Fox News - Don't call this dignified wonderful gentleman a fascist because it may provoke another assassination attempt, By Hal M. Brown, MSW

General Kelly warning about Trump praising Hitler and being a fascist was the top story on HuffPost:

If you missed the stories about what Trump's former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly said about Trump you haven't been paying attention to the news. 

I wondered how Fox News was covering the news (Google News link) about Gen. Kelly saying Trump was a fascist and his praising Hitler's generals. I checked and watched this segment from one of their shows.

This is the 8 minute segment from Fox News.

They called these headlines irresponsible:

They played clips of Democrats including Kamala Harris and Tim Walz calling Trump a fascist. 

The takeaway is from this in my title: Don't call this "dignified wonderful gentleman" a fascist because it may provoke another assassination attempt.

This panelist who said this was calling someone who just yesterday suggested to his rally crowd that Kamala Harris might drink or use drugs. Is it dignified to suggest your opponent is an alcoholic of drug addict? Read article and watch video here. "Does she drink, was she on drugs" he said referring to the Harris "60 Minutes" interview.

Of course they all denied Trump had a fascist bone in his body. The main point all of them made was that calling Trump a fascist would lead to another assassination attempt. One of the panelists said "don't literally put somebody in the crosshairs."

Their argument is that nobody should say anything about a political opponent wanting to destroy democracy because this may provoke some unhinged person to try to assassinate them. 

They noted that the Secret Service warned about another Butler happening as if this was relevant to the discussion about Democrats warning about Trump wanting to be a dictator. 

Of course there was no discussion about Trump's inflammatory rhetoric attacking Kamala Harris using language which, if you follow the Fox News argument, could lead to an attempt on her life (article in LA Times):

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON —  

Over the six weeks since Kamala Harris succeeded President Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump has charged relentlessly that she’s a radical whose views are out of step with voters.

“She’s a Marxist. She’s a fascist,” the former president declared last week, weirdly combining labels that normally contradict each other.

Trump claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Vice President Harris, whom he has dubbed “Comrade Kamala,” “wants this country to go communist.” 

They brought up Whoopee Goldberg, who needless to note is an actress and comedian, saying Trump was a bug and Biden making a squashing gesture as if Trump doesn't revel in being a crude insult master.

One of them brought up Louis Farrakhann having called Jews termites, as if very many Fox News viewers would even know who this now 91 year old leader of the Black Nationalist organization The Nation of Islam is. I wonder how many people watching him looked him up in Wikipedia.

The Fox News argument understandably doesn't address the reasons Gen. Kelly and others like former Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milley  who worked in the Trump adminstration are warning that Trump aspires to be a fascist dictator and is a danger to the country.

Trump has told us who he is, who he wants to be, and how he wants to run the county. Apparently the Fox News Trump worshippers haven't been listening. When it comes to Trump they are the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys.

Addendum:

Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking her cue from Fox News:

What does else does the Trump campaign have to say about this? They want to coin a new psychiatric diagnosis for anyone who says Trump is a fascist:

Previous blogs here.

Psychiatrist who authored The Goldwater Rule says there are exceptions and Trump is one of them, by Hal M. Brown. MSW

Mental health professionals said Goldwater Rule be damned, it shouldn't apply to us when we warn about the danger of Donald Trump.

This was the main article on HUFFPOST today:

Vindication came today with this news not only for Dr. John D. Gartner, founder of Duty to Warn (See "Experts are desperate to warn the public": Hundreds sign Dr. John Gartner's Trump dementia petition"), all the contributors to the best selling "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" and the hundreds of mental health professionals like myself who went public despite The Goldwater Rule. We wrote explaining why Trump was suffering from one or more psychiatric disorders that made him both unfit and dangerous to hold the office of president. 

Many mainstream media articles about our doing this referenced The Goldwater Rule and suggested we were violating it. Each time this was included in an article it probably  instilled doubt in some readers about the credibilty of our argument.

This was published in HUFFPOST today:

Doctor Who Wrote ‘Goldwater Rule’ Says He Would Recommend Dementia Tests For Trump

An author of the 1973 American Psychiatric Association standard says it was never meant to stop doctors from expressing their opinions based on public information.

 Here's how the article begins:

A psychiatrist who helped craft the 1973 “Goldwater rule” that has kept many mental health professionals from opining on Donald Trump for nearly a decade said that it was not intended as a hard-and-fast prohibition, and that if he were Trump’s doctor, he would order a full battery of tests to determine the cause of what he believes could be the former president’s dementia.

