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Fox News Created This Problem

  

Category:  Op/Ed

Via:  john-russell  •  5 years ago  •  41 comments

Fox News Created This Problem
In other words, Barr came out of retirement after spending a couple of decades marinating his brain in Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly every night. He’s grumpy and reality-challenged, and whatever moral compass he ever had has atrophied into dust.

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



Fox News Created This Problem



October 2, 2019

The people who are close to William Barr, who really   know  him, know that he only ever turns off  Fox News   when an opportunity arises to run outside and yell at kids on bikes. What a gift that he managed to make that a full time gig as attorney general of the United States!

He essentially   applied for the job   by convincing the president that he had a plan for shutting down the Mueller investigation. Now he has been tasked with undermining the entire rationale for the Mueller investigation by “proving” that it wasn’t Russia that helped Trump but Ukraine that helped Clinton. It’s the ultimate get-off-my-sidewalk move.

Here’s some   reporting   from Philip Rucker and Robert Costa of the   Washington Post :


Barr’s role in the investigation into the Russia probe’s origins, which is being conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut, is extraordinary in part because the probe seeks evidence of misconduct within his own Justice Department to support the conspiracy theory — embraced by Trump and advanced on Fox News — that the Russia inquiry was corrupt and predicated on undermining Trump…

…The White House and Justice Department have defended this review of the investigation into possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign as appropriate; Barr told Congress in April that he believed “spying did occur.”

Barr’s interest in the probe is unsurprising to several of his associates, who said this week he is a headstrong and deeply conservative man who at this point in his career has grown disdainful of the Democratic Party, the federal government and the news media, criticizing them in private as biased and skewed against the president.

In other words, Barr came out of retirement after spending a couple of decades marinating his brain in Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly every night. He’s grumpy and reality-challenged, and whatever moral compass he ever had has atrophied into dust.

The story has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times, all over the country. You hear about it all the time. “I can’t even talk to my father anymore.” “My mother is so bitter.” “My brother never used to be a racist.”

That’s what   Fox News   consumption will do to a person over time. Before you know it, they’re nodding in approval when the president   says   we should shoot asylum seekers in the legs to slow them down or build a moat on the border filled with snakes and crocodiles.

Rucker and Costa continue, explaining how Trump’s   Fox News -inspired worldview has taken hold throughout the government.


But taken together, they illustrate the sweeping reach of Trump’s power and the culture he has spawned inside the government. The president’s personal concerns have become priorities of departments that traditionally have operated with some degree of political independence from the White House — and their leaders are engaging their boss’s obsessions.
“Barr and Pompeo are stuck in the fog machine. They seem captives of the president’s perverse worldview,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “Authoritarian regimes have this problem all the time . . . when all government activity is the product of the id of the leader. But in a republic, that’s unusual.”

There are some obsessions of Trump’s that seem independent of   Fox News , inspired perhaps by even loonier regions of the interwebs. But it’s mostly untrue that people like Barr and Pompeo are buckling to a foreign perspective. They hold their current positions precisely because they, like the president, have lost the ability to distinguish between truth and propaganda. Spending twenty years watching Lou Dobbs wet his pants over Mexican immigration will do that to even sturdier stock.

Anyone in the Trump administration who still retained the ability to be skeptical when Laura Ingraham is talking was quickly sacked. The lemmings replaced them.

Some of these lemmings, like Barr and   Pompeo , are borderline brilliant in terms of their raw intelligence. Their reasoning ability didn’t collapse overnight or completely, so it was also necessary for the morals to collapse. It’s this second piece that allows them to plod ahead over the objections of that little voice in their head that still knows they are peddling bullshit. It doesn’t matter because they have to beat the other side. It doesn’t matter because they’re   the last hope for white people .

It is an urgent problem that these people are running the most powerful government on Earth, armed with enough radiation to destroy all life on the planet. And none of this would be possible without the influence of  Fox News. 

Donald Trump will be gone someday, but half our country will still be yelling at kids on bikes.


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JohnRussell
Professor Principal
1  seeder  JohnRussell    5 years ago
There are some obsessions of Trump’s that seem independent of   Fox News , inspired perhaps by even loonier regions of the interwebs. But it’s mostly untrue that people like Barr and Pompeo are buckling to a foreign perspective. They hold their current positions precisely because they, like the president, have lost the ability to distinguish between truth and propaganda. Spending twenty years watching Lou Dobbs wet his pants over Mexican immigration will do that to even sturdier stock. Anyone in the Trump administration who still retained the ability to be skeptical when Laura Ingraham is talking was quickly sacked. The lemmings replaced them.
 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
1.1  Greg Jones  replied to  JohnRussell @1    5 years ago

Putting this through the truth translator says that the left is scared shitless of what Barr and Durham and going to turn up against all the bad actors on the left.

