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump, Lara’s bigoted father-in-law.

Just prior to Lara Trump’s promotion of domestic terrorism, Pirro complained about unverified reports that migrants damaged fences and left garbage. Even if true, those are hardly capital offenses. Trump herself acknowledged that the migrants were predominantly children.

After her heinous comments, Pirro simply changed the subject with no pushback whatsoever on Trump’s call to shoot unarmed refugees. And for good measure, both of them disparaged Vice-President Kamala Harris, who just returned from a diplomatic mission to the region. Their catty assertion that she was unqualified for the job is ludicrous. Harris was the Attorney General and senator of the largest state in the country, California, which is also a border state.

No one should be surprised by these remarks. Fox News is notoriously drenched in xenophobic hate-speech. Their Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, has attacked immigrants repeatedly. And he unabashedly promotes the racist “white replacement theory” that fear mongers about people of color being brought into the U.S. to “pack the electorate” against the soon to be minority whites. So the Piroo/Trump tirade is just the next sickening step in the Fox News/Republican battle plan.

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

Fox News Clings to Trump’s Big Lie of Election Fraud that Fueled the Capitol Riots

A week ago several thousand Donald Trump cult disciples stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the constitutional duty of Congress to certify the results of the presidential election. These traitors terrorized members of Congress, their staff, and Capitol security. Five people died during the insurrection, and many more were seriously injured.

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Fox News, Terrorism

The impetus for this assault on democracy was Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him by some nefarious and massive Deep State cabal. Never mind that there is no evidence whatsoever of this alleged conspiracy. Just the allegation was sufficient to inflame Trump’s followers and produce a historic and tragic atrocity carried out by fatuous fools under the influence of flagrant falsehoods.

Within a week Trump was impeached for his role in inciting the riots, which he threatened would result in even more violence. He may be right. His cult is notoriously hostile and not known for their adherence to reason or facts. And it makes little difference that he posted a video asking to find common ground. With racist conspiracy crackpots? Not likely.

All of which makes what aired on Fox News Thursday morning more heinous and dangerous. Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, who has zero credentials to address these matters, appeared on Fox News for an interview with their Senior Trump-fluffer, Maria Bartiromo. The segment could only be described as a further incitement to violence (video below):

Navarro: What happened yesterday [the impeachment vote] was a travesty. The Democratic Party did violence to this country by attacking a president who I believe was legally elected on November 3. If the election were held today he’d be elected again. And if he runs in 2024 he will be elected then. And I think that’s what the Democrats fear. I’ve never been more pissed off in this place, and I think there’s 74 million Americans out there who voted for President Trump who feel exactly the same way.”

Notice that Navarro tries to linguistically associate Democrats with violence when all of the violence was caused by Republicans and Trump supporters. More ominously, he is regurgitating the very same “Big Lie” that Trump has been pushing about a “rigged” election, which is what triggered his supporters to commit terrorist crimes in the Capitol. This is a brazen attempt to incite more violence, just as Trump warned. Navarro then engaged in this exchange with Bartiromo:

Navarro: So I would say to these people on Capitol Hill, “Knock it off. Stop this.” Let the man leave peacefully with his dignity. He was the greatest jobs president, the greatest trade negotiator we’ve ever had in history. And this is just wrong what they’re doing.
Bartiromo: We know that there were irregularities in this election. We know that 70% of Trump voters have said we’re not buying this election. We think it was rigged. But get this, you cannot say that on social media. You will get banned.
Navarro: You can’t say it anywhere.
Bartiromo: You can’t use the word “irregularities.” And if you say there was fraud it’s absolutely outrageous. This feels more like communist China than it does America, that they have the ability to stomp out free speech.

First of all, suggesting that Trump has any dignity is just another big lie. What’s more, he is literally the worst jobs president ever. As for trade, he has only succeeded in imposing tariffs that have crippled American businesses.

Then Bartiromo returns to the election fraud lie, saying that “70% of Trump voters have said we’re not buying this election.” So what? Those are Trump’s dimwitted zealots whose opinions were formed by his hammering falsehoods into them. Of course they feel that way. That is not, however, the way the majority of Americans feel. They support his impeachment and removal from office.

