He didn’t get his wall and now he needs a higher fence. https://t.co/22EQ4qYnDg
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 2, 2020
GOP senators on Trump dispersing protesters for a church photo op ??
JOHNSON: “I didn't really see it.”
PORTMAN: “I’m late for lunch.”
ROBERTS: “I don’t have a comment.”
McCONNELL has no comment.
DAINES thanks Trump.
CRUZ denounces the protestors.https://t.co/Ma3ARaQZys
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 3, 2020
in case you were wondering, "why isn't anyone stopping trump?" https://t.co/pk2LxBrbRt
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) June 3, 2020
Why can't any other GOP senator say that? Why does it have to be the black one? https://t.co/A9jeoq0MQ5
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) June 2, 2020
This will be useful for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a few years from now. https://t.co/m3M0NHNbyl
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 2, 2020
People talk about how all of this will push squishy Law And Order type moderates to Trump, but at this point it's pretty obvious to anyone except the most irrational reactionary that Trump is a source of disorder and things would be a lot quieter under the other old white guy.
— Galar Regional Medical Director (@weedlewobble) June 1, 2020
My contribution to the “Will Trump benefit politically from a law and order platform in 2020?” genre. https://t.co/cKJznl9mu4
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 2, 2020
It's been 24 hours and I still have yet to see any NRA member standing up to this military occupation they always say they need guns for.
— Black Lives Matter (@davidhogg111) June 3, 2020
At least one member of the inner circle realizes how badly the situation has deteriorated…
Trump asks Melania to smile during today's photo op. pic.twitter.com/B59YeDHKRM
— The Recount (@therecount) June 2, 2020
Kay
Walls and fences are the only infrastructure the Trump Administration are interested in. No roads, no bridges, nothing that brings people together or is useful and necessary to the vast majority. It really is a monument to their beliefs and character. A true depiction of them. Ugly, hateful barriers and division.
PsiFighter37
GOP senators are little shitweasels. More spineless than Paul Ryan. I hope a lot more of them lose this year, especially Moscow Mitch.
satby
Melania “smiles” like a feral cat looks at a bird.
debbie
I think the protesters should gather en masse at that fence and cluck like chickens at the cowards inside the White House and the cowards protecting them.
debbie
@satby:
She reminded me of Natasha from Bullwinkle.
scuffletuffle
“My people love me, biggest inauguration crowd ever…now, for the love of god, would you make them all get the fuck away from me!”
MattF
The correct term is ‘collaborators’. Anne Applebaum has an essay in the current Atlantic Magazine that draws a detailed comparison between Trumpite Republicans and East European politicians and functionaries who collaborated with the Soviet overlords. One point she makes is that nearly everyone collaborated.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Didn’t you hear? The official line from the White House now is that there was no tear gas and they are demanding that all news media take back their reporting of tear gas.
Edited: Added link.
MattF
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I noticed that the WaPo mentioned ‘irritant’ gas in their story.
MomSense
Despite our governor asking him not to, the Tangerine Tin Pot is coming to Maine to visit the factory that makes the swabs used in the COVID -19 testing.
She delivered an excellent statement about his rhetoric and behavior on Monday. All we need is to have him stir shit up and expose the workers in the factory to his maskless, stupid face.
It’s nice to see a little fight from our press, but it’s still too little too late. They’ve been sleeping on the GOP slide into fascism and ethnonationalism for decades.
MomSense
Esper is trying to give a CYA statement.
PenAndKey
Do they honestly think that anyone but their supporters gives a single f*** if the billowing gas clouds we have video evidence of them deploying wasn’t, specifically, tear gas? They can try to gaslight the idea that they shot at and gassed the crowd, including church staff, but they’ll find it won’t work. Firing gas rounds at a church priest so you can trespass on their land for a photo op isn’t the kind of thing you can walk back.
FelonyGovt
Trump is really suffering now that he can’t be in front of crowds which have been pre-screened to remove protestors and anyone with a brain. Good. Since he was booed at the baseball game last year it’s dawning on him that most Americans hate him. Good.
Gravenstone
@satby: Does she also chitter?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: Yep, no tear gas. Merely a pepper gas that causes tearing, burning and involuntary closing of eyes along with uncontrollable gasping and gagging. And which the CDC classifies as tear gas (till they get to editing that page).
So take back those tear gas reports!
MisterForkbeard
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: One of my MAGAT cousins was telling everyone this yesterday. “It wasn’t tear gas! It was pepper spray and other stuff!”. And wanted outraged family members to apologize to him and Trump about it.
They’re trying really hard to push this. It’s weak and sad because they’re weak and sad.
