Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Giving up is unforgivable.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The lights are all blinking red.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Trump should be leading, not lying.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Late Night Open Thread: Catholics, No Charity

Late Night Open Thread: Catholics, No Charity

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Well, that went well… assuming you weren’t Donald Trump. He said himself that he’s been attending these dinners ‘for years, with my father, since I was a young man’, and he still hasn’t picked up a feel for what would be acceptable? Does the man listen to anything other than the sound of his own voice?

… What began as the expected ribbing of presidential candidates at the white-tie Al Smith Dinner Thursday turned to boos as Donald Trump described Hillary Clinton as “corrupt” at the event, which is a major fundraiser for the Catholic charities connected to the Archdiocese of New York…

… Trump was quick to take some campaign trail attacks with him to the dais at the annual dinner. He called Clinton “so corrupt she got kicked off the Watergate Commission” and lobbed his usual line that Clinton has been in politics for 30 years and accomplished little. “I can fix it, she says,” he deadpanned as the crowd’s mood noticeably shifted.

As the boos rolled in Trump wondered who they were booing. “I don’t know who they’re angry at Hillary, you or I?” he said. Someone in the crowd yelled out “you!”

Trump’s next line struck a nerve. “Here she is in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” Trump said, referencing an apparent email exposed by WikiLeaks in which a Clinton spokeswoman seemed to joke about Catholics and evangelicals…

The Democratic nominee, for her part, poked fun at herself while also taking searing jabs at her opponent. Clinton didn’t hesitate to slam Trump for his past comments on women and his ambivalence about accepting next month’s election results.

In contrast with Trump, Clinton also made a point of acknowledging both the purpose and the history of the Al Smith dinner and closed her speech with a big-picture campaign message that was tied to the positive focus of Thursday’s Catholic fundraiser…

Me, I think this was the most interesting photo from the evening:

Now, Timmy Cardinal Dolan is not a good man — to steal a Donald Westlake line, I’d trust him alone all night in bed with a ten-year-old, as long as the kid didn’t have more than five dollars cash on them — but he has a nose for power like a pig for truffles. If he’s willing to put aside his public histrionics over baby-murdering lesbian feminist God-denying Democrats who don’t care about suffering women to suck up to Hillary Clinton in public, that’s another leading indicator as to which party will be on the podium at the inaguration in January.

Also, mad props to whoever chose Clinton’s outfit tonight, which was very flattering, officially “Planned Parenthood deep pink”…

… and, at least to my raised-in-the-Church eye, unofficially more than somewhat reminiscent of a traditional bishop’s cassock.

ETA: Since someone asked, in Adam’s earlier post — you don’t have to be Catholic to attend the Al Smith dinner, but you do have to have something to offer. Since it’s a fundraiser for Catholic Charities, most attendees buy as expensive a ticket as they can afford, because just getting your name on the guest list holds a certain NYC social imprimatur. Assuming Donald wasn’t lying tonight, that’s why his father might’ve taken him to earlier dinners, even though Fred was (at the very least) not happy with Catholics in politics. And since the NYC ‘Democratic machine’ has traditionally been heavily Catholic (all those Irish/Italian/Polish/Hispanic/Vietnamese immigrants), politicians of all parties have been eager for the privilege of being seen rubbing shoulders with all those ‘princes of the church’ and the high-dollar society people who help bankroll them. Being booed at tonight’s dinner wasn’t just a political disaster for the Trumps — it was a social catastrophe as well. Donald and Melania were being put on notice that they might as well retire full-time to Palm Beach with the other superannuated back numbers (not that they were exactly A-list guests at NYC social events before this).

Collateral Trump damage:

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  2. 2.

    Trentrunner

    Imagine a President Trump being a bull in every single china shop of ritual and diplomacy and protocol and just basic goddamn decency.

    See how his campaign has been a shit-ridden massive fail at every level? Cube that, and then cube that, and you’d have his first 100 days as president.

  3. 3.

    grrljock

    I just listened to Hillary’s speech. Damn, it lived up to the hype! Came wait until we can call her #45.

  5. 5.

    CalD

    Check out Donald Trump’s coiffure malfunction. I noticed when he walked up to the podium that a lock of hair on the side of his head had decided it wanted a life of its own, exposing a patch of bald skull. After that, I could not stop staring at it.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Does the man listen to anything other than the sound of his own voice?