Both Bartiromo and Navarro then make the absurd observation that you can’t say the election was rigged. Notice that they are both saying it on a national television network. Bartiromo goes further to compare her false allegations to the media in communist China. Once again, she’s making that charge on her own nationally broadcast TV show. The only plausible comparison that can be made in that regard is the comparison to how devotional and sycophantic she and her Fox News confederates are toward Dear Leader Trump.

Fox News seems to be doing everything in its power to exacerbate an already volatile situation. An analysis by Media Matters shows that Fox News has cast doubt on the results of the election nearly 800 times in the two weeks since Fox itself called the election for Joe Biden. They seem to be purposefully antagonizing Trump’s terrorist brigades. There just isn’t any other plausible explanation for their persistent dissemination of Trump’s lies. And if they keep it up, they will make sure that Trump’s prediction of more violence comes true.

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

Trump Warns Of More Violence If He’s Impeached For Inciting Violence

After a week of conspicuous silence since the Trump Insurrectionists assaulted Congress, Donald Trump finally made a few self-serving remarks to the press on his way to a photo-op with his holey border wall that Mexico didn’t pay for. It was typical of Trump’s exploitation of the media to exalt himself and malign his foes.

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Donald Trump Dreamer

The first of his comments came while leaving the White House. He called the new moves by Congress to impeach him “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics,” and complained that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are “causing tremendous danger to our country, and it’s causing tremendous anger.” That’s coming from someone who fired up a dangerously overheated mob by telling them that “we fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”

So Trump is issuing a warning that any effort to hold him accountable for his inflammatory rhetoric that inspired a mob of coup plotters would result in further violence by the same deviant mob. It’s not unlike a Mafioso threat to comply lest something terrible happen to your lovely shop. It’s demanding capitulation to a terrorist threat.

Trump addressed the press again later to elaborate on his threats of rising anger among the troops of his seditious army. After lashing out at the “horrible things” “Big Tech” is doing, he wrapped himself in the warm fuzziness of what he imagines is “support probably like nobody’s ever seen before.” He’s actually kind of right. His support is currently at a record low of 33% and majorities say he should be removed from office or resign. And it isn’t going to improve with more dishonest and utterly incoherent exchanges like this one:

Reporter: What is your role in what happened at the Capitol? What is your personal responsibility?
Trump: So if you read my speech – and many people have done it and I’ve seen it, both in the papers and in the media on television. It’s been analyzed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate. And if you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level, about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem, what they said. But they’ve analyzed my speech and my words and my final paragraph, my final sentence. And everybody, to the tee, thought it was totally appropriate.

First of all, not “everybody” thought Trump’s pre-packaged propaganda video in response to the attack on the Capitol was “totally appropriate.” In fact, there was a broad based and bipartisan rejection of his tone deaf support of the attackers wherein he called them “special” and gushed that “we love you.” Many Republicans effectively surrendered by pleading for unity in a futile attempt to evade accountability of their own.

Meanwhile, Trump and his shills in Congress and the press are struggling mightily to characterize his impotent abdication of duty as strength, when it’s nothing more than lame victimhood. He’s whining about his loss of privileges on Twitter, Facebook, etc., as censorship driven by political differences. That’s a deliberate (and coordinated) lie. Trump was booted from these platforms because his comments incited his already deranged cult disciples to violence. Had he not been so purposefully inflammatory he would still be tweeting.

Trump is behaving perfectly in alignment with his sociopathic character, or lack thereof. It’s nothing less than one would expect from a malignant narcissist under intense pressure as his world is falling apart. And it’s why it is so important to proceed with impeachment and make certain that Trump pays for his crimes and can never again be in any position of power. And the same goes for his congressional and media enablers.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Fox News is also advocating capitulation to domestic terrorists. Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade echoes Trump’s position that holding the President accountable for inciting violence will trigger more violence and, therefore, the terrorists should be left alone to commit violence without impunity:

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

Fox News is Still Fomenting Violence and Making Excuses for Trump’s Terrorists

The day after Donald Trump sent his terrorist goons to assault the United States Capitol, and the American people’s representatives as they tried to do perform their Constitutional duties, there is still a whiff of chaos and treason in the air around Washington, D.C. The perpetrators have not been apprehended and many of their enablers in the Republican Party continue to espouse the dangerous lies that motivated the insurrection.

