I’m not Jake Tapper’s biggest fan (I haven’t forgotten his priggish sniffing around President Obama for signs that the last legit POTUS had fallen off the smoking-cessation bandwagon — as if that’s anyone’s business except his family’s). But gott-damn if Tapper doesn’t drop-kick one of the most vile, arrogant Trump treason-weasels in DC right out of the studio here:
Miller tries to deflect questions about President Crazypants’ fitness for the job with a rehearsed monologue attacking CNN for not paying enough attention to the concerns of Trump voters. (As-fucking-if! CNN constantly inflicts Trump voter panels on viewers and runs stories featuring sad old white people gazing listlessly from dilapidated window frames seemingly every fucking day!) But Tapper isn’t playing:
“Stephen, I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now. And you’re being obsequious, you’re being a factotum in order to please him, okay? And I think I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time.”
And with that, Tapper moves on to the next segment while the producer cuts Miller’s mic mid-screech. That’s the way to deal with these shit-stains.
Bobby Thomson
A better way to deal with them is by freezing them out entirely.
Big Ole Hound
I just wish it had been Jared or Ivanka Kushner
germy
“Self-made billionaire”
“Tapped into something magical”
oof!
rachel
What can it mean that this happened on Chris Wallace’s show: Fox host enrages CIA chief: What would CIA says about a world leader who calls himself ‘stable genius’?
No Drought No More
Beware the gnarly powers of anyone that drops ‘obsequious’ and ‘factotum’ off the top of their heads and into a conversation when fed up..
Jeffro
Maybe they’re starting to figure it out? there is no point in having Trump staffers and Trump apologist on their shows
germy
Villagers don’t like it when their guests attack their network.
If he’d talked more about the magical feeling in the hearts of people fed up with high crime neighborhoods (dog whistle) without bringing up the subject of the network’s “fake news” Jake would have let him rattle on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and FoxNews, who once referred to MRO as “Obama’s Baby Mama”, among other flat out racist propaganda, is his “sister network”
that said, Tapper is our fucking Cronkite when you compare him to the preening dolt Chuck Todd
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
Hahaha. How many times I’ve yelled at teevee while they’re extolling the virtues of Donnie Dollhands, “Cut off his mic!”
raven
OT but I’ve gotten great input from the jackals so it is with profound sadness that I report that I sold my National Championship ticket on stub hub,. I really really really want to go but I’m not getting better and it would be dumb. On the upside this means the rose bowl trip was almost free!
Kay
It is really frustrating dealing with liars in hearings. I sympathize. I have had people lie when they are holding the document I’ve just handed them that contradicts their lie. It’s fucking infuriating for two reasons- 1. you’re helpless and 2.it is a waste of time. I was once scolded from the bench because I got so mad I touched the witness with the document, holding it up to her face. Okay, so out of bounds but really you try it. It’s maddening.
That’s the point I’ve reached with the Trumpsters. What is the POINT of listening to them if they can just filibuster and deflect and LIE day after day, week after week? They are wasting out time with this bullshit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and even making allowances for the fact that this was Stephen Miller talking about trump, the buffoon actually offered “revolutionized reality television” as a qualification for the presidency. Madison weeps.
also, “self-made billionaire”. I know the horses have already been led to this water, but that’s a chance to point out that whole SP 500 thing again
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
you sound cucked bro
Villago Delenda Est
Miller is a person one should treat like one would Martin Bormann.
oatler.
Gott-damned if they don’t keep giving the Enemy airtime.
Adam L Silverman
@rachel: Wallace is very conservative. He is not stupid.
Mike in Pasadena
Miller was able to spew an awful lot of talking points even in that segment. Better that CNN not invite him on in the first place.
JMG
@raven: You did the right thing.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s the full interview.
My take is that the Trump fans will agree with Their Leader that Miller really gave it to the Fake News Network, and Tapper showed his colors by cutting him off. Miller was a debater in high school and college, and he prepared well for this.
Not clear to me how much it matters that it energized the Trumpies, but Trump needed that.
