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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Another Open Thread: The Trickster God Is A Terrible Scriptwriter

Another Open Thread: The Trickster God Is A Terrible Scriptwriter

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The late Michael Cimino’s spirit and the ghost of Michael Bay’s self-respect are currently telling Him, “Dude, too broad! Waaaay too broad, even for Simon Pegg!… “
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Olivia Nuzzi, at the Daily Beast, “How Long Can Donald Trump’s Twitter Troll Ringmaster Hold On?”…

… Dan Scavino, Donald Trump’s social media chief, once shared a video he claimed was of Syrian refugees rallying in support of ISIS in the streets of Germany. The video was a hoax, footage of a 2012 protest that had been repurposed by the fringe right as anti-refugee propaganda…

And then he posted another video, one that implied, with no discernible evidence, that Ted Cruz had an affair with his former staffer Amanda Carpenter, a married mother of two who was forced to go out and declare, on CNN, where she now works, that she has always been faithful to her husband.

All of this was done on Twitter, one of the mediums that Dan Scavino, as director of social media for a major presidential campaign, is supposed to have mastered. But like so many aspects of Donald Trump’s operation, Scavino’s digital outreach is not just unorthodox but a veritable forest of dumpsters doused with gasoline and lit by a match. Scavino, who did not return a phone call, text message, or email requesting an interview, is about as skilled a director of social media as Corey Lewandowski would be a masseur.

A registered independent, Scavino couldn’t even vote for his boss in the New York primary. But to Trump, none of this matters much…

Scavino is a devoutly religious husband to a wife with what he says is chronic Lyme disease. He’s a father who twice met the pope and was named an Inspiring Catholic of 2012 by Our Sunday Visitor. But the idea that he would be down in the trenches of anti-Semitic smut with Trump at 40 years old is not quite the surprise you’d think. Trump seems to inspire a certain kind of Northeastern man to get down in just about any trench with him without a second thought…

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    AnderJ

    Do you want to build a strawman?

    Team Hillary wins the thread before it even began.

  4. 4.

    Ben Cisco

    Trump seems to inspire a certain kind of Northeastern man to get down in just about any trench with him without a second thought…

    Clay of the Northeast?

  5. 5.

    Wag

    But like so many aspects of Donald Trump’s operation, Scavino’s digital outreach is not just unorthodox but a veritable forest of dumpsters doused with gasoline and lit by a match.

    Too many quotes in this post that are full of win. This post rewarded my insomnia tonight.

  6. 6.

    JPL

    From the NY Times

    Mr. Trump called the news media “dishonest” in the rambling and sometimes manic-sounding address, in which he hopscotched from one topic to another.

    That’s actually an understatement.

  9. 9.

    Waldo

    Kinda tired of seeing Trump one-up himself on the stupid, but I am looking forward to 4 more months of Paul Ryan’s Daily Donald Disavowals.

  10. 10.

    sherparick

    As always, “Here’s to the confusion of our enemies.”

    If this has been a normal political campaign, with a candidate somewhere within the bounds of normal, the candidate would have put out a quiet statement about Hillary Clinton e-mails and Director Comey’s characterization of it as a “reckless practice” and let the MSM burn Hilary at the stake, which as can be seen in the NY Times headline and “lead article” they were more than willing to do. Instead, Mr. Narcissist decides to drown out the story to feed “the Base” more of the “politically incorrect” stuff they love about him.

  11. 11.

    Keith P.

    Note to Donald: You are going against the Anti-Defamation League. This will not work out well for you.

  12. 12.

    germy

    His speeches are reminding me more and more of Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Lenny Bruce. The end of the movie where Lenny wanders onstage in a raincoat and no pants and rambles on about his legal troubles.

  13. 13.

    Kay

    He sounds insane in that speech. He has the wrong temperament for this job, and probably the wrong background. He can’t handle criticism.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    Clinton should play the hoarse, insanely angry shouting part again and again. It’ll be horrifying to most people.

