I don’t hear it much around here, but I hear a lot of people say that the Trump era is fundamentally different from the Bush era, that Trump’s outright lies have no precedent. Bullshit. This is from the WH White House:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.”
Likewise, while we’re busy laughing at James O’Keefe’s latest hijinks, remember that it’s quite likely that “Memogate” was a conservative sting operation too.
The insane Republican tax plan? Not something Trump dreamed up, but a product of the very serious mind of Paul Ryan. Its biggest cheerleader in the Senate? Lindsey Graham, Bobo’s favorite Senator.
And on and on and on.
It’s not going away. O’Keefe will try again. To paraphrase the IRA, he only has to be lucky once, his targets have to lucky and diligent every time.
And when Trump is gone, we’ll be told of a new serious, intellectually honest group of reformicons. Their policies and tactics will be nearly identical to Trump’s. They’ll just have better haircuts
Cermet
But think of the children …oh, wait. The Chip program is running out and the thugs have no interest to renew it. Oh, of course, hold it hostage to their sick tax cut for million and billionaire’s …
gvg
hmm, i thought Bush and cohorts were bad, but honestly, they were more connected to reality than Trump and his minions. Bush and Cheney did try to cover things up or restate them in ways that supported their arguments but Trump seems like he never learned logic or remembers anything from a few minutes ago, nor does he take into account that the rest of us do remember a minute ago. the reasons his lies are so striking is he is so bad at them.
given that I don’t get racism, i still don’t understand how anyone voted for him. to me it was like getting in a car with a visibly drunk stranger. they could have picked several other racists. Why him?
laura
@gvg: I think it’s because of his TV presence -but mostly, because of his racism.
Roger Moore
@gvg:
Perhaps, but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind. The one way that Trump is terrible in truly unprecedented fashion is that he’s obviously an agent of a foreign power. As awful as Shrub was, he didn’t try to dismantle the State Department or sell out our foreign policy to a dictator who had his balls in a vise.
RepubAnon
@gvg:What Dubya dog-whistled, Trump shouts. No difference, otherwise.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Bush and Cheney were working from the carefully cultivated fake reality that republicans had spent decades building, to the point that the media couldn’t tell/didn’t/wouldn’t notice.
Trump just makes shit up. Even the media notices.
HinTN
One of the MSNBC gabfests had a very sharp woman on last night who made the point that when the R’s tax plan fails to deliver the promised growth in the economy but does blow up the deficit, soon then will come the Reformicon deficit hawks claiming that the only solution to this terrible problem is to cut spending, specifically those big wasteful entitlement programs. It’s a feature. Call, call, CALL
TenguPhule
This is why being a Republican is going to have to be codified as an actual crime in America.
Spanky
Richard Cohen haz a sad. No linky for little Richard. It’s the WaPo, if you’re so inclined. But I doubt very much that you are.
Starfish
@HinTN: Bruce Bartlett has been saying this for a while on Twitter.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Bush and Cheney introduced torture as official American policy.,
Trump wants to double down on that by mass murder of anyone related to accused enemies.
I am not comforted by the complete silence in the military and IC community about this.
I remember when Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib first broke.
Major Major Major Major
@Spanky:
…
……
there’s… an easy-to-find tally of the number of people who supported Trump…
what a moran.
bemused
O’Keefe is a smirking, arrogant little punk. He could be a twin to that Shkreli asshole.
Spanky
And in other WaPo news:
Maybe Melania will get top billing in SI’s annual swimsuit competition.
Betty Cracker
Trump is fundamentally different, IMO. That’s not to say Republicans before him weren’t evil and won’t be again after he’s gone. But Trump straight up sold out America to gain office and is dismantling our influence in the world at the behest of a foreign autocrat. He’s a malignant narcissist who does what he does not in service to a misguided ideology, stupid religious convictions or even plain old greed. He’s a madman.
Villago Delenda Est
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again until it happens:
The GOP must go the way of the NSDAP and the CPSU.
Oblivion.
Brachiator
@Spanky:
Also, in the New Koch Era, Trump will be Time Man of the Year every year, Don Jr will the People’s Sexiest Man Alive, Eric will be featured in Fortune every month
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism…
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Another interesting news item:
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I agree with everything except this.
