It’s been 500 years or so since the impeachment, but remember Fiona Hill, formerly of the National Security Council? There’s a fascinating piece by Adam Entous in The New Yorker: “What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House.” If you were intrigued by Hill’s testimony, wondered about her background or are curious about how a no-nonsense public servant like Hill ended up working for Trump and Bolton, it’s worth a read.
Hill doesn’t seem to buy into the theory that Trump does Putin’s bidding because he (Trump) is compromised in any direct sense. She appears to believe Trump is a credulous ignoramus who is impressed by autocratic power and unaware of how the presidency functions. He follows his instincts — unleavened by knowledge of history or geopolitical considerations — and thus treats U.S. foreign policy decisions as personal transactions for his own gain. None of that surprised me.
Neither did my biggest takeaway from the article: that Trump is every bit as egregious a sexist pig as I imagined. But I’m seething over that aspect of his misrule anew after reading the article. Hill tells a story about her first day on the job, when she accompanied then-Secretary of State Tillerson and National Security Advisor McMaster to the Oval Office to debrief Trump after a call with Putin.
As the Russia expert, Hill thought she would be contributing to a “substantive discussion about the call.” But Trump was preoccupied with editing a press release someone had written about the call, and he evidently mistook Hill for an administrative assistant. He momentarily confused her by waving the annotated press release at her (I’m imagining “YOUR EXLENCY” and “VERY” and “VERY STRONGLY” inserted via gold Sharpie). When Hill looked baffled, Trump said, “Hey darling, are you listening?”
Her male colleagues left her hanging, perhaps afraid that it would anger Trump if they told him Hill’s actual White House function. Ivanka got huffy about it for some reason and thought Hill was being rude to Trump, maybe because Hill didn’t immediately leap up to do the press release edits? Who knows. But Hill found herself in Stepford right from the start and tried to fit in, sort of:
Until that point, Hill said, she had always let her work speak for itself. But she had noticed that women in the West Wing wore designer dresses and more makeup. After the meeting, she went out and bought a few new outfits, “just so I wouldn’t be conspicuous in my dowdiness.” It was well known that Trump put inordinate stock in appearances, particularly when it came to women. “Central casting is a real thing for him,” a longtime Trump adviser told me. Trump addressed his female aides as “honey,” “sweetie,” and “darling.” If he didn’t like how an adviser looked, he would say, “Honey, you look so tired.” Trump would sometimes say of his female advisers, “They look O.K. in person, but on TV they look really bad. Why do they look so bad?”
After Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary, was interviewed on “60 Minutes,” Trump complained that she wasn’t attractive enough. When officials were discussing the possibility of a new position for Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Trump said he didn’t like how her cheeks looked. He complained to officials that Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security, wasn’t sufficiently aggressive toward migrants—and she was too short. When Trump insulted a female adviser, the men in the room would look away. “It throws you off your game,” a former female adviser told me. “It deflates you.” Another former White House official, a man, told me that Trump was “rougher with women. He has a problem with women.” It was soon evident that Trump had a problem with Hill. “Forgive me, Fiona’s attractive, but he doesn’t trust women that are kind of non-players in his world,” the former official said. He added, “Anyone who takes notes is suspect.” A former national-security official told me that, after the incident in the Oval Office, some of Trump’s top advisers, including Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, began referring to Hill as “the Russia bitch.”
I think we can all guess what the unnamed former male official meant when he said Trump “doesn’t trust women that are kind of non-players in his world.” Among the women who are “players” in that world are the empty-headed pouty wife and vacuous grifty daughter and vacant lying press secretary. I don’t believe for a minute he trusts any of them either but likely considers them interchangeably fuckable (except the wife, who is probably considered too old now).
It’s so hard to focus on any single aspect of Trump’s personal awfulness. He’s such an irredeemable asshole in every respect. His behavior is so consistently inappropriate and outrageous that it’s impossible to catalog it all, let along pause to acknowledge each horrendous and destructive aspect of it, at least in real time. It’s more difficult still to comprehend all the ways Trump’s elevation to the presidency cheapens and shames this country and demeans and alienates tens of millions its citizens.
But some day, damn it, we need to have a reckoning about Trump creating a low-rent escort service environment in the White House and the gross toadies like Reince Preibus who eagerly joined in. We should know the names of the cowardly shits — men and women — who not only did not oppose this outrageous behavior but didn’t even think it was worth mentioning. Hill didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Trump and the organization he runs, not during the impeachment hearings, and not in this article. But if we’re making a list of the things Trump wrecked that need to be fixed, I hope the vile misogyny he exuded and enabled at least makes the top fucking 5.
