I’ll add a Thank You to Ellen for having dedicated so many years to this work and to this archive. Most people have no idea how much work it takes to assemble the materials and present them and to maintain a website like this.

I have one major request: Please do not delete the information from these pages. The archive of facts and documentation over the past 20 years is going to be vital for historians and students to understand exactly what happened over the course of this epoch of time.

The main purpose Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch had in creating Fox “News” in 1996 was always about history. They were hoping to rewrite history into their version, and to convince enough people that their version actually was the true history rather than an Angry Right Wing opinion about it. They were trying to create current facts on the ground by generating their own biased takes on every current event (as shown both in Outfoxed and daily on this website for 20 years) and then trying to go back and cite those “current facts” when referencing them years later. It is vital that Angry Right Wing attempts to present their biased “history” of this time be repeatedly pushed back and shown for what they are.

When Roger Ailes and Little Rush Limbaugh died of their various issues, it was important to note that their contribution to the world wasn’t to make it a better place but to make it a nastier, meaner one, and to enrich themselves in the process. They succeeded on both counts, but history should show them for what they were rather than as anything anyone could admire. And in a few years, when someone like Bill O’Reilly has his career/life retrospective whitewashed, it will be necessary for Angry Right Wing propagandists to be publicly rebuked and reminded who O’Reilly really was.

I’m not on any social media other than Facebook, where I mostly reserve my comments. I deleted my Twitter account after this election, given that it only seems to be a promotional vehicle for Little Elon Musk now. I haven’t signed up for anything else as it just feels like everyone is going off into separate silos – either to one that is promoting Little Felon Trump or to one that is noting his criminality.

I’m happy to be of any help I can for Ellen, even if it is just to keep this website online and the archive available. We cannot lose this information, or the Angry Right Wing propagandists like Roger Ailes really will be able to rewrite history to their liking.

Fox continues to engage in frantic projection rather than dealing with reality. Their panicked attempts to throw mud at President Biden should be compared with how they and other Angry Right Wing propaganda platforms behaved in 2020.

In 2020, when Little Felon Trump was the loser of the election, multiple Angry Right Wing pundits, politicians and platforms including Fox threw repeated temper tantrums and pretended that he somehow hadn’t lost and wasn’t the loser that he is. Instead, they screamed that nobody was allowed to call then President-elect Biden “president-elect” and they repeatedly lied about what happened in the election. Duffy has probably just forgotten about the fact that this led to Fox being required to pay nearly 800 million dollars in court to Dominion for defamation, and is about to lead to Fox being required to pay hundreds of millions more, if not billions more, to Smartmatic.

It’s frankly interesting how Angry Right Wingers can never stop whining and complaining, even when they prevail by a tiny plurality. We saw this in 2016 as well, and both then and now, the Right Wing anger was expressed both verbally on propaganda outlets like Fox and physically in violence and harassment. And after the Jan 6 insurrectionists get their pardons, we can look forward to a lot more violence as they act out over the years to come.

To be very clear, Little Felon Trump himself is infamous not just for repeatedly telling lies but for the sheer volume of lies he and his fans regularly emit. Does nobody remember all the lies about his “landslide” win last time, which he’s repeated this time? (In reality, he lost the popular vote and squeaked through the EC in 2016, and he barely won a plurality in 2024.). Does nobody remember all the lies about the size of his inauguration crowd or the ratings Sean Spicer amusingly tantrumed about? Does nobody remember the “big beautiful wall Mexico is going to pay for”?

There were entire websites devoted just to tracking the lies, which got to the point that the numbers went into the thousands. One imagines that something similar will happen this time, but it’s also possible that most Americans will simply tune Little Felon Trump out and ignore him. We’re already seeing that the rest of the world is positioning itself to mostly ignore the US for the next several years, given that they cannot rely on anything being said from here. From 2017-2020, the world turned to England and Germany for guidance. We’ll see where they turn for the years of the Vance White House – probably to the same places. In the meantime, we can expect Little Felon Trump to be laughed off the dais at the UN, if he even dares to show up there. It would frankly be more appropriate for the UN membership to respond to an appearance by the Felon by turning their back or simply getting up and leaving the room until he is gone.

