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By Matthew Chapman, AlterNet

It is increasingly clear that President Donald Trump is marching to the drumbeat of Fox News. And people at the network know it.

In an interesting moment of candor, Fox News Host Greg Gutfeld laid out just what role his network has played in enabling and bolstering Trump's behavior.

“You know what it is? Trump was radicalized by something, okay?” said Gutfeld on “The Five” on Tuesday. “Because he was a Democrat for a long time, he was pro-choice, liberal in many things. He was radicalized. What was he radicalized by? Us. Fox News. When Fox News happened — he watches Fox, and the world starts to make sense to him, and then — so all he's doing, Juan, is what we do, which is, we bash the media!“

“So he's just doing — he's turned the White House into kind of, like, an alternative Fox show where he sits there and he rips the media,” Gutfeld continued, roaring with laughter. “It's kind of refreshing.”

Fox's Greg Gutfeld: “Trump was radicalized by something … what was he radicalized by? Us, Fox News. … All he's doing is what we do, which is we bash the media. He's turned the White House into an alternative Fox show where he sits there and he rips the media hahaha” pic.twitter.com/Jx55cG5pbs

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) August 30, 2018

Gutfeld, as a Fox commentator, may find that “refreshing,” but it is in fact deeply disturbing. Fox News has long operated as an echo chamber for right-wing ideologues who want to promote themselves free from fact-checking — at least one study has found Fox News viewers are less informed on politics than people who don't watch any news at all.

Trump, moreover, has gotten numerous toxic falsehoods from Fox, from the idea that South African farm attacks are a conspiracy to expropriate land from white people, to the idea that Google is censoring conservative search results. …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

Even President Donald Trump's allies in Congress have warned him that pardoning Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman who has been convicted of eight counts of bank and tax fraud, would be a “bridge too far.”

But the president and his lawyers still have made it clear that they are willing to consider a pardon for Manafort — though they have said it will wait until after special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation wraps up.

In a new op-ed for the New York Times, to law professors Alex Whiting and Ryan Goodman argued Thursday that despite the fact that Trump hasn't yet tried to actually pardon Manafort, his involvement in the case against his former campaign chairman already constitutes obstruction of justice. President Richard Nixon, they note, was accused of similar behavior in the articles of impeachment adopted by the House of Representatives.

“Mr. Trump appears to be trying to have it all: dangling a pardon down the line to keep Mr. Manafort quiet, giving the president the benefits of a pardon without requiring him to pay substantial political costs,” they wrote. “That requires assuring Mr. Manafort that a pardon will very likely come, and Mr. Giuliani has obliged, telling reporters that Mr. Trump himself raised the subject of a Manafort pardon.”

They continue: “Whether and when he acts, it appears that Mr. Trump has already embarked on a strategy of using his pardon power to silence witnesses in the Mueller investigation. In other words, at this point, dangling the prospect of a pardon or going ahead and exercising it amounts to the same thing: obstruction of justice.”

Trump could have avoided all of this, they argued, if he had just kept his mouth shut about pardons. 

Citing the articles of impeachment against Nixon, they say that Trump has engaged in some of the conduct the former president — who ultimately resigned instead of being forcibly removed from office — carried out, specifically: “Endeavoring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored treatment and consideration …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

Evidence that President Donald Trump is racist emerges so frequently and consistently that credible commentators on American politics no longer even doubt the fundamental fact of his bigotry.

But of course, many of the president's defenders — and even conservative critics of the president — do their best to argue that Trump is the farthest thing from being racist.

The latest in this sad genre comes from The American Conservative, a right-wing magazine. In a new article, Jack Hunter argues that despite what many in the media say, Trump isn't racist. He even argues that claiming Trump is a white supremacist only empowers the “real” racists. 

And yet despite this sweeping claim, Hunter engages with very little of the extensive arguments put forth that document decades worth of the president' racism. Instead, he focuses on a single recent event that many critics of the president cited as an embodiment of his white supremacist worldview: Trump's tweet about Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who devoted a segment of his show to discussing South African policy toward white farmers. This issue has been seized upon by white supremacists trying to portray themselves as victims.

Hunter argues that because there are legitimate concerns regarding this issues — the idea of land expropriation has proved disastrous in the past, and there have indeed been some apparent murders of white farmers — the incident cannot be evidence of Trump's racism.

“That Trump and Carlson are taking their talking points from neo-Nazis seems absurd once one takes into account the full circumstances of what occurred, something most mainstream outlets have not done in their eagerness to tag both men as racists,” Hunter wrote. “Though South Africa’s complicated history and politics should be included in this discussion, Carlson is not wrong.”

