Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

T R E 4 5 O N

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Schadenfreude / Growing Hope Open Thread: It’s *Not* So Good to Be the #FAIL King…

Schadenfreude / Growing Hope Open Thread: It’s *Not* So Good to Be the #FAIL King…

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Mel Brooks knew but half of it!

Gabriel Sherman: “They probably won’t have” the Jacksonville convention. The Joni Ernst campaign is angry at Trump’s horrible numbers. Meadows and Kushner are at loggerheads over Parscale. And if things don’t turn around by Labor Day, GOP defections may begin”…

With Donald Trump’s approval sinking to Jimmy Carter levels and coronavirus cases spiking across the country, Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone. Republicans that have spoken with Trump in recent days describe him as depressed and “down in the dumps.” “People around him think his heart’s not in it,” a Republican close to the White House said. Torn between the imperative to win suburban voters and his instincts to play to his base, Trump has complained to people that he’s in a political box with no obvious way out. According to the Republican, Trump called Tucker Carlson late last week and said, “what do I do? What do I do?”…

When the host is failing, the lampreys swim away. The NYTimes’ A team, led by Maggie Haberman, explicate “Why June Was Such a Terrible Month for Trump”:

… As Mr. Trump heads to Mount Rushmore on Friday to spend the Independence Day holiday in the carved presence of presidential greatness, he is suffering through the most trying stretch of his administration thanks in large part to his self-inflicted wounds. June represented the political nadir of his three and a half years in the Oval Office, when a race in which he had been steadily trailing, but faring respectably, broke open and left him facing the possibility of not just defeat but humiliation this fall.

In addition to public surveys showing him losing decisively to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in a number of battleground states, private Republican polls in recent weeks show the president struggling even in conservative states, leading Mr. Biden by less than five points in Montana and trailing him in Georgia and even Kansas, according to G.O.P. officials who have seen the data…

Yet as demoralizing as June was for many Republicans, what was less visible were the frenetic, and often fruitless, attempts by top Republicans to soothe the president and steer him away from self-sabotage, while also manipulating him to serve their own purposes.

Interviews with almost four dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and administration officials about Mr. Trump’s re-election bid paint a picture of a White House and a re-election effort adrift, at once paralyzed by Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior yet also dependent on him to execute his own Houdini-like political escape. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity to freely discuss internal deliberations, and to avoid retribution from the president…

Letting Trump be Trump will delight some of his most committed supporters, but it is likely to dishearten Republicans who are already nervous about losing the Senate and yielding further ground in the House…

Official ‘Toddler in Chief’ collator Dan Drezner, at the Washington Post — “The beginning of the end for the Toddler in Chief?”

… It took 30 months for Trump to get to the 1,000th entry in this thread. It took only seven months to get to the 1,500th. If the president continues at his current pace, the #ToddlerinChief thread might hit 2,000 before Election Day. Even a slight taper would not prevent Trump from hitting 2,000 before Inauguration Day in January.

What explains the surge? After all, Trump, who is obsessed with the idea of loyalty, has constantly purged his staff in an effort to eliminate leaks.

Rocket science is not required for the answer. Reports of Trump’s immature behavior are a function of two inputs: negative news that causes Trump to have a meltdown, and his staff’s willingness to talk to reporters about it, There was no shortage of negative news for Trump last quarter. The acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic, combined with a toddler-like reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests, combined with Trump’s decline in the polls did a lot of the work.

The other element that led to a surge in the past few weeks, however, suggests additions to the thread will not taper for the rest of Trump’s term. Simply put, as Trump seems less potent, his current and former staffers are less intimidated about dishing dirt…

The vicious circle Trump will face is that stories about his immaturity will hurt him in news coverage and in the polls, which will in turn generate more toddler-like outbursts, which will in turn generate more stories. It’s a self-reinforcing doom loop.

Can Trump pull it together and not get to 2,000 entries? I doubt it. There have been too many stories in recent weeks about Trump rejecting the advice of staffers or family and simply going with his instincts. And his political instincts are outdated.

With luck, the #ToddlerinChief thread has less than seven months left. It is going to be a busy seven months.

Reader Interactions

260Comments

  1. 1.

    JMG

    NBC News reporting that Trump administration will switch to a new message on the coronavirus — “We Need to Live With It.” Honest. They’re going to say that most people who get it don’t die, and tout new therapeutics that as of now don’t exist.
    Vote for Me — You Probably Won’t Die is one hell of a campaign slogan.

  2. 2.

    Cheryl Rofer

    This is the way the media whitewashes it (words carefully chosen)

    his instincts to play to his base

    But he’s angry and he wants to blame the dark folk and all those who stick with them. The previews of his speech tonight on Twitter sound like it’s going to be pure race-baiting.

  3. 3.

    laura

    Loser realizes his show will not be renewed and his ratings are tanking. That should never ever have been said about a president of the United States and Reagan wasn’t enough of a warning and so here we are.

  4. 4.

    p.a.

    His ‘support staff’, ‘team’, ‘remoras’, ‘hagfish’, whatever, deserve every miserable moment the scumbag can inflict on them, as much as the scumbag-in-chief deserves it too.
    There better be an accounting when this is done. None of the “let’s look forward, not back” shit.

  7. 7.

    Fleeting Expletive

    So where is the outcry for the Idiot to RESIGN!!  It should resound throughout the land and echo from sea to shining sea. I hope, I hope, I hope.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    According to the Republican, Trump called Tucker Carlson late last week and said, “what do I do? What do I do?”

    ‘Do your actual job, competently’ is the correct answer here, but somehow I’m guessing that wasn’t a plausible option.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    @JMG: should probably help him with senior citiz…er, with working fam…um, with suburban mo…oh my.

    LANDSLIDE COMING

  12. 12.

    Kelly

    @JMG:NBC News reporting that Trump administration will switch to a new message on the coronavirus — “We Need to Live With It.”

    Just saw this clip of Peter Navarro arguing to Ali Veshi that this is a “weaponized virus”. The crazy is strong in this one. Completely blows off the question why does the USA virus response one of the worst in the world.

    twitter.com/Acyn/status/1279144190522220544

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    In a meeting with Republican officials this week, Mr. Kushner repeatedly shushed Mr. Parscale and told him to “shut up”

    LOL To be shushed by that pasty-faced child…

    OUCH!

  15. 15.

    BBA

    Here’s hoping we see the mountain we’ve defiled with the name “Rushmore” returned to its rightful Sioux owners and the faces of the colonizers dynamited away in our lifetimes.

