Monday, March 04, 2019

The trump protectors.

Image result for new yorker magazine fox news white house image

I am glad to see that the House Judiciary Committee is taking on trump Inc. I mean somebody had to do it. As Americans we could only stick our heads in the sand and cover our ears for so long.
Can you imagine if the democrats had not taken back the House? The trump protection racket in Washington would have just doubled down on protecting Mr. trump and defending the indefensible. 

 "House Democrats sent more than 80 letters Monday demanding documents from family members, business associates, political confidants and others with connections to President Trump, opening a sprawling investigation of whether he and his administration have engaged in obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power."   

While 80 letters might seem like a lot to some people, I would suggest that they will need more. I don't think that we can comprehend the level of corruption that is taking place right under our noses and in plain sight with this family.

Hopefully the democrats in the house will shame those in the senate-- who are invested in protecting this president at all cost-- into coming to their senses. I doubt that it will happen, but we can dream.

Of course one reason that it is so hard to make at least 40% of the people in this country see that they are being hoodwinked is a certain television and media conglomerate that is hell- bent on protecting Mr. trump.

We are just learning today just how deep this FOX NEWS trump partnership is. Mr. trump actually rates the FOX hosts on a loyalty scale. He can do that because he believes, and rightfully so, that they are all in the tank for him.

If you really want to see how the synergy works between trump and his pals at FOX, read the excellent article from Jane Mayer in New Yorker Magazine.

Here is an excerpt from it:

"In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had an exclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”

Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.”

Hemmer argues that Fox—which, as the most watched cable news network, generates about $2.7 billion a year for its parent company, 21st Century Fox—acts as a force multiplier for Trump, solidifying his hold over the Republican Party and intensifying his support. “Fox is not just taking the temperature of the base—it’s raising the temperature,” she says. “It’s a radicalization model.” For both Trump and Fox, “fear is a business strategy—it keeps people watching.” As the President has been beset by scandals, congressional hearings, and even talk of impeachment, Fox has been both his shield and his sword. The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead. All day long, Trump retweets claims made on the network; his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”

Fox’s defenders view such criticism as unfounded and politically biased. Ken LaCorte, who was in senior management at Fox News for nearly twenty years, until 2016, and recently started his own news service, told me, “The people at Fox said the same thing about the press and Obama.” Fox’s public-relations department offers numerous examples of its reporters and talk-show hosts
challenging the Administration. Chris Wallace, a tough-minded and ecumenical interviewer, recently grilled Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, on the need for a border wall, given that virtually all drugs seized at the border are discovered at checkpoints. Trump is not the first President to have a favorite media organization; James Madison and Andrew Jackson were each boosted by partisan newspapers. But many people who have watched and worked with Fox over the years, including some leading conservatives, regard Fox’s deepening Trump orthodoxy with alarm. Bill Kristol, who was a paid contributor to Fox News until 2012 and is a prominent Never Trumper, said of the network, “It’s changed a lot. Before, it was conservative, but it wasn’t crazy. Now it’s just propaganda.” Joe Peyronnin, a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., was an early president of Fox News, in the mid-nineties. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he says of Fox. “It’s as if the President had his own press organization. It’s not healthy.”

Nothing has formalized the partnership between Fox and Trump more than the appointment, in July, 2018, of Bill Shine, the former co-president of Fox News, as director of communications and deputy chief of staff at the White House. Kristol says of Shine, “When I first met him, he was producing Hannity’s show at Fox, and the two were incredibly close.” Both come from white working-class families on Long Island, and they are godfathers to each other’s children, who refer to them as “Uncle Bill” and “Uncle Sean.” Another former colleague says, “They spend their vacations together.” A third recalls, “I was rarely in Shine’s office when Sean didn’t call. And I was in Shine’s office a lot. They talked all the time—many times a day.”

Shine led Fox News’ programming division for a dozen years, overseeing the morning and evening opinion shows, which collectively get the biggest ratings and define the network’s conservative brand. Straight news was not within his purview. In July, 2016, Roger Ailes, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Fox, was fired in the face of numerous allegations of chronic sexual harassment, and Shine became co-president. But within a year he, too, had been forced out, amid a second wave of sexual-harassment allegations, some of them against Fox’s biggest star at the time, Bill O’Reilly. Shine wasn’t personally accused of sexual harassment, but several lawsuits named him as complicit in a workplace culture of coverups, payoffs, and victim intimidation.