Betty Cracker
Not the campaign slogan I’d hoped for in 2020, but it’ll do!
Jeffro
@debbie: that’s an excellent suggestion!
Hours of ‘bock-bock-bock’. One would hope at least 30 seconds’ worth of footage ends up on the news.
Eunicecycle
And nobody in this administration thought it might be a good idea to have some black staff members for the photo op? Sure it would have been a token, and everybody would know it, but still…all those white faces…
rikyrah
@MisterForkbeard:
true.
rikyrah
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
But, they are all big and bad. Why would they try and run away from the tear gas?
MattF
Trump sez the Bible is ‘very special’.
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard: Just for giggles, ask the next MAGAt you talk to how they’d feel if a huge crowd of trumpublicans were protesting outside the WH…and President Hillary had the crowd smacked around and blasted with “pepper spray and other stuff” so that she and Chelsea could go pose in front of a church with a bible.
(which Hillz has, at least, actually read!)
WereBear
I am actually dizzy with relief this morning. The country seems to have picked a side. And it wasn’t Trump’s.
Jeffro
@MattF: So incredibly special that he can’t tell us his favorite book of the bible, or bible story, or apostle, or…
“It’s special because when I wave it around, it gives me magical powers over about half my base/a quarter of the country. It’s amazing, Lou!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
Trump told CNN that he only went to that bunker for “inspection.” He says he was there only for a “teeny” amount of time. LOLOL
SiubhanDuinne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
It’s not a clip, it’s a magazine!
Jeffro
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Hope they ask him, “So…how’d the inspection go? Bunker up to your standards, Mr. president* sir?”
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: BIDEN 2020: Make America Boring Again.
PenAndKey
Which, as anyone who has ever dealt with a habitual braggart will tell you, means he was cowering in the bunker all night.
Jeffro
Catherine Rampell on trumpov’s claim that he went to the bunker for “an inspection”
(I think she hangs out with Petri, and it shows. =)
Bill Arnold
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Kinda irrelevant. If in fact they are not lying and they lobbed smoke canisters, the crowd had no way of knowing that it was smoke and not tear gas without taking a lungful of unknown substance to check. And tear gas has been used elsewhere.
Smoke in this context is fake tear gas; it only works because protesters are legitimately expecting the possibility of tear gas. Imagine e.g. protesters armed with fake chainsaws (chains with no teeth) charging police. How would the police react?
And more important, the whole meme is being used to attempt to obscure that force, including [whatever], “pepper balls”, physical force, and whatever else was used by the non-park-police part of the response (no denials yet from the Secret Service, for instance), was used to disperse a legitimate peaceable assembly protected by the First Amendment.. There is plenty of video proving that the protest was peaceful at the time that the crowd was dispersed to make room for DJT’s disgusting photo op. (He didn’t even read a bible verse!!!!)
Jeffro
Kurt Eichenwald:
That was as of almost four hours ago. Wonder what trumpov’s up to now?
MisterForkbeard
@PenAndKey: “I wasn’t crying! I just had something in my eye for like 10 seconds.”
Yeah, dude was definitely in there all night under his bed. And probably under a blanket too.
Jeffro
Esper is not going down with this ship: he has asked for an inquiry into why that helicopter flew so low over the DC protestors and also opposes trumpov invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces to states.
Maybe if everyone just quietly ‘ghosts’ trumpov in the WH later this week, eventually, he’ll waddle out to find himself a cheeseburger and we can be done with this sham presidency.
Baud
Melania should think about Obama if she wants to have a more convincing smile for these photo ops.
Leto
Because that’s what Tokens do, that’s part of the main reason they’re there.
Cheryl from Maryland
Aside from that quisling gaslighting re tear gas, the Park Police statement needs to be fact checked that the protestors threw “caustic liquids” (bet it was just soda pop) and that there were many “caches” of metal poles, etc. That statement had the purpose of trying to set the table that the protestors were prepared for attack as well as pulling the standard right wing nanny boo boo you’re wrong trope so often found in discussions of firearms.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jeffro:
Yep. He was expecting gassing protestors for his photo-op to get him widespread public praise for how tough he is, and he is in agony that it’s just getting him even more insults.
Baud
Trump is going to need a bigger Bible.
Fester Addams
So she managed to get off a brief sneer followed by what looks like a wave of nausea. Human garbage, the lot of them.
