Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Republicans in disarray!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

You are here: Home / Politics / An Unexamined Scandal / Late Night Open Thread: Here Be Actual Monsters

Late Night Open Thread: Here Be Actual Monsters

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Speaking of inflated, this Gorka guy…

… On Wednesday, Gorka lashed out at “at [New York Times reporter] Maggie Haberman and her acolytes in the fake news media, who immediately have a conniption fit” and brought up McVeigh. He added that “white men” and “white supremacists” are not “the problem.”

It’s this constant, “Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.” No, it isn’t, Maggie Haberman. Go to Sinjar. Go to the Middle East, and tell me what the real problem is today. Go to Manchester.

Since Trump’s election there has been a rash of attacks by white supremacists targeting various minority groups. When another top Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, recently promoted Trump’s plan to drastically limit legal immigration, his arguments mirrored white supremacist rhetoric.

Gorka himself has been embroiled in controversy for his alleged ties to a Nazi-linked group in Hungary.

Since the only thing he does for his WH salary is amplify lies, seems like officially removing him from the Trump administration would be a start, yes?

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’d like to make it very clear that Gorka has not, as far as has ever been documented, ever been to Sinjar or anywhere else in Iraq. Or anywhere in Afghanistan either. He wouldn’t know Sinjar if it walked up and bit him.

  2. 2.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Gorka, Bannon, and Miller all need to be shitcanned after the horror in Charlottesville today. I won’t hold my breath. I doubt Trump will let Kelly fire them and I’m even doubtful Kelly would in the first place, given his conduct at DHS.

  7. 7.

    Waynski

    Assuming there are any honorable Republicans left (wishful thinking) it is long past time that they condemn the knuckle-draggers in their party and the president* they have been making excuses for, for nigh on two years in pursuit of their own power. It’s gut-check time Republicans. It’s time to see if you have any balls other than the ones Donald J. Trump has been dangling atop your faces. The hourglass only has a few specks of sand left in it. Move. Now!

  10. 10.

    Inventor

    Hit-ler
    Only had one ball!
    Goer-ing
    Had two, though small
    Him-mler
    Had something sim’lar
    And Goebbels
    Had no balls at all!

    For some reason I’m on a theme tonight.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    Since the only thing he does for his WH salary is amplify lies, seems like officially removing him from the Trump administration would be a start, yes?

    Never gonna happen. Trump put him on the White House payroll precisely to amplify lies.

  12. 12.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    John McCain‏ @SenJohnMcCain

    White supremacists aren’t patriots, they’re traitors- Americans must unite against hatred & bigotry #Charlottesville

    2,890 replies 22,637 retweets 58,328 likes

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Inventor: The Aryan Master Race: As blond as Hitler, as svelte as Göring, the eagle eyesight of Himmler, and as buff as Goebbels.

  14. 14.

    bluehill

    I appreciate some repubs denouncing what’s happened. On the other hand, that it’s viewed as some kind of heroic act worthy of high praise is a problem.

  16. 16.

    lamh36

    Welp, I’m going to bed soon.

    What’s the over/under that Cheeto tweets some bullshit over night after seeing all the coverage (and even some of it on Fox) and reading all the tweets about how weak and bullshitty his “statement” and “best regards” and “Charlottesville..sad” tweets were?

  19. 19.

    Patricia Kayden

    @lamh36: Trump’s base is the White Supremacist/alt-right. He refused to condemn David Duke during the campaign season. He’s not going to condemn his people.

  20. 20.

    Mike in NC

    Gorka has direct links to the WW2 Hungarian fascist group known as the Arrow Cross. The idiot attended the inauguration wearing an Austro-Hungarian hussar tunic complete with a fascist medal presented to one of his forebears. Utter scum, like the vast majority of the people Trump hired.

  22. 22.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Waynski: Republicans literally just elected an openly racist bigot. Not sure what we’re supposed to expect them to do at this point in time. They’ve shown their cards.