Tom
Regarding Tapper, I can do no better than quote my thesis advisor: “Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.”
JMG
@Cheryl Rofer: Stop thinking about Trump fans at all. They wouldn’t care if Miller threw up in the interview. Miller had nothing but a lie-filled spiel. If the interview signals that mainstream media, especially cable, the only medium that reaches Trump, is turning to a “no more bullshit” mode, that’s good news. Or it may be that Tapper, like I’d wager 99.9 percent of people Miller’s met in his life, took an instant and well-founded visceral dislike to him.
m.j.
How does he keep his forehead so smooth without a Botox drip?
JPL
@raven: Take joy in knowing that you are not out infecting your fellow fans with that nasty virus.
What finally gave me relief was mucinex sinus max. I’m still not sleeping well at night though.
tobie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think I heard a Representative from South Carolina spout the exact same lines yesterday. Trump’s a self-made billionaire, he made a success of TV with no prior experience, he won the Presidential race on his first try (patently untrue), and–most unbelievably–he graduated top of his class from a top school. These are the GOP marching orders when the go on TV. Republicans really do everything in lockstep like the good brown shirts they are.
Schlemazel
@raven:
Sorry to hear you won’t be able to go but that is not a bad second place finish you got. A free Rose Bowl trip is nice.
We were discussing Stupor Bowel tickets this week at work. I looked them up on stub hub & tickemashers. End zone seats are a minimum of $3000 each, stuff between the 25s on the side start at $11,000 and go up to $60,000 each. Makes me wish I had bought a pair just to sell them.
laura
@raven: it’s a shame……but, look at the upside; no traveling, comfy chair/couch pulled up close to your hi-Def tv, good eats, bride and pooches, friends, recent memories of the Bowl, a team with a good chance of winning, and a really legit reason to stay home and self care.
Your needed here now more than ever, as the curmudgeon contingent took some heavy hits this last year.
raven
@Schlemazel: Whew!
cynthia ackerman
I first read the AP headline as “Tapper cuts off head …”, not “heated.”
Dylsexics sometimes have more fun.
Mr. Mack
Raven, ducking in right quick to say how much I enjoyed watching that freshman QB,(Fromm?) beat Oklahoma last week. Kid is amazing. But tomorrow I think Bama wins, much as I hate it.
msb
what Jeffro and Mike said.
JohnO
Miller should swap his eyes out for a less dead-eyed psychopath look.
aimai
Should have done it earlier and also taken advantage of cutting his mike and gone ahead and had the interview and impeached the witness instead of cutting to another topic.
Quinerly
Sloppy Steve is now Supine Steve. (H/T Jennifer Rubin) Bannon has issued an apology to Trump and family. I guess our long national nightmare is over. Nothing to see in THE BOOK.
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: Trump seems to think it went well — he’s crowing about Miller “destroying” Tapper on Twitter. Good — let him make that creepy as fuck sleazeball his Sunday show spokescreep. I don’t think it’ll resonate outside the cult.
CONGRATULATIONS!
CNN is home of the Cletus Safari. Miller knows that. This is just theater for the rubes, and Tapper’s just giving the Trump fans exactly what they want and need; CNN as villain.
A better solution would be to cut off their oxygen and quit booking the Trump fellators, useful idiots and enablers, but they won’t do that. The media made Trump, put him in office and is profiting hugely every day he’s in his stolen throne. They’re never going to help get rid of him. Remember that.
SFAW
@m.j.:
Bathing it in the blood of babies he helped kill?
Quinerly
@tobie: AM Joy has a typed set of Repug talking points. She read them off about an hour ago.
Cheryl Rofer
@JMG: Energizing the base is Trump’s priority. As I said, it’s no longer clear how much this matters, since polls are starting to go against him because the rest of the country sees the danger, and even some Trumpies are starting to recognize that White House drama 24/7 is not doing them any good.
So I think the interview probably accomplished that narrow goal. As Mike in Pasadena observed, Miller got a lot of talking points out.