    This is, of course, a rhetorical question.

  8. 8.

    demz taters

    Hillary remarking that Trump was healthy as a horse – Putin’s horse – was the most sublime moment of the night, followed closely by 91u1iani’s response at being sickly burned. She might actually be a president who can throw more shade than Obama. Invest in popcorn futures.

  9. 9.

    Ruckus

    I don’t understand why anyone thought it might go different than it did. tRump has been this guy for decades. And he isn’t going to change at 70 yrs old. Trust me to change at this stage in life you have to really, really, really want to change. Does anyone think he’s ever thought that changing who he is would ever entered his tiny mind?

  11. 11.

    Splitting Image

    I had completely forgotten that Hillary Clinton’s Senate run in 2000 was against Rudy Giuliani and that she basically ended his political career when she made him bow out. A couple of people reminded me of this in a thread somewhere downstairs.

    If I were one of those all-important “undecided voters”, that would be enough to move me to Clinton. In his own way, Giuliani is as big a horse’s ass as Trump.

  20. 20.

    scav

    Liking the slightly odd symmetry between theoretically being pushed into campaigning by public humiliation at one nerdfest by one president and then flailing publicly at the same task at this event and immediately being squished by the next president.

  22. 22.

    Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck

    @slag:
    Watching that little bit was interesting. He’s telling a joke. Yes, it’s a political ‘tease my opponent’ joke, but it’s not just campaign rhetoric. The humor is clearly meant to be in the silly exaggeration. He just has the worst delivery I have ever heard in my life.

  25. 25.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @srv:

    All the democracy money can buy:

    WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her allies have neared the $1 billion mark in fundraising, as her party’s donors have helped the first female major party nominee build an enormous financial advantage for the campaign’s final weeks.

    About 64% of contributions to Donald J. Trump for President during the election cycle have came from donors who gave $200 or less. By comparison, 25% of Clinton’s donors gave in amounts that small.

    Percentages don’t tell the whole story.
    Just how many donors did each candidate have? If Clinton had 20 million and Trump had 6 million or vice versa, the ‘$200 or less’ percentages don’t mean much. If their respective absolute donor numbers are similar, those percentages might mean something, though I’m not sure what.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    I just watched most of it on YouTube (49:43). Trump shows, yet again, what a horrible, monstrous, dangerous, brain-damaged person he is, especially after about 18:00. Hillary gets some good digs in, so the rest of it is worth watching, too. She closes on a great note.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who always cringes when he sees religious functionaries who talk about serving the poor being decked out in finery…)

  33. 33.

    sukabi

    @slag: that pic….hmmmmmm….the florist made some interesting choices. White mums, with what looks like erect pink pen!ses flanking cardinals head….

  35. 35.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    Trump did fine for about 10 minutes, and then went completely off the rails. His delivery isn’t great, and he overplayed some of his jokes, such as the one making fun of Melania’s speech, but it was pretty good. Even some of the shots at Clinton were well done. Then he just stopped even attempting a punch line.

    Honestly, I didn’t think Clinton’s speech was that great, either. Not that funny, and she crossed the same line, though not as aggressively.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @David ?▶️Bad Hombres▶️? Koch:
    Went to a catholic HS for freshman yr. The cardinal for LA came to the school one day. Arrived in a Rolls Royce limo, dressed in silk robes with what looked like enough diamond and ruby rings to pay the debt of a small third world nation. Asked the kid next to me what about the vow of poverty, “Oh those don’t belong to him.” Asked him if anyone else could borrow them or wear them, “No” and that’s how I knew at 12-13 that it is a grift for the upper layers of the church. Members of the church in many countries, including this one, live in poverty and he looks like a very, very expensive, ostentatious whore.

  37. 37.

    burnspbesq

    The sooner His Holiness puts Dolan out to pasture in a small parish way, waaaaay Upstate (like, say, Massena), the happier the vast majority of American Catholics will be.

  38. 38.

    David ?▶️Bad Hombres▶️? Koch

    Being from NY I remember the politically corrupt Cardinal O’Connor.

    He always viciously attacked Mario Cuomo in public for being pro choice. Yet Pataki and Giulianni were also pro choice and he didn’t say shit. To contrary, he kissed their ass in Macy’s window.

