Like a curvy couch of parrots, Fox & Friends repeated Donald Trump’s latest hate for America as truth, this time blaming any economic problems on the media and anyone who doesn’t blindly support Trump as they do.
On Sunday, The New York Times noted that Trump is “confronting perhaps the most ominous economic signs of his time in office” not by seeing what he can do to address the matter but by “lashing out at what he believes is a conspiracy of forces arrayed against him.”
He has insisted that his own handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, is intentionally acting against him. He has said other countries, including allies, are working to hurt American economic interests. And he has accused the news media of trying to create a recession.
“The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Mr. Trump tweeted last week. “The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!”
The chorus of sycophants known as Fox & Friends sounded as though Trump had pre-scripted their comments.
Cohost Ainsley Earhardt, who claims, “I do not want to come across as being in the tank” for Trump never looked more tankified. She exclaimed, as though she had thought of this all on her own, “It’s so obvious what they’re doing! They do not want him to win again! And they don't like that the economy's doing well, apparently.” Earhardt also claims to want to be a journalist who asks “tough questions.” But she didn’t seem to ask any questions before coincidentally sounding just like Trump.
Guest Charles Payne, a Fox Business host, agreed.
PAYNE: The CEO of Bank of America put it the best: Brian Moynihan said that the only fear of recession we have is fear of recession. In other words, the only thing that can happen in this country right now that can derail this economic juggernaut is if everyone believes it's going to be derailed. And, I hate to say it, but to a degree the media almost did that in December. And I think some people do it deliberately. Listen, there is no economic data out there that suggests we are on the cusp of a recession.
Just because we are not “on the cusp of a recession” doesn’t mean there are not warning signs. Besides last week’s market plunge (not even this group argued that was fake news), based on the so-called inverted yield curve, often a precursor to a recession, U.S. manufacturing is already in a recession.
Then there is Trump’s trade war with China. The Financial Times recently reported, “’It’s a dangerous game,’ said Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer at Pimco, the giant bond investment group. ‘We think some economic damage is dealt every day that this uncertainty lingers.’”
But on Fox & Friends, Glorious Leader Trump is totally winning or else being sabotaged by the enemy. After exclaiming about soaring retail, Payne doubled down on parroting Trump. “The bottom line is, is there seems to be a deliberate attempt by many people to make this economy go into recession,” Payne accused.
“You mean talk it down,” Doocy said, without challenge.
“Talk it down,” Payne reiterated.
Watch the propaganda below, from the August 19, 2019 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
No wonder Trump looks so bloated. Look at all the Fox News sycophants who’ve crawled up his ass!
For those who were asleep for the past decade, the history isn’t that complicated.
In the 2000s, under the failed stewardship of Dick Cheney in the W White House, the US economy expanded a massive amount of consumer debt in multiple forms while the major companies gouged the consumers as much as they could. In the short term, this had appeared to be a growing economy, but the signs all pointed to a bubble that would burst – particularly in terms of real estate, where too many people were buying property they couldn’t afford. Cheney and his cronies had hoped the economy would float at least until mid 2009, so they could escape office and claim that they’d left a wonderful situation for the next White House. Instead, the whole thing imploded starting at the end of 2007 and accelerating through 2008.
During the 2008 campaign, Fox News desperately tried to paint the situation as totally fine, with Sean Hannity frantically shouting down any guest who dared admit the truth.
As soon as President Obama was elected and took office, Fox News and the Right Wing immediately turned on a dime and declared that the economy was practically in a depression, and that it was all the fault of the Democratic Party and President Obama somehow. Throughout Obama’s first term, the GOP and their friends in Right Wing media repeatedly talked down the economy. When President Obama announced his plans to stimulate the economy, Rush Limbaugh countered at CPAC with a hysterical scream of “I HOPE HE FAILS!!!!” All the way up to Election Day 2012, Right Wingers kept banging the drum that the economy was in ruins thanks to that terrible Obama and that they hoped he would be a one term president. When President Obama defied them and was re-elected instead, the Right Wing media simply continued talking down everything that happened in the economy. Among their tactics, by the way, was a refusal to extend unemployment benefits and a refusal to allow the ACA expansions to go into effect in multiple states. This was partly to kneecap the programs, but it was also intended to put the clamps on Middle Class and working class families across the country – payback for their temerity and potentially planting a seed for them to feel anger at the Dems and vote another way come 2016.
As soon as Trump squeaked through in 2016 and Mike Pence became the acting president, Fox News and the Right Wing turned on a dime once again and suddenly the economy was all roses. Even when farmers were getting pounded by ill-advised tariffs. Even when Middle Class employees were suddenly targeted for massive tax increases in the GOP Tax Transfer of 2017.
And now that we hear today about the economy showing extremely ominous signs (enough that Right Wing radio shows regularly have commercials warning their elderly listeners to buy gold to be ready for the oncoming problem…), the Right Wing media wants you to believe that any discussion of the problems Pence has created is just sour grapes and an attempt to talk down this White House.
What an incredibly brazen example of projection and what a daring attempt to rewrite history. It’s too bad that some of us actually have memories of the recent past, or maybe this trick could have worked.