Baud
Out: Fiona Hill
In: Fiona Ann
Spanky
Stalking Hillary comes to mind.
I’m again sorry that Harris or Warren don’t head the ticket, but I can’t wait for when the post-inauguration indictments come down from a woman AG.
Baud
The vile misogyny is what got him elected.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve never worn a lot of makeup and continue to wonder how those women make their skin look so plastic.
schrodingers_cat
He is afraid of strong women.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And xenophobia. With Fiona Hill it was both I guess.
laura
When Trump insulted a female adviser, the men in the room would look away.
Frankly you can erase trump and replace it with just about any entitled penis-haver. The sad fact of the matter is men do not step up and defend women in the workplace from the oval office to the fast food drive thru. Same with bullying in general. The persistent problem IMHO.
waspuppet
I remember when we were supposed to think Obama was a “dangerous foreign radical” who picked u all sorts of “un-American ideas” because of all the “shady foreign characters” he palled around with in his youth.
That has literally been Donald Trump’s entire “adult” life, but gee who can say what’s going on in his head?
I can’t qwhite figure out why he gets treated differently.
Kropacetic
Shame on all the men who are uncomfortable with Trump’s behavior toward women, but can’t muster a stronger reaction than simply looking aside
Why, they might have a functioning thought process. Only trouble that way lies…
Sab
@Cheryl Rofer: I have had to wear makeup occassionally, and it is horrible. Icky and greasy. Makes me break out. Eye makeup is okay, feels minimal. But the rest of it is icky gross.
Immanentize
Ms Cracker:
Amy Schumer:
Last Fuckable Day
Kropacetic
Took me a second. I’m sitting here like the w is nowhere near the u on the keyb…ooooooOoooohhh….
mad citizen
I started reading the article last night and ended up skimming through it. I guess I didn’t want to know all the details of how awful these Trump-men are. Other than his going bankrupt 4-5 times in NYC, I will never understand how he and his company was able to compete and do business in NYC real estate. It doesn’t say much to me for the real estate business.
I did catch how Ms. Hill thought little of Obama calling Putin a “regional power” or something like; yet in something she wrote she said Putin might be the world’s most powerful/influential person, and heard through the grapevine that that made Putin happy. I’m not sure what to think of Fiona Hill.
Sab
@Kropacetic: That is my brother exactly, which is why I will never speak to him again. He is decent in his life, but absolutely determined to ignore awful stuff going on around him, even though he knows same stuff going on around his sisters.
He doesn’t want to interfere with the bucks rolling in.
trollhattan
Yet another installment in our long-running series, “I went to grad school for this?!?”
schrodingers_cat
@Sab: I use makeup. I have a routine that takes less than 5 minutes. But I don’t use a trowel to shovel concealer on my face.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Yes, Daddy?
Elizabelle
More evidence that Trump would not last 3 to 4 months in a publicly accountable company. (His vanity Trump Organization is not that.)
But he is utterly unremovable or held to any standard because — thanks Republicans.
Kropacetic
A simple “Yo…” or “Bruh…” goes a long way. “…” indicates a meaningful glare. Adjust as needed according to the age of the speaker.
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
I think it’s more that notes might be considered evidence. Given his background with the mob, that’s not acceptable behavior.
The Moar You Know
Well, then Hill didn’t learn too fucking much during her time at the White House, because Trump is directly compromised and that is as clear as sunrise in the desert.
Immanentize
@mad citizen: Hill is a Russia expert. It is her life. Elevating the importance of Russia in the global order elevates her value. That was pretty obvious in her testimony.
She is a flawed expert. Flawed, I say!
Kropacetic
Stands to reason.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Putin’s mission is accomplished now we are at the level of Russia. And Putin did it without firing a single shot.
Edmund Dantes
This is related actually.
https://twitter.com/poetmaybe3/status/1275077537257779207?s=21
fun fact, it’s COMMON for women in retail to have to “hide in the back” or change their schedules to avoid a creepy man. often these women are teens. Those men are NEVER ARRESTED OR REPRIMANDED. we just consider this normal.
Read the comments. Often note how often they were lift hung out to dry by managers and coworkers.
rare are the ones that had allies.