He knows fully well what he is doing. That’s why I don’t like to call him a toddler, either. He just doesn’t care.
quakerinabasement
The politics aren’t new. It’s the crudeness and bluster that’s way beyond anything seen before.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
French academic Georges Bataille said the following about then nobleman Gilles de Rais, originally a champion of Joan of Arc, who was later suspected of unspeakable crimes:
AnotherBruce
It’s not going away. O’Keefe will try again. To paraphrase the IRA, he only has to be lucky once, his targets have to lucky and diligent every time.
Which makes me wonder about a big, fat, WaPo lawsuit. Or a criminal prosecution for fraud. Why should the media have to play defense? Take that crap and fling it back in their face.
slag
@Betty Cracker: Totally enabled and supported by establishment Republicans. Can’t be all that different.
Ridnik Chrome
I made the mistake of looking at Maureen Dowd’s column (I know, I know) in the Times this past Sunday. It was the annual Thanksgiving column she lets her wingnut brother write, and of course he thinks Trump is just what this country needs. Which is the same thing he said about Bush, right up until Bush’s accumulated fuckups became too glaring for even him to ignore. And of course MoDo doesn’t bother reminding Wingnut Brother about Bush, or asking him why he thinks Trump will be any different, because she’s MoDo and she’s a lazy airhead. But this is why I don’t worry about Trump causing some sort of permanent ultra-wingnut realignment. By the time the Orange Clown leaves office, I guarantee you will not be able to find a single Republican anywhere who will admit to having voted for him.
Cermet
Bush, the human sock puppet for bloody hands cheney, destroyed amerika using external devices (two wars – one utterly needless) via off the books and the small handed fart cloud aka tRump, is destroying it using internal methods. Two of the same ‘destroy amerika’ methodologies but just different sides of the same coin.
schrodingers_cat
@slag: He is different in degree and execution. There is a real difference in how he perceived and treated immigrants and foreign born within our borders.
trollhattan
Uh oh, Donny the Slut has a new shiny thing.
I’m not angry anymore.
bluefish
That’s right.
Ridnik Chrome
@AnotherBruce:
Per Jason Vogt’s tweet, quoted in the O’Keefe thread, this would be the value in having a smarter, more competent lefty version of O’Keefe/Breitbart: to beat the ratfuckers at their own game.
trollhattan
@AnotherBruce:
Civil court seems the only possible avenue. Would be hard to convince some D.A. that a criminal conspiracy has occurred.
Obvious Russian Troll
Honestly, I thought memogate was the result of some Republican operative throwing shit against the wall until something stuck. Then they and the rest of the Republicans yelled loudly enough that it stuck long enough for Bush to win the election.
slag
@schrodingers_cat: As I said, totally enabled and supported by establishment Republicans. If they had a real problem with what was going on, they could, in fact, “shut that whole thing down“. But they don’t.
This is they.
schrodingers_cat
@slag: Yes, he is no different from the current batch of establishment Rs. I was comparing him to W.
Bill
@gvg:
They like how overt he is. No dog whistles to strain their brains interpreting.
oatler.
When the bloody revolution comes and we scream and stab and howl at each other, The Corporation continues to function smoothly.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with you about trump and why he is different even as the Republicans certainly created the conditions that made this bullshit possible.
I mentioned the Netflix documentary Icarus the other night and I highly recommend it again as it relates to how Russian ops work. The documentary started as an experiment to see how a cyclist’s performance in a race where he was doping would compare to his previous performance and morphed into something much more intense.
Frankensteinbeck
@gvg:
This question is important to understanding our current situation, and I know these people well. Let me unpack it for you.
Racist conservatives feel disrespected. They are disrespected, and rightfully so. More and more since Reagan left office, they have faced public pushback against saying stupid shit, claiming God told them to be an asshole, sexually harassing women, and making openly racist commentary. They are angry about this. They want to be worshipped for all their worst traits, and believe with some justification that there was a time when they were top dogs and could flaunt this kind of behavior while being praised for it. They are specifically attracted to all of the things we think makes Trump obviously unqualified, because Trump’s presidency is supposed to prove that racist conservatives are superior beings and should be praised for Trump’s traits. It’s not working out, but they sure aren’t going to back away from it, because this is about their own self-image.
Now, add to that Obama’s election. This is huge. This is apocalyptic to them. It is an event that brought their world to its knees, and Obama’s reelection proved it wasn’t a fluke. At least since Reagan, GOP voters have been operating under the promise that dog whistle politics and plutocracy will put blacks back in their place without anyone having to admit to being a racist. That strategy failed in the most visible possible way when a black man became president. All of their other issues have been thrown into a desperate ‘We want our country back’ existential crisis mode. Playing nice and doing things the reasonable way did not work, and only scorched earth fanaticism remains.