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    Interviews with almost four dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and administration officials about Mr. Trump’s re-election bid paint a picture of a White House and a re-election effort adrift, at once paralyzed by Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior yet also dependent on him to execute his own Houdini-like political escape. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity to freely discuss internal deliberations, and to avoid retribution from the president…

    There is something about this stuff from Haberman that is not journalism. It’s not really reporting, or analysis or commentary. I can’t help thinking that Haberman is just happy to be there, and is jazzed to get self-serving statements from anonymous courtiers. She would be just as buzzed if the campaign was going well and Trump was kicking Biden’s ass.

  18. 18.

    Mallard Filmore

    Every time I hear stories about Republicans, whether advisors close to the White House or some low level guy out in the boonies, my only thought is:

    “These people are OK with baby snatching, kids in cages, child abuse and torture. This isn’t simply a moral failure of a narrow band of Trump enthusiasts. For the whole GOP, closing one’s eyes to this depraved practice to be able to vote Republican will not clean the stain off your soul. God Damn you all.”

  20. 20.

    Jinchi

    when a race in which he had been steadily trailing, but faring respectably,…

    This framing is just ridiculous. He has never been “faring respectably” he was odds on favorite to lose long before the pandemic struck, the economy collapsed and he was caught shrugging off bounties on American soldiers.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    With Donald Trump’s approval sinking to Jimmy Carter levels and coronavirus cases spiking across the country, Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone he will join Benedict Arnold and John Wilkes Booth as part of American Trinity of Evil for all eternity.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    @JMG

    “We Need to Live With It.”

    Except for those of you peons who, y’know, don’t.

    MAGA: More American Graves Await.

    //

  28. 28.

    laura

    @dmsilev: for some reason this reminds me of Shitsmass – an unexpected horrific mess that must be dealt with while neither party is voluntarily participating but mustered in for the greater good and it all looked better as time went on and it took on sepia tones and became an annual holiday Chestnut that we relished in the retellings except here, given a multitude of options for “what do I do” he will latch on to the basest cruelest hit to the amygdala for maximum stimulation that Stephen Miller can dream up and cause a tsunami of avoidable deaths as the lagniappe.

  31. 31.

    John Revolta

    @Fleeting Expletive:

    We don’t want him to resign. We’ve got a better chance of winning back the White House if he’s in it. With Pence in there, or another candidate, they can claim “Everything’s back to normal now”.

  32. 32.

    Wapiti

    @Fleeting Expletive: Yup. If you can’t do your job, and the unit/organization/country is suffering because you can’t do your job, the adult thing to do is to resign. Hopefully your replacement will be more competent. Don’t dare second-guessing them.

  35. 35.

    Tony Jay

    Speaking of distasteful things that are cringemakingly outdated, that NYT piece looks as awful as you’d expect.

    So Trump was doing respectably until this mean old virus came out of nowhere to pants what would have been a triumphant re-election campaign? Now he’s just plain stuck deciding between the boring necessity of pretending to give moment’s thought to the things that Americans outside of the Fox/Qanon bubble care about and his prefered tactic of cosplaying ‘Fat Hitler says it like it is’ for his tail-chasing Base of rabid, raving racists.

    Which could happen to anyone, because thats just so normal, yeah?

  36. 36.

    HumboldtBlue

    At this point who are they addressing their message to? We’ve witnessed three and a half years of absurd ineptitude and disgraceful behavior, who is the target of the Trump campaign who can be swayed that four more years is just the ticket to amzaeball-land?

    There is the base, but outside of that, what message even begins to address the daily disaster we’re seeing play out in real time?

  37. 37.

    Wapiti

    @John Revolta: Yeah, the partisan part of my brain says it’s better that he not resign, but the patriot part says that a lot of Americans are suffering now, and if Pence is 10% more competent* it would be better to have him doing the job.

    * I doubt Pence is much more competent. But he can’t be less competent.

  38. 38.

    ThresherK

    @Mallard Filmore: Yep. The Republican party is full of Republicans.

    Even the ones whose fortunes are lashed to what appears to be the sinking ship of Trump are only worried because his failure looks looming. “We’ve got to keep our phoney-baloney jobs!”

  40. 40.

    Kelly

    @Jinchi: We have to live with and wear masks unless  it infringes on freedom or looks silly or doesn’t help or something to combat a weaponized Chinese virus that going to go away when the weather gets warm.

    There did I clear that up for you?

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    RE: This is the way the media whitewashes it (words carefully chosen)

    his instincts to play to his base

    You’re right. This is media whitewashing. Trump has always had a thing for brutish law and order, and for supporting cops who just know that busting heads is the best way to keep rebellious blacks and Latinos in line.
    We may see whether Trump pulls back at all, or goes full Klan rally.

  42. 42.

    Patricia Kayden

    Jefferson was the enslaver of 100s of African HUMANS when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, when he wrote, “all men are created equal” & by endowed God w “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Liberty & the pursuit of Happiness.” Let that sink in while u prepare ur BBQ.— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) July 3, 2020

  44. 44.

    Peale

    @Kelly: Navarro had me thinking today which Trump horribles would be likely to be hired on by universities as tenured faculty, which would be esteemed guests on news shows, which would become partners at white shoe law firms, and which would be resigned to take up communications as a profession. I figured Navarro would be heading to a think tank or the Kennedy School. I didn’t realize he was already a professor at UC Irvine.

  45. 45.

    patrick II

    @Kelly:

    Navarro knows better.  He wrote a paper distributed in the White House describing the danger of not taking the the virus seriously.  The president ignored it.  He’s not nuts in the sense that he believes what he is saying, he is nuts in that his lies to protect the president are so dangerous and he doesn’t care. What he is describing is biological warfare, and if it were true people would justifiably be calling for serious retaliation or possible war.

  46. 46.

    Kilgore Trout

    @JMG: NBC News reporting that Trump administration will switch to a new message on the coronavirus — “We Need to Live With It.” Honest.

    The full message of course being “We Need to Live With It Because We F&#ked Up Everything We Touched.”

    They’re going to try to bluff their way through this, pretending that they did everything GREAT.

  47. 47.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:There is something about this stuff from Haberman that is not journalism. It’s not really reporting, or analysis or commentary. I can’t help thinking that Haberman is just happy to be there, and is jazzed to get self-serving statements from anonymous courtiers. She would be just as buzzed if the campaign was going well and Trump was kicking Biden’s ass.

    She is an insider herself.  Her mother worked for the Trump Organization.  She is just too close to have any sort of critical distance.  Since our media overlords have decided that Black reporters are too close to the topic to objectively cover Black Lives Matter, I think they should establish a similar rule for the Trump Campaign.   Since too many white people have shown themselves incapable of critically evaluating Trump (as witnessed by his election) we should have a new media rule that only POC with the proper critical distance should cover the Trump Campaign.

  48. 48.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    As of today, Trump’s epic incompetence has been responsible for the deaths of 129,000 Americans so I’m pleased to hear that this asshole is feeling depressed.  Fuck him and all of his enablers and sycophants.

