Today in Trump

[NoSavingByTheBell]

The election was fixed. You still deny it?

[Master]

The election was fixed. You still deny it?

The election was not fixed you are in denial.

[Kirkland Laing]

The election was fixed. You still deny it?

Not even a nice try. A very half hearted effort here. Even somebody with the critical thought capability of an apricot can work this one out, can't you.

Got to say I'm shocked at the radio silence from America's media critics over the last couple of days. I would have thought people like Elon who are on a mission to bring accuracy back to the media would be outraged that a major media company knowingly deceived their viewers because they were terrified of losing their viewers. It turns out every major Fox News personality was aware that the election wasn't stolen but they pretended it was on air because they were terrified of losing their viewers and the income that goes with them. I'm amazed there's so little coverage going on. I wonder how all those people who are getting prison sentences for January 6th feel about it.



Look what they were saying on air when they knew it was all bullshit:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1626724109303402497



One reporter went and fact checked some of the bullshit on air and Tucker Carlson wanted her fired for doing so:


Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for broadcasting lies that its machines rigged the 2020 election. Dominion obtained internal Fox News communications that reveal the network’s complete awareness that conspiracy theories targeting Dominion were false, along with a belief that they had to be given some measure of deference anyway in order to avoid alienating the network’s audience.
Dominion’s objective in its filing is to establish a legal standard of actual malice that would allow it to obtain damages from Fox News, specifically that the network’s employees were “recklessly negligent in failing to check the accuracy of their coverage,” according to the New York Times. (Fox News accuses Dominion of cherry-picking messages.)But what is more interesting to the rest of us is what the filing reveals about Fox News’ ethics.
The election result created a crisis for Fox News. Its journalists understood that Joe Biden won the election without having relied on vote fraud. Even Tucker Carlson understood full well that the conspiracy theories about election-stealing software were nonsense. “The software shit is absurd Half our viewers have seen the Maria clip,” he texted November 8, referring to a positive interview Maria Bartiromo gave to Sidney Powell.
But as the result unfurled, Fox News staff began to complain that its audience was departing. The day after Fox called the election for Biden, Rupert Murdoch wrote to CEO Suzanne Scott, “Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.” Fox senior vice-president for corporate communications Irena Briganti wrote on the evening of November 7, “Our viewers left this week after AZ.”
The most distraught figure was Carlson. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” he texted his producer. “We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
On November 9, he told Scott, “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company. Kills me to watch it.”
In the following days, Carlson and his colleagues began to fixate on the financial risk the network faced if a rival competitor such as Newsmax stole its audience by catering more directly to election-fraud claims they knew to be false.
In a group text, Sean Hannity wrote to Carlson and Laura Ingraham on November 12: “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.” Carlson replied, “It’s vandalism.” Contemplating a potential rival conservative network, Hannity mused, “Serious $$ with serious distribution could be a real problem. Imho they need to address but wtf do I know.” Carlson replied, “That could happen.”
Later that night, Carlson pointed Hannity to a tweet by Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich, which fact-checked a tweet by Trump that mentioned Dominion voting conspiracy theories. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” she wrote.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson texted Hannity and Ingraham. “Seriously … What the fuck? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
You can imagine Carlson making the shocked face he uses on television to recount the horrifying realization that a news colleague had stated something he knew to be true. Because it would hurt the stock price.
Carlson and Hannity assured each other that they had both gone to management with complaints that Heinrich had put Fox News’ business model at risk by correcting a false claim by Trump. “I just went crazy on Meade over it,” Carlson wrote, referring to an executive named Meade Cooper. Hannity replied that he “already sent to Suzanne with a really?”
Heinrich, according to the Times, deleted her offending tweet, though she posted a nearly identical fact-check of Trump afterwards.
Carlson’s motivation in remaking himself from a respected and skilled features writer into a white-nationalist demagogue has long been the subject of curiosity. Unlike many of his colleagues, who are widely seen as legitimate morons, Carlson has (or at least had) enough intelligence to see through the rank propaganda he peddles every night. The Dominion internal communications go a long way toward putting the mystery to rest.




https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...ted-trump.html

[Kirkland Laing]

In one set of messages revealed in the court filing, Carlson texted Ingraham, saying that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so. Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
The messages also revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, did not believe Trump’s election lies and even floated the idea of having Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election.
Such an act, Murdoch said, “Would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen."