Leto
@Jeffro: it’s too late, fuck stick. The choppa flew that low because of what you and Trumpov were saying to the governors: dominate the battle space. Everything has flowed from that. Want to not go down with the ship? Immediately resign and head to the House to testify about wtf is going on in the administration. Otherwise, accept your fate and place in history, you worthless POS.
scav
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I wonder if Trump managed to check the the downstairs linen cupboard for clean sheets and hand towels at the same time. I heard they were running low.
Cheryl Rofer
@Jeffro: Esper is going down with the ship.
He is frantically protesting that Trump told him that they were going to inspect a portapotty, not that he was going to do a Bible-flashing stunt. So he’s claiming the CinC lied to him, and that he was stupid enough to fall for it. The alternative is that he knew perfectly well what was going down. Not a good look either way.
He also talked about “dominating the battlespace” in the phonecall to the governors.
He’s in a stateroom with a locked door, and the water is creeping in.
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense:
Oh great! Soviet shitpile mobster conman will contaminate another batch of much-needed supplies.
gwangung
@Bill Arnold: And he used force to enter a church that he didn’t ask to enter.
PenAndKey
@Cheryl Rofer: Sounds to me like his colleagues, including the one that resigned and called him out by name, are having an impact. Good. I hope he’s mainlining Tums at this point and can’t sleep at night, because his conduct so far is a disgrace to his uniform.
They never expected that a priest would get swept up in their jackboot behavior, nor that the church would call them out on it. Like everything else they ‘plan’, they screwed up royally and won’t ever admit it.
donnah
I repeat myself from last night, but it’s important to email or call your state representatives and call them out for their failure to represent their constituents. My Republican Senator Rob Portman was one who was asked about Trump’s shitshow photo op and said, “I’m late for lunch”. I emailed his office and told him that he’s a coward and he’s not representing the state of Ohio and he’s a disgrace to the office. I also sent a message to Sherrod Brown, thanking him for standing up for us. Voting in November is crucial, and telling our representatives what we want and what we deserve goes to making them accountable.
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard:
Were apologies forthcoming?
Of the “Sorry, you can really go fuck yourself.” variety?
Did anyone tell the snowflake to stuff it?
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl from Maryland: Ooh, when do they get to talking about concrete milkshakes?
Betty Cracker
@MattF: I just read that yesterday. Pretty chilling, really, how rare courage is.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
If you’re making up lame excuses, you’re losing even worse.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF: The worst part is he’s a fascist shitpile child.
Just Chuck
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: How’s that line go? “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” And not only are they losing this one bad, every time they remind everyone that they
tear-gassed a peaceful crowd that included that church’s own priest.Trials after this. No one fucking skates.
geg6
@Leto:
Yes, this. I couldn’t possibly have said it better.
Wapiti
@Cheryl Rofer: I think he got a come-to-Jesus meeting with the service chiefs after that stunt. The Army may not be a totally unbiased organization, but it’s been honestly working on cleaning up its racial problems since before I went in the 1980s. They don’t want this fool Esper to wipe that progress.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Again, a fascist shitpile child.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Is this too long for a rotating tag?
edit: and I see that geg6 liked this, also!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud:
I believe her happy place is Justin Trudeau.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer:
I just wanted to savor that for a little bit longer.
Betty Cracker
My kiddo was in a protest again in Tampa last night. The curfew was lifted yesterday, so they should have been able to protest peacefully. But her group got chased by cops. One of her companions took a rubber bullet to the leg and the other got maced in the face. I’m so mad I can’t see straight. And that’s in a city with a Democratic mayor who used to be a fairly progressive police chief.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: I’m curious, do you have a browser extension that replaces “Trump” with “Trumpov”?
You are super consistent about doing this, even within quotes from other people. If you aren’t doing this automatically I really admire your dedication to it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It works for me!
MisterForkbeard
@mrmoshpotato: There were some fairly polite replies as to “you really want to argue about whether or not this is tear gas v. ‘pepper gas’. Trump gassed priests and if you’re worried about the precise chemical makeup of the gas then we’re really worried about you.”
He has since said he loves all of us and clearly we have different point of views where we’re not going to persuade each other, so he’d like to stop talking about it. The really mystifying thing is that he’s one of the few people in my larger extended family to marry into a minority family, but he’s also the strongest Trump supporter in my entire extended 150+ member family. And that includes my mom’s side, who are all deep-red Kansas folk.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: Let me rephrase that: Esper would very much like to not go down with the ship, and is making tiny mewling noises about how all that sh!+ wasn’t his idea.
But yeah, the water’s still coming in under the doorway… =)
mrmoshpotato
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s gone from “inspecting a bathroom” to “inspecting a porta-potty.”?
Next “We had to inspect the shittin’ hole we dug last week!”
