Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Bark louder, little dog.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I was promised a recession.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Hugh Hewitt Gets Trumpened

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Hugh Hewitt Gets Trumpened

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“Ambulatory cream cheese sculpture” (thanks, Betty!) Hugh Hewitt has been a shameless mouthpiece for the Wingnut Wurlitzer since he first rose above the bottom ranks by comparing his Manhattan talk-radio job to reporting from the front lines of Iraq. Years of tireless service to the RWNJ meme-of-the-moment got him as far as a moderating gig during the presidential primaries. But nobody who attempts to work with Donald Trump comes through without being dinged, if not destroyed… and today Hugh Hewitt got Trumpened:

It was inevitable some Donald Trump supporter would try to rationalize Trump’s view of Vladimir Putin. People just didn’t think that person would be Hugh Hewitt.

The popular conservative radio host got thoroughly clobbered on Twitter Friday morning after he made the argument that Putin is a more effective leader than President Obama because he has “served his country’s national interest better.” Counterarguments came from the left, right and center, and they’re still coming…


To quote another inexplicably respected professional right-wing mouthpiece: Let. Us. Savor.

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    LibraryGuy

    So this is it, as clear as day if people will pay attention – the Right will fall in line with their leader, no matter how awful or dangerous, in order to win. When people show you who they are, believe them.

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    When you scratch these “Liberty” and “Freedom” types you wind up with small “a” authoritarians. They want to dominate anyone they think/feel is weaker than they are (often just their families and employees) and as soon as someone they perceive/know to be stronger than they are they roll over and piddle on their bellies. I offer as People’s Exhibit A one Hugh Hewitt.

  6. 6.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Assuming Trump loses bigly, I wonder if Hannity, Coulter, Hewitt, and the other right-wing apologists will meet any genuine social or financial pushback (lower ratings, fewer book sales). I hope so, but I find those on the right to be wildly befuddling.

  7. 7.

    LibraryGuy

    I don't think they will suffer, really – the need for emotional fuel to keep the fires of anger, resentment, and hate burning is too great.

  8. 8.

    Keith P.

    @West of the Rockies (been a while): If TrumpTV happens, it may weaken Fox enough to die on the vine while also making enough of an enemy of them to never get itself off the ground. In that case, all the right wing welfare that will be left is (dying) talk radio and Regnery books. My ideal scenario is something like that scene in “The Wrestler” where all the washouts are at folding tables hoping to sign autographs for a few bucks.

  11. 11.

    jl

    In terms of what neocons think important, maybe Putin has served his country well, I mean lots of sketchy armed interventions overseas causing trouble, and encouraging reactionary racist movements as well. Me, I think US policy wrt to Russia has been unwise and this kind of nasty reaction should been foreseen. But that doesn’t make the reaction any less nasty and brutish, or any less dangerous. But I can see how vicious neocons might admire it.

    And, the Russian economy has habitually been in the crapper unless propped up by high fossil fuel prices. Some success, there, Vlad, congrats!

  12. 12.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Keith P.:
    If he actually tries it, Trump TV will fail. I’m sure of it. Even if Ailes proves to be a genius at siphoning the Angry Old White People demographic from FOX. Too much money is involved, and too much publicity. He won’t be able to keep his hand out of the cookie jar, and he’ll take a Trump all over it.

    They might take down FOX with themselves. That would be a good thing.

  13. 13.

    jl

    ‘The Trumpening’ would make a good horror film. People are ‘Trumpened’ while alone during a dark and spooky night, when ‘The Orangeman’ pays a visit. The next morning the poor victims are gibbering fools. Scary.

    Edit: but if he wins, we’ll all be unpaid extras in the reality show version. Scary!

  14. 14.

    Anoniminous

    Understanding the Right Wing is really pretty easy. Stuff in the square brackets by me ….

