When Trump blasts Fox News for failing to "work for us," what's key is the *open and unabashed* assertion that he is entitled to a 24/7 propaganda outlet working on his behalf.
The open flaunting of Trump's corruption is a key feature of it.
We should view Trump's demand that Fox News function as his personal propaganda network, along with his nonstop lying and attacks on legitimate news organizations, as its own form of insidious corruption:
"All politicians shade the truth. But most hew to an underlying belief that gaslighting voters too shamelessly treats them with deep contempt; that at some point, factual reality has to matter; and that this is necessary for democracy to function."
We keep hearing credulous pundits say MAGA is "antiwar." So how many MAGA Republicans will support the new resolution requiring Trump to get congressional authorization for war with Iran?
This resolution is important. Pay attention to it. 1/
In 2024, Trump slammed Kamala for campaigning with Liz Cheney, claiming she wants “war with every Muslim country known to mankind.” This was always a scam, and now it looks like Trump is rushing into war with Iran. This has deeply split MAGA. 2/
"Antiwar" MAGA Republicans have the option of backing this new resolution from Thomas Massie (R) and Ro Khanna (D) requiring congressional authorization for war with Iran.
“It’s a test of whether the MAGA movement is really antiwar,” Khanna tells me. 3/
House Rs are urging a focus only on criminals AT THE EXACT MOMENT that Stephen Miller is ordering ICE to scour Home Depot parking lots for noncriminals to pad the numbers. Miller is *choosing* to divert resources away from dangerous criminals. 3/
Awful: News orgs are credulously amplifying the idea that sending troops into LA is good politics for Trump. This gives his lawless abuses of power the aura of conventional politics, obscuring how extraordinarily dangerous this moment truly is. 1/
Over the last few days, Trump has goaded servicemembers into booing a sitting Dem governor, called for his arrest, needlessly sent troops into an American city, and spewed wildly absurd lies about that city. This shows political weakness, not strength. 2/
We just learned that two-bit fascist Stephen Miller told ICE officials to raid Home Depot parking lots for more people to deport. To boost removal numbers, Trump and Miller are diverting resources away from serious crimes like child exploitation. 3/
Stephen Miller is in a rage over deportation numbers he deems too low. So he's shifting huge amounts of law enforcement resources away from fighting serious crimes and into his immigration crackdown.
Miller recently erupted at ICE officials, demanding 3,000 deportations a day. He's now redeploying thousands of agents from other agencies like Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, and DEA.
This is already hampering other crime-fighting, per NBC. 2/
“Shifting that number of law enforcement agents from those types of agencies inevitably will mean fewer resources fighting transnational criminal organizations, drug smuggling, counter-terrorism, and child exploitation,” a former ICE official tells me. 3/
Unreal: To sustain his "genocide" of "white farmers" lie while meeting with the South African president, Trump used a photo of war deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I looked into this a bit more. It's worse than it first appeared. 1/
First, note that the printout Trump used to humiliate Ramaphosa came from a conservative blog post, which used an image from a Reuters video about DRC. Perhaps an aide Googled "white farmers" and "South Africa," found this, and gave it to Trump. 2/
But there's something darker here. Even as Trump used this image of the dead from the DRC war to push a fake "genocide," Trump has suspended foreign aid and refugee resettlement in ways that are hurting countless humanitarian victims of that REAL war! 3/
Amazing: Trump grew angry over a Biden-era program with the word "equity" in its name, so he ended it. But a key part of the program was sending money to red states to expand internet access in rural/MAGA country. Now they might not get it.
Trump saw the word "equity" in the name of this Biden-era program, so naturally he decided it must be serving undeserving minorities, giving him an opening to demagogue about it.
A funny thing about this saga: Many red state governments had submitted proposals in hopes of accessing this federal money. I looked at the proposals. They are in no small part about using this money to expand high speed internet into rural areas.