"Don't believe your eyes ", a pattern of Trump's spin doctors that needs exposing..

Updated: 1/31/2026.We have seen enough of the spins and lies lately to see what Trump's spin doctors are trying to do: to get voters not to believe their very eyes. Their lies and spins are being exposed by citizens who have unlimited access to new kinds of technology. Those objecting to Trump's tactics have the advantage in this age of everyone having a video camera in their cell phones and access to social media to publish it. Whether a passing-by citizen or a seasoned journalist like Don Lemon uses their phone to video a protest, or  ICE killing a protester or shooting a pepper ball at a praying pastor, or a 5-year-old, looking like every other 5-year-old, being shipped with his dad to an ICE camp, the Trumpian attempt to get their followers not to believe their very eyes becomes harder and harder. Drones overhead and protesters themselves film the actual size of 7 million protesting the tyrannical king-like regime of Trump marching in masses in hundreds of locations, making a mockery of theTrump propaganda line that all of those protesters are being paid or are professional agitators.  While the most loyal MAGA close their eyes, cover their ears, Trump minions try to buy out any media who dare report these citizens' and journalists' videos,  or Trump uses the DOJ to prosecute them (the attempt is the punishment; they rarely succeed in court). They are still failing because these days of social media, those videos still escape into the public realm. This is despite the attempts by the Trump regime to suppress press reporting  them by using threats of delicensing and buyouts of their owners by MAGA loyalists.  This is not just a matter of violating the First Amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and the press. It is an attempt of a regime to control the thoughts and minds of citizens, just like the fascists and communist dictators of years past did. What is different now, everyone with a cell phone can become a photo journalist, and social media is their publisher if traditional media is suppressed.

  Here are the danger signs that your mind is being twisted to swallow the spin.  Immediately, within minutes, without any attempt to investigate first, the spin is out: the agent was always acting in self-defense in the shooting, followed by refusing to let independent or multiple agencies do an investigation. The spin doctors depend on the suppression of evidence to the contrary. They are afraid their cover-up would be exposed, which itself suggests they are engaged in a cover-up. Next, if the selected video is shown and edited to support their spin, know that given the same opportunity exists for everyone else in the world to see something quite different, and then give the world the opportunity with eye-opening multi-video opportunities in every media opportunity possible. Third, as the event gets less and less coverage, the propagandists will try to revise history by those whose memories have dimmed. Keep the videos to the contrary shown every time the spin is attempted in the future, and never let up doing it whenever the opportunity presents itself. The pattern itself is damning.

Some opportunities to show the pattern of behavior of lies and spins using  the "don't believe your very eyes"attempts and put events in context of behavior:

A most recent one, 1/28/2026: Lying about affordability, the economy, and inflation as Trump is doing in Iowa does not fly either. Fact check: Trump says Democrats don’t talk about affordability anymore (they do) because inflation is over (it isn’t)  It is either his staff does not dare correct him, or his gears and mouth are stuck in lying, or he thinks his MAGA base is really that dumb. He assumes they do not know the price of gas in the tank is not under $2, or if grocery bills have increased, not decreased or he thinks he can get away with "don't believe your eyes" line on this issue, too.  Even those in Trump's cabinet who should know better about the economy lie. Scott Bessent says construction jobs are booming under Trump's tariffs. Government data show the opposite,  and the job numbers sector is just for starters in this fact check.1/29/2026.

On January 6,the spin: The Trump banner-waving rioters were looky-loos tourists who were not called to be violent that day by the president himself (Jack Smith's detailed findings are to the contrary and demand release of his report. Call it a cover up diverted with personal attacks on Smith). The propagandist response is to bury and rewrite history in words that contradict what we saw with our very eyes or videos of the violence that the stormers of the Capitol committed. In the shooting of Renee Good, show the wheels and back-up lights as she moved away from the threatening ICE agents, and the bullets that riddled her side of the car that killed her is from an agent on the drivers side, not standing in front of it.  An agent claiming that she tried to run him down has a hard time showing why he shot her from the side of the car.. In the case of the killing of  Alex Pretti, focus on the cell phone in his hands, some 9mm pistol. Show he was pinned to the ground on all fours with no gun in his hand. His legally concealed gun was removed from him, but after that, he was shot multiple times by the agent/killer after he was subdued and the weapon was removed..Timeline: How the Shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti Unfolded - The New York Times And do it all over again and again and again as a way to demonstrate a pattern of behavior and destroy the credibility of the Trump spinners.