    Germany had entered the nightmare years. Millions had lost jobs in the Great Depression. Black-shirted [actually brown-shirted] Nazi thugs paraded in the streets. Unreason ruled. Peter [Drucker] witnessed a “wildly cheering rally” at which a Nazi logician displayed the “abracadabra of fascism” with this burst of irrationality: “We don’t want lower bread prices, we don’t want higher bread prices, we don’t want unchanged bread prices—we want National Socialist bread prices!“

    They are ruled by their Limbic System. They don’t think, they emote.

  15. 15.

    ? Martin

    The upshot to this election is that we can definitively say that we are now about 40% to a full dictatorship, in terms of voter desire. No more guessing.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Frankensteinbeck: Ailes looks to be in poor health and is no spring chicken. I can’t imagine he’ll have the energy and lustre to recreate his Fox “success”. FSM, I hope not.

  19. 19.

    Brachiator

    Seems like it was only yesterday when right wing nutjob were insisting that Obama was a tyrant who was going to dispense with the Congress, cancel the presidential election, install his Supreme Court nominee in defiance of the Senate, rule by decree and toss his enemies into FEMA camps.

    Now, Obama is weak and powerless and the Republicans are insisting that an authoritarian who controls his compliant version of parliament with an iron fist, and who has wreaked havoc in Europe and the Middle East is the best model of strong leadership ever.

    Even Orwell would be astounded by this level of doublethink from Hugh Hewitt’s Ministry of Truth.

  20. 20.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Brachiator:

    Obama was a tyrant who was going to dispense with the Congress, cancel the presidential election, install his Supreme Court nominee in defiance of the Senate, rule by decree and toss his enemies into FEMA camps

    Projection.

    Obama is weak and powerless

    Projection.

  21. 21.

    jl

    @Brachiator: Obama is an inadequate black man in over his head, and an evil shapeshifting super genius who has traveled through history foiling righteous conservative causes. He built the time machine in his garage while toking up on weed and sipping malt liquor.

    Weak liberals are so brainwashed by loser PC culture that they can deny these simple and obvious facts. Unbelievable and sad!

  22. 22.

    Helen

    Oh man, Oliver Willis is having a righteous twitter rant about the media clutching their pearls over Hillary saying that half of Trump’s supporters are a “basket of deplorables.”

  23. 23.

    Anoniminous

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Absolute power applied absolutely stupidly. Can’t do that and govern a modern industrial nation. Hitler and his gang of goons managed in five short years to destroy the world’s most advanced scientific establishment.

  24. 24.

    Kropadope

    @Brachiator:

    Republicans are insisting that an authoritarian who controls his compliant version of parliament with an iron fist, and who has wreaked havoc in Europe and the Middle East is the best model of strong leadership ever.

    Something something weak man’s idea of strength.

  25. 25.

    daves09

    It’s important to remember that Mussolini and Hitler didn’t take power-they were given it by conservatives, highly respectable conservatives, the best conservatives, who had convinced themselves that liberal reformers were totalitarians who would wreck the world.
    Some things don’t change.
    If Trump wins and things become as bad as seems possible, people like Hewitt, and Ryan, and McCain, and all the others, will moan *but how could we have known, why didn’t someone tell us?*

  28. 28.

    bluehill

    So this is what the proverbial slippery slope looks like. The incremental acceptance and rationalization of actions and people that were once considered repugnant. Started by the Southern Strategy, coupled with the methodical discrediting of the government and the media and now the military and abetted by conservative intellectuals who wrapped destructive economic and racist social policies in a veneer of legitimacy and here we are. I don’t imagine the Germans suddenly woke up one day in the 30’s and decided going to war with rest of the world and trying to wipe out an entire religion was the way to go. I hope the repubs wake up soon because we’re getting close to the edge.

  29. 29.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @daves09: They thought they could “control” Hitler. Wow, that turned out really well, now didn’t it? What the Social Democrats could not do (destroy the Junkers) Hitler did.

  30. 30.

    Major Major Major Major

    I just got back from an evening at the local independent film archive. They showed stuff from the 60s and 70s through I think the mid 80s about computers. Some promo filmlet for word processors with John Cleese and Judi Dench, a Shatner thing about transistors and wafers from Bell, some sort of tomato virus visualization (the Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus?). Super cool.

  31. 31.

