Tag Archives: fake news

International news

No ‘reporting’ necessary on this spectacle

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. today posted this item via Twitter: While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sadly, it is not being reported that way – the Fake News is going Crazy!

Let’s see. I need to catch my breath.

There. Breath caught.

I wish to to take note of something that’s been lost on the president of the United States.

Many of us witnessed in real time the president’s astonishing defense of Vladimir Putin. He took the U.S. intelligence community to task for determining that Russia attacked our electoral process in 2016.

There is no “reporting” necessary to tell viewers what they saw in the moment. The president groveled at Putin’s feet. He elevated the leader of a declining power to his own level as the leader of the world’s greatest nation. He gave comfort to an adversarial state.

Donald Trump has the gall, the stones to lay all this on what he calls “fake news”?

Mr. President, many of us watched this unfold before our eyes.

Donald Trump has delivered to Americans yet another shameful demonstration of ignorance.

media news

Newspaper pushes back against POTUS

The Annapolis (Md.) Capital Gazette has laid it on the line.

In a letter made public this weekend, the newspaper said it won’t forget that Donald J. Trump has continually labeled the media “the enemy of the American people.”

“We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people,” the staff wrote. “No, we won’t forget that. Because exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do.”

A gunman armed with a shotgun walked into the Capital Gazette newsroom this past week and killed five employees. Four of them were journalists; the fifth was a sales assistant.

The suspect isn’t cooperating with the police who arrested him. Thus, we don’t yet know with absolute certainty what motivated him to open fire on the Capital Gazette. Yes, he lost a defamation lawsuit he had filed against the newspaper.

But the Capital Gazette has leveled a thinly veiled response to Trump’s continual verbal assault on the media.

Yes, the president issued appropriate remarks condemning the attack against the newspaper, saying that journalists “like all Americans” deserve the right to do their jobs without being “violently attacked.”

But according to The Hill: CNN’s John Berman called the president out on air for using the phrase “violently attacked,” saying that he “clearly has no problem at all verbally attacking journalists.”

It is long past time to tone down the anti-media rhetoric. Are you up to the challenge, Mr. President?

media news

‘These aren’t our kids’

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Brian Kilmeade needs a serious whuppin’.

The “Fox & Friends” co-host said this today while defending Donald J. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which the president ostensibly ended with an executive order that stops the practice of yanking kids from their parents along the southern border of our nation.

“Like it or not, these aren’t our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country and now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”

Let’s hold the phone, dear reader. Time out! Take a breath and digest what this clown has said on national TV.

Has anyone, ever hinted, implied or suggested — let alone say it out loud — that the young immigrants at the center of this immigration firestorm are “more important than people in our country”?

Kilmeade was trying to make some sort of cheap point, I reckon, when he blurted out that misstatement.

It is false. It is yet another lie. He has demonized in one of the most hideous examples we’ve heard in all this tumult the critics of the Trump administration policy that has swept the entire globe.

If the president is going to go after the mainstream media for telling lies, right there is a glittering example of “fake news.”

International news, national news

Was there a message in the jacket? POTUS says ‘yes’

So-o-o-o-o. It turns out first lady Melania Trump was sending a message after all with that weird jacket she wore today.

That’s according to Donald J. Trump, who wrote via Twitter:

“I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!

But … wait! Mrs. Trump’s staff said she wasn’t sending a message with the jacket. She was photographed with the “I REALLY DON’T CARE … ” message on the back while she boarded an airplane bound for South Texas; the first lady made a surprise visit to an immigrant center near McAllen.

Man, I hope she lost the jacket when she visited with those who are holed up in the Rio Grande Valley awaiting disposition of their case … not to mention getting reunited with their children who the president ordered taken from their parents.

As for the media message mentioned by Donald J. Trump’s tweet, something tells me he made it up — kind of like the way the president does with most statements that fly out of his pie hole … or flutter into cyberspace.

media news

Call a halt to media war, Mr. POTUS

It’s getting tiresome.

With actual foes and enemies of this country looking to do us harm, our head of state is concentrating his fire on the media. Russians have attacked our electoral system; North Koreans want to build nuclear bombs; Syrians are getting gassed by their government.

Donald Trump is fixated over reporting on his presidential administration.

He calls any negative press coverage “fake news.”

What’s more, it’s been revealed that he told CBS News’s Leslie Stahl that he continues the anti-media barrage to sow distrust among the public. If the media report negatively on the administration, Trump told Stahl, the public won’t believe them.

See? It’s part of the Trump strategy!

Those of us who toiled in the media are sickened by it. They are ashamed of the president who is assailing men and women who pledge to report the truth and do that very thing to the best of their ability.

Previous presidents of both parties have endured their share of media negativity. Do they declare war against the media? Do they accuse the media of being the “enemy of the American people”? Do they insist that “most” members of the media are “dishonest people”?

No. They recognize the media has a role to play, which is to hold public officials accountable.

Trump doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the media’s role in protecting this country.

He lies. He embellishes. He condemns the media. Constantly!

Frightening.

media news

Mark it down: Trump finally defines ‘fake news’

This might be a landmark day — of sorts — for the Donald J. Trump administration.

It’s the day when the president of the United States finally explained what he means by “fake news.” He did so, naturally, via Twitter:

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

“Network News about me is negative (Fake) … ”

There it is. Do you get it? Finally, the president comes clean and admits what almost all of us have known already.