    It was then that I knew the church didn’t care about abortion, that they were using it cynically as a political ploy.

  39. 39.

    Joyce H

    That line about Hillary being fired by the Watergate Commission is something that the right wing really believes, though it’s false. There’s even a fellow who claims to have fired her. Problem with that is that he wasn’t her supervisor or in any position to fire her, and also that she wasn’t fired but continued working for the Commission till it disbanded because its work was completed. But you might be hearing this from your wingnut friends and relatives, so just be advised, it’s nonsense.

  41. 41.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @amk:

    World media hails Clinton as winner.

    Words cannot express my disappointment to see the Beeb using “media” as a singular noun. Truly we live in a degenerate age.

  42. 42.

    David ?▶️Bad Hombres▶️? Koch

    Al Smith himself was a pig.

    Here’s a guy who grew up in poverty and faced heavy discrimination for being Catholic yet he became a puppet for Wall Street fascists who tried to hire General Smedley Butler to organize a military coup to depose FDR, the New Deal, and end democracy.

    Disgusting.

  43. 43.

    Bruce K

    I see that Clinton made a joke about Wikileaks – well, it’s good that she can poke fun at herself. That’s always been one of the endearing things about Obama: his ability to not take himself seriously even when he takes the job seriously. It’s a good sign.

    By the way, has anyone made the obvious joke about one of the infamous deleted emails being from the wife of the late president of Nigeria, asking for help with recovering the money from the bank account her husband left behind? (Or, more generally, about the risks involved in the Secretary of State hitting “delete all” on the spam folder?)

  45. 45.

    TriassicSands

    I watched the full clip of Trump’s remarks/jokes. He read awkwardly from his prepared sheets, and I was surprised when he actually delivered a couple of jokes that were fairly funny. But Trump is Trump and he couldn’t get through his 15 minutes without descending back into the gutter. When he called her so corrupt she got thrown off the Watergate Commission, he elicited mostly shock from the audience, but his lowest blow, one that was not at all funny, as well as being untrue and completely inappropriate, was when he said that Hillary was attending this event and pretending she didn’t hate Catholics. The man is an utter and complete POS.

  46. 46.

    Cckids

    @Bruce K:

    By the way, has anyone made the obvious joke about one of the infamous deleted emails being from the wife of the late president of Nigeria, asking for help with recovering the money from the bank account her husband left behind? (Or, more generally, about the risks involved in the Secretary of State hitting “delete all” on the spam folder?)

    I’m not sure about that one, but Borowitz had a headline: “Hillary Releases 20K emails; tells American public “I Swear I Tried to Unsubscribe from Old Navy”.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    I thought that Steve Bannon’s remarks, as delivered by Donald Trump, didn’t go over so well. I think both men clearly forgot it was a charity dinner, not yet another free media opportunity to run down their laundry list of anti-Clinton lies. Every last little weird conspiracy, every half-baked bit of nonsense just had to be in there. Off to the dustbin of history with you, losers – sad!

    Trump is so hapless and so loathsome, especially after his speech bombed, I thought Clinton might take just a few shots at him and let it go. But in a way, it was a nice warning shot to the rest of the GOP: this is what you’ll get if you cross ALL of the lines with me, folks

  49. 49.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Trentrunner:

    Imagine a President Trump being a bull in every single china shop of ritual and diplomacy and protocol and just basic goddamn decency.

    Dear GOP:

    Please keep your bull outside the china shop.
    No bulls allowed, that’s where they stop.
    It’s the rule, the way it’s always been,
    Your bull cannot come in!

  50. 50.

    different-church-lady

    @srv:

    …an enormous financial advantage for the campaign’s final weeks.

    Admit it: you want to cry a little bit right now.

  51. 51.

    different-church-lady

    Somewhere in an alternate universe:

    TRUMP: “Hillary Clinton is so corrupt! She’s so corrupt! Okay? And she’s sick! She’s sick! Look at her stumbling around…”

    AIDE [whispering]: “Sir, you’ve won. This is your inauguration speech…”

  52. 52.

    SFAW

    @burnspbesq:

    The sooner His Holiness puts Dolan out to pasture in a small parish way, waaaaay Upstate (like, say, Massena), the happier the vast majority of American Catholics will be.

