Fox Business Network needs to rein in Lou Dobbs’ recklessly inflammatory rhetoric or else share in the responsibility for any violence that is being incited by his militant attacks on those daring to question Dear Leader Donald Trump.
Believe it or not, Dobbs is even more of a Trump lickspittle than Fox & Friends and, possibly, Sean Hannity. An excellent post today by Media Matters’ Simon Maloy notes that while it’s “easy to laugh” at Dobbs’ “perpetually overwrought” fanaticism, his “creepy adulation of Donald Trump and routine calls to imprison the president’s opponents” is actually “sinister.” His “intensely and creepily propagandistic” show sets Dobbs apart from his divisive, hate-mongering colleagues at Fox News.
As if to prove the point, a tweet from journalist Ken Klippenstein last night called attention to a tweet from Dobbs as well as the kind of response it solicited from his fans:
Drain the Swamp!- Our Justice Dept has been compromised, and it’s time to crush the corrupt secret society working against President @realDonaldTrump. @POTUS #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Dobbs #DTS pic.twitter.com/kNDWaDSw3S
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 24, 2018
Dobbs is referring, of course, to the FBI conspiracy theories which so far amount to nothing more than innuendo and whataboutism. But Fox’s Trump supporters would rather tear down our institutions than live with questions about Trump and Russia.
Also, Dobbs didn’t just assert conspiracy theories as truth, he went the extra mile by demanding someone or something “crush” “the corrupt secret society working against President @realDonaldTrump.”
The video clip included in Dobbs’ tweet revealed the kind of anti-democratic, demagogic rhetoric Fox Business thinks appropriate to broadcast:
DOBBS: The public lies of the Dems and the Deep State coming up. And now, too numerous and even threatening for even the left-wing media to ignore altogether.
We’re at the point we feared we might be. There is an all too clear requirement to determine the full extent to which the FBI, the DOJ and special counsel’s office have been compromised and corrupted. … It is deep and it is determined. … It is now obvious to all that what is needed is not mere change but fundamental cleansing and reform.
In the written-out version of Dobbs’ commentary, displayed over Dobbs’ shoulder, “Dems” is written as “Dimms.” A nice touch, Fox Business, eh?
Earlier this week, it was revealed that a Michigan man was arrested after making a series of seriously threatening phone calls to CNN, with “fake news” rhetoric that echoes both Trump and Fox. Yet, Dobbs doesn’t seem to have a care in the world about the ramifications. In his feed of reactions to this tweet, as Klippenstein noted, are the following responses. So far, Dobbs has disavowed none of them, nearly two days later.
Public execution by hanging of four people condemned as conspirators in assassination of Abraham Lincoln. pic.twitter.com/pyMPlJgfql
— Archangel Michael 🇺🇸✟🇺🇸 (@AlecHagel) January 24, 2018
Works for me or modern day treason...military firing squad.
— Lisa #ReleaseTheMemo (@Myapple05Lisa) January 24, 2018
I don't ever want to have to see someone executed but my feelings on that have now changed. I would travel across the country to witness it.
— #ReleaseTheMemo 🇺🇸 (@jenny_okiegirl) January 24, 2018
Yep. Time for the Guillotine.
— Cathy Jo CorsoPlank (@frigcrazyshit) January 24, 2018
— Don E Tapper (@tapperdon) January 24, 2018
That's why we have the 2nd Amendment. Our founding fathers knew liberal Democrats were evil, they thought ahead.
— Charles L. Rigoglios (@CharlesLRigogli) January 24, 2018
Hang em high!
— standurground (@SteveBarnett24) January 24, 2018
The only thing more frightening than this? Donald Trump’s love for Dobbs. Maloy wrote:
At his New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump grabbed a microphone and gave thanks to the guests who paid him several hundred dollars each for the privilege of attending. As he spoke, the president singled out one attendee for some especially fulsome praise: Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs. “The great Lou Dobbs is here, by the way,” Trump said. “Boy, I tell you, I’ve loved him for years, but now I really love him. And you know what? It’s not about me. It’s about -- he is saying what he believes.” To applause and cheers, the president heaped his admiration on the cable news personality: “I just want to tell you, you are fantastic, and we appreciate it. Everybody in this room appreciates it.”