[...]



Despite what appeared on air, Fox News executives and hosts privately criticized the Trump camp for pushing claims of election fraud, the messages showed. Hannity even said Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.” Rupert Murdoch said it was “really bad” that Giuliani was advising Trump.

The court filing also revealed that Fox News executives had criticized some of the network’s top talent behind the scenes. Jay Wallace, the network president, said that “the North Koreans” did a “more nuanced show” than then-host Lou Dobbs. Jerry Andrews, the executive producer of “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” referred to host Jeanine Pirro as “nuts.”



Some beautiful quotes in that story.



https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/media...nts/index.html





https://twitter.com/willsommer/statu...96012024586240



Another journalist punished for telling the truth:

https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/s...06178736558083





https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/s...03931118096386





https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/s...00575649710080





This shit is the basis for about half the claims of election fraud. Some fucking nutcase who believes they can time travel:

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/...88877366755329





And these shameful motherfuckers put this garbage on air because they were terrified of losing their viewers to Newsmax.

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/willsommer/statu...86169205227523

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1628584158376124418

Another contender. This guy has an uplifting everybody-come-together message which is diametrically opposed to the GOP base who want a culture warrior to slay the libs. He's basically running for vice president here. Same with Haley although she has the potential to be Kamala Harris bad at running for office. This guy looks like a safe pair of hands. Odds on for a VP pick whoever wins the nomination.





https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/statu...42683979051008

Fox News really going after Trump here. There's no way they'd ever mention anything against deregulation if it wasn't damaging for Trump.





Really this stuff about better safety standards for rail companies transporting toxic chemicals is just a bunch of communists trying to destroy job creating businessmen who are struggling to make a profit after being buried under mountains of job killing regulation:

https://twitter.com/GunnelsWarren/st...81605371551745





Ron on Russia. Scroll up:

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status...34347586408468





Ron's latest bullshit publicity stunt:


https://twitter.com/RonDeSantisFL/st...10668966096896



I'm synthesising numbers here from a bunch of places: New York has far lower levels of all types of violent crime and a three hundred and something percent higher burglary rate. 330 murders last year in the biggest five Florida cities with a population of two million and 400 murders in nine million people in the five NY boroughs. If NYC had the crime of urban Florida people would lose their minds. Ron can get away with this garbage because conservative voters are never going to hear the facts from conservative media. Or even regular media to a large extent. This type of stunt should have at least some media (accurately) describing it for what it is rather than just reporting what he said. Instead you get this:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vide...-york-97337779





Another Fox News video:

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/stat...59139291459585

[TitoFan]

On the derailment issue.

Railroad lobbyists pushing for the elimination of rules to make train brakes safer. Ahh... lobbyists. Just below fungi in the strata of life forms. Performing one of those "necessary evils" protected by the U.S. Constitution... but inevitably abused for the benefit of the rich and powerful, and to the detriment of the poor bastards affected by resulting asinine decisions.

In an ideal society, something as critical as brake systems on trains would be exempt from any debate... and if it's too expensive and cuts into your profit, then do what everybody else does and pass along the cost down the consumer chain.

In 2023... to be talking about deadly train derailments (with toxic chemical spills involved) because of unpassed legislation regarding safer braking systems is... dare I say... third-wordly.

[Kirkland Laing]

On the derailment issue.

Railroad lobbyists pushing for the elimination of rules to make train brakes safer. Ahh... lobbyists. Just below fungi in the strata of life forms. Performing one of those "necessary evils" protected by the U.S. Constitution... but inevitably abused for the benefit of the rich and powerful, and to the detriment of the poor bastards affected by resulting asinine decisions.