I’m just musing here. Would be interesting to see how RW Twitter is taking this, but I’m not connected in there.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: Wise decision!
Schlemazel
@raven:
top ticket price to SB I was $12. Adjusted for inflation that would be less than $90 today. I believe that the top official price to LII was $3,000. The whole thing has gotten totally out of hand. I don’t know about college games but since they have only held a championship game for a couple of years I don’t know if it could be comparable.
Hope you enjoy the game from a comfy chair with a reasonably priced beverage and snacks of your choice.
Kathleen
@No Drought No More: I’m not a Tapper fan either but he had me at “obsequious”. Sigh
Doug!
My take on Jake is that he’s very serious about journalistic responsibility, to his credit, but that he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed (though still much smarter than most on tv). The Trump administration has given him an endless parade of guests whose talking points are so ridiculous and transparent that he can rip them to shreds. He’s the perfect man for the moment.
MattF
You’re hearing now what Miller tells Trump– and, undoubtedly, what gets repeated to Trump over and over again from all sides, all day long. It’s worth listening to, for as long as you can stand it, because it’s the happening reality in the Oval Office. I understand that at some point, one has to turn away– the lickspittle reality is just too much.
Mr Stagger Lee
If I ran a network I would cut off these Gish Galloping bastards by cutting off their mics, especially when they are debating the other sides. Miller is the new Steve Bannon, more polished, better dressed. Look at those eyes just like Trump’s old mouthpiece Roy Cohn.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If I didn’t know Miller was a True Believer, I’d think that Kellyanne Conway was standing off-camera with an icepick held up to his aged mother’s temple to get him to spew that nonsense
Skepticat
@Bobby Thomson: This, many times over.
marcopolo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Has anyone seen any reporting on how much of other people’s money/wealth Trump has destroyed through his grifting & bankruptcies? I think that needs to be thrown out every time someone talks about what a great businessman he is. I mean think of how many folks have been along for the ride as Buffet or Gates or Bezos made billions. Trump not so much.
marcopolo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What leads you to believe threatening harm to Miller’s relatives would motivate him in any way shape or form?
Schlemazel
@Betty Cracker:
Too many people will not see what happened or if they do not understand it. Dump is smart to get out in front & declare victory because for a lot of people that will be the narrative.
tobie
@Quinerly: Thanks for the tip…I’ll check the website for her show tonight or tomorrow.
Mary G
Tapper seems genuinely offended by the Twitler circus and his dogs Winston and Clementine are adorbs. Winston is on Twitter.
KickBoxBanana
Screw Tapper. I don’t understand why some of you are willing to tongue bath some of these idiots the odd time they say or do something you like.
Quinerly
Bannon apology: https://www.axios.com/scoop-bannon-sends-regret-to-trump-1515329924-dbfe9439-59e0-4773-8d3d-079e5ee2b493.html
Frankensteinbeck
@tobie:
When you don’t give a damn about the truth and have no positions other than ‘fuck the other guy’, it is easy and natural to parrot whatever you heard is the party line.
Bobby Thomson
@Cheryl Rofer: There is a good case to be made that it did the rest of us more harm than good.
patrick II
Ricky Gervais wrote and starred in a movie named “The Invention of Lying” in 2009. Ricky lived in a world where Gervais’ character is the first person with ability to lie . The other people on this world (which looks remarkably like ours) were very susceptible to his lies because of their own relative honesty. Ricky became very skilled at lying , became rich, and invented religion (only Ricky could talk to the man in the sky — and shared with the world the “Ten rules” to get to a happy life after death.)
I thought of Ricky today as I reread president* Trump’s tweet from yesterday which starts with “Now that Russian collusion after one year of study has been proven to be a total hoax on the American people… “, which at first read I thought was satire . And then I remembered Trump’s dictum ” Just lie , they’ll believe you”.
OldDave
@raven:
Take the money and run!