Shine, who has denied any wrongdoing, has kept a low profile at the White House, and rejects interview requests, including one from this magazine. But Kristol contends that Shine’s White House appointment is a scandal. “It’s been wildly under-covered,” he said. “It’s astounding that Shine—the guy who covered up Ailes’s horrible behavior—is the deputy chief of staff!”

The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, another conservative Never Trumper, used to appear on the network, but wouldn’t do so now. “Fox was begun as a good-faith effort to counter bias, but it’s morphed into something that is not even news,” she says. “It’s simply a mouthpiece for the President, repeating what the President says, no matter how false or contradictory.” The feedback loop is so strong, she notes, that Trump “will even pick up an error made by Fox,” as when he promoted on Twitter a bogus Fox story claiming that South Africa was “seizing land from white farmers.” Rubin told me, “It’s funny that Bill Shine went over to the White House. He could have stayed in his old job. The only difference is payroll.” [More here.] 

I am just still trying to figure out why they are still allowed to call themselves FOX "NEWS." 

*Pic from ebay.com



 

51 comments:

PilotX said...

And this stays on in airline crewrooms around the country non-stop. They used to keep a Fox News sentry to make sure it stayed on it but for now that seems to be lessening. I had to change it to ESPN today but I'm sure it went right back after I left for my flight. MAGA baby!

PilotX said...

First! 😂

Anonymous said...

"Bill Kristol, who was a paid contributor to Fox News until 2012 and is a prominent Never Trumper, said of the network, 'It’s changed a lot. Before, it was conservative, but it wasn’t crazy. Now it’s just propaganda.'”

"The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, another conservative Never Trumper, used to appear on the network, but wouldn’t do so now. 'Fox was begun as a good-faith effort to counter bias, but it’s morphed into something that is not even news,' she says. 'It’s simply a mouthpiece for the President, repeating what the President says, no matter how false or contradictory.'”

I'm afraid the above statements are a load of crap. Fox News was wall-to-wall right-wing propaganda, right from its inception.

Kristol and Rubin were fine with the tsunami of lies on Fox when they were helping promote standard warmongering hypercapitalist GOP politicians. Now that the party has been taken over by a racist ethnonationalist clown, suddenly they are all, "Lying is bad!"

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said:

Kristol and Rubin were fine with the tsunami of lies on Fox when they were helping promote standard warmongering hypercapitalist GOP politicians. Now that the party has been taken over by a racist ethnonationalist clown, suddenly they are all, "Lying is bad!"

* I have to agree with you. Do you remember when FOX was peddling 'Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction' 24/7? FOX has been a propaganda machine since its inception.

Anonymous said...

LOL!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=ZZ5BdrZnhwE

Anonymous said...

Who the fuck reads The New Yorker??

Anonymous said...

Funny stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5BdrZnhwE&list=PL2kwfpmDDCR_kpvg2o9Fq7Yqq2Rd1XQDO&index=2

Harry Hamid said...

He comes across like a conservative pundit, and that's a large part of his draw, I suppose, so this is not really surprising.

dinthebeast said...

And Roger Ailes, who is now dead, fed debate questions to Fergus in the primaries.
Where else have I heard about debate questions being fed to a candidate ahead of time before? And how big of a deal was made of it?

Fox was thought up as a way that Nixon might have kept his job had it existed in the early seventies. That is, as a way to protect felonious Republican presidents from the consequences of their misdeeds, so the fact that anyone is surprised that it is fulfilling its intended purpose is a testament to the success of its propaganda.

Also, it has a lot of help. My friends in the midwest all say that they can't turn on the radios in their cars without some goddamn wingnut ranting hatespeech at them.

Also, never turn your back on a Republican never Trumper. They act like they are your friends now that there is money to be made writing things that were standard fare on liberal blogs in 2006, but the nanosecond someone offers them a coin for stabbing you in the back, they'll put the knife right in.

-Doug in Oakland

Anonymous said...

“Also, it has a lot of help. My friends in the midwest all say that they can't turn on the radios in their cars without some goddamn wingnut ranting hatespeech at them.”

It’s hate radio, plus Fox and Sinclair TV, plus all the multitudes of Breitbarty BS Internet “news” sites. There’s a whole ecosystem of wingnut disinformation now. Way too many Americans are marinating in this false, manufactured reality.