  24. 24.

    mai naem mobile

    I tell you when I think of the epitome of great manhood the first three men who come to mind are Steve Bannon,Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka. Talk about Aryan Adonis.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    News is shattering, and when it comes to decompression TCM is of no help today, what with it being John Wayne day (yuck).

    Wednesday will be Elvis day (double yuck).

    Thank goodness for the Roku box.

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @Waynski:

    .It’s gut-check time Republicans.

    Someone (including me) says this almost every week.

    The Republicans are gutless. Ain’t nothing gonna change.

  33. 33.

    Waynski

    @Patricia Kayden: @Waynski:

    Republicans literally just elected an openly racist bigot. Not sure what we’re supposed to expect them to do at this point in time. They’ve shown their cards.

    I don’t expect them to do anything, but we should all make an effort to throw their crap back on the lawn it came from. They need to know that they can’t pretend these racist scumbags are not a part of their support in this country.

    No more, “Well, I don’t believe that!” It’s a dodge and we should not let them weasel out of it for another minute. They own this behavior now. Politely letting them off the hook by issuing half-hearted condemnations of particular incidents isn’t good enough. Shame. Shun. Rebuke.

  34. 34.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Trump’s base is the White Supremacist/alt-right. He refused to condemn David Duke during the campaign season. He’s not going to condemn his people.

    I think it’s worse than that, Trump is so childishly self centered; Alt Right supports him, therefore Alt Right is good.

  39. 39.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @NotMax:

    They Were Expendable, coming up at 3:15 EDT, is a damn good movie. Even some pretty good acting from the Duke. Appropriately stoic.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, we just finished watching Minority Report on cable. It’s very cool how it manages to be both very 1940s film noir and futuristic at the same time.

    And if you watch very closely starting with the scene when John Anderton is put into storage, it has the most cynical ending Spielberg has ever put on screen.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mnemosyne:

    Got to put in a plug for The Miracle Woman (3:00 a.m. EDT Monday), which doesn’t come up that often. Early Stanwyck, early Capra, luminous photography by Joseph Walker.

  44. 44.

    Bruuuuce

    @Mnemosyne: It’s a terrific story. But John Wayne was terribly cast in the lead for it, and the film suffers greatly as a result. It’s one where I would like to see a remake, because there’s so much room for improvement. (Also, too, I would love to find a way for them to use Stan Rogers’ “Harris and the Mare” in the soundtrack, but that might be difficult.)

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    At the moment running in the background are episodes of the short-run Boris Karloff TV show The Veil. Short-run in that only a dozen episodes were made and the series never actually aired on TV. Karloff hosts and also acts a role in nearly all the episodes.

    Judging by the size of the roaring fire in the fireplace in front of which Karloff stands to introduce each story, he had to have been wearing industrial strength asbestos long johns under his dapper suit.

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @NotMax:

    I’m watching an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, then I’m going to make sure that a Swedish Wallander on MHz (cable channel) will fit on the DVR. And then I’m going to bed.

    I recommend the Norwegian corporate crime miniseries Mammon, which I’m almost done with. Available on MHz (channel on Amazon Prime), maybe other places.

  47. 47.

    SectionH

    @Mary G: I owe you, for carrying my nym among other BJers’ in the women’s march. AL knows me, obvs has my email, so if you find something beyond tomorrow which you need transport for, let me know. No promises, but right now…

    Of course I’ve had an automatic contrib to Applegate for, well as soon as he said Running again. I used to be in Bilbray’s district (who? pfffft, another Republican fraud – but you know that). Now, I’m in D everything, and it’s the best feeling ever (ahhem, politically).

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bruuuuce:

    I disagree, but I kind of like John Wayne as an actor, or at least don’t dislike him. I think he plays the part of a slightly befuddled American just right, and he has great chemistry with Maureen O’Hara.

  50. 50.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mnemosyne:

    Agree. Wayne was always good as an amiable, competent lunkhead—a quintessential American type. I think the low quality of his later westerns and his douchebag real-life persona sort of blur the achievements of his earlier career.

    Just thought of another romantic fairy tale that I like: North to Alaska.

