Trump Tells the Truth: And It's Even Worse Than His Lies

[Opoponax]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_term=.21ec60bb812a

The Headline:

Sean Hannity, come on up’: Trump fawns over Fox News in final rally. ‘They’ve done an incredible job for us.

From the mouth of the fetid fuckstick known as Sean Hannity:

“Promises made, promises kept,” said Sean Hannity, echoing President Trump’s campaign slogan. And with that, the Fox News host broke a promise of his own.

At 11 a.m. on Monday, Hannity assured his nearly 4 million Twitter followers that he would not join Trump on stage that evening in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and that he would not campaign with him. While the Trump team described him as a “special guest,” the top-rated host maintained that he was simply covering the president’s final rally for his show. “Something I have done in every election in the past,” he added.

About 12 hours later, though, he delivered a lengthy campaign advertisement for the president, and for the Republican Party, and then joined Trump onstage to recite his achievements and thank him.

Then there was this:

[Hannity's] only complaint? That the president had missed his opening monologue.

Not so, Trump comforted him.

“No, I saw it on the plane,” he said. “Actually, I saw it on the plane. I never miss your opening monologue. I would never do that.”

If your breakfast hasn't already escaped your stomach via the way it was consumed, hold on:

At the end of the conversation, billed by Fox as a “powerful interview,” Laura Ingraham, another host and Trump proponent, was standing by for her 10 p.m. slot. “Want to say hi to the president?” Hannity asked her.

She did and was promptly informed by Trump that he was “very proud of her.” Feigning jealousy that Ingraham got “all the compliments,” Hannity turned to Trump and issued compliments of his own, telling the president, “I don’t think anyone has your energy level.”

And of course this evening not could not have been complete without...

Next came Jeanine Pirro, host of Fox’s “Justice With Judge Jeanine” and the author of “Liars, Leakers and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.” Trump singled her out, he said, because she “treats us very, very well.” He told the audience: “She’s my friend, and she’s your friend — Justice Jeanine.”

Although she has a law degree and has served on the Westchester County Court in New York, Pirro has no experience that would warrant the title “justice,” applied to members of an appeals or supreme court. She took the podium and exhorted audience members to usher their family members and friends to the polls to vote for Republican candidates.

So what would conservatives say in response to this yellow display? They'd say, and be factually correct in stating that Donna Brazile leaked debate questions in advance to Hillary. So that's true. But what they would leave off is that Brazile was then fired for that.

How does Brazile's idiocy compare to this? Not at all.

But what's odd is that this won't cause the slightest discomfort in Trump's fans/Fox's viewers. Barring some kind of widespread regulation on news and entertainment organizations, it is indeed difficult to see how this can be stopped. And it does need to be stopped because Fox News has indeed done an an incredible job supporting, propagating, and being complicit in all of Trump's lies and actions. That's not what our free press is supposed to do.

 

[Elixir]

...Fox News has indeed done an an incredible job supporting, propagating, and being complicit in all of Trump's lies and actions. That's not what our free press is supposed to do.

Doesn't that depend on who is doing the supposing? I do not favor regulations upon news organizations' content; as our own Tom Sawyer regularly points out from his Canadian ivory tower, we get what we deserve. If the American electorate is truly so stupid and undiscerning that they can't tell when someone is pissing on them and telling them it's raining, they (we) deserve to get pissed on.
Whether or not that's the case will become much clearer in the next day or two.
But regulating the media is just the wrong way to go - who do we imagine might be doing that regulating? Today it would be some committee that would be rubber-stamping Trump's autocratic propaganda and suppressing dissent. Tomorrow it could be the same committee silencing Faux News and Breitbart, and letting the left/moderate networks run wild tearing down the credibility of the entire Federal Government. I think it's best to let the liars lie, let the fact checkers check facts and allow the biases of the electorate form as they may. I say that with full recognition that 50% of Americans are of below average intelligence; this doesn't mean that they are all too stupid to sense dishonesty, even if they can't figure out exactly how they are being misled.

