September 29, 2020: Trump on Taxes, Tucker Carlson on Facts

 9/29/20: President Trump is warming up for tonight’s debate by practice-lying. For example, he just told reporters that the IRS “does not treat me well. They treat me very badly.” 

Yes. He really said that.

 

I am going to see if I can pay no taxes next year, like Trump, ten of the last fifteen years.

 

Then I will pretend to be a Trump fan. I will bitch about how the U.S. military has no money. I will howl about how awful the deficit was when Obama was in charge and how Congress should give President “No Taxes for Me” Trump more dough to slap up his big, beautiful border wall.

 

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Buffalo "chip" in honor of Tucker Carlson.

 

“Mere bloviating.”

 

IN OTHER LIAR NEWS: Tucker Carlson triumphed in court today, in a slander case, but not in the way a real news person would hope to triumph. His lawyers defended him against slander by saying no reasonable viewer would ever believe the “facts” Carlson was sharing nightly.

 

U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil issued an opinion in line with that argument. The “‘general tenor’ of the show,” she wrote, “should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’”

 

Otherwise known as slinging shit.

 

Vyskocil continued: “Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”

 

She suggests that the court might have even called what Carlson does “mere bloviating.” But whatever it was she called it you couldn’t really take Carlson seriously. Karen McDougal, the Playboy bunny with whom Donald J. Trump had an affair, had sued after Carlson said she and Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump had also slept, despite being married to Melania at the time, were extorting Candidate Trump in the summer of 2016, when their stories broke.

 

In introducing a story on the topic, Carlson told viewers, “Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed.”

 

Then he set the scene: “Two women approach Donald Trump and threaten to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money. Now that sounds like a classic case of extortion.”

 

Although we do know Trump had his personal lawyer pay hush money to both women, and then his lawyer lied about paying. Then lied about whether Trump knew he paid. And then went to jail for lying.

 

Anyway, now we know. For Tucker Carlson, star of Fox News, facts are malleable and not facts at all.