Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

A consequence of cucumbers

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Let there be snark.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Taibbi on Trump

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  4. 4.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @redshirt: I though Michael Hastings was more apt, but ‘he blew his mind out in a car, he didn’t notice that the light had changed…’

  8. 8.

    karen marie

    @Davis X. Machina: I read this piece because, well, Trump, but otherwise I choose to ignore Taibbi. He’s probably changed it by now but many years ago his little bio in the sidebar was a “cute” story laughing about rape. I thought it was shockingly disgusting, so I sent him and Rolling Stone an email telling them I thought it inappropriate. The response back was “har har, you can’t take a joke.” My response in turn has been to refuse to read him or anything else at Rolling Stone since. Reading this piece by him, I concur with your statement. While I agree with his ultimate point, he cuts a ridiculous figure. I will go back to my blackout of Taibbi and the magazine.

  9. 9.

    craigie

    … egged on to a doomed rebellion by a third-rate con man who wilted under pressure and was finally incinerated in a fireball of his own stupidity

    Cannot stop laughing at this.

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    OT: carryover from previous thread

    In response to how “Arizona feels about the Wall” in response to Bill, hover and redshirt.. since I am a resident of Tucson, and how the issue plays here and its “history”. If this topic doesn’t interest you, its most def tl;dr. :-)

    Arizona is conflicted… a lot of folks have a lot of different takes on the border and the issues that come with it. Geography matters, also, money has been dumped here to beef up the border patrol and while immigration is a key, so is crime. In some cases they go hand in hand.

    In the Bush days (and even in the Clinton days) the immigration issue was all about cheap labor and Arizona was an “easier” conduit than Texas and California. East access via the interstate system to move bodies, up from Interstate 19 out of Nogales, or across small town border crossings like Douglas, or Naco or even Yuma. Then into Phoenix and Tucson and from there, damn near anywhere. Cheap labor, for construction and agriculture and domestics.

    They came because of the drug wars in Mexico, the Mexican persecution of mestizos, plus what was going on in Honduras, Guatamala and Nicaragua and Panama (to a lesser degree El Salvador). Figured that working their way up through the bottom of US society was less dangerous than death squads and civil war. So people came and plenty of folks took advantage of them…

    Also mixed in there was the US drug habit and some savvy less than ethical people decided that they could get a twofer… trafficking in human lives and moving product. So the Coyotes became less concerned with moving people to destinations than they were in moving “product”. This meant that more people were abandoned and some of the coyotes did more petty (and some not so petty) crimes while moving their product and people. This resulted in cut fences, killed livestock, trash dumpage and eventually one murder in Cochise county (which caused the state to collectively lose their shit) which is where you start drawing the line from that to Jan Brewer’s headless bodies in the desert statement. It caused a conflict between the humanitarians who were leaving remote stations of water out in the desert to try and keep people from dying and those folks that would have just as soon have them die. As such SE Az doesn’t see the traffic it used to so most folks that still cross, come over on the tribal reservations because there are less folks and if the Tohono O’Odham are complaining, its unheard because they can’t shout down or grab the attention of folks that make the rules or are driving the narratives.

    Because of the drug use in the US, the drug traffickers got more bold and found more ways to move their products (hence the underground tunnels in Douglas and Nogales, circumventing customs and immigration) and Arizona demanded more money and personnel. What is rarely mentioned is that a LOT of the heavy lifting for that was done by Gabby Giffords and in return, she also requested that we start policing the border OUTBOUNDS, and they started to stop the distribution back across to Mexico of money and guns.

    Economically, illegal Immigration became less viable because when our economy went into the tank, so did the need to cheap labor, we suddenly were flush. So immigration numbers started to drop, but our dependence on cheap weed and drugs hasn’t abated, so there’s still an ongoing battle in stamping that out.

