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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Battling Trump Chumps

Battling Trump Chumps

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Former Trump employee Omarosa Manigault-Newman went from the White House to the “Big Brother” reality TV show, which probably wasn’t a very jarring transition. I’ve never watched the stupid “Apprentice” shows, so I’d never heard of Manigault-Newman before the campaign. Her “Kneel before Zod” statement after the election convinced me that she’s a kook.

But in her current reality show gig, Manigault-Newman is trashing Trump and Pence, which doesn’t sit well with fellow “Apprentice” alum Piers Morgan. Via The Daily Mail:

‘Shut the f**k up, a**hole,’ snarled Omarosa Manigault-Newman at me. ‘How are your kids going to feel when they wake up and discover their dad’s a f**king f*gg*t?’

Yes, this is the same Omarosa Manigault-Newman who just spent a year inside Donald Trump’s White House.

I’ve met a lot of vile human beings in my life, from dictators and terrorists to sex abusers and wicked conmen.

But I’ve never met anyone quite so relentlessly loathsome as Omarosa; a vicious, duplicitous, lying, conniving, backstabbing piece of work.

Which beggars the question: what the hell was she doing inside the world’s most powerful building for 12 months?

No, it really doesn’t “beggar” the question, since the answer is so goddamned obvious: Trump is a scumbag, so of course he hires fellow scumbags to round out his scumbag administration. More dish from Morgan on Manigault-Newman:

Omarosa sidled up to me at the New York Mercantile Exchange and said, quite seriously: ‘Piers, do you want a showmance?’ ‘A what?’ I replied. ‘A showmance. You know, a romance on the show – we get it on together. Happens all the time on Apprentice. Everyone has sex together. Then we can make lots of money out of it.’ I stared at her grasping, ferociously ambitious little eyes, and laughed: ‘You must be joking, you deluded woman.’ She didn’t take it well. ‘What are you? Gay?’

From that moment, she turned on me like a viper.

I can honestly say I’ve never been spoken to in my life like the disgusting, foul-mouthed, homophobic way Omarosa spat at me throughout the weeks of filming.

Because I’d rejected her revolting sex plot, she decided the best line of attack was to repeatedly question my sexuality in the most crude and offensive manner imaginable.

Wow. She sure sounds like an asshole, but everyone in Trump’s orbit is, and that includes Morgan. I look forward to more amusing public feuds between Trump hangers-on in the very near future. It’s about the only upside from this endless nightmare. Open thread!

Reader Interactions

216Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    No, it really doesn’t “beggar” the question, since the answer is so goddamned obvious: Trump is a scumbag, so of course he hires fellow scumbags to round out his scumbag administration.

    Exactly. It’s not any more complicated than that: who would want to/agree to/could bear to work for one of the country’s worst human beings? Answer: equally awful human beings.

    And…AND…they’re only going to keep going down in quality from here on out. As hard as that is to fathom…

  5. 5.

    Gravenstone

    Apparently Omarosa had never met a Dominionist whackjob in the flesh before. Sad as it is to say, maybe her “warning” in this wretched venue of (un)reality TV will serve a greater purpose of reminding folks of just how broken everyone in this admin is, whether they are loud or not.

  6. 6.

    hueyplong

    One of the least surprising stories I have read this year.

    Look at what we have become accustomed to since 2016.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    If Omarosa didn’t exist Trump would have had her created in a laboratory. “Weird Science” for sociopaths.

  9. 9.

    James E. Powell

    Did he really say “beggars the question”? Okay, I’ve given up fighting for things like the original meaning of “begs the question” and I’ve stopped complaining about the abuse of the word “unique,” but have we now entered a New Age where everyone is Humpty Fucking Dumpty?

  11. 11.

    Bill K

    On the other hand, this is Piers Morgan making these claims. He has been in a few scandals himself and I would not trust him any more than I would trust his friend Trump.

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    Which beggars the question: what the hell was she doing inside the world’s most powerful building for 12 months?

    Because Donald Trump is a garbage human being who hires people who are just as awful as he is.

    SATSQ.

  14. 14.

    The Moar You Know

    Morgan is a vile, lying piece of shit, talking about another vile, lying piece of shit, so I’m going with odds that anything said here was true at about 0%.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Betty, I am another who had never heard of Omarosa until she joined the Tradministration. Had to ask BJers to explain her to me. A year later, I’m still not sure what she did in the WH (or what she was meant to do, which may or may not be the same thing). She sounds like a loathsome person.

  16. 16.