Eric S.
@Kropacetic: I had to make the same pause there. It was well done.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Enjoyed that John LeCarre had a character describe Trump as “Vlady Putin’s shithouse cleaner,” and the phrase got repeated a few times.
LeCarre finds Brexit and Trump abhorrent.
Elizabelle
WRT Trump and the misogyny: That’s a lot of his appeal to evangelicals and fundamentalists, isn’t it?
Restoring man to his elevated place, and women are incidental and supporting characters, only. A wicked problem to be dealt with.
A Good Woman
@mad citizen: I’m not sure what to think of Fiona Hill.
I totally recognize her. Like me, she is not Mary Poppins, there is no spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. She is a total professional who is focused on what’s in front of her, not necessarily the relationships. The plus side is that she will know her stuff backward and forward, and will stand by her conclusions, regardless of how anyone else feels about them. The downside is that she doesn’t feel the need to engage in a lot of ‘politicking’ with her peers. That can be important in building alliances, but she obviously recognized at some point that it was a losing battle given who the boss was, and the resignations that took place.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Given his background with the mob, that’s not acceptable behavior.
“Are you taking notes on a fuckin criminal conspiracy?”
catclub
There was yet another NPR Gomer tour of why Fundagelicals go for Trump, this morning. I was yelling “That is The Authoritarians!”
but they did not hear me. nothing do do with christianity, everything to do with authoritarian followers and their leader.
Betty Cracker
From the article, regarding Hill’s disagreement with the Obama admin on Russia:
Where is she wrong? Putin damn sure DID assert himself forcefully, and he brought the world’s sole remaining hyper-power low with a pitifully small investment.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Obligatory
ETA: <Shakes fist ineffectually at catclub>
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Do you think Putin wouldn’t have interfered if Obama had followed Hill’s advice?
germy
Here’s Maggie Haberman trying to “controll the narrative” by calling Biden a flawed candidate running a flawed campaign:
She should wear a “My mom was trump’s publicist” tee shirt every time she appears on TV. Fair is fair.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What was her advice? I haven’t heard the New Yorker article
germy
Ohio Mom
Cheryl Rofer@ 4: Re: women with plastic skin. It’s not just concealer slathered on, women like that get facials and face peels and laser treatments and Botox and who knows what else — they have a regular esthetician who is maintaining that plastic look.
Just like they have cosmetic dentists to bleach their teeth, put on veneers and who knows what else.
It’s foreign to me, too. Sounds boring spending that much time on primping.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I was going off what Betty posted. I don’t know the details.
Emma from FL
@A Good Woman: One can only build alliances with equals. And President Failure and his happy band will never recognize a woman as an equal.
Baud
@germy:
We are all
sinnersflawed, so it’s technically true.Betty Cracker
@Baud: I don’t know, but it seems pretty clear the Obama admin underestimated how dangerous Putin was.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Or overestimated the American voter.
Gin & Tonic
@A Good Woman:
Is that the old “she doesn’t play the game the right [read: a man’s] way” again?
Fiona Hill knows her shit and is very highly regarded among people who know the area. Trump is an asshole. That’s the New Yorker story in two sentences, isn’t it?
kindness
Uhhhh….yea, no. If we aren’t going to at the very least start out with the understanding that the Russian
MobOligarchs…excuse me, hasn’t funded the Trump family since the 90’s and Donald and his empire is in deep dept to them, then this is a dumb exercise. Of course Donald and his kids are corrupt as hell and all want to pay back their benefactors of the last 20 years with ‘favors’. Fiona Hill would do better to at least admit that.Betty
@Cheryl Rofer: That’s not just make-up. Botox most likely.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: That doesn’t make Putin super powerful. It makes Trump super weak. Just because you play a pony at the track and hit a longshot doesn’t make you the greatest racing expert ever.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
I debated including that quote in my comment; it was exactly what I was thinking of.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Russia hawks were pretty upset with Obama after Crimea IIRC. Also PBS’s Frontline all but blamed Obama for Syria and ISIS.
Apart from sending ground troops I don’t see what Obama could have done but didn’t do. But I am not a Russia expert.
rikyrah
????
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Bully pulpit.