    So most Dems find the idea of a wall idiotic, because if they can dig across the border from residence to residence, a wall isn’t going to do a helluva lot of good, plus, who monitors it and with the Arizona heat, that equipment is going to suffer from some attrition. Who is going to build it? There’s a couple of hundred miles between Nogales and Yuma, and damn few roads. Plus, some of that is Indian reservation land and some of it is the Yuma Proving grounds, so now you have to have contractors with clearance. It’s a fucking pipe dream and completely unreasonable project that serves nothing more than a sap for a few grouchy panicky folks in Sun City who’ve been told by Rush Limbaugh that their deaths are imminent. There are some very grouchy ranchers in SE AZ that want to make sure that no one fucks with them, tyvm and they want the government to handle it, but don’t raise their taxes federally, state or local because reasons….

    As always, we’re penalizing the poor folks that still want to come and doing fuckall about the people who abuse them. No one wants to pony up the cash to set up or establish checkpoints on each of arteries that they would use upon getting across because, again, they must not set foot upon our sovereign soil or some such…

    As always, if we stop supporting petty tyrants and look at trading with Mexico and latin america fairly, economics improve there and not as much incentive to leave, but no one seems to think about that. Prop 205 legalizes pot in AZ, so we’ll see where that goes but there is a buttload of anti ads being run indicating that Colorado hates their law because their schools got shafted. I see it as a way to dump folks out of the prison system, so will probably vote yes anyway.

    my apologies for being long winded.

  12. 12.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    You know, I wonder how many Trump supporters are terrified the US will be overrun by a zombie outbreak.

  19. 19.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    I bailed on the article… IMO, the writer is a little too pleased with himself, a little too hipper than thou.

  21. 21.

    Chris T.

    I am not sure it would actually educate anyone, but it might be nice to have a cartoon and/or photo-essay…

    image 1: Arizona desert
    caption: THIS IS NOT THE BORDER

    image 2: actual border crossings at Tiuajan and Nogales
    caption: THIS IS NOT THE BORDER EITHER (Although It’s Closer)

    image 3: airports
    caption: THIS IS THE BORDER

  23. 23.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Trump supporters are terrified the US will be overrun by a zombie outbreak.

    Zombie’s are not immune to Trumpian strains of “syphilis and gonorrhoea”, and probably pass gene sequencing to non- carriers. Great location opportunities for non starving grannies… and grave diggers. Bring long johns, Carharts and snow shovels. Ice fishing EQ, beer coolers and 4 wheel drive a plus. PLEASE send picture of truck !

  24. 24.

    Major Major Major Major

    @NotMax: He likes the smell of his own farts, that’s for sure. Unfortunately for us, his actual content is bog-standard leftism the likes of which you could get any number of places. I enjoy Jacobin, myself.

    OT: It finally started raining in the bay area! It smelled great by work, sort of like a menthol. Like a plant oil of some kind being released. We’re up in the foothills.

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    IMO, the writer is a little too pleased with himself, a little too hipper than thou

    That’s Taibbi in a nutshell. Plus he thinks he knows more about Federal white-collar criminal law than all 88 U.S. Attorneys combined. And never lets the facts get in the way of a good rant.

  28. 28.

    burnspbesq

    I’m old enough to remember Mike Taibbi, who was a terrific reporter, mostly for Channel 2 in New York. Journalistic excellence is apparently not hereditary.

  29. 29.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @piratedan: Applause for a cogent explanation. I don’t know that “long winded” describes it. Sometimes the pixels are needed.

