Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Not all heroes wear capes.

“They all knew.”

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You cannot shame the shameless.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

He really is that stupid.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Understatement Of The Year Competiton May Already Be Over

Understatement Of The Year Competiton May Already Be Over

by | 116 Comments

This post is in: ,

Still too swamped to do much in the way of serious posting, but I’ve got something too sweet not to share.

Seems that there is a little trouble in paradise with the new hires to Herr Drumpf’s campaign — the folks brought on post-Lewandowski to bring adult supervision to the romper room masquerading as the national campaign of the GOP’s presumptive nominee.  Here’s what Keven Kellems, in charge of surrogate operations, had to say [Politico link] as he bid this Trumpster fire adieu:

“While brief, it has been an interesting experience.”

James_Tissot_-_The_Farewell

I’ll bet.

Open thread.

Image:  James Tissot, The Farewell, 1871.

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  2. 2.

    Emma

    Kevin Kellems, one of the new hires tasked with overseeing surrogate operations, has left the campaign. “While brief, it has been an interesting experience,” he wrote in an email to campaign staffers.

    That resignation followed Thursday’s departure of Vincent Harris, the digital strategist whose hire was announced 11 days earlier. Both staffers had been part of a wave of hiring by Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort following Corey Lewandowski’s firing on June 20.

    They came, they saw, they had panic attacks, they ran.

  3. 3.

    redshirt

    Leather and Lace.

    I’ll be honest, I’m enjoying the Trump candidacy thoroughly. What a clown show!

    And in 2012 Romney was a joke, but not like this.
    And in 2008 McCain was a joke, but not like this.

    How worse can they get? Hard and scary to imagine.

  4. 4.

    p.a.

    one of billmon’s favorites:

    Despite the best that has been done by everyone… the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    Well, Trump seems to be listening to someone. Judging by the photo in the link, he’s laying off the spray tanning.

  7. 7.

    RaflW

    On my phone, so link posting is a pain, but it seems Trump ad-libbed as a passenger jet flew over something like “Those could be Mexicans. (Pointing up) they are gonna attack us.”

    Can anyone imagine any other major US candidate saying anything that paranoid and unglued? Why is he not hauled off to the loony bin?

  9. 9.

    Redshift

    I have a certain amount of respect for people who think maybe it’ll be good professionally to grab a chance to work for a presidential campaign, and once they see it from the inside, say “oh, hell no.”

    But I think I would have more respect for people who are smart enough to recognize a train wreck and not get on the train.

  10. 10.

    Anya

    According to my TTL, Lewandowski was seen at a Trump rally. Maybe he’s rehired by the Trump campaign.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @redshirt:

    How worse can they get? Hard and scary to imagine.

    They could deploy the Palin.

    Newt and Chris Christie are awful in their own right, but La Palin takes such pleasure in being mean queen.

    Tom: thank you for the minty fresh thread.

  14. 14.

    Redshift

    @RaflW: It’s not the first time; I saw video of him making a similar crack a few days ago. I think it’s part of his patter now, not an ad lib, which is arguably worse.

  15. 15.

    smith

    The one that has me chuckling is this at TPM, where Josh Marshall has been keeping tabs on Trump’s foreign fundraising by staying in touch with an Australian MP. Not only have the emails from the Trump campaign not stopped, but the MP is also getting them from a Trump Super PAC that was set up only days ago. As Marshall points out, whatever boneheaded move by the campaign resulted in sending fundraising emails to foreign MPs, it is surpassingly unlikely that a PAC just coincidentally made the same mistake, so it’s pretty damn clear that the campaign is coordinating with this PAC. I guess Trump is going for the world record for the most FEC violations in one campaign.

  16. 16.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Redshift: Yes, indeed, he was “reporting.” You know, doing that thing that’s so important that protections for it were written into the Constitution.

    I hate these people. And also the MSM. When you can’t tell them apart, things have gone very wrong.

  17. 17.

    Martha from Augusta

    @Anya: The Politico link mentions his appearance (“dressed in shorts and loafers” BTW, meow, Politico) at the New Hampshire rally.

  18. 18.

    Belafon

    @smith: He’s a litmus test for Republicans: How will the government penalize someone who doesn’t care?

  19. 19.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    While I enjoy the schadenfreude of these posts we the Dems need to run like we’re running against Brian Sandoval because we need to pick up the Senate for sure and if FSM is smiling on us, the House.

  20. 20.

    germy

    We have some storms passing through the area. TV news (between weather updates) did a quick story on Bill Clinton’s meeting with Lynch. According to the story, republicans and some democrats are outraged by the meeting. They featured Trump’s reaction to it (“He cried foul”). The story was brief, and then they moved on to more weather.

