Look at it from President Trump’s point of view. He has been totally up front with everybody about what kind of person he is, and about 35% of the country still loves him, unconditionally. He could, literally, have his masked agents execute peaceful civilians, in their car, restrained face down on the pavement, trying to run from a masked mob of heavily armed agents, and they’d still vote for him. He could promise lower gas prices and no new wars, get over 70,000,000 votes, and then, when necessary, start to carpet bomb Iran (excursion, not war, excursion!) declare immediate victory in the war, and watch as the price of gas spiked. Then righteously vent epic fury that traitorous Europeans and Chinese will do nothing to open the strategic choke point, the Strait of Hormuz
As the president knows very well, the world is a cruel and unfair place. If you don’t get your enemies first, and keep punching, kicking and shooting them while they’re down, they will eventually surround and kill you. That’s why the Iran Excursion is existential for the president. You don’t need a business degree from Wharton to know any of this.
In his first term, he surrounded himself with unreliable people. His first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, listened to the advice of the DOJ’s Office of Ethics (ethics, for fuck’s sake!), because he’d lied, in the Senate, about his contacts with Russia. Ethics (fucking ETHICS!) told Sessions his involvement in investigating Trump’s ties with Putin had a clear appearance of impropriety — and like a coward he recused himself and refused to un-recuse. By stepping away from the investigation, Sessions paved the way for the traitorous Robert Mueller, who then accused Trump, basically, of ten counts of obstruction of justice, while also totally exonerating him from the Russia Hoax. After his total exoneration Trump publicly humiliated Sessions, and later destroyed what was left of his political career. He had other disloyal, traitorous, selectively “ethical” assholes in his first administration, and they leaked terrible lies about him. Lessons learned, mistakes he would not repeat next time.
An oath of personal loyalty to the president, demonstrated by an ability to angrily lie publicly in any situation, (along with iron-clad nondisclosure agreements), would ensure Trump’s second administration would run much smoother than the first. With Kristi Noem, a posing pinhead, in charge of Homeland Security (along with FEMA and the TSA), Pete ‘no quarter, no mercy’ Hegseth, a misogynistic alcoholic sadist, in charge of the Department of WAR, Kashyap Pramod Patel, enraged author of a children’s book praising a Godlike Trump, leading the FBI, and a pliant, cherub-faced white Christian fascist as Speaker of the House — what could go wrong in squashing protests, intimidating enemies foreign and domestic, dominating the legislative branch, sodomizing the Constitution, and so on? Appoint your criminal and impeachment lawyers to head the Department of Justice and who can touch you? Only the fucking media, with their constant lies and fake news. That’s where loyalist Brendan Carr, partisan head of the FCC, comes in.
The New York Times, often named by name as among the worst of the worst by the president (along with the lickspittle Bezos-owned Washington Post, not currently licking quite enough spittle), reported on the attack on mass media with uncharacteristic urgency, and fewer qualifiers than usual. The gist is that Brendan Carr is openly threatening broadcasters with the loss of their licenses, for failure to serve the public good, if they report lies about the president’s perfect, already historically successful, meticulously planned and war gamed non-war excursion in Iran. Carr is equally outraged about the lie that Biden “won” in 2020, but that’s another story. The Times (from link above):
The goal seems to be pressuring journalists to back off critical coverage of the war effort, or to at least encourage the public to second-guess reporting that runs counter to the administration’s preferred narrative. And the effort has gone well beyond words.
Mr. Trump’s top media regulator, Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, issued an explicit warning to broadcast television networks on social media, writing that “hoaxes and news distortions” could lead to the revocation of licenses for local stations, a threat that Mr. Trump said he was “so thrilled to see.”
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, doing what she does so well:
[She] said in a statement on Monday: “The media has been undeniably biased and negative in its coverage of President Trump and Operation Epic Fury. Anybody with eyes and ears can see this.”
So true, so fucking true, Karoline, it brings tears to the eyes, and also to the ears. Anybody with eyes and ears can see this!
Another [Trump] post blamed Iranian AI and disinformation for stories that he said are “FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” He reiterated support for Carr’s attack on the media and insisted he won the presidential election “IN A LANDSLIDE.” source
Obviously.


Brian Tyler Cohen, with a nationwide chorus of fair and balanced analysis of the spike in gasoline prices, “short term pain for long term gain.” You betcha.


