    Sourmash

    Piers Morgan is one of the worst humans alive. He was the Editor in Chief of one of Rupert’s papers when they were hacking the voicemail of crime victims, even going as far as erasing some messages of a woman who was still missing but turned out to be dead at the time they did it, falsely giving her parents hope that she might still be alive. Horrifically immoral person. He deserves every bad thing that ever happens to him.

  17. 17.

    Corner Stone

    Speaking of fucking scumbags:

    David Wessel
    ‏Verified account @davidmwessel
    44m44 minutes ago

    Mulvaney tells Congress he would vote against the Trump budget if he were still in the House!

  18. 18.

    Starfish

    I think you should go back and watch some Omarosa on the Apprentice. I am not sure how a show like the Apprentice could manage to have a villain, but she was it. Omarosa was all about Omarosa they way Trump is all about Trump. She was a cartoon villain who was definitely “not here to make friends.”

  19. 19.

    Corner Stone

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    A year later, I’m still not sure what she did in the WH (or what she was meant to do, which may or may not be the same thing).

    I could be wrong but I think her official title was, “Chief Pisser Offer of Every Black Community and Community of Color”

  22. 22.

    geg6

    Oh, Omarosa is a vile person, no doubt. However, Piers Morgan may be even more vile, so the idea that he thinks I’m going to take his word for gospel is laughable.

  23. 23.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I haven’t seen a lot of Olympic discussion here (although admittedly I haven’t checked in a lot in the last 3-4 days) so let me just toss this one out there:

    The scoring in curling is really weird. Discuss.

    We were watching Canada vs. Norway while eating a pub meal (rooting for Canada) and I started to actually understand the strategy and skill of the whole thing. The basic idea is kind of like slow-motion bocce: get your rock close to the middle, knock the other guy’s away. And there’s a lot of strategy in where you put your rocks. But we could see no correlation between the final position of the rocks and the assigned points.

  24. 24.

    Corner Stone

    @The Moar You Know:

    Morgan is a vile, lying piece of shit, talking about another vile, lying piece of shit, so I’m going with odds that anything said here was true at about 0%.

    I also can’t stand Morgan but using my inner Michael Wollfe-ometer, what he says about Omarosa rings true.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    Here’s another one! Louise Linton is super-duper sorry, you guys, and she told Elle Magazine all about it.

    Other ordinary-girl things: Linton loves calligraphy and big-band jazz. She enjoys taking cute selfies with Mnuchin using the Snapchat filters that make people look like puppies and piglets. Against her husband’s wishes, she shows them to me. (“I didn’t even know she had Snapchat,” her press rep says, faintly concerned.) She is obsessed with dogs, especially sick ones. So much so that she once made friends with a homeless man named Richard in a park in Los Angeles because she was concerned about the health of his dog. She wound up paying the vet bill. (Richard, over the phone, tells me that he knows Linton is a good person because his dog loves her. “You can’t fool an animal. Dogs read people,” he says.) She believes that everyone should go to therapy. “It’s like going to the dentist,” she says. Like any average person, Linton uses Amazon religiously and orders delivery meals on Postmates, on evenings when she’s not making her husband a big ratatouille with leftover groceries. And when she’s feeling worn down from all the negativity in the world, she’ll turn off her television and her phone, light some candles, and blast Duke Ellington so loud that it reaches every nook and cranny of her $12.6 million Massachusetts Avenue Heights home.

  31. 31.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @geg6: Yeah, none of that sounds like a conversation that actual human people would have. More like a badly-written movie script.

  32. 32.

    zhena gogolia

    @James E. Powell:

    Thank you — I can’t believe that “beggars the question” is the new abomination. I just spent a semester pleading with my students not to use “beg the question” because no one knows what it means any more. I finally managed to explain its true meaning to them, but I said it’s gone, can’t be used any more because if you use it correctly no one will understand you.

  33. 33.

    geg6

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    That’s my trouble with it. I totally get the strategy, having played bocce and petanque in my youth. No idea how the scoring works and watching was not illuminating. I need some sort of tutorial or something.

  38. 38.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @geg6: And yet, it is strangely mesmerizing. Maybe it’s the constant feeling of “I can’t believe this is a sport. It’s just a rock and a broom. They don’t even have skates on!”

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    @The Moar You Know:

    Horrible people are usually pretty good at remembering slights from other people, so Morgan is probably telling the truth. Of course, I’ll bet Omarosa has a pretty juicy tale about what he said to her. ?

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @James E. Powell:

    Did he really say “beggars the question”? Okay, I’ve given up fighting for things like the original meaning of “begs the question”

    I’m guessing he not only had no idea of the meaning of “begs the question” but he then made things infinitely worse by conflating it with “beggars belief.”

  46. 46.