  50. 50.

    Leto

    @rikyrah:

    Ah! wel-a-day! what evil looks
    Had I from old and young!
    Instead of the cross, the albatross
    About my neck was hung.

    May it drag them down for eternity.

  52. 52.

    Jeffro

    @John Revolta: I don’t think even Pence can save them now…he’s licked trumpov’s boots a million too many times, and the GOP infighting after trumpov collapses will be IN-TENSE.

    The barrage by Team Biden continues btw.  Some of the ads I’m seeing are just relentlessly hard-hitting and spot-on.  KEEP IT UP UNCLE JOE!

  53. 53.

    Mai naem mobile

    1. So June was a bad month for Donny. I hope to try and contribute to making July such a month that he will look at Jine fondly.  Bigly fond.
  54. 54.

    Kent

    @Peale:@Kelly: Navarro had me thinking today which Trump horribles would be likely to be hired on by universities as tenured faculty, which would be esteemed guests on news shows, which would become partners at white shoe law firms, and which would be resigned to take up communications as a profession. I figured Navarro would be heading to a think tank or the Kennedy School. I didn’t realize he was already a professor at UC Irvine.

    All of them Katie.

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    Anne Laurie has made me laugh.

    The NYTimes’ A team, led by Maggie Haberman …

    A for Asskisser?  Asswipe?  Ass Whisperer?  Amoral?   What do you guys think?

    The whitewashing in that short excerpt is amazing (as others have pointed out upthread).

    Nowhere mentioned:  120,000 dead and rising.  The vast majority of those deaths preventable, had we had in place a competent administration that cared about American lives.  And was not sabotaged by the man at the top.

    Let’s just talk about politics and optics.

  56. 56.

    Peale

    Hmm. At the rate he’s going, he should go with “vote for me. If I win, I’ll hammer a rusty nail into my testicles”. Might get a few angry swing voters off the fence with that.

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    @Peale:

     

    @patrick II:

    Navarro is losing it, and is inciting even greater depths of insanity and enabling by the GOP Senate.  He needs to be called out quickly, publicly, and harshly.

  60. 60.

    patrick II

    That “We need to Live With It” is unavoidable.  What we can’t do is pretend to “live with it” as if we weren’t living with it.  It’s not 2019 anymore.

    Sorry if that’s a little convoluted.

  61. 61.

    Mike in NC

    To console himself, Fat Bastard plans to announce tonight that Mount Rushmore will be altered to become Mount Trumpmore, with the likenesses of himself, Asshole Jr., Ivanka and Jared for us peons to worship.

  62. 62.

    Alison Rose

    I don’t even like kids much but even I think it’s insulting to toddlers to put Trump amongst their ranks. Although if the toddlers have access to Twitter…

  64. 64.

    JPL

    @HumboldtBlue: That was wonderful and thank you so much for the link.

     

    Maybe someone will put it up on the morning blog…   hint, hint  send it to Anne.

  65. 65.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle:Let’s just talk about politics and optics.

    Someone (here? on Twitter?) earlier today said that to the GOP mind-set, any problems they have are just in their messaging.  It couldn’t possibly be their actual policies (or lack thereof).

  66. 66.

    Mai naem mobile

    @Jeffro: can you see the Project Lincoln ads on Pence? A montage of Pence at the Coronavirus Pandemic pressers talking about Donnys great leadership with death rates, coffins and PPE shortage stories.

  67. 67.

    James E Powell

    @Fleeting Expletive:

    I don’t want him to resign. I want him on the ballot dragging down the Evil Ones like battleship chains, fifty foot long and a two ton anchor.

  68. 68.

    lumpkin

    Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone.

    The current situation is:

    1. Dire, and….

    2. Trump has no idea what to do about any of it, and since….

    3. There is no possibility that he can change #2, unfortunately…

    4. #1 will only get worse, and that means….

    5. His only chance is to cheat, which we can expect….

    6. Because he did last time.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    We need his polling on the economy to go down- kachunk- then he’s in freefall. It’s the single thing holding him up at 40.

  70. 70.

    Jinchi

    @Wapiti: I’m not worried about President Pence surging to win against Biden. He might pick up a few disenchanted Republicans at the margin, but Trump’s base would be completely demoralized.

  71. 71.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    I hope Biden says “we will never surrender to the Coronavirus”  and screams “WOLVERINE!”

  72. 72.

    cmorenc

    @Fleeting Expletive:

    So where is the outcry for the Idiot to RESIGN!!  It should resound throughout the land and echo from sea to shining sea. I hope, I hope, I hope.

    The more likely scenario would be a mid-summer announcement by Trump that he won’t run for a second term, which would give the GOP just enough time to replace him with a kinder, gentler sociopath who might actually be able to run a competitive race with Biden and at least hold the Senate for the GOP.  No- we perversely need Trump to hang on until it’s too late for the entire GOP to pull out of the nosedive with only modest repairable damage – we need the impact election day to leave nothing for the GOP but electoral rubble from a smoking hole in the ground.

  73. 73.

    Wapiti

    @Mike in NC: I think it would be easier to go the other way, massive sculpting by a team of plastic surgeons. Junior’s the only one who can grow a beard, so he gets to be carved into Lincoln. I don’t think Ivanka’s going to be crazy about her new look.

  74. 74.

    dmsilev

    From NBC’s story,

    For nearly six months the administration offered a series of predictions and pronouncements that never came to fruition. From Trump promising that “the problem goes away in April” and predicting “packed churches all over our country” on Easter Sunday to Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that “by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us” to Jared Kushner’s pronouncement the country would be “really rocking again” by July because Americans were “on the other side of the medical aspect of this.”

    You know what might have helped? Aside from even a vague semblance of competence, that is. An ability to look more than two or three weeks into the future.

  75. 75.

    Just Chuck

    Honestly, I think The Lincoln Project needs to make another ad that just says “Jump, Trump, Jump!” over and over.

  76. 76.

    James E Powell

    @Brachiator:

    There is something about this stuff from Haberman that is not journalism.

    I’ve never seen anything form Haberman that I would call journalism. She was genuinely angry on a cable show when it was suggested that Trump was toast. Is she still supposedly writing a book? She’s not an insightful political analyst or an investigative reporter or a very good writer, so they paid her for what? She’s got Trump insider contacts and they use her to get their messages out.

  77. 77.

    Eric S.

    @JMG: “We Need to Live With It.”

    This was always going to be the message of the GOP and their monetary supporters.

  78. 78.

    germy

    When “North by Northwest” came out in 1959, what you might consider a surprisingly large number of people were offended by its ostensibly sacrilegious treatment of — yup, Mount Rushmore, which the movie correctly depicted as the most gigantic piece of kitsch ever concocted.— Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) July 3, 2020

  79. 79.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone.

