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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / GOP Venality Open Thread: Mike Dense: Loyal, As In Stooopid

GOP Venality Open Thread: Mike Dense: Loyal, As In Stooopid

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The Belgian VP was clowning.

The American ‘VP’ is clownish:

Dave Barry, back in the day, had some great routines about dog owners who claimed their beloved pets were ‘loyal’ as a euphemism for ‘extremely, egregiously stupid’. Vice President Pence is that joke, in almost-human form.

It’s by far the best job Pence will ever have, and even he’s aware he never deserved it. Per Vanity Fair:

…Trump tweeted on February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA….Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” The market plunged nearly 900 points the next day. Trump called Azar and screamed that the CDC was alarming people. “It’s a little bit like the flu,” Trump assured reporters at the White House.

The same day, Trump finally pushed Azar aside and put vice president Mike Pence in charge of the White House’s coronavirus task force. According to a source, Trump had considered other candidates—former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Birx, and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb—but he told people that bringing in a credentialed outsider would signal a larger concern about the virus. “It’s going to make the issue bigger than it needs to be,” he said to an adviser. He also knew that Pence could be controlled. “Trump trusts Pence almost more than anyone,” a former White House official said. In the West Wing, Trump often belittles Pence in front of others. “Pence lives in mortal fear of being booted off the ticket. Trump constantly reminds Mike that he almost didn’t choose him,” a Republican that heard Trump make the comments told me…

Mayo Clinic employee:

To reiterate: Mike Pence is an idiot. A dangerous idiot, like the man he serves.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  1. 1.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    “Pence lives in mortal fear of being booted off the ticket. Trump constantly reminds Mike that he almost didn’t choose him,” a Republican that heard Trump make the comments told me…

    This is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever read

  4. 4.

    Mary G

    When he was in Congress, I think it was Dave Weigel who called him “Mike Dense the stupidest man on the hill.” You know Trump told him not to go near any actual patients for fear of being it into the WH.

  5. 5.

    Frankensteinbeck

    This is why Manafort picked Pence.  Not because Pence works for Russia directly, but because Pence is the kind of stupid where he follows the party line exactly, with no improvisation.  He does what his handlers tell him to do and doesn’t ask questions.  There is no immorality that could ever be a step too far for him.  I have known this since the VP debate where he spent the whole time saying Trump’s positions were the exact opposite of Trump’s actual positions, with no sign of being aware he was lying.  Pence sticks to the script, which makes him an invaluable patsy.

  7. 7.

    bluehill

    @Patricia Kayden: At this point, I don’t even think they are hypocrites. It’s about winning. Reade is a means to an end. Jane Mayer recently wrote a piece about Mitch McConnell, basically saying that he was unprincipled except about acquiring power. Depressing.

  9. 9.

    Barbara

    “I am sorry the vice president is an idiot.  Is that the kind of apology you were looking for?”

  11. 11.

    egorelick

    @Patricia Kayden: What is that timestamp on the tweet?  Is it from the origin location, your location, or gmt?  It couldn’t be that hard to identify a troll, but it confuses me.

  12. 12.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @bluehill:

    O’Brien: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

    We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m probably not the first to say this, but Pence is only “law-abiding” and “rule-obeying” when the rules come from a man that he thinks of as his superior. If the rules come from his inferiors, then he sees no reason why he should have to follow them. Because he’s an insufferable, self-important Dunning-Kruger prick.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    The Post has a long article up about the clusterfuck that has been Trump’s response to this crisis. No huge revelations, but putting the last month or so all in one place is sobering.
    34 days of pandemic: Inside Trump’s desperate attempts to reopen America

    A small team led by Kevin Hassett — a former chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers with no background in infectious diseases — quietly built an econometric model to guide response operations.

    Many White House aides interpreted the analysis as predicting that the daily death count would peak in mid-April before dropping off substantially, and that there would be far fewer fatalities than initially foreseen, according to six people briefed on it.

     

    Trump and Kushner began to declare a great victory against the virus, while urging America to start reopening businesses and schools.

    “It’s going to go. It’s going to leave. It’s going to be gone. It’s going to be eradicated,” the president said Wednesday, hours after his son-in-law claimed the administration’s response had been “a great success story.” The span of 34 days between March 29, when Trump agreed to extend strict social-distancing guidelines, and this past week, when he celebrated the reopening of some states as a harbinger of economic revival, tells a story of desperation and dysfunction.