    The Moar You Know

    Like any average person, Linton uses Amazon religiously and orders delivery meals on Postmates, on evenings when she’s not making her husband a big ratatouille with leftover groceries. And when she’s feeling worn down from all the negativity in the world, she’ll turn off her television and her phone, light some candles, and blast Duke Ellington so loud that it reaches every nook and cranny of her $12.6 million Massachusetts Avenue Heights home

    .

    @Mary G: Bolded the staggering bullshit. I do wish the media would stop trying to humanize people like this. The uber-rich certainly don’t think of us as humans worthy of anything save death.

  49. 49.

    Mary G

    @Gin & Tonic: You can get a TracFone here at any 7/11 or grocery store or gas station for around $10 and pay $20 for 90 days service. It’s what I have, anyway.

  50. 50.

    patroclus

    Uh, it is safe to say that my usually accurate gaydar does not even register a peep when it comes to Piers frickin Morgan.

    On curling, I was highly anticipating the mixed doubles curling finals on CNBC tonight, but a “former” Canadian friend totally spoiled it for me on another blog. If he weren’t so polite and progressive and healthy (and knowledgeable about Terry Fox and the Avro Arrow), I’d strangle him!

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    @germy:

    Did she hire a publicist who specializes in damage control?

    Probably same PR people Ivana Jr uses to keep her distanced from Daddy’s horrible decisions. Which she truly opposed strenuously behind the scenes.

  52. 52.

    John Revolta

    @germy: No, he heard someone say “beggars the imagination” once and got it confused with another expression that he also didn’t know the meaning of.

  54. 54.

    Adam C

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:
    Once all the rocks have been thrown, you score one point for every rock of yours that is closer to the centre of the house than any of your opponent’s rocks. Rocks that aren’t in the house don’t count.

    So only one team can score, but they might score two or three. And if the house is empty then no-one gets anything.

  60. 60.

    Mary G

    @The Moar You Know: I could be wrong, but the fashion mags are all pretty much Trump-loathers, and the whole article has a whiff of “look at this rich idiot who has no business being where she is.” Not overt, so deniable, but there.

    The last paragraph, about the infamous photo in the Treasury building with the dollar bills:

    Linton thinks ruefully about the long leather gloves and the black skirt, which are currently hanging, unloved and radioactive, in her closet. “I really hope someday I can wear that outfit again,” she says. “Because I really liked it.”

  61. 61.

    patroclus

    @Mnemosyne: Well… Matt Mitcham and a LOT of equestrian riders have won medals in the Summer games, and as for the winter games, you might quibble with the word “openly,” but there have CLEARLY been gay figure skaters who have won medals in the winter games before as well.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): If you want to know how they handled that on The West Wing and how they currently handle it on Designated Survivor, I’m your girl. Real life, how it’s handled in a normal whitehouse? I don’t know. How it’s handled in this shitshow of a whitehorse? I have absolutely no clue.

  63. 63.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: Nothing happened as far as I am aware. Nuzzi is a nominally pretty blonde woman with great cheekbones. And all the right friends on the “left”, including the Obama Bros.
    I’ve actually only seen her a couple times so far in 2018. I can’t stand her as she sucks all the air out of the room and purses her lips thoughtfully as she disdains some person or action. If I had my druthers I would ex-communicate her to CNN. She seems just as vile to me.

  64. 64.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Mary G:

    Oh, no, this story deserve as much publicity as possible.

    One of, perhaps the only, silver cloud in the Trump shitcloud is that traditionally “non-political” outlets are stepping up and taking their whacks.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @patroclus:

    It’s the “openly” part that seems to be the big deal this year. Obviously, Greg Louganis was a huge Olympic star, but he had to do it while closeted, as have many, many others.

    And Adam Rippon medaled, too. I’m not sure what I love more about this tweet — the tweet itself, or that his first defender is Jake Tapper. ?

  70. 70.

    Gelfling 545

    Vioe, foul mouthed, homophobic? Sounds like a perfect fit in the Trump regime. I’m surprised they let her go.

  72. 72.

    Corner Stone

    I don’t mean to shock anyone, so make sure you’re sitting down. But Cole’s twit feed proves yet again he does not read his own blog.

  73. 73.

    StringOnAStick

    @Gravenstone:

    Apparently Omarosa had never met a Dominionist whackjob in the flesh before. Sad as it is to say, maybe her “warning” in this wretched venue of (un)reality TV will serve a greater purpose of reminding folks of just how broken everyone in this admin is, whether they are loud or not.

    Good point. This gets the whole “these people are vicious nuts” info to people who otherwise probably would not be seeing or hearing any of it because they don’t care about politics or think it affects them. They aren’t the type to read BJ, watch CNN or listen to NPR (as weak as they’ve gotten recently).