Elizabelle
@germy: That is rich, coming from a nepotistic hire on a very badly flawed politics desk. Emails, emails, emails. Clinton Cash.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Ah yes.
jonas
I read the article and, yeah, your jaw is really just on the floor the whole time. A couple of things stood out to me. One, WTF is Ivanka doing sitting in on an Oval Office call to someone like Putin? I mean, seriously, what is she doing there? She’s a vapid pitch-person for cheap knock-off handbags from China, not a foreign policy advisor. Smh. Also, there was this:
Entous doesn’t really unpack that. Did Trump really sign something and then forget he did because, you know, he’s a sundowning idiot? Or do his aides really have him sign off on policy stuff by telling him its a proclamation in his honor or something? It’s clear he’s functionally illiterate, so this is a concern.
germy
@Elizabelle: She is horrible in her own way as much as Trump is horrible in his.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Sadly, that is probably closer to the truth. Putin has as much power as we grant him. I am heartened by the fact that stupid bot campaigns don’t seem to have the traction they did in 2016. I think we learned something.
geg6
@Edmund Dantes:
I have not had a job yet, ones requiring no education and ones requiring a graduate degree, that this shit doesn’t happen. Men have no fucking idea the shit we women put up with.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t think this is a male or female thing. There are a lot of technical people who focus primarily or exclusively on the world of facts and figures and believe that’s enough. They don’t want to engage in the world of office politics and often behave as if ignoring that stuff will make it go away. They function very badly in an environment run by somebody like Trump who views the world almost exactly the opposite: the facts and figures don’t matter to him at all, only interpersonal relationships.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
or overestimated the American people, which is probably the overarching critique one could make of Obama’s presidency. And Hillary Clinton had domestic opponents who hated her when Putin was KGB colonel watching his world collapse, and who probably damaged her campaign more than Putin did in when he eventually joined forces with them.
I’m not a foreign policy wonk but I imagine you could have a pretty lively debate over the word “individual” there. I would venture that Xi is more powerful, and Obama’s point about Russia being a regional power was (I suspect) based in his view that the US should/must turn its attentions to the Pacific world.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
The nepotistas have to stick together. Their worst fear is a world run on the basis of competence rather than contacts. Is it any wonder they favor Trump?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: the essence of what Obama called the Blob, which ranged from John McCain and Leon Panetta to Andrea Mitchell to (at least in Syria) Nicholas Kristof is that the answer to every foreign policy question starts with the US military. How exactly its used is for somebody else to figure out, but it starts with “boots on the ground”
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: It would be a worthwhile exercise to see how many of our media betters are nepotisitic hires.
MagdaInBlack
@geg6:
Truth.
Cameron
@schrodingers_cat: All of them, Katie.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
why, exactly was the shoe-sales girl in the room with (among other) the PhD Russia scholar to begin with? rhetorical, of course.
Salty Sam
Obligatory link: https://youtu.be/hGo5bxWy21g?t=76
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore: Hell, the man is alleged to eat physical notes to get rid of documentation. Of course he’s not going to trust someone writing shit down when it might counter his endless lies at some future point.
Brachiator
What continues to amaze me are the men and women who claim to espouse wholesome family values who defend Trump’s disrespect of women, or who are in deep denial about it and excuse his behavior. Also I don’t understand the men and women who are still eager to work for him.
West of the Rockies
I’ve noted before how difficult it is to express the contempt I feel for Trump and the ass-sucking Trumpettes. String together the most powerful, precise adjectives to describe his visceral loathsomeness. It still is unsatisfying and flat. He is light years beyond repugnant.
James E Powell
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s the sad story of a competent professional joining the Trump administration because she feels she can make it better, only to learn that no one can make him better.
Martin
@Kropacetic: No, he doesn’t want a document trail.
I’ve worked for these people before. They rely on the ability to say what is best for them in the moment, and to say something completely different in a different moment. Notes threaten that. These people need to be utterly unaccountable to function.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Consider what would have happened if President Hillary Clinton had Chelsea in the room under those circumstances. Flames would be shooting out of the NYT building.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Martin: one of the biggest surprises of the Mueller investigation, to me, is that Fredo never left a written trail about telling Daddy about his big important message from the Russians. I’d guess the idea of ‘never write it down’ was literally beaten into him, as I suspect it was from Fred to The Beast, literally or figuratively.
Kropacetic
Well, if that’s the case, it is so banal as to not merit mentioning on a major news network.