    Miss Bianca

    @daves09: It’s also important to remember that there were useful idiots on the left in the various Communist parties who were receiving marching orders directly from Russia, not to compromise with those dirty liberal squishes, the Social Democrats and the like. Heighten the contradictions! Nach Hitler, uns!

  32. 32.

    daves09

    @Major Major Major Major: Bell Labs used to distribute films on all their latest advances. I remember seeing one in grammar school in the late fifties about how they had perfected the vacuum tube and how they were going to change the world. Some of those tubes were huge!

  33. 33.

    Death Panel Truck

    @jl:

    while toking up on weed and sipping malt liquor

    Now that’s my kind of president. He can hang out at my place any time. I’ll even share the latest strain of weed I bought at my local Washington state pot store. It’s called Obama Kush, and it’s a wicked Indica.

  35. 35.

    jl

    @Miss Bianca: IIRC lefties who saw what was happening up close and personal in Germany decided to oppose Hitler, from political action to violence. Didn’t do them much good, since they ended up dead or in concentration camps. But they would have ended up there anyway, and I suppose it was better than just sitting and waiting for the police to pick them up.

  36. 36.

    Cat48

    Obama is strong enough for me. He stopped construction that would have sent 600,000 gallons/barrels of oil under the Missouri River daily. Nonsensical.

  37. 37.

    ruemara

    I just love the Obama death stare and the Putin cower. Put’s the whole “quien es mas macho?” thing to rest.

  46. 46.

    Origuy

    Back when I worked at Tandem Computers, they used to have an employee produced TV show once a month, Called First Friday. Execs and others would talk about the business and products, often with humorous skits. Many of them had Jimmy Treybig, the founder, a Texan who loved the Friday beer busts. Here’s a Star Trek parody. (Splatus is a reference to one of our competitors, Stratus.)

  47. 47.

    mike in dc

    I don’t see how Clinton should get in trouble for the “bucket of intolerables” comment when she pretty much made the case for this a couple weeks ago with her alt-right speech. “What, you want some documentation, media? Why don’t you look at your own exit polling and reporting for the past 16 months?”

  48. 48.

    Major Major Major Major

    This was by far the strangest one they showed.

    According to this film, Signal Syntax means “Another violent death at computer keyboards has occurred.”. This amateur film involves hilarious dramatic skits

    I’m not sure about ‘hilarious’.

  50. 50.

    PPCLI

    Hugh Hewitt was still a George W Bush worshipper up to 2009, when even most republicans had jumped ship. So the word “competent” in Hewitt’s mouth means “wrecked the world economy, spent trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi ones on a catastrophic failed war of aggression based on lies (or obviously mistaken “flawed intelligence”, take your pick), neglected a major American city as it drowned, and held the watch when thousands of Americans died in a terrorist attack.”

    So frankly his judgements about competence are worthless.

  51. 51.

    Tee

    Found this the other day and thought it fit what’s going on today. “Themselves, mostly. Rage is a powerful thing. People get upset over many things. Frustrating jobs, small paychecks, bad hours. People want things; people feel humiliated by others who have the things they want; people feel deprived and powerless. All this gives fuel to rage. The anger builds and builds and if there is no outlet for it, pretty soon it transforms the person. They walk around like a loaded gun, ready to go off if only they could find the right target. They want to hurt something. They need it.” He refilled his glass and topped mine off. “Humans tend to segregate the world: enemies on one side, friends on the other. Friends are people we know. Enemies are the Other. You can do just about anything to the Other. It doesn’t matter if this Other is actually guilty of any crimes, because it’s a matter of emotion, not logic. You see, angry people aren’t interested in justice. They just want an excuse to vent their rage.” Doolittle sighed. “And once you become their Other, you’re no longer a person. You’re just an idea, an abstraction of everything that’s wrong with their world. Give them the slightest excuse, and they will tear you down. And the easiest way for them to target you as this Other is to find something that’s different about you. Color of your skin. The way you speak. The place you’re from.” From author Ilona Andrews book Magic slays. Fits Trump supporters. Makes me worried.

  53. 53.

