Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Covering Up The Coverup

I keep thinking that Fox News cannot get worse, but there seems to be no bottom to how low they can go.  New lows are being exhibited in their coverage of the current Senate impeachment trial.  They are fully involved in covering up the Trump administration coverup of what Trump did regarding the articles of impeachment. Anybody getting their news on this trial from Fox will really have no idea what is going on or what the case is that the House managers of the prosecution are arguing.

I am not following the trial fully, and I am only occasionally popping to Fox News to see what they are doing, but I have seen enough.  The main thing they do, and I am seeing Sean Hannity do more of it after seeing Tucker Carlson also do it, is that they barely show the presentations of the House managers. They cover over the presentations with themselves and their allies talking and characterizing what is being said without showing whar is being said except for scattered cherry picked comments.  For Hannity Adam Schiff is a liar and "crazy."  He  repeats standard talking points he has presented almost every night for months, but never lets the House managers actually their stuff.  Tucker Carlson is no better.

Last night we had the extreme spectacle that I actually saw live, of while Hakeem Jeffries was speaking Tucker Carlson had a large chryon scrolling under him saying "Dems Push Hysterical Talking Points in Trial."  As  it is, most observers have noted that whatever  one thinks of the bottom line, the House managers have presented careful arguments supported by lots of evidence.  Nothing "hysterical" about any of it.

However, it appears that Chief Justice Roberts is tilting to the GOP.  Late last night Jerrold Nadler accurately declared that the Trump lawyers were "lie, lie, lie."  This triggered Roberts to criticize both sides for using bad language, although it was clear he was directing this at Nadler.  However, indeed, the Trump lawyers had used personal invective and words like "hypocrisy" repeatedly all day long with nary a whisper of complaint from Roberts.  As it is, Republicans have since been all over everywhere complaining about Nadler's language, even though he was completely correct in his charge.

Anyway, again, anybody getting their information on this trial from Fox News will simply have no idea what is being said by the House managers.  This performance is a new low for them.

Barkley Rosser

8 comments:

pgl said...

Lindsey Graham has already told us that he will ignore the evidence presented. Something about "not giving this the time of day". I guess during the presentations he is using his iPhone to tune into the Faux News coverage.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Actually this should be called Covering Up the Coverup of the Coverup because it is Fox News covering up that the GOP senators are covering up the Trump administration's coverup of Trump's impeachable conduct.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

The following is a quotation from today's ed page of the Washington Post by Michael Gerson.

"Fox News and conservative talk radio - have created a narrative of establishment persecution that covers up for the Senate's coverup of the Trump coverup."

ken melvin said...

In a third world banana republic and in places like Turkey, Russia, China, … the courts, the justice department, the state department, and the military would be co-opted by the head of state; making it difficult to get rid of the bastard.

What the hell happened here?

The symptoms aren't new to American soil; think Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, ... all of the ex-confederates; after the civil war, many long after, and some today, were/are places where racism and patronage dominates, and economics is some form of feudalism.

When and where did this spread to the nation as a whole? Probably had genesis in the Goldwater- Reagan era. By 1990, Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr attempted a coup to overthrow a democratically elected president and install a government more akin those of the South.

Today, resultant another questionable presidential election in a series of questionable elections, we have a president who: has co-opted the justice department by appointing a right wing ideologue Attorney General after being unable to shake down the likes of James Comey, ….; has, with the help of a senate majority leader from a small backward state who was born and raised to teenage in Alabama, further co-opted the judicial with the appointment of ever more right wing Federalist Society judges to the federal courts.

Any damned fool can criticize. Trump, a big critic of the previous administration, filled his administration with like damned fools such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton (AKA the father of North Kore's Nuclear Program), Mick Mulvaney, … Pompeo saw himself as much much smarter than Hillary Clinton or John Kerry. Problem was, he wasn't smart enough to understand what it was they were they were trying to do. Same could be said about Trump.

Watching world leaders cringe for America is really hard.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Pompeo has made a complete fool of himself today, apparently screaming and cursing at NPR reporter Megan Kelly because she kept asking him when he defended for Ukraine Amb.Maeie Yovanovitch after he claimed he had defended all his State Dept staff. He also demanded she point out Ukraine on an unmarked globe, which she did, a European Studies major out of Cambridge U. in UK, although he is now claiming she pointed to Bangladesh. Quite a performance this one.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Oh, and we have the leader of the VFW demanding that Trump apologize publicly for minimizing the seriousness of the tramatic brain injuruies suffered by 34 US trrops as a result of the Iranian missile strike in Iraq in response to his assassination of Gen. Soeimani. Claims they had "headaches" and some other "minor" problems. Ugh.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

The reporter Pompeo screamed at was Mary Louise Kelly, and this happeneed on Friday, not today.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Completly unsurprising, during the opening Republican defense yesterday, crawling with lies, Fox News was playing it live with the sound. Those in the Fox News bubble will have their perfect world undisturbed.