Stay tuned for the coming investigations and indictments on the deplorable left wing slimers,

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
1.1.1  MrFrost  replied to  Greg Jones @1.1    5 years ago
bad actors on the left.

LOL!!!!!! You support the most lawless president in history, and you are worried about bad actors on the left? Greg, go start an article about all those bad actors, sure to get a lot of traffic. 

 
 
 
igknorantzrulz
PhD Quiet
1.2  igknorantzrulz  replied to  JohnRussell @1    5 years ago

If people are too stupid to see Trumps reactions to the few there, who actually, have the audacity to report reality, as opposed to talking points designed by those inclined to create an agenda that in order to defend, a LIE is a constant requirement ,  they are deserved of bedding down in,    As their acquired deception is worn like a badge of dishonest dishoner , but they realize not, that they are honoring those who remove the right to even have, Dis Honor 

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
1.2.1  MrFrost  replied to  igknorantzrulz @1.2    5 years ago

Damn right Iggy.. 

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
2  MrFrost    5 years ago

I think Barr slept through the class that explained he is not the president's personal lawyer. 

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
2.1  Greg Jones  replied to  MrFrost @2    5 years ago

Nah....that would be Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
2.1.1  MrFrost  replied to  Greg Jones @2.1    5 years ago

Nah....that would be Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch

You will be relieved to hear that they don't work for the US government anymore, and, they are actually respected. Barr? Not so much. Barr has orange stretch marks around his mouth, should tell you something. 

 
 
 
Ronin2
Professor Quiet
2.1.2  Ronin2  replied to  MrFrost @2.1.1    5 years ago

Holder and Lynch were respected? Where did you dig up that pile of shit?

Holder was held in contempt by Congress. In case you forgot.

The House has voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal, the first time Congress has taken such a dramatic move against a sitting Cabinet official.

The vote was 255-67, with 17 Democrats voting in support of a criminal contempt resolution, which authorizes Republicans leaders to seek criminal charges against Holder. This Democratic support came despite a round of behind-the-scenes lobbying by senior White House and Justice officials - as well as pressure from party leaders - to support Holder.

Two Republicans, Reps. Steve LaTourette (Ohio) Scott Rigell (Va.), voted against the contempt resolution.

Another civil contempt resolution, giving the green light for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to sue the Justice Department to get the Fast and Furious documents, passed by a 258-95 margin. Twenty-one Democrats voted for that measure.

As for Lynch the Tarmac Queen- she wasn't even respected by Comey- of course it is hard to find anyone that Comey did respect- outside of himself, Mueller, and the Agency he presided over.

FBI Director James Comey reportedly did not trust former Attorney General Loretta Lynch when it came to the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and believed she was trying to downplay the probe. A New York Times report on the saga revealed that Lynch did not want Comey to use the word “investigation,” but rather call it a “matter.” According to the Times , Comey worried that “a Democratic attorney general was asking him to be misleading and line up his talking points with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.” Democrats, particularly those who worked on the Clinton campaign, have blamed Comey for Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, saying he inappropriately intervened in the electoral process by disclosing that the FBI was looking into newly recovered emails from her private server.

You are correct they no longer work for the government, thankfully. That is the only thing you are right about.

 
 
 
cjcold
Professor Quiet
2.1.3  cjcold  replied to  Ronin2 @2.1.2    5 years ago

Pretty sure that "fast and furious" was a GOP Bush/Cheney thingy. 

 
 
 
Ronin2
Professor Quiet
2.1.5  Ronin2  replied to  cjcold @2.1.3    5 years ago

BS, and more BS.

Operation Wide Receiver was a Bush/Cheney thingy.

Fast and Furious was all Holder (remember Obama claimed to have no knowledge of it- before claiming executive privilege for both Holder and Holder's wife that is).

Just to hi-lite some of the major differences between the two programs.

  1. Operation Wide Receiver had tracking devices implanted in the guns that were sold. Fast and Furious did not.
  2. The Mexican government was involved in Operation Wide Receiver. They were not involved, or even informed, in Fast and Furious.
  3. Fast and Furious involved far more weapons than Operation Wide Receiver.
  4. Operation Wide Receiver did a far better job tracking the weapons than Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious wanted to track the guns by finding out what crimes they were used in.
  5. A US border patrol agent (Brian Terry) and many Mexicans were killed by guns sold under Fast and Furious; not so under Operation Wide Receiver.

 But by all means keep the lie alive. 