Anonymous said...

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said:

Kristol and Rubin were fine with the tsunami of lies on Fox when they were helping promote standard warmongering hypercapitalist GOP politicians. Now that the party has been taken over by a racist ethnonationalist clown, suddenly they are all, "Lying is bad!"

* I have to agree with you. Do you remember when FOX was peddling 'Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction' 24/7? FOX has been a propaganda machine since its inception.

7:40 PM

Once again Granny Mudshark is confused and utters falsehoods. CNN was the only cable news network at the time of the Gulf War.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

Gulf War

Date 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991
(6 months, 3 weeks and 5 days)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News

Fox News

Launched October 7, 1996; 22 years ago

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said:
Once again Granny Mudshark is confused and utters falsehoods. CNN was the only cable news network at the time of the Gulf War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

Gulf War

Date 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991
(6 months, 3 weeks and 5 days)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News

Launched October 7, 1996; 22 years ago

6:43 AM

******************

Hey Dumb Ass, You are the one who is confused. I was talking about the Iraq War that G.W. Bush started in 2003!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a ... Date, 20 March 2003 – 18 December 2011 (2011-12-18)

‎Time Fox News certainly was around then by your own admission above.


Anonymous said...

CNN....Commie Negro Network 80 IQs Just won't do.

PilotX said...

https://wlos.com/news/local/judge-orders-pro-confederacy-group-to-disband-or-pay-3m

The slow arc of justice?

PilotX said...

"CNN....Commie Negro Network 80 IQs Just won't do."

80 is the collective IQ of all Fox hosts including fill ins.😂

Anonymous said...

Stewardess X....Demand that BET channel. Twerking hos and monosyllabic, fecal hued rapscallions is where its at. Soul Plane is da shit !

PilotX said...

Nah, I'd rather watch Duck Dynasty or Honey Boo Boo. Ya know, reality tv.😂 Didn't I see your mom on one of those shows?

PilotX said...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sgvtribune.com/2015/10/23/how-watching-fox-news-lowers-your-iq-letters/amp/

mike from iowa said...

I imagine Devin Numbnuts is still running secrets between the House investigation of Drumpfuck and the kremlin annex to score his brownie points with his king.

Take a lon g look at mike Fuckabee and the Outlaw Jersey Whale Christey and compare them to Gerald Nadler. All three have had stomach surgeries. Which one looks like he knew what he was doing? Hint it isn't either of the wingnuts.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...


PilotX said,

"80 is the collective IQ of all Fox hosts including fill ins.😂"

****************
PilotX, you are giving them too much credit. Their true collective IQ score is probably more like 60.

Anonymous said...

Just another "Smollett" moment.....

mike from iowa said...

More like a Seth Rich clusterfuck where Drumpf buddy Corsi publicly apologized for spreading vicious rumors about Rich's death.

Anonymous said...

Negro Felon League mandingo fighting allegations he raped 3 women now pulls out its muh dik in front of a 77-year-old woman.

Kellen Winslow Jr. Back In Jail, Lewd Conduct with 77-Year-Old
Breaking News

Ex-NFL star Kellen Winslow Jr. is back behind bars following TWO new allegations of sexual deviance ... this time, he's accused of touching himself in front of a 77-year-old woman.

Remember, Winslow had been out on bail while fighting allegations he raped 3 women. Officials say 2 of the women were transients who were kidnapped by the former tight end.

A 3rd woman claims Winslow raped her 15 years ago while she was unconscious.

If convicted on all counts, Winslow faces up to life in prison. Bail was set at $2 million, which he posted back in July.

But, according to officials, Winslow has NOT been living up to the terms of his bail -- and now, prosecutors claim he committed more sexual impropriety just last month.

Officials say Winslow was working out at a San Diego area gym on Feb. 13 -- when he started touching himself and asking a nearby elderly woman if she liked it.

The very next week, the woman claims she was in a hot tub at the same gym when Winslow once again engaged in lewd conduct. The woman says she got out of the tub and reported Winslow.

She also claims Winslow reached out and touched her arm and foot as she tried to leave.

Winslow was formally charged with 2 counts of lewd conduct, 1 count of battery of an elder and 1 count of willful cruelty to an elder.

