The Post has been publishing excerpts from Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s A Very Stable Genius, and it’s about what you’d expect. The latest is Trump calling generals “dopes and babies”.
My response to that is more-or-less “so what”. We knew who he was before he ran, it became clearer as the campaign progressed, and now we have one more anecdote to add to the massive pile of evidence that Trump is spectacularly unfit for office. My basic understanding of Trump has not been enhanced one bit by the information published in the excerpt, and I don’t think I would learn much new from the book itself.
The Post has been one of the better (if not the best) of mainstream media outlets – “Democracy Dies in the Dark” was a clear signal that they recognized Trump as a serious threat, which is far beyond a lot of other outlets. But the Post still exists on a continuum of press attitudes. At one end of that continuum lies outlets like NPR, which are still trying to wedge Trump’s behavior into the template of what a normal President would do. At the other end is an outlet like the Post, which gets it that Trump is not normal, and are unafraid to report that.
But nowhere on that continuum of mainstream media attitudes is an outlet that regularly and frankly reports that Trump is what Republicans have become. Every lying Trump enabler in Congress, except the ones like Steve King who have been exiled by Republicans, gets a whopping benefit of the doubt about their attitude towards Trump. Look at the attention Mike Lee and Rand Paul got last week over some really garden variety bitching about the terrible briefing they got. Lee and Paul got that attention precisely because they are Republicans, and the stage directions that the press follow say that if a Republican complains about what another Republican does, then it’s a legitimate complaint. Otherwise, it’s noise.
Well, that little rule of thumb might work in an normal environment where both Republicans and Democrats are fighting about normal things. But this is not a normal environment, and we are not fighting about normal things. Democrats are literally fighting to save the country. Republicans are aiding and abetting someone trying to destroy it, because they could not figure out a way to stop being a party that caters mainly to white males. But saying “Democrats are the only party that cares about anyone but white males” or “Republicans would rather sacrifice the rule of law than lose political power” makes you sound like you’re off script, so instead we have two of the best reporters in the country writing this book.
It’s like being faced with a stinking manure pile that is poisoning the water supply, and spending your time examining it the pile instead of addressing the crisis. “Oh, that’s a horse apple.” “Hmm, just as I thought – another cow pie”.
Yes, it’s a fucking shit pile. We get it. Let’s talk about who put it there.
Friday Morning Open Thread: The Love Is Real
MattF
The Post is my hometown paper and I’m generally pleased with their coverage of national politics. The Post subsidizes a few RW hacks (e.g., Hewitt and Thiessen) but there are also a few ex-Republicans (e.g., Rubin and Boot), so I guess it balances out, sorta, kinda.
But the question of who is really behind the firehose of lies and bullshit is off-limits.
Betty Cracker
Preach! Early on, the only thing even vaguely of value in these “Trump is a crazy, unfit motherfucker” books is a list of who had incontrovertible evidence that Trump was endangering the country and corrupting the government and kept their mouth shut about it. At this point, we can assume “all of them,” so it’s completely useless.
Kay has made an excellent point here before about the Campaign Book Industrial Complex that skews our political coverage beyond fucking recognition as campaign reporters amass material for a tell-all. The same can be said of these Trump books. You’re not wrong that the authors are excellent reporters. But they’re also pimping books — they all are — and maybe that’s part of the problem?
Betty Cracker
O/T, but this simply must be shared:
The man who prosecuted an impeachment because of a consensual blowjob and was subsequently ousted from his post at a university for covering up a sexual abuse scandal will now advocate against impeaching a president who extorted a foreign government for domestic election help. You just cannot make this shit up.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: Seriously? President Toadface couldn’t get anyone else? Aren’t his personal attorneys taking this on?
The Moar You Know
The media is the reason we have Trump. Three years straight of outrage stories. Clicks like never before.
All to tell us what we already knew about the orange piece of shit.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Betty Cracker: What a dream team: Dersh and Starr. It’s like the exacta of scummy old men.
The Moar You Know
@Yutsano: His REAL personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, is dealing with this. The others are just window dressing for PR purposes.
His pretend personal attorney, the PR disaster guy, is still trying to get to the bottoms of some Ukranian prostitutes.
Patricia Kayden
West of the Rockies
@The Moar You Know:
Truth!!!
PenAndKey
It’s all red meat for their Fox News worshiping base, isn’t it?
clay
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: Someone said that, if we can’t get a fair trial, we should at least get a circus.
This qualifies.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I am speechless.
Yutsano
@The Moar You Know:
Ew. I did NOT need that mental image this morning thank you very much!
West of the Rockies
Patricia Kayden
JPL
Obama saluted with a coffee cup got more attention than trump’s disrespectful comments. just sayin
Yutsano
@PenAndKey: Should we start asking where the lions and the peanuts are now?
We already know where the clowns and elephants are.