In the US, unfortunately, there will be no way to avoid the consequences of our first Home School Election. And these consequences will include some fairly petty revenge moves against some media outlets. Project 2025 includes musings about pulling FCC licenses of media companies that don’t do what they’re told. The Congress is trying to ram through a law that would allow the Vance White House to rescind non-profit status of any media outlet that they can accuse of “supporting terrorism” (ie not doing what they’re told by Stephen Miller). This is unlikely to affect CNN or MSNBC, which have already bent the knee. But it’s guaranteed to be used as a cudgel against NPR and Pacifica Radio. Pacifica is quite vulnerable to this attack now, with programs like Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” facing imminent challenge. When their FCC license is pulled, they’ll most likely find themselves appealing to a Pence-appointed judge who would likely not be sympathetic to their plight, and when their non-profit status is rescinded, they will lose most of their funding as their donors will no longer be able to claim the donations as charitable deductions. (There’s also a strong likelihood that the new Congress will eliminate the charitable deduction in their omnibus Tax Transfer bill this year, so that entire argument may be moot anyway.).

Elections have consequences. Sadly, we’re going to be living through these consequences for more than a couple of years.

Karen, you’re correct. Little Felon Trump doesn’t care. And more and more GOP congressmen/Senators and Angry Right Wing pundits are jumping in to echo the Felon’s name-calling and to demand that no money be provided to California unless it does what it’s told. My impression is that what’s left of the Republican Party simply isn’t worried about consequences to themselves. They haven’t paid much of a price for tossing Roe v Wade in the trash, and the insurrectionists are about to be pardoned and celebrated by the Vance White House.

We should remember that in 2020, there were wildfire disasters in Washington State and Little Felon Trump made a point of refusing to provide any assistance whatsoever. The aid was finally given a year later by President Biden, but the Pence White House made sure not one cent was provided while they held office. And in 2018, Little Felon Trump repeatedly said he would not provide any FEMA help for California’s fires until he was shown that the fires were affecting his voters in Orange County, which had shown majority support for him in 2016. In the current situation, in the Palisades, Malibu and Altadena, there is no scenario where Little Felon Trump would care what happened to those Americans.

California actually won’t need to go to federal court and shouldn’t waste time there for exactly the issue you mentioned. The more expedient way to handle this matter will be for Governor Newsom (and as of 2027, likely Governor Harris) to simply withhold any money from California going to federal coffers. This state sends many billions more to the federal government than it receives back. So until we’ve completed the process of containing the fires, cleaning up the damage and rebuilding the homes, not one dollar should go to the Vance White House – unless Little Felon Trump resigns.

Nobody in California needs to bend the knee to the Vance White House or to gargoyles like Stephen Miller or Elon Musk. Little Felon Trump can throw all the tantrums he wants, and throw all the ketchup at the wall he feels compelled to toss, and he will still be what he is.

The record is clear about Fox and its attempts to whitewash and “bothsidesisms” for Little Felon Trump. The reality is that there was obvious shadiness about Little Felon Trump’s entire career and background, and this translated into his unfortunate 2016 campaign. Which then was exposed in investigations which sent multiple Trump cronies to prison for their felonies. But nobody disputed that he had actually squeaked through the swing states to be able to occupy the White House. The discussion was about all the criminality and shadiness and that was appropriate. Hillary Clinton openly conceded the 2016 Election, called Little Felon Trump to congratulate him, and told her supporters to give him a chance. Little Felon Trump and his cronies then squandered that opportunity by spending 4 years attacking everyone else in the country and the world, mismanaging the economy into a pit and causing the deaths of over a million Americans due to an avoidable viral pandemic, all while Little Felon Trump had sloughed off his work to Mike Pence and spent his time playing golf, mean tweeting and eating hamberders and covfefes.