Watch what Trump appreciates below, from the January 23, 2018 Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Drain the Swamp!- Our Justice Dept has been compromised, and it’s time to crush the corrupt secret society working against President @realDonaldTrump. @POTUS #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Dobbs #DTS pic.twitter.com/kNDWaDSw3S
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 24, 2018
If the Dems do not show up to vote this year and in 2020, this situation can and will get worse. If these guys get the idea that they can really push this approach (and they will if the Dems stay home again), we’ll be looking a lot more mass shootings as nearly happened at Comet Pizza, and a lot more mass assaults and killings as inflicted by James Fields in Charlottesville. I note that at the time of Heather Heyer’s funeral, Fox News posters were putting up comments extolling how much fun it would be to kill more protestors. One poster actually posted “Next bowler up! LOL!” Another poster responded that for the next protest, the driver would do better to use a pickup truck with a snowplow on the front. Given this viciousness, and given the actions taken to essentially legalize vehicular assault and homicide in North Dakota (where Right Wingers wanted to say that if you’re in a protest in the road, and a driver rams the crowd, it’s your fault for being there rather than the driver’s fault for trying to kill you.), I would recommend, again, that people keep their eyes wide open. And let’s all work to make sure that voters actually show up to repudiate these deplorables this fall.
“The investigation on Bill Clinton started by focusing on a real estate deal but the only thing that special counsel (Starr?) could get on him was lying about a blow job.”
Right on — and we should ALL keep in mind this one IRREFUTABLE FACT that drives Republicans ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY BERZERK:
NOBODY DIED WHEN BILL CLINTON LIED!
- But calling for killing the Democrats ? Here’s Dobbs going “off the deep end”.
The rank hypocrisy of so many GOP-ers is what gets me most. The investigation on Bill Clinton started by focusing on a real estate deal but the only thing that special counsel (Starr?) could get on him was lying about a blow job. Nowadays, it’s clear that Starr was out to get anything he could on Bill Clinton, no matter what. His failure is a pretty good proxy indicator of the futility of that particular proble. Any way, the final emphasis on lying about a blow job created a lot of hilarity in Europe and the whole impeachment process was deemed silly, even stupid.
Flash forward to today and we have the GOP and the White House screaming that Mueller does not have the right to expand the scope of the ongoing investigation. Money laundering is always a crime, working on behalf of a foreign power may also be a crime. Hell, they don’t even want to consider a foray into the possibility that Donald Trump may be lying about having had a romantic encounter with a buxom blond porn star while Melania was in a maternity ward. What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander but the GOP slogan has been and will always be IOKYAR.
If those segments of the economic world are happy to the point where they can gush with enthusiasm, those of us living in the middle or surviving at the bottom of the scale should be very worried indeed.
Dobbin was a famous horse long ago, and horses are related to rhinoceri and only a little smarter (less dumber).
*I stole my new name for Clinton Network News from a right wing troll on FB – Chicken Noodle News. Campbell’s Soup for the masses. Mmm mmm good.
Reich-wingers do have a point about establishment Democrats being elitist, but then Republican philosphy is elitist, so the duhble standard pervades the dumb voters.
#kuidfmnews #el84
From this moment onward I will call Lou Dobbs “Herr Goering”, because one does NOT need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that, since leaving CNN for Goebbels Murdoch’s BIG $$$$, his behavior is VERY, VERY FRIGHTENINGLY SIMILAR to Adolf Hitler’s notorious reichmarshal Herman Goering who spoke these infamous words at the Nazi trials in Nuremberg in 1945:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country that determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter of dragging the people along whether it’s a democracy, or a parliament, or a fascist dictatorship, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country”