Wonder how she describes Trump.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Baud: BINGO! Perhaps it’s being from Connecticut, which means I heard about Trump and his backstabbing, grifting and bad business deals for years before 2016, but this is who Trump ALWAYS was. Anyone who thought for a minute about voting for him, who claimed they did not know how awful he was is lying to themselves. The sexist, racist, name-calling, reality show carnival barker, school yard bully is who they voted FOR.
hitchhiker
Thanks for pointing out this aspect of that article. I have this app called AUDM that delivers audible versions of articles, and I spent an hour yesterday morning walking the dog and listening to it. The whole thing is very worth reading, and I’d just say to people commenting on the snips about Putin and Obama that those snips aren’t the whole story.
Another interesting bit of this piece is the end …. where all those men who couldn’t be bothered to stick up for her when trump and his toadies were calling her The Russia Bitch were sending heartfelt emails describing their admiration for her courage, post impeachment testimony.
What’s that phrase? Fuck ’em.
Feathers
This conversation reminds me of an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich. She was talking about one of her new books, but brought up that after Nickled and Dimed she had wanted to go undercover among the rich in the same way. She realized fairly quickly that it was impossible because the fact that she had not started having plastic surgery at least a decade before immediately flagged her as an outsider.
I remember pointing out to a friend that the only women over 50 that you see on TV without plastic surgery are tenured professors. He scoffed, but later admitted that on one PBS show he was watching it was very obvious. After that he couldn’t unsee it.
If you are looking at a group of people and all of them are attractive, you are not looking at a meritocracy.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle: @catclub:
They can wave virtually anything off with “Hate the sin, not the sinner” when it suits their needs. Still flabbergasted at women showing up in Trump rallies with “You can grab me by the pu**Y” shirts. How messed up is that?
hitchhiker
@Feathers:
Yeah, I don’t understand why people are not creeped out by the spectacle of trump with all the women he surrounds himself with, in his family and in his administration.
They all look alike. They all dress alike. They all wear their hair the same way. They’ve all had their faces operated on.
It’s really disturbing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Feathers: Sure, it is a meritocracy. They just chose a different measure of merit.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ohio Mom: Thanks.
WhatsMyNym
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I’m from the Chicago suburbs and I knew about Trump from decades ago. She didn’t do her research on her future employer or ignored it to further her career (mistake).
Just Chuck
@hitchhiker: It’s what trash think elegance looks like.
sukabi
Haven’t read the entire linked article yet, but the thing that gets me in the excerpted part is the lack of push back and acceptance of everybody in that meeting to drumpfs absolutely classless, dismissive behavior to Hill and other women. That anyone would willingly work in that kind of degrading environment is just baffling to me.
HAVE SOME FREAKING SELF RESPECT.
tokyokie
@Cheryl Rofer: You may not wear a lot of makeup, but that leaves more for der Trumpenführer to ladle on his face.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@James E Powell: And maybe it’s because I am a fan of Hillary Clinton, but having Chelsea working for the Clinton administration would not bother me nearly as much from a simple education standpoint (example, if she and Ivanka were 2 people unrelated to whoever was president, who would be a better person to work for the White House/President) :
Chelsea – B.A in History Stanford, Masters in International Relations Oxford, Masters in Public Health Columbia University, Doctorate in International Relations Oxford.
Ivanka by contrast has a B.A. in economics from UPen/Wharton School of Business. not bad , and she did well at college but she is certainly not experienced or educated in international relations at all, except as it affects her father business interests.
Cheryl Rofer
@Betty: I’m thinking the preternatural smoothness. The rest of us have pores. I think Ohio Mom has it right that they are doing something beyond heavy pancake makeup, altering the very structure of their skin. The Botox takes care of wrinkles, but not all of the look.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Obama put too much faith in Americans and our institutions, and possibly he was too optimistic about geopolitical trends more broadly. I agree Hill used the word “individual” advisedly. Russia was then and is now a 4th rate kleptocracy, but Putin showed how vulnerable Western democracies are to assymetrical attacks, and it wasn’t just us. He fucked the UK up too.
trollhattan
Lincoln Project jumps on “Slow the testing down.”
rikyrah
Fabulous ad
The Dangerman
I want the beer and bran concession at his gravesite (you can’t drink beer first thing int eh morning, so bran it is).
/humor impaired from the transesophageal echo and the cardioversion … but still ticking, dammit
Lacuna Synechdoche
Betty Cracker @ Top:
He’s the definition of contemptible.