  30. 30.

    demz taters

    :@piratedan There’s no way to describe Arizona’s political landscape without being long-winded. Let me add to what you said by pointing out the misconception that Arizona is a deep red state. Though we have more than our share of right wing loonies – at least two of the Malheur Refuge terrorists claimed AZ as home, and without the retiree voting bloc, Sheriff Joe would not be possible – there are large, reliable, solidly-blue constituencies. We have the fast-growing registered to vote Latino population that may be socially conservative but not really inclined to embrace the anti-immigrant rhetoric that goes along with allying with the social conservatives, along with the sizable population of Navajo, Hopi and other tribes, who are inclined to vote for Democrats, especially with the focus that Obama has given to restoring ancestral lands and the focus Republicans have given to opening reservation land to unfettered resource extraction damn the consequences. Not to mention the economic clout that left-voting places like Sedona and Flagstaff have on the state’s economy due both to their own awesomeness and proximity to Grand Canyon. One of the draws to this state is that you can experience a range of ecological zones from low desert to alpine within a three-hour drive. The political landscape is about as diverse. I felt some regret moving out here from the politically-consequential state of Massachusetts but Arizona has turned out to be pretty interesting and consequential in its own right.

  32. 32.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @burnspbesq: I want to read a meta-piece on Taibbi from a trustable media crit. Any recommendations?

    (Throwing it out to anyone, actually.)

  34. 34.

    tallred

    Paul Ryan’s annual “GOP Fall Fest.”

    Must be dirty spectacles. The first two times I read that, I swear it said Fail Fest. That wouldn’t be too far off.

  35. 35.

    NobodySpecial

    Started reading, watched it bog down into ‘both sides!’, said meh. Pretty words, empty meanings.

  40. 40.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @piratedan: after the ‘No papers law’ was passed a few years ago,i think many business people realized how dependent AZ was on illegal labor and I am not just talking about labor. There are areas in Phoenix where the stores are dependent on these people for customers. Housing which they rent.
    Also, Arizona is full of people who’ve moved here from other states. It used to be older white retirees from the Midwest. Now there are many couples with kids who are more racially diverse. It used to be that the ex-Californians I used to run into were white people from OC or the Central Coast or at least a rural area. Now it’s more likely a minority from a blue SoCal or SF area.

  41. 41.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Taibbi = Sexual Predator

    “When I’m [the US], it’s like I’m taking a very cold bath,” said Mr. Ames. “I don’t think I’ve had a hard-on since I’ve been here. You don’t even think about jacking off anymore here, it’s just so vile. What’s nice about Russian girls is you don’t have to talk too much, you can pretend that you don’t understand Russian. And they’re usually so drunk. They like to have fun, they like adventure and they like doing things that are reckless.”

    “They like to live while they’re still young and attractive,” said Mr. Taibbi. “They look at their mothers, who turn into nose tackles at age 30.”

  42. 42.

    Ian

    Paul Ryan is already planning for what the Republican party will look like when Trump loses

    Sad? Pathetic?

  43. 43.

    opiejeanne

    @Ian: Ryan supposedly said that Bernie will be Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, as a Scary Reason to Vote and it’s being passed around among the disappointed Bernie fans as a reason to vote.

    Does anyone know where Ryan got that idea?

  44. 44.

    Ian

    @piratedan:

    What is rarely mentioned is that a LOT of the heavy lifting for that was done by Gabby Giffords

    I love that woman. She is so awesome. I got really mad at a fellow poster here for saying Sarah Palin did no damage. She did lots of damage helping to silence this awesome congresscritter.

  46. 46.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @opiejeanne: Bernie’s the ranking member of the minority(Democrats) on the Budget Committee.

    ETA: Though Patty Murray was the previous chair when the Dems had the majority.

  47. 47.

    Chris T.

    @Pete Downunder: I still (well, “again”) live here, and there are still too many of the firebomb trees in the hills. We have our local crazies claiming that they act as fire suppressants. (Which is sort of true, in that any trees do that, via enhancing the fog drip, up until there’s a sufficiently hot fire, when the Eucalypts turn into explosive accelerators.)

