Dick O' The Day

Because the "party of family values" (and their #1 pimp) don't give one empty fuck about families - or values.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column - explains

Anyone who'd mock a guy for trying to communicate those thoughts to his only remaining child is a scum-eating slug of the lowest form - a "man" who has never been loved at all. He can't imagine what it's like to be loved unconditionally - or to love someone unconditionally, from way deep down in your soul.

If this is the behavior that can be embraced (or shrugged off) by enough people to get Republicans elected, then we are well and truly fucked.

Oh, Tucker

Nutty as a squirrel turd.

Tucker Carlson announcing (I guess) his 2024 candidacy?

Today's Radicalization

Carlson's commentary is another not-too-veiled threat.

He's saying it's wrong for women to criticize men, and that if they don't stop, young men will feel justified in murdering more people.

He is, in effect, encouraging the nutballs - it's basically a variation on Stochastic Terrorism.

This is far more than a hint. The Press Poodles need to get this shit straight, and start calling it what it is.

Newsweek:

Tucker Carlson Suggests Shootings Are Result of Lectures on Male Privilege

Tucker Carlson suggested on his Tuesday show that women lecturing men about male privilege is a contributing factor to mass shootings in the United States.

His comments came after the mass shooting at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that saw at least seven people killed and more than two dozen people injured. Following the shooting, police arrested 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as the main suspect and charged him with seven counts of first-degree murder.

During his show, Carlson also claimed that poor mental health is a significant facet of why mass shootings happened and said that there were many people like Crimo across America.

"Look at Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, would you sell a gun to that guy, does he seem like a nut case? Of course, he does," Carlson said. "So why didn't anyone raise an alarm? Maybe it is because he didn't stand out. Maybe it is because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act like this guy. That is not an attack, it is just true."

He added: "Like Crimo, they inhabit that solitary fantasy world of social media, porn and video games."

Carlson then went on to claim these same men may be high on drugs and angry because they believe their lives will be worse than their parents'.

"They are high on government-endorsed weed, 'smoke some more, it is good for you.' They are numbed by the endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out in every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors. Of course, they are angry, they know that their lives will not be better than their parents', they will be worse. That is all but guaranteed, they know that. They are not that stupid." he said.

"And yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. 'You are male, you are privileged.' Imagine that, try and imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So a lot of young men in America are going nuts," Carlson continued.

"Are you surprised? By the way, a shockingly large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors, SSRIs or anti-depressants. That would include quite a few mass shooters."

Carlson also questioned why the authorities did not act more on the red flags they had seen from Crimo, prior to his alleged actions in the July 4 attack.

Carlson then played a snippet from a press conference held Tuesday regarding the shooting. Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County sheriff's office and the Lake County major crimes task force highlighted the instances where police encountered Crimo.

He said in April 2019, police were contacted by someone who had learned a week prior, Crimo had attempted to die by suicide. Police then spoke with Crimo and his parents and the matter was passed over to mental health professionals.

In the second instance, in September 2019, Crimo had a large collection of knives confiscated by the police after saying he "was going to kill everyone."

And also too:

It's not a stretch to see this as a pretty standard conflation of manipulative disinformation - an attempt to skew the issue in a way that gets people riled up and confused, and keeps them stuck in the boiler.

Carlson is taking the standard tropes, ie: "It's the mental health", together with "The doctors and the schools don't know what they're doing", together with "We should be enforcing the Red Flag Laws we have on the books instead of passing all these new laws" in order to get it all back to that comfortable stasis that makes it easy to sell dick pills and panty liners, so the rubes actually finance their own subjugation.

And that brings us back around to the point of the exercise, which is - as always - to tear down good government and keep people on edge until a critical mass is achieved, at which point it all explodes into an overwhelming popular demand for Daddy State rule. "We are ungovernable - save us, Daddy - please."

In Love With Brianna Keilar

I'll take exception with the lawyer's argument that "Any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism."

Seems pretty obvious to me that nobody with a living thinking brain would be watching DumFux News at all.

Brianna Keilar - CNN - A segment from 5 months ago, which is proving to be both prophetic, and a little aggravating.

The problem, of course comes at the end, when Stirewalt carps about how Republicans are being so mistreated and blah blah blah - and Keilar lets it stand.