  79. 79.

    Bishop Bag

    Completely OT:
    My daughter who is 21 is rereading “Slaughterhouse Five” (not for any class or assignment in school). She texted this to me today:
    ‘Was reading slaughterhouse 5 when’
    Then a photo of her text:
    ‘Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945,’ Billy Pilgrim began. ‘We
    came out of our shelter the next day.’ He told Montana about the four guards who, in their
    astonishment and grief, resembled a barber-shop quartet. He told her about the stockyards
    with all the fenceposts gone, with roofs and windows gone -told her about seeing little
    logs lying around. These were people who had been caught in the firestorm. So it goes.
    Then she texted me:
    ‘Today is the day Dresden was bombed’
    Pretty cosmic that she was reading that part of the book on the date that Dresden was firebombed…
    That’s all…

  86. 86.

    patroclus

    @Corner Stone: LOL. If you don’t see it, you are blind as a bat. And with Greg Louganis (and Peter Vidmar and Tim Daggett (albeit now married to women)), there’s “closeted” and “not as closeted as you might think” subcategories of “closeted.”

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: Rippon got ripped off from gold awarded a bronze, so not quite gold. They’re both worth celebrating.

    Speaking of Louganis, I got to meet him once. He’s TINY. I’m not exactly tall but I felt like I loomed over him. And he is just so sweet and gracious.

  88. 88.

    different-church-lady

    what the hell was she doing inside the world’s most powerful building for 12 months?

    Piers, what the hell is TRUMP doing inside the world’s most powerful building?!?

  89. 89.

    Brownian

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Canadian here. The point of curling is to be able to claim one is playing a sport when in actuality one is getting drunk. It’s like golf, bowling, or darts in that respect, but by being played on a sheet of ice inside a refrigerated arena curling has the advantage of keeping one’s beer perpetually chilled.

  91. 91.

    lgerard

    I’m sure that Morgan and Omarosa will be able to settle their feud by participating in the upcoming all-trump season of Dancing with the Stars.

    Meanwhile. I’ll amuse myself by watching for the Seb Gorka vs Omarosa spat which should be starting momentarily.

  92. 92.

    jacy

    I can’t get over the image of her “grasping” eyes. And then I suppose his “eyes slid down the front of her dress.” GAH. The editor in my head just jumped out a window.

  93. 93.

    Just one more canuck

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: the number of points you get is based on the number of rocks that are closest to the centre after all the rocks are thrown. If you have two rocks in the four foot circle (inner) and two in the 12 foot (outer) you would score 4 points. However if the other team has one in the eight foot circle, you would only get two

    Curling is a lot of fun – great social sport

  94. 94.

    PPCLI

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: You get a point if you have the rock closest to the centre. Then you get 1 additional point for every rock closer to the centre than your opponent’s closest rock. 0 points if you don’t have the closest rock.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @oldgold:

    Is there any Black person in the entire United States who has never made a “kill Whitey” joke?

    And this complaint from the side that always tries to claim they were “joking” when they get caught saying something racist or sexist. ?

  100. 100.

    Kay

    @Sourmash:

    He was the Editor in Chief of one of Rupert’s papers when they were hacking the voicemail of crime victims,

    I didn’t know that. I watched some of the hearing /Murdoch and his son. Two minutes in it occurred to me that the expression on Murdoch’s face was self pity. He was sitting there feeling sorry for himself. Just a horrifying human.

  101. 101.

    germy

    @Frankensteinbeck: Do you mean ActBlue?

    I thought GoBlue was connected to a sportsball team.

    EDIT: Oh, you meant the commenter.

    Where did srv go? I miss being called “cuck” and “you people”.

    (Possibly he’s still here under a new nym)

  103. 103.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Yutsano: and @different-church-lady:
    I know paid trolls exist, but I’m an anti-conspiracy theorist, and I never expect to see one. But if GoBlaart was a regular troll like Amygdala RGB, they’d still be around, not focused entirely on the campaign season. It’s like the news coverage of Ebola that way. Wow. Hey, how can we tell if they’re Russian?

  105. 105.

    smintheus

    Morgan is pretending to be shocked that somebody spurned might become vicious? Even he can’t be that stupid or naive. Dishonest and manipulative, that’s Morgan, like virtually everyone else connected to Trump.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @patroclus:

    I’m just reporting the headlines. The media seems to think that the distinction is a big deal this year. I’m guessing people were nervous about being out during the Winter Olympics in Russia since it could have put them at risk of arrest.

    My favorite “closeted” story was Nathan Lane, who did not publicly come out until after his mother died, which she had requested. I think it was something like, “I’m a single man in his 40s who works in musical theater — you figure it out!”

