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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: All the Worst People Seek Each Other Out

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: All the Worst People Seek Each Other Out

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I’m sure they’re getting paid plenty (assuming Trump’s not the one writing the checks), but it’s amazing how for a campaign like this all the worst people can find time to help out. From the Washington Post article:

… “He’s a battle-tested warrior and a brilliant strategist,” Conway said. “He’s a nuts-and-bolts tactician as well, who’s going to help us fully integrate our ground game and data operations, and help with overall strategy as my deputy.”

Bossie will also work on crafting attacks against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, mining past controversies involving her and former president Bill Clinton, and cultivating Trump’s bond with conservative activists.

The addition of Bossie, who first gained notice in the 1990s as the Republican congressional staffer who aggressively delved into the Clintons’ finances and dealings, is the latest sign that the Trump campaign’s new leadership team is embracing right-wing figures whose ties to the party’s elected leadership have been tenuous or even hostile…

Bossie brings long-standing ties with Trump and his inner circle. He is a friend of Bannon and Conway whose political projects have often overlapped with his own. He is close to the secretive Mercer family, who have funded his organizations and been major backers of Trump’s candidacy.

That leaves three Mercer allies — Bannon, Conway and Bossie — atop the Trump campaign. Hedge-fund investor Robert L. Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, were key players in urging Trump to reshuffle his campaign this summer…

Until this week, Bossie was president of Citizens United, the hard-line advocacy outfit that has mounted digital, film and advertising campaigns against President Obama’s agenda and against moderate Republicans. Bossie will take a leave of absence from Citizens United for the duration of the campaign. And he has left the “Defeat Crooked Hillary” super PAC, which he had been running since June.

Citizens United is best known as the orchestrator of the 2010 Supreme Court decision, “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” a historic ruling that ended many restrictions on political spending for corporations and unions…

Bossie provided advice to Trump ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign when Trump was flirting with a bid for the White House. Three years later, he was central in recommending Trump’s political hires ahead of the 2016 election, introducing Trump to the campaign’s first manager, Corey Lewandowski, and introducing Bannon to Trump.

There had been deliberation both internally and with party leaders about whether to formally bring Bossie into the campaign, with conversations over whether he was right for the high-ranking post and whether his confrontational style would fit…

Deliberation: Can we afford to be seen in public with this legbreaker? Is it too late to salvage any part of the ‘respectable’ GOP from Deadbeat Donnie’s gang of cranks and grifters, or have even the most willingly gullible Media Village Idiots given up selling our cover stories due to the sheer number of bloody fingerprints on the wrappers? Is it time to stop pretending we’re a conventional political party, and just go full-time grifter, like Newt and all his fellow ‘freedom caucus’ nimrods from the last Clinton presidency?

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  2. 2.

    Betty Cracker

    Hurricane Hermine woke me up a little while ago by dropping a tree limb on our truck! It’s too dark and rainy to tell for sure, but I don’t think there’s much damage. Probably just a few scratches and dings. Wasn’t a very big limb. My guess is we’ve had 10+ inches of rain.

  5. 5.

    Peter H Desmond

    @Betty Cracker:

    snakes and hurricanes! you live an adventurous life! but at least i now know how to estimate an alligator’s length! in case mass. goes tropical. :-)

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    Like calls to like, I suppose. So it’s not surprising that the ghastliest presidential candidate of recent times draws the ghastliest political ringside crew of recent times. We can expect yet more Trumpian ghastliness over the couple of months remaining in this campaign.

  13. 13.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @Keith P.:Conway. She isn’t aging that well. This is her last big grift and her last big chance to do anything substantive. Also,i think Bannon is sticking around because Trumpy wants to start a second wing nut channel to compete against Fox.

  14. 14.

    Balconesfault

    Hillary: “Repeal Citizens United Decision”
    Trump: Hires the head of Citizens United
    Johnson and Stein: “Both Major Parties are the the same about Big Money in politics”

  17. 17.