    And not a whisper about Trump using charity money to buy sports memorabilia.

    All these outrages we read about concerning Trump’s campaign, his misdeeds, his statements? It’s not being reported. They’re too busy chasing the hildebeast and her fiendish sidekick, the clenis.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Mai.naem.mobile: How wonderful would it be to claim the house, or be at parity there.

    This is such an unusual year, I won’t believe people who throw rain on that idea this far out.

    I like the idea that Paul Ryan might be endangered in his district. Happened to Tom Foley.

  23. 23.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @gogol’s wife: That’s a heck of a painting.

    I’m sure there’s a story behind those scissors – they’re much, much too prominent to be there by chance.

    “Don’t cross me if you know what’s good for you! Snip, snip!!” ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @Iowa Old Lady: the Corey Lewandowski hire is shameful. Just plain shameful.

    Although this is the network that employs Wolf Blitzer and a pantheon of other unworthies. The internets told me that Anderson Cooper refuses to have Lewandowski on his program. Good on Anderson.

  25. 25.

    raven

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Adrift in a sea of digital apps for every imaginable function, we often feel our needs are met better today than in any previous era. But consider the chatelaine, a device popularized in the 18th century that attached to the waist of a woman’s dress, bearing tiny useful accessories, from notebooks to knives. In many ways chatelaines provided better access to such objects than we have today: How often have you searched for your keys or cell phone at the bottom of a cavernous bag?

  28. 28.

    germy

    @raven: We have more digital stuff to play with, more instant information, but I remember a million useful things from my childhood that I never see anymore. Things like shoehorns and key organizers and other household items.

  29. 29.

    JMG

    CNN is permanently stuck in 1993. I mean, aside from the mandatory right wingers, their expert panels include the likes of Gloria Borger, and even though she’s a good Democrat, Donna Brazile. Neutral expert John King who has an orgasm on-air when a new county reports in the North Dakota primaries. These are all people whose sell-by date was about a week after the Clinton impeachment failed.
    Jeff Zucker damn near killed NBC. He’ll do it to CNN, too.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    Should anyone happen to have TCM on at the moment and might be curious about who the actor with the gravelly voice is, that’s good egg, extreme liberal and courageous progressive Lionel Stander, who stood up to HUAC and was blacklisted for 15 years.

    “I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness without due process of law … I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it. And if you are interested in that and also a group of ex-fascists and America-Firsters and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody including Negroes, minority groups and most likely themselves … and these people are engaged in a conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists.”

  34. 34.

    germy

    @NotMax:

    courageous progressive Lionel Stander, who stood up to HUAC and was blacklisted for 15 years.

    We just saw him yesterday in “The Wicked Stepmother”

    He’s one of those actors I recognize immediately even though I can never remember his name.

  35. 35.

    catclub

    @smith:

    I guess Trump is going for the world record for the most FEC violations in one campaign.

    The FEC is completely toothless as far as enforcement goes, plus, whatever enforcement power it does have is going to be applied after the election.
    It cannot reverse an election, so a rational actor who is willing to break norms should break all those laws and not care. I suspect the Trump campaign has not even thought this far.

  37. 37.

    Anya

    @Baud: I am convinced he was never fired. All that lovefest was suspicious. He didn’t sound like someone who was fired.

  38. 38.

    Mike J

    In news about Democrats:

    Abolish the death penalty made it into the platform.

    Clinton has raised $288 million this campaign, plus $90 million for DNC and state parties.

  41. 41.

    Tokyokie

    @germy: I think the first movie I remember Lionel Stander from is C’era una volta il West. And he’s both funny and menacing in Polanski’s Cul de sac. But he’s one of those characters (Richard Boone was another) who stole every scene he was in. I loved him before I learned he was a HUAC victim, which made me love him even more.

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Because nothing beats being constricted by a whalebone corset like having something additional cinched about the waist.

  43. 43.

    D58826

    @germy: THE MEETING has been talked to death on an earlier thread if you want to get a flavor of opinion here on BJ.

  45. 45.

    Doug R

    @Elizabelle: This is what running up the score is all about. The Trumpster fire represents a unique opportunity to turn the 2016 election into a wave election like 2006.

  46. 46.

    germy

    @D58826: I read some of it in real time. I just found it interesting that my local news found it fascinating enough to report on… and yet chose not to mention Trump’s foreign fundraising or sports memorabilia charity mishandling.