    And apparently Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory” had no idea that the media considered him closeted when he first became famous. He brought his then-boyfriend (now husband) to awards shows and other events and stated that this was his boyfriend, but no one ever bothered to publish it. He had to do an “official” coming out after he became a TV star.

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Just say something “raises the question.” Why can’t people use that?

    One I’ve noticed recently is people saying “step foot in [someplace].” It used to be “set foot.” I thought this was relatively new, but I heard it in a 2005 episode of Without a Trace yesterday, which made me do a spit-take and brought it back to the front of my mind.

  109. 109.

    cope

    @patroclus: The story of the Arrow is fascinating, to be sure. I read that one of 9 flying scale models that were used for test flights was found lasts summer in Lake Ontario and will be salvaged this spring.

    Edited to capitalize “Lake”.

  110. 110.

    Mandalay

    @James E. Powell:

    Did he really say “beggars the question”?

    Morgan is British, and wrote that in a British publication. I don’t think anyone in Britain would be remotely bothered by it.

    In a similar vein, when Omarosa called Morgan a “f**king f*gg*t” he might have wondered why she was referring to “pig’s heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes bread crumbs.”

    I hate myself for defending Piers Morgan, but there are many things to get annoyed about right now and British people failing to meet the standards of American English is not one of them.

  114. 114.

    Steeplejack

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    All I got from watching five minutes of curling Sunday night was that “John Morris is the bad boy of Canadian curling,” which raised more questions than it answered. Curling has bad boys? And what do you have to do to be a bad boy in curling?

  117. 117.

    Tenar Arha

    @Amaranthine RBG: Oh my effing dear lord

    Besides some contributions to a few Democratic political campaigns, Mnuchin and Linton didn’t consider themselves political people in the early stages of their relationship. But when the Trump campaign came knocking—first, to offer Mnuchin a role leading campaign financing—they felt powerless not to heed the call of American citizens.

    ???

    ETA this is meant seriously, it’s not parody, right? Except it cannot help but be like parody in the wild.
    ETA foxy & added “right?”

  119. 119.

    bystander

    @germy:

    @zhena gogolia: Maybe he meant “buggers” – he is British, after all.

    Yes, that would be good to teach students and remove any ambiguity about the phrase. Or “lorries”. Maybe he meant lorries?

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    @The Moar You Know:

    Then you’ll love this part farther down:

    And, she says, the turbulence of the last year has solidified her decision to start her own family. “I think motherhood is an incredible thing that I now feel that I would like. . . . There can be all this noise out there, but at the end of the day, you’ve got your family, and a roof over your head, and food.”

    Just keepin’ it real, yo.

  122. 122.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack:

    “John Morris is the bad boy of Canadian curling,” which raised more questions than it answered. Curling has bad boys? And what do you have to do to be a bad boy in curling?

    I asked that same exact question on this blog at the time. I mean, what? He curls shirtless? It’s not like he can drink more than the average curling competitor.

  123. 123.

    Kay

    @Tenar Arha:

    They’re insufferable. She was better off when we heard less about her.

    It’s scary because all of these Trump people will now be running for office forever. This is the best scam they’ve ever encountered. We’ll be hearing from them 30 years from now.

  126. 126.

    debbie

    But I’ve never met anyone quite so relentlessly loathsome as Omarosa; a vicious, duplicitous, lying, conniving, backstabbing piece of work.

    Great blurb for the book jacket!

  127. 127.

    germy

    @bystander: So Omarosa was fired for using the executive car service for personal business?

    Scott Pruitt’s been flying first class on taxpayer money. Mnuchin did as well.

    They wanted her out, and now they find an “official” reason after the fact.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    One I’ve noticed recently is people saying “step foot in [someplace].” It used to be “set foot.”

    Yes, I’ve heard “step foot” for several years, and it always sounds wrong.

    The one that my ear simply can’t get used to is a Southernism (largely, but not exclusively), and that is the expression “out of pocket.” To me, it means broke or low on cash (“Can you pick up the lunch tab? I’m a bit out of pocket today.”) but in the South it generally means busy or previously engaged or absent in an unspecified way (“Can’t meet for lunch until Thursday; I’ll be out of pocket all day tomorrow.”)

    Regionalisms are fascinating.

  130. 130.

    Mary G

    Politico has another story on the timing of the Porter story.

    When now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters hours after the publication of a Daily Mail story showing his first wife with a black eye, he was quick to deny the allegations of physical abuse.