    Joyce H

    What I’m finding interesting is not just what horrors these personnel choices are, because of course Trump would choose people as vile as himself. But what’s really intriguing is the resumes of his campaign ‘managers’. None of them seem to have experience in, y’know, managing campaigns. Lewandowski came the closest, he’d at least managed a state-wide campaign – which he lost. It doesn’t seem to dawn on anyone in Trump Tower that campaign management actually involves a set of skills and a body of knowledge that might be nice to have in a campaign manager.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    The hurricane is ashore well north of us now, but it’s raining and blowing here as hard as it has in the past two days. The dogs just went out to pee a few minutes ago — poor things had been holding it for hours. They returned soaking wet and shook off on my antiques, the bastids. The yard is badly flooded from what I can see in the pre-dawn darkness. No doubt the chickens are miserable.

    Speaking of the chickens, we have a large, covered coop with a hen house inside it, and during the summer, the hens often roost on the roof of the hen house. Yesterday evening it was raining sideways, so I wondered if they’d keep to that practice, and sure enough, a couple of hardy souls were clinging to the roof instead of going inside like sensible creatures.

  20. 20.

    satby

    Good morning to all. I’m on day the last of my big move, because I hand over the keys in about 12 hours. I made a whopping $5.00 at my garage sale yesterday, so assuming today goes about the same sales-wise some organization is getting some nice donations. Because if it hasn’t sold by 2pm, it’s getting loaded for drop-off.

  21. 21.

    Keith G

    @amk: I don’t see any resume burnishing or actually any affection in the Washington Post article. It seems to be just a straight recitation of the facts at hand. Even so, there are little tidbits in the article that give a reasonable person purpose to question the intentions and ethics of the subject of the article.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: Sucks to be you. My weather this morn? 57 degrees with cloudless skies and a smear of Milky Way. Gonna hit all of 77 with plenty of sunshine today.

    @satby: The last time we moved, I made a big pile of stuff in the front yard w/ a sign: “Free Stuff”. It was 90% gone in about 12 hours and I didn’t have to baby sit it either. Hoping the rest of this move goes well for you.

  25. 25.

    Gvg

    I can’t see the results of the nights rain but it sounds like an amazing amount of water fell. Since I live on a lake the area drains to here and the next few days will see a continuous water rise after the rain. Francis taught me that hurricanes can be boring. Slow moving rain makers force you to stay inside for days. I really don’t want to lose power. I expect to spend the weekend cleaning out of boredom and nessesity. We planned to begin moving to the new house this weekend. UF is closed tomorrow. Cats are already bored which is why I am up. I have a loudmouth. Oh well.

  27. 27.

    different-church-lady

    “He’s a battle-tested warrior and a brilliant strategist,”

    In that case we can thank gods Trump won’t listen to a word he says.

  28. 28.

    Cat48

    It’s pouring rain here in SC & we have a tornado warnings. The forecast is for it to all be gone later tonight sometime. We can always use rain.

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    Well, it’s certainly great for Hillary’s campaign that Trumputin has hired someone practically guaranteed to go negative in a big way. Especially since all those studies have shown that the electorate absolutely hates-Hates-HATES! negative campaigning. And Hillary’s net favorable will probably withstand anything Bossie can do, just as Kerry’s decorated-Vet status withstood all sorts of bullshit.

    I’m also glad to see that her campaign continues to let Trumputin hang himself — another few weeks of all-Trumputin-all-the-time, and he’ll be down in the single digits, because the MSM will grow a backbone, and stop with the both-sides-ism. As long as she doesn’t have some high-profile surrogate out there hammering on Trumputin every day — that would kill her campaign.

  32. 32.

    SFAW

    On the plus side, it looks like PPP has Ann Kirkpatrick even with McCain. PPP used to be pretty accurate about some things, but 538’s ratings indicate that PPP is not as accurate as a number of others. I’m hoping future polls show a similar trend.

    Unfortunately for Kay (and us), it looks like Portman is going to kill Strickland, unless something changes drastically.

  33. 33.

    Barb2

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I drove cross country from Seattle to Miami arriving the day after hurricane Wilma left Miami.

    Fun times trying to navigate Miami with most street signs pointing in random directions. Seems like the first crew out was putting up and straightening street signs, most of the restored sign were not pointing in correct directions. Directions for freeway on ramps south were mixed randomly.

    Spousal unit was an early GPS user – and that toy was what got us to places we had to go. I can imagine the street signs spinning as the high winds hit Miami. I had to have the hotel give directions as I drove – I’d tell desk clerk land marks and he’d tell me if I needed to make another U turn.