If you squint and tilt your head, Hunter might seem to have a point. But the problem is that he ignores the entire context in which this event occurred.

Trump's presidency has promoted racist bans on Muslim travel and vicious policies toward immigrant …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Mark Sumner, Daily Kos

There are a lot of reasons to investigate Google. Its near-monopoly over digital advertising alone is reason enough to crack open the books. Recent changes to the way it manages YouTube payments chopped away potential revenue from thousands, only to slide even more money into the company’s giant maw.

But all of that hasn’t ruffled a feather on the right—until now. Reuters reports that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has asked the Federal Trade Commissions to look into the “competitive effects of Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising.” Hatch’s move is clearly designed to appease Trump, who on Monday made a ludicrous charge that the search engine was ”suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information” by returning search results that featured more regular news outlets than alt-Reich blogs. 

Not only did none of Google’s monopoly powers previously warrant attention from Hatch or other Republicans, but the last time Trump tweeted about Google, it was to complain that the European Union was fining the company in an antitrust action. But now that Trump has conceived an imaginary plot to make bad news stories appear next to his name, Hatch is all over this thing.

Stay tuned for Hatch to launch fresh investigations into how vaccines cause autism and how world governments are covering up the raging Ebola pandemic.

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…read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Although Democrats are feeling increasingly optimistic about their chances to retake the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, they are facing an uphill battle in their quest to gain a majority in the U.S. Senate. All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs on Tuesday, November 6, which gives Democrats a lot more wiggle room and potential paths to victory. But in order to win a majority in the Senate, Democrats would have to maintain every seat they are defending while taking at least two seats from Republicans—which is doable but certainly challenging in light of how tight many Senate races are shaping up to be.

If the Democratic Party can, for example, maintain all of its current Senate seats while achieving victories for Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, the U.S. Senate will have a narrow Democratic majority in 2019. But that is a major “if” because some Senate Democrats who are seeking reelection this year—including Bill Nelson in Florida and Claire McCaskill in Missouri—are facing what appear to be very tight races. And political pundits might be staying up late on November 6 to find out whether Democrats or Republicans will have a majority in the U.S. Senate in 2019.

Here are five of the most exciting, nail-biting U.S. Senate races to keep a close eye on between Labor Day and Election Night 2018. 

1. Arizona: Kyrsten Sinema v. Martha McSally

Between the death of Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake’s decision not to seek reelection, Arizona will have two new faces in the U.S. Senate in 2019. McCain’s seat will remain in Republican hands next year: by law, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey must appoint a Republican to fill the seat temporarily until a special election is held in 2020. But Flake’s seat is in play for Democrats, and Democratic nominee Kyrsten Sinema has been performing well in recent polls. Sinema would probably have an easier path to victory if she were running against either former Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward or former …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Stephen Wells, Independent Media Institute

New York’s state animal protection laws don’t do enough to punish those who commit serious crimes against animals. A dog named Bella went without justice because of it. A proposed law nicknamed in her memory could help change that.

On the afternoon of December 23, 2016, Bella was beaten by the person who was supposed to protect her. Bella’s caregiver, 56-year-old Michael Gallagher, tied a zip tie around the 11-year-old dog’s neck. Then he stuffed her in a garbage bag and hit her, over and over, with a shovel.

Bella’s cries were so loud and anguished that Gallagher’s neighbors in Levittown, Long Island, came out to beg him to stop hurting his dog, and called the police. Gallagher fled. By the time Gallagher’s wife got home, and was able to bring Bella to a veterinarian, she was too badly injured to be saved. She was euthanized.

Gallagher was picked up by police later that day, and charged with one felony count of animal cruelty, and three misdemeanors. Bella’s abuser received only four months in county jail.

New Yorkers were stunned and horrified that Gallagher received such a short sentence for such a violent and serious crime. In response, and to prevent such injustice from occurring again, New York State Senator Andrew Lanza introduced Senate Bill 8724, nicknamed “Bella’s Bill.” New York Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal introduced the companion bill, A 11070, in the Assembly shortly thereafter. Though the bills did not pass during the 2018 session, support is ramping up for reintroduction in 2019.

Bella’s Bill would do two important things: First, it would increase penalties for those convicted of intentional abuse. Second, it would bring New York in line with the vast majority of other states, by transferring animal cruelty laws into the Penal Code, out of the Agriculture & Markets Law. This may sound like a small and technical difference on first blush, but it’s a significant change that helps ensure crimes against animals are treated …read more

Source: ALTERNET