    “The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.” ~ Emperor Hirohito, August 14, 1945

  80. 80.

    Kent

    @cmorenc:

    The more likely scenario would be a mid-summer announcement by Trump that he won’t run for a second term, which would give the GOP just enough time to replace him with a kinder, gentler sociopath who might actually be able to run a competitive race with Biden and at least hold the Senate for the GOP.  No- we perversely need Trump to hang on until it’s too late for the entire GOP to pull out of the nosedive with only modest repairable damage – we need the impact election day to leave nothing but electoral rubble from a smoking hole in the ground.

    I agree.  On the plus side, he’s never listed to a single advisor on any topic during his entire presidency unless it is Stephen Miller. There is probably very little chance that a group of senior Republican statesmen sitting around a conference table in the West Wing or Mar a Lago are going to convince him to resign or drop out of the 2020 campaign.

    And I’m not sure Fox News is going to do it either.  Their ratings will probably go up with a Biden presidency as they can once again become the rabid screaming voice of the opposition which is much more fun.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    @Kelly: This was the strategy in April/May when I stopped doing updates. They just weren’t brave enough to say it out loud.

    Let’s hope the result of this is a new appreciation for the role of government.

    I won’t hold my breath.

  83. 83.

    Just Chuck

    Shorter slogan: “Just Live With It”.

    Yeah, this is not gonna go over well for them.  Another one of OG Kush’s ideas I’m sure.

  85. 85.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Trump up to this year has lead a charmed presidency, due to the lack of major issues that have occurred and the press giving him a pass on those he fucked up(Puerto Rico).  Now he’s got a  problem that most President’s encounter and he just wants to punt and let hundreds of thousands of American die.

  87. 87.

    germy

    Many of the seats at Trump’s speech tonight at Mount Rushmore are being ziptied together, guaranteeing no social distancing for scores of people attending the event. Discussing all of this and more on @CNNSitRoom this evening. Filling in for Wolf. pic.twitter.com/Rg16nPvX4p— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 3, 2020

    I suppose killing his base is a sort of strategy, although I confess I don’t understand it.

  88. 88.

    Doug R

    In a meeting with Republican officials this week, Mr. Kushner repeatedly shushed Mr. Parscale and told him to “shut up”

    The Capo vs the Aryan. Nice!

  90. 90.

    James E Powell

    @cmorenc:

    The more likely scenario would be a mid-summer announcement by Trump that he won’t run for a second term, which would give the GOP just enough time to replace him with a kinder, gentler sociopath who might actually be able to run a competitive race with Biden and at least hold the Senate for the GOP.

    Mitt Romney tanned, rested, and ready!

  93. 93.

    Jeffro

    @cmorenc: let us know which “kinder, gentler” sociopath you think could take the baton from trumpov (without a million GOP knives in his back) and then also go on to win.

    They have all been in on the enabling, even Haley, even Hawley, etc etc.  The country knows which party is responsible for this disaster.

    I don’t really care if he resigns or runs, honestly.  He (or his gravesite, rather) is still getting the same treatment from me down the road.  I just want my country to not be on fire with coronavirus and to also not be an object of shock and horror around the world.

  94. 94.

    germy

    @James E Powell:

     She was genuinely angry on a cable show when it was suggested that Trump was toast.

    None of this means anything to her.  She’ll be fine no matter who the president is.  Biden, Trump, Jill Stein.  She won’t suffer one bit.

    The only thing she cares about is access, and showing off to the other “journalists” whatever  scoop she’s been fed.

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    Did you guys discuss this Jen Rubin column from July 2nd?  She dives into the false premise that Maggie Haberman and others foist on us repeatedly.  It’s illustrated with a photograph of a beautiful huge ocean wave.

    WaPost: Maybe we aren’t a 50-50 country after all

    We have gotten so used to the cliche that we are a 50-50 country — divided into blue and red, liberal and conservative — that the punditocracy has failed to see that we are increasingly a 60-40 country.

    Forty percent is about where President Trump’s approval rests and how he scores in head-to-head matchups against former vice president Joe Biden. The level of support for many Trump-favored positions (e.g., the pandemic is overblown, the media is the enemy of the people, “dreamers” should be kicked out, “black lives matter” is a negative statement) is often even lower than that. The direction of the country? Only about 25 percent think we are headed the right way. Indicative of the false balance sought by some in the mainstream media — twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid accusations of bias from the right — you might think Trump’s views have widespread support or that the presidential race is competitive. Neither is true, at least not now.

    The proverbial blue wave in 2020 threatens to make 2018 look like a ripple.

    Among her bullet points:

    ** Trump and his base are losing the culture war (e.g., Confederate-named military bases) as Republican lawmakers abandon a president who unabashedly plays the white nationalism card.

    ** Senior military leaders revolted against Trump’s attack on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square and their strong voice in favor of racial justice. Intelligence and Pentagon personnel, horrified by Trump’s refusal to take action against Russia for placing bounties on U.S. troops, have gone public as well. Republicans have frittered away their recent advantage on national security. [Elizabelle: We can leave for another day that Republicans are actually frauds on “national security”, as they are on “economics” and “healthcare policy.”]

    ** Polls show support for government to do more rather than less. (In late April, a USA Today-Suffolk University poll found: “Americans by double-digit margins say the federal government is doing too little — not too much — to deal with the health and economic repercussions of the deadly pandemic.”)

    Of course, not one of us at Balloon Juice and in our real lives will be complacent, and holding a presidential election during a pandemic holds a lot of presumed and unknown dangers.

    But let’s have some fucking honesty, please. Within your own circles (and even the dreaded Facebook friends of FB friends) do you see Trump picking up new support? There are the diehard deplorables and those who will never admit to making a mistake, and so forge on. But I see a lot of buyer’s remorse and am sick of the media of Maggie Haberman’s ilk pretending that Trump has it in him to suddenly become presidential. He has never been up to the office he usurped. Never.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @HumboldtBlue:

    I don’t think the rethuglicans in power right now consider anyone who hasn’t voted for them to even be human. shitforbrains certainly doesn’t. He doesn’t think he’s going to lose his base, he just doesn’t realize actually how small his base is. The only thing that could change that is people like wilson and his Project Lincoln. Normal humans are having a hard time dealing with this and unless another lockdown is mandatory along with masks a lot more people are going to die. Is shitforbrains thinking that all of them are people who don’t support him? Because that seems unlikely to remain a viable electoral number.

  98. 98.

    p.a.

    @cmorenc: I don’t think he resigns.  I think he brings down the whole racist, treasonous structure down around him.  I just watched Downfall, so that may be influencing my view.

  99. 99.