    Aleta

    Hewitt, and Ryan, and McCain

    They’d rather oversee the death of democracy than make adjustments to a different world. If fascism is the only means to keep control, so be it. Calling Obama incompetent because he doesn’t believe in their goals –these are words coming from desperate drowning men.

  54. 54.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    I’m halfway(?) through cleaning the house in advance of an appraiser coming next Thursday as part of refinancing the mortgage to get my ex-wife off of it now that I’ve been employed for more than a year. I hurt all over.

    To get a sense of just how bad the house was, it was a combination of not caring, with the fervency only someone autistic can bring, to the state of the house and a minor-to-moderate, depending upon the day and weather, physical disability that makes it hard to do cleaning. Stuff had built up for six years, not just clutter, but a lot that was borderline (or, maybe, over) unsanitary. I can date it, because I found empty bottles of the drugs I gave to Eddie for the last nine months of his life, which ended in June 2011, that hadn’t been thrown away.

    I got the front entryway done over two days, which is more than it sounds like, because it’s actually the largest room in my horribly laid out house. Yesterday, I did the whole kitchen. Now, my back, shoulders, elbows, quads, and knees all hurt like hell. I hate fibromyalgia. Later today, I get something of a break, because I have an event to attend in the afternoon, so I can’t stay up too long after getting off work in order to get enough sleep. So, it’s just the bathroom and, maybe, the bedroom, though I don’t intend to do either the tub or much under the bed. I’ll save the latter for when I get a new mattress, which I need to do soon.

    So far, it’s been seven 45 gallon trash bags hauled out to the garbage bins. I threw away a lot of the stuff in the kitchen that I just didn’t have the energy to recover from the state it had fallen to. I hardly ever cook for myself (the biggest contributor to the problems in the kitchen was cat food that had gotten scattered away from the bowls), so I won’t miss it anytime soon, and if I do, I’ll replace it a piece at a time, starting with a new ice tea maker.

    There’s only 1 1/2 rooms left that ought to be a huge effort, namely the back room I use as an office and its walk-in closet. I’m planning to do those on Sunday and Monday.

    If no one hears from me for a few days, could you send someone around to find out if it’s killed me?

  55. 55.

    LesGS

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I informed my (now not living in my house) kid yesterday, “No, no, this isn’t clutter. It’s a booby-trap in case someone breaks into my house.”

    Good on you for muscling through.

  58. 58.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @LesGS: Heh. Someone did break into my house about six weeks ago. In the end, the only thing he could find that was worth taking were some blank checks that I immediately canceled. He did open a bunch of boxes, but apparently he didn’t want any of the copies of my novel I have around for promotional purchases.

    I’m chalking that up to him having no taste whatsoever.

  62. 62.

    Kathleen

    @ThresherK (GPad): Yikes! My dad used to work at WLW! OT, but a WLW engineer opened a recording studio in Cincinnati, where Hank Williams recorded Lovesick Blues and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. There’s also a Media Heritage Museum in Mason (at the Voice of America location) that includes exhibits on radio technology.

  63. 63.

    piratedan

    @Helen: @23… here’s the thing… prove that they aren’t. Really, feel free to pull on that twitter thread and see who these people are, see what they say, who they say it to and who and what they follow.

    These people are wholly encapsulated in multiple layers of delusion, many of them gun nuts, racists, bigots and completely unreachable with facts. I would take a bet on that number being well above 50%. It’s as if these asshats in the media have never read a comment thread before of their own damn publications.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    Can’t help but wonder if we are witnessing death of US democracy.

    Ain’t it cool?

    By which I mean, seems that many take the continued existence of democracy for granted. If you want it, are you willing to fight for it?

  65. 65.

    tokyo expat

    @Betty Cracker: My 19 yr. old son mentioned that this morning. I think he’d read it on Twitter or something and I laughed. He said he had seen Trump on CNN while waiting in the airport to fly back to Tokyo and he was creeped out by him. We then got online and he filled out the overseas form to register to vote. He has never resided in the US. CA is one of the states that allows people in those situations to register if their parent has residence (me!). The best part was when he clicked on the box for party and chose Democratic.