  47. 47.

    germy

    @Tokyokie: By the same token, I cannot see certain actors without being reminded that they cooperated with and approved of the hearings (Adolphe Menjou, Gary Cooper, etc)

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    @germy

    It’s fast approaching the point when a channel could report on the Trump disasters/scams/frauds non-stop 24/7 without repeating a story.

  50. 50.

    germy

    @NotMax:

    It’s fast approaching the point when a channel could report on the Trump disasters/scams/frauds non-stop 24/7 without repeating a story.

    that’s a great idea, actually. A channel devoted entirely to every one of his misdeeds. WHUTN (What’s He Up To Now)

    Raw footage, interviews, panel discussions… it’d be interesting, entertaining, funny and horrifying all at once.

  51. 51.

    JPL

    OT.. The nytimes book review has a fictional story about the Trump family and especially Melania. link

    It’s a fun read and the author did a good job, with the characters.

  52. 52.

    Patricia Kayden

    Image: James Tissot, The Farewell, 1871.

    That’s a pretty romantic painting. I’d watch a movie based on it.

    @germy:

    All these outrages we read about concerning Trump’s campaign, his misdeeds, his statements? It’s not being reported.

    You’re correct that the MSM may not be reporting Trump’s misdeeds. But thankfully there are so many other media outlets online from which many of us get our news, that Trump’s missteps are being heavily reported. That’s part of the reason that he is lagging behind Secretary Clinton despite her hyper highlighted shortcomings.

  53. 53.

    hovercraft

    @Anya:
    Since he was elected as a Drump delegate for the convention, he supposedly was attending as just a supporter.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Should anyone happen to have TCM on at the moment and might be curious about who the actor with the gravelly voice is, that’s good egg, extreme liberal and courageous progressive Lionel Stander, who stood up to HUAC and was blacklisted for 15 years.

    The podcast and website You Must Remember This has a series of excellent episodes on various stars and the blacklist.

    I am having issues trying to create a link with my mobile device, but the site is definitely worth checking out. Or download some of the podcasts.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    All these outrages we read about concerning Trump’s campaign, his misdeeds, his statements? It’s not being reported.

    The fraudulent nonsense that was the Trump Institute has received lots of play since the original NY Times story came out a couple of days ago. Just in time for people to send it to their Trump loving friends. Should make for great conversation while the burgers are grilling.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    Can’t help but wonder if the stage design for the Cleveland convention will include a yuuge escalator, so you know who can once again descend like Zeus from the heavens.

  58. 58.

    Tokyokie

    @germy: I’m a little like that, but I’m more likely to watch A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and am saddened that the likes of Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford were long silenced. But the guy other than draft-dodging John Wayne I have trouble with Elia Kazan. I was sort of neutral about him until I saw an archive interview with Jules Dassin, who detailed just how Kazan back stabbed members of their theater group, and, decades later, it still brought him to tears. And, in that same vein, when Kazan got an honorary Oscar a few years ago and reaction shots of celebrities were televised, I remember Nick Nolte and Ed Harris deliberately NOT applauding (with fellow OU alum Harris looking especially pissed off), and I loved those two guys ever since.

  60. 60.

    Patricia Kayden

    @redshirt: When they are roundly defeated in November, Conservatives will simply say, “Trump wasn’t really one of us” and in 2020 they’ll nominate a “true” Conservative. David Duke should still be alive by then.

  61. 61.

    Aleta

    Stories about Trump chaos that make me happy must be giving hope to the Rs who want to replace him, which then makes me nervous. How likely is that effort to succeed? I don’t have a good grasp on their chances. I understand that some of those Rs are on the rules committee and may try to disqualify some delegates ?

  62. 62.

    hovercraft

    @Patricia Kayden:
    Agreed, MPT Daily with Chucky the toad was all aflutter about tarmacgate, using it as an excuse to bring up Clinton exhaustion , when the good economy of the 90;s was raised, he pivoted to yes but who was speaker then. They are going to do their level best to try make the dumpster competitive.

  63. 63.

    redshirt

    @Aleta: Even if they could replace Trump – and they can’t – a replacement would be an even bigger failure than Trump.

    They’re stuck with Trump.

  64. 64.

    hovercraft

    @Patricia Kayden:
    Maybe since the media is now able to label candidates as racist, they will be more subtle and nominate the purest, truest conservative, who cannot be accused of racism since he is Latino, Ted Cruz. The candidate America has been waiting for.

  65. 65.

    Trentrunner

    @Aleta: 13 million Trump primary voters will not allow another Republican nominee. Period. GOP nominee will only change if Trump withdraws. Rest easy.