  51. 51.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @NotMax:

    I thought that last season was tremendously powerful, especially coming after the edifice that had been built up.

    MHz is currently running episodes at 3:30 and 9:30 a.m. EDT every day. Just watched “The Forger” from Friday a while ago.

  57. 57.

    CZanne

    @Inventor: verses:

    Donnie has only got one ball
    The other is at Carnegie Hall
    His daughter, the Macy’s squatter
    Tossed it because it’s so small.

    She thought it smelled like spoiled brie
    thanks to botched rhinoplasty,
    She’s quite ambitious, but knows no stitches,
    And mistook it for a broken golf tee.

    Mellie finds it rather blue,
    Doesn’t belong on Fifth Avenue,
    It really clashes and gives her rashes,
    So she mailed it to Internal Revenue.

    Kushie found it lying in the hall,
    Thought it was his — his are also small
    He hocked it, his loan shark swapped it,
    Now he’s gotta make a margin call.

  61. 61.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack (phone): So this is a bit of a mind-meld. Saw a vid of “Wade in the Water” at the UVA sanctuary yesterday, and sent a link to a different version of “Oh Happy Day” to a woman friend with whom I share a beautiful and challenging history: I was her husband’s lover – but she had a boyfriend too.

  63. 63.

    Bruuuuce

    @Mnemosyne: See, that’s where we disagree. I always thought of the character as a pacifist rather than befuddled (i.e., closer to the original short story), and pacifist was not JW’s screen persona at all. Maybe it’s a case of not liking the adaptation, but part of that may have been that they wrote for the actor. I don’t know, but either way, it doesn’t work well for me, and I’d love to see another try, closer to the original.

  66. 66.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack (phone): Loved this.

    And for a reason that I cannot explain, youtube has decided to play Toto’s “Africa” right now, so that is kind of fun. Finding my smile again – against all odds..

  76. 76.

    opiejeanne

    @Villago Delenda Est: We were in Manchester about a week before the stupid claim was made about it and it bewildered us. There was nothing like they described. They made the same claims about areas of Paris that we had been in recently too, and it was nothing like what we saw. We rode the metro and walked through those districts, ate breakfast at a shop run by a man from Pakistan while we waited for the flea market to finish setting up. Everyone was pleasant.
    Yes there was graffiti. Oooh, scary.
    Please.

  95. 95.

    Bobby Thomson

    I can’t believe my totebagging friends pushing the line that counterdemonstrations are counterproductive because they give racists the visuals they want to radicalize young people. Might as well just hand those fuckers the keys.

  96. 96.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I still can’t process that an American president choked on condemning Nazis.

    He IS one. The sooner people figure that out the less surprised they will be,.

  97. 97.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Iowa Old Lady: Has Trump given you any indication that he and White Supremacists aren’t traveling down the same road? He refused to disavow David Duke during the election cycle, he appointed several advisors to his administration with alt-right ties (Gorka, Bannon) and has made bigoted comments to feed his bogoted supporters (anti-Mexican, anti-transgender, anti-Muslim, etc).

    Not shocked at all. I’m furious that the media is giving mealy mouthed Republicans kudos for a few of them stepping forward to condemn the violence wrought in their name.

  98. 98.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Iowa Old Lady: The story at ProPublica of political partisans showing up armed intending to beat up their enemies and following through on their plans was chilling in how closely it resembled descriptions of Weimar-era politics. Another event like the Women’s March would be good right about now. You could call it the March of Not Being Nazis and dare even Republican politicians not to show up.

  102. 102.

    debbie

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    He showed us who he was in that interview when he responded to a question about Putin’s ruthlessness, “What, you think we’re so good?”

  103. 103.

    Sab

    @Bobby Thomson: @Bobby Thomson:I am sort of a totebagger. Counter demonstrations are productive if the counter demonstrations are peaceful. It’s countercounterproductive if both sides are throwing rocks and cement filled water bottles at each other. Then it’s just both sides.