    The reporters present for the meeting — the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Axios’ Jonathan Swan, and the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender — pressed Porter to explain the picture of his first wife with a black eye as well as his comment that he had taken the picture in question. He told them what he had told his colleagues: that, on vacation in Florence, the two had quarreled over a Venetian glass vase, and that his then wife, Colbie Holderness, had fallen and bruised her eye.

    Porter, who until that point had been seen as one of the most competent and trusted aides in the West Wing, also confirmed that he was resigning his post, but White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and two other communications aides – Josh Raffel and Raj Shah – interjected that White House chief of staff John Kelly had urged Porter to stay, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

    The meeting, at which Porter also conceded calling his second wife “a f***ing bitch,” was arranged by Sanders as the scandal mushroomed on Feb. 7 and seen by one participant as an effort to give Porter a chance to defend himself while letting the White House distance itself from him by not speaking on his behalf. The reporters, in keeping with the off-the-record terms, did not use the information conveyed in the meeting.

    So the NYT. WaPo, WSJ & Axios all kept this information secret, but someone in the WH leaked it all to Politico? Or someone in one of those journalism organizations? Somebody’s not fond of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that’s for sure. This makes everything she said earlier a lie.

  133. 133.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @John Revolta:
    For every Russian ratfucking operative, there are five assholes who built their self-esteem around being the truly moral person who knows that American Empire is to blame for everything, and how can they pat themselves on the back if they don’t tell everyone they can find?

  136. 136.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    in the South it generally means busy or previously engaged or absent in an unspecified way (“Can’t meet for lunch until Thursday; I’ll be out of pocket all day tomorrow.”)

    That’s how I use it. I didn’t know there was another meaning.

  138. 138.

    KithKanan

    @SiubhanDuinne: They really are. Here on the weird coast, this is the first time I’ve heard “out of pocket” used in either of those senses. I’m only familiar with it in the (mainly but not exclusively health insurance) sense of “what you have to pay yourself as opposed to someone else picking up the tab” and never something you would say about a person.

  141. 141.

    Corner Stone

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m going to be out of pocket today til 3:00.
    That’s common across the country, AFAIK. My British boss HQ’d in CHI used it all the time.

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: that’s great– a toss up for me which is the best part of the Blues Brothers, Cab Calloway or Aretha

  146. 146.

    Corner Stone

    @Mary G:

    So the NYT. WaPo, WSJ & Axios all kept this information secret, but someone in the WH leaked it all to Politico? Or someone in one of those journalism organizations? Somebody’s not fond of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that’s for sure. This makes everything she said earlier a lie.

    MSNBC had video of those four leaving the backroom meeting and entering the WHPC room. It’s pretty damning, if that’s possible anymore.

  147. 147.

    germy

    @Baud: Clinton coughed during a recent speech. Hannity just tweeted “The Hack Is Back” (accompanied by a photo of Hillary with her hand hat her mouth). He truly is despicable.

  148. 148.

    Jay S

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yes but also one that no one can understand why they are still there after an hour or so. OTOH I don’t think Kato had a reputation for being nasty to people, but in the Trump universe nasty is probably the parallel to innocuous in OJ’s.

  150. 150.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: beg the question? beggar the question? beggar thy neighbor? bother your neighbor? don’t flick boogers at your brother?

    They all run together after a while.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  154. 154.

    germy

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I loved Aretha in that movie.

    I recall that Cab was irritated they gave him arrangements of “Minnie” to play that were the original 1930s style.

    He’d grown as an artist, and wanted to do something new and different with the song: a disco version.

    They had to insist they preferred the classic version and he finally agreed to give them what they wanted.

  155. 155.

    Corner Stone

    OMG, I just clicked through to see the Elle interview with Louise Linton. She has her hand covering her cooter in the promo shot!

  156. 156.

    J R in WV

    @James E. Powell:

    Begs the question vrs beggars the question….

    Well, he is, or pretends to be, British, so they do talk different. And if he was “discovered” on a reality show, well, there you go, you get what you paid for.

  158. 158.

    Brachiator

    @Mary G:

    When now-former White House staff secretary Rob Porter sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters hours after the publication of a Daily Mail story showing his first wife with a black eye, he was quick to deny the allegations of physical abuse.

    Goddamn. Off the record stories are deals with the devil. And I don’t know why Haberman (and a male colleague of hers) are still on the White House beat.

    But I am happy if someone leaked shit to Politico. And more importantly, Porter looks shady trying to explain away his actions. And Sanders … Well. The people who want to work for this president are all slimeballs.

  159. 159.

    Chyron HR

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    Are you going to stage another MLK Day-style freakout on Presidents’ Day? After all, which American president deserves recognition more than the one who had the oval office stolen from him by that wh*re Clinton?

  160. 160.

    lgerard

    @germy:

    He has never noticed trump’s constant, chronic sniffling though. has he?