Formica
@Betty Cracker:
The Most Powerful Man In The World
Frontline: Putin’s Way (description is mislabeled)
Both are well sourced and investigated pieces making the case that he is in fact the most powerful human being on the planet. I have a hard time sitting through videos anymore, and I found both compelling (presuming you haven’t seen them already).
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Brachiator: It’s not like that part is new, Newt Gingrich was on wife number 2 and working on #3 when he was railing against how awful Bill Clinton’s adultery was, Gingrich wanted/got an annulment from his wife because his next wife Callista (with whom he had a 6 year adulterous affair) was Catholic and wanted to get married in the church. Callista is now Trump’s Ambassador to the Vatican, which seems fitting enough…It’s OK if you are a Republican…
Newt wanted an annulment
MagdaInBlack
@Cheryl Rofer:
If you’re so inclined, take a stroll through some of the girls doing makeup on YouTube. Its really stunning, and its an art. I had a coworker whose wife made makeup tutorial videos. Nice looking average pretty but when she got done, holy cow !
I dont wear much makeup, same as you, it feels weird,and it’s too much work, but I find those videos are kind of fun.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
that little toadying asshole should be ashamed to show his face in public
Dina Powell?
Kay
@rikyrah:
I don’t care about sports but I just love him. He had this program where he gave bicycles to poor kids and it was just so nice to see them get something that is just pure fun and freedom without scolding or any lofty societal goal.
rikyrah
???
Sloane Ranger
I only wear make up for special occasions. It’s too much time and bother to put on every day and I hate how it feels.
As for men not speaking up when a woman colleague is subjected to sexist behaviour, some have told me that if they speak up first they are afraid the woman would accuse them of being patronising or paternalistic and tell them she can fight her own fights, but they would support her if she does speak out.
Just a general observation, not saying this is the case in this White House.
jonas
Weren’t Javanka and Maggie Haberman friends or acquaintances or something before she was posted to cover the ongoing dumpster fire at the WH? Might help explain why the president’s utterly unqualified daughter and son-in-law who couldn’t get security clearances being given high-level advisory positions in the West Wing was not treated with more concern.
Formica
@Just Chuck:
… in much the same way that Trump is an idiot’s idea of a smart, successful business person. The influence of The Apprentice is important here as well. Enough voters thought that it was real that they believed they were electing a skilled executive, not a con man who lost daddy’s money running fucking casinos.
Kay
This is a good post, Betty. Thank you. I too am horrified by the regressive, circa 1975 Trump Administration treatment of women but I’m somewhat encouraged that most of the shift in his polling is driven by women dumping him.
The Trump Family are a lot of horrible things but one of the weirdest is how dated they are. Ivanka and Jared are like some weird throwback to the 1980’s. No one wants to go back there.
patrick Il
@laura: They don’t step up to save anyone from Trump’s bestial personage for any reason, man or woman. The white House is a horror show of hate and cowardice.
Kropacetic
I get that. I’ve felt similarly when people have spoken up about others being homophobic toward me. I’m telling you, though, a quick utterance lacking content while shooting darts with your eyes gets the message across.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sloane Ranger:
I think given the hierarchical nature of a White House, it would be incumbent on senior people to speak up for others in a situation like this, especially given the contempt that Tillerson probably already had for trump, but according to reports, he’s not the type to speak up for anybody
Formica
@rikyrah:
She was my first choice for the top of the ticket, and I really hope we get her as a strong VP. I’m proud to have her as my senator, and if all goes well in November, I’ll miss her. Now gimme Susan Rice as StateSec and we’re really cookin’ ?
Kay
It’s just that the standards are so low. I live in the middle of nowhere, a town of less than 10,000 people, very conservative. No one would use “darling” in a professional setting. Yet. Here we are. This is what goes on in the White House. Was this family asleep for 50 years? WTF? Why didn’t any of them learn anything? I know they’ve been insulated and protected and coddled but they all took that to mean they could remain in 1979?
lollipopguild
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I am really surprised that Newt is not on Wife 4 by now.
Kropacetic
Deplorable perhaps
There comes a time when a man is in his late 50s that he is ready to settle down…
Actually I just noticed a pattern. He seems to have switched wives every nineteen years. So he’s due this very year.