Taken together, Trump stood out far and away better from his competitors in the GOP primary. He is much more what they want, and they’re in no mood to compromise in the hopes of getting more done.
Please note that you can rephrase all of those emotions into the single sentence “Suck it, libtards!”
EDIT – @Brachiator:
Oh, yeah. The serial killer, who was supposedly fascinated with Joan but didn’t make a move because his sexual/murder preference was teenage boys. She might have been boyish, but didn’t have in her pants what he wanted to disembowel.
slag
@schrodingers_cat: He’s more emboldened, given the nature of his election victory, and slightly more shameless. But not substantially different. Just another living out loud Republican who, this time, happened to get elected president.
Crazy is as crazy votes.
Droppy
@Ridnik Chrome:
My wife said, “Wow, Maureen Dowd’s brother is actually dumber than she is.”
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: As an anthropologist of this slice of America, how do you explain people who voted for Obama and then went on to vote for T. I am not being snarky, I am genuinely curious as to what you have to say about such people. There are not many of them but they exist.
schrodingers_cat
@slag: W courted the Hispanic vote and he (nor did the USCIS and ICE under him) did not treat every immigrant as a moocher or worse. Just because you refuse acknowledge the difference doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not sure how helpful this is, but coupled with exit polling and some interviews of Obama>Trump voters, I think a picture emerges. I’m guessing that the voters who voted for Obama twice, then for Trump, is miniscule. The interviews I read indicated that they like Obama personally, but thought he’d “calm the coloreds down” (their words) and then Kaepernick and BLM happened. They reverted to their norm.
There’s no such thing as a Trump Democrat.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
Some of them are just people who don’t take their votes seriously and went for whatever their whim said made a nice protest statement. I don’t think that’s the big number. There is a more major process going on, and the vote switchers are mainly from Obama’s first election, not his second. A very strong thread among mild-to-moderate racists is that it’s not usually visible. They are perfectly happy with minorities as long as they feel in control. They can heap respect and friendliness on a black sidekick, but can’t handle a black boss. They thought they could handle a black president, thought they even welcomed it, but when they actually saw a black man in charge, they freaked the fuck out. Clint Eastwood is the perfect example here, with a long Hollywood reputation for treating minority actors well, and then in 2012 lecturing an empty chair whose imaginary Obama was a stereotypical black man who swore at him for being corrected.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: My JS voting friend, voted for Obama twice and so did her T voting husband.
PJ
@Brachiator: Suspected? Gilles de Rais was convicted and executed for the sexual abuse, torture, and murder of hundreds of children.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t get that at all.
Roger Moore
@AnotherBruce:
It seems to me that the bigger issue is that the media should stop accepting whatever the right wing noise machine spews out at face value. Even if they can’t punish somebody like O’Keefe through a lawsuit or prosecution, they ought to be able to acknowledge that he has zero credibility and dismiss anything he says unless he’s willing to provide his complete and unedited videos. The media needs to rediscover the concept of credibility and how people who lie repeatedly can and should lose it.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
From that very short description, they sound like the tiny ‘protest vote’ segment, about 5% of the voting population who switch so regularly they basically cancel themselves out.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: My brother-in-law is one of those people. You may recall that this summer he said something that made me reply with: “You didn’t vote for Trump, did you?”
His reply: “Well, I sure wasn’t going to vote for the lying bitch!”
I’m pretty sure he wasn’t alone in that thinking.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: @WaterGirl: They hated Bill C with a passion and somehow projected all that hatred on HRC. Also too, were W voters. He only lost them post Katrina.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
There was a small but noticeable number of voters who are normally Republicans but voted for Obama, mainly in the first election. Not a lot, but as Conster’s article shows, they existed. The process seems to have been ‘See? We’re not racists! NOW GIVE US OUR COUNTRY BACK.’
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: That describes her husband. My ex-friend on the other hand is a weather vane.
Matt
@Cermet: In the case of the GOP, perhaps it’s better if they don’t think of the children TOO much.