    Martin

    @cmorenc: Convention is in 6 weeks. If they were going to replace him, they are nearly out of time to get delegates on board with this idea. McConnell and company can wish whatever the fuck they want, but the delegates make the call.

    Their better bet is to back Trump as the candidate, accept his loss, and run the downballots against him.

    There’s nothing but shitty options though.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    She’s my favorite Never Trumper but she’s still a Republican – that’s how they approach elections- all that confidence and bluster.

    I read that and I think “no Democrat would ever write that”. Not enough qualifiers :)

  103. 103.

    lumpkin

    @James E Powell:

    She’s got Trump insider contacts and they use her to get their messages out.

    Maggie is kinda like the Judith Miller of the trump administration.

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    @Jinchi

    Following on “Be Best” I suspect the second choice for the new slogan was “Be Oblivious.”

    //

  106. 106.

    germy

    On the subject of Haberman, have any of you seen the entertaining Alfred Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent ?

    Some of the dialogue was written by Robert Benchley, who also plays the role of “Stebbins” a reporter who admits his only job is transcribing what the politicians tell him.

    (In real life, Benchley had spent a few years writing a column called “The Wayward Press”  where he criticized certain journalists and newspapers for dishonesty and laziness.  So he knew what he was talking about when he worked on the screenplay for Hitchcock.)

  107. 107.

    dmsilev

    @Martin: What happens if the delegates vote to give him the nomination and he declines it? Aside from half the political pundits in the country dying from orgasmic heart attacks, that is.

  108. 108.

    Mary G

    I’m seeing on Twitter that a smallish crowd of Native American protesters is blocking the road to Mt. Rushmore and the cops are getting ready to bring down the hammer. Cross your fingers they get the pictures and video out.

    Also, this thread about the long term effects of the virus on someone who was infected in March and still suffers is grim, but if you can stand to read it, informative. I worry about the massive increase in long term disability that could be coming down the pike even as more people survive:

    Hey, so, I got #Covid19 in March. I’ve been sick for over 3 months w/ severe respiratory, cardiovascular & neurological symptoms. I still have a fever. I’ve been incapacitated for nearly a season of my life. It’s not enough to not die. You don’t want to live thru this, either. 1/
    — Dani Oliver (@DaniOliver) July 3, 2020

    She doesn’t give her age, but she’s young enough to still be menstruating, which also sounds awful under Covid.

  111. 111.

    different-church-lady

    “What do I do? What do I do?”

    STOP BEING SUCH A SHITTY PERSON.

    And that’s just the first step…

  112. 112.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @JMG:

    Funny, most other countries haven’t had to “live with it”. Wonder why?

  116. 116.

    Baud

    It didn’t have to be this bad. But month after month, as other leaders in other countries took the necessary steps to get the virus under control, Donald Trump failed us.

    Here’s what I’ll do as president: t.co/xsCrfzWnxC
    — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 3, 2020

  117. 117.

    Jinchi

    Trump to accuse ‘left-wing mob’ of ‘totalitarian behavior’ in Mount Rushmore remarks

    This is a headline on FoxNews right now.

    Sounds like it’ll be a standard fourth of July celebration speech.

  119. 119.

    Ruckus

    @Wapiti:

    I don’t think shitforbrains will resign. He knows failure, very well, but he’s always just walked away and let his lawyers handle it. Except that he can’t do that here. He’s the one that has to quit, he can’t just walk away and let the janitors clean up. He can’t pull a Nixon, he’s just not capable of that. He’s boxed himself into a clear box with lights, cameras and witnesses, all of whom can and will screw him for what he’s done. Would dense pardon him? Unless dense is as stupid as shitforbrains, and that is an overwhelming possibility, I think he has a better understanding of how this works. Not necessarily a good understanding but better than his boss. So I don’t see dense pardoning shitforbrains and I’d bet that shitforbrains knows this, somewhere in that disaster of a mind. I see it as a big risk for him and he’s not a big personal risk person. He might have been years ago, but not now.

  120. 120.

    James E Powell

    @germy:

    The only thing she cares about is access, and showing off to the other “journalists” whatever  scoop she’s been fed.

    That’s the thing. She’s never had any access to anyone but the Trumps. She’ll be shunned by Biden’s people.

  124. 124.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Speaking of his little fireworks show:

    Trump heads to Mount Rushmore for speech and fireworks; protesters block highway

    President Trump is heading to Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota on Friday for a massive Independence Day celebration, as protesters gather, including blocking a key highway to the site.

    About three hours ahead of Trump’s scheduled speech, police were demanding that protesters clear the highway.

    At the event, he plans to lament “the left wing mob” and so-called “cancel culture.”

    “If we tear down our history, we will not be able to understand ourselves or America’s destiny. The left wing mob and those practicing cancel culture are engaging in totalitarian behavior that is completely alien to American life — and we must not accept it,” Trump will say, according to a campaign official with knowledge of the speech.

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) confirmed this week that social distancing won’t be enforced and that the approximately 7,500 expected attendees will not be required to wear masks. The United States on Thursday recorded the largest single-day total of new coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, and on Friday a number of states set new case records.

    “We will have a large event on July 3. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we’ll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we won’t be social distancing,” Noem said Monday in an interview on Fox News. “We’re asking them to come — be ready to celebrate, to enjoy the freedoms and the liberties that we have in this country.”

    The Mount Rushmore event is just the beginning of Trump’s planned Fourth of July weekend celebrations. On Saturday, the president is expected to watch military displays and the annual fireworks show from the White House, and he is also expected to give an address. Before heading to South Dakota, Trump spent several hours Friday golfing at his private club in Sterling, Va.

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    You were right about his speech. Definitely screams “ethnonationalism and strident culture war”. Asshole has some nerve accusing us of totalitarianism

  126. 126.

    Barry

    @cmorenc: 
    “The more likely scenario would be a mid-summer announcement by Trump that he won’t run for a second term, which would give the GOP just enough time to replace him with a kinder, gentler sociopath who might actually be able to run a competitive race with Biden and at least hold the Senate for the GOP. ”

    I don’t see this helping. It would just be an open admission that the GOP is crashing to Earth, and would demoralize The Base horribly.

  128. 128.

    John Revolta

    @Jeffro: I don’t know if Pence would make enough of a difference, but after 2016 I take nothing for granted. Some of the GoPers who have been turned off by Trump would feel justified in pulling the lever for their side now…………and a number of low-info Dems will go “well, Trump’s gone so I don’t have to go vote against him now, Biden’s as bad as Pence yada yada”. Every idiot counts-on both sides.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Jinchi:

    It’ll be bad but it will never be as bad as the speech at the church. They all sat in a room and planned that event, perhaps for days, and every single minute of it was actively offensive and off-putting, and that’s before the tear gas.

