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.

A great opinion piece in the NY Times this week by Bret Stephens drew a direct parallel line between today’s Team Trump and the German army’s defeat in 1918.  The commonality is the term Dolchstosslegende, which literally means “stab in the back myth”, and was used during the remilitarization in Weimar period after WWI.  The myth goes like this – when the German army was being routed all over northern Europe towards the end of the war in 1918, it was actually winning, and corrupt politicians stabbed the military in the back by signing an armistice with the Allies to end the war.  That lie was used thousands of times by Hitler and his henchmen as they seized power from the “schemers” (politicians and Jews), proclaiming they were restoring Germany’s honor and greatness.  Sound familiar?

Dolchestosslegende is precisely what Trump, Rudy, and his merry band of deplorables are using against Americans to steal the election from a duly elected President, Joe Biden.  And the amazing feature of this myth is that it really doesn’t matter if the lies are blatantly false; it proves that if your repeat an outrageous lie enough times, people will believe it.  Trumpland is so inured to receiving lies that they are simply accepted, even though they are pure farce.

And that is the point.

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

Just like everything else Trump, information about his case of COVID-19 is wholly and completely uninformative, not to mention unsettling. Sean Conley, his physician (not a MD, but an Osteopath), is obviously on a very short leash being controlled completely by Trump and his henchman.  The timeline, true condition, vital signs, and prognosis for Trump are completely opaque.  The information is so inconsistent and poor that the possibilities for his condition range from he’s not sick and faking the whole thing to he’s already dead.

To confuse matters even more, the WH has released photos of Trump “working” and even posted a video of Trump doing a “single take” video talking about how great he’s feeling.  Yes, that’s all bullshit.  The photos, taken in two different rooms showing him supposedly working throughout the day are staged, and taken 10 minutes apart using the same binder, folders, and Trump’s signature fat sharpie he uses for autographs.  The Washington Post has just posted an expert analysis of the video, concluding that it is heavily edited with a tool called Fluid Morph which camouflages edits.  They even found one part of the video where he was starting to cough, but then doesn’t.  Also, you can see the background shifting through the various edits.  This is the technique used in so-called “deep fakes” where videos are altered to show events that didn’t actually happen.  Here’s the video:

It is key that Americans understand clearly the condition of their president, but that is simply not going to happen with Trump.  Falsehoods are genetically encoded in him, and he will lie when telling the truth is easier.  We will likely never know the true extent of Trump’s illness until after he leaves office.

Trump lies about his enemies’ mental states and physical health in a continuous stream as long as those lies serve his purposes, whatever those are.  Well, karma turned on him yesterday, this time self inflicted.  Here’s how the story has evolved:

Remember last November when Trump made a rushed and unexpected trip to Walter Reed Hospital?  The trip was not scheduled, and he was accompanied by the White House physician.  We asked about the trip, a spokesman said the trip was for preliminary tests before Trump’s annual physical.  We all knew THAT was a lie, but no one really figured out the real reason.  Well, now we know and it’s not good; for Trump I mean.  Here’s how the story is playing out…

Yesterday a new book titled Trump v. The United States by NY Times reporter Michael Schmidt was published.  It is an investigative look at the chaos of the Trump WH and how he is actually threatening the very survival of democracy in the US.  In the book, though, Schmidt mentions that during said November trip to Walter Reed, Pence was put on standby to take over in case Trump needed to be put under anesthesia for a surgical procedure.  That story had not been picked up by any major news agency, and then Trump tweeted this:

So, Trump denies reports that he had a series of mini strokes, when, in fact NO ONE WAS REPORTING THAT.  Maggie Haberman of the NY Times then tweeted:

So, Trump, frantic to kill any story that happens to be true about his health, actually outed himself.  As you would expect, the Twitterverse exploded, and one doctor even gave a plausible argument that Trump is actually displaying signs that he has had a stroke:

The fact that Trump has had a series of strokes explains a LOT of his physical issues including slurring of words, his difficulty walking down the ramp at West Point, and trouble drinking water with one hand.  Everyone in the United States (except for Trumpists) know Trump is in terrible physical condition.  He is at least 40 pounds overweight, he eats junk food every day, and even had to ride a golf cart during a walk of world leaders during a G7 meeting in 2017.  The possibility that he’s had a series of strokes explains all of those unanswered questions about Trump’s health.

Karma is a bitch, to be sure.

Dana Boente, 38 year veteran of the FBI and its top lawyer was fired yesterday after he was criticized by Trump Toad Lou Dobbs on Fox News.  The order to fire him came from a “high level”, and not FBI director Christopher Wray.  Boente led the investigation of Russian colluder Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI  about his role with the Russians.

The firing happened on the same day that a new transcript of Flynn’s conversation with Sergey Kislyak was released by the White House that showed he actually WAS colluding with the Russians.

You just can’t make this up.