Mohagan
@MagdaInBlack: I haven’t worn makeup since early in college (as soon as I got a boyfriend, to be exact). Can’t stand the feel of stuff on my face, and I have always rubbed my eyes, so eye makeup was out unless I wanted to look like a racoon. I would occasionally wear makeup while in costume on Halloween at work and I would always want to go home and take a shower by lunchtime to get that stuff OFF my face
I wear glasses, so have always hoped they work to define my eyes and not need eyebrow stuff and mascara :-)
Ben Cisco
Of course she did – she was in the presence of a woman who actually had expertise and she was pre-emptively insulted on behalf of Daddy. How DARE the help behave as though they have their own agency?
JCJ
@Betty Cracker:
True, but bin Laden pretty much brought America down pretty far as well.
chrisanthemama
@Roger Moore: The wit and wisdom of Mr. Stringer Bell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
With those women, you never see their skin at all — it’s covered by substances manufactured by duPont and other chemical companies, blended into a wide variety of colors to sort of kinda match their real skin tone not covered by the makeup.
Sad, really, almost all real skin is more attractive than the chemical paste covering those faces. I’ve never understood people who think paint can improve a face. It just doesn’t, ever, at all.
Mohagan
@rikyrah: She can be pretty wonderful. I didn’t know much about her when she ran for the senate, but I’m glad now I voted for her and would love to see her as Biden’s VP.
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: So looking forward to her doing more of this in whatever capacity she finds herself in. Hell, it could be a full-time job in itself, and I would DVR the living bejeezus out of it.
MagdaInBlack
@Mohagan:
As I said, I dont wear much, too much trouble, plus, I work in a body shop………? ( where it appears I get more respect from body men than Ambassador Hill got from so called professionals, go figure)
I just feel that what those makeup artists do is a skill, and its fun to watch ☺
schrodingers_cat
Ah we have found one more topic to humble brag about, makeup or the lack thereof.
MisterForkbeard
@jonas: IIRC, Trump was told that the US believed other countries would expel a lot of Russian diplomats and was angered when he found out that the US had been one of the higher counts by far.
Basically, he’d agreed to punish Putin only so long as other countries were punishing Putin by the same amount. He did not want to actually signal real displeasure, but wanted to go with the flow and not look like a stooge.
The Moar You Know
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I’m from Southern California and knew the man was a fraud since I was in college, decades ago. It’s not like I went looking for proof of it either. It was just that obvious.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh for heavens sake ?
J R in WV
@Lacuna Synechdoche:
Yes, but you left out the equally accurate descriptive word: despicable!
Which is similar to contemptible, but covers different territory, so perhaps we need both words.
lgerard
thought this was the most salient passage
That the trump maladministration was consumed by palace intrigue rather then duty to country will certainly be its epitaph.
evodevo
@Roger Moore: Yeah…Stringer Bell…
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: Heh I patted myself on the back too for having a quick make-up routine. My look is a no make-up make-up subtle look.
Mike G
@Formica:
Trump is a stupid man’s idea of a smart man, a weak man’s idea of a strong man and a white trash idea of a rich man.
Uninvited Guest
My impression of Obama always led me to believe that he made light of Putin when he spoke of him because he knew it would drive him nuts.
Ruckus
shitforbrains is not the guy who thinks his shit doesn’t stink, he’s the guy who thinks it smells perfect.
So let’s list his qualities.
I can’t, I just ate lunch.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
Plastic surgery?
dnfree
@geg6: I was a programmer starting back in the 1960s until I retired. People don’t realize that a fair percentage of programmers then were women. I first encountered actual sexual harassment in 1980 when I was the only woman on a project team, but there wasn’t a word for it yet. And the whole “brogrammer” thing seemed to me to start more in the 1990s. By then I was too old to be harassed, so there was that. But now when I read articles about women in computing in the 1960s, the comments are full of young men “explaining” that those women weren’t really programmers, they were just coding what men told them to do.
Reading about Fiona reminds me that Trump is my age, and not a sterling representative of men of that era, but neither are the “bros” now. It’s discouraging to contemplate.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Or just a courtroom and judge.
sdhays
Interestingly, reading Betty’s brilliant (as usual) summary + rant, I was reminded of (I think) the PBS Newshour’s exhaustive investigation into Joe Biden’s treatment of Tara Reade and women in general. In the anecdotes, when other men, including other Senators, would denigrate or sexualize the women working for or with Biden (he was apparently unusual in his hiring of women for top posts in his Senate office in the 80’s and 90’s), he would shut them down quick and make it clear that wasn’t going to fly in his presence.