    I don’t think they can outdo that.

  131. 131.

    Kent

    @germy:I suppose killing his base is a sort of strategy, although I confess I don’t understand it.

    They don’t actually CARE about their base one way or the other.  They are props for the photo-op.  Press coverage and photos showing a bunch of people pulling their chairs up and distancing apart is just a “mixed message” they don’t want to project.   I suspect that is all there is too it.  In other words, they are sociopaths, not psychopaths.

  133. 133.

    Kent

    Is it horrible of me to wish for a Trump fireworks-sparked wildfire that burns up some MAGA ranches on stolen Indian land?

  134. 134.

    Cheryl Rofer

    A wheel has been taken off this van blocking the entrance to Mount Rushmore. Police pulling out restraints, telling media to back up or we'll be arrested. pic.twitter.com/8ioFB4fdpJ

    — jayfug (@jayfug) July 3, 2020

    I've been pushed to the side of the protest by police, with other media, counter-protesters and some people with tickets to the event. Video isn't posting to Twitter due to cell bandwidth issues. pic.twitter.com/8d5rEw1lyX

    — jayfug (@jayfug) July 3, 2020

    Leaving out a number of tweets – and the latest

    Two semi two trucks have pulled up. Presumably to remove the vans blocking the road. pic.twitter.com/7A9cHIGQRs

    — jayfug (@jayfug) July 4, 2020

  135. 135.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Elizabelle: 

    Trump and his base are losing the culture war (e.g., Confederate-named military bases)

    I don’t recall the source, but a few weeks ago I saw a poll stating that a majority of Americans favored keeping the Confederate names for the military bases. If Biden wins, I hope he’ll move quickly to have these military base names changed regardless of what polling data shows because it’s simply the correct thing to do.

  136. 136.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: Yeah, he can always decline to run, but I’m assuming his narcissism prevents that from happening. He legitimately believes his problem with the polls aren’t that he’s losing but that they are lies and attacks against him, and that they will discourage his base from voting.

    In a way that’s delusional, but it’s also a defense mechanism. People didn’t reject him, the media convinced people to reject him. Without the media’s pesky influence he can tell himself he would have won in a landslide. And that’s the challenge with predicting his behavior – you never know exactly what delusional thinking he’ll adopt in order to protect himself. Maybe it’ll be the decision to not run, but I wouldn’t count on it. I think he’d rather run and than scream about being cheated than give up. That’s why he’s gone bankrupt so many times – he doesn’t know when to cut his losses – he pushes until he’s forced.

  138. 138.

    Kent

    @James E Powell:That’s the thing. She’s never had any access to anyone but the Trumps. She’ll be shunned by Biden’s people.

    She is a Trump person.  Her mother’s consulting firm worked for the Trump Organization.  She is an insider.  From her Wiki profile:

    Haberman was born on October 30, 1973, in New York City, the daughter of Clyde Haberman, who became a longtime journalist for The New York Times, and Nancy Haberman (née Spies), a media communications executive at Rubenstein Associates. At the firm, a “publicity powerhouse” whose eponymous founder has been called “the dean of damage control” by Rudy Giuliani, Haberman’s mother has done work for a client list of influential New Yorkers including Donald Trump. A singer, in 3rd grade Haberman played the title role in a performance of the musical Annie at the P.S 75 Emily Dickinson School. She is a 1991 graduate of Ethical Culture Fieldston School, an independent preparatory school in New York City, followed by Sarah Lawrence College, a private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1995.

  144. 144.

    dmsilev

    @Martin: Oh, I agree. It’d be very unlikely that he’d choose to walk away. That’d be an admission that the deep state/fake news/(((globalists)))/etc. had beat him and driven him out, and that’s not something he’d willingly admit to.

  145. 145.

    germy

    @Kent:  A rich girl who goes to the “best schools” and is given every advantage but can’t overcome her innate mediocrity.

    The Meritocracy!

  146. 146.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The vehicles are being towed. I personallly witnessed one PCSO deputy pepper spray protesters. Another reporter said she saw 3-4 deputies do it. 10+ protesters got sprayed and had to wash their eyes out.

    God Bless America! /s

  147. 147.

    dmsilev

    @Patricia Kayden: Just wait until the convention in a month and a half. Hell, the Texas GOP is having a practice session in about ten days, a 6000 person in-person state convention. If it weren’t for all the innocent bystanders, including the service workers at the venues, I’d say “just lock the doors and wait for the screaming to die down”.

  148. 148.

    Jinchi

    @Kent: in 3rd grade Haberman played the title role in a performance of the musical Annie at the P.S 75 Emily Dickinson School

    That’s in her bio?! This is a New York Times reporter, right?

  149. 149.

    germy

    @dmsilev:  Brick them in and wait for the jingling bells on the clown hats to stop.

    The voice said– “Ha! ha! ha! –he! he! he! –a very good joke, indeed –an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo –he! he! he! –over our wine –he! he! he!” “The Amontillado!” I said. “He! he! he! –he! he! he! –yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone.” “Yes,” I said, “let us be gone.” “For the love of God, Montresor!” “Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!” But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud — “Fortunato!” No answer. I called again — “Fortunato!” No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

  150. 150.

    Gravenstone

    @Jinchi: It’s less a President Pence gaining re-election than a Trump defeat dragging substantial numbers of Republican incumbents into the void with him. Pence might not have as potently negative coattails.

  151. 151.

    dmsilev

    @germy: If we’re going Poe, we should go full Poe:

    It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple — to the purple to the green — through the green to the orange — through this again to the white — and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse- like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

    And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

  152. 152.

    Achrachno

    @Kay: She’s not a Republican anymore.  Independent now, and I hope others follow in droves.

  153. 153.

    NotMax

    Because of course they did.

    The state convention of Texas’ Republican Party could bring thousands of people to an enclosed space in the middle of a COVID-19 spike in the state.

    The state party’s executive committee voted 40-20 on Thursday in support of an in-person convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center, in Houston.

    The vote to hold the convention in-person, the Houston Chronicle noted, took place during a virtual meeting of the committee. Source

    Recent past Texas GOP party platforms have been so far out there they could orbit Uranus. I expect this year they’ll aim for Pluto.

  154. 154.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jinchi:

    Crowds shipped on buses to listen to Trump give a political rally during a pandemic, with social distancing and mask wearing not only discouraged, but actively suppressed.

    I retract my earlier question. Coronavirus is Trump’s Kool-Aid.

    People will die because of this. Why can’t Trump get sick from this? If anybody “deserves” it, it’s him

  155. 155.

    Redshift

    The Navarro blame-China initiative is some serious flailing. Tell me, Peter, if this is a biological weapon attack from China, how does that help your case? If voters are turning against you for your failure to deal with a pandemic, why would you think it’s better to imply, “no, we actually failed to deal with an attack on America!”