Rugosa
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: In every presidential election, there are people who clamor for “change.” This change is amorphous and unspecific, but a big chunk of the electorate falls for it and will vote for the “change” candidate. Obama and Trump were both change candidates. Now, real change would be voting in a congress that would change things for the better for the common person, but too many people seem to believe that the president rules by fiat and if their guy gets in, amorphous and unspecified change will happen to their benefit.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Obama > Trump voters, here’s a paragraph from Adam Serwer’s “The Nationalist’s Delusion” article in the Atlantic last week:
I don’t recall PBO publicly scolding black Americans for their “cultural shortcomings” a whole lot, but Fox News has a frequent guest list that fits that bill, and Fox viewers probably believe the fact that they can watch that pair of fools “Diamond and Silk” singing Trump’s praises without screaming the n-word means they aren’t racists. I’ve gotten push-back for saying it, but I still believe it’s true: Obama HAD to be just about perfect to win the presidency in this racist-ass country. A lesser man could not have won, not even with the tailwinds of that year.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
After Trump comes Alex Jones and after Jones comes the foul mouthed cartoon character candidate from Black Mirror.
kindness
I have a complaint/request.
If you are going to link to a NY Times article, please list it as a NY Times article. Those of us who only get to see their 10 free articles a month want to be able to use those 10 choices reasonably and I just used one of mine on a 2004 article. I do have a digital subscription to the WaPo but refuse to give the God Damned NY Times any of my money.
SgrAstar
@schrodingers_cat: trump has no idea what he’s doing. He’s oblivious, and he doesn’t care. I bet he believes that the tax plan will help the middle class, cuz thst’s what he’s been told. Trump just doesn’t have the cognitive ability to navigate complexity, which is why he’s such a perfect foil for the oligarchs and their lackeys in Congress. He’ll believe anything they tell him as long as they pretend to admire him. UGH!
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat: @WaterGirl:
While suspecting they’re a small cohort the election was lost due to fewer than 100k critical votes, so not entirely without value to ponder. I say they’re
1. Anti-establishment in that voting for Obama and Trump represented opposing “business as usual.”
or
2. Sufficiently misogynist to be unwilling to vote for Clinton or Palin.
slag
@schrodingers_cat: I’m pretty sure I acknowledged the difference I see:
Bush courted Hispanics back when Republicans told him he needed Hispanics to win.
Trump may be racist—as are most Republicans—but he’s not ambitious in a policy sense. If rounding up immigrants weren’t a sure-fire base-pleaser, he wouldn’t be doing it.
Betty Cracker
@kindness: You should be able to hover over the link to see the source.
gene108
@RepubAnon:
Bush, Jr. didn’t race bait much at all. He actually worked to make the Republican Party seem inclusive to minorities.
Look at his Cabinet. There were a lot of firsts for African-Americans, Latinos, and women to hold Cabinet level positions. The big ones that come to mind are the first African-American Sec. of State, first female African-American Sec. of State, and first Latino AG.
And the Republican Party turned on Bush, Jr., partly, because of this. His own Party sunk his immigration reform proposal.
Trump is a whole other thing entirely. There’s nothing covert about Trump’s racism. He’s a racist and he keeps it on display for everyone to see.
gvg
@TenguPhule: Yes, W and Cheney introduced torture. I said frequently that I would never forgive and I wanted them to stand trial, even if it took years. But I wasn’t as frightened of them as I am Trump and his Congress.
W was also fundamentally different than previous Republican Presidents, but not as dramatically so as Trump and now it’s going to be overshadowed by the bigger break, Trump so we may not see a real examination of W.
I think it’s Congress cracking that makes Trump potentially worse though. It started with Gingrinch I think but the astro turf Tea Party morons really made it bad. Obama prevented them from fully show themselves but Trump reveals them. I knew there was a problem when Ryan got put in charge of one of the committees that formulates economic policy. No one who actually understands economics ever puts a Libertarian in charge of anything.
the first shutdown was Gingrich. How many have we had since?
our government is supposed to work on checks and balances, 2 sets of fools and we have a problem.
Boatboy_srq
@gvg: If anyone has read any Star Wars novels, tRump reminds me of nothing so much as Warlord Zsinj – albeit Zsinj with dementia….
@RepubAnon: tRump won precisely because he doesn’t do Atwaterian dogwhistle (either because he isn’t smart/attentive enough to master the words and phrases, or he just doesn’t care and gets a charge out of shocking the VSPs) and his voters, equally sick of tiptoeing around racism/sexism/anti-Otherism, celebrated his aversion to couching bigotry in codespeak.