    Real counter protests are scary to participate in. The civil rights people in the twentieth century did it for decades. The stupid SDS guys at the Chicago convention only bothered with it for a couple of years before they got bored, and their rock throwing antics handed the election to Nixon.

    I commend these folks in Charleston. Pretty much peaceful, facing the Klan and Nazis. That’s how it’s done. Don’t give any both sides do it images for the national press, because mostly both sides don’t do it: we turn up with candles and signs and they turn up with semiautomatc rifles. The press will cover us, because the other side is terrifying. Protest is a lot about optics , and we need to keep the optics crystal clear. We are peaceful and inclusive. They are NOT.

    Lots of people are on the fence out there (not about Nazis and white supremacists, but yes about public demonstrations that cause disorder.) They just want a peaceful country. We need to protest in a way that let’s them know we agree with them.

    I am old enough to remember the 1960s riots. They were utterly terrifying to the people they were supposed to be defending. People went to work in the morning not knowing if they would have a home to return to.

    We need to be out on the streets, but we need to remember be are protecting things, not destroying.

  104. 104.

    Chris

    @NotMax:

    For me, John Wayne is to movies what Tom Clancy is to books. I loathe them both personally, but I can’t deny that they made some solid entertainment.

    (Also, “The Longest Day” is a John Wayne movie).

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @Bruuuuce:

    Speaking of casting John Wayne: he’s pretty much perfect as the lead character in “The Searchers.” Turns out, playing a homicidal racist lunatic was something he was perfectly suited to. Imagine that!

  106. 106.

    Chris

    @opiejeanne:

    As near as I can tell, they’re taking the fact that there are ghettos in Paris and London which cops either 1) prefer to avoid unless they’re in force, and/or 2) don’t bother to police because of the bog-standard “fuck them, all the people in those areas are gangsters and druggies, I’m not wasting resources to protect them, if there are good people in there they can just move” mentality. (Which is, you know, a thing in most of the world).

    Then they let their fantasizing and a heavy dose of Fox News and talk radio do the rest to reimagine these ghettos as independent caliphates ruled under Sharia Law.

    (Basically, the equivalent of people a hundred years ago who noticed that there were a lot of Chinese immigrants left to themselves in the shitty parts of town, and dreamed up Fu Manchu based on that fact).

  110. 110.

    DesertFriar

    Well John Wayne did star in that movie that takes place in a true Libertarian town; “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.

    If there is one movie that mimics what is happening politically now, it’s that movie.

  111. 111.

    hueyplong

    If you’re a Stanwyck fan and haven’t seen Baby Face, set your dvr for 1:30 am. She’s a “social climber” in that one, and it’s pretty amusing for an early 1930s movie.

  112. 112.

    Chris

    @DesertFriar:

    I love that movie because it’s all about the passing away of that “stand your ground” society and how that’s a GOOD thing. (It takes place against the background of a debate over statehood, with the opposition – wealthy ranchers, represented at the debates by a Confederate veteran in his old gray uniform – being terrified of statehood and preferring the current law-of-the-jungle status quo because it’s much easier to, among other things, terrorize the population with proto-Pinkerton thugs like Liberty Valance).

  113. 113.

    DesertFriar

    @Chris:

    Other things about the movie is that there is law in the town, it just isn’t enforced (think of the EPA now). Link Applegate (Andy Devine) is the sheriff. When he gets Vera Miles at the train station at the beginning of the movie,he lets her know he hasn’t been elected sheriff in a while. So in the flashback, he was the sheriff because he was elected by the people Shinbone. That’s who they wanted. Someone who would not enforce the laws and acted weak.

    It’s later brought out in the movie that the budget of the town is so bad, they can’t even fix the lock on the jail. Some infrastructure. And one of the first things Liberty and his gang try to break up? Why it’s the school where a back man and girls are learning.

  114. 114.

    Spaniel

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I had seen similar reports but then I had read Jake Tapper’s Twitter account and it seems those so called local and state law folks may have been mistaken and were really the alt-right militias like 3% and such. Lots of complaints the militia guys, also armed were thought to be someone they were not.

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