I remember thinking both how impressive that was for a man in his position in that era, and also how pathetic being impressed by that is, since it’s almost the bare minimum of what anyone should expect. Anyway, it’s just another very important way that Biden is the anti-Dump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Moar You Know: Since the late ’80s in the role playing games I run a stock character has always been a Donal Trump paradoy – some cheesy, blond haired, chest thumper with a million silly schemes and the players always it thought it hilarious what ever their politics is. I really don’t get how 10-20% of the population decided Trump wasn’t anything but an utter joke.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah:
Kamala got the short end of the bargain there, John Cornyn has no soul.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
I think you’re wrong about that. It’s not that makeup is less attractive than skin, it’s that obvious makeup is less attractive than skin. Really well applied makeup looks natural enough that you have to pay careful attention to know it’s there, and the better it’s done the more carefully you have to look.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In a just world, Reince Priebus referring to Fiona Hill as the “Russia bitch” would disqualify him from further gainful employment in any public facing position. That it won’t is a testament to the thriving status of misogyny.
misterpuff
@J R in WV: Deplorable.
h/t to Hillary.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I thought Pence is pretty typical for that crowd; the TOTALLY-NOT-WUPPED man of the houses decide they are going to what ever mother wants,
I will say it again, even for sexist pig, Trump is a freak because there is no mother figure in his circle.
sdhays
@Uninvited Guest: Obama also grounded his critique in facts. Russia is a very weak power. Their economy is corrupt cesspool of aging Soviet-era resource extraction business, with most of the money fleeing the country. While Russia is a much bigger country in geography and population, Italy’s economy is still bigger. The military is weakened husk of its former Soviet glory. It’s a dying country, with the President and his buddies sucking the lifeblood out of it.
That doesn’t make them no threat at all – they still have aging nuclear weapons and their ability to manipulate people via social media is clearly advanced and they’re obviously a threat to their neighbors, but it also doesn’t make them an actual “rival” of the United States any more than Venezuela.
The truth hurts.
Soprano2
@Sab: I wear makeup regularly; I would recommend tinted moisturizer and some kind of gel or cream blush. It’s much more natural and easy to put on than regular foundation. In the “before times” I would recommend going somewhere like Sephora or Ulta and letting them help you find something acceptable to you at a price you can afford, but I’m not sure they would do something like that today, and you’d probably not be comfortable with it anyway. I wear that all summer because it’s a lot lighter than foundation with powder. Just my $0.02 worth, which is about what it’s worth. LOL
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t wear any at all. Do I win?
apocalipstick
@Roger Moore:
I believe the quote is:
“Is you takin’ notes on a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy?”
...now I try to be amused
I see no reason why Obama and Hill can’t both be right. Russia is only a regional power, but its dysfunctional political institutions allowed one individual to accumulate more personal power than anyone can gain in a functioning democracy.
Kent
Interesting observation. I would expand that to tenured professors and government officials. UC President Janet Napolitano was on my TV recently. As was Laura Kelly (governor of Kansas). And Val Demings.
sdhays
@rikyrah: That was awesome!
Kent
Russia is a second rate economic power but a first rate military power. I don’t think that is sustainable long-term but it is the reality we are in today. I have no doubt that Russia could probably crush Germany militarily at this moment in time even though Germany’s GDP is 2.5-times larger. Especially in terms of projection of force if they were both fighting a proxy war someplace.
South Korea has triple the per-capita GDP of Russia. Russia will eventually burn out as a country if all the oligarchs keep exporting the wealth rather than investing it locally. But for the short to medium term they remain a world power.
sdhays
@patrick Il: Indeed, Ted Cruz wouldn’t even stand up to him to defend his own wife.
The sign of Pathetic Cowards for Trump with Ted Cruz’s picture is my favorite sign of the season, so far.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Divide television into the pre and post hi-res eras, then look at who was on camera then, and who is and is not on camera today. Hi-res ended a LOT of broadcast careers, from the local news on up the ladder.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Probably more a third rate economic power and a second rate military power.
It has a large army and nukes, but the quality of its military gear has always been suspect.
Russia is rich with natural resources, but it’s economic development has been stifled by greedy and self-serving oligarchs.
catclub
Caligula rapes the newlyweds. Trump wants to.
VeniceRiley
@Feathers: I have a friend whose mom gets tons of TV/Video work precisely because she looks like a real old lady, and none of her actor peers do.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Blame Obama first.
TerryC
I would prefer to get my news from ugly people.