Apparently, talking up Donald Trump’s latest moves to sabotage Americans’ health insurance and the Iran nuclear deal were a bridge too far for even the Dear Leader Morning Cheerleading Squad otherwise known as Fox & Friends. So they did the next best thing and tried to sell it as a cure for the Obama years.
The choice of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski tells you everything you need to know about the propagandistic aims of the segment. He has no background in either health policy or anything related to the Iran nuclear deal. Indeed, his only credential seems to be as a Trump loyalist.
“The Iranian deal has been a terrible deal for the American people,” Lewandowski claimed. And yet, he could not seem to explain Trump’s decision to decertify it without deceit.
LEWANDOWSKI: What [Trump] has done is, he has empowered his ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, to go and make sure that the Iranian deal is being followed through on and she went to Vienna, she met with the executives of the IAEA, the international atomic agency, and then she went and she gave a speech in Washington, D.C. a few months back to lay the groundwork for the fact that she didn’t believe that this deal was actually being followed through on.
What Lewandowski “forgot” to mention is that the IAEA said Iran is in compliance. Furthermore, Trump’s secretary of defense, secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his chief of staff and his national security advisor all reportedly advised against Trump's decision.
So why on earth would Lewandowski cite Haley, a woman with no diplomatic experience before becoming the ambassador to the U.N. and still without any background in nuclear issues, Middle East issues or national security?
Well, it just so happens Haley is reportedly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job.
Not one of the three Trump Friends Playing News Hosts On TV corrected the distortion nor told viewers the whole truth.
Instead, cohost Abby Huntsman suggested we should all accept these likely dire and destabilizing moves of Trump because it’s what he promised on the campaign trail. “As you said, this is what the president promised on the campaign trail, undoing the Obama era policies,” she chirped. “No one should be surprised.”
Then, instead of wondering what the effect of Trump’s wrecking ball might be on Americans, Huntsman prodded partisan Lewandowski to make political hay by “wondering” if Trump is successful “with turning some of these things around” (Iran, Obamacare and immigration), then “what will former President Barack Obama’s legacy be?”
Lewandowski took his cue. “His legacy will be one of a failure,” Lewandowski said, before moving on to crow about Trump having “done more in the first 10 months or so of the administration in ridding the world” of ISIS “than the Obama administration in eight years” and crediting Trump for “new highs” in the stock market. Laughably, he claimed that by “unbiased metrics” Trump is “far and away above anything that the Obama administration has been able to do.”
And yet, Obama remains far more popular than Trump will probably ever be.
I’ll have more to say about this segment in my next post.
Meanwhile watch the cheerleading below, from the October 14, 2017 Fox & Friends.
(H/T NewsHound Richard)
.@CLewandowski_: "There was a sexual assaulter in the White House. He was called @BillClinton." pic.twitter.com/ZN5qNEYVUh
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 14, 2017
The Pence White House made significant moves in three areas this week to push their agenda – that of erasing the presidency of Barack Obama and declaring him a failure.
1. For DACA, they sent a poison pill memo demanding complete capitulation by the Dems on every vicious idea in the Right Wing hive mind about how to deal with undocumented immigrants. And if the Dems cave on absolutely everything? Maybe the Pence White House will let only the current DACA enrollees stay in the country with no hope of ever attaining citizenship. Of course, their families will be deported, but the kids can stay on their own, which should be great for everyone, right? And obviously, the Pence White House knows this will never happen – meaning that DACA will be finished by March (they’ve already stopped taking applications) and the enrollees will be subject to deportation at that time. Pence’s actual intention is to try to blame the coming chaos on the Dems for not caving. I think most people will understand it differently, but that won’t matter to the DACA group, some of whom will relocate to Canada and other countries that want their services, and the rest of whom will go underground again – which was always the intention of the Right Wing here.
2. For Iran, Trump’s nonsensical statement on Friday shows that the USA is leaving the agreement. This will not end the agreement, since multiple other countries are still in it with Iran – it just means the USA is stomping its foot and reneging. Pence’s obvious hope here is that Iran will be angered by the threat of new sanctions and will walk away themselves, thus allowing Trump to blame Iran for the whole mess. My hope is that Iran follows sager advice and stays in the agreement with the other participating countries – and that Iran sends all the civilian commercial business coming out of that agreement (oil, new factory construction, trade, etc) to the countries that stayed in – like France, Germany, Russia. There’s nothing requiring Iran to reward the Pence White House for bad behavior and they shouldn’t. But they hopefully won’t blow off the agreement – after the Pence group has been voted out of office, we may be able to salvage something here. That’s three years away, but it’s the best we can hope for at this time.
3. Regarding the ACA, the Pence White House just showed exactly what it thinks of Dems – complete hatred. Pence was well aware that several Senators from both parties were trying to work together to find a bipartisan solution that would stabilize the markets Trump has repeatedly disrupted and panicked. But rather than allow a bipartisan idea to develop, Pence has instead encouraged Trump to gut the basic rules of the ACA by Executive Order, and now has finally taken the step we predicted here 10 months ago – namely to pull the subsidies from the exchanges, thus crashing them. Since the money is not being supplied (and even a court ruling would not affect this), the insurers are free to leave any situation where they are being asked to lose money. This also means lower income people in the exchanges are in serious trouble – they are likely to lose their policies in short order – which is of course the intention here. The childish action here is not surprising (we’ve known that Trump and Pence are bullies at heart for some time now, and this action was easily foreseeable), but it is being done for a specific purpose – to punish Obama voters and supporters for having had the temerity to think a program like this would ever survive. The best part about the delivery of the ACA news on Friday was the smugness dripping from both Trump and Pence.
Again, the purpose of all of this, which Lewandowski is correctly reflecting, is to bully and attack anyone in the country who believed in the notion of “Yes We Can”. Lewandowski understands that the intent is to kick those voters in the face a few times – to make sure they know what happens if you don’t give up your lunch money when you’re told. My hope at this point is that people remember the anger they are experiencing over this behavior, and that they put it to good use next year and in 2020. It is imperative that Dem voters DO NOT stay home again. I really hope they’ve learned their lesson from 2016, because the results of them staying home have been truly unfortunate.