TenguPhule
@gvg:
The checks are going to start bouncing and the balance is off.
Right now is just the calm before the shitstorm.
TenguPhule
@Boatboy_srq: That’s an insult to Zsinji. He was clever pretending to be crazy.
Brachiator
@slag:
I don’t think this is true at all. Trump has deliberately included segregationists and nativists in his cabinet. He happily embraces the worst racists. Trump has gone after immigrants that most of his base knew nothing about, and cared less about.
Trump’s birtherism was always infected with a racial hatred for Obama. And of course, Trump has a history of racist dealings in his personal and business life.
gvg
@gene108:
yes, that was Bush’s good point. I also considered it hopeful that in many people’s view and unsucessful Black Sec. of state was followed by another Black sec. of state without that even really coming up. To me that meant people had learned not to blame all black people for every single other black persons mistakes. And then we elected a black President….
I don’t understand racists. Even harder to understand is any respect for ignorance. that’s just too hard to understand.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
OT, but does anyone follow Marcy Wheeler aka emptywheel on twitter? If so, any idea what happened to her? She’s kind of a ranting loon now.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
Obama and McCain were basically tied after their respective conventions ended in early September 2008. Than September 15, 2008 happened. Lehmen Brothers declared bankruptcy and the financial markets started spinning out of control.
Obama looked to be the cool adult in the room.
McCain nominated Sarah Palin and looked old and addled. Remember McCain “putting his campaign on hold” until the financial crisis or something was sorted out.
Edit: And Obama had Biden, who was a calm elder statesman, who had long years of experience in government and that also reassured voters, in contrast to Palin’s bomb throwing.
Obama won, in large part, because in a crisis, he looked like the guy, who had his shit together and the other guy clearly did not.
schrodingers_cat
@slag: I disagree. There is no clamoring for rounding up immigrants from the base, more than 70% Rs want DACA recipients to have a path to citizenship.
@Brachiator: I have to agree.
gene108
@WaterGirl:
Have an acquaintance, who voted Johnson. He said Hillary had blood on her hands, because of Benghazi.
I think what we are seeing with Franken, and even Warren with the “she’s not really native American, the lying bitch” is a Benghazi-ing of prominent Democrats, who might think to contest Trump in 2020.
Recall, though Benghazi was a major issue in the 2016 campaign, the actual attack on the consulate occurred in September 12, 2012, during Obama’s first term. President Obama debated Gov. Romney over the Benghazi incident in a debate, before his re-election as President.
Keep muddying the waters for years and years, and people will be conditioned to believe Warren is a lying bitch, she claimed to be Native American and she’s not or Franken is an ass-grabbing hypocrite, whose just as bad as Trump or Roy Moore.
Brachiator
@PJ:
I’m just reading an article in “National Geographic History” that casts some doubts on the extent of his guilt.
However, he had shown signs of bizarre and violent behavior. He confessed to crimes, but did so after torture.
schrodingers_cat
@SgrAstar: He may not have an idea as to the policy implications but he knows how to sting with his insults and cause the maximum hurt and humiliation. Stuff like Jackson’s portrait in presence of Native American war heroes, is not accidental.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: Yes to both actually, my friend hated Palin and HRC. But I don’t know if it was misogyny because she worshiped at the altar of Olympia Snowe and loved Michelle too.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, don’t worry, they will. All sorts of deep-thinking lefties/liberals/progressives say that demographics are going to do the work that the Dems can’t on their own. I believe the current prediction is that they will not win another election after 2014, so there’s hope.
Duane
@bemused: O’Keefe and Shrikeli could be the same people. I’ve never seen them together.
Hey, I created a conspiracy theory. Gotta go, there’s work to do.
Gravenstone
And in a surprise to absolutely no one, the Senate passed their version of tax deformation out of committee. Brave, brave Sen. Johnson oh so bravely ran away (from his threat to vote NO). Now comes the concentrated bullshit of last second changes done on the floor immediately prior to vote.
zhena gogolia
@kindness:
As a subscriber to the NYT, I think I can assure you you won’t miss anything if you don’t link to any more this month.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
This is true. But Bush was a big scare-mongerer too, just one with a less nastfy way of doing things.
Jeremy
Franken’s “scandal” is an obvious ratfuck to anyone willing to take their head out of their ass too.