OTOH, my colleague recommended an in-flight movie to me a couple of days ago - "Hostiles", which he said was a good movie. After the flight, I told him it was a very good movie indeed - as long as your purpose in watching it was to eradicate any vestige of faith in the goodness of humanity that you might have retained before watching it... (even the good guys are violent bad guys in that movie). If that's really who we are, we're fucked in any event.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The trouble is that in order to be a free press, it also needs to be free to pick a side if that's what it chooses to do. The only alternative is to have the government regulate what is or is not real news and what counts as fake news.

 

[TV and credit cards]

But regulating the media is just the wrong way to go - who do we imagine might be doing that regulating?

I see nothing wrong with drawing a clear line between news and opinion. When I was young, this was practice in the industry. There were banners that said “ commentary”. There were specific opinion pieces at the end of the news with titles such as “In My Opinion”.
I wouldn’t mind some standard of proof, some at least minimum requirement the news must have to be considered news.
These practices should be agreed and adheared to by the industry without government interference.

 

[Worldtraveller]

But regulating the media is just the wrong way to go - who do we imagine might be doing that regulating?

I see nothing wrong with drawing a clear line between news and opinion. When I was young, this was practice in the industry. There were banners that said “ commentary”. There were specific opinion pieces at the end of the news with titles such as “In My Opinion”.
I wouldn’t mind some standard of proof, some at least minimum requirement the news must have to be considered news.
These practices should be agreed and adheared to by the industry without government interference.

It's also not like there aren't plenty of examples where they've been quite successful at doing this, so all the whining is easy to pre-empt (not that it will stop the propagandists from doing so, mind you).

 

[Elixir]

But regulating the media is just the wrong way to go - who do we imagine might be doing that regulating?

I see nothing wrong with drawing a clear line between news and opinion. When I was young, this was practice in the industry. There were banners that said “ commentary”. There were specific opinion pieces at the end of the news with titles such as “In My Opinion”.
I wouldn’t mind some standard of proof, some at least minimum requirement the news must have to be considered news.
These practices should be agreed and adheared to by the industry without government interference.

I'd like to see that, in a perfect world, and as you point out, HONEST media have done their best in the past to label opinion and commentary as such. The problem IMO is that in the current environment someone needs become the arbiter of what's news and what's not. Even if there were guidelines that should be adhered to, there would have to be repercussions for non-conformance or it would just be a charade. A standard of proof would have to be set up and agreed to... no easy task there. As has been pointed out elsewhere, good propaganda is not ideally composed of lies, but rather of selective facts arranged in a manner to promote a specific bias. So veracity alone wouldn't suffice to deal with the problem, and a seal of approval would only enhance the effect of such propaganda.

 

[Gun Nut]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

 

[Elixir]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Is your confidence that Democrats won't take over the house by later today based on anything but your subjective read of the situation and wishful thinking, or have you done a thorough analysis of the effects of voter suppression and gerrymandering, and deemed those factors sufficient to overcome even a 7-11% differential in overall Dem vs Rep vote counts?

 

[Ford]

It is worth remembering that conservatives regularly denigrated CNN as the "Clinton News Network," and that Fox for years sold itself as "Fair and Balanced."

If the situations were reversed, and the highest rated host on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the broadcast networks got on stage at a rally and stumped for a President, the right wingers would point to it as proof they were "in the tank" for that party.

But when Sean Hannity does it? Well that's just because he loves America!

Hypocrisy has been weaponized.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Don't forget the re-education camps!

 

[Gun Nut]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Is your confidence that Democrats won't take over the house by later today based on anything but your subjective read of the situation and wishful thinking, or have you done a thorough analysis of the effects of voter suppression and gerrymandering, and deemed those factors sufficient to overcome even a 7-11% differential in overall Dem vs Rep vote counts?

Both. I think voter suppression is the most effective.

 

[Gun Nut]

It is worth remembering that conservatives regularly denigrated CNN as the "Clinton News Network," and that Fox for years sold itself as "Fair and Balanced."

If the situations were reversed, and the highest rated host on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the broadcast networks got on stage at a rally and stumped for a President, the right wingers would point to it as proof they were "in the tank" for that party.

But when Sean Hannity does it? Well that's just because he loves America!

Hypocrisy has been weaponized.

