Tag Archives: Fox

Trump’s attack on the media as a microcosm of how it works in the White House

According to reporting by the Washington Post and others, Donald Trump has supported roughly the same policy regarding the press for perhaps his entire presidency. Since Trump has always hated the press, especially the New York Times, I’d argue that there has not been a change in his policy as far back as the first hints of his involvement with Russia, in the mid 1980s, or before.

Trump has on numerous occasions told his staff to ban specific reporters because he did not like the questions they asked. He told his followers to physically attack reporters during he campaign. He has wanted the press to bow down to him, and he’s wanted to harm the press in a variety of ways, all along.

However, it was only just a couple of days ago that a White House reporter was actually banned from an event, and it was only earlier today that Trump carried out his most extensive and violent Twitter attack on members of the press.

It may be that his rhetoric is set on high right now because the pressure is on. His closest long term confident, whom he abused in recent months, has turned on him and told what appears to be the truth about activities that have a good chance of landing Trump in prison at some point later on. The trial of his campaign manager is going to start in less than two days. And so on.

But the real difference between several months ago and now is the degree to which Trump’s staff is willing, now, to carry out his nefarious wishes, as opposed to then, when the refused to do so, or talked him out of it. This may be partly facilitated by the addition of Bill Shine to the communications staff.

Shine comes from Fox News. While at fox, he produced Hannity’s show. Also, Shine is the fifth person in his position, and I’m pretty sure that is a high rate of turnover for White House Communications Director. Since the beginning of the position (Her Klein was the first, serving in 1969 for Richard Nixon) the average say for a White House Communications Director (or staffer of similar though slightly varying name) is about 1.75 years. The position has changed hands six times since Trump has been president.

Trump is like a pressure cooker. His staff is like those little doohickeys that rattle around on the top of the pressure cooker.

By the way, even Fox News complained about the banning of a White House Press Corps reporter from an event.

Anyway, I’m sure everything else is like this. Trump is constantly being held back by those around him. I assume there are two reasons they do so.

1) They are not as bad as him and want to slow him down so he does less damage.

2) They are at least as bad as he is, but they are not, like Trump, quite as dumb as a brick, and they know that taking blatant action as he would want will cause too much trouble, and interfere with their evil agenda.

The question is, what is the ratio of Type 1 to Type 2 White House Staff?

Muslim No Go Zones: Paris may sue FOX

This is crazy. I live, apparently, near one of these zones, and for several years lived right in the middle of one. No one ever told me to not “go”!!! Shouldn’t there be signs or something?

Anyway, now Paris may sue FOX over this:

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has said she plans to sue Fox News for a broadcast that described parts of the French capital as “no-go zones” for non-Muslims. But is it possible for a city to take out a libel action against a TV channel, asks Thomas Dahlhaus?

Fox News Makes Up Hate Speech for Hoffa

Fox News got all huffy and pissy while reporting that James Hoffa Junior told Democratic Party voters to murder Tea Party Republicans that had been put in office during the Great Stupidity that happened last November. But he didn’t. In order to make it look like Hoffa had said this Fox had to lie.

Hoffa said, “Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!”

Now, observe what Fox News says he said:

Continue reading Fox News Makes Up Hate Speech for Hoffa