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Fox News

Trump himself has still not condemned the violence. In fact, in a video that Twitter removed, Trump actually embraced it and told the terrorists that he loved them. Twitter also deleted Trump’s last tweet before his account was suspended for putting the nation at risk. In that tweet Trump excused the violence saying that…

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

WRONG! These are the things and events that happen when a sociopathic, narcissistic, aspiring authoritarian dictator stages a coup in order to maintain his illegal grip on power and avoid certain criminal indictments.

There has been a broad condemnation of Trump from across the political spectrum in America and around the world. However, from Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) there has been a steady drumbeat of support, rationalization, and even condemnation of others for Trump’s wrongdoing. Chief among the Trump apologists is Tucker Carlson, who devoted his Primetime White Nationalist Hour to making excuses for Trump and his treasonous brigades (video below). Carlson began by sympathizing with the delusions of the rioters:

“Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy. You can call them conspiracy theorists. You can kick them off Twitter. But that won’t change their minds.”

The reason that some Americans believe the election was fake is because people like Carlson, and others on Fox News, have endorsed and amplified Trump’s flagrant and repeated lies on the subject. But Carlson is correct in saying that their minds won’t be changed. And his sanctimonious monologue didn’t even attempt to do that. In fact, he just made things worse:

“What happened today will be used by the people taking power to strip you of the rights you were born with as an American. Your right to speak without being censored. Your right to assemble, to not be spied upon. To make a living. To defend your family, most critically.”

So the lesson Carlson takes from this purposeful act of sedition is that the government that these traitors sought to overthrow truly is their enemy and is determined to squelch their freedoms and kill their families. That is not how you deescalate the irrational tensions of insurrectionists. That’s how you incite them to further violence.

Carlson closed by saying that “We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault. It is their fault.” So Carlson is validating the terrorists by affirming that had a good reason to commit terrorism. And besides, it isn’t their fault anyway. It’s the fault of the democratically elected government that they oppose and hope to topple.

Fox News is wholly complicit with the evildoers of Trump World. They immediately joined the chorus of Trump cult disciples who sought to blame the insurrection on Antifa. Never mind that they had zero evidence of that, or that Antifa doesn’t even exist. Fox News also tried to draw outrageously false equivalencies between these traitors and the millions of citizens who protested institutional racism and police brutally.

Fox News hosts minimized the riots by characterizing them them as protests that “got a little out of hand” by “passionate” people “who love our country.” Pete Hegseth of Fox and Friends justified the terrorists saying that “They were there to support the President of the United States and to defend our republic.” “I understand what this country represents,” Hegseth said. Adding that “I see how the left is trying to tear it down. And I see one man in Donald Trump who’s been willing to fight undeterred.”

That’s precisely the problem. Trump and his confederates are determined to start a fight that they hope takes the form of a civil war. And they are undeterred by reason, facts, decency, or patriotism. They are committed to betraying the country in favor of a tyrannical dictatorship led by a megalomaniac with no moral core.

And Fox News is at the center of Trump’s communications strategy to disinform the dimwitted and lead them into submission and oppression. So when anyone proposes that Trump must be removed from office and prohibited from serving again, they have to include Fox News if the nation hopes to avoid the next aspiring dictator.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

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

Trump’s Lame Address to His Terrorist Coup Plotters: “Go Home, We love you.”

The terrorism that is being carried out in Washington, D.C., is a clear and predictable consequence of the insurrectionist rhetoric of Donald Trump, Fox News, and their confederates on the far-right, treasonous, lunatic fringe. And as it proceeded, Trump remained silent for an intolerable stretch of time while the U.S. Capitol was under assault by Trump incited traitors.

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Donald Trump

Eventually Trump managed to slap together a prerecorded, one minute long statement politely asking his cult disciples to disperse. He began by affirming the very reason they were acting out, saying that “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it was stolen.” His message was both lame and pitifully weak. “Go Home, We love you,” Trump gushed. Adding “Go home and go home in peace.”