James E. Powell
@germy:
Exactly. Tapper – who is as much of a dick as any other Villager – wasn’t defending truth, justice, and the American Way. He was bristling that his own self had been attacked right in his own place. The only thing any of these Beltway Courtiers will ever defend is their own status & privilege.
The appropriate response would have been to follow that up with a straight into the camera statement: People who refuse to answer questions and talk over the host will not be invited back on the show, people who lie will not be invited back on the show. We are no longer going to be providing a place where government officials can broadcast lies. And then stick with it.
I will not, of course, hold my breath.
ETA – It was also clear that Tapper wasn’t expecting the intensity of the attack from Miller.
marcopolo
@Quinerly: Hey fellow St. Louisan, Indivisible St Louis will be doing GOTV postcard writing every Sunday this month from 1-3 pm at Stone Spiral Coffee in Maplewood. I’ll be there later today and on the 21st. There are, I think, 4 MO house/senate special elections coming up in February. Can you pass this information along to your St. Louis folks? Maybe get some of them to join the group? They also have a Facebook page but I don’t do Facebook. And I hope you and Poco are enjoying the warm up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@KickBoxBanana: lighten up, Francis
raven
@Schlemazel: I went to the D3 National Championship a few years back, It was $12 too!
Tenar Arha
@aimai: Yep. Really makes me think though.
All the networks do this to a greater or lesser extent, but I think most cable & broadcast news has basically become a reality show. I really believe that just a few people, maybe even the network heads, are booking these guests & telling Tapper et al, interview them & you can cut them off if they get obstreperous towards the end of the segment. The interviewer might have been a great reporter, but now their job depends on a basic “storyline” that they don’t get to fully control. Like the first era of tv quiz shows, it’s all rigged.
raven
@marcopolo: What a nice airport! After that fucking rathole LAX is was shocked!
Schlemazel
Got a hopeful bit of news this week. Our new Junior Senator, Tina Smith, has announced publicly she will appear at a rally staged by blackity-black, Muslim Koran swearing Congressman keith Ellison. This is something our Senior Senator has studiously avoided. It remains to be seen if she can fight but at least she is not afraid to appear in public with actual liberals
Villago Delenda Est
I’m sorry, on just one point (“self-made billionaire”) it is utter cretinism at its worst. “Fred Trump? Never heard of him!”
Quinerly
@marcopolo: I’ll pass it along. It also came up in my FB feed. I can’t go today or next Sunday…then I’m New Mexico bound until 3/1. Love Stone Spiral. Great place. A dear friend does poetry reads there.
Mandalay
@germy:
They do actually, especially when it’s done on camera, and provide the network a chance to cut the mic. Tapper WANTED that shitshow to happen, and his producer was probably jerking off when it happened. It’s all about ratings and revenue. Nothing more.
If CNN had the slightest interest in informing their viewers on a Sunday morning why on earth would they invite Miller on in the first place? You might prefer the political perspective projected by CNN over the political perspective projected by FoxNews, but they really are birds of a feather: attack-conflict-viewers-revenue.
Villago Delenda Est
@Quinerly: So, Bannon is a sniveling coward along with being a Nazi prick.
Waldo
My money is on Miller being the last loyal soldier in the bunker when they come for Trump.
FlipYrWhig
@tobie: Trump wasn’t “top of his class” in any way. Somewhere I’ve seen the graduation program for his year. He’s on it, but has no honors, while others do.
lgerard
@m.j.:
Due to his immense brain power his forehead is continually expanding, thus keeping the skin taut.
At some point his all powerful third eye will pop out, then we will see the true awesomeness of the one who can not be denied.
Or something like that.
Gelfling 545
@Kathleen: Ah, THAT’S why Trump thinks it went well. He doesn’t know what any of those words mean.
marcopolo
@raven: Wait you liked the St. Louis airport? Huh. I think that might be a first :). I don’t think Lambert gets a lot of compliments due to it’s low ceilings, dim lighting (maybe formerly they’ve done some work in the last couple years), and general lack of pleasing amenities.