Sidenote: Some takeaways from the Alex Pretti killing that serve as a warning to protesters: 1) leave your legal conceal and carry weapon at home; you too could be called a domestic terrorist armed and dangerous with an evidenced plan to kill ICE agents 2) wear a covid mask; you are on ICE agents cell phone cameras for future prosecutiion as domestic terrorist. Filming ICE is legal but exposes you to digital tracking – here’s how to minimize the risk 

Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of US troops in Europe, called out ICE for being an uncontrolled militia. He did this morning, 1/26/2026 on Morning Joe. 'ICE is playing soldier but without the discipline:' Ret. general | Watch

 Hertling and other analysts. In the past heand others have used the term like a "violent militia" or "occupying army". This includes accusations of using excessive force, such as the shooting of a civilian in Minneapolis, which contradicts official reports (per a search on Google AI). 

Trump...the master of mind control pre and post Nov.3

In social media dialogs with dedicated Trump supporters, I have got to hand it to Trump. He is a master of mind control. and he is the master of a universe he himself helps shape. What is reality has become what media outlet a person watches exclusively. That is the single most important factor causing such a sharply divided nation. There seems to be an Earth A and an Earth B existing side by side. Reality to him is what FOX and Friends and Hannity broadcast, and the lines are blurred with who is influencing whom. Trump if anything is a TV-shaped and shaping creature. He is where he is because of his TV stardom in an echo chamber of his making..That he watches FOX hours a day is documented in his tweets, his former staff, and his own comments and his using them as his kitchen cabinet to shape public policy. That is the reality he wants for his followers to perceive, even if he himself knows otherwise.

Post-Nov. 3, the Trumpists still promote Earth B, defying the election results in spite of no evidence of fraud..and his attorneys have been laughed out of court.  Nonetheless, the propaganda machines are hard at work drumming up social media and "news" stories that are bogus, purporting to show evidence of fraud...and debunked by ABC news showing how they have tried to do this: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/election-2020-debunking-false-misleading-videos-claiming-show/story?id=74148233&fbclid=IwAR27lopUFT2RVS91tB5q-XwvxDNxu0bxcQXkXG784dG4RKf0H1HbR5Cnu-s

CNN’s Tapper Shreds GOP For Enabling Trump as He Foments Post-Election Threats: ‘Did You Not Know Who This Man Was?’ (msn.com)

Example #1 of how effective Trump's propaganda machine is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/526204-south-dakota-nurse-says-many-dying-patients-still-insist-covid-19-not?fbclid=IwAR2pe8JLapCvGdUnXgyo-fAfUC6ylfXAqrJ-R9WITgCCSdRC3_114KWthgQ

Example #2: Crossing Trump's propaganda machine gets you fired. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/936003057/cisa-director-chris-krebs-fired-after-trying-to-correct-voter-fraud-disinformati

Example # 3: Trump's crowd-size lies did not end with his inauguration crowd. How about these Trumpsters tricks: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/17/facebook-posts/photos-show-cleveland-cavaliers-parade-and-womens-/?fbclid=IwAR0YCtmfQ3oZzQDMC6utWHibXXsncwyrDan3HfGoXUaHzFBKZR-RKH4cV1g

Pre November 3.:

Foxated on Hunter Biden?  Funny how that story came about and where it went. Here is an example how Fox media

made it into a big nothing.How the Hunter Biden Laptop Story Disappeared from Fox News Prime Time After the Election (msn.com)

Back in the communist era in the USSR and also in Nazi Germany, there was a political commissar in charge of making sure thoughts, words, and deeds conformed to the political leader or party line, throughout their society. Now, in the Trump administration, it appears there are informal commissars who make scientific reports curtailed, rewritten, or buried, particularly when it comes to mortality figures of COVID regardless of scientific findings or the effectiveness of masks and the timing of the availability of immunizations. We may not yet have a dictatorship, but our wannabe autocrat, Donald Trump, is showing the same tendencies to act as others before him did. (for more on how members of our family experienced this first hand see another posting of the blog: https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/trumps-political-commissars-are-at-work.html    What Trump is doing is even more insidious than either Stalin or Tito because both of these mid-20th-century communists appeared to believe in their own ideology, but Trump believed one thing and told his followers to believe something else.

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How many times have you heard from his mouth not " to believe what you hear or see" and. believe him instead?