When Little Felon Trump lost the 2020 Election, he and his fans threw a massive temper tantrum and refused to admit the truth. This childish reaction, akin to a 5 year-old throwing his fingers in his ears and screaming as loud as he could, included multiple felony crimes as Little Felon Trump and his fans and cronies tried to intimidate election officials into changing the results and “just finding” votes to allow him to get away with saying he wasn’t the loser that he is. And this went as far as Little Felon Trump, his fans and cronies refusing to admit that President Biden could even be called “president elect” or that the election was over even two months after the fact. Little Felon Trump and his fans and cronies went as far as to create “alternate electors” with their “alternative facts” to try to confuse and foul up the process. And when all that failed, Little Felon Trump and his fans and cronies attempted a bloody insurrection on January 6, 2021 to physically stop acting president Pence from certifying that Little Felon Trump was a loser. In the middle of the vicious attack, while insurrectionists were running all over the inside of the Capitol Building, ransacking offices and defecating in the hallways, Kevin McCarthy frantically called Little Felon Trump and pleaded with him to tell the insurrectionists to stop. Little Felon Trump angrily shouted back “Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are!” When this failed to stop the election from being certified, Little Felon Trump continued his temper tantrum and refused to ever concede, and finished his unfortunate time in the White House by stealing a large number of classified documents, taking them to Florida and leaving them around the property in easily-accessible rooms for anyone to rifle through.

After a small plurality of voters chose to allow Little Felon Trump to return to the White House in 2024 rather than vote for a non-white female, it should be noted that VP Harris conceded the election and called Little Felon Trump like a civilized person.

If Angry Right Wingers want to shame themselves and the world by supporting a bigoted, unrepentant convicted felon, that’s their problem. The consequences, unfortunately, are a problem we all will face. One would wish for everyone to face these consequences together, but it’s clear that Angry Right Wingers don’t believe they need to follow the same rules and laws as everyone else.

The position that propagandists at Fox and other Angry Right Wingers propaganda platforms are taking to play games here is both shameful and deplorable. And it is appropriate that they be called out for it.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cavuto try to migrate to an actual news channel, but his long record at Fox, including the nickname he unfortunately earned of the “Cavuto Mark” for wildly tipping coverage far to the Right, is likely to make this difficult. CNN might give him a small perch, as they did with Chris Wallace, as part of Bezos’ prostration before the Vance White House.

Karen Barton is absolutely correct to note that the actual news story that should alarm everyone is the series of school shootings we’ve seen over the past week, along with an unbelievably “meh” response from most media and the public. As though this much violence and death were something to shrug about. On the other hand, the violence coming in a month when Angry Right Wingers really push their attacks on everyone else may be enough to get people’s attention again.

The entire “drone story” was utter nonsense. It was pushed by Angry Right Wingers who just wanted to throw mud around. And it was intended as a direct follow-up to all the nonsense about the balloon from nearly 2 years ago. One could get the idea from this that Angry Right Wingers think that nobody actually remembers their behavior from five minutes ago.

I honestly have not watched Fox in years because of viciousness like this. And the saddest part of it is that Fox is actually considered a “moderate” right wing outlet, given the decidedly more vicious casting that comes from fireworks propaganda units like “newsmax” and “OAN” and “the blaze”.

Given the coming darkness flying towards us in the next month, I am taking the holiday time to help serve food to the homeless at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. I am not participating in any holiday activities other than that. I have informed my family that this is not a year for celebrating, unfortunately. It’s difficult to intone “ho ho ho” or “happy new year” when so many Americans are now living in terror and when the violence is nearly upon us.

In reality, the Pence White House saw very few press briefings or conferences. At one point, there hadn’t been a presser at the White House in several months, and the shills at Fox and AM radio were saying then that it was better this way, because Pence’s childish spokesman could just Tweet if he had something to say. When there were press conferences during the Pence White House, they were unfortunate affairs. For example, the opening months of it were marked by the tantrums of Sean Spicer and his unhinged fury when anyone would point out facts about Little Trump’s small inaugural turnout. When Little Trump would take questions from the press, he would spout lies and fume and throw tantrums that did nothing but cement his status in the world as an infant.

Let’s also note that at this time in 2020, after Little Trump had been confirmed repeatedly as being the loser of the 2020 Election, pundits at Fox and elsewhere in the right wing media bubble were angrily tantruming that nobody better call President Biden “president elect”. Even when it was pointed out to Angry Right Wingers that they had referred to Little Trump as exactly that in 2016, the tantrumers just doubled down and plugged their ears, yelling that nobody better call President Biden “president elect” because “it’s not over.”

When the history of this time is relayed to the people who follow us 50-100 years from now, it will not be kind to the Angry Right Wingers who tried to rewrite it. Obviously, we’re going into an extremely dark and dangerous time, but it will be necessary for sites like this and writers like Ellen to continue documenting what happens.