I haven’t flown much in recent years but hated O’Hare, SeaTac, and somewhere else I don’t remember because of the physical/time difficulty of making connecting flights from StL to Fairbanks.
And you didn’t ask but I think selling your Championship Tix was the absolutely right thing to do.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
But not necessarily informative. RW Twitter is so infested with bots, it’s hard to tell what people think and what they’re being instructed to think.
tobie
@FlipYrWhig: I hear you. It’s all garbage but Republicans have figured out you can spew any shit without any pushback on TV. And it’s clear that someone is drafting these talking points and sending the party faithful out to repeat these lies, most of which are designed to placate Trump’s ego. It would be good if the non-pundit hosts were able to fact-check in real time but most of them are either incapable of doing so or instructed not to.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Adam L Silverman
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s much nicer than “fuck you, cocksplat!” Thanks for getting there first. :)
Quinerly
@marcopolo: Terrible airport. I say this with inside dope. My ex boyfriend worked there for 10 years…an inhouse architect.
MattF
@tobie: It’s the script. Who’s sending it out these days?
chris
I can’t watch Miller, he makes me want to kick the cat. It’s those eyes, that boy ain’t right.
ETA: Anyone else get the same vibe from Hope Hicks?
Gelfling 545
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, if we got a look at his finances we might find he’s a self-made millionaire – who started out as a billionaire. Great busimessman that he is.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s derf mk XVII (or so). Pie it and move on with life.
Zach
Nah, I disagree. The best move for Tapper would’ve been: “OK, let’s agree to disagree for now, table this issue for a second, and talk about you. What the hell is the deal with this? [read NYT blurb on screen]”:
Cheryl Rofer
@Bobby Thomson: Yes. And just hearing the lies makes a memory trace that makes them easier to believe, or at least makes it easier to believe everyone is lying.
A number of pundits are making the case that we can see that “that boy ain’t right” in the case of Trump. We don’t need a medical diagnosis. I tend to agree with this, but even in that discussion, a number of things are lost because of the torrent of garbage being poured on us. If I were going to make that case to, say, try to persuade Congress in a legalistic manner, I would start with the Trump businesses and the emoluments clause. Then maybe nepotism compounding those business interests. I don’t see that point being made at all in that argument, indicating how far we’ve come in accepting this very dishonest presidential behavior.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chris: interesting thing about Hicks is that I’ve never seen her on TeeVee. Pleasing the Audience of One (we really need a single word for these performances) is usually the only way for non-kin to earn their way into the family circle. It’s why I gave some credence to the idea that she was his mistress. But it’s not uncommon, in the history of aging libertines, for them to like to have pretty young things around even if they can’t get up to much with them anymore.
Her and that security guy who got bounced a while back, and they say trump really misses him, and Wolff FWIW says he left amid dark whispers or some Buller-Lytton phrase. The only two you never see on TeeVee.
eclare
@chris: He is dead inside. His “the president will not be questioned” bit was scary. How someone so young got so warped is beyond me.
chris
@eclare: Some mental health issues is my guess but but giving me the creeps is not a real diagnosis.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good point. Maybe she’s too crazy for TV?
Quinerly
Howard Dean,……”This is a sick psychodrama.”
raven
@Quinerly: Huh, well wherever we were was well lighted, very clean, lot’s of space and a strabucks every 10 feet.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been saying for awhile (though a lot more so over at LGM) that there is a sharp distinction between conservatism and what the modern Republican Party has become. In some ways, Barry Goldwater was the last prominent conservative in the Republican Party, at least at the national level. Conservatism, properly defined, is characterised by a scepticism of ideology and of change for its own sake. Edmund Burke is probably still the best example of this. I have a number of serious philosophical differences with him, but overall, he was pretty strong on human rights and found the authoritarian excesses of the French Revolution (Reign of Terror etc.) appalling.