Note that Trump’s tweet was tagged as being “a risk of violence.” Twitter was considerably late for that. UPDATED NOTE: Twitter later deleted Trump’s tweet containing his repulsive video response to the insurrectionists he inspired (available here for you masochists). Twitter also deleted a tweet that effectively excused the insurrectionists saying…

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

This would be a good time to remind people of how Trump responded to what he called thugs and anarchists who protesting the institutional racism that has resulted in so many tragic injuries and fatalities of innocent, unarmed black citizens. When those overwhelmingly peaceful protests were occurring, Trump lashed out at the diverse crowds and labeled them all as “Antifa” agitators, an organization that doesn’t actually exist. He tweeted insults and threats such as these…

So Black Lives Matter protesters are “sick and deranged,” but the members of Trump’s bowel “movement” are “wonderful, sweet and innocent people.” BLM protesters “will be prosecuted,” while the Trump Brigades can just go home, leaving behind a trail of destruction and assault on citizens, members of Congress, and law enforcement officers.

It’s typical of Trump to include the media in his tirades. However, the role of the right-wing media is one of willing complicity. Fox News presently has an article on their website that is brimming with Trump’s inciteful language. For instance, he called the election of Joe Biden “a catastrophe,” and labeled Biden “illegitimate.” They quoted Trump at his grossly misnamed “Save America” rally saying that…

“We do not want to see our election victory stolen by radical left Democrats, that’s what they’re doing, and stolen by the fake news media, that’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up and never concede.”

[And…}

“We don’t have free and fair elections, and you know what else, we don’t have a free and fair press. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it’s become the enemy of the people. It is the biggest problem we have in this country.”

This is precisely the sort of inflammatory dialog that produced the insurrectionists in Washington. And the article was actually a criticism of other media (CNN and MSNBC) for not disseminating Trump’s vile words. Apparently Fox News would prefer that this sort of bombastic blather get even more exposure and reach more nut cases to storm the Capitol.

At this point there is no justification for Trump remaining in office for another minute. He is a threat to the security and tranquility of the nation. And the same thing can be said of Fox News. They have both taken advantage of our nation’s freedoms in way that furthers their treasonous aspirations. And it’s long past time that they be held to account.

For contrast, here is President-Elect Biden’s address to the nation:

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

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

In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset: 2020 Edition

[On September 11, 2006, I wrote an essay about how the American perception of its place in the world supposedly shifted after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I reprint it here today because much of it is still true. And in the midst of a historic election, Donald Trump has made fear his brand. He is exploiting the horror of another catastrophe, the coronavirus pandemic, to advance his selfish political interests.

While 9/11 is nearly twenty years in the past, there is a nightmare that we are all living through now that has already taken as many lives as 64 9/11’s due to Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate and dishonest malfeasance. It, therefore, seems like an appropriate time to revisit these thoughts]

9/11

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it. America has a decision to make in less than two months. Let’s hope we make the right one and elect a president who will console us, inspire us, and unite us. We need healing, honesty, and competence now more than ever. And we must not allow Trump to have another four years to shred our Constitution and drive us apart. COVID-19 is Trump’s 9/11. Never forget.

According to Trump and Fox News MOST Americans are Dumb, Terrorist Lovers

It has been clear since his inauguration that Donald Trump was not a popular figure in American politics. He has never reached 50% in approval polls, and his policies have been universally disfavored by voters. What’s more, despite his frequent and desperate denials, support for his impeachment is growing.

Donald Trump TV Set

In the aftermath of Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the divisive rhetoric emanating from the White House has intensified. There has been a noxious effort on the part of Trump and his sycophants to portray anyone who disagrees with him as a traitor who supports the terrorists. That’s a tactic used unsuccessfully by the Bush administration to malign opponents of his invasion of Iraq. And now the StormTrumpers are employing it to attack his critics. GOP Congressman Doug Collins went so far as to say that Democrats are in love with terrorists.”

That sort of ugliness has not been the exception from Republicans in recent days. They are desperately trying to claw their way out of the hole that Trump has dug for them. Trump’s reckless venture into international assassinations is not being met with approval by Americans or the world. And things aren’t getting any better for them as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduces a resolution to prohibit Trump from taking further rogue actions. That legislative move has triggered the Trump-fluffers on Fox News (video below):

Ainsley Earhardt: The president yesterday said the U.S. is ready to embrace peace. He’s calling for more economic sanctions on Iran’s already struggling economy. He did say that Iran is standing down, so why is the House putting up this resolution to try to limit the president’s powers?
Sarah Sanders: I can’t think of anything dumber than allowing Congress to take over our foreign policy. They can’t seem to manage to get anything done. I think the last thing we want to do is push powers into Congress’ hands and take them away from the president. Any Democrat that doesn’t understand that America is safer now that one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world is rotting in hell is completely naive and completely misses what we need to have in foreign policy.