  70. 70.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @redshirt: I did not think it was possible for the Klown Kar Kavalcade of 2016 to be more bizarre than that of 2012.

    I was wrong.

  71. 71.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hovercraft: He’s just a dominionist asshat who is one of Daesh’s top agents in the United States.

    Real improvement, there.

  79. 79.

    TG Chicago

    I’ve got a little rant I have to get off my chest.

    I saw some rightwingers on Twitter complaining that the Democratic commisioners on the FEC were targeting Fox News! OMG! Outrage!

    You will be shocked to learn that there’s nothing to this.

    What happened is Fox News was going to have a Republican presidential candidate debate on August 6, 2015. Fox came up with criteria for who should be in the debate. At the last minute, they realized that the people they wanted in the debate wouldn’t make the cut, so they changed the criteria.

    This is a violation of two points in federal regulations (11 C.F.R. § 110.13) relating to the production of debates:

    b. Debate structure. The structure of debates…is left to the discretion of the staging organizations(s), provided that…the staging organization(s) does not structure the debates to promote or advance one candidate over another.

    c. Criteria for candidate selection. For all debates, staging organization(s) must use pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate.

    So the three Democratic commissioners said this was a violation, but only two of them said Fox News should actually be punished in any way for it. It would have been a slap on the wrist:

    Any penalty applied to Fox News would have been small, Ravel [one of the Dem commissioners] notes — perhaps “conciliation” discussions and/or a “de minimis” monetary penalty of $5,000.

    The Republicans don’t think it’s appropriate for the FEC to get involved in news coverage. That’s a totally defensible position. However, that’s not what’s currently written in the law. Maybe the law should be changed — I can see that point. But instead, the Republicans just decided not to enforce the law.

    So Republicans choosing not to enforce the law gets twisted around into Democrats targeting Fox News.

    Rightwingers even claimed that Fox News was being singled out — CNN did the same thing! — but the reason the FEC dealt with Fox is that the complaint was only lodged against Fox. Nobody filed a complaint about CNN, so they didn’t rule on them.

    And the best part is: who do you think had standing to file a complaint? Answer: someone who was left out of the debate. In other words, a Republican!

    It was also-ran Republican candidate Mark Everson who started this ball rolling. Amusingly, I read one Fox News report about this that actually used the passive voice — “A complaint subsequently was filed with the FEC…” — to obscure the fact that the complaint came from a Republican.

    So to sum up, when a Republican files a complaint against Fox News and two of the Democratic FEC commissioners want to give them a slap on the wrist while the Republican commissioners choose to ignore the law, this is an example of Democrats trying to muzzle conservative media!

    And of course, none of the rightwingers who read about or frothed about this will ever even learn that it’s nonsense. A new zombie lie is born: Democrats are using the FEC to crush conservatives!

    Coda: Rightwing alarmist sites also called it a “SECRET VOTE!” So secret that the FEC released a routine public report about it.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @redshirt: “I have a personal relationship with Jesus whatshisname. You know that Hispanic guy. Did I mention that Hispanics love me. I think they love me even more than the blacks.”

  87. 87.

    Tokyokie

    @germy: Thanks. Wish I could remember which supplemental material to a Criterion release of a Dassin film that archive interview was in. Not that I could very well link to it if I did. But I think that Dassin may have gotten the last laugh by not only outliving Kazan but seeing his best movies (Night and the City and Du rififi chez les hommes) achieve generally greater critical acclaim than Kazan’s. Not to mention that his exile to Europe led to his long marriage to Melina Mercouri and his taking up her cause of having the Elgin Marbles returned to Greece.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    @smith:

    As I understand it, soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals is illegal. Period.

    No wonder the MSM is busy pointing to Bill Clinton’s public conversation with Loretta Lynch and her husband and insisting that we all look over there instead. After all, the appearance of impropriety by a Clinton is a far, far worse crime than actual lawbreaking by Trump.

  90. 90.

    gogol's wife

    @NotMax:

    Right now on TCM is what looks to be one of the worst movies ever made, Chandler with Warren Oates.

  93. 93.

    smith

    @Mnemosyne:

    soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals is illegal.

    Yep. And coordinating with your PAC to solicit contributions form foreign nationals is double illegal. Isn’t it comforting to know that the Trump campaign will go down in history as the bestest and mostest at something?

  94. 94.

    Rand Careaga

    I’m inclined to think that in the event that Trump is defeated in November (which does not seem like an unduly reckless bet from four months out), the party line will be that the Dread Butch Hillary would have lost had the GOP nominated a real Republican, and that accordingly her election is illegitimate and her every policy and initiative to be resisted like grim death. In other words, business as usual.