    Fun fact: the Eucalypts were imported on purpose in the 1800s:

    Sadly, most of these schemes went the way they infamously did for Frank C. Havens. Havens was an Oakland developer who opened a mill and planted eight million eucalyptus trees in a 14-mile-long strip from Berkeley through Oakland. But when he came to sell the timber, it was found that the trees were too young to make suitable wood; the young wood had an irregular grain and it bent, cracked, and shrank when dried. It is true that eucalyptus trees from Australia could make good timber, but those trees were decades or sometimes centuries old. It was soon found that eucalyptus trees would need to be at least 75 or 100 years old for good lumber. The young wood didn’t even make useable fence posts or railroad track ties, both of which decayed rapidly. Havens closed shop.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Facebook group, first reported by the local Daily Camera newspaper, was discovered after one of its leaders allegedly committed suicide, reportedly to “show his allegiance to the [Nazi] party and the killing of Jewish people”, a police report said.

    Here’s hoping everyone of these impotent jackasses show their allegiance in a similar manner

  49. 49.

    Pete Downunder

    @Chris T.: I know that story. They are really bad news. We have bush fires here down under and when they get going there’s no stopping them.

  50. 50.

    opiejeanne

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Thanks. He’s already asked her to give up her seat on the Health Committee, back in June; she declined. She’s up for reelection and I would be shocked if she loses, and I can’t see her giving him the Budget Chair if we get the majority back.

    Frankly, I’d rather he stick to post offices.

  53. 53.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Pete Downunder: One of those trees fell on my car a few years ago. Fortunately it wasn’t too big(maybe 20′ tall) and just dented the back of the roof a bit.

  55. 55.

    satby

    Good morning, or night if you’re out west like BillinGlendaleCA and Chris.
    Looks like it was a slow night on the ‘tubes.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne:

    I can’t see her giving him the Budget Chair if we get the majority back.

    Unless I am greatly mistaken (always a possibility) she already gave it up when Bernie became the ranking member. That puts him at the top of the heap.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Leonard Cohen on Dylan’s Nobel prize:

    “To me,” he said, “[the award] is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.”

  59. 59.

    Shalimar

    @jl: Threatening to tell the neighbors only works if the neighbors are crazy assholes with guns who think all Democrats are traitors.

  64. 64.

    Applejinx

    @NobodySpecial:

    Started reading, watched it bog down into ‘both sides!’, said meh. Pretty words, empty meanings.

    Yeah, but the thing is the political landscape has changed really rapidly. I think it’s easy for a guy like Taibbi to go from ‘both sides did it’ to ‘both sides will always do it, no matter what advantage can be gained from intelligence market research’.

    And so you get them claiming that because it’s Hillary it’s going to be 90s retread politics, and the thing is that was decades ago, about a political world that is now unrecognizable.

    It is completely pants-on-head retarded (in the Yahtzee term) to deny that both Republicans and Democrats (just like Tories and New Labour in the UK) built a disastrous establishment containing the seeds of its own demise. We’re seeing it fail now. I think the difference is, in the UK they’re having a lot of trouble reversing course. Here in the USA, Hillary Clinton already lost to Obama years ago, because he ran to her left and successfully tied her to old policy… and then made use of her skills anyhow. This time around, threatened with losing to Bernie Sanders, she went ‘oh hell no, not again’ and took pains to figure out what was happening in the world she doesn’t have to see any more.

    Hell, she’s on record talking about that: the ‘basement dwellers’ talk, the ‘I don’t have to be aware of the poor places I came from now that I too am rich’ talk, these are evidence Hillary doesn’t intend to be blind to reality. She’s telling these people these things because THEY don’t know. There’s no reason for her to be talking that way if it’s about her taking bribes or doing their bidding: that kind of stuff is her earning her speaking fee paycheck by doing a damn good job of bringing rich fuckers up to speed about the world they don’t understand. She can couch it in some flattery but between the lines, the message I’m seeing is, the system’s got problems.

    Hillary is not wrong. I think she earned her fees. I think she served those rich fuckers extremely well by accurately briefing them on how things really are.

    Taibbi is full of shit for acting like she’s some historical trendline. Clintons can read the political winds.