No, goddamn it. Republicans are actively engaged in very deliberate attempts to tear down democracy. I will not play nice with assholes who're doing that.

And if Republicans want to be treated better - if there are actually Republicans who're on the side of the American traditions of democratic self-governance - then let 'em get up on their hind legs and start helping us.

In Line With The Kremlin

No one is surprised by any of this, but it's important to see it, and acknowledge it, and try to remember it.

Mother Jones:

Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson

The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.

On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”

The document - titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)” - was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus. It was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified. The source said memos like this one have been regularly sent by Putin’s administration to media organizations during the war. Independent media outlets in Russia have been forced to shut down since the start of the conflict.

The March 3 document opens with top-line themes the Kremlin wanted Russian media to spread: The Russian invasion is “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes on its territory”; Ukraine has a history of nationalism (that presumably threatens Russia); the Russian military operation is proceeding as planned; Putin is protecting all Russians; the “losing” Ukrainian army is shelling residential areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia; foreign mercenaries are arriving in Ukraine; Europe “is facing more and more problems” because of its own sanctions; and there will be “danger and possible legal consequences” for those in Russia who protest the war. The document notes that it is “necessary to continue quoting” Putin. It claims that the “hysteria of the West had reached the inexplicable level” of people calling for killing dogs and cats from Russia and asks, “Today they call for the killing of animals from Russia. Tomorrow, will they call for killing people from Russia?”

A section headlined “Victory in Information War” tells Russian journalists to push these specific points: The Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse; the Kyiv government is guilty of “war crimes”; and Moscow is the target of a “massive Western anti-Russian propaganda” operation. It states that Russian media should raise questions about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state of mind and suggest he is not truly in charge of Ukraine. And it encourages these outlets to “broadcast messages” highlighting the law recently passed by the Russia Duma that makes it a crime to impede the war effort or disseminate what the government deems “false” information about the war, punishable for up to 15 years in prison. This portion instructs Russian journalists to emphasize that these penalties apply to anyone who promotes news about Ukrainian military victories or Russian attacks on civilian targets.

This is the section of the memo that calls on Russian media to make as much use as possible of Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts. No other Western journalist is referenced in the memo.

Mother Jones is not posting the full document to protect the source of the material. Here are photos of the memo. The first shows the opening page; the next displays the paragraph citing Carlson.

"Some people say..." Hmmm - I wonder where we've heard that before.

Fox's Maria Bartiromo: "Some people have told me over the weekend that they feel that, at the end of the day, this administration does not see Putin as the enemy, they see him as a partner!" pic.twitter.com/lkYddMlXUs

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 13, 2022

Breaking News

The first video has been smuggled out of DumFux News HQ - depicting the opening battle between Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.

No word yet as to whether US satellites are in position to detect the launch of Inter-Cubicle Missiles.

HuffPo:

Sean Hannity Seems To Rip 'Gutless' Tucker Carlson As Fox News Feud Turns Ugly
Fox News host Hannity responds to reports of Carlson's behind-the-scenes gossiping.

Fox News host Sean Hannity tore into The New York Times and its recent coverage of the behind-the-scenes drama at the right-wing cable network. But his harshest words may have been aimed at his colleague, Tucker Carlson.

This week, New York Times columnist Ben Smith said Carlson dishes out off-the-record gossip about the network, former President Donald Trump and other topics to reporters, calling his willingness to spill tea “one of Washington’s open secrets.” Sixteen journalists at other news outlets confirmed to Smith that Carlson had been a source.

On Thursday, Smith shared a report from the Pop Bitch gossip column that one of the topics Carlson liked to dish about was Hannity “and how much of a cringing Trump sycophant Sean is.”

On Thursday night, Hannity attacked Smith and the Times, mocking the paper of record for allowing a reporter to cite Pop Bitch.

“You can’t make this Adam Schiff up,” Hannity cracked.

But then his segment took a turn.

“Now the big news is that some people at Fox apparently don’t like me, and said bad things about me ― gutlessly ― behind my back, according to Ben Smith and members of the media mob,” Hannity said.

If the news was true, “that’s called a normal day in the world that I live in,” Hannity said.

He also claimed that he didn’t care what anyone said about him anyway.

“I’m not gonna change just because some of you don’t like me,” Hannity said.

