Wednesday 14th of October 2026
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real news about a dangerous real clown.....

 

President Donald J. Trump booted CNN, MSNOW and Politico out of the White House because he is furious with how he is covered. Trump’s attacks against the Constitution are unprecedented. The media companies have taken him to court, arguing: “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.“

 

‘Fake news’ v faker-in-chief: Why Trump’s media war is backfiring


 

The four major television networks – including Fox News – have withdrawn their cameras from the White House. The president who loves to be on the air for hours a day now sits in the Oval Office with no big media cameras on him.

How did we get to this crisis over freedom of the press? Trump wields with abandon an idiom that is centuries old – all to flaunt his massive executive power as president. When asked about limits to his power, he said: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

To speak with a forked tongue is “to tell lies or say one thing and mean something else” and to “make empty or false promises”. It conjures up serpents, with their forked tongues.

Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was characterised as a serpent. The stunning new biography, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, by Kai Bird and Susan Goldberg, shows Cohn’s immense sculpting and shaping of Trump as he built his real estate empire in New York. As Carlos Lozada of The New York Times has observed, “One of the core parallels or similarities or lessons … between these two men [is] that sort of ultimate self-confidence, paired with ultimate disdain for rules and traditions and norms.”

Freedom of the press under the first amendment is a sacred norm of the republic. Trump has sued, so far unsuccessfully, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for defamation. He has threatened to have the regulatory agencies in his executive branch take away the broadcast licence of CBS and ABC because of how they report on him. He has defunded America’s public media, PBS and NPR.

But what makes Trump vulnerable to the most critical coverage of any president, ever, including Richard Nixon, is that he speaks with a forked tongue on almost all major issues of the day. He hates being confronted by reporters who question the truth and legitimacy and contradictions of what he says.

Trump declared on his social media soap box, Truth Social: “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA – UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE – IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1 — IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2 — and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure.”

Most AI leaders are genuinely fearful that artificial intelligence could cause or trigger an existential event threatening all of civilisation.

The scale of this challenge is not unprecedented. In 1947, Albert Einstein and the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists wrote to the president Harry S. Truman: “Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into this world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man’s discovery of fire.” And what was needed was “the aroused understanding and insistence of the people of this world”.

In his speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, and before discussing this with China’s President Xi Jinping, Trump rejected with prejudice any global oversight of AI.

In taking the oath of office, Trump swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, which requires that the president takes carethat the laws are faithfully executed. At the recent Republican midterm political convention in Dallas, Trump broke that pledge. He asked all those present to raise their right hands and affirm, “That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they [the Democrats] do, they’d never, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3rd or we are going to vote before that!”

Trump urged them to break election laws.

On the economy, the consensus of almost all experts was that it was imperative for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the US. Trump’s response was incendiary: the Fed was wrong. The US had to have “the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World”. He added injury to insult: “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT.” Such nonsense would trigger a global economic catastrophe.

Trump hates the coverage of the war. From the podium of the UN this week, he threatened Iran with “annihilation”. Last week, he said, as he often does: “I will tell you this. Iran [wants] to make a deal so bad, they are calling constantly and they want to make a deal.” But no deal is evident. Trump regularly accuses journalists of treason, which is punishable by death.

Trump hates the mainstream print and broadcast media. Their coverage has become increasingly probing because Trump speaks daily with a forked tongue. Any reporting he disagrees with is “fake”. His attacks on America’s democracy and the First Amendment are relentless. Retribution rules.

But Trump’s flailing against the media, provoking a constitutional crisis, will not improve prospects for Republicans in the midterm elections in November. Steve Scalise, the House Republican majority leader, appears to believe that Trump did not understand his recklessness when it came to the media ban. “I don’t know why he did it.”

We will soon understand the reckoning that will occur.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/fake-news-v-faker-in-chief-why-trump-s-media-war-is-backfiring-20260923-p60zrh.html

 

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

 

 

 

 

 

bully don...

 

Tehran is open to diplomacy with Washington, but it will not accept the language of force, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said in his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Pezeshkian delivered his address on Wednesday, a day after US President Donald Trump used the same tribune to threaten to “annihilate” Iran if negotiations to settle the conflict between the sides fail. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” the US president said.

Trump also labeled the authorities in Tehran sponsors of terrorism and called on other countries to join the US in enforcing the “complete economic isolation” of Iran until it agrees to sign the deal.

Pezeshkian, who became the first foreign head of state to speak at the UN while their country is at war with the US, insisted that “the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend at the knee.”

“Iran must be understood by Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” he stressed.

The US delegation walked out of the General Assembly hall when Pezeshkian began his speech, just as members of the Iranian team did during Trump’s address on Tuesday.

“We are not terrorists,” the Iranian president said. “We have been the victims of terrorism,” he added, noting the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the American-Israeli attack on February 28 and the missile strike on an elementary school in Minab which killed 175 people, most of them children.

“Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggression imposed upon our country and we defended ourselves with utmost strength… We responded, but we did not hit civilian populations,”Pezeshkian said.

He insisted on Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the route for around 20% of global crude oil trade, saying that “we cannot let some have free access and gain their interest from a waterway, while at the same time using that waterway to impose their aggression upon us.”

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held unscheduled three-hour talks on the sidelines of the General Assembly, with both sides describing their first contact since June as constructive.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said afterwards that the meeting was aimed at conveying Tehran’s terms for peace to the Americans, which include “the end of the war in all its dimensions, the cessation of American aggressive actions, the naval siege, and the economic war, the release of Iranian assets and so on.”

https://www.rt.com/news/646172-pezeshkian-iran-un-trump/

 

READ FROM TOP.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

mediacrap....

 

Robert Reich

The danger for CNN isn’t being shut down. It’s being silenced from within

 

CNN is set to join CBS News under the Ellisons’ ownership. With Trump openly hostile to critical coverage, the concern is not that the network will disappear, but that its journalists will face pressure to stop asking difficult questions.

Democracy dies in the darkness.

This week at the United Nations, CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Trump when the war with Iran would end, citing a poll showing that two-thirds of Americans don’t think the US is winning.

“I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me,” Trump began before telling Collins: “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me. You shouldn’t be covering me.”

Collins told Trump that the UN allowed her organisation into the General Assembly, even though Trump had days before banned CNN (along with MSNOW and Politico) from covering his White House because he didn’t like their coverage of him.

Collins then repeated her question twice while Trump ignored her.

CNN’s days of asking hard questions of Trump may be coming to an end anyway, now that California Attorney-General Rob Bonta has allowed Trump lapdog billionaire Larry Ellison and son David to take over CNN.

Bonta caved presumably because the Ellisons threatened to begin moving Paramount’s operations out of California starting in October if Bonta refused to settle his antitrust lawsuit against them.

Trump’s game plan all along has been for the Ellisons to control a huge media monopoly that won’t utter a critical word about him – including CBS News, CNN, Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart), HBO (John Oliver), and even TikTok (where one out of five Americans now get their news).

What’s next for CNN? I doubt it will be gutted. That would be too obvious. It will just be defanged.

When the Ellisons gained ownership of CBS, they got rid of Stephen Colbert by not letting CBS renew his contract, and they ripped the guts out of CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes – firing Scott Pelley and other senior producers who refused to walk the Trump walk.

One departing producer there explained in a farewell memo to colleagues that she could no longer work where stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations – a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavourable headlines”.

Anyone who believes the Ellisons will treat CNN (or Comedy Central or HBO) any better than they’ve treated CBS News hasn’t been paying attention to Trump’s and the Ellisons’ manoeuvrings over the past few months.

When Warner Bros. Discovery – CNN’s parent – went up for sale, Trump said it was “imperative” that CNN be sold as part of the deal. “CNN should be sold because the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” he toldreporters at an event at the White House. He continued:

“I think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately, but I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN – which is a very dishonest group of people – I don’t think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along with everything else.”

Last December, when a CNN reporter asked Trump a question he didn’t like, he shot back: “You know you work for the Democrats, don’t you? You’re basically an arm of the Democrat Party.”

The Ellisons – père et fils – have already promised Trump they’ll bring CNN to heel.

According to The Wall Street Journal, David Ellison promised Trump he’d make “sweeping changes” to CNN if he were allowed to acquire its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

A White House official even discussed with Larry Ellison potential programming changes at CNN, including firing reporters such as Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, whom Trump is said to loathe.

At a press briefing in March, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. “Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better”.

It’s the neofascist playbook: take over the media and silence criticism. Even better (because it’s less out in the open), have your cronies take over the media and have them silence criticism. Better still, make deals with your cronies so when they take over the media, they have ongoing financial incentives to silence criticism. If they’re billionaires, they can keep buying up media and silence criticism as they make even more money.

Jeff Bezos has defanged the editorial page of The Washington Post. Elon Musk has turned Twitter into global neofascist X. Trump suck-up Mark Zuckerberg controls Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads.

And now the Ellisons, and CBS News and CNN (and Comedy Central and HBO).

What do you get when you combine the richest people in America with the biggest media corporations in America with the thinnest-skinned and most corrupt president in American history?

One thing you don’t get is an informed public.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/09/the-danger-for-cnn-isnt-being-shut-down-its-being-silenced-from-within/

 

MEANWHILE, NOT A SINGLE LEGACY NEWS OUTLET HAS HAD THE COURAGE TO DENOUNCE THE WESTERN LEADERS IN THEIR DESPICABLE TREATMENT OF RUSSIA AND THEIR ATROCIOUS SUPPORT FOR THE CORRUPT NAZIS IN THE KIEV REGIME....

 

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….