First of all, Earhardt’s question was loaded with contradictions. She asserted that Trump was embracing peace while simultaneously imposing sanctions, which is a form of economic warfare. And that should be unnecessary if her claim that Iran is standing down is true.

While the question was a jumble of flagrantly biased presumptions, Sanders’ answer was downright demented. Apparently Sanders “can’t think of anything dumber” than the Constitution, which provides Congress with the sole authority to declare war. Congress also has the authority, under the doctrine of checks and balances, to impose limits on the executive branch’s aspirations to tyranny.

Furthermore, Sanders is among the Trump apologists who is suffering from the wishful thinking that the American people support Trump’s unlawful international adventurism. According to a new USA TODAY/Ipsos poll

  • An 18 point majority (52%-34%), called Trump’s behavior with Iran “reckless.”
  • A 44 point majority (52%-8%), said the attack made it more likely that Iran would develop nuclear weapons.
  • By far, most Americans (55%-24%) believe the assassination made the United States less safe. Including nearly a third of Republicans.
  • By 47%-39%, those surveyed said Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani in an attempt to divert the focus from his impeachment.
  • And specifically addressing Pelosi’s resolution, a big majority (53%-33%) endorsed congressional action that would limit Trump’s ability to order military strikes or declare war without legislative approval.

So Trump, along with his surrogates and cult followers, are severely disengaged from the will of the public at large. This has been a common flaw in the thinking at the White House and their Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News. They persist in trying to convince the people that they believe what they plainly do not believe. And the Trumpies may be succeeding in convincing themselves that the fantasy they imagine is actually reality. That might make them feel a little better today, but it won’t help them in November.

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

Fox News Host and Trump-Fluffer Wants the U.S. to Be More Like the Terrorists

The White House narrative on Iran is falling apart. Donald Trump claims that he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani due to intelligence that indicated he represented an “imminent threat” to the U.S. But reports from the Pentagon do not confirm the charge and officials say that any evidence is “razor thin.”

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, when asked to substantiate the allegation, Trump’s press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said that she couldn’t. She merely repeated the baseless speculation that American lives were saved. She also complained that people wouldn’t simply trust Trump and take his word about the whole affair. That, of course, is the wholly warranted result of his having lied non-stop throughout his presidency. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also failed when asked to provide confirmation that Iran was plotting attacks on the U.S. In fact, he resorted to a completely different “justification” that relied solely on past events.

Now the propagandists of Trump World are trying to spin his threat to destroy cultural sites as appropriate and lawful military targeting. Never mind that it is an explicit violation of both U.S. and international law. On Fox News Tuesday morning, Pete Hegseth of Fox and Friends sought to demonize rational Trump critics as treasonous saying that “I think with friends like these Democrats, who needs the Iranians” (video below). He went on to complain that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “out of her mind” for tweeting correctly that Trump had proposed committing war crimes. And then he unleashed this grotesque commentary:

“I don’t care about Iranian cultural sites, and I’ll tell you why. If they could, if Iran could, if you understand the Islamic Republic of Iran, of Islamists, if the could, if they had the power, they would destroy every single one of our cultural sites and build a mosque on top of it.”

This is a bizarre argument even if you ignore his stuttering introduction. Hegseth is saying that it’s acceptable to behave like terrorists because terrorists behave that way. He is, in effect, advocating that the U.S. adopt the tactics of terrorists. What’s next? Would Hegseth approve of Americans beheading prisoners of war? Would he favor sending suicide bombers into the lobbies of hotels where Muslims were guests? Would he support flying planes into skyscrapers in Tehran? After all, the terrorists do that, so why shouldn’t we?

