Trump Tweets Fox News Clips Directly as the Symbiosis of Stupid Reaches a Climax (Esquire)

[highplainsdem]

Jack Holmes opinion piece in Esquire:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26881469/trump-tweet-fox-news-clips-directly/

The Symbiosis of Stupid between Donald Trump, American president, and the Fox News Channel has come to define our era in a way that rivals The Death of Shame. Now that pretty much every organization the president has ever run is under investigation—from the already shuttered Trump Foundation and Trump University, to the Trump campaign, the Trump inaugural committee, the Trump transition, and the Trump Organization—he has begun to sink deeper and deeper into the infotainment vortex. He has correctly identified that maintaining his grip on political power may be the best way to keep himself out of the slammer, as a sitting president cannot, according to current Justice Department doctrine, be indicted.

He has also correctly ascertained that part of his strategy for maintaining that power must be to maximize the diameter of The Bubble. The president must rope as many people as possible into the void of Fox News and talk radio, where he is one of the great presidents ever—many people are saying the best, except maybe Abraham Lincoln—and all opposition to him is based in pretty grievances from Liberal Snowflakes in The Fake News Media. He has, for years now, tuned into cable news for between four and eight hours a day. It is his primary source for information. More recently, he has taken to echo-tweeting whatever they say on Fox & Friends or Hannity, spreading The Gospel According to Meatheads to his nearly 60 million followers on the Tweet Machine.

But over the last week, he has gone to another level in his efforts to draw unsuspecting travelers closer to The Bubble's event horizon. The President of the United States has begun directly tweeting video clips from his favorite TV channel—11 clips in four days, to be exact. And it all kicked off on Saturday, as it always had to, with a segment from the Fox Business program hosted by Lou Dobbs, the fascist Benjamin Button.

-snip-

The president took a break from distribution on Sunday to go absolutely intergalactic, firing off 28 tweets of varying comprehensibility. (Not to worry: the official Twitter account of the White House also shares clips from Fox News now.) But he was back Monday with a clip from Maria Bartiromo, a once relatively normal Fox Business anchor who has attended The Lou Dobbs School of Authoritarian Toadyism over the last few years.

-snip-

Well worth reading in its entirety, with great comments on other Fox hosts, especially Jesse Watters, "the Ron Burgundy of White Resentment News" and "the enduring skidmark left by Bill O'Reilly."


Holmes concludes:

These are the worst people on television, now getting an expanded platform thanks to the President of the United States. The amount of misinformation and outright stupidity now flowing through the hellscape of the Presidential Twitter Feed is almost beyond comprehension. The president is tweeting dozens of times a day himself, often echoing whatever he sees on the teevee, but now he—or someone he employs—is just shoveling the shit directly.

All of this is putting our republic under severe strain, and not just because the president continually attacks the separation of powers or the independent judicial system or the free press. What this era has exposed is that democratic self-government requires we all adhere to some principle of truth—that it exists, and that the many things we have learned about our world through observation and the scientific method piece together to form something we can all grant, with some disagreements, constitutes reality. This theory of the world is not compatible with Jesse Watters monologues, or with a President of the United States who shares them as the Word of God.

[underpants]

1. Great read. Thanks.

[smirkymonkey]

2. When will this madness stop?

I keep thinking that it can't get any worse and that some miracle must happen to save us from this nightmare, but it never happens. Day after day it just gets uglier and he seems more undefeatable than ever (because of Russian interference, republican cheating, right wing propaganda, Fox news, etc.). This man must be stopped no matter what it takes. He has to go down.

Another two years is unbearable. Another six years will make me suicidal. I honestly don't think I could survive it.

[Lock him up.]

4. Actually, the worse hasn't happened yet (re: tariffs)

Once the orange mob boss imposes tariffs on European cars, the EU will impose tariffs on US cars. Prices will skyrocket, the economy will go South in a few weeks if not days. Car workers in Michigan will lose their jobs and everybody working with suppliers in the local communities too, extending into Ohio. Approval numbers for the orange mob boss are already dismal in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will not give him the tiny margin he got for the EC.

He's going the Bush way: Recession (if not Depression...).

GOTV for November 2020! There's no other way unless the House investigations find irrefutable pieces of evidence for most of his crimes, and even then, the Repuglican Senate could turn a blind eye.

[Drum]

3. Re trump's twitter messages...

Am I correct in recalling that it's been legally/officially determined that they are truly considered presidential communications, archiving required, and ostensibly "on the record"?

Just such a mountain of EVIDENCE!