“He seems to be progressively cognitively impaired,” said Allen Dyer, a retired George Washington University psychiatry professor.

Dyer said Trump’s recent behavior warrants medical evaluation, like his apparent inability to remain focused on a single topic or string together complete sentences, for example, or his confusing of people, as he has repeatedly done with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. And more recently, his loss of interest in taking questions at his own campaign event, followed by a demand that his staff play some of his favorite songs while he stood onstage and swayed to the music.

“I find it concerning that he doesn’t complete his sentences, seems to lose track of the question he is trying to answer, or avoid, and that one thought doesn’t lead to another, but appears to veer tangentially off track,” Dyer said.

The article goes on to explain why the American Psychiatric Association formulated this rule. 

This is how Wikipedia decribes The Goldwarer Rule:

The Goldwater rule is Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics,^[1] which states that psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health, but when asked to comment on public figures, they shall refrain from diagnosing, which requires a personal examination and consent.^[2] It is named after former U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.^[3][4]

Creation

The issue arose in 1964 when Fact magazine published "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater,"^[3][5][6] a play on the title of Goldwater's bestseller The Conscience of a Conservative. The magazine polled psychiatrists about Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president.^[7][8] Goldwater sued magazine editor Ralph Ginzburg and managing editor Warren Boroson, and in Goldwater v. Ginzburg (July 1969) received compensation of $75,000 ($623,000 today).

Now, with two weeks until the election, it is too much to hope for that undecided voters who think Trump is as stable as the Rock of Gilbralter will reconsider this conclusion and realize that all the mental health experts are right about him.

Previous blogs

I don't care that Trump's stint at McDonald's was staged. What he couldn't fake was that he's unhealthily obese, By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Of course Trump is known for his love for McDonald's and hasn't been shy about allowing photos of him eating their food to be shared. His doing a made for TV stink at McDonald's is said be have been motivated by Kamala's touting her working class creds by talking about having worked there. 

A number of articles have noted that Trump's visit to McDonald's was not only a staged event but that those who went though the drive-through were pre-screened to be his supporters and, as would makes sense, were checked by the Secret Service. I don't find this alarming. What I am surprised at is that he allowed himself to be photographed is decidedly unflattering ways.

I am sure this is the image he wanted to present to voters:

If he was smart and not in denial about how fat he is he would never had allowed anyone to take photos like the ones below.

In this one he just looks like a squat old man not the tall imposing figure he fancies himself to be:

This shows how fat he is...

... but in this you can clearly see a roll of fat.

Here's the interview from in the restaurant where he claims falsely that Kamala Harris never worked at a McDonald's. She did, though like many people (myself included when I worked two summers in college as a groundskeeper at at large county park), she didn't include what was a summer job on her resume. 

Here are some frequently shared photoes of Trump which I am sure he wishes were never taken.

Some of the photos he has to hate are these and others of his playing golf with his ample girth on display:

Compare these with two other presidents Trump loves to hate engaging in sports:

And eat you heart out, Trump, if you can find it under layers of fat, compare yourself engaging in a sport which takes no more physical effort than billiards or pool with Kamala dancing:

Don't get me started on what Trump considers to be his Travolta level dancing moves. These have snarkily have compared to his making obscene gestures to music. In keeping with the PG rating of this blog I'm not putting a link to the article in the PRIDE website which addresses this. You'll have to use your imagination or do some creative web searching to see what I am referring to.

Getting (more) serious:

There has been criticism over Trump refusing to release a complete medical reported about his health like this in HUFFPOST:

Much attention has been paid to whether he has early dementia. This would be difficult to determine without extensive neurological testing. I think he shows these signs but there's no way to know with a reasonable degree of certainty. 

There are several health related things about Trump that we do know about this 78 year old man.  One is that he gets no significant exercise and that he has a terrible diet. We know from photographs and videos that he is overweight. You might want to add his not getting the sleep required for optimal health.

Here are more illustrations because (I had trouble deciding which one to use when I asked Perchance Photo AI for an image of a fat Trump eating McDonald's. You can see why it was difficult to chose the best one below:

Here's a shoutout to Perchance, the free photo generating AI program I often use to make illustrations for my blogs.

Read previous posts here.