We should have gotten a clue when he exaggerated the size of his inauguration audience, even when photo comparisons with Obama's audience his inauguration were shown side by side. There is another world out there that takes data from scientific sources, evidence, and experience as reality and believe what they see, hear, experience and rationally consider.

How and why does he do it?. It is not always a matter of ignorance, or forgotten school lessons, ADHD, or lack of reading comprehension many presumed. It is not that he is ignorant of science. He knows how the disease spreads. He is a germaphobe and, he fears human physical contact by a handshake or a sympathetic hug with the public, as he called" disgusting" supporters attending his rallies, per a former Pence aid. It may be he is driven by instinct instead of calculation, but it is effective in shaping the public perception that favors him, the person.
If anything speaks to his being driven by calculation, it was revealed by Bob Woodward's book RAGE,. It was Trump's intentional manipulation to shape and bond with his core followers with the self-knowledge of the deadly danger of COVID, caught on Woodward's tape, while simultaneously telling his followers it was just like the usual flu and not to worry.

.It takes two to validate one another and he has an uncanny ability to know what rings the chimes of at least 40% of voters. This is not to say his voters do not know their own minds. . They do. He just amplifies the depth of their anger, fears, racial prejudices, a desire for a "strong leader" to save them, and/or economic self-interest as he plays to it and intensifies it The roar of a maskless indoor rally crowd in Henderson, NV, or Tulsa, or TV ratings and media coverage of his tweets validate what he utters is working to cultivate loyal followers. as well an understanding that resonates with them. They think if they act like COVID is over, it is over, so why wear a mask, while experts warn we have not turned the corner, as Trump trumpets. It has just plateaued until winter drives activities indoors and the usual flu season begins.
When every news outlet, domestic and foreign, write and report something else than what FOX and Trump media report, the reality is not just a matter of perception, gut feel, or hunch. He is an intentional manipulator. of other people's thoughts, even when he knows the evidence indicates the contrary. which he acknowledges as the truth in private.
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More....
As a first-hand witness to Russian consolidation of control of East Germany and spending in-person time in a country run by a dictator and over 50 years being married to a refugee from communist Yugoslavia,I noted the first strategy used by these dictators to get and keep power is to block, and jam all news from the West and the only news allowed was their version. It was a method of mind control. that was also physica.l..No western publications or radio reports are allowed. In these days the menu and access to a smorgasbord of news providers online, the way unfavorable news is blocked by the Trumpsters is with four years of claiming any source others that their approved ones were called "fake news. " . . Trump himself has conditioned his followers to block out inconvenient facts and news, not physically, but in their minds. He has dismissed any news except that coming by Fox and Trump's approved news sources as "fake". It began with "alternative facts" at the early years of the Trump administration to his continued damning every other source except his approved ones...and his willing followers and worshippers of Trump himself are more than willing to comply. There is one particular stock answer that I see pop up on some Facebook sites, terming any news from any source, domestic and foreign, that provides facts and data that expose Trump's spin as "fake news", presenting no proof, data, or information to the contrary....just the two-word comment: "fake news". I appreciate those who do provide "alternative facts' and sources, but I also find the same Trump supporters are still calling inconvenient news stories dismissed as "fake" as well, even when presented with data, evidence, and facts,. 

The service that Bob Woodward provided in his book "RAGE", and corresponding tapes of Trump's own voice is to expose his intentional distortion of "facts to the contrary", to be just the opposite to the public of what he admitted to Woodward on tape privately. Top of that list is Trump's wilful lies that COVID is no big thing, just like the flu...at exactly the same time he acknowledged the deadly and infectious nature of COVID...In the past couple of days he now sets out to denigrate facemasks again and launch a policy of "herd mentality", which would require the death totals in the US to be at least 2 million (10 times the current deaths), and 60% of US population to survive the infection. He is leading by example and calling out Biden from wearing facemasks since Biden does lead by example himself. Trump is holding indoor maskless rallies and telling red state governors with spikes in COVID to do away with mandatory mask-wearing. .The result is not just a political tactic, it is also a matter of life and death. .for his own supporters ...and .as an 82-year-old, for my likely premature death from mask shunners. My answer is another nine or ten months of lockdown until vaccines will be available to the general public, per the CDC 9/17.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/trump-rally.html https://www.businessinsider.com/video-aide-trump-didnt-want-to-shake-hands-disgusting-supporters-2020-9

 

Putin's winning strategy: the duping of the GOP

Update December 10, 2019 to reflect the articles of impeachment and the DOJ Inspector General Report on the FBI activities in opening and conducting the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Putin's  strategy to shape US policy for Russia’s benefit is to attempt to dupe American voters and their government representatives.  It appears some have fallen under their spell.