The question is, did that disgusting illogic come from Trump, or did Hegseth plant it in Trump’s befuddled head? Because the President said pretty much the same thing on Monday:

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

This is representative of Trump’s total absence of morality. He and his cult followers believe that they can commit any crime they like with impunity. And they will also tell any lie to support their atrocities. For instance, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Monday that Democrats were “mourning the loss” of Soleimani. She was challenged repeatedly to provide a single example of that reckless and hateful assertion, but went into hiding rather than respond.

This tendency to endorse such repugnant acts shows how far Trump and his regime have diverged from any semblance of civil society. It marks them as aspiring terrorists themselves because, if they approve of these tactics, what separates them from the heathens they pretend to oppose? They believe that any act, no matter how heinous, is justified if your enemy would do it. But the American people, whose principles are in tact, would surely disagree and admonish Trump that “It doesn’t work that way.”

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

Trump Lies Too Much to Take His Word that There Was Ever a Taliban Meeting

Our Reality TV President has done more to debase the presidency of the United States than anyone could ever have imagined. Donald Trump’s pathological lying, infantile insults, willful ignorance, blatant self-dealing, mental infirmity, disrespect for the law and the Constitution, and bizarre affinity for foreign dictators, cannot be dismissed as mere character flaws. They are dangerously and deliberately anti-American.

Donald Trump

Among Trump’s multitude of personal and presidential improprieties are his official proclamations via Twitter. They represent an unprecedented devaluing of governmental discourse. It’s a cartoon version of diplomacy. And Trump’s latest Twitter pronouncement may truly have blasted through the bottom of the barrel and excavated a rough passage to China.

There is so much wrong with this tweet it’s hard to comprehend that it wasn’t the work of comedians on acid. And while many of Trump’s Twitter outbursts seem astonishingly stupid, this one really deserves further examination. So let’s break it down, shall we?

Disclosing Peace Talks with Terrorists
The first problem with this tweet is that it exists at all. No sane leader would even contemplate disclosing on Twitter that there was a secret meeting being planned with the same terrorists who harbored the 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Nor would the cancelation of such a clandestine meeting be tweeted along with petulant threats to make future talks even more difficult.

Invitation Without Pre-conditions or Concessions
Trump’s tweet revealed that he intended to reward these still unrepentant terrorists with a meeting at a presidential retreat on U.S. soil, despite the fact that they have not conceded a single thing to earn it. To the contrary, they still celebrate 9/11 as a proud victory in their struggle to impose a radical form of islamic rule. They continue to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and it’s religious and imperialistic principles. And since the Taliban haven’t agreed to anything prior to the meeting, an agreement that fails to restrict their governance of Afghanistan appears all the more likely. Especially since Trump is such an awful negotiator that he already said publicly that he wants to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan. He needs a deal more than than they do, which can only result in a bad deal for the U.S.

Staining the Anniversary of 9/11
Trump also managed to show callous disrespect for the victims of 9/11, their families, and all Americans by scheduling a meeting with bin Laden’s protectors for the week of the anniversary of 9/11. The memory of that horrific event is still an open wound that millions of Americans recall in stark and painful detail. Apparently that isn’t the case for Trump.

Canceling the Meeting Because Terrorists Committed an Act of Terror
This is a mind-boggling admission by Trump. Peace talks are always held between two warring factions. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that one side or the other engages in violence prior to the completion of any peace treaty. That’s the whole reason for the talks. But Trump is pretending that a recent car bombing in Kabul is his excuse for calling off the meeting. What was he expecting? He never demanded anything, including a cease fire.

Trump Wants to Know: “How Many More Decades Are They Willing to Fight?”
It’s hard to imagine that Trump thinks this is a serious question. The Taliban, and their comrades in Al Qaeda, have already been fighting for many decades that go back to before the U.S ever set foot in Afghanistan. He should ask his friends in Russia. It’s further evidence that they are committed to a long term battle that Trump is showing he doesn’t have the stomach for. Most Americans certainly do not want this war to continue, but as President, it’s foolish and dangerous to show your cards to the enemy.

What Peace Talks?
It’s notable that there has been no confirmation from the Taliban that any meeting was ever actually scheduled. There is no indication that they traveled to the U.S., or were preparing to do so. There is no indication that they have had to alter such plans. They have not issued any statements criticizing Trump for abandoning the peace effort. Just total silence from the Taliban.