He has been impugning the integrity of the media for the past couple of years. He labels all news he dislikes as “fake.” The irony of course is too rich to ignore, given the president’s own propensity for promulgating real “fake news,” which I interpret to be a synonym for “lies.”

The Obama birther story, the “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, some phony-baloney link between Ted Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald. All lies. That’s what I call “fake news.”

Negative news coverage in Trump World is “fake” too?

In the president’s goofy mind, perhaps it is. Except that it isn’t.

national news

FBI launches raid and the mystery deepens

FBI agents conducted a quick-hit raid on the office of Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

He’s the guy who shelled out that $130,000 hush-money payment to porn queen Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an affair that the president denies ever occurring.

Stay with me on this.

Cohen allegedly paid the money without his client’s knowledge. It supposedly came from a personal account. Trump has said he didn’t know about the payment. And surely we believe the liar in chief’s denial. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? I mean, he’s the president of the United States … after all.

I’m no expert on legal ethics, but this one just doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks to high heaven.

So the FBI wants to take a look at the documents that Cohen had squirreled away in his office. They may — or may not — have anything to do with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in the “Russia thing” that Trump calls a “witch hunt” and the product of “fake news” and Democrats who are still steamed over losing the 2016 presidential election.

As an American taxpayer with a keen interest in seeing this mystery play out, I welcome the FBI raid on Cohen’s office. It tells me that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is on the hunt. It is seeking the truth behind — at a bare minimum (no pun intended) — this seedy, tawdry story involving our nation’s head of state.

There might be some element to this story and the payment of the hush money that hasn’t come out just yet.

So, the mystery deepens. Same for the intrigue.

media news

Trump vs. Bezos, er … Amazon

Gosh, do you suppose just possibly the president of the United States is angry with Amazon.com because its owner, a guy named Jeff Bezos, happens to also own one of the nation’s leading newspapers — which has written deemed to be critical articles of the same president?

Let’s try to assess the real reason for Donald J. Trump’s anger.

He contends that Amazon is undercutting the U.S. Postal Service. He’s been tweeting his brains out over Amazon. It’s been Amazon this and Amazon that. He’s been browbeating and berating the company via Twitter.

I have to wonder out loud: Why hasn’t he gone after Facebook with equal ferocity, given that medium’s relationship with a company, Cambridge Analytica, that used Facebook customers’ individual data for political purposes — which allegedly sought to benefit the Trump presidential campaign?

Not a peep from POTUS on that one.

Amazon? That’s a different story.

Bezos’s newspaper, The Washigton Post, has been dogged in its reporting of matters affecting, let’s see, “the Russia thing,” Trump finances, the Cabinet shuffle, the chaos and confusion within the West Wing, Jared Kushner’s role as a Middle East peace broker … that kind of thing.

Trump keeps yapping that The Post is reporting “fake news,” which in itself is the height of irony, given that the president is the “purveyor in chief” of fake news. But … I digress.

Trump’s so-called anger with Amazon looks to be nothing more than a case of cyberbullying by the leader of the free world against an Internet mogul who moonlights as the owner of a first-class newspaper that doesn’t slobber all over the president to his liking.

media news

‘So much fake news’

Every time Donald John “Liar in Chief” Trump Sr. throws out the “fake news” allegation, I am reminded only of one thing: The president lacks any sense of self-awareness.

You know the type. These are people who accuse others of doing what they do. It’s a form of projection. Perhaps it’s a pathological condition.

Whatever it is, Trump’s got it. Or he lacks it.

The president fired off a tweet after the “60 Minutes” interview with the porn queen who says the two of them had a fling in 2006. He called it “fake news.”

Sure thing, Mr. President. I happen to believe her. She’s more credible than the president of the United States. Yes. A porn actress is more believable than the head of state. What in the world has become of this world?

And … why is that? Because the president is the king of fake news.

He perpetuated the lie that Barack Obama was not qualified to serve as president because he allegedly was born in another country. He lied about President Obama wiretapping his offices in Trump Tower after the 2016 election. He lied about witnessing “thousands of Muslims” cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

He lies without any sense of shame or guilt.

Through all of this, the president has the stones to slap the “fake news” label on any news story he deems to be negative.

Fake news are those items that are demonstrably false. They are made-up tales. They are lies put forward by those who cannot tell the truth. These tall tales are meant to defame others, to do damage to others’ credibility.

The president will never look inward while he accuses others of fomenting “fake news.” It is left to the rest of us to do it for him.

The Liar in Chief is a disgrace to his office.

media news

‘Fake news’ gets more Trump scorn

I have become immune to the outrage of Donald Trump’s Twitter fetish, so I won’t gripe that the president is tweeting his outrage yet again.

However, his continuing outrage at what he keeps calling the “fake media” is outrageous in the extreme.

The president went after the media’s coverage of Robert Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russians and three Russian companies over their alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

C’mon, Mr. President! They’re doing their job. The media are part of the very system to which you belong!

They have a responsibility to report on what the special counsel is doing to discover all the facts surrounding the election, the Russian interference in our electoral process and whether there was any “collusion” between the Russians and the president’s campaign.

As for Trump’s criticism of the media reporting of the indictments, I hasten to add that the media have reported quite clearly that the indictments do not suggest there was collusion. To that end, the media have treated the president fairly — which means they have passed the second test of good journalism.

The first test is accuracy. On this matter, the media have done well, too.

So, Mr. President, shut up with the “fake news” mantra.