    Hundreds of blue tarps on roofs. Trees stripped of their leaves.

    The Puget Sound has hurricane force winds which bring down massive trees. Chain saws and portable generators are necessary to make roads passible. These storms are faster than the Wilma hurricane.

    Hurricane Lenny, the wrong way hurricane which began off the coast of Mexico and hit the west sides of the islands and was unpredictable. Ships and sail boats got caught on the wrong side of that storm.

    Hurricane Lenny is the second-strongest November Atlantic hurricane on record. It was the twelfth tropical storm, eighth hurricane, and record-breaking fifth Category 4 hurricane in the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season. Wikipedia
    Date: November 13, 1999 – November 23, 1999

    I was in the Caribbean for Lenny. Sideways rain. Boring. It went on and on.

    Good luck to all of you in Florida, the clean up is going to be a challenge.

  35. 35.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @SFAW: I’m still sending Ted money. Supposedly the Koch‘s have stopped spending money in Ohio – maybe they’re over-confident.

    It’s still early.

    Keep the faith!

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who hopes to be pleasantly surprised, but isn’t counting on it.)

  36. 36.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @SFAW: [I got thrown in moderation for editing again – sigh]

    I’m still sending Ted money. Supposedly the Kochs have stopped spending money in Ohio – maybe they’re over-confident.

    It’s still early.

    Keep the faith!

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who hopes to be pleasantly surprised, but isn’t counting on it.)

  37. 37.

    JosieJ (not Josie)

    Bossie is yet another person who has reason to be grateful that the Clintons can’t actually have people assassinated.

  38. 38.

    Stella B.

    Bossie is “a brilliant strategist” with zero actual campaign experience? Heckuva a choice, Donnie.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    (Who hopes to be pleasantly surprised, but isn’t counting on it.)

    I know we have to keep doing what we can. I just wish the (Rethuglican) electorate had better critical-thinking skills, or less tribalism, or both.

  40. 40.

    SFAW

    @Stella B.:

    All Trump cares about (more or less) is attacking Hillary. He may give policy speeches, but he’s clearly more at home saying/typing “Crooked Hillary” than just about anything else. Bringing in Bossie turns that up to 11.

  41. 41.

    rk

    @Mai.naem.mobile:

    Conway. She isn’t aging that well.

    I remember Conway from the Clinton impeachment of the 90s. That was when I had cable and CNN. It was the three blondes Conway, Coulter and Olsen (she died on 9/11), always on Larry King, constantly vilifying the Clintons. That coverage was what made me into a democrat. Who wants to belong to a party of shrieking blonde harpies and perpetual whiners. I could never understand what the fuss was about (It’s a normal human reaction lie about an affair). Of course Elian Gonzalez and Terry Schiavo made me hate the republicans even more. The republican party hasn’t changed a bit, except the hatred and complaining is way louder. Now they have a blonde scream machine as a candidate.

  42. 42.

    Barbara

    @Mai.naem.mobile: It’s a conundrum that a lot of women face, especially women who leverage their prettiness to professional advantage. What do you do when you start aging out of your good looks? Kellyann still has the hairstyle and clothing choices of someone much younger. Perversely, it makes her look older than she is. Overall, however, I try not to go there because the reality is that women are judged way too harshly on their personal appearance, and dinged a lot more for the trait of aging than men are. Kellyann making common cause with David Bossie is enough to condemn her. The idea that he is going to do data management and outreach is a complete joke. He has apparently never run a campaign, and it is clear that hired him for the ferocity of his hatred of Hillary Clinton so that they never run out of ideas for attacking her.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    The Hill reports that the moderators for at least one of the Debates will be Lester Holt, Chris Wallace, Anderson Cooper, and Martha Raddatz.

  44. 44.

    laura

    David Bossie and his “Citizens United Not Terrified” -which for some reason is ONLY referred to as CU -should be the change agent who will likely signal Trump campaign going the extra mile in sliming Hillary.

    Bracing for the press response and whether they continue in normalizing or actually engage in real journalism. . .

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    @laura: Actually there were two different organizations: Bossie’s was just called Citizens United. The other one had a deliberately misleading name.

    Your point stands, though, because the other one was founded by Roger Stone, who was already working for Trump. He’s got both of them now!

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