Tag: Hannity

Fake President = Fake Information

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“My monkeys stop science – not gossip”

“…Is there anyone in the White House who can say to Donald Trump, and I know this has sort of become a moot question over the years, but is there anyone who can say, hey, this is too important for you to be riffing off the top of your head?”

“…President Trump himself is the main one spreading disinformation, completely contradicting the information and the data put out by public health experts. The president disputing the 3.4% data-driven assessment of the overall coronavirus death rate saying it’s a false number, offering no evidence to back it up, only saying it’s a hunch.”…

“That said, though, public health experts do say the administration is doing a couple of things right, in part in naming Debbie Birx, the Obama appointee, the State Department ambassador at large. She brings 30-plus years of real-life experience. She is described to me as being someone who is serious, sober-minded, a real professional. She is now coordinating the day-to-day coronavirus response.”

I hope one thought Pence capable of carrying the fightback against COVID-19. He’s still busy preparing to defeat Satan with prayer.

The Symbiosis of Stupid

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Dumb and Dumber — Ethan Miller/Getty

❝ The Symbiosis of Stupid between Donald Trump, American president, and the Fox News Channel has come to define our era in a way that rivals The Death of Shame. Now that pretty much every organization the president has ever run is under investigation—from the already shuttered Trump Foundation and Trump University, to the Trump campaign, the Trump inaugural committee, the Trump transition, and the Trump Organization—he has begun to sink deeper and deeper into the infotainment vortex. He has correctly identified that maintaining his grip on political power may be the best way to keep himself out of the slammer, as a sitting president cannot, according to current Justice Department doctrine, be indicted.

❝ He has also correctly ascertained that part of his strategy for maintaining that power must be to maximize the diameter of The Bubble. The president must rope as many people as possible into the void of Fox News and talk radio, where he is one of the great presidents ever—many people are saying the best, except maybe Abraham Lincoln—and all opposition to him is based in petty grievances from Liberal Snowflakes in The Fake News Media. He has, for years now, tuned into cable news for between four and eight hours a day. It is his primary source for information. More recently, he has taken to echo-tweeting whatever they say on Fox & Friends or Hannity, spreading The Gospel According to Meatheads to his nearly 60 million followers on the Tweet Machine.

RTFA for detailed analysis of the relationship between the quasi-fascist in the White House and his Goebbels equivalent.

Where Does It Stop?

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>❝ “So it has gone from Russia collusion, to a St. Petersburg troll farm, to Stormy Daniels, to Michael Cohen, and now, Sean Hannity?” Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft asked rhetorically, reeling from a whirlwind day that began with Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, walking into federal court, and ended with the revelation that Cohen claimed Hannity as a client. “Where does it stop and what the hell does this have to do with the Russia collusion?”

>❝ Indeed, anger and stupefaction were the primary emotions on the far right Monday as the media raced to keep apace with a cascade of twists and turns in the Stormy-gate circus…The news had prompted a near-instantaneous meltdown on Twitter as media pundits and commentators speculated about what sinister deal Cohen might have negotiated on Hannity’s behalf…Indeed, while CNN and MSNBC seized on the news with rapturous zeal, the right-wing mediaverse was spectacularly silent on the Cohen-Hannity question…

Eddie Scarry, the media reporter for the conservative Washington Examiner, suspected that Trumpworld was more worried about potential skeletons in Cohen’s closet than they were letting on…Hannity, he added, was only a plot point in the vast right-wing narrative, if a totally bonkers one: “Yeah, of course that’s the logical next step in this insanity.”

Looking past the smell of Trump’s life, the corruption and national degradation he’s created in Washington, I would neither call this insanity nor logic. Crime and opportunism always benefit from cooperative ignorance. In this case, on the part of a significant minority of eligible voters.

Right-wing moneygrubbers say they are being silenced by the folks who sign the checks

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❝ There is a delicious irony when free market zealots become victims of the very system they celebrate…When the market tells them: “You know what? You’re losing us money. We couldn’t care less what you did or how much you made for us yesterday. Get lost.”…

❝ For critics and scholars who have for decades pointed to the acute dangers connected to corporate control of the media, howling from the far-right over O’Reilly, Hopkins and Hannity rings hollow for a couple of reasons.

First, an individual who invokes Nazi ethnic cleaning terminology in relation to Muslims, or was involved in so many sexual harassment lawsuits that his employer had to pay $13m in settlement deals, are hardly poster children for journalistic free speech. At the broader level, however, these are people who have served a political ideology that has pushed deregulated markets conducive to the concentration of corporate control – which in the case of media also means excessive advertiser influence…

❝ Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Mail and Daily Express are all alive and well. Bill O’Reilly wasn’t replaced by Noam Chomsky. He was replaced by Tucker Carlson, who provides a very similar brand of far-right vitriol … just without the sexual harassment accusations. And will LBC now be bereft of far-right anti-immigration voices? Fear not. You can always tune in to Nigel Farage’s show on the same station.

❝ So when senior people at Breitbart and on-air talent at Fox News start saying they are only now realizing the extent of corporate and advertiser power? Cry me a river. They are liars, naïve or have been in a coma for the last 50 years.

RTFA for more dissecting of rightwing moneybags whining about losing their profitable squeeze. Couldn’t happen to a more perfect class of hypocrites and scumbags. Profits are still more important than people, guys. Isn’t that what you wanted?