And that may be the most revealing part of this whole affair. Why is anyone taking Trump’s word that there were any peace talks scheduled in the first place? This is the President who has spent the last week insisting that his inclusion of Alabama among the states at risk during Hurricane Dorian was correct, despite documented evidence that it wasn’t. He went so far as to summon the Fox News White House correspondent to the Oval Office for a spanking because everyone at Fox wasn’t obediently regurgitating his lies. He’s the President who has told more than 12,000 lies just since his inauguration.

Consequently, it would be foolish to assume that any peace talks were actually scheduled with the Taliban. Trump could easily have made it up the way he made up what he said was the question he was asked most at the G7 meetings in France a couple of weeks ago. Or the way he made up the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Or the way that he made up that China pays the tariffs, not American importers and consumers. Or the way he made up untold numbers of other purposeful fallacies intend to deceive the American people. So until there is proof that peace talks at Camp David were actually scheduled between Trump and the Taliban, no one should believe they were. His tweet is just not good enough.

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

Trump Won’t Condemn White Nationalist Domestic Terrorists for Fear of Offending His Base

The casualties are piling up as gun violence in America continues unabated. And it is impossible to tolerate any longer the right-wing mantra of “thoughts and prayers” while they do absolutely nothing constructive to solve the problem. To the contrary, Republicans in Congress work affirmatively to obstruct common sense solutions that the American people want in unprecedented majorities.

Donald Trump

This isn’t about mental health. It’s not about video games or prayer in school. It’s about easy access to weapons of war and the flagrant racism and hate speech of Donald Trump and his ilk. There have been more mass shootings (250) in 2019 than there have days (219). And while Democrats have passed bills in the House of Representatives, Republicans, and particularly GOP leader Mitch McConnell, have refused to even allow a vote on any of those bills.

For his part, Donald Trump remains aloof and unable to tear himself away from his golf game, or Fox News, long enough to address this crisis with any measure of the seriousness it demands. A real president would deliver an Oval Office speech condemning the white nationalists who are responsible for the majority of fatalities related terrorism in the U.S. That’s a conclusion that even the Trump-appointed FBI director affirmed. It would be nice if we had a real president.

But Trump himself will not even acknowledge that there is a problem with right-wing violence. In fact, he literally downplays any significant occurrence of it. Following the slaughter at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump dismissed the growing threat of white nationalism saying that “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”

The words “white nationalist terrorism” have never passed through Trump’s lips. And this is despite his being one of the most vocal critics of President Obama for not using the inaccurate and inflammatory phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump even called for Obama to resign on Twitter asking…

Trump has made it a hallmark of his presidency to maliciously portray refugees as criminals and terrorists “invading” our country. Never mind that his exclusionary view of “our” country ignores the fact that it is populated, and was built, by refugees. Yet he demands that they “go back where they came from,” even they happen to be U.S. citizens and elected representatives in Congress. The rhetoric of “invasion,” and “criminal,” and “go back,” is exactly the same language that appears in the manifestos of these racist murderers.

It’s also the same language that is used by Fox News. Tucker Carlson’s White Nationalist Hour frequently bemoans the “darkening” of America. He has said that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier.” His colleague Laura Ingraham worries that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore [due to] massive demographic changes … that most of us don’t like.” And in the wake of two tragic massacres, Fox sought to blame ISIS or video games rather than the clearly guilty movement of alt-right bigotry.

There’s a reason that Trump won’t go after these domestic terrorists. He is scared. He’s a shivering wisp of a man who is afraid of offending his base. He’s afraid that the attendance at his cult rallies will decline. He’s terrified of losing support from the neo-Nazis who comprise the most activist faction of his hateful crusade. And Republicans in Congress won’t act either because they are afraid of offending 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 so unashamedly beholden to his cretinous disciples that he recently joked about shooting migrants. And considering the clarity that Trump gives to his hate speech, no one should be surprised when his followers take up the call. When they do, don’t expect Trump to denounce them. But the rest of the nation needs to come together and condemn Trump’s hatred and incitement to violence. We need to hold him accountable for the pain and grief he purposefully encourages. And if he can’t “finally mention the words [white nationalist terrorism], he should immediately resign in disgrace!”