DumFux News

Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Doocy:

and it goes on and on

Today's POTUS

Biden says what should be said many times per day for as long as it takes to get Americans to understand just how shitty DumFux News is, and how shitty it is to live under that level of abusive and cynical manipulation.

Up In Smoke

But are we sure it was a guy, and not an act-of-god-spontaneous-combustion kinda thing? Like a Christmas miracle maybe?

Pretzel Logic

Translating:

"Congress has constitutional authority to issue subpoenas that are unconstitutional."

Mediaite video with a clip from Tucker Carlson, interviewing John Eastman.

There's no embedding allowed, but here's the story from the Mediaite website.

Former Trump Lawyer Who Claimed Congress Didn’t Have to Certify Biden’s Win Says He Has to Abide By Subpoena From Congress

Right-wing lawyer John Eastman, who falsely claimed that Congress did not have to certify Joe Biden’s presidential electoral victory, said on Monday that he had to abide by the subpoena he received from Congress.

Eastman, according to a recent book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, wrote a six-point memo that stated that Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the tallying and certifying of Biden’s victory, could disregard the election results.

However, on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday, Eastman said that there was no going around Congress as it pertained to being subpoenaed last month by the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Why comply?” asked Tucker Carlson. “I mean, honestly, at this point, look, if it’s totally fake. This is just some Soviet show trial, which it is, why would the rest of us have any kind of obligation to play along with it, honestly?”

“Well, we shouldn’t but Congress has the power to issue criminal contempt,” responded Eastman. “Normally, those don’t go anywhere and such charades as this. But the Department of Justice is fully in line. And, you know, they’ve already brought one criminal indictment against one of the people that refused to comply.”

That indictment was against former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon for refusing to appear before the committee.

“And the phone companies, I think, would prefer not to comply, but they’re going to be held in criminal contempt if they don’t,” continued Eastman. “So they have now forced me and my lawyers to work with some of these other people to file a court action to try and block these unbelievably expensive and unconstitutional subpoenas of our private records and communications.”

COVID-19 Update

David Pakman - DumFux News whistleblower - full-on Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do.

see vax info by state (freebie)

Radical Right Roundup

We can't actually round 'em all up and ship 'em to exile on some tiny island in the middle of the BumFuck Ocean. And while the notion may be a pleasantly diverting daydream, we don't really want to do that.

So what we can, and by right, ought to do is try to keep a close eye on them.

Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla | October 1, 2021 5:32 pm

Right Wing Round-Up: Invading the Suburbs

• Sebastian Murdock @ HuffPost: Alex Jones Just Lost 2 Sandy Hook Cases.
• Casey Michel @ The Bulwark: Why Was Mike Pence Hobnobbing with a Sanctioned Genocide Denier?
• Matt Shuham @ Talking Points Memo: Idaho’s Secretary of State Physically Recounted The Vote To Prove Mike Lindell Wrong. Lindell’s Still Not Convinced.
• Megan Squire and Hannah Gais @ Hatewatch: Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 2: Richard Spencer’s Origins in the Podcast Network.
• John Wright @ Raw Story: Marine lied at Trump rally about pulling baby over wall in Afghanistan: report.
• Media Matters: Newsmax host warns the suburbs are being “invaded” by undocumented migrants.
• Kelly Weill @ The Daily Beast: Oath Keepers Panicked That the Left Would ‘Decapitate’ Them After Failed Capitol Putsch.

Here's today's reminder that what we see going on over there on the right is not hypocrisy.

They're doing this shit on purpose.

NOTE: Everybody at DumFux News is vaccinated, and the on-air "talent" has aggressively pushed more than a few lies concerning COVID-19, including the "controversy" over masks. But then they unveiled their newly refurbished bureau digs in DC, they let a few publicity shots leak out.

And the Daddy State thing for today:

Rule 1: Every accusation is a confession. 

Tucker

Not meaning to amplify a putz like Tucker Carlson, but there's a subtext here that might be worth looking at.

Axios:

The National Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday calling claims made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the NSA is spying on him "untrue."

Driving the news: Carlson claimed on "'Tucker Carlson Tonight," Monday that the NSA was monitoring his electronic communications "in an attempt to take this show off the air," but the agency said this did not happen and he "has never been an intelligence target."