 

 
 
 
JumpDrive
Freshman Silent
2.1.6  JumpDrive  replied to  Ronin2 @2.1.5    5 years ago
But by all means keep the lie alive. 

The tracking devices' batteries failed. 400+ of the 474 guns were lost. In F & F 1,400 of 1,800 guns were lost. To put in perspective what ATF is trying to get a handle on, the estimate is that 200,000+ guns are illegally sent in to Mexico *each* year because of US lax gun acquisition laws. These are used to murder tens of thousands of people (Mexicans & Americans) yearly. If conservatives actually gave a shit, this could be substantially stopped.

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
3  MrFrost    5 years ago

512

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
3.1  Greg Jones  replied to  MrFrost @3    5 years ago

Sounds like you get all your "news" from CNN, MSNBC, and major networks.They've got more lefties on Fox than conservatives now,

Especially the guests.

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
3.1.1  MrFrost  replied to  Greg Jones @3.1    5 years ago
Sounds like you get all your "news" from CNN, MSNBC, and major networks.They've got more lefties on Fox than conservatives now,

Yes, I get my news from networks that have journalistic integrity. Fox has none. 

And yes Greg, we know that to you, anyone that says anything that doesn't fit your political agenda is a "leftie". jrSmiley_50_smiley_image.gif

 
 
 
Sunshine
Professor Quiet
3.1.2  Sunshine  replied to  MrFrost @3.1.1    5 years ago
Yes, I get my news from networks that have journalistic integrity.

Having guest that foam at the mouth over Trump to entertain and brainwash their TDS viewers is not journalistic integrity.   Opinions having nothing to do with reporting. 

Without Trump they would have died.  Before Trump they would spend 6 months 24/7 trying to figure out how a plane crashed.  Poor Cooper and Lemon where always befuddled. 

 
 
 
cjcold
Professor Quiet
3.1.3  cjcold  replied to  MrFrost @3.1.1    5 years ago

Proud to be a liberal centrist "leftie". 

Spent my whole life standing up to far right wingers.

Marched against the war in Nam. Was a hippy in the 60s with hair.

Now an environmental scientist trying to make a difference.

So glad to have a mind of my own rather than being a corporate tool.

 
 
 
lady in black
Professor Quiet
4  lady in black    5 years ago

Fox isn't a news station, they are an opinion station.

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
4.1  Greg Jones  replied to  lady in black @4    5 years ago

CNN is an arm of the DNC

All fake news and opinions all the time.

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
4.1.1  MrFrost  replied to  Greg Jones @4.1    5 years ago
CNN is an arm of the DNC All fake news and opinions all the time.

Care to list all of those fake news stories? The only reason you say CNN is fake news is because a guy that has told over 12,000 lies in 3 years told you so. 

512

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
4.1.2  Greg Jones  replied to  MrFrost @4.1.1    5 years ago

I know from personal experience it was true, that's why I quit watching them

The only gullible people are brainwashed liberals and their supporters

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
4.1.3  MrFrost  replied to  Greg Jones @4.1.2    5 years ago
I know from personal experience it was true, that's why I quit watching them

Then you will have no problems listing all the fake news stories they have ran. We'll wait. 

 
 
 
igknorantzrulz
PhD Quiet
4.1.4  igknorantzrulz  replied to  MrFrost @4.1.3    5 years ago

i won't

 
 
 
lady in black
Professor Quiet
4.1.5  lady in black  replied to  Greg Jones @4.1    5 years ago

Fox is an arm of the rnc and gullible deporables

 
 
 
igknorantzrulz
PhD Quiet
4.1.6  igknorantzrulz  replied to  lady in black @4.1.5    5 years ago

the arm is now an amputee ,

of a sound mind that NO body, deserves

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
4.1.7  Sean Treacy  replied to  MrFrost @4.1.1    5 years ago
The only reason you say CNN is fake news is because a guy that has told over 12,000 lie

The irony of the guy citing a fake fact to call others gullible is hilarious. 

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
4.3  XXJefferson51  replied to  lady in black @4    5 years ago

Fox has an opinion section from  5-6pm and 8-11 pm. Most all newspapers have opinion pages.   The rest of Fox is news.  

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
5  MrFrost    5 years ago

I think fox news is trying to distance itself from trump....not a lot, but to a degree. Fox and friends held Mark Levine's feet to the fire the other day.. 

 
 
 
Greg Jones
Professor Participates
6  Greg Jones    5 years ago
.It appears Levin is being his old blunt self. He refuses to be silenced
MARK LEVIN: I've been watching you and a lot of reporters, and you haven't once asked for the identity of the so-called whistleblower.

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS: I want to know the identity.