On December 3, 2019, the House of

 Representatives voted on a resolution that opposed Russia's being readmitted to the G7. Russia had been kicked out of that prestigious group of world leaders for their grab of Ukrainian territory. There is an ongoing hot conflict there in which 13,000 Ukrainians have died .and for which the western leading government had sought critical anti-tank missiles, Javelins, to thwart further aggression.    Seventy-one Republicans voted against that  G7 resolution, including Colorado's own Rep. Ken Buck. That is a sad indication of how some in the GOP are becoming a supporter of Donald Trump's pro-Russian policies, a party that used to be firmly against Russian aggression. The resolution passed handily but in past, similar resolutions, including maintaining sanctions against Russia,  had received greater bi-partisan support. The seventy-one GOP votes in opposition on December  3 are a disturbing measure of how far the Russians have made inroads into the views of some voters and their representatives in Congress.  The Russian influence has also been felt in the issues surrounding impeachment, such as Cloudstrike and support of lethal military aid for Ukraine against Russian aggression.

That Russian influence and Donald Trump inviting them into the American system is a subject that appears throughout the articles of impeachment that will be voted upon in the House within a week or two. Within the same week, the long-awaited Inspector General report of the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference and active measures in the 2016 election verified the justification of the issue on its merits and that it was not done because of some "deep state" partisanship.  The GOP had tried to brush off and deny the Russian meddling as some conspiracy cooked up by Trump's opponents to unseat him. In a stunning role reversal, the once anti-communist GOP became an unwitting supporter of Russian activities and policies promoted by Trump and Democrats became the defense and Russian hawk party.  

It is likely those who used to be Russia hawks and now have flipped are also taking their cue from their leader, Donald Trump.  The mystery is Trump's Make Russia Great Again foreign policy. Why? Whatever the issue, Crimea, Syria, NATO, interference in the 2016 elections, he apologizes or supports Putin's policies and takes his word for Russian intelligence over his own US intelligence services.

The Mueller investigation found  widespread  Russian interference  in 2016 elections  and Special Counsel Robert  Mueller warned us that Russia is planning to do likewise in 2020. Constitution  law professors dominated the first day of the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings Dec. 4, citing the deliberations of the writers of our Constitution in formulating impeachment clauses.  The reason it was included in the Constitution, our founders  feared the re-establishment of a monarchy, a king,  by foreign influence, negating what the American Revolution.had accomplished. They also feared that waiting for the next election for the president to be disciplined for this might be too late  because the wrongdoing  practices of the chief executive could continue to get more foreign intervention to help get himself re-elected and perpetuate his ability to become a king, an autocrat.
That Russian influence and Donald Trump inviting them into the American system is a subject that appears throughout the articles of impeachment that will be voted upon in the House within a week or two. Within the same week, the long-awaited Inspector General report of the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference and active measures in the 2016 election verified the justification of the issue on its merits and that it was not done because of some "deep state" partisanship.

A propaganda initiative conducted by Russians has become central to the impeachment actions in the House. One of the two favors Donald Trump asked of the Ukraine president  was for him to open investigations of Cloudstrike in order to get an oval office visit, and later, to get the anti-tank missile aid Trump had frozen released.  The  Cloudstrike theory, that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the DNC server is a conspiracy theory that contradicts the findings of the US intelligence services who traced it to a propaganda initiative of Russian intelligence. Both GOP Trump Congressional supporters and Trump himself have fallen for the conspiracy theory hook line and sinker, even after they were briefed by our intelligence services.

Putin  may be a younger generation than the Soviets,  but he was still trained by them as  KGB operative. The propaganda methods developed in the USSR were some of the most effective skills in modern history. I have seen them work from the inside, too, from my student days in Berlin as Communists consolidated control of their German zones. Putin has harnessed modern IT communications as his weapons to shape the minds of those he is trying to control. He is appearing to be succeeding.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/09/world/meanwhile-in-america-december-10-intl/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1gbEhI4rMxpHmiuo0FOh6xxF2ydkMtliGTCN2icRe1StKzzCmA8gho0Ng

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/04/republicans-have-become-party-russia-this-makes-me-sick/ 
The GOP now the Gang of Putin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/04/stop-calling-trump-russian-dupe-truth-is-much-worse/
Trump was not duped: he has used Russian interference for his own self interested reasons.