The judge in Winslow's case revoked his bail on Monday and ordered him to be locked up.

He's due back in court later Tuesday.

Winslow played in the NFL from 2004 to 2013 -- and made the Pro Bowl in 2007 as a tight end for the Cleveland Browns.
Kellen Winslow Jr. Back In Jail, Lewd Conduct with 77-Year-Old
Breaking News

Ex-NFL star Kellen Winslow Jr. is back behind bars following TWO new allegations of sexual deviance ... this time, he's accused of touching himself in front of a 77-year-old woman.

Remember, Winslow had been out on bail while fighting allegations he raped 3 women. Officials say 2 of the women were transients who were kidnapped by the former tight end.

A 3rd woman claims Winslow raped her 15 years ago while she was unconscious.

If convicted on all counts, Winslow faces up to life in prison. Bail was set at $2 million, which he posted back in July.

But, according to officials, Winslow has NOT been living up to the terms of his bail -- and now, prosecutors claim he committed more sexual impropriety just last month.

Officials say Winslow was working out at a San Diego area gym on Feb. 13 -- when he started touching himself and asking a nearby elderly woman if she liked it.

The very next week, the woman claims she was in a hot tub at the same gym when Winslow once again engaged in lewd conduct. The woman says she got out of the tub and reported Winslow.

She also claims Winslow reached out and touched her arm and foot as she tried to leave.

Winslow was formally charged with 2 counts of lewd conduct, 1 count of battery of an elder and 1 count of willful cruelty to an elder.

The judge in Winslow's case revoked his bail on Monday and ordered him to be locked up.

He's due back in court later Tuesday.

Winslow played in the NFL from 2004 to 2013 -- and made the Pro Bowl in 2007 as a tight end for the Cleveland Browns.

https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/05/kellen-winslow-lewd-conduct-bail-revoked/

Muh dik said...

What is it and this anon's extreme fascination with reporting on negro male genetals? It's getting kinda creepy.

TWB said...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.kstp.com/articles/minneapolis-man-wallace-lynn-moore-charged-indecent-exposure-como-zoo-pleads-guilty-5267658.html

mike from iowa said...

Meanwhile, wasicu in Alabama charged with murder of 11 year old girl. Man in Colorado strangled wife in front of 4 year old daughter.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...


Muh dik said...

"What is it and this anon's extreme fascination with reporting on negro male genetals? It's getting kinda creepy."

**********************
I think it's been creepy for quite awhile. Mostly they talk about dicks, crimes they say Blacks have committed, and I.Q. Scores.

Lt. Commander Johnson said...

Like I've said over and over.....shoot them if convicted. I think they should make it as the same as voters are forced into jury trial.

Then...we'll see how that goes.

dinthebeast said...

Bloomberg isn't running. That's good news.

-Doug in Oakland

dinthebeast said...

But Mark Cuban is thinking about a third-party run and that's not good news.

-Doug in Oakland

Anonymous said...

"But Mark Cuban is thinking about a third-party run and that's not good news."

I have to admit I would enjoy how much this would piss off Trump, because Trump and Cuban despise each other and I think even the remote possibility of losing to Cuban would enrage him.

However, yes, third party candidates are a terrible idea, if you are someone who truly wants Trump gone.

On that same subject, Howard Schultz also needs to butt the hell out. His dumb motives for wanting to run for office seem to be that he is bored with selling coffee, and that he has been listening to too many wingnut screeds suggesting the Democrats have all become actual communists, and if he doesn't intervene, we will all soon be living under the Stalinist fist of President Kamala Harris. No more Starbucks for you! Only standing in endless lines, Soviet-style, for cabbages and scratchy toilet paper! And off to the Alaskan reeducation camp if you don't like it!

Anonymous said...

Trump has opened the floodgates of rich dudes with zero political experience suddenly thinking everyone loves them and they should run for every political position. This is an dismal trend.

Anonymous said...

doug in oakland wrote:
But Mark Cuban is thinking about a third-party run and that's not good news.

From which party do you think Cuban would take the most votes?

dinthebeast said...

"Trump has opened the floodgates of rich dudes with zero political experience suddenly thinking everyone loves them and they should run for every political position. This is an dismal trend."

Krugman called it "Yes-meningitis" because they only talk to people who have a financial incentive to kiss their ass.

