'Lyin' Eyes'

The Washington Post recently ran a headline for an article laying out Trump’s plan for implementing the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’ as a ‘muscular Oval Office’ and described what amounts to plans for a Trump-led dictatorship as a ‘post-Constitutional’ vision.

A lot of the reason many in our news media organizations are failing us in this historically fraught moment can be gleaned from that headline; turning plans for a Trump kleptocracy into a click-bait friendly, nearly sensualized headline.

There’s nothing sexy about their plans.

Nor is there anything muscular or strong about Trump and the GOP’s attempts to dismantle our democracy in favor of a would-be authoritarian.

It would be the weakest move ever and it would be carried out by absolute cowards.

Hiding behind their ill-begotten power to punish their enemies and reward their friends, taking aim at the bureaucracy that allows our government to function while making retribution and religious extremism their central tenet.

The media is as aware as any of us about the threats we face as a nation.

The problem is the editors and newsroom producers design much of their content around what they think the audience wants to hear most.

What the algorithm has already rewarded IS what determines much of what gets reported on and discussed on the cable news shows - which have all basically turned into podcasts with better lighting and fancy cameras.

Filled with endless hours of online influencers turned journalists not so subtly pushing their own podcasts, youtube shows and newsletters while repeating their same group-think talking points we have all seen and heard a thousand times already on social media.

They do this because it is what is desired and stating the obvious has become big business.

MSNBC was still pushing and re-airing their ‘Trump Trial’ special long after the jury had delivered their verdict and Donald and the GOP had moved on to their plans for retribution.

The cumulative effect of this has left a certain subset of ‘undecided voter’ woefully uniformed and worse; full of the sort of misinformation and propaganda that Trump and Fox News are pushing around the clock.

As witnessed by the multiple ‘voter roundtable’ segments that CNN runs during primetime that illuminate the ignorance so rampant in our country.

There is a dearth of wonky, fact-based reporting.

When you highlight the misinformed over educating your viewers because you know it is guaranteed to generate outrage and the almighty viral video clips most news shows are hoping for, you have a real problem on your hands as a nation.

Factor into that newspapers and social media platforms being purchased and taken over by right-wing owners hoping to shape the narrative and you have a four-alarm fire on your hands.

That is not to say there isn’t some excellent reporting being done - there is - it’s just having a hard time breaking through amongst all the click bait and noise.

Trump’s propaganda is having a definite effect on the American electorate.

This is reflected anecdotally in the undecided voters that are going on record with misinformed statements like ‘Trump will be better for the economy’.

He will not and was not: any economic gains that occurred during his term were the result of the hard work and leadership that took place during President Obama’s two terms, much of it designed by Biden, who led many of Obama’s economic recovery initiatives.

There’s a bit of a delay for economic stimulus and growth to come to fruition and Trump was fortunate enough to have much of it occur at the beginning of his term.

Before he sent it all to hell by bungling the pandemic response and using his economic stimulus package to hand out PPP loans to his buddies and hold up stimulus checks to average Americans until he could have his signature printed on them as if they were coming out of his personal bank account.

They, in fact, were coming out of the U.S. Treasury - that men like Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were busy plundering while Trump was shaking down world leaders and being impeached twice.

These men did nothing to stimulate or help our economy; they resided over the most tumultuous and corrupt administration in American history.

Kushner and his wife Ivanka left the Oval Office $640 million wealthier than when Trump flaunted his nepotism and made them White House advisors.

Despite Jared not being able to pass a security clearance until Donald over rode his own security agencies’ concerns.

Vanky herself had extensive business ties to China and started to violate the Hatch Act the moment her shiny Louboutins first stepped into the West Wing.

Kushner of course received a two billion dollar pay day when the Trump administration ended in the chaos and flames of our Capitol being attacked in an attempted coup.

Whatever favors he did for his friends in Saudi Arabia, including the murderous MBS, were handsomely rewarded by the KSA sovereign wealth fund handing over such a staggering amount to a man with no previous institutional investment experience.

It’s also worth noting that the entirety of his assets under management in his nascent hedge fund come entirely from foreign sources.

The most egregious and under-reported aspect of his greed and malfeasance may, in fact, be the mortgage loans he secured for Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate business, from Freddie Mac in 2017.

Jared got better terms, lower monthly payments and higher amounts loaned, than anyone else had ever received; to the tune of a whopping $786 million which he used to buy up more of the low-income housing his family has invested in for decades.

Much of it in Virginia and Maryland and other mid-Atlantic states; the same housing he happily evicted folks from during the pandemic when most other landlords were observing a moratorium on evictions.

Jared uses his access and power to enrich himself and essentially victimize consumers - and has faced zero accountability.

You can count on a lot more of those type of fiscal shenanigans during a second Trump term - except this time it may go basically unreported.

The truth of the matter, in terms of economic policy, is that Biden has presided over historic job growth and record unemployment.

President Biden’s key legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, has sparked manufacturing and infrastructure projects all over the U.S.

It was designed to enact an equitable recovery with carve-outs and caveats to ensure stimulus is distributed equally when it comes to hiring practices and spending.

Many of the GOP Reps have campaigned on and taken credit for projects begun as a result of this legislation that they actually voted against when the bill was on the floor of the House.

This has become standard practice in the duplicitous Republican Party.

The GOP is betting their voters will be ignorant as to the facts when they make their erroneous claims back in their home districts - and sadly they may not be wrong in their assumptions.

Even Trump took credit in recent days for capping insulin at $35, something that Biden achieved by calling out and pressuring big Pharma and inserting it into his signature legislation.

Another thing Republicans voted against when they voted against the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’.

Trump and the GOP are running a game plan of ‘who ever lies the loudest wins’.

They are aided in this by Fox News and a bevy of odious right-wing podcast hosts and pundits.

Men and women who see no dishonor in lying to their viewers on behalf of MAGA and their goals of a Christian Nationalist government.

Something ‘Project 2025’ will go along way towards achieving, especially if men like Russell Vought, an architect of the plan and rumored to be White House Chief of Staff in a second Trump term, is in charge.

A true extremist in every sense of the word and a man whose plans are so virulently antidemocratic they deserve much harsher descriptors than ‘post Constitutional’.

I’ll write more about that scabrous fascist later and the executive orders he has already drafted to allow Trump to seek revenge on his ‘enemies’ and go after immigrants and abortion rights on day one of a next term.

We must make sure there is never another Trump term - and that Trump is held accountable for his myriad crimes during his first term in office.

SCOTUS will not be an ally in this fight, as we have already seen by their delay in Trump’s immunity case, which has already pushed any hope of a trial in D.C. for his actions on January 6th and his attempt to overturn the election.

The same thing has happened in the Georgia case as we learned this week.

Despite the heroism of D.A. Fani Willis, she was attacked - as was the rule of law.

That is what they do in the GOP.

Judge Cannon is all but certain to continue to carry water for Trump and keep him from facing any sort of justice and accountability in the stolen classified documents case.

The absurdism of all this corruption is mind-boggling but all hope is not lost.

We have the truth and the facts on our side.

We have a competent Biden administration that has delivered real results to the American people with a lot more progress to come.

It is incumbent upon all of us to know the facts and distribute them freely, wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

Arm yourself with the truth and call out the lies.

Ignore the click-bait chaos and the rage-farming.

Vote Blue.

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