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yep, everything he does magnifies his #BunkerBitchiness.
Kay
Good. I like it when it’s over 50. I have no patience with these “undecideds”. I never really did because I don’t fundamentally buy that they are “undecided”. I think it’s “decline to state”, and even more so now.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s almost like he misunderstood the job requirements, or something.
Protect the country? Nope.
Unify the country? LOL
Have my enemies whacked and tear-gassed, then stride confidently over to one of those church-thingys, hold up the Magic Book, photo runs on every newspaper’s front page for a week, zoom past Biden to 20 point lead in the polls? Oh YEAHHHH, baby!
Can someone work up a new logo for the GOP, something that clearly alludes to ‘underpants gnomes’?
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Shorter:
Too late, fuck stick. Accept your fate and place in history, you worthless POS.
scav
There must be some virus of really shockingly lame-ass excuses that has run rampant through team Repub recently. Wonder if it’s related to the epidemic of I don’t recalls they suffered during the W years?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Well, if the tag scrolled… :)
Jeffro
@Just Chuck:
Absolutely right. Just keep them rolling in the background for years…maybe we’ll get 8 or 12 years to undo all this crap and put some new requirements for office in place while we’re at it.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Agreed. A large chunk of that 7% of undecideds just don’t want to admit (publicly? to themselves?) that they’ve already decided who to vote for.
I’d bet that a lot of these undecideds will break for Trump. They’re embarrassed about him right now and don’t want to say anthing, and the chances of Trump continuing to be this awful through November is pretty low. He’ll just be at his normal level of soul-crushingly awful, which isn’t enough to embarrass most Republicans.
different-church-lady
“Stonewall it.”
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s worth searching for Colbert’s bit last night about Trudeau being asked what he thought about the goings-on here. Talk about being at a loss for words!
Chris Johnson
@Frankensteinbeck: They gassed the MINISTER to seize the church and pose for pictures.
What more can I even say? Just batshit bonkers monstrous, in broad daylight. They gassed the minister to take pictures in the church. W. T. F.
jimmiraybob
There was a quaint time when the White House was considered the people’s house. No really, I remember such a time. Now it’s a fortified position used to plan and launch attacks against the people.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: That was awkward, wasn’t it? I felt sorry for him.
zhena gogolia
This J.-L. Cauvin guy is really good. It’s all ad-libbed.
https://twitter.com/JLCauvin/status/1267847983762149381
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson:
Yep, that is a perfect crystallization of this regime.
evodevo
@satby: nailed it…
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard:
I’m just gonna give you the Trudeau silence on that one.
MattF
@Kay: Small changes in polling percentages are at the margin— which is to say, they are in that small group who can’t make up their minds about Donald Fucking Trump. Excuse my French, but that’s where we are.
MisterForkbeard
@Betty Cracker: You can see Trudeau trying to hold in emotions, then trying to find a response that clearly isn’t “The President of the United States is a monster and a criminal” before he finally settles on a pretty good response, if one that can’t directly call out Republicans.
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard: Nope, it’s just me! It’s the shortest shorthand I could come up with for the facts that 1) he’s not worthy of even the most basic respect, and 2) he’s wholly owned by Russia.
If it’s snowing when I visit his eventual resting place, I’ll spell it out for him there, too. ;)
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, I had a very different take. I thought the long period of silence was powerful. A couple of times he cleared his throat or opened his mouth as if to start saying something, then thought better of it. My sense was that he wanted to express opinions that were decidedly UNdiplomatic, got hold of himself, reasserted self-discipline, and finally spoke, once he could trust himself to be non-inflammatory. I loved him in that moment.
MisterForkbeard
@mrmoshpotato: Seriously, it’s weird. Maybe 20% of my generation married non-whites. The previous generation was less than 5%, though overall the family has been very tolerant and fairly liberal.
This guy married a mexican woman and his kids are culturally pretty mexican. He is ALL IN on Wall and going after immigrants. He gets the side-eye from large chunks of the rest of the family because most of us can’t really understand it.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Like I said, I’m impressed. It’s incredibly consistent. Props.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re probably right. He seems like a good guy, and clearly Melania has the hots for him. I’m just the sort of socially awkward person who dies a little inside during long pauses, so I projected that onto Trudeau and didn’t catch the intent. :)
TS (the original)
@PsiFighter37:
They have very selective hearing/knowledge. Everyone around the world knows that trump used force to clear himself a walk to a church, but the senators know nothing.
Jeffro
President Obama to speak to the country at 5pm today btw folks.