"From which party do you think Cuban would take the most votes?"

I don't think Fergus' idiot hordes would vote against him with a gun to their heads (or to their health insurance, which is pretty much the same thing) so to the extent that anyone would vote for him at all, those are votes that we should have had.

-Doug in Oakland

Anonymous said...

So, that thing Trump announced about how he was pulling all the troops out of Syria?

Now he is doing the thing where he does not pull them out of Syria.

It is always hard to figure out how much energy to expend debating any of Trump's policy decisions, since they tend to abruptly change with Trump's whims.

Dónde está el Emoluments Clause? said...

Federal regulators are presently considering whether to allow a merger between the cellphone companies T-Mobile and Sprint to go through.

Mysteriously, immediately after the merger, tons of T-Mobile execs and staffers suddenly started staying at the Trump hotel. Staying there a lot. $200K worth of hotel bills went into the Trump family pockets:

"Before the merger was announced, only two T-Mobile officials had ever stayed at Trump's hotel, according to The Washington Post. Since April 29, T-Mobile executives have stayed at the hotel for at least 52 nights.

Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about the T-Mobile stays at the Trump hotel as the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission continue to review the multibillion-dollar merger.

T-Mobile in the letter wrote that the nearly $200,000 paid for 'meeting space, catering, business center services, audio/visual equipment rental [and] lodging' in the hotel, according to the Post."

mike from iowa said...

They're back and just as racist as ever- https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/colorado-cops-detain-black-man-gunpoint-picking-trash-house-live/

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
PilotX said...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/05/white-supremacists-have-a-new-strategy-225518

Anonymous said...

"https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/05/white-supremacists-have-a-new-strategy-225518"

If hate organizations are expelled from the mainstream Internet and forced to resort to flyers to spread their twisted views, then I'm pretty happy with that situation. That means they're losing.

Flyers aren't a particularly good form of advertising. When was the last time you bought anything off a flyer someone jammed under your windshield wipers? For most people, the answer will be never.

Anonymous said...

Photograph of Mueller's entire body of evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia:

https://gab.ai/media/image/bq-5c7f62421f9cb.png

anotherbozo said...

And don't forget Sinclair media, Salem Communications, iHeartMedia ( formerly Clear Channel) doing for locsl TV, print, and radio what Fox does as a network. The Invasion of the Mind Snatchers has already occurred in the "heartland," and they're coming for the coasts.

Anonymous said...

"And don't forget Sinclair media, Salem Communications, iHeartMedia ( formerly Clear Channel) doing for locsl TV, print, and radio what Fox does as a network. The Invasion of the Mind Snatchers has already occurred in the 'heartland,' and they're coming for the coasts."

Sinclair forced all their news anchors to read the same speech from a script, denouncing "biased and false news) (which they are implying is what is shown on all those other news networks, as opposed to, you know, Sinclair).

Video Reveals Power Of Sinclair, As Local News Anchors Recite Script In Unison

Sinclair is Fox 2.0.

dinthebeast said...

Some high-IQ folks tried hanging one of those banners from a freeway overpass in Richmond, just north of here, but I couldn't read it because they hung it backwards and I didn't have enough time to translate it before we were already past it.
It seemed to be complaining about immigrants.
Perhaps if they had hired some immigrants to hang it, I would have been able to actually read its message.

-Doug in Oakland

Anonymous said...

10 negroes attack security guard at H&M on Mag Mile:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/security-guard-hm-attack/

mike from iowa said...

Can any human being, forget stoopid fucking wingnuts, recall a more incompetent group of lawyers than what Drumpf has surrounded himself with? Forget the dumb fuckers in wingnut congress, they are just as incompetent. Where do they train these jokers? Probably in shithole countries like Alabama and Georgia.

Anonymous said...

The treasonous criminal comrade Thump is about to be gotten, he can go easy or if he wants to be dragged out the White House we can accommodate him on that request also but either way he and his criminal Russian enabling buddies through out the American government today are toast. Mueller and the Democratic Congress will root out every single one of these treasonous Republican dregs if it takes five years to do it.

Anonymous said...

Wolf......Wolf......Wolf.....

Paradoctor said...

Why did the nameless one at 10:01 moan "wolf wolf wolf"? Shouldn't it be moaning "brains brains BRAYYYNZZ"? Has the zombie virus mutated?

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