     

    This story documenting Trump’s month-long struggle to reopen America is based on interviews with 82 administration officials, outside advisers and experts with detailed knowledge of the White House’s handling of the pandemic.

     

    Yet if Trump felt humbled, he managed to avoid revealing much humility. Aside from reading perfunctory remarks scripted by aides, the president voiced little compassion for the tens of thousands who have lost lives or the tens of millions who have lost their jobs. By month’s end, as businesses in Georgia, Colorado, Texas and elsewhere started to reopen, the total number of dead climbed past 60,000.

     

    He’s a guy that goes with his gut,” said a senior administration official involved in task force discussions. The doctors, this official added, “don’t have that luxury. Their jobs are to make sure he understands where they are on the science and data.” Trump, meanwhile, used his presidential megaphone to promote what he thought was a silver bullet: hydroxychloroquine.

     

    Kushner struck a nerve on April 2 when he said that “the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”

     

    Kushner said Saturday that criticisms from governors are outdated and that every state’s testing needs have now been satisfied. He challenged any governor who claims unmet needs to contact his office. “We’ve figured out how to get all of the states enough complete testing kits to do the testing that they’ve requested,” Kushner said. “We can get to a really big number in May. The biggest thing holding us back is not supplies or capacity; it’s the states’ ability to collect more samples.”

     

    Trump, however, rarely mentioned contact tracing. His focus was on more personal challenges. One senior White House official said that the president was among the most animated when discussing what his press appearances would be like: A call-in to the radio? A morning photo opp? An evening news conference?

     

    Still, on a question that historically has helped determine whether incumbents win reelection — whether the country is headed in the right direction — just 37 percent said they believed it was. The decision to share the data with Trump backfired. The president went into one of his rages. He said he did not believe the numbers, arguing that people “love” his performances at the briefings and think he is “fighting for them,” according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. He berated Parscale for the polling data over the course of several days, threatening in one of the calls that he might sue his campaign manager.

     

    Injecting or ingesting disinfectants is dangerous and can be deadly. Trump would later claim he was being sarcastic, but there was no trace of sarcasm in the president’s comments.

    That day, 1,857 Americans died of the coronavirus.

    This has been the longest fucking month in history.

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    …Trump tweeted on February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA….Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” The market plunged nearly 900 points the next day. Trump called Azar and screamed that the CDC was alarming people. “It’s a little bit like the flu,” Trump assured reporters at the White House.

    I was talking to a colleague about this the other day. How could Trump be so arrogant, so stupid as to think that he could simply declare the Covid-19 virus to be a minor issue, and that nature would oblige him?

    And his enablers and co-conspirators, from the GOP leadership to Fox News and compliant right wing pundits. They eagerly back Trump and simply pivot from lie to lie as the virus went from a mere piffle to the Invisible Enemy. And most of all, they had faith in their base, faith that these suckers would gulp up every lie, even at the risk of their own lives.

    But is Pence more than a craven lickspittle, afraid of being dumped from the ticket? Obviously, he understands that he would be mercilessly kicked around if he ever disagreed with or defied Trump. In return, he is always there to whisper suggestions in Trump’s ear that will further the religious nutcase agenda.

    But does Pence also have an eye on a larger prize? Does he see himself, come defeat or re-election, as Trump’s successor? He might be willing to put up with all kinds of abuse to make sure that he gets a shot at running for president.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @egorelick: Twitter’s timestamps are often broken.  If one clicks on it, it says 40 some-odd minutes ago (here anyway) and changes the date to May 2 (ET).

    It used to be that most of the time stamps that I saw seemed to be California time.  That one presumably was posted (at some point) from somewhere in Europe or farther east.

    HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    Kent

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:@Mary G: I believe it was his Republican colleagues that coined the nickname Mike Dense.

    He was thought to be the stupidest member of the House until Louis Gohmert came along to challenge for the title.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Patricia Kayden:

    The wheels have really been coming off the wagon today, and her story has been changing every few hours. There’s a reason why she couldn’t get any reputable journalists to run her story and had to go with hacks like Halper, Robinson, and Grim.

  21. 21.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    How could Trump be so arrogant, so stupid as to think that he could simply declare the Covid-19 virus to be a minor issue, and that nature would oblige him?