In an ideal society, something as critical as brake systems on trains would be exempt from any debate... and if it's too expensive and cuts into your profit, then do what everybody else does and pass along the cost down the consumer chain.

In 2023... to be talking about deadly train derailments (with toxic chemical spills involved) because of unpassed legislation regarding safer braking systems is... dare I say... third-wordly.

There is endless regulation that could be cut to boost competition and economic growth. But those regulations are never cut, just added to because the big businesses and corporations that can afford lobbyists want that regulation to impose barriers to prevent small and medium size businesses getting bigger and eventually competing with them. The regulations that the GOP cuts are these kind of regulations that eat into corporate profits. Another liberal media failure is not explaining this to the public with endless endless possible examples.

And in my previous post it looks like New York has a three hundred percent higher burglary rate than Florida. It's the other way around.

[Kirkland Laing]

New York has far lower levels of all types of violent crime and a three hundred and something percent higher burglary rate.

Got this wrong. Florida three hundred percent higher burglary rate. Actually two eighty something percent but close enough.

[TitoFan]

Meanwhile, in Today's Circus Daily...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-bu...l?guccounter=1

Seems like MTG is moving up in the world.




Not to mention the politicians descending on the poor people of East Palestine, Ohio... who apparently haven't suffered enough... and must now be subjected to cheeky finger-pointing.

Which by the way includes Trump... who predictably has the unmitigated gall to show his face and do his own finger-pointing.




Can't stop marveling at the irony of Trump's "third-world" comments about other places, in light of what happened on January 6th 2021... and just the whole ball of SHIT since Trump became President in 2016.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Take Tron over Potato any day.

But Jo trumps them both.

[TitoFan]

I meant to put this here instead of the PC thread.



https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...003309918.html

Bryan Cranston on the 'Make America Great Again' slogan: 'Do you accept that that could possibly be construed as a racist remark?'



Of course the slogan itself isn't racist. Everyone knows that.

But I think most people get the message. He makes some good points. Give that man a beer.

[Kirkland Laing]

Former President Donald Trump holds gargantuan leads over his Republican rivals in a new poll, beating Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) by 30 points in a full field, and crushing former South Carolina Governor and Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley by 61 points in another matchup.
It was not long ago that many analysts were writing political obituaries for Trump in the wake of a chaotic Speaker of the House election and post-midterm soul-searching. Since then, DeSantis has soft-launched his presidential campaign and Haley officially launched hers.
But those developments have not only failed to make a dent in Trump, recent polls show he stands to steamroll the Republican field — none more so than a new Emerson College poll that shows Trump almost doubling DeSantis:


https://www.mediaite.com/news/new-po...t-nikki-haley/


Surely it shows him more than doubling Ron.









Ron is fighting back though. He's started to wear lifts. You can tell he's definitely going to run from this:

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/s...06966100328451


Here is Ron without the Louboutins:








That rules out Trump telling him onstage that he's this cycle's Jeb Bush but a foot shorter. Unless he wants to get into an argument about which one of them is wearing the bigger lifts.





Which reminds me:


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...-oriented.html





GOP primary voters want an insurgent candidate, a guy who will wreck both the Republican and Democratic establishments. Difficult to do that when you've already been prez and have a track record but the GOP along with their media are making it easy for Don by uniting behind Ron like this. Trump can paint him as the establishment candidate and himself as the candidate the establishment is terrified by and for once he's actually telling the truth.

[Spicoli]

Haley flopped before she even got out of the barn by not confronting the 800lb gorilla in the room when asked. With apparently no desire to do so. CPAC currently is in open divide and is Congress. Eventually the Repubs are going to relearn how to punch each other in the nose again and get off their knees. Maybe I'm off my rocker but if ever there was a window for third party its current elections. Trump and his 33 percent bubble wrap will remain the drunk yelling from the backseat big picture wise. You do not erase or ignore "terminate parts of the Constitution".

[TIC]

You do not erase or ignore "terminate parts of the Constitution".

the constitution is ignored daily