    Massena? I was thinking more like Shemya.

  53. 53.

    SFAW

    @srv:
    Gee, with Corrupt Pedophile Deadbeat Donnie being a billionaire, bigly, he should be able to self-fund and kick Hitlary’s unimpressive-from-the-rear butt in the campaign finance department.

    Of course, were he only a thousandaire, the story might be different.

  54. 54.

    hueyplong

    What is all this talk of contributions? I thought The Donald was self-funding his campaign because he’s the most bigly richest rich man in the he-man world?

    Am I reading from a script from the wrong month?

  55. 55.

    msdc

    @redshirt: She killed at the Al Smith dinner. It’s like she was having so much fun at the debates she decided to go back for a fourth one.

  58. 58.

    SFAW

    From The Hill, re: Trump’s usual nasty speech

    “Donald, after listening to your speech, I will also enjoy listening to Mike Pence deny that you ever gave it,” Clinton joked.

    Outstanding

  59. 59.

    seejanerun

    @srv: I’m a retired person in the middle income quintile and I have given more than $200 to Clinton – most people could scrape up that amount for something as important as beating Trump.

  60. 60.

    SFAW

    @ET:

    Does the man listen to anything other than the sound of his own voice?
    No.

    Minor correction: I believe he also listens to the voices in his head. All of them, Katie

  62. 62.

    Kay

    Laura IngrahamVerified account
    ‏@IngrahamAngle
    I’m enjoying the elites booing @realDonaldTrump at the Al Smith dinner.

    “The elites”. Laura must be tweeting from her 3rd shift job at the diner. She’s on break.

    One of the most shocking things I learned this cycle is Sean Hannity has a private plane. They pay Sean Hannity that much.

    That’s obscene.

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    They pay Sean Hannity that much.
    That’s obscene.

    In Wingnut World, stupidity is an asset, not a bug/detriment

  64. 64.

    Fermion T. Clown

    @Sm*t Cl*de: (“media” as a singular noun)

    Oh noes! Get me to a fainting couch! [clutches pearls]

    Srsly, I wish I’d gotten there first.

  65. 65.

    tobie

    Can someone explain why Trump keeps on talking about Hillary Clinton and Haiti? It came up at the third debate and again at the Al Smith dinner last night.

  66. 66.

    SFAW

    @Sm*t Cl*de:

    the Beeb using “media” as a singular noun.

    Does that mean “in medias res” is inappropriately pluralizified? Does it become “in media re” (subject/verb agreement)?

    Asking for a friend.

  67. 67.

    Elizabelle

    @tobie: Guessing it’s trying to draw the Clinton Foundation, which presumably has done some work/philanthropy in Haiti, into his toxic brew?

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @Kay:

    Hell, Matt Layer recently bought Richard Gere’s “sprawling Hamptons retreat” for $36.5 million.

    I hate all their “just regular guys” posturing. Like Bill O’Reilly drives home in his Buick and has a beer at the kitchen table.

  72. 72.

    The gray adder

    Are we sure Don hasn’t been drinking? You usually have to be pretty wasted to sound that drunk.

  73. 73.

    chopper

    i love how drumpf is loudly and proudly pushing the long debunked zombie lie about hilz and watergate. the guy is just terminally incapable of learning any facts.

  74. 74.

    Gelfling 545

    @David ?▶️Bad Hombres▶️? Koch: Non-monastic priests do not take a vow of poverty in general. They may, as anyone may, take such a vow privately but it is not a requirement. They are generally admonished to live according to the economic standards of the community they serve. Some are better at this than others. Not that Dolan isn’t a pig, just that he is not violating a vow.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @tobie: It’s trying to push the “Democrats don’t care about Black people except when elections roll around. Vote GOP! The Party of Lincoln!!1 (Just ignore all the stuff we’ve done since 1964!!)” line. And the “Clinton Foundation Corruption™” and all the rest.

    Donnie’s campaign is just a bunch of RWNJ and conspiracy theory memes. More of the same.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Bill

    @David ?▶️Bad Hombres▶️? Koch:

    Dolan, who took a vow of poverty, wearing cuff links and a bejeweled crucifix.