    At the risk of boring everyone with the repetition: he’s a narcissist. He genuinely thinks that reality is whatever he says it is, and he becomes enraged if anyone tries to tell him that a virus doesn’t work that way.

    The reason it’s called a personality disorder and not a mental illness is that it can’t be helped or mitigated with medication or therapy. He is what he is, and we’re all stuck with him.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and yet…

    Josh Dawsey @jdawsey1
    Internal RNC poll shows Biden up 48-45 in 17 swing states. Voters see Biden as more trustworthy, compassionate, competent & calm by big margins. See Trump as more of an outsider who can help economy. Trump world split on Biden attacks.

    I think it was the night after the election he went to one of the most expensive restaurants in the country and told the richest people in the country he was gonna cut their taxes, and he did. And a lot of white people still think he’s an outsider fighting for them. There are a whole lot of voters who are at least as dumb as Pence.

  27. 27.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:

    I was talking to a colleague about this the other day. How could Trump be so arrogant, so stupid as to think that he could simply declare the Covid-19 virus to be a minor issue, and that nature would oblige him?

    And his enablers and co-conspirators, from the GOP leadership to Fox News and compliant right wing pundits. They eagerly back Trump and simply pivot from lie to lie as the virus went from a mere piffle to the Invisible Enemy. And most of all, they had faith in their base, faith that these suckers would gulp up every lie, even at the risk of their own lives.

    Republicans since George W Bush have gotten used to creating their own reality and gaslighting the rest of the country into believing it or going along with it.  It really started with the run-up to the Iraq war and then “Mission Accomplished” and then continued with the first 3 years of the Trump Administration with all the endless lies like “Repeal and Replace Obamacare with something better” and “Middle class tax cuts” and “Russia didn’t meddle in the election” and so forth.

    But every one of those past lies were basically lies about policy.  That could be vaguely supported by various pieces of evidence.  Covid-19 is an entirely new type of crisis.  It is remorseless and doesn’t watch Fox News.  When there are refrigerator trucks lining up with corpses and people’s family members are dying in nursing homes it is pretty hard to lie.  And when you lie about factual issues that everyone can verify on their own, like “we have enough testing” the usual right wing wurlitzer can’t penetrate what people are seeing with their own eyes.

    They don’t know how to deal with it because this is something they have never actually had to do.  Lead the country through an actual crisis without lying about it.

  28. 28.

    Brachiator

    @bluehill:

    At this point, I don’t even think they are hypocrites. It’s about winning. Reade is a means to an end. Jane Mayer recently wrote a piece about Mitch McConnell, basically saying that he was unprincipled except about acquiring power.

    Moscow Mitch is certainly unprincipled about acquiring power. He is equally unprincipled about using it.

    Mayer recently spoke with NPR’s Terry Gross about how he became Trump’s enabler-in-chief.  A transcript and audio is available here.

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m no Biblical scholar, but when they sent Mother out there to say the Mayo Clinic never said anything about masks, wasn’t she bearing false witness against the staff there?

    also:

    people always say that pets and their owners start to resemble each other eventually

    Bwa-haw-haw!

  32. 32.

    JMG

    @Baud: Let’s see. Pa., Fla., Mich., Wisc., N.H., N.C., Nev., Minn., those were the closest states last time. So for swing, they must be including Ohio, Ia., Ga., Va., Ariz., and hell, that’s 13, what’s left? Maine’s 2nd district? Texas? Really, I’m running out of states here. My guess is the poll included not-really swing red states so the topline number wouldn’t make Trump feel so bad.

  34. 34.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: good point, not much clarity provided in the article, speculation in the replies to Dawsey that they’re including places like GA, TX, OH and IA.

    also from the article:

    Trump advisers say they hope to unearth more contentious Senate votes and want to see his papers at the University of Delaware covering his 36 years as a senator.

    What are the odds Parscale or even Kellyanne Conway (I think she’s probably the smartest person in his circle, if also one of the most vicious, along with Barr) had given a thought to those papers a week ago?

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kent:

    One of the few things that people credit W’s otherwise disastrous reign for was his preparation for epidemics. Even he seemed to realize that a pandemic would be something that would be really, really hard to lie about, so instead he created a pandemic office (and also did a lot of worldwide AIDS funding, to boot).

    Looks like none of the other Republicans were smart enough to learn the same lesson, and now we’re all paying for it. ?