The modern Republican Party is not conservative. For lack of a better term, I usually characterise it as reactionary, though I’m still not fully satisfied with this label either, as reactionaries historically valued social stability, and most Republicans do not. However, Republicans as a whole want not to avoid change, but to reset society back to how they imagine things used to be. This is, in fact, implicit in Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America great again” – it’s implicit that society will be returning to an imagined past where things were allegedly great. Of course, there’s no discussion of inconvenient facts like the 91% top marginal income tax rate on the upper class, the extensive regulatory regime, or the massive welfare state that existed in the ’50s. There’s also an element of fascism to Trump’s ideology, though I think he’s too lazy to be an outright fascist; however, agencies like ICE have certainly gone outright fascist. I’ll leave it to actual scholars of fascism whether Trump qualifies as para-fascist, proto-fascist, or something else.
What we’re seeing when people like Wallace deviate from the party line is in large part an inevitable result of conservatives clashing with reactionaries and fascists. I don’t pay all that much attention to Wallace, but he comes across as genuinely conservative. So does Brit Hume. A number of others who are increasingly deviating from party orthodoxy – Max Boot, Rick Wilson, Ana Navarro, John Schindler, Tom Nichols, and so on – also look like cases of conservatives who are coming to grips with what has overtaken their party. (There are a few who have gone even further – I’ll be extremely surprised if Jen Rubin isn’t an outspoken liberal by the end of the Trump administration, which, if God loves us, will be no later than January 2021, and hopefully much earlier. David Frum appears to be undergoing a similar conversion, though not as rapidly.)
I don’t, on the whole, agree with it, but there is an important place in society for principled conservatism. The biggest ideological problem with the Republican Party is that, on the whole, it is not conservative. (Or principled, unless you consider Cleek’s Law, IGMFY, and other similar rules to be principles.) Indeed, the Democratic Party, at least from a Burkean sense, is by far much more conservative than the Republican Party. What I find particularly interesting in the case of people like Rubin and Frum is observing them coming to realise this.
Catherine D.
@Gelfling 545:
Many years ago, I worked for a crook in the commodities & options business, and I learned that the way to make a small fortune was to start with a large one.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@(((CassandraLeo))): Postscript: Of course, a possibly larger problem than the Republicans’ ideology is the overwhelmingly bad faith in which they frequently engage. At the same time, I’m not entirely convinced that the ideology and the bad faith can even be separated, since the idea that eternal reality doesn’t matter seems to be a foundational part of their ideology.
I also neglected to mention Bill Kristol as an example of someone deviating from party orthodoxy. He may, in fact, also be in the midst of a Rubin-style conversion.
Matt
Am I the only one thinking Jake is using the word “Factotum” wrong? Or has it picked up a new meaning? All I know is that of Il Barbiere de Seviglia.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Good Goddess, does any woman or man or schnauzer willingly crawl into bed with that dead-eyed bigot on a nightly basis?
afanasia
@SFAW: he’s not very old – 31? I looked similarly unravaged at that age, and I didn’t even have a pact with Satan.
Yarrow
@(((CassandraLeo))): No one really knows what “conservative” means anymore. It’s all things to all people who want to declare themselves conservative. The wingnut radio folks threw it around for years as conservative = good and liberal = bad and Fox News took that and ran with it, so that’s essentially what it is now. Except they’ve all hitched their wagon to the crazy Trump people so to everyone not in the cult that’s what “conservative” is.
Those Never Trumpers can work to wrest the word back from the fascists and reactionaries, but they have a very long uphill battle. T
FlipYrWhig
@Matt: I thought it basically meant “errand boy.”
Yarrow
@JohnO: He really does have dead eyes. I hadn’t seen him in action for awhile until I watched that video. He looks like a psychopath.
@chris: Yes, I get the same vibe from Hope Hicks. Dead inside.
I know Hope Hicks has had an interview with Mueller’s team. i can’t remember if Miller has. I hope she enjoyed hers. Ha ha.
gene108
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Republicans are radical ultra-right-wing revolutionaries. All they do is in service to the Revolution. You are either for the Revolution or against. Trump is the vanguard of the Revolution.
You are either with Trump and the Revolution or an enemy. This is why Congressional Republicans are attacking the FBI and Mueller, they stand in the way of the Revolution.