  157. 157.

    Yutsano

    @Kent: Get out of my brain. :P

    And he won’t resign. He’ll have a psychotic break before that happens. He’ll definitely fight the loss of the election no matter how overwhelming the margin is. But it won’t matter. As long as Biden makes it to 270 and the electors are sat, it’s over and noon January 21st he’s out.

  158. 158.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Why did Trump pick Rushmore, wouldn’t Stone Mountain be his thing?

  161. 161.

    dmsilev

    @NotMax: And they can’t even use the fig leaf of “maybe things will blow over by the time the convention starts”. It starts in about 10 days.

  163. 163.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    I’ve hoped that would happen. It would be such an embarrassment and own goal that it wouldn’t matter how well attended his Kool-Aid Party is. Governor Barbie would also have egg on her face for working with the admin to make it possible.

    On the other hand, I’d be worried somebody might get killed. How much danger would the audience be in if a wildfire is sparked? I know Trump’s NPS says they have precautions in place, but y’know, this is the same admin that didn’t do a damn thing about Russian bounties on Coalition troops for an entire year, so I don’t trust them

  165. 165.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jinchi:  And it also lists her high school. There appears to be nothing in that bio past college graduation. She even added a line about her mother’s accomplishments to pad it out.

    This is the resume of somebody going for their first internship, before they have any job history.

    How did she get hired?

  166. 166.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kent:

    They are props for the photo-op.

    I would take it a step further.  The point here is that Trump screamed at his lackeys because the empty seats at the Tulsa rally made him feel like a weak, unloved, tiny-peen’d loser.  His people want a jammed crowd so Trump to keep their abuser soothed.

  167. 167.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I don’t recall the source, but a few weeks ago I saw a poll stating that a majority of Americans favored keeping the Confederate names for the military bases.

    There really that many Braxton Brag fans out there?

  168. 168.

    Redshift

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    What about faithless electors? 

    What about them? This isn’t some idiotic Bernie/Hillary thing, there would have to be electors chosen by Democratic congressional district and state conventions voting for Trump in the Electoral College. On the scale of election worries, that’s pretty near the bottom.

  172. 172.

    Kay

    @Achrachno:

    Right. I meant more in attitude. I’ve always been a little jealous of how they strut around pre-election, just EXUDING confidence.

    It’s fine. We’ll never be able to pull that off :)

  173. 173.

    Mike in NC

    The next Trump hate rally will be explicitly a white power cavalcade. Dog whistles and fog horns and maybe liberal use of the N-word.

  174. 174.

    Martin

    @Cheryl Rofer: We could learn a thing or two from the french on how to protest. They would have set the vans on fire. That’ll slow getting people in by at least an hour or more.

  176. 176.

    The Moar You Know

     Trump called Tucker Carlson late last week and said, “what do I do? What do I do?”

    If you ask an idiot for advice, expect poor results.

    I’m delighted at this turn of events.

  177. 177.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    She is an insider herself.  Her mother worked for the Trump Organization.  She is just too close to have any sort of critical distance.

    Her father, Clyde Haberman, is a long-time NYT staffer. He has done good work, but all these people, including Haberman’s mother, have sucked up to New York’s elite all their professional lives. You can’t trust them to ever bite the hand that feeds them, at least not very hard.

    And Maggie seems to work both sides of the street, and all the corners. From Wiki:

    In October 2016, one month before Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, a document was released by WikiLeaks that showed the Clinton campaign’s use of Haberman to place sympathetic stories in Politico. “[The Clinton campaign] has a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. While we should have a larger conversation in the near future about a broader strategy for reengaging the beat press that covers HRC, for this we think we can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie.”

    I’m an idealist. I would rather reporters have a mild distaste for everyone they covered, not be eager to suck up to them.

  181. 181.

    Elizabelle

    2018 online article on Maggie Haberman.  No paywall. And devastating. Published about the time of Puerto Rico’s hurricane. I am surprised it did not get more traction, because it seems rather credible to me. The authors are now active on twitter.

    CitJourno.org: Maggie Duranty.

    Re the site: [which has gone dormant since the Haberman story; had an earlier big story “Poke the Bear” — apparently about Trump’s Russian ties. I have not looked at that at all, yet.]

    In 2017, we founded CitJourno.org to fill the glaring gaps in mainstream media’s coverage of the Trump era. The intention of CitJourno.org is to shore up our Fourth Estate. Because, we love it.

    We love great investigative journalism. We love fair, informed editorial pages. We love press free from propaganda. Free from partisan spin. Free from religious doctrine. Free from the iron rule of autocracies. Free.

    They spend a page or two outlining Walter Duranty and his Pulitzer-winning coverage of early 1930s Russia, during which he apparently denied or downplayed the existence of a major famine.

    There is a term now for Duranty’s particular brand of “reporting.” Unsurprisingly, it is pure Soviet in its roots: whataboutism.

    Whataboutism is a classic cold war tactic, described this way by the Washington Post: “Whataboutism appears to broaden context, to offer a counterpoint, when really it’s diverting blame, muddying the waters and confusing the hell out of rational listeners.”

    And then the bloggers turn to his modern equivalent.

    …. Since the 2016 Presidential campaign, one very special NYTimes journalist has risen to fame and favor within their organization. Just like Duranty with Stalin, this rise is due primarily to her direct access to Donald Trump.

    We’ve gone through every article she authored during the 2015-2016 election season – both in content and timing of publication (equally significant), and we’ve come to the conclusion that this reporter is a full-blown, PR spin, Trump apologist.

    We feel ever more certain of this conclusion because, unlike Duranty, we think we know her motive – the “why.” It’s not a pretty picture.

    Despite all the articles published – and the incredible shooting star of journalistic fame being lavished on their reporter, The New York Times has failed to disclose to the public that she has family FINANCIAL ties to both Russia and the Trump-Kushner clan.

    This reporter is Maggie Haberman.

    These bloggers have done a really, really deep dive.  Including on Maggie’s mother’s work with Howard Rubenstein, PR doctor extraordinaire to Fred Trump and the Donald.

    To Glenn Thrush (!!) vouching for Maggie when other journalists were casting some (not enough!) stones at her. And her earlier, pre-NY Times reporting.

    Maggie cannot claim ignorance as an excuse for failing to cover Donald Trump’s mob ties. When she was at The New York Post (whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, is a close friend and client of Howard Rubenstein), Maggie wrote about the Gottis, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, and Chris Paciello.

    Now, do you want the “mic-drop” moment of this entire piece? Of course you do.