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    1. @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I suspect that getting access to the U of D archive to find some risotto recipes is the real prize that they’ve been aiming for. Tara Reade is just the tool to get them there. You can tell that’s the plan because the NYT editorial board is calling for Biden to let reporters access the archive.

  39. 39.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    And it’s pretty much a dead heat for absolute last place.

    Dense and Gohmert, making the 3 stooges look like Nobel prize winners.

  42. 42.

    Kent

    @JMG:@Baud: Let’s see. Pa., Fla., Mich., Wisc., N.H., N.C., Nev., Minn., those were the closest states last time. So for swing, they must be including Ohio, Ia., Ga., Va., Ariz., and hell, that’s 13, what’s left? Maine’s 2nd district? Texas? Really, I’m running out of states here. My guess is the poll included not-really swing red states so the topline number wouldn’t make Trump feel so bad.

    That seems to be the most likely scenario.  If you include states like OK, UT, TN, KY, and MO as “swing states” then the numbers don’t look so bad for Trump.

  43. 43.

    DMcK

    @egorelick: Pretty sure that tweet refers to the women who’ve accused Assange of sexual assault/rape. It’s the reason he went into exile in the first place.

  44. 44.

    Kent

    @Mnemosyne:

    @Kent:

    One of the few things that people credit W’s otherwise disastrous reign for was his preparation for epidemics. Even he seemed to realize that a pandemic would be something that would be really, really hard to lie about, so instead he created a pandemic office (and also did a lot of worldwide AIDS funding, to boot).

    Looks like none of the other Republicans were smart enough to learn the same lesson, and now we’re all paying for it.

    He also set aside more marine protected areas than any other president through executive orders.  Maybe that was the Kennebunkport yachtie Bush leaking out. But as a marine biologist it is the only thing I give him credit for.  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/06/ocean-conservation-george-bush-pacific

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tim Miller @Timodc 3h
    Quick rundown of POTUS day. Calls a female tv host a dog; Offers well wishes to a murderous despot; posts video congratulating himself on his election; Accuses members of FBI of treason; quote tweets pizzagate instigator; sends 15 tweets about assorted nonsense, 2 about covid.

    Brian Stelter @brianstelter 3h
    Now he’s up to 35 tweets and retweets, including five promos for OANN, two promos for Fox News, and two RTs of an account called @SexCounseling

    looks like Matt Gertz of Media Matters is taking the day off, so I don’t know how his tweeting is tracking with what he’s watching on TV up at Camp David. He reportedly hates Camp David. From the pictures I’ve seen, if I were president I’d be there every freakin’ weekend.

  46. 46.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: The NYT reporters would be out of there after one box.  My boss back when I was working for Satan had a good story about discovery.  Two female paralegals were sent to a mine to look at records.  The mine foreman said the records were in an old shack.  The first paralegal opened a box and found a scorpion, her co-worker opened her box and found a rattlesnake.

  47. 47.

    Kent

    @debbie:I can totally see Trump snapping at Pence, “Get a longer tie.”

    I always assumed he was dressed by “mother”

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    One for Adam:

    Let's take a second to talk about how infuriating this photo is. Beyond the white privilege of walking armed into a govt building unmolested; Beyond how asinine their demands are…These assclowns have no earthly idea how to wear combat equipment! pic.twitter.com/SjY2ppZOdw

    — Darth Bader Ginsburg (@Disord87) May 2, 2020

    Heh.

    (via Popehat)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    Redshift

    @Brachiator:

    But does Pence also have an eye on a larger prize? Does he see himself, come defeat or re-election, as Trump’s successor? He might be willing to put up with all kinds of abuse to make sure that he gets a shot at running for president. 

    I absolutely believe Pence is dumb enough to think that’ll happen.

  51. 51.

    Mike in NC

    Lest we forget, Dan Quayle was another utterly worthless VP who quickly faded back into well deserved obscurity.

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    RE: How could Trump be so arrogant, so stupid as to think that he could simply declare the Covid-19 virus to be a minor issue, and that nature would oblige him?

    At the risk of boring everyone with the repetition: he’s a narcissist.

    I naturally tend to resist attempts at long-distance mental diagnoses of people, but more than that I don’t think this adequately gets to the root of Trump’s delusional behavior.

    He denied that the virus was a problem, but then exhibited supreme ignorance and incompetence in dealing with the subsequent pandemic. He ran away from responsibility, but continued to fall back on his standard play, fighting with governors, but demanding that he be praised for pretending to deal with the crisis. And he may be involved in kickback schemes set up by his minion Young Jared.