MARK LEVIN: I want to know the identity. Who's asking for it?

ED HENRY: I've pointed out several times that it is second-hand information.

MARK LEVIN: That's not the same. Ed, it is not the same as saying: "I'm an American citizen. If this CIA operative is going to be the guy who brings down my president, I want to know all about him. I want to know how many dogs they have, how many marriages they've had. I wanna know f they've had any DUIs. I wanna know if their a partisan. Like they do with everybody else. I wanna know."

This guy should be cross-examined. They're going to bring down the president of the United States and the Democrats are telling us we can't identify this guy because his life might be in danger? And then everybody swings around his memo like it's the Bible. I have a lot of questions about his memo. I don't need press people interpreting it for me, I can read it myself.

I want to question this person about his memo. And as we've been told by everybody for the last two days, why is it that the CIA changed its whistleblower policy in August? When this letter is dated August 12?

Under the former policy before August, he's not a whistleblower. This isn't a whistleblower complaint and nothing is sent to the U.S. Congress.

ED HENRY: Those are fair questions, so let's get to the point. What happened in the Oval Office on that call? Was it illegal or not?

MARK LEVIN: Well, we know it's not illegal. What crime was violated? It’s not illegal. The question is whether Biden did something illegal. The president didn’t do anything illegal. You know how I know? Because Nancy Pelosi’s been on every tv show and she can’t cite one section of the United States code where it’s illegal. My question is, why is Joe Biden above the law? Why is his son above the law? Where is Hunter Biden today? Where is the media? Don’t they want to know? Don’t they want to know if the leading contender for the Democrat nomination is a crook and if his son is a crook?

Let me tell you about our president. We've had a special counsel with 2,800 subpoenas and 500 search warrants and witnesses. And 13 requests to foreign governments by Mueller. We've had four Democratic senators, three wrote a letter to Ukraine telling them they'd better help Mueller and investigate Trump. One pressured them the other week and said, you'd better not investigate Biden. What do we know about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden? Zero.

MARK LEVIN: Let me finish, Ed. You have all morning. I have two minutes. It’s not an honest question. Show me in the transcript where the president said that? Nowhere..

MARK LEVIN: What you ought to do, rather than restating it is put a graphic up and read it, that said, what's the problem with that? .. What do you mean why is it OK? You don't prove a negative. It is not illegal, it is not immoral, it is not unethical. And if you guys in the media would do your damn job and ask Joe and Hunter Biden what the hell is going on, maybe the president wouldn't have to raise the issue...

The media have taken sides here and what I’m saying is this is an utterly corrupt political, partisan process. And it’s about time we had some real reporters who would try to get to the bottom of this...
 
Gee, we have the letter, and we have the transcripts, and all I get are reporters trying to tell me what the transcript says as opposed to what I read with my own eyes and telling me it’s the offense of the century that the president of the United States dares to mention something that's in the American newspapers to the Ukrainian president. He doesn’t say, "get Biden." He doesn’t say, "I’m digging up dirt on Biden." He doesn’t say, "do me a favor and get Biden." He says, "Why don’t you talk to my attorney general, look into this. People have questions." 

I want to know. I want to know if Adam Schiff and his staff, working with this phony whistleblower. I want to know who the lawyers are who helped him write that complaint as I was the first to point out before. I want to know the whole activity that’s taking place in the shadows of this government to try and bring down a president of the United States.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
6.1  XXJefferson51  replied to  Greg Jones @6    5 years ago

Mark Levin was flat out awesome and right on in all that he said above. Bravo 👏👍🗽🇺🇸

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
7  MrFrost    5 years ago

512

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
7.1  seeder  JohnRussell  replied to  MrFrost @7    5 years ago

In general, I think that meme is quite accurate as to what has led us to the disaster we are now in. 

 
 
 
MrFrost
Professor Expert
7.1.1  MrFrost  replied to  JohnRussell @7.1    5 years ago

Not all meme's are worthless jokes. 

 
 
 
Ronin2
Professor Quiet
7.2  Ronin2  replied to  MrFrost @7    5 years ago

Yes, but you left out ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN. and a host of other leftist entities. 

What are you pissed about- that the right now have mouth pieces just like the left?

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
7.3  XXJefferson51  replied to  MrFrost @7    5 years ago

Freedom of the press is hard for the left to tolerate and accept and now they have Facebook , Google, Twitter, MBFC, the SPLC and IFCN with which to try to silence us on the right. 

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
9  Sean Treacy    5 years ago

The impeachment inquiry is being led by a guy who spent years falsely claiming he had proof of collusion between Trump and Russia...

Fix your own house. 

 
 

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