Of note:

• On his show Monday, Carlson admitted his claim was "shocking" and "ordinarily we'd be skeptical of it." But he said a whistleblower provided evidence that such surveillance was occurring.
• The host has yet to share the evidence.
• A Fox News spokesperson pointed Axios to a segment from his Tuesday evening show in which he called the NSA's statement a "paragraph of lies." He said the statement "does not deny" that it read his private emails without his permission.
• Carlson insisted the agency and the Biden administration won't answer his question about whether they read his emails.

Keith Olbermann:

And Again

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced recently, and gee,

DumFux News managed not to be on the list - again -

for the 25th year out of the last 25 years of their 25-year history.

None

Zero

Zip

Zilch

Bupkis

The DumFux News Effect

Foxitis: an ideological infection of the brain.

And it's not at all surprising that the guys who love to bitch about liberals being "woke" are the ones yelling at everybody to wake up.

The Death Of Irony, Part ∞

Today's Tweet

Practically everything on Dumfux News is either illusion or delusion.

He vapes?

pic.twitter.com/0ffAB6aNXn

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) March 19, 2021

A Self Parody

Karen McDougal, former Playboy model (and alleged paramour of President Stoopid),  filed a defamation suit against DumFux News.

In court, the defending attorney made the argument that there's no basis to sue since no one has a reasonable expectation that DumFux News has anything to do with the dissemination of factual information.

Law & Crime:

“Would a reasonable viewer be coming here and thinking this is where I’m going to be hearing the news of the day?” Fox News attorney Erin Murphy asked U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil during a hearing conducted via telephone on Wednesday.

- and -

Under New York State defamation law, the entire case essentially hinges upon whether or not a reasonable viewer would have thought that Carlson was actually accusing McDougal of a crime.

Fox News attempted to argue exactly the opposite in court on Wednesday–insisting the controversial host was simply employing First Amendment-protected hyperbole and that a reasonable viewer would have, in fact, clearly understood the host’s rhetorical device.

You're in a hole. Stop digging

“There’s no statement that a reasonable viewer would understand in this context to state something provably false,” Murphy added–explicitly invoking the word “hyperbolic” to make her client’s case.

Stop.

“It’s not the front page of the New York Times,” Murphy continued. “It’s Tucker Carlson Tonight.

And there ya go.  Do I have to remind anyone that all the Journalism Awards have been handed out for this year, and DumFux News went oh-fer again - for the 25th year in a row?

Deprogramming

I don't know what all we need to do, but I'm pretty sure it has to include figuring out how to teach Americans about the differences between Fairness and Balance and Accuracy in any kind of reporting, but especially in political reporting - ie: sometimes, if the reporting is accurate, then there is no balance. And there's no fairness to be found for someone who makes a conscious choice to be contrarian simply in the interest of stirring the shit..

2 + 2 = 4

Not 5.

Not 3 ½.

And we're not negotiating a settlement at 4.3

eg:

Dys-Informed Nation

(the whole banana from) Wired (cuz it's pretty fuckin' important):

Monday’s split-screen drama, as the House Judiciary Committee weighed impeachment charges against President Trump and as the Justice Department’s inspector general released a 476-page report on the FBI’s handling of its 2016 investigation into Trump’s campaign, made one truth of the modern world inescapable: The lies and obfuscations forwarded ad infinitum on Fox News pose a dangerous threat to the national security of the United States.

The facts of both dramas were clear to objective viewers: In the one instance, there’s conclusive and surprisingly consistent evidence that President Trump pushed Ukraine to concoct dirt on a domestic political rival to affect the 2020 presidential election, and in the other, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI was proper to investigate Trump’s dealings with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.

But that set of facts is not what anyone who was watching Fox News heard. Instead, Fox spent the night describing an upside-down world where the president’s enemies had spun a web of lies about Trump and Ukraine, even as Horowitz blew open the base corruption that has driven every attack on the president since 2016.

Sean Hannity, who had long trumpeted the forthcoming inspector general report and expected a thorough indictment of the behavior of former FBI director James Comey and other members of the “deep state,” had a simple message for his viewers during Fox’s Monday night prime time: “Everything we said, everything we reported, everything we told you was dead-on-center accurate,” he said. “It is all there in black and white, it’s all there.”

Except they weren’t right and it wasn’t there. But Fox News’ viewers evidently were not to be told those hard truths—they were to be kept thinking that everything in their self-selected filter bubble was just peachy keen.