Patel can be counted on to do precisely what Vance’s childish unrepentant convicted felon spokesman wants him to do: “Retribution”. Or in simpler lingo: “Revenge against my enemies”. And to Angry Right Wingers, those “enemies” include a lot of people, ranging from politicians and prosecutors who held Little Felon Trump accountable for his felonies via impeachment and prosecutions, to journalists who asked questions Little Felon Trump didn’t want to hear, to everyday citizens who Little Felon Trump wanted brutalized for having the temerity to stick up for themselves or others.

With Patel running the FBI and Pam Bondi and Matt Gaetz ramrodding the DOJ (and Gaetz will be there, just in a position that doesn’t need confirmation by anyone), Americans should prepare themselves for some unfortunate and fairly vicious times coming up shortly.

Yes, there will be prosecutions of the Clintons. Yes, there will be prosecutions of President Biden and his family. Yes, there will be prosecutions of anyone in the Dems who dared to stick their heads up, and of anyone in the GOP who dared to stand up to Little Felon Trump’s whims in the past. Some of these people will actually be denied bail and tossed into jail, just so Angry Right Wingers can gloat about it. The rest will simply be hounded with expensive criminal litigation until they are forced to retreat from public life. Think in terms of Professor Blasey Ford, whose life was ruined after she had the temerity to speak up about Brett Kavanaugh’s viciousness. That fate awaits many others now.

And at the same time, the insurrectionists of January 6 will be pardoned and congratulated publicly. Some are being invited to Little Felon Trump’s new inauguration so they can gloat in front of the policemen they assaulted. We can anticipate that this bunch and the rest of the MAGA gargoyles will take advantage of their impunity to continue physically attacking the rest of the country. And when people respond like antifa to say that they will not tolerate Angry Right Wingers attacking their communities, it will be antifa that will be attacked again and prosecuted. We can anticipate SLAPP suits like we’ve never seen before.

But this doesn’t mean that there won’t be elections in the future. We’ll still have them. Chile continued to have elections for decades after Pinochet had Allende killed (with eager support from the US). The current problem is that a small majority of US voters actually want these things to happen, because they actively voted for it. There’s nothing to indicate that those same voters, who seem to be happy about the coming mayhem, are in any way remorseful, which tells us they will likely continue to vote as they just did.

Competence has never been the criterion for the Angry Right Wingers who staffed the Pence White House and are now finding gargoyles to occupy the Vance White House.

Scooter is correct. Hegseth has repeatedly told everyone who and what he is. We should believe him.

It’s honestly concerning that the fall-back of many sane Americans today seems to be a faint hope that maybe these guys will just be so incompetent that they won’t be able to accomplish anything. Right. How’d that work out last time?

Back in 2017, in the carefree days of the Pence White House, Crowley was forced to withdraw from the job she’d really wanted in National Security because of the scrutiny she’d drawn for her plagiarism. She was eventually brought back for a much more inconsequential position as a spokesperson for the Treasury Department.

In the current age where morality is gone and right and wrong no longer matter, she can be pushed into a position at State where she, as a vicious Angry Right Wing extremist, can presume to lecture everyone about “protocol”. And that’s the way it will go.

We must remember that a small majority of American voters, including Dems, actively chose to support this. They didn’t want to vote for a half-Asian, half-African American woman, and they preferred to support an unrepentant convicted felon. This is what happens when people do that.

I agree that it’s frustrating to watch it happen, but that’s what a majority of the American electorate preferred over the terrifying prospect of a female president.

To be honest, it isn’t the viciousness or the incompetence that concerns me the most. And it isn’t even the gleefulness with which this bunch will attack migrants and shove the gay community back in the closet. It’s the near certainty that we’re looking at a significant world conflict and another pandemic thanks to the established ignorance and inability of what will now be the Vance White House. Last time, we lost over a million Americans to COVID. And that was a low number since we were able to evict the Pence White House within a year of the pandemic’s beginning. What happens when the same problem happens earlier on in the Vance White House?

Sane Americans may not be able to stop all of this from happening, but what we can do is speak up. That’s the lesson of Martin Niemoller. Don’t be quiet when the bigots try to get away with their attacks. Don’t let them walk away without being told who and what they are, directly to their faces. Do not go gentle.

