In the 1934 movie Six of a Kind, the great comedian W.C Fields plays a sheriff called "Honest John."
In one scene, when asked how he earned the moniker, Fields' character tells of a time when he used to tend bar and wait on a guy with a glass eye. The fellow would take the glass eye out and put it in a tumbler of water. One day he forgot his glass eye. Honest John found it. The next morning when he came in, Honest John said "Young man, here's your glass eye." "And I gave it back to him. Ever since that day, I've been known as 'Honest John.'"
The comedic genius of this scene relies on the absurdity of the ridiculously low bar used by those who awarded Honest John his appellation.
Well, according to a poll that came out recently, an unbelievable 49% of registered voters seem to be applying the same ridiculous standards to the Trump administration, who they consider to be truthful!
To quote WC Fields -- Godfrey Daniels!!
This compares with only 39% who consider the news media truthful!
48% find the Trump administration to be untruthful while a whopping 53% find the media untruthful.
This poll made me feel ill. What the fuck is going on? Are that many people only watching Fox News?
I would love to know what's behind the thinking of these people. The poll does refer to the Trump administration and not Trump himself. But even so, we're still talking about Kellyanne "Bowling Green Massacre" Conway and Sean "Alternative Facts" Spicer, both of whom constantly defend Trump's falsehoods, Trump's national security advisor and "so-called" general, Mike Flynn (who appears to have been untruthful about his communications with Russian officials.) Not to mention Steve Bannon and a host of other conspiracy theorists who relentlessly feed the media their fevered fantasies.
In a test of my ability to withstand disgustingly warped delusions, I tuned in to the "Fair and Balanced" network to watch them gloat. I heard Mike Huckabee ask, incredulously, "who are these 39% who actually believe the media are truthful?" Later, Sean Hannity and his guest sported broad smiles while they crowed about the correctness of their media assessments.
None of these jackasses seemed to be aware of the fact that they were broadcasting from Fox News -- a television news channel and part of the news media. They were also blissfully unconcerned with the mountain of falsehoods that have been spewing out of the mouth and tweets of the (shudder) President for the past six years or so, and on a daily basis for the past two years.
Mr Huckabee, your incredulity should be directed at those who think the Trump administration is truthful, you obnoxious jerk.
Just like Trump thinks that all improperly registered voters voted -- and they all voted for Hillary -- the aforementioned jackasses think that the "untruthful media" poll responses only applied to non-right wing news outlets. What makes this all particularly disgusting is that Sean Hannity -- who broadcasts on a station who's very premise is a lie (Fair and Balanced) -- is the lyingest fuck of them all.
A chronicle of Hannity's and Fox News' untruthfulness deserves its own separate blog posts, which I intend to do in the future. For now, check out these past posts: Fair and Balanced and Fair and Balanced
Are the responders to this poll buying Trump's bullshit that the media is "very, very dishonest" when it comes to their coverage of him? Do they not notice that whenever Trump makes some outlandish claim -- including his most often used charge that the media is "very, very dishonest" -- he offers no evidence, but when the media fact checks his claims, they provide detailed information that includes references to relevant and reliable sources?
If these people believe Trump -- despite all of the concrete evidence proving that he will say anything that he can pull out of his overweight ass -- then they are truly gullible fools and our country is in "big league" trouble.
Trump wants the entire media to be like Fox News. Ignore all of his imbecilic comments, his moronic insults, his daily output of blatant falsehoods, his racism and his childish and ego-maniacal behavior -- and just put a positive spin on all of his policy proposals. And don't forget to compliment and praise him and act like he embodies nothing but positive qualities. And whatever you do, don't treat him the way he and Fox News treated Obama. Because, while he can dish it out, he sure as hell can't take it.
I'm listening to his press conference right now and he's repeating the "fake news, false reporting, dishonest media" crap. Unfortunately, no one has asked him what, specifically, has been reported that is not true.
Is their reporting on your claims of massive voter fraud fake? Is their reporting on your claim that the crime rate is the highest it's been in 47 years false? Were they being dishonest when they contradicted your claims about the size of your inauguration crowd?
Frustrating.
Apparently, I missed this. Trump continued his daily output of blatant falsehoods by claiming that he had the biggest electoral college victory since Ronald Reagan. (Previously he claimed it was one of the biggest electoral college victories in history. According to the NYT it ranked 46 out of 58 elections)
A reporter corrected him by pointing out that it wasn't even the biggest electoral win since the last election (Obama had 332 votes -- Trump had 304). Trump than tried to say that he was talking aboutRepublican presidents and he was corrected again.
To his credit, the reporter asked "Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake when you're providing information that's fake?"
Trump's answer? "I don't know, I was given that information."
Trump then tried to distract from the question by saying " We won by a very, very big margin... but it was a very substantial victory, do you agree with that?"
The distraction worked because the reporter seemed to agree, sat down and left him off the hook. Infuriating. He should have repeated the question, because Trump didn't answer it!!
That distraction technique is used by politicians all the time whenever they don't want to answer a question. And it is very effective because it works. In order to deal with that the reporter should either ask the question again or, if the politician gives an ambiguous answer, ask for a clarification.
So, in this case, the reporter should have, because Trump actually gave an ambiguous answer, said "for clarification, Mr President, your answer to the question "why should Americans trust you when you give fake information -- your answer is 'I don't know?"
My guess as to how Trump would have answered that question, if he had been asked, is by repeating the "excuse" that that was the information he was given -- as if he should be forgiven because of that.
This is exactly how he answered Bill O'Reilly when confronted about his retweet of outrageously false black on white murder statistics that he got from some White Nationalist/Supremacist web site:
This is what I would have asked next: "with all due respect, sir, you have a very long history of making many, many false claims that have been fact-checked as being false -- shouldn't you, by now, be making sure that when you make a claim, that you can back it up with solid, reliable evidence?"
Whatever bullshit Trump would have offered next, this would have been my next question:
"Shouldn't you, sir, since you claim that the media is not being truthful about you, be addressing those many false claims you made instead of making baseless claims that the fact checks are fake news?"
Because there were no follow up questions, I guarantee you that that excellent question will be forgotten by most people. Trump really outplayed the media this time. He managed to turn the whole fake news/honesty issue around on them when they should have nailed him for being the real dishonest, fake news perpetrator.
Liberals correctly see this but the majority of people -- like the ones who answered the Emerson College poll -- will think Trump came out looking very good. I predict that Trump's honesty numbers will go up and the press's will go down after this. Disgusting