He and Uncle Joe can keep it up all summer and into the fall, twice weekly, as far as I’m concerned. Counter all that ‘free/unearned media’ that trumpov and Co. seem to get at a moment’s notice (and for the dumbest things) from their lapdogs in the national snooze media. Keep showing the country what real presidents look and sound like.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@MisterForkbeard: Yeah, “it wasn’t really tear gas” will make things better in the same way knowing the make of every firearm carried by the Michigan protestors will. I’ve been wondering how our “liberal media” has been largely avoiding that discrepancy in our protest world.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
I like it also,too!!
charon
@MisterForkbeard:
@MisterForkbeard:
Some like Trump always gets worse. He can not do anything but get worse.
HumboldtBlue
BLACK WOMAN DRAGS WHITE RIOTERS who destroyed her neighborhood.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
Not for the first time in my life, I am having an attack of penis envy.*
*(I should note, this condition arises [sorry!] only in context of writing in the snow.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
Putting in my request for one of our FPers to FP this.
Betty Cracker
@charon: Agreed. It’s been a downward spiral since 1/20/2017.
@SiubhanDuinne: LMAO!
MomSense
@Cheryl Rofer:
That language was not lost in Maine’s Governor Mills. I think you would appreciate her statement On Monday about his rhetoric and his decision to visit Maine.
HumboldtBlue
“Tell Me Black Lives Matter. You Lied. You Wanted To Loot My Store” Granny Goes Off On Looters For Destroying Her Store!
MisterForkbeard
@charon: Yes, but: He has to be spectacularly awful to get Republicans embarrassed. You see this for the past few years, where he’s steadily and increasingly awful… but his poll numbers only take a dive when he says something incredibly awful, like praising Nazis, kneeling to Putin, etc. And then they rebound within a couple weeks.
“He hasn’t said ‘Nazi’s are fantastic in about two weeks: This is the moment that Trump became President!” is basically where they’re at. I don’t think Trump will be able to sustain the requisite amount of rake-stepping for the next few months.
Fester Addams
@Cheryl Rofer:
https://twitter.com/hilaryluros/status/1267999409100296194
HumboldtBlue
How to bible
MattF
@MisterForkbeard: Trump will be under steadily increasing pressure for the next six months. He does not handle pressure well, the instructions in the con artist’s playbook say ‘get out of town ASAP’, but he can’t do that.
Jinchi
Nope. This is a guy who looked at his image and poll numbers collapsing and decided to use storm troopers to clear the streets so he could pose in front of a burned out church. He thought that was good optics. It’s what passes for a smart move on his part. He will only get worse over time. If he wins in November it will prove he can get away with anything and he will ratchet it up even higher. If he loses, he will be in panic mode and he will lash out in anger. I’m not sure which will be more destructive, but there is no better with him.
MisterForkbeard
@Jinchi: I think the problem isn’t Trump’s awfulness, it’s that his supporters need to be shocked and embarrassed about voting for him. And that only sticks for a week or two when he fucks up spectacularly.
Trump will absolutely continue to circle the drain at increasing speeds.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: LOL, and
@SiubhanDuinne: thank you!
I see up above that another 6-22 posts just hit, so I’ll move to the most recent one.
columbusqueen
@satby: Considering how Melania looks like a mutant cat woman from the Island of Dr. Moreau, I’m not surprised.
charon
@MisterForkbeard:
His type on malignant narcissist always gets worse when under pressure, which he will increasingly be under.
On top of that, his senile dementia is already well advanced and visibly progressing at a brisk clip, with physical symptoms as well as various mental issues. This is destroying any minimal filters on his behavior. He is incapable of not getting worse
I think the environment will get worse for him also, as this photo op thing looks like a sea change combined with the BLM stuff, it looks to me like GOP pols are getting panicky.
Bill Arnold
@MisterForkbeard:
Our goal should be to help him be worse, IMO[1]. And even more obviously incompetent (including mentally incompetent). At this point large numbers of people in the country know how to coax him into being a piece of dumb shit on camera and audio.
[1] Falling short of live fire into crowds, though. Make it very clear to him that he and his family (not that he actually cares about them very much, but examples must be made.) will meet a similar fate to that of Nicolae Ceaușescu if he goes down that path or any similar paths. Perhaps not judicially, but … certainly.
Bill Arnold
@jimmiraybob:
They really should just go all-out and mine the white house lawn with anti-personnel mines. Put up temporary construction barriers to prevent observations about where the mines are being placed. (Unless they’ve already done this. Why no, not trying to start a rumor. :-) The US is one of the few countries that still uses mines.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Jeffro:
Surely Trump is keen on the bit about “Giving Caesar whatever Caesar wants”.