    If Trump were even one percent competent, and able to provide real leadership, we might be looking at an entirely different response to the pandemic. Trump continually backs himself into a corner, but then bites through the walls and scurries to find another corner.

    The reason it’s called a personality disorder and not a mental illness is that it can’t be helped or mitigated with medication or therapy. He is what he is, and we’re all stuck with him.

    One of the reasons that this is insufficient is because even if you define Trump as a narcissist, you also have to acknowledge that he is a successful narcissist. So, are you talking about a personality disorder, or just his shitty personality? His bullshit works for him.

    In leaping from the world of junkie tv personality to the presidency, he has achieved a position in which he can force people to obey him, to kiss up to him and to practically worship him. And a sick core of people are more than willing to line up to be the next toady, lickspittle or faithful minion.

    And this still does not get to the heart of the issue.  We not only have an incompetent and deranged Trump, we have a craven GOP infrastructure willing to follow Trump into defeat and disgrace, and totally committed to the con.

    This also reminds me of Rupert Murdoch and other right wing media moguls who published lies about the extent of the Australia wild fires even as that country was burning out of control. They don’t care whether they are caught lying.

  53. 53.

    Redshift

    @Kent:

    He was thought to be the stupidest member of the House until Louis Gohmert came along to challenge for the title. 

    Weird how the multiple people in the running for stupidest member of Congress are always white male Republicans…

  56. 56.

    frosty

    @JMG: Wow, that’s the first time in a long while that I’ve seen the old state abbreviations. I always liked Penna for PA.

  57. 57.

    Kent

    @Redshift:Weird how the multiple people in the running for stupidest member of Congress are always white male Republicans…

    Members of Congress?  Maybe.  But if we are talking GOP politicians writ large, then I’ll raise you a Sara Palin and that crazy lady from Las Vegas who wanted to use her city as the “control group”

  58. 58.

    jl

    Thanks for info on the PBS reporter Steve Herman. I wondered whether he was banned because he ‘reported’ fake news Deep State lie that for covid-19 we don’t use face masks to cover our eyes, or reporting the confidential long form tip top super secret that the Mayo Clinic was yelling to any member of the public entering their clinic that they had to wear a mask.

    Good to know which one it was.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Redshift: maybe Pence is as surprised as I am that The Beast hasn’t stroked out on a gold-plated crapper by now

    @Kent: a couple of recent polls showing TX is tight. I’ll believe it when I see it, but…

    Polling USA @USA_Polling 11h
    #Texas Presidential Polling:
    Biden (D): 43% (-1)
    Trump (R): 43% (-2)
    UTT / April 27, 2020 / n=1,183 / Online/Telephone (% chg w Feb 26)

  60. 60.

    Another Scott

    @Kent: My brother’s rep, Virginia Foxx, is no prize either:

    In September 2005, Foxx was one of 11 members of Congress to vote against[17] the $51 billion aid package to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

    Etc., etc.

    It’s (as Charlie Pierce says) the GOP prion disease.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Redshift: well, there is always Marsha Blackburn, who ended the years long struggle between Ron Johnson and Jon Cornyn for dumbest Senator

  65. 65.

    Kent

    @SFBayAreaGal:@Kent: Actually you can go back to Nixon

    Well yeah.  I guess the entire Vietnam War was one just fucking gas lighting exercise.  “Domino Theory?” “We are winning”  But that started with Johnson, not Nixon.  So it was a bipartisan effort.

    And I somehow blanked Reagan entirely out of my mind.

  66. 66.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’m still of the opinion that Pence won’t be on the ticket in 2020.

    I think he’d be gone already if Nikki Haley would take the job. I think she and Christie are (from a Republican POV) successfully navigating the close-but-not-too-close model that hold actual office impossible for the dignity wraiths

  68. 68.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:I think he’d be gone already if Nikki Haley would take the job. I think she and Christie are (from a Republican POV) successfully navigating the close-but-not-too-close model that hold actual office impossible for the dignity wraiths

    If you were Nikki Haley, would YOU take the job and have your credibility destroyed for all time?  Because everything and everyone Trump touches is destroyed.

    Or would you bide your time until 2024?