The idea that laws, justice, etc exist for purposes other than forwarding the Revolution are no longer considered applicable.
And if this makes Republicans seem like later day Lenninists, it is because they are. Plus some elements of fascism.
Matt
@FlipYrWhig: Jack-of-all-trades, I think of it. Either meaning is not quite he seems to mean here, ie, a flak.
singing truth to power
Really glad I unmuted Miller in time to hear Jake Tapper slap him silly. The Trumpites clearly believe that louder and ruder wins the day. Please, please let other newspeople follow Tapper’s example –
singing truth to power
Re Miller as factotum, you could substitute flunky, lackey, hanger-on, follower, stooge, toady, sycophant. Or just call him an a$$-kissing attack dog. They all work.
Catherine D.
@Matt: Factotum means one who does whatever is needed for someone else.
Brachiator
I’ve been waiting a long time for the pundits to do this. And of course, Trump and his toadies set themselves up for this kind of push back by insisting that it’s all fake news anyway. If they will not offer the media anything and are relentlessly hostile, there is not much point in the media trying to be kind to them.
singing truth to power
Well, how else would you expect Trump to interpret the Miller interview?
Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!
7:15 AM – 7 Jan 2018
Brachiator
@(((CassandraLeo))):
What massive welfare state in the 50s? I would honestly like to know about this.
And posters keep talking about the 90 percent top marginal tax rate and ignoring the inconvenient fact that this was never the top effective tax rate, and the fact that the alternative minimum tax was introduced in the 60s because a good chunk of the ultra wealthy we’re paying no income tax at all. Also, I cannot find much evidence that 1950s era tax rates did much to restrain the growth of massive fortunes of the rich.
I could not find a simple comparison of the proportion of government revenue spent on the military and social programs compared to the modern era, adjusted for inflation.
Is the idea supposed to be that this was a silver age of principled conservatism?
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
This Miller v Tapper exchange was excellent.
But it also reveals the naked racism and nativism that Miller loves to wade in, and of which Trump clearly approves.
Miller paints a picture of hard working, noble white people who have lost their manufacturing jobs “besieged by communities of crime” and buffeted by “unrestrained immigration.”
Communities of crime is not a dog whistle, it’s a direct and racist insult. As is the clear implication that Immigration must be limited to the right kind of people.
hellslittlestangel
@Matt: I don’t think he used “factotum”appropriately.I’d have gone with “toady.”
Dmbeaster
@eclare: Read this about his early years to see that he seems to have been born warped, even though his parents were FDR jews and he was raised in Santa Monica. Also, Richard Spencer takes credit for helping bake in that Nazi mindset when both worked together in college at the Duke Conservative Union on conservative causes.
Dmbeaster
@(((CassandraLeo))): The time period that the GOP all lust for is really pre Progressive America, as in the changes that took place from 1900 to 1940. Bring back the 1890s and unrestrained capitalism! I first noticed this when I saw a Heritage Foundation wank fest about how America’s problems all began with the Progressive Movement and Roosevelt, as in Teddy, not FDR.
Bring back child labor! Maybe they would leave out the part where captains of industry would exploit the existing policy of unlimited immigration in order to import foreigners for cheap labor and union busting.
Duane
I liked Tapper calling Miller obsequious and factotum, but ass kissing suckup cuck would have really left a mark.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Can’t you ask them to “read paragraph four” on the document I have just handed you. I’ve seen that in court myself. Maybe it isn’t always as effective as it seems it would be. It would make me blush and stammer to have lied and then have to read out loud a document contradicting my lie. I guess some people take to it naturally, like Dump and Sessions.
Ella in New Mexico
@JohnO:
Xanax 0.5mg Q 4 hrs PRN to suppress anxiety/panic/your conscience will do that to you.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Brachiator: I’m on my phone right now, so I don’t have access to the full info, but Krugman went into great detail in The Conscience of a Liberal about how the tax laws at the time kept wealth from concentrating too greatly (and also built up the middle class). From my understanding, Piketty also went into great detail on this, but unfortunately, I misplaced my copy of his book before I got that far into it.
