Fox’s Bolling lies a lot about Obama and Trump; also, race riots [updated]

Updated below.

How many falsehoods and distortions can Fox News host Eric Bolling pack into a single minute of airtime? Let’s count:

When rating a presidency, the two most important factors are clearly the economy and national security. President Obama presided over eight years of economic malaise.^[1] President Obama presided over the massive expansion of ISIS terror^[2] and homeland terror.^[3] President Obama presided over volatile civil unrest in our communities.^[4] President Obama was a failed presidency.^[5]

President Trump, however, has a robust economy.^[6] ISIS is just about defeated^[7], the Supreme Court is intact and conservative^[8], and by the way, have you heard of any race riots in Ferguson or Baltimore lately?^[9]

That’s quite the alternate reality he’s woven in defense of Trump. Unfortunately, this universe has things like facts and Google.

1. Obama inherited Bush’s recession, the worst since the Great Depression, and turned it around so completely he left the economy better than when he found it, with steady growth throughout his tenure. And that’s not just the liberal view; the centrist Bloomberg estimates it’s one of the better economies of the last few decades, and the arch-conservative American Enterprise Institute – no friends of Obama’s – deemed it “pretty solid”.

2. ISIS was born under the Bush administration and largely due to their screw-ups. Considering how Obama only ramped up Bush’s War on Terror with massively increased drone strikes and record numbers of suspected terrorists taken off the field, it’s deranged to try and pin Daesh’s growth on him.

3. True, domestic terror groups are growing larger and deadlier … and they’re almost exclusively Right-wing White supremacists and anti-government militias who’ve killed twice as many people as Islamic extremists (foreign or domestic) have since 9/11, and their growth spurt took place under the first Black president. That all paints quite a different picture than the one Bolling’s probably looking for.

4. I’m not sure what Bolling is referring to here. He can’t mean the national crime rate; that’s been falling continuously over the last couple decades. Wait, I know – he’s talking about all those protests over police brutality and systemic inequality. But that’s good; it means more people are claiming their right to civil disobedience in the face of discriminatory policies and practices. You’d think that’s something people like Bolling would applaud, until you remember this isn’t the Tea Party, but Black people.

5. He left the country richer, safer and healthier, with a larger military^* and more freedoms for groups that didn’t have them before. So I guess it’s a matter of perspective, eh?

6. I think he’s referring to Obama’s economy that Trump inherited – something of a pattern when it comes to economies passed along from Democratic to Republican presidents.

7. I’m sure the fact that Daesh was already losing ground and hemorrhaging numbers under Obama has nothing to do with that.

8. When was the Supreme Court ever not intact? It briefly had an empty seat when Scalia died, but vacancies happen. (It would’ve been over much sooner had the Republicans not made a shameless partisan game of screwing Merrick Garland over.) As for conservative, half the country would dispute whether that’s necessarily a good thing.

9. This one deserves a special mention. Decades of discrimination, of being denied their rights and constitutional protections, of being murdered in the streets and in their own homes on a daily basis, have galvanized people into rising up against the hideously prejudicial system that subjugates them – largely peacefully, with marches and civil protests only occasionally marred by violence, often at the provocation of overreacting police.

   But sure, let’s just dismiss them as “race riots”.

Pictured: race rioter

I have a better idea – how about we dismiss Eric “Dick Picks” Bolling and the entire Fox News crew as craven, abuse-excusing ideologues who aren’t fit to be on the air?

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UPDATE (08/05/17 @ 5:14 PM ET) —

And now the news hits that Bolling’s been suspended because of said dick picks. Fox News headquarters is turning into a ghost town.

* Not exactly a bonus in my book, considering the US military’s bloated size and world-policing tendencies, but neocons like Bolling certainly love it.