  69. 69.

    sdhays

    I’ve said this before, but that shit from Karen Dense is just unbelievable. I mean, her useless husband is supposedly in charge of the Federal Task Force in charge of combatting COVID-19. Someone in that position should be reading reports about what’s going on in hospitals every fucking day. He shouldn’t have to be told (although he absolutely was told) to wear a fucking mask when going to a hospital with COVID-19 patients. He should have been able to figure that shit out himself. Did they need to instruct him not to lick door knobs as well?

    Also, Karen, your fucking shit husband should be wearing a fucking mask all the time now, if no other reason then to be a fucking leader, like just about all of the minimally decent world leaders are doing now.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    Republicans since George W Bush have gotten used to creating their own reality and gaslighting the rest of the country into believing it or going along with it.

    The GOP has been trying this off and on since Senator Robert Taft in the 1940s, on to Goldwater, and side trips with Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America. Also, Trump is not a Republican, but he knows how to play them as part of a larger con game.

    When there are refrigerator trucks lining up with corpses and people’s family members are dying in nursing homes it is pretty hard to lie.

    Not for Trump.

    And when you lie about factual issues that everyone can verify on their own, like “we have enough testing” the usual right wing wurlitzer can’t penetrate what people are seeing with their own eyes.

    Trump has clearly gone to far for some of his supporters, but sadly the lunatic fringe will never give him up. And his enablers have held firm, at least in public.

  75. 75.

    leeleeFL

    @Mary G: I remember him touring Baghdad and saying it was safe than Detroit, or was it Chicago?

    Pretty much knew he was a putz then.

  76. 76.

    sanjeevs

    @dmsilev: Reade has to coordinate her new story with her ‘corroboraters’.

     

    Which will be tricky now we know her brother’s original story matched what she told AP (harassment, no sexual assault) and then Nathan Robinson got him to change it to the sexual assault story

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @jl:

    Thanks for info on the PBS reporter Steve Herman. I wondered whether he was banned because he ‘reported’ fake news Deep State lie that for covid-19 we don’t use face masks to cover our eyes, or reporting the confidential long form tip top super secret that the Mayo Clinic was yelling to any member of the public entering their clinic that they had to wear a mask.

    Good to know which one it was.

    Steve Herman is a top reporter for Voice of America, not NPR, at least the last I knew. Steve is a good guy who taught me a lot about Sushi and Japanese food and culture. He spent years reporting on Asia, from Asia.

    Not surprised the Trump machine is trying to put him in his place, anyone honest is vulnerable to liars.

    He invited us to attend a Pink Floyd concert with him and his girlfriend in the long ago. Great times!

  78. 78.

    sdhays

    Wow: Mississippi Guv Has Second Thoughts About Stay-At-Home Order Lift After Sharp Rise In COVID-19 Cases:

    Tate, who had issued an executive order that allowed some businesses to reopen effective April 24, told reporters that he had originally planned to announce more reopenings during the press conference, then changed his mind upon hearing about the sudden surge in cases.

    “The increase was a large enough change to make me take a step back, reexamine things and must hold on and reconsider at least over the weekend,” the governor said. “Not to recklessly put people in harms way.”

    Tate Reeves should be the nation’s stupidest governor, but apparently he’s not.

  79. 79.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Brachiator: How could Trump be so arrogant, so stupid as to think that he could simply declare the Covid-19 virus to be a minor issue, and that nature would oblige him?

    “Surrender / declare bankruptcy, walk away, stick other people with the bill and declare victory” is Trump’s strategy in Afghanistan, and his strategy for Covid, because it has always been his business strategy.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    27 years isn’t enough time to get your story straight?

    Not when you are making it up out of thin air and bullshit and forgot what you said longer than 2 hrs before.

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    A narcissist is also a bully and a lier. A narcissist lives in their own world, not in the real world. The lies don’t have to make sense or have a pace of reality because the narcissist works every minute to make their own reality that they are the center of attention. Making a high level narcissist with a rather limited intellect president, defies all logic. But then our very far right conservative party doesn’t run on logic, just on thievery and bullshit. And they have been doing this for a lot longer than any of us have been alive.

  83. 83.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Excellent thread by that guy from 2018:

    Except it could have never been a Democrat.

    Hi! I'm a grad student studying emotions in political rhetoric as it relates to acts of terror. I am here to explain the difference between the Democrat & Republican leadership & why GOP supporters are more prone to violence. (1/12) https://t.co/7b3EW5ujgo

    — Darth Bader Ginsburg (@Disord87) October 26, 2018

  85. 85.