Just wait until Little Felon Trump and the GOP Congress pull the aid from Ukraine. The increased amount that was just put through will be reversed in January.

Based on this situation, Zelensky has three options:

1. Ukraine surrenders, Russia absorbs them, and Putin has Zelensky killed.
2. Ukraine fights to the end, Russia absorbs them, and Putin has Zelensky killed.
3. Ukraine tries to negotiate, Russia absorbs them, Zelensky tries to flee, and Putin has Zelensky killed.

And then Putin looks around to see who he wants to absorb next to recreate the USSR, while Little Felon Trump congratulates him.

And that doesn’t even get into the mayhem coming in the Middle East, particularly after Hegseth starts pushing his “Kill All Muslims!” approach.

There’s definitely moral clarity here. The clarity is between those Americans who voted for an unrepentant convicted felon and those Americans who did not. The ones supporting the felon don’t get to lecture anyone else about anything.

None of this should be a surprise.

Elections have consequences.

This is only the mildest part of what’s coming with the Vance White House and a hardline GOP Congress, particularly when paired with the extremist ideologues packed into our judiciary.

And just wait for what happens after the insurrectionists get their pardons and run free.

Actually, if Fox wants to support jury verdicts and felony convictions, then it should be loudly affirming that Little Felon Trump should never hold any public office again, given that he was convicted of 34 felonies and committed countless other crimes. But that would assume that Fox and other Angry Right Wing propaganda outlets actually care about concepts of right and wrong or legal and illegal.

President Biden did the only appropriate thing he could, given that Little Felon Trump and the Vance White House are loading up the DOJ and the FBI with horror shows like Pam Bondi, Matt Gaetz (who will likely have a high level DOJ position, just not one that has to go through confirmation) and Kash Patel. We can look forward to prosecutions of President Biden and his family (albeit not Hunter at this time), of the Obamas, of the Clintons, and of anyone the Vance White House feels is “the enemy within”. Remember that Little Felon Trump’s first priority, as he’s openly stated is “Retribution”, aka “Revenge Against My Enemies”.

Past that, we can guarantee that the Jan 6 insurrectionists will be pardoned, which will only embolden them to commit further acts of violence, since there are no consequences for them. On the other hand, if people fight back against Angry Right Wingers’ attacks, that will likely be met with prosecutions. Welcome to the world of how elections have consequences.

There’s a simple explanation that makes sense as to how we are on the edge of what may be the darkest period of American history: Most white men and women did not wish to vote for a half-African American, half-Asian American woman. Instead, they chose to support an unrepentant convicted felon who emboldens bigots, and whose last occupation of the White House resulted in over a million American deaths from COVID.

As for the Senate confirmation hearings, these guys are likely to sail through regardless. Lindsey Graham just reversed himself and declared that Hegseth’s issues don’t count. Hegseth is likely to be confirmed on a party line vote, maybe missing one or two GOP and still getting in 51-49. So will the other gargoyles.

Seriously, people need to stop hoping for a miracle to stop this situation. This is what the majority of Americans voted for. We need to brace ourselves and fasten the seatbelts. This is going to be a fairly bumpy ride.

I spent yesterday volunteering at a meal event for the homeless and needy in Los Angeles. Did everything I could for the day in serving food and running back and forth to make sure people were doing okay. Best approach I could think of considering the dark times we are entering. I’ll do the same for the end of December as well.

I can’t think of a reason to try to celebrate what is happening here, but at the least we can try to do something decent for our fellow humans and spread a little light.

In fairness, the above discussion is more of a quibble about which way Angry Right Wingers want to work their expansion of the 2017 GOP Tax Transfer next year.

Project 2025 details an intent to change the US federal tax code to just have 2 flat rates – 15% and 30%, with no deductions at all for employees. The only caveat there is when the higher rate would come into play – which would likely be somewhere a bit north of 100K per year. This would mean a massive tax increase for Middle Class Employees, particularly in Blue States, just like the last one was as of 2018. Project 2025 says nothing about Social Security.