    I think trump has a secret nasal spray addiction

  161. 161.

    smintheus

    @germy: That’s the first track from one of the first lps I bought as a kid, Recollections of the Big Band Era, and still a favorite. A lot of wonderful arrangements on it.

  162. 162.

    Mandalay

    @Tenar Arha:

    it’s not parody, right

    Very hard to tell….

    His daughter Ivanka is “incredibly bright, brilliant, gifted, thoughtful, kind, generous, and very, very elegant.” She’s recently started wearing Ivanka Trump’s brand of shoes, which you can buy for $69 on Amazon. “They’re incredible,” she says.

    But looking on the bright side, I think we have found out who will be getting Rod Rosenstein’s job.

  163. 163.

    germy

    Too bad nobody says “out of countenance” anymore.

    I’m always reminded of the “Hodge” anecdote about Dr. Johnson:

    I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, “Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;” and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”

  164. 164.

    Gvg

    @SiubhanDuinne: southerner here and I have never heard out of pocket mean either. It mean’s you pay for something. Can imply you won’t be reimbursed for it, or sometimes that you will.

  166. 166.

    Timurid

    @Mary G:

    So the NYT. WaPo, WSJ & Axios all kept this information secret.

    Elites are c;losing ranks around Trump. They don’t all like him and many wish that none of this had ever happened, but now they fear the consequences of Trump’s defeat more than they fear him (the backlash after his demise would endanger their assets and privilege).

  168. 168.

    J R in WV

    @Sourmash:

    Piers Morgan is one of the worst humans alive. He was the Editor in Chief of one of Rupert’s papers when they were hacking the voicemail of crime victims, even going as far as erasing some messages of a woman who was still missing but turned out to be dead at the time they did it, falsely giving her parents hope that she might still be alive. Horrifically immoral person. He deserves every bad thing that ever happens to him.

    OK, there’s some detail on Mr. Morgan… I know about the Murdoch tabloids hacking people’s phone records, but didn’t know Morgan was involved with that. He is disqualified from any news work in my book, despicable actions on Murdoch’s behalf.

    Thanks for that info, turns my stomach, but we need to know that about Piers Morgan. Why isn’t he being deported for immoral, illegal, despicable behavior not disclosed on his immigration papers? Doctors and teachers can be deported for a traffic violation, but this piece of wormwood gets to inhabit our nation? No way!

  169. 169.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Steeplejack: “Scuffling” for “struggling”. As in “Bryant and Rizzo scuffled throughout the playoffs”. Wrong, just wrong.

    Another pet peeve of mine is how “angst” has replaced “anxiety” in common usage. The former should only be used by Germans who are experiencing inner turmoil about their place in the universe. Not by people who are worried about planning a wedding.

  170. 170.

    Mike in NC

    If anybody wants to start a pool on the next folks to leave the Trumphouse, I’m going with General Kelly and Possum Queen. Three weeks, tops.

  171. 171.

    FlyingToaster

    @Steeplejack: Oh FFS. I can’t imagine the hell that poor kid will be put through, with that mom. If it’s lucky, it’ll be raised by the “help”.

  172. 172.

    Mnemosyne

    @John Revolta:

    He was so mad about being banned that he emailed me through my blog to make sure people knew he hadn’t left voluntarily. ?

    He may have been an authentic American nutbar.

  174. 174.

    Corner Stone

    @Timurid:

    They don’t all like him and many wish that none of this had ever happened, but now they fear the consequences of Trump’s defeat more than they fear him

    I don’t know if they do or do not like him. ISTM only complete scumbags could stand to spend one minute around Trump. However, what they fear is loss of access. All their sources would be cut off if they get kicked out of the WH. So they are eager to attend this little soiree with SHS, to keep her happy.

  176. 176.

    mike in dc

    What a horribly slanderous thing for Piers Morgan to suggest that any living human woman would express a willingness to have sex with Piers Morgan.

  177. 177.

    germy

    @zhena gogolia: When Hodge was near death, Johnson purchased valerian to ease his suffering. There’s a Hodge statue somewhere in England, honoring that fine and well-loved cat.

  179. 179.

    efgoldman

    @oldgold:

    Sean Hannity, has gone full Alex Jones.

    Wasn’t there a comic or a show that would say more and more outrageous things to try and find the point at which people wouldn’t believe then any more? The problem is, the mouth breathers are so credulous they’ll believe whales from space if Hannity tells them.

  182. 182.

    Corner Stone

    @efgoldman:

    The problem is, the mouth breathers are so credulous they’ll believe whales from space if Hannity tells them.

    What do you have against Star Trek and Capt Kirk?