    I was sincerely hoping Hillary would tell a joke tying The Donald’s bankruptcies to Dolan’s spearheading the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy to avoid claims by abused kids.

    Fortunately she has better political instincts than I do.

  78. 78.

    Librarian

    It’s high time that politicians start boycotting this event. It’s infuriating that they have to kiss the cardinal’s ring. Mondale refused to attend when he ran in 1984, and I wish his example had caught on.

  79. 79.

    jonas

    In normal times, the Al Smith dinner wouldn’t have necessarily been the most friendly crowd for a liberal Democratic woman candidate. FFS, Timothy Dolan is easily one of the most conservative Catholic prelates in the US, and yet she was being feted like a celebrity and Donald literally gets booed off the stage.

  81. 81.

    jonas

    @tobie: There is a vocal group of Hatians in NYC and elsewhere who blame the Clinton Foundation for screwing up relief work in Haiti in recent years. Everything I’ve read suggests that, on balance, CF did some really important work there and got a lot done, but some projects were less successful than others. Basically what you’d expect from any major post-disaster relief effort on that scale from any organization. But of course the Wingnut Wurlitzer has been more than happy to give a few disaffected people a major bullhorn and a platform to go after Clinton.

  83. 83.

    maurinsky

    I cantor and am the alto section leader at a Catholic church. There are a few Trump supporters in the choir. We get a brief break halfway through the rehearsal and they they do a prayer when they come back. Last night, one of the Trump supporters was starting to talk about the election and it was getting uncomfortable, but the youngest member of our choir cut her off by saying he was too young to vote, but he hoped that people would make wise choices when they vote, and think about the ‘least of your people’.

    The last two homilies the priest at this church has given never mentioned a candidate, but were clearly indicating which candidate he thought was the better choice (homilies focused on welcoming and caring for immigrants, and on prisoners and poor people).

  87. 87.

    Vhh

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I thought she was pretty good. She was careful to lower the pitch of her voice-I wonder if she has had coaching on that, as Margaret Thatcher did. She has learned to appear relaxed while speaking. And she came across as sincere when she talked about the original Al Smith, the anti Catholic prejudice he faced, and the immigrant origin of New Yorkers.

  88. 88.

    nominus

    Hello, crimestoppers? Yeah, I just witnessed a fucking murder. Yeah, she just kept beating the living shit out of him until there was nothing left…

  91. 91.

    bobbo

    Who in the f–k wrote Trump’s “jokes”? Was it Dennis Miller? With an edit by Steve Bannon? The Dilbert guy?
    Also, when Trump said “corrupt,” the eyes of the holy dude sitting next to him nearly popped out of their sockets.

  92. 92.

    baquist

    @Ruckus: I went to a catholic HS in a third world country. The nuns were poor, hard working salt of the earth people who did the best with what they had and taught us to do the same.The priests we interacted with were mostly the same. Then one takes a look at all the ostentatious wealth of the cardinals and bishops and it’s really hard not to get mad. If Sister Catherine had an eighth of the money she could have from selling that finery, I know what she would have done with it, and it would have done infinite more good.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @baquist:
    @opiejeanne:

    Hannity is sometimes referred to as “The Stupidest Man on TV.” Thus, because he’s on Wingnut Central a/k/a Fox, and because stupidity is to be rewarded, not eschewed, they pay him commensurate with his level of skill, Fox being a purely meritocratic “institution.”

    Some jokes work, some don’t. Apparently that one didn’t.

    So a priest, a rabbi, and a cricketer walk into a pub ….

  99. 99.

    athenaze

    @SFAW: “in medias res” is correct because in this phrase res is feminine accusative plural of the 5th declension, and medias is the adjective in agreement with that. (Grammatically speaking, the form res could also be nominative singular or nominative plural as well.) “Media” is the plural form of the Latin neuter noun “medium”. So, the different gender and different declension lead to a different set of singular/plural endings.

  100. 100.

    SFAW

    @athenaze:

    It was a joke.

    I would have thought the use of “pluralizified” was a tip-off, along with “asking for a friend.”
    Next time I’ll insert a Trigger Warning..

  102. 102.

    r€nato

    @redshirt: Ever since Trumputin became the official nominee, I’ve had confidence by the time all is said and done, a good number of people will actually like Hillary. And not because she’s not Trumputin.

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