    I’d guess that The Donald will also bellow that the election was tainted, and wonder how reckless he will be in the message he conveys to his brownshirts.

  95. 95.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Hiya Tom. I just this minute finished your Newton book. Earlier than expected because I wasn’t anticipating 65 pages of notes at the end.
    It was great and I will be passing it on through the family at the next reunion as is our custom with awesome finds.
    I have Vulcan and Einstein in Berlin with me as well. Not gonna be home until 07/18 so I stocked up on nonfiction.

  97. 97.

    smith

    @Rand Careaga: It will be convenient for them to say so, but I think that even had they put up a conventional R candidiate, they would have found a multitude of ways to deny her legitimacy. First, she’s a Dem, and ever since Nixon had to resign, the Rs have done their best to make all Dem presidents illegitimate. Second, she’s a woman, and will be as continuously guilty of presidenting while female as Obama was of presidenting while black. Third, she’s a Clinton, and the Rs will never ever forgive either of them for surviving and even thriving in the face of the most extensive and expensive witch hunt ever aimed at a president. So, it’s baked in the cake, just as the Clinton Rules for political scandals are, so there’s nothing to do but emulate Hillary, and shrug, and keep on keepin’ on.

  98. 98.

    Mnemosyne

    @gogol’s wife:

    Warren Oates is always worth watching, but he was frequently stuck being the best thing in really awful movies. He’s like the American Oliver Reed.

  99. 99.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Rand Careaga: Of course they will. Anytime a Democrat wins, something fishy must have been going on. This is the basis of the “True The Vote” movement…that unless a Rethug wins, the vote MUST have been fraudulent.

  102. 102.

    catclub

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Even so, I bet it would be the campaign or the underlings, rather than the candidate, who gets indicted.

    Maybe the campaign would have to spend 52 weekends in jail after a conviction.

  103. 103.

    Doug R

    @Baud: I saw Jesus at Great America on an Easter Sunday operating the Boomerang, at least that’s what his nametag said.

  106. 106.

    JudyinSD

    @Villago Delenda Est: Someone here the other day said, one day of the Republican Convention would probably be a “Jerry Lewis” style telethon. I think we are now officially on the way to that.

  108. 108.

    Origuy

    Anyone else remember this?

    For a brief time in the early 1970s, beginning in 1972, the Democratic Party even held annual telethons (two were called “America Goes Public” and “Answer, America!”[6]) to help it erase a multi-million dollar debt (this may have provided the inspiration for the 1979 film comedy Americathon, where a telethon is held to prevent national bankruptcy). The telethon idea was created and promoted by John Y. Brown, Jr., the businessman who built Kentucky Fried Chicken into a worldwide chain and later became governor of Kentucky.

  110. 110.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @raven: Neat. My mom’s flatware pattern is called Chatelaine.

    On the painting…:

    This is one of the first works James Tissot painted after his arrival in London in 1871, and one of several in which he treated the theme of parting. It has been suggested that such subjects were provoked by Tissot’s sudden departure from his native Paris and his sense of displacement in London, although clearly he was also responding to the English taste for narrative. The reluctantly parting couple are divided by a fence that symbolises their imminent separation. The scissors which dangle from the lady’s waist also allude to their division. The image became famous through an engraving published in 1873.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    karen marie

    @Aleta: Hahaha. Replace him with who eggzackly? Ted Cruz? Hahahahaha.

    I am also laughing about the Politico thing – Trump “had to” make June work, and failed, so now they’re counting on July. Then it will be August, then September …. hahahaha.

  112. 112.

    karen marie

    @Mnemosyne: Aww, but the poor tiny fingered thing isn’t a professional politician, so of course he’ll make mistakes! It wouldn’t be fair to suggest the public look askance!

  113. 113.

    karen marie

    @Rand Careaga: He’s already doing that. At rallies he explains that the primary taught him that “the system is rigged,” setting up to explain his loss in the general. And Sanders has been effectively confirming that view. Nice!

  114. 114.

    J R in WV

    I heard today someone insisting that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the tarmac meetings between the A G and President Clinton. Totally ignorant of the fact that special prosecutors no longer exist after the shameful and shameless $40,000,000 investigation of the Clintons, which discovered sex between consenting adults.

    Amazing!

  115. 115.

    catclub

    can Trump claim the federal matching funds that all candidates have said is too little to bother with starting with Obama in 2008?

    That way he would not have to fundraise? I wonder how much that is?

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