On the other hand, the GOP “Republican Study Committee” (aka the brain trust of the GOP majority in the House) is pursuing something closer to the Heritage Foundation’s plans. When it comes to federal taxes, they would prefer to just expand the 2017 Tax Transfer, likely by lowering the book rate for the big corps to 15% (meaning the effective rate would be zero), by giving the uber wealthy more big cuts, and by hitting Middle Class Employees in Blue States with another massive increase. We can expect the SALT deduction to be completely erased, along with any remaining deductions for the Middle Class, and other rules and restrictions thrown in to make sure that the Employees don’t try to claim any contractor deductions. And we can expect another increase in brackets for anyone making over 100K. So another skyrocket for the “urbanites who voted for Hillary”.

But wait, there’s more. Much more. The GOP plans for gutting Social Security and Medicare didn’t need to be included in Project 2025 because they’ve been public for nearly 15 years already. Heritage published the plans back in 2010 and they’re quite simple. For SS, there are three changes the GOP will implement as part of an omnibus tax bill in 2025: First, the retirement eligibility age is going up to 69. Second, the monthly benefit will be reduced to a flat amount – Heritage recommends 1200/month with an option to increase maybe once in a blue moon, say in 2050 or 2075 when they could take it to 1400/month. Third, and best of all, Heritage and the GOP have discussed a strict means test. Heritage was basing it on what people have in retirement assets and income. The GOP are nicer – they’re basing it on what people earn as an average over their working lifetimes. Per the GOP’s latest discussion of this, from June 2024, any Employee who averages $80,625/year over their career would not qualify for the SS payments. And that’s not even the best part yet. The best part is that the GOP will apply the new rules to everyone 59 years old or younger, assuming they don’t expand this to 61 or 62 next year. As for Medicare, that would become a simple voucher, which would allow recipients to use their 1200/month on whatever doctor agrees to take such vouchers. And that’s it.

Certainly modern Employees will rage at this, given that millions will have paid large amounts into FICA over the past several decades, only to be told that their payments went out the window for them. Not to mention that anyone under 60 years old expecting a monthly SS check will need to budget for no longer qualifying, or for only receiving a fraction of what had been promised. The common refrain we hear about this is that the GOP wouldn’t actually do this because voters will be angry about it. Given the GOP’s track record over the past 30 years, we shouldn’t base our hopes on that. It is far more likely that Angry Right Wingers are counting on voter anger here, which they’ll redirect at the Dems with lines like “Hey, we’re saving Social Security! The Dems blew it! We told you this wouldn’t work, and now we’re the ones cleaning up the Dems’ mess! Are you saying you want your parents and grandparents to starve? What’s the matter with you?”

Most people I know are ending their subscriptions, as did many people with the Washington Post.

The frantic move to not endorse VP Harris was clearly part of a push to beg Angry Right Wingers in the Vance White House for mercy.

At this point the LA Times is a shadow of the newspaper I grew up with in the 1970s and the 1980s. That newspaper ceased to exist over a decade ago, and the reporters who worked there are now long-retired or deceased.

We’re going into a new world of online journalism. We can only hope that enough outlets will stand up to the incoming fascism to help our democracy get through a decade of this stress test. It might be educational to look into what happened to the press in Germany in the early 1930s, as a preview of what’s coming.

Judging from Thune’s comments, he will be extremely subservient to the Vance White House in everything they ask of him. If there are any delays in getting things done right away for Little Trump, of course Thune will blame the Dems, and then he’ll hasten to get the rubber stamping done.

It is unlikely that there will be significant opposition allowed regarding any of the Vance White House appointments. Even Gaetz will sail through, provided the details of his criminality are kept sealed by the House. If Gaetz’s files somehow get public, that might cause enough of a ruckus to get him pulled. But even then, another extremist would be rammed into position.

Based on what we already know of the GOP’s plans, they’re going to have a busy year in 2025, and Thune has a large part to play in it. They’ve got a Fetal Personhood bill to ram through, they’ve got an ACA to toss in the trash, and they’ve got another GOP Tax Transfer to ram through, including the long-awaited gutting of Social Security and Medicare for everyone up to 59 years old. And yes, there’s the defunding of many areas of the US government.

The Dems will certainly try to fight this stuff, but they’re going to be in a weak position, particularly since they would need at least 4 GOP Senators to join them, and that’s never going to happen.

Agreed, Firefox.

But people need to be clear-eyed about what is about to happen. There is nothing normal about this situation and nobody should pretend that it is.