  184. 184.

    J R in WV

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    ….notes the Hannity article, Kehinde Wiley has in the past made jokes about “killing Whitey.”

    And we’re all positive that Hannity has never told a joke in which black people feature with N** words, because a professional bigot would never do that. Not.

  185. 185.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ridnik Chrome:

    As in “Bryant and Rizzo scuffled throughout the playoffs”. Wrong, just wrong.

    It only works if they were constantly getting into fistfights and shoving matches with each other throughout the playoffs.

  187. 187.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Nah. As we’ve been reminded recently, Sanders and the other women who have jobs communicating the policy decisions of white men are obvious proof that Trump values and respects women, advancing them as appropriate.

    If I remember right, the only possible exception to this was Kelly’s handpicked successor at DHS, who also appears to be kind of an idiot. But she is technically in a policy role.

  188. 188.

    trollhattan

    These two belong together in a hogpen somewhere, and let’s figure out how to add deadbeat Donny to the mix. Bleccch to the lot.

  190. 190.

    Mnemosyne

    @J R in WV:

    I’m just reporting what the news media tells me. Apparently the Canadian guy’s event was decided first, so he beat Rippon by a few hours.

  191. 191.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Steeplejack: Belch loudly when the other team is up? Depth-charge your beer?

    I thought they separated all the bad boys out and sent them to play hockey.

  194. 194.

    Brachiator

    @J R in WV:

    Thanks for that info, turns my stomach, but we need to know that about Piers Morgan. Why isn’t he being deported for immoral, illegal, despicable behavior not disclosed on his immigration papers?

    Because he is so skilled at being immoral and despicable. Just the kind of immigrant that Trump wants.

    Looking over some of his biography, it appears as though he has always been what people used to call a “nasty piece of work.”

  196. 196.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro:

    And…AND…they’re only going to keep going down in quality from here on out. As hard as that is to fathom…

    Its mutant turtles all the way down.

  199. 199.

    Mary G

    @J R in WV: @Mnemosyne: They won their medals in the same event. Mnem’s article is talking about the first gold medal for an openly gay athlete. A lot of the Rippon articles talk about the first medal for an openly gay American athlete.

    It’s all pretty cray because I am pretty sure other athletes who have won medals were out, but evidently not what NBC Sports would call it, because before they NBC took care not to mention whether or not an athlete was gay.

  200. 200.

    Ajabu

    @Gvg:
    Agree on “out of pocket”.
    In the music studios we’d talk about “in the pocket” being a solid groove.
    As in, “That’s in the pocket.”

  202. 202.

    Barbara

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I have been watching curling for a couple of years now (there is a weekly Curling Night in America on NBCSN) and have tried to piece together the rules and lingo without actually consulting any reference. I haven’t totally figured out all the scoring rules but the basic rule is that (1) only one team can score in the inning, and the team with the last shot (the “hammer”) is generally favored to score; (2) the team with the stone in the button or closest to it gets one point; and (3) in order to get any additional points, your other rocks have to be closer to the middle than the competing rocks. They will sometimes bring out a measure to see whose rock is closer to the middle.

  203. 203.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    But the Canadian won the gold medal, and Rippon only won bronze, so clearly he outranks Rippon. ?

    I’m a little confused by the whole “team figure skating” thing, but it sounds like they each skated in different events that were scored as a team total?

  204. 204.

    TenguPhule

    The media is ignoring ties between the Clinton campaign and Russians
    By Ed Rogers

    Speaking of Trump Chumps I just want to put an end to….

  207. 207.

    MCA1

    @geg6: It’s actually really simple. You get one point for each stone of yours that’s closer to the button (the center of the house, which is the big bullseye target area) than the closest of your opponent’s stones to the button. So if they just threw all 8 of theirs all the way to the back line, and you got all 8 of yours somewhere in the house, you’d get 8 points.

    A lot of the strategy near the conclusion of an “end” (a round, so to speak, where each team throws all 8 of its stones) comes down to the team who’s sitting in better position determining how aggressively to play the last couple stones to try to rack up a bigger score. If they have “shot rock” – the current closest stone to the center – but they’re feeling conservative, they’ll try to set up a barrier, make it harder for their opponent to clear the shot rock, and settle for 1 point. If they’re feeling more aggressive, they’ll try to take out their opponents closest rocks and put themselves in position to get multiple points.

  215. 215.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack:

    There can be all this noise out there, but at the end of the day, you’ve got your family, and a roof over your head, and food.”

    As long as we have our $12M house here and a few other multi-million dollar roofs over our head in the future….I’ve got a feeling it will all work out. Oh! And a charter jet! Ha ha! I almost forgot that.

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