    Kent

    @sdhays:Tate Reeves should be the nation’s stupidest governor, but apparently he’s not.

    Good lord there is sure some competition for that title.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    This thread might be dead, but there’s a fascinating (though terrifying) book called “The Narcissist Next Door” that explains all of this. It sounds crazy until you actually encounter it because normal people have inner lives and assume that everyone else does, too. Narcissists do not have inner lives the same way the rest of us do and do not react to life events the way normal people do.

    Narcissists are often successful in the US because our society admires their rule-breaking ways and their disdain for others, but now we can see how dangerous that admiration is.

    Also, keep in mind that Trump’s “success” is a façade. He has been boosted his entire life, first by his father, and later by an assortment of business partners and associates. He’s been involved with the Russian mob for years — that’s the world that Michael Cohen came from. He’s a hollow man propped up by powerful interests who find him useful. That’s not “success,” except to Americans who can’t see past the façade.

    ETA book link

    https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00INIXV2U/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1588476660&sr=8-3

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    A narcissist is also a bully and a liar.

    Trump is a coward. He talks tough, but ran away from trying to deal with the pandemic, even as he tried to sabotage the efforts of the governors in getting down and really dealing with things. Trump did everything he could to avoid having the federal government provide clear direction.  But he still wanted to be given credit for handling the crisis.

    A narcissist lives in their own world, not in the real world. The lies don’t have to make sense or have a pace of reality because the narcissist works every minute to make their own reality that they are the center of attention.

    As president, Trump can force people to at least publicly pretend that his lies represent the real world. And he also has a phalanx of people who will willingly lie for him. Again, even if you want to label Trump as a narcissist, he successfully uses the power and authority of the president to force people to assent to his fantasies.

    I agree that Trump must be the center of attention. And once again, as president, he can naturally exploit the office to support his ego needs.

  89. 89.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, keep in mind that Trump’s “success” is a façade. He has been boosted his entire life, first by his father, and later by an assortment of business partners and associates.

    He also has been insulated with money. You can fuck up in a lot of ways over a long period of time if you’ve got a big pile of money to burn (preferably other people’s).

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @dww44: Nicole Wallace– he said she was “fired from the View like a dog…”

    I know Nichole Wallace was fired from The View cause I’ve heard her talk about it on her MSNBC show. I wonder how/from when trump knows. I imagine it was big news on Page Six of the NY Post

  92. 92.

    dww44

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks.  I didn’t know about the View firing, a show I’ve never really watched.  But she gets the last laugh at her 4 p.m. MSNBC perch where she holds forth against Trump with real fire and passion.  I’ve noted that the Never Trumpers and mostly now former Republicans have been the most effective anti Trump pundits.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Again, even if you want to label Trump as a narcissist, he successfully uses the power and authority of the president to force people to assent to his fantasies.

    Well, sure. That’s why it was a really, really, REALLY bad idea to hand the power of the presidency to a toxic narcissist. This is exactly what Hillary warned us would happen but, like a modern-day Cassandra, she gets scorned and disbelieved even when it’s happening in front of everyone’s eyes.

    The main reason to accept that Trump is a narcissist is to brace yourself for the reality that he will never get better at his job. He will only get worse. This is because any attempt to correct or restrain him leads to him doubling down on the exact behavior he was just told not to do. Because he’s a toxic narcissist, and that’s what they do.

  95. 95.

    cliosfanboy

    Pence and i were in a study group for the Senior history study group back in 81. We called him Mike Dense even then.  I still remember thinking “This guy is a moron.”

  98. 98.

    cliosfanboy

    @JPL: that he was painfully self righteous and that he thought he was a lot smarter than he really was.  He applied to a bunch of high powered law schools, all of which rejected him.

    TBF, his GPA was better than mine, but i spent my first two years having fun away from a restrictive home for the first time, and spent the next two trying to resurrect my GPA.

  102. 102.

    Steeplejack

    @cliosfanboy:

    The Shaun King tweet he was replying to is what’s no longer available. His thread is still there, as replies to his first post. It’s 12 comments long, with some subsequent back and forth with other people.

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    ETA: You don’t click on the link right after “prone to violence. (1/12).” That’s what the poster is replying to or referencing (which may or may not still exist). You always click the link after the poster’s name (“Darth Bader Ginsburg”) to get the content from that person.

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