{"id":11997,"date":"2017-01-16T18:06:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T02:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11997"},"modified":"2017-01-16T18:05:50","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T02:05:50","slug":"the-trump-twilight-zone-bradcast-1162017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11997","title":{"rendered":"The Trump Twilight Zone: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 1\/16\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_TrumpTwilightZone_011617.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">On today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>, resignation and evidence of corruption continue to dog the wildly unpopular incoming Trump Administration just days before his Inauguration; And is Comcast\/NBCUniversal doing the bidding of the Mormon Church in Utah? [<i>Audio link to show follows below.<\/i>]\n<p>As we barrel towards what is certain to be an incredibly <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/neilmackay\/status\/820669358179553280\">bizarre<\/a> (to say the least) Inauguration Day for the historically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/201833\/approval-trump-transition-low-inauguration-nears.aspx\">unpopular<\/a> Donald Trump, the Obama Administration has <a href=\"http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/0c475390c15b448ea110fbd6fb1c9322\">reportedly<\/a> transferred out another 10 Gitmo detainees to Oman. In the meantime, a senior Trump White House appointee (and former Fox &#8220;News&#8221; contributor) has already <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2017\/01\/16\/media\/kfile-crowley-out\/index.html\">resigned<\/a> after revelations of massive plagiarism, as new questions about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/education\/betsy-devos-omitted-125000-political-donation-from-senate-disclosure-form\/2017\/01\/13\/7a82c368-d9ba-11e6-9f9f-5cdb4b7f8dd7_story.html?tid=sm_tw\">financial<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/01\/16\/politics\/tom-price-bill-aiding-company\/index.html\">improprieties<\/a> continue to mount for a number of Trump cabinet nominees and for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2017\/01\/14\/uncle-sam-to-donald-trump-please-explain-these-shady-practices-and-dubious-donations\/\">Trump Campaign<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n<p>Then, we are joined by <a href=\"http:\/\/FredKarger.com\">former GOP Presidential candidate<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightsequalrights.com\/\">gay rights activist<\/a> <b>Fred Karger<\/b>, to discuss his latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/home\/4803801-155\/television-campaign-targeting-mormon-church-tax\">campaign<\/a> against the Mormon Church, which he believes should lose their tax exempt status revoked by the IRS due to participation in a number of anti-gay political campaigns and other corruption. Karger is charging that Comcast\/NBCUniversal has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/home\/4812171-155\/comcast-changes-tune-wont-air-ads\">blocked<\/a> the airing of <a href=\"https:\/\/video.search.yahoo.com\/yhs\/search?fr=yhs-mozilla-002&#038;hsimp=yhs-002&#038;hspart=mozilla&#038;p=help+us+commercail+fred+karger#id=7&#038;vid=c735dea424b3f0c751b7553545f175cb&#038;action=click\">his new TV ad<\/a> for <a href=\"http:\/\/mormontips.com\">MormonTips.com<\/a>, after the media behemoth had previously agreed to run the 30 second spots in the state of Utah.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know how the Mormon Church operates,&#8221; Karger explains, describing his claim that the Church is behind Comcast nixing the spots. &#8220;They are all powerful, particularly in the state of Utah. It&#8217;s a virtual theocracy. They exercise a tremendous amount of power.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t like me,&#8221; he notes. &#8220;I&#8217;m the guy that discovered their vast involvement in California&#8217;s Prop 8 in 2008 to take away gay marriage. I got them investigated and prosecuted by [California&#8217;s] ethics office because they only admitted to spending $2,078 on the campaign. Turns out it was hundreds of thousands of dollars they ended up reporting. Much more likely millions. So I&#8217;ve learned they are very dishonest, and they&#8217;ve have done things very secretively.&#8221; He argues that they&#8217;ve used their muscle to convince Comcast (which, he says, &#8220;controls something like 90% of the [cable television] market in Utah&#8221;) to kill the ads. &#8220;So they&#8217;re using censorship to quash our free speech and I&#8217;m going to be fighting back against them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Finally today: Is the Trump Administration planning to shut down the White House Press Room after taking office? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/news-politics\/news\/a52301\/trump-evict-press-white-house\/\"><i>Esquire<\/i> reported<\/a> over the weekend that the matter is under serious consideration and, in response, Trump&#8217;s top officials are <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2017\/01\/15\/media\/white-house-press-corps\/index.html\">not denying<\/a> it&#8230;though they do appear to be lying about their reasons for it&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_TrumpTwilightZone_FredKargerMormonAd_PressOutOfWH_011617.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_TrumpTwilightZone_FredKargerMormonAd_PressOutOfWH_011617.mp3]<\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On today&#8217;s BradCast, resignation and evidence of corruption continue to dog the wildly unpopular incoming Trump Administration just days before his Inauguration; And is Comcast\/NBCUniversal doing the bidding of the Mormon Church in Utah? [Audio link to show follows below.] As we barrel towards what is certain to be an incredibly bizarre (to say the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,239,921,89,675,920,299,479,315,130,263,252,176,477,332,188,919,918,592,712,300,126,922,127,198,31],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-barack-obama","category-betsy-devos","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-comcast","category-democrats","category-donald-trump","category-fec","category-freedom-of-the-press","category-guantanamo-bay","category-john-mccain","category-journalist-intimidation","category-kpfk","category-lgbt","category-mainstream-media-failure","category-monica-crowley","category-mormonlds-church","category-reince-priebus","category-religion","category-republicans","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-tom-price","category-the-constitution","category-us-house","category-utah","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11997"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}