As for the welfare state, it wasn’t as big as Europe’s, but things like Social Security and the Great Society were pretty damn big.
Brachiator
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Thanks very much for the reply. I gotta lot of nerve, but i think that the stuff I’ve read from Piketty overstates the case and is flat wrong in a number of places. He implies, I think, that tax policy or tax rates is a stronger force in distributing or restraining incomes. I don’t think this is supported by the available data.
I have not read Krugman’s book and need to.
Yeah, but this was not a 1950s thing. There are probably some good books, etc, about the growth of social spending in postwar America, and maybe some current blogs. I have not had time to sort out the good stuff from the chaff. Also, I freely admit that I have a lot of downloads of Piketty material that I have not had time to read.
But again, thanks for the reply and the reading suggestions.
Ruckus
@(((CassandraLeo))):
The tax laws won’t stop some from getting rich, unless they truly are meant to do that. Extremely high top rates, very little to no deductions and ways around the high marginal rates. Capital gains at less than half of the highest marginal rate or wide/wild definitions of what capital gains are, for example. Which is what we have now. The tax laws of the 50s didn’t stop people from getting rich, they helped the country recover from the massive spending on WWII instead of helping people. Social Security was pretty much it for the welfare state at the time and it was not all that strong. A lot of the issues that today’s conservatives/republicans are trying to destroy are the tax issues/welfare work of the last 50 yrs. The country has been over all prosperous but this wasn’t all that difficult given that we were an industrialized nation that wasn’t destroyed in WWII and had to be rebuilt. What was and is a problem is that a lot of the wealth created has been concentrated in relatively small numbers of people and a large segment has had very little forward movement. Another issue is that as the rest of the world recovered a lot of became cheaper producers of industrial output. That, along with the families that owned a lot of the wealth helped to move a lot of production offshore, hurting our industrialized production of the types of goods that people of normal incomes needed and wanted and the incomes of those people. The world became smaller and included far more countries and people than it had in 1950. IOW Globalization. So the wealthy became more wealthy and had excess to play in the world market of money creating money, rather than production of stuff. And the access meant that a lot of that money stayed off shore where it does very little for the country. It also put a lot of money in play in politics, much more than had been there for decades. IOW we were a growing country with growing pains and a lot of overconfidence about us. As countries go we were still teenagers with too much hormones and the rest of the world was trying to recover from a mid life heart attack. We were and are too big for our britches. Not of course that everyone else didn’t make mistakes, but ours were and are predictable. And now they’ve come to bite us in the ass.
ItAintEazy
@m.j.: How does a 50-something year old get into a body of a 32-year-old?
J R in WV
@(((CassandraLeo))):
It’s nice to see you here. I am growing away from LGM, not sure why. I like the front pagers, but the commentary is wearing me out.
Trying to develop a definition of Republicans in terms from the past seems fruitless to me. They are fascist, they are conservative as in KKK, they are greedy, racist, treasonous… one could go on for a very long list of repulsive and hateful characteristics. What’s the point?
Republicans today are either duped fools, or evil hateful traitorous thieves. Let us use the word Republican to describe those people.
ETA: to add treasonous in an appropriate spot.
Bill Arnold
People might be seriously underestimating his mental age. :-)
Get Out (Movie)
Do not like that man. The pizza slice incident might be helpful for understanding his character:
Stephen Miller once pushed his palm into a slice of pizza so he wouldn’t have to share it
Julia Grey
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I still remember the fucking tantrum he had (in Salon, I think) back in 2000, about the Gore people not holding the press plane for his precious ass. He got there late and Gore staffers were so incompetent or hateful that they didn’t even notice the terribly important Jake Tapper wasn’t aboard.
The whole thoughtless cruelty of poor Jakey’s abandonment on the tarmac was a quintessential demonstration of what a lousy person/feckless candidate Al Gore was.
Jeeeeeezus.