  15. 15.

    germy

    [He] seems to inspire a certain kind of Northeastern man to get down in just about any trench with him without a second thought…

    The ultimate roll of the dice: “He could make it all the way, and then I’ll be on the biggest ride of my life! Or he could lose…”

  16. 16.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Kay:

    Clinton should play the hoarse, insanely angry shouting part again and again. It’ll be horrifying to most people

    .

    Is there a way to make this happen? Can some of the folks you know up there press for it?

  17. 17.

    low-tech cyclist

    @AnderJ:

    Team Hillary wins the thread before it even began.

    Didn’t they ever? “Do you want to build a strawman?” was freakin’ perfect.

    Except that now I’ll have that song going through my head all day, but it was worth it.

  18. 18.

    Patricia Kayden

    And Trump just cannot stop shooting himself in his foot. The debates are going to be hellaciously fun.

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @efgoldman:

    stream-of-consciousness

    Assumes facts not in evidence.

    Seriously, if you ran the Turing test – gave someone a transcript of one of Trump’s speeches, and a computer-generated essay on a political topic, and asked which showed conscious thought – which do you think most people would pick?

  22. 22.

    dm

    I’m really beginning to believe those conspiracy theories that have it that Bill Clinton talked Trump into running, but I doubt even he could have foreseen the chaos that would be unleashed. I’m pretty confident that this will be one of the major RWNJ narratives during the Hillary Clinton Presidency (that she couldn’t possibly have won against a “Real Republican”).

  23. 23.

    Emma

    My one question is: does he surround himself with incompetents deliberately (doesn’t want someone his insecurity considers smarter than he is around) or is the incompetence a natural outcome of his personality disorders overwhelming everyone around him?

  24. 24.

    delosgatos

    @AnderJ:

    Somebody on Clinton’s social media team gets extra kibble for that one, for sure. Made me literally lol.

  26. 26.

    mdblanche

    @Russ: If it were revealed today that Donald Trump was really Andy Kaufman, it wouldn’t even be the most shocking thing to come out of his campaign this week.

  27. 27.

    JPL

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Maggie Haberman and the NYTimes, got booted from Trump events. It’s not often that a major paper calls out the Republican candidate for the President of the US, angry, defiant, rambling and manic.

    @mdblanche: So true.

  30. 30.

    Ken

    @Emma: Why not both?

    Or maybe a third option, anyone competent quits after two weeks, or is fired the first time they contradict him.

  31. 31.

    different-church-lady

    @Ken:

    which do you think most people would pick?

    You mean for president? I’d pick the computer generator.

  32. 32.

    Citizen_X

    @JPL:

    SCENE: The TV room in Hell.

    HITLER: Hey, check this guy out. People made fun of my speaking style, but he’s really crazy!

    SADDAM: Eh, he likes me, so I gotta cut him some slack.

  33. 33.

    nutella

    All the excitement and all the words about this tweet and most are still pretending that it came originally from the Trump campaign rather than copied from a known bigot. Nobody wants to know whether it’s Trump himself or Savino who is following white supremacist and ant-semitic sites looking for fun things to retweet.

  35. 35.

    ShadeTail

    @nutella:

    Nobody wants to know whether it’s Trump himself or Savino who is following white supremacist and ant-semitic sites looking for fun things to retweet.

    Why should we care which it is? Either Trump is a bigot, or he’s too stupid and incompetent to know how to avoid getting tangled up in that kind of shit (or both). Either way, he has no business being put in charge of a janitor’s closet, let alone the Oval Office.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @kd bart:

    FWIW, not really. Neal Gabler, the historian who first reported that, retracted it in his later biography of Disney after doing more research. It turned out that the guy who had told Gabler the story was one of the artists who was fired during the big 1940s strike and was still pissed off about it. Other Jewish artists at the studio — including others who were still pissed about the strike — contradicted that artist. It’s in Gabler’s book.

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