Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Everybody saw this coming.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Wayne Barrett, July 11, 1945 – January 19, 2017: Rest in Peace

Wayne Barrett, July 11, 1945 – January 19, 2017: Rest in Peace

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Wayne Barrett, the long time reporter for the Village Voice and one of the first biographers of the President-elect has died at the age of 71. Barrett had been in ill health throughout the 2016 election season, but continued reporting and providing analysis for as long as he was able to.

From his obituary at the NY Times:

Wayne Barrett, the muckraking Village Voice columnist who carved out a four-decade career taking on developers, landlords and politicians, among them Donald J. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71.

His wife, Fran Barrett, said the cause was complications of lung cancer and interstitial lung disease.

…

A 1992 book, “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall,” was, as Mr. Barrett acknowledged, a flop at first. Thanks to his subject’s improbable political ascent 25 years later, it was successfully republished and expanded in 2016 as “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention.”

Mr. Barrett’s voluminous background files from the Trump biography, and his professional courtesy, made his Brooklyn home a mecca for investigative reporters during the recent presidential campaign.

“There may be no journalist in the nation who knows more about Trump than Barrett,” Jennifer Gonnerman wrote in The New Yorker just after the election.

…

“He took Trump seriously long before anyone else did,” Mr. O’Brien, who is now executive editor of Bloomberg View, said, “and most of the work that followed Wayne’s was built upon his insights.”

Here’s a link to his Twitter feed, which includes links to much of his election year analysis of the President-elect.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    Trentrunner

    You KNOW Trump exults in this.

    So: I’m middle-aged and in good health, and the surest consolation I have on the eve of the Trumpocalypse is that I will likely outlive that tangerine taint wattle.

  2. 2.

    randy khan

    Trump, to demonstrate once again just how bigly his Administration will be, will take the oath of office on two Bibles – one that was given to him by his mother (and undoubtedly had to be exhumed from deep storage in Queens) and the Lincoln Bible, which may sound familiar because President Obama is the only other President since Lincoln to use it for a swearing in.

    Now they’ll have to disinfect it.

    Maybe it’s just me, but this feels like one more reason to believe the Moscow hotel room story – he’s trying to stomp on everything Obama did.

  5. 5.

    hovercraft

    @randy khan:
    Bitter, sore winner is bitter. Obama choose that bible because of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, and you know he’s um black, and because they came from the same state. It was a big deal symbolically for him to be sworn in with that bible. This will simply be copying his predecessor with no real significance to the choice. It’s a good thing that he’s not the one holding the bible’s, since he’s barely literate, he might hold them upside down.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    Mike Bloomberg

    Wayne Barrett was a tenacious reporter in the tradition of the old muckrakers who could sniff out corruption and special interest politics a mile away. No elected official always saw eye-to-eye with Wayne, including me. But I always respected his deep sense of moral purpose and encyclopedic knowledge of city politics, accumulated through a lifetime of tireless research. I had the chance to break bread with him on occasion, and behind the scathing pen he wielded was a good guy with a big heart who loved New York City. His death is major loss for New York journalism, but students of our city’s history will be reading his work for decades to come.

    Thanks to Maggie Haberman’s twitter.

  8. 8.

    MomSense

    @randy khan:

    Let’s hope he’s not left alone with the Lincoln Bible and a couple of Russian prostitutes…

    FSM forgive me but I can’t stand the tiny handed tin pot.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Drumpf, Goulianai, and the vile creature of evil know as Cheney outlived this good man.

    The Universe sucks.

  16. 16.

    ruemara

    @randy khan: Pretty much. I hope he bursts into flames from touching it.

    The angel of death is taking away some decent folks and leaving some less decent ones.

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JPL: The demise of Maggie Haberman, on the other hand, would be no loss at all to New York journalism.

    Collaborators will be dealt with.

  20. 20.

    hovercraft

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    That’s what happens when you make a deal with the devil, you get extra time to spread your evil. Don’t worry their time will come. You can throw dear Maggie in too, she is vapid and her stupidity is harmful.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    I wish Wayne had lived to see Trump not allowed inauguration, and a fresh election. I wish we could all see that.

    RIP.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodingers_cat: He’d been sick for a while. Politico convened all the biographers several times to do roundtables. There most recent one published today minus Barrett and indicated he was unable to participate because he was ill. When I read that I figured it wouldn’t be long. Last interview I saw with him was on an AM Joy episode and he was having significant difficulty breathing. And his breathing had that wet, I’m drowning in my own lungs sound to it.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    Wayne Barrett, the long time reporter for the Village Voice and one of the first biographers of the President-elect has died at the age of 71

    I greatly admired his work in the Village Voice. Some of the best journalism I’ve ever read. Barrett was a great prose craftsman too.

    RIP

  26. 26.

    Busybody

    Hi all, I’ve been thinking about a diary that I read on Kos. I think I’ve got this right.The Ethics office is there to guide and help the nominees avoid conflicts of interest by suggesting remedies for problems. If a nominee doesn’t heed the Ethics office or avoids it and then, after confirmation, is caught with serious conflicts of interest or unethical, unlawful activities, they can be arrested and charged with felonies. Is this right? I’m asking the lawyers out there and other commentators with gov. experience. If this is correct, it seems to me to be the way to go after them.

  33. 33.

    Busybody

    @MomSense:
    @Adam L Silverman:
    I lived for 30 years ( 1970-2000) in Kalamazoo, MI (hi, Hillary) and you can’t imagine how conservative it was when we arrived.But as conservative as it is, the DeVos family is loathed in Western Michigan and somebody has some excellent dirt on all of them. All of the nominees are horrible people who have made enemies right and left, not just among the downtrodden, so something will break before long. Isn’t that a happy thought.

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