Boatboy_srq
@TenguPhule: Disingenuous bombast was Zsinj’s trademark. How else do you describe Lord Dampnut’s public persona? He doesn’t care if he’s caught lying, because his base will admire his hyperbole and showmanship even if they don’t believe him over the obvious facts (and there plenty who WILL believe him regardless).
ETA of course Lord Dampnut is crazy pretending to be clever, which doesn’t produce an identical effect.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: Was a scare monger about terrorism, I remember the alerts,
TenguPhule
@Boatboy_srq:
All of which was a clever act to fool his enemies. He also engineered genetically mutated combat aliens, several covert ops assassination plots and managed tactical misdirection to level unheard of by most Imperial naval officers.
WaterGirl
@gene108: It surely worked on Hillary Clinton. When I overheard my right-wing religious sister saying “Hillary Clinton doesn’t go to church” as part of her reason for supporting Trump, my head almost exploded.
These people believe what they want to believe – and they believe all the lies they are told by “their sources – facts and truth be damned. I truly do not know how you fight that.
edited
Boatboy_srq
@gvg: Shrub’s Cabinet was proof that idiocy knows no creed, race nor gender. Minority status does not automatically confer wisdom or civic-mindedness. The fact that that Cabinet was as multicultural as it was is sabotaged by the lunacy each officeholder practiced.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Ain’t that the truth!
From an April 2017 story
Trump supporters not only believe whatever they want about him, they refuse to do any follow up to see if their first impressions are accurate. And Trump gives them special permission to believe whatever they want by his constant bleatings about “fake news.”
George Nixon Shuler
Who is “Bobo”?
WaterGirl
@George Nixon Shuler: David Brooks. It’s such a common nickname that if you google “bobo columnist”, it comes up with (the not respected ) David Brooks.
Duane
The category is assholes, so I’m in the right place. Trump, McConnell, Ryan just held a press conference, talking about their meeting on taxes. Mostly blamed Democrats for not attending, then took turns lying. The Trump administration is a sight to behold.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@George Nixon Shuler: Your life was much better not knowing, believe me.
arielibra
Skipping over all the comments and coming in late to say, I killed a badger with a spoon!
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, and compare the consequences.
Being wrong just that once killed Dan Rather’s career – and it had been quite a career.
Being wrong over and over again doesn’t seem to make O’Keefe go away. Or the Pizzagate guys like Cernovich and Posobiec.
Apparently it’s OK to fail repeatedly if you’re a wingnut.
EM
The notion that the Trump presidency is somehow fundamentally different than what we got in the past, specifically the bush years, is almost comically absurd. Just a brief recap of some of the wonderful things we experienced under the Bush Administration:
-We invaded a country to obtain weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, in a country that hadn’t attacked us, all the while sending our troops running face-first into gunfire while not being equipped properly
-We openly embraced the wide-scale implementation of torture
– We witnessed the spectacle of an undercover CIA agent having their identity revealed as political retribution
– We watched a major American city essentially drowned to death during one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the US while the government responded by doing nothing
– We witness the president of the United States give an address from the Oval Office to announce that he wanted to change the actual Constitution of the United States to forever forbid gay people from ever getting married
– He ran an entire presidential campaign predicated upon the notion that the man who was a highly decorated war hero didn’t actually earn his medals. And this attack was coming from someone who himself was a draft dodger
– We witnessed the wide-scale mocking of an actual war hero in the form of John Kerry at the Republican National Convention with the spectacle of thousands and thousands of people wearing fake tears to mock the notion that John Kerry actually earned his medals
-We saw the passing of major tax legislation that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy while the Republicans ran around claiming it actually was a tax cut for the middle class
-There was an attempt to privatize, thus end, Social Security. Thankfully that bill went nowhere though
-We witnessed the white scale dissemination of actual fake news from people like Armstrong Williams, and witnessed the horror of actual fake reporters in White House press conferences. The fake reporter asking fake questions turned out to be a former male prostitute.
– We witness the wide-scale mass firing of US Attorneys under George Bush and Alberto Gonzalez
– And let’s also not forget perhaps most important is that the election itself was stolen.
So please, can we all just knock it off about the Trump Administration being something new and unique and something that we’ve never quite seen before in the history of this nation. It is in fact the apotheosis of conservative governorship. This is precisely what you get when conservatives are in control. It is precisely what you will get when Republicans are in control in the future. It is the modern-day Republican Party.