Over on Fox Business, Lou Dobbs said the mere fact that the IG found no political bias in the FBI’s investigation of Trump and Russia in 2016 was de facto proof of the power of the deep state.

John Harwood, long one of Washington’s most respected conservative voices in journalism, summed up Fox’s approach Monday night simply: “Lunacy.”

It’s worse than lunacy, though. Fox’s bubble reality creates a situation where it’s impossible to have the conversations and debate necessary to function as a democracy. Facts that are inconvenient to President Trump simply disappear down Fox News’ “memory hole,” as thoroughly as George Orwell could have imagined in 1984.

The idea that Fox News represents a literal threat to our national security, on par with Russia’s Internet Research Agency or China’s Ministry of State Security, may seem like a dramatic overstatement of its own—and I, a paid contributor to its competitor CNN, may appear a biased voice anyway—but this week has made clear that, as we get deeper into the impeachment process and as the 2020 election approaches, Fox News is prepared to destroy America’s democratic traditions if it will help its most important and most dedicated daily viewer.

The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.

In the impeachment hearings, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill and other witnesses made clear how those who, like Fox News hosts and the president, advance the false narrative that Ukraine meddled in the US election are serving the Kremlin’s interests. Russia is playing a weak hand geopolitically—its economy is sputtering along and its population shrinking—and so its greatest hope is to stoke internal discord in the West. Robert Mueller warned of this; James Clapper has warned of it; and now Fiona Hill has done the same. “Our nation is being torn apart,” she said. “Truth is questioned.” Yet Fox, and the GOP more broadly, has warmly embraced almost every twist of Kremlin propaganda, up to and including the idea that Russia never meddled in the 2016 election to begin with.

Fox’s clear willingness to parry the wingnuttiest ideas in service of the president, long-term implications to the United States be damned, should worry all concerned about the state of the United States. The Ukraine myth is hardly the only example; for years, it has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media. (To say nothing of Fox’s long-term commitment to undermining and questioningclimate science, leaving the US both behind in mitigating the worst effects of climate change and also ill-equipped to face the myriad security consequences of a warming planet.)

It’s possible to paint Fox with too broad of a brush—Chris Wallace remains one of the toughest and best interviewers on television and has repeatedly stood up to vapid GOP talking points, and Bret Baier is a talented journalist and historian—but it’s clear from this year that something fundamental and meaningful has tipped inside the network.

While propagandizing has long been a key facet of Fox’s business (Stephen Colbert debuted his own Fox News host alter ego, in dedicated pursuit of “truthiness,” all the way back in 2005), the situation is clearly getting worse: the lies deeper, its always-tenuous commitment to “Fair and Balanced” unraveling further. Whatever loose adherence to a reality-based world the Fox worldview once possessed, whatever guardrails on truth the network might have once installed, are now gone. Shep Smith, long one of the network’s biggest names and best reporters, literally walked out of the Fox building this fall, departing abruptly after apparently deciding that he couldn’t in good conscience be part of a “news” operation that treated facts so fungibly.

Indeed, as the year has unfolded, Fox’s evening talk shows and its presidentially endorsed morning show have proven to be a particularly egregious and odious swamp of fetid, metastasizing lies and bad faith feedback loops that leave its viewers—and, notably, its Presidential Audience of One—foaming at the mouth with outrage and bile.

It’s hard not to think that the increasingly odd behavior and untethered-to-reality pronouncements of the president’s two top lawyers—Attorney General Bill Barr and personal defender Rudy Giuliani—have not been deeply influenced by the filter bubble on the right created, fostered, and fertilized by Fox News. As Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey tweeted after Barr set out on his Quixotic quest to prove the deep state was behind the FBI’s 2016 investigation, “The Attorney General is a fully-committed Fox News conspiracy theorist.”

The network’s pantheon of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and the rotating couch-cast of Fox & Friends’ morning show dunces-by-choice together represent a level of ill-informed demagoguery that would make Father Coughlin and Huey Long wince.

More than simply embarrassing themselves by spouting obvious falsehoods, though, Fox News’ incendiary, fanatical rants serve to delegitimize to its viewers the very idea of a political opposition. Every Democrat is evil. Every person who disagrees with President Trump is an enemy of the state. Every career federal employee is a member of a deep state opposition.