When the British lined up nice and neatly in a row to face the revolting colonists in America, they got mowed down by flanking troops in foxholes. "How uncivilized" they said... and lost the war.

 

[Elixir]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Is your confidence that Democrats won't take over the house by later today based on anything but your subjective read of the situation and wishful thinking, or have you done a thorough analysis of the effects of voter suppression and gerrymandering, and deemed those factors sufficient to overcome even a 7-11% differential in overall Dem vs Rep vote counts?

Both. I think voter suppression is the most effective.

Lol - yeah, voter suppression has become an art form - the only thing that could qualify the rethuglican party as artistic.
But public sentiment is so wildly opposed to Trump's authoritarianism, his lying, his lack of empathy and unbridled greed, misogyny and general repulsiveness, that many will vote - as I did - for a straight Dem ticket despite actually favoring some individual republican candidates.
I'll be a little surprised if the Dems don't control the House next year despite gerrymandering and voter suppression, and more surprised if they do manage to grab control of the Senate (much lower-hanging fruit for the 'thugs due to its unbalanced representation and the fact that more dem than rep seats are at risk this cycle).

 

[Worldtraveller]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Don't forget the re-education camps!

In his case, there would have to have been education for there to be re-education.

 

[Gun Nut]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't), then expect to see poorly worded, ineffective and ultimately harmful regulations about politicians lying being illegal.. and fail to define a politician or what lying is... or what "media" means, and hand the oversight over to a committee that is run by some corporate lobby group.

Don't forget the re-education camps!

In his case, there would have to have been education for there to be re-education.

That is true! hahaha...

Here is a link to one of many of the Liberal re-education camps that already exist:
http://www.museumoftolerance.com/site/c.tmL6KfNVLtH/b.5052719/k.1594/Corporate_Leadership_and_Diversity_Training.htm

 

[Opoponax]

The trouble is that in order to be a free press, it also needs to be free to pick a side if that's what it chooses to do. The only alternative is to have the government regulate what is or is not real news and what counts as fake news.

It really is a sticky problem--one that can't be hashed out on an internet forum in any meaningful way. That said, I've heard the Fairness Doctrine bandied about from time to time:

The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission, introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC's view—honest, equitable, and balanced.

The problem in the U.S. now though is that the FCC has become a partisan nightmare where the Republican appointed majority does the direct bidding of Trump. Maybe one should be required to be a raving centrist to be appointed to the position. And then they could possibly get us back to the time when sober, educated, boring experts had sophisticated conversations about opposing policy positions. They could smoke on air, be unsightly, and not yell at each other.

Would Americans watch? I for one don't give a damn about that.

 

[JohnG]

News media has become ultra competitive - and knows for certain that a story about cute cats gets more hits that a story about the war in Yemen. The better large media outlets do both, just to stay alive and to be able to bring us the actual important stories (the ones not about cats)

Unfortunately people click on the cat stories and then complain that the media isn’t covering the big stories.

 

[Ford]

It is worth remembering that conservatives regularly denigrated CNN as the "Clinton News Network," and that Fox for years sold itself as "Fair and Balanced."

If the situations were reversed, and the highest rated host on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the broadcast networks got on stage at a rally and stumped for a President, the right wingers would point to it as proof they were "in the tank" for that party.

But when Sean Hannity does it? Well that's just because he loves America!

Hypocrisy has been weaponized.

When the British lined up nice and neatly in a row to face the revolting colonists in America, they got mowed down by flanking troops in foxholes. "How uncivilized" they said... and lost the war.

If that's what you believe, than your middle school history teachers failed you miserably.

I bet you also think Washington copped to chopping down that cherry tree.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

News media has become ultra competitive - and knows for certain that a story about cute cats gets more hits that a story about the war in Yemen. The better large media outlets do both, just to stay alive and to be able to bring us the actual important stories (the ones not about cats)

Unfortunately people click on the cat stories and then complain that the media isn’t covering the big stories.

I must have missed that one. What's this about a cute cat? Do you have a link?

 

[Elixir]

If the Liberals ever regain any power (they won't)

Still pretty certain about that, are you?


Subpoena power is no trifle - in the real world. Now we might get a peek at the seamy underbelly of rethuglican "strategy".