    I’m going to want to keep a sharp eye out for what she actually does in office, but I remain as guardedly optimistic as ever. For months and months now, I trust Hillary Clinton more than a lot of politicians, because she’s not stupid. I can see how she was induced to look back into the real world outside the Village bubble (losing to Obama had a lot to do with that) and I see many things suggesting that she learned. Few people can claim both that and an ability to effectively govern.

  65. 65.

    Joel

    @Pete Downunder: Did anyone cut the stuff down after the fire? Eucalyptus is great tinder. I know Californians (foolishly) fell in love with the stuff a hundred years ago or so.

  66. 66.

    Barbara

    @karen marie: Taibbi is apocalyptic in outlook. I still believe that we have mostly solvable problems although the window for coping with climate change is narrowing fast. As entertaining as he can be I believe that his doomsday attitude and formless apocalyptic prescriptions help undermine the will and the hope necessary to address known problems. Revolutionary politics is more likely to set us back especially on climate change. IMO.

  67. 67.

    Gindy51

    @Chris T.: He should have planted Black Locust. Grow fast in any soil, add nitrogen to soil, relatively straight if pruned correctly or grown close together, HARD as iron after they are cut and cured, gorgeous scented flowers like orchids, and the bees love them. They are a reclamation tree you can cut over and over and over again. Osage orange is another one and the fruit is like HUGE green softballs, lots of fun to toss into the water and watch float away.
    And neither bursts into flames if lit by fire.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    I know he isn’t a political operative but Taibbi is terrible for liberals. The absolute cynicism and really dark view is not something politically active people can sign onto for long. It’s anti-action, it’s “abandon hope all who enter here”.

    It’s clever wording and it makes a fast, lively read but ultimately there’s nowhere to go with it. The people who want to do something will reject it because of that- they have no possible role in this system he describes. Unless you see yourself as an observer rather than a participant this won’t be attractive to you for long- it can’t be. You have no role.

  70. 70.

    Turgidson

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I permanently stopped taking taibbi the least bit seriously when he was ranting about how TARP was secretly costing taxpayers like $90 trillion or whatever fanciful number he pulled out of his ass.

    He has an entertaining style and was quick and merciless in unmasking what a fraudulent clown show the teabaggers were. But I take his substantive claims with a pound of salt.

  71. 71.

    laura

    @BillinGlendaleCA: a giant eucalyptus fell on the VW bug of a friend’s sister in Sonoma. Responders needed grief counselors at the crash site.
    There’s been an ongoing effort since the Oakland Hills fire to remove them or thin them out all over the area due to their propensity to kill off surrounding treets, fall over in high winds or where the ground is soft. But when you can drive with the windows down and get that cool, astringent scent, it’s still something of a pleasure.

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    I don’t understand the disparagement of Matt Taibbi here. I thought the article was excellent. Included a gentle take on Hillary’s speaking engagements to bankers, which I was not expecting. And Taibbi’s right that we are in great danger from such a large segment of alienated and polarized voters.

    The “secret” speeches in some ways showed Hillary Clinton in a more sympathetic light than her public persona usually allows. Speaking to bankers and masters of the corporate universe, she came off as relaxed, self-doubting, reflective, honest, philosophical rather than political, and unafraid to admit she lacked all the answers.

    The transcripts read like freewheeling discussions with friends about how to navigate an uncertain future. In one speech, she conceded a sense of disconnect between the wealthy and the middle class to which she used to belong. This, she said, was a feeling she never had growing up, when the country seemed to be more united.

    “And now, obviously,” she told executives from Goldman, “I’m kind of far removed because of the life I’ve lived and the economic … fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy.”

    This frank, almost regretful admission rendered her more real in a few sentences than those cliché-ridden speeches about her hardscrabble background as the granddaughter of a Scranton lace-factory worker.

