First, here’s the good news – since the election, CNN is beating Fox News in average viewers.  Now the bad news – Fox and CNN both are losing to Newsmax.  Why?  Fox isn’t “Trumpy” enough for the red hats, but still unwatchable for normal people.  Newsmax and an even worse OAN have taken over the alt-right folks who are abandoning Fox in droves as more of their anchors have acknowledged that Trump has no chance of stealing the election from Biden.  If you’ve never watched Newsmax and OAN, don’t bother.  By way of description, if Fox News is manure, Newsmax and OAN are nuclear waste.  They have created a Superfund site of toxic and deadly conspiracy theories, gross exaggerations, and freeform lying.  And Trumpists lap it up. Since the election CNN has averaged 1.73 million viewers, more than double a year ago. Fox News Channel averaged 1.56 million and MSNBC 1.53 million viewers.  More important, Newsmax, a safe haven for delusional Trumpists to hide from gravity and arithmetic, Newsmax beat Fox for the first time ever.  Newsmax commentators, even today, continue to peddle the lies that Trump is going to prevail over Biden.

Newsmax and OAN (as well as some remaining Fox programming) engage in prodigious lying, creating toxic propaganda that has now made it impossible for normal people to engage their viewers in any kind of productive debate.  In recent days, I’ve attempted discourse with several people, and it’s like arguing with an audio recording that’s running backwards.  These folks have bought in to the Dominion fairytale, the suitcases full of ballots narrative, and even the new “Office of the President-Elect” story ignoring the decades of the use of that term.  Even talking to these folks is exhausting because you simply can’t make any progress.

Even though Trump will soon be hiding at Mar a Lago and fighting criminal and civil charges in New York, the damage he inflicted and made recovery of our democracy even more remote.  I personally don’t see a route to recovery.

Donny Deutsch, a former Trump friend, was on MSNBC’s Nicolle today giving his perspective on Trump’s inexplicable claims of massive non-existent voter fraud.  His take?  Business. Business, plain and simple.  And it makes perfect sense.  Deutsch says that the “Trump Revolution Network“, a new subscription channel, is in preproduction preparing to launch as soon as Trump storms out of the White House claiming that the election was stolen from him.  He also asserted that Trump has already trademarked the term”Telerally” and is trying to set himself up as Republican kingmaker, demanding that future candidates kiss his ring to avoid his Omniscient Twitter Attacks that would sink the campaign of anyone who dares cross him.  Later on The Beat with Ari Melber, guest and confessed felon, Michael Cohen, pretty much confirmed the same theory, that this is all staging for the next step in Trump’s toxic career.  Cohen claims that Trump has no remaining revenue left, and is going to attempt to establish himself as the gatekeeper to Republican Nirvana.

This makes more sense to me that any other theory for his idiotic claims of voter fraud, even going so far as sending out Trump Humper Mike Pompeo to assert that there will be a “peaceful transition of power to a second Trump administration.”  With all the opacity of current events, one thing is clear…Trump and all of his enablers, including Pompeo, Barr, Trump Jr, Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Miller, and other Trumpists MUST be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  It’s hard to overthrow democracy from a prison cell.  It might, though, be a good setting for Trump’s new reality series, Celebrity Felon, Cell Block C Edition.

A company run by Trump’s digital director was caught sending thousands of incendiary texts to Trump supporters telling them to amass in Philadelphia and falsely demonstrate that Dems were stealing the election.  This will pretty much shoot down Giuliani’s claims of voter fraud.

Must read.  A great article today by Jennifer Rubin the the Washington Post about stopping right wing myth making.

The Washington Post is reporting that at least 5 of the terrorists who have been charged with planning the kidnapping and murder of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer played prominent roles in the April protests where the capital was swarmed by heavily armed gun nuts.  Three of said nuts are in the now famous photo standing menacing people in the capitol building.

At least 5 of those charged played active roles in these protests that shut down the state government and were active in 7 other protests around the state until they were arrested.  It’s also come to light that these terrorists identified themselves with the Boogaloos Bois movement which is spreading a violent ideology.  After we witnessed Trumpists stopping traffic and even threatening Biden campaign busses over the weekend, it’s clear now that Republican leaders, through decades of gross negligence and radical ideology, have unleashed evil forces in the US not see since the Kennedy assassination in the early 60s and the American Nazi movement in the 30s.

We must pull back from the brink shine the light on these criminals.  Enough of this is enough.

Many of us believe Trump doesn’t care whether you live or die.  There is ample evidence of that from his behavior over the years, but was in plain view last night at Eppley Airfield outside of Omaha, Nebraska.  To use Air Force One as his backdrop, he had thousands of supporters bussed 4 miles to a remote area on the airport.  He held said rally, playing all of his Fat Elvis hits, then boarded his plane and was gone.

Thousands of his supporters were then left stranded out on the airfield, with few buses taking people back.  Oh, and it was 30 degrees last night.  Emergency medical teams were called and were treating people for hypothermia.  At least 7 people remain hospitalized this morning.

Two lessons here: 1) He really doesn’t care if you live or die; 2) Incompetence pervades every aspect of Trumpland.  They can’t even get buses right.