MisterForkbeard
@Betty Cracker: Apparently Starr’s wife says he’s an “expert witness” for Trump. So I guess we are calling witnesses now, if they’re long running republican lapdogs with a history of covering up rape charges?
And yes, there’s a difference between expert witnesses and fact witnesses. :)
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
@Yutsano:
What lawyer of any positive standing would want to defend trump? The only hope he has is that he can find enough lawyers who think shyster is a
goodgreat adjective for their resume.Someone like Ken Starr comes to mind…….
JPL
@The Moar You Know: Epstein’s former attorneys are window dressing? ick
Kay
Frank Biden is horrible so I knew this would come out. The schools are shoddy garbage marketed to the most vulnerable students- those who have had behavior problems. There are also you tube videos of Frank selling this garbage in Pennsylvania, because Florida wasn’t enough.
Biden needs to put a 100 foot firewall between himself and some of his gross family members. This article actually goes easy on the schools- they’re much worse than depicted here.
West of the Rockies
Dershowitz pals with Epstein and defends Trump and then wonders why he is no longer welcome in polite society. Funny.
hitchhiker
What’s crazy is that it’s dead certain a bunch of the uniformed people in that “Tank” room voted for trump because they just couldn’t imagine taking orders from the likes of Hillary Clinton.
I haven’t read the book, but the excerpt is so slavering over the brave uniformed staffers (some of whom were of course sources) watching in shock as their candidate did in private exactly what he’d been doing in public for more than a year. Viciously mocked perfectly ordinary citizens. Exposed ignorance on an epic scale. Scared the piss out of them.
You know that if HRC had won, those same uniformed types would have been prepared to undermine her and criticize her every move, just on principle.
Yes, I am still pissed off.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies:
Right.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I saw that earlier today. Isn’t there another Biden brother being sued for deceptive influence peddling to a medical device company or something? We’re gonna need a bigger firewall.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: Yep. For some it’s always been about keepin’ the Darkies in their place.
joel hanes
@West of the Rockies:
we get another county supervisor, another school board, another state house
This is how the war is won.
joel hanes
@Kay:
Biden family members
I’m gonna whatabout.
Neil Bush was worse.
First Silverado Savings and Loan: financial self-dealing, and fraud on a massive scale.
Later his educational testing corporation was a direct beneficiary of No Child Left Behind
PJ
@Betty Cracker: I know nearly every rich or famous or powerful person has at least one family member trying to make a buck off of the association, so Frank and Hunter Biden (or Roger Clinton or Billy Carter or the whole Bush clan) don’t surprise me, but it burns me up that Trump’s children and siblings (who all benefitted from the tax fraud involving their father’s estate) get a complete pass.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, no. Had not seen that. Maybe he needs to give a speech. I suppose you could make it a contrast with Trump “this is the problem, here’s how I plan to address it” but he’s so defensive about his family, Biden.
The charter chain (which is called ‘Mavericks’ , btw- egads- WTF is wrong with these people) got STATE grants in FL so no federal special treatment, but let’s just get this out and outta the way.
catclub
@hitchhiker: and my point is that GOP pols need to be asked: “Do you agree with Trump that our senior military leadership is made up of dopes and babies and that you would not want to go to war with them?”
repeatedly
catclub
See Mencken, H.L. “Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and they should get it good and hard.”
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: I……..got nothing.
ET
Sure the negative opinions about tRump may have just been reinforced and we may not have learned anything new but books like this are still important if for no other reason than they become part of the historical record. They also distill and consolidate facts, observations, stories, etc. into one handy dandy volume and give it a narrative scope. This book along with the others written during the unfolding events by those that report/watch from the front row, each add more to the puzzle that historians are going to have access to in their understanding about this time period.
Jay
@ET:
the bitch about “these books”, is that much of the content was obtained on the Campaign Trail and early Dumph Presidency,
and was saved for the Book, by Journalists and exOfficials,
rather than being published in the MSM at the time, when it could have had greater impact.
It is akin to your Proctologist saving the the results of your prostate exam, ( in which they found a fast, metatizing cancer) from you, for the coming autopsy.
rk
White people.
J R in WV
Regarding families and their various different members… my own brother, 3.75 years younger than I, is a life member of the NRA, and had a Bush II sticker on his vehicles in 2004. I’m sure he voted for Trump, and may have contributed and or worked for the Trump campaign.
He lives in TEXAS, so it really made no difference, TX was going for Trump last election from the get-go.
Anyways, we have made it an unspoken policy to never talk politics, no point to it. But we always called each other on birthdays to chat for a while, keep each other posted on what’s happening. Last year’s birthday, he hadn’t called me by late in the day, so I called him, assuming it was an oversight. But this year’s birthday, he didn’t call again, and I for damn sure didn’t call him — I can take a hint, even when it takes a year to sink in.
So long, bro.
Mike in NC
@Kay: Isn’t crooked Florida real estate developer an oxymoron? I have a horrible timeshare story that took place in Orlando a few weeks post-9/11 that I could share.