  73. 73.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Article is clever in parts, but curiously glosses over (that is, omits almost entirely) the racism and misogyny that fuels the Trump phenomenon. Wonder why?

    /s

  74. 74.

    BruceFromOhio

    Thanks for sharing, JC. I cannot wait to cart this one out the next time some rwnj decides to wank it out loud.

    The party spent 50 years preaching rich people bromides like “trickle-down economics” and “picking yourself up by your bootstraps” as solutions to the growing alienation and financial privation of the ordinary voter. In place of jobs, exported overseas by the millions by their financial backers, Republicans glibly offered the flag, Jesus and Willie Horton.

  75. 75.

    kindness

    Matt Taibbi is a rock star just up there shredding it for us all to glory over. Some times it hardly works. Most times it’s screamin’, This one killed it. Good job Matt.

  76. 76.

    Starfish

    @piratedan:

    Prop 205 legalizes pot in AZ, so we’ll see where that goes but there is a buttload of anti ads being run indicating that Colorado hates their law because their schools got shafted.

    The schools got shafted by the state during the recession. The counties had to make up the underfunding by the state. I live in a relatively wealthy county, and the school my child is in is getting a building renovation over the summer. And we also have a mil levy on our ballot to potentially cover extra staffing that the state will not cover. Also, our university has very little funding coming from the state at this point.

    The one thing that has happened, that I am not sure if correlation equals causation or what, but the number of homeless people gathering around here have gone way up. And there is some weird stuff going on in the nearby mountain towns. Here is an article from the New York Times about some of the homeless issues.

  79. 79.

    Barbara

    @Elizabelle: The parts I objected to were his not so veiled wish that this year had been “revolutionary,” and that because of Trump, now everyone from hereon out would cover their failures by asking, “would you rather have Donald Trump?” I do understand where Matt is coming from, I agree with 90% of what he says, but it’s that “let’s burn down the house, only from the left” that I object to.

  80. 80.

    Mathguy

    @Elizabelle: I agree. I’m not seeing the same thing as the participants in the Taibbi hate-in. The essay seems pretty reasonable to me–a good, snarky opinion piece that has debatable points, which is as it should be.

  81. 81.

    cmorenc

    @hitchhiker:

    man, that son of bitch can write.

    Nearly every paragraph contains incisive hilarity. Tabbi’s Trump article will, or at least should be, a timeless classic that in another era, could have been written by Mark Twain or Will Rogers (except they could not have gotten away with references to the p-word).

  83. 83.

    karen marie

    @Barbara: Yes, he is so much in the “too cool for school” vein, I could well see that his “fans” would understand him to suggest foregoing political participation or voting third party or something equally stupid.

  84. 84.

    Elie

    A bleak but accurate story of what is happening to us. It doesn’t have a shred of hope for how we survive or try to get better afterwards. He just quits depicting any cause for hope. I understand that on one hand but we are going to have to find some motivation, some hope to try to fix our very broken system by either prayer or voodo. We don’t have the luxury of throwing up our hands

  85. 85.

    Elie

    @Kay:
    Right on. This. It was a waste of time reading it. I won’t read him again any time soon. We have too much work to do to have some observer tell us that there is no way we can succeed.

  86. 86.

    Feebog

    In 2004 a huge fire consumed most of the vegetation around the golf course I usually play on. A couple years later we were on the 7th tee when an entire line of eucalyptus fell, coming at us like a line of dominos. The last one ended up about twenty yards from the tee box. Scary stuff.

  90. 90.

    joel hanes

    @Gindy51:

    Osage orange is another one and the fruit is like HUGE green softballs

    Osage orange fenceposts last for decades.

    A few dried Osage orange fruits in the corners of a little-used room will discourage spiders.

  91. 91.

    Ghayduke

    Can’t stand Taiibi. Ran a marathon today. 4:03:22 had hoped to crack 4. First Mari in 28 years, and a PR for me, so that’s okay, at least.

Comments are closed.