As writer Gabe Sherman, who authored a history of Fox News, tweeted over the weekend, “Been thinking a lot about why Trump will survive impeachment when Nixon didn’t. For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil. As lawless as Trump is, Republicans believe Dems are worse. That’s the power of propaganda.”

These pronouncements—uttered around the clock on weekdays and doubled down on weekends by hosts like the president’s favorite, Jeanine Pirro—are an attack on the very ideals and foundations of the American experiment.

The founders settled on political parties as a mechanism to institutionalize channels for ongoing debate. As historian Joseph Ellis wrote in American Creation, political parties “eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in an endless argument.” It is that willingness to view opponents as legitimate that has long allowed America to hold together even under trying political times and to deal with political disagreements in the political arena, rather than resorting to violence against national leaders. For all of Fox News and President Trump’s daily declaration of coups and attempted coups against the administration, American history has actually been shockingly free of actual coups.

Part of what drives the unique national interest in the rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr was that their fatal showdown represents the only case of a founder taking another founder’s life. It was one of only a handful of times in our entire national history where we’ve seen political figures fight each other and inflict real wounds. (The caning of Senator Charles Sumner in the pre–Civil War Capitol comes to mind as another such rare instance.)

In the midst of his own presidential run in 2008, John McCain stopped one of his own supporters in her tracks attacking Barack Obama as a Muslim to defend the Democratic nominee: “No ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

That tradition and idea of American politics as an ongoing conversation, an endless argument, is key to preserving our democratic experiment. The idea that you will be in power sometimes, and out of power other times, is what preserves norms and traditions, and curbs the worst abuses and impulses; politicians traditionally understand that actions taken in the majority could serve to bite them if and when they return to the minority.

Donald Trump, who rose to prominence trumpeting the very “birther” falsehood that McCain once batted away, seems bent on undermining that tradition; he has proven he’s perfectly willing to burn down political norms for short-term gain. Fox News seems intent on helping him—and on a daily basis, they’re telling their viewers he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him is less than human. Trump’s lies are the one constant and consistent position of his presidency (13,000 and counting!), and Fox News has gone all in.

We, as a democratic society, cannot survive such consequences-be-damned, winner-take-all, facts-don’t-matter politics. Fox News has upended Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous proclamation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Its daily programming seems driven by the idea that everyone might be entitled to their own facts, but that there is only one correct opinion: President Trump’s.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote his imagined dystopian regime “told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” but Fox News has actually figured out a tactic even more pernicious: Fox News’ own masters of Orwellian doublespeak, its Hannitys, Carlsons, and Doocys, the ones who smugly declare down up and up down, aren’t even bothering to tell their viewers to ignore their eyes and ears, because the truth never even approaches their airtime.

Let’s hope that Fox News today, unlike in Orwell’s world, doesn’t manage to succeed in transforming our country from a functional democracy into an authoritarian cult.

Driftglass:

The union cannot endure half free and half Fox.

Today's Tweet

This bit of distancing didn't totally come outa the blue. We've been hearing about some disgruntlement for a while, but I haven't seen anything quite so pointed.

Maybe DumFux News is acknowledging the writing on the wall. At this point, no one can be unaware that eventually, everybody hitched up with Trump is going to burn.

Has Trump finally compelled Rupert Murdock to give his hosts the green light to tell the truth.

If The executives were still protecting him the hosts would not be doing this and there are five or six of them over at Fox News who have turned now.pic.twitter.com/Mk6qhFYuJe

— Bill Maxwell 🌊 #CountryOverParty (@Bill_Maxwell_) August 30, 2019

So we're left to wonder if this is a signal event. ie: Has Trump become toxic enough to the GOP that they're starting to recognize him as a threat to the Plutocracy Project? And are they just hedging their bets, thinking they can get Trump back into line by firing a shot across his bow, or are they telling him it's over?

Or maybe they're playing 45*'s Reality TV Flip-Flop-Flip Game where they throw something out there, making it look like there's a spat, when they're really just trying to get people to stop thinking they're always and only in bed with Trump? 

But then again maybe not cuz it could be a real thing and then what if they're really mad at him and he's just being a dick to make us think the opposite, cuz if you're not a dick then people take unfair advantage of you and so you have to pretend you're a dick so you keep your fan base and holy fuck how do we get off this stoopid fucking ride!?!