  66. 66.

    Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    Assuming Trump loses bigly, I wonder if Hannity, Coulter, Hewitt, and the other right-wing apologists will meet any genuine social or financial pushback (lower ratings, fewer book sales).

    You are expecting logical consistency from the same people who turned on a dime from “HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT A SITTING PRESIDENT AT A TIME OF WAR! GAAD BLESS OUR TROOPS” to purple heart band-aids.

    Did they pay any price for their backing Bush to the hilt?

    Hewitt and Co will simply turn around and argue that Trump was never sufficiently conservative, that they never supported them, and that the Democrats remain the greatest threat to America’s freedom EVAR – far more so than the people aiming actual nuclear weapons at us.

  68. 68.

    NorthLeft12

    I think it is pretty important to note that Hewitt cannot distinguish between what is best for Russia’s national interest, and what is best for Putin’s personal interest.

    I think smarter people than me can make a solid case that what Putin is doing in Russia’s name is to consolidate his hold on power and increase his own personal wealth.
    And again, Hugh Hewitt is okey dokey with that.

  71. 71.

    amk

    Even bbc is reaching for the fainting couch. Never mind their own correspondents were stalked and hounded by trump’s racist nutjobs.

  75. 75.

    JGabriel

    @NorthLeft12:

    I think smarter people than me can make a solid case that what Putin is doing in Russia’s name is to consolidate his hold on power and increase his own personal wealth. And again, Hugh Hewitt is okey dokey with that.

    That’s the definition of good leader in Conservative World: someone who increases his own power and wealth at the expense of everyone else – cf., Ayn Rand.

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thanks. I probably could have Googled it myself, but the context-free portentousness got to me. I was pushed over the edge by the added touch of “stuff in the square brackets by me.” Really helpful, that.

  77. 77.

    Miss Bianca

    @jl: dead thread, but my point was that if the various factions of the left wing hadn’t been so busy fighting each other, they might have been more effective fighting against the Nazis.

  78. 78.

    Mk3873

    It is completely bogus to think that purity conservatives are suddenly now praising Putin in order to back Trump.

    The right wing’s love affair began back when W looked into his soul and saw a good man. Do you remember that sordid episode?

    Then came the he-man right wing love of Putin’s shirtless hunting poses.

    Sarah Palin became US conservative’s Vlad Putin.

    This has been brewing in the right wing fever swamps for years.

  81. 81.

    Ruckus

    @Tee:
    The only things that makes this different from the beginning of humanity are.
    1. There are more of us and we can move about a lot easier and talk (text) about everything instantaneously.
    2. We interact with a lot of people who are different than each of us all the time, unless you live 40 miles from everyone else. Some people don’t like this, the interaction, not the living 40 miles away.
    3. Not everyone suffers from this. I’d suggest that upbringing and personality have a lot to do with it but even more is what you expect from life.
    4. Bad economic times, current or not so distant past, make this seem worse because we all have a hard time with not being in the right place at the right time, because we could have made different decisions. Usually that’s bullshit by the way because there is no way to control the decisions that others make.
    5. That other people make decisions that we don’t understand or like, that control is something that a lot of people seem to need because they don’t know how to live in a world that others are autonomous, these people are authoritarians. You can’t change that in them, what you can do is show them that what is real doesn’t actually hurt them.
    6. It boils down to: People think it’s “Is the glass half full or half empty,” but really it’s “Is the glass have anything in it or is it completely empty?”

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    @NorthLeft12:

    And again, Hugh Hewitt is okey dokey with that.

    And why wouldn’t he be? That’s exactly what Hugh is doing, it’s exactly what he would do if he was running for or was a leader. It’s the one trait that people with his mindset look for, self interest, at the expense of everything else. All he’s doing is going along for the ride. He’s one of those tiny fish that attach themselves to the bigger fish.

  84. 84.

    Gex

    Hugh Hewitt – pro-Devil. Hey, he’s evil, but based on what I see from the GOP and their base, he’s more effective than this God fellow.

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