    It was Sammy “The Bull” Gravano who testified that the Trump Organization’s construction partner, HRH Construction, was owned by the Genovese crime family (the mob started by Lucky Luciano). And, Gravano’s testimony was given at the exact time when Howard Rubenstein was spinning personally for ‘ole Donny “Two Scoops” himself.

    Let’s review Maggie’s 2015-2016 coverage again…

    “Donald Trump” and the “Mafia”? ZERO search results.

    Hillary Clinton scandals? Between the terms “Benghazi” and “email” alone, there are 94 Maggie Haberman hits.

    94-0. It’s stunning.

    …. It’s unmistakable to us that Maggie is just running PR on behalf of her mother’s clients and her father-in-law’s interests.

    As we have stated several times in this piece, PR is not journalism. A PR professional’s job is to spin a story to portray their client in the best light possible. And where scandal or crimes are involved, that spin is in the form of apologistic obfuscation.

    Maggie’s coverage of the Trump and Kushner families is Duranty-level apologist spin. As long as the NYTimes values a reporter’s access over their integrity, this will continue. And atrocities are sure to follow.

  182. 182.

    Redshift

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    There really that many Braxton Brag fans out there? 

    Meh, I bet people just like the names they’re familiar with and want to go back to not knowing who they’re named for. I doubt that many people care enough that they’ll say it matters to them six months after they’re changed.

  184. 184.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    A scary thought I’ve had is what if somebody got their hands on an armored truck and used it run over crowds/riot police. It’s an armored vehicle, so normal bullets wouldn’t work except on the tires, and bulletproof tires exist. That person would be practically unstoppable unless they damage the engine/suspension/transmission/driveshaft through crashes, are blocked in somehow, or armor-piercing rounds are used

  187. 187.

    NotMax

    @Mike in NC

    “Hold on, let me write this down. That’s six extra-extra-long neckties and a Confederate general’s uniform for a 280 pound man, right? By the way, when can we expect payment for your last order?”

    //

  190. 190.

    CaseyL

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Why doesn’t T* get sick?

    If I believed Satan existed,  I’d believe T* had sold his soul for money, love and power.

    …and considering that Satanic bargains always seem to be of the Monkey Paw variety, I’d say this one was no different. T*s money is theoretical, not actual; he gets “love” only if he pays for it (cash or prenup settlement); and his power is waning.

    Plus, Daddy Fred still doesn’t love him.  Even from Hell.

  191. 191.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): After 9/11 my dad and I over beers gamed out as many cheap/easy terrorism scenarios we could think of. We could think of a LOT of them. Our takeaway is that terrorism is exceptionally easy, and that it’s also so uncommon means that we really don’t have much to be afraid of.

    Also this.

    And this.

  192. 192.

    The Moar You Know

    Trump has gone way beyond Carter “malaise” territory into a new, unexplored place, where 1 in 20 Americans will die (Mama Rona has a 5% mortality rate with no treatment, and a 100% or close enough infection rate) and we should just deal with that.  16 million dead Americans.

    “We Need To Live With It” ok, good luck selling that one.  The steaks will look like a Nobel-winning idea in comparison.

  194. 194.

    Butter Emails

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    We just need to do it. Once it’s done, I expect public opinion will quickly swing in favor of it, or at least there will be strong opposition to replacing the names of actual American heroes with traitorous losers.

  196. 196.

    joel hanes

    @Kay:

    it will never be as bad as the speech at the church. They all sat in a room and planned that event, perhaps for days, and every single minute of it was actively offensive and off-putting, and that’s before the tear gas.

    Everything … except that I believe that Trump is capable of being worse.  He’s decaying before our eyes.

    ETA: or what NotMax said shorter and earlier

  197. 197.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Elizabelle:

    Wow. I REALLY fucking hate the NYT and Haberman now. No wonder she was pissed about the suggestion that Trump’s re-election is doomed.

  199. 199.

    Just Chuck

    @Brachiator:

     I would rather reporters have a mild distaste for everyone they covered, not be eager to suck up to them.

    And I think we need at least a handful to go full Hunter S. Thompson.

  201. 201.

    NotMax

    @Martin

    Exchange recently noted on a foreign TV show:

    “We have sinned against God.”

    “He started it. We’re just fighting back.”

  204. 204.

    MisterForkbeard

    @patrick II: “We need to live with it” is exactly the right approach if they meant “Take precautions, adjust our lives considerably, and act like responsible people and accept that’s the new normal for awhile.”

    But what they mean instead is “You need to get off unemployment and not blame the Trump administration for the deaths of your friends and family. Live with it!”

  206. 206.

    Kay

    @joel hanes:

    Everything … except that I believe that Trump is capable of being worse. He’s decaying before our eyes.

    I watched the church event in wonder, like I could never get so lucky. I picked up immediately that it was bizarre that Ivanka was carrying a purse but I never dreamed she was carrying it to hold…THE BIBLE.

    I really think that one cannot be outdone. Just the fall out from that one photo op. Generals were apologizing, park police were lying their asses off, ministers were outraged. It was the worst photo op in modern political history. Never before has one involved tear gas, and they PLANNED that.

  211. 211.

    Emma from FL

    @Jinchi: That’s not a bio point. That and the colleges are social markers. She’s pointing out her upper-crust bona fides.

  212. 212.

    PsiFighter37

    NYT article also mentions that internal polling has Trump losing in Kansas. If those folks are willing to vote him out…watch out. You might see a fuckin’ electoral bloodbath like you have never seen before in your lifetime, up and down the ballot.

  213. 213.

    Sab

    @Martin: Dick Cheney got a heart transplant years after he was too old for the transplant waiting lists. My whole family went and deleted the donor ok from our drivers licenses after that.

  217. 217.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Hey, yeah, I remember seeing those. An interesting question of what the police would’ve done had the tank not got caught on a highway divider

  218. 218.

    prostratedragon

    Trump’s campaign is like a custom suit in that it no longer fits after four months of quarantine.

    Besides, we all know how he defeats (even the possibility of) good tailoring in a landslide.

    Ah, the fireworks have started.

  219. 219.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Benw: alas Kissinger is still with us, even though he’s 96 or 97 and deserves a painful death more than just about anyone I can think of

  221. 221.

    joel hanes

    @Kay:

    As is so often the case, I hope you are correct.

    God I’m glad you’re back.

    Be well.

  222. 222.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Butter Emails:

    We just need to do it.

    I agree completely.

    In 2020 It’s beyond crazy that we still have military bases named after Confederate generals.

    I hope Biden has the stomach to ram through the name changes for these military bases. This is a wrong that should have been corrected decades ago.

  223. 223.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:

    I conclude that Trump’s base are too stupid to bring a small pair of scissors to cut the zip ties.

  225. 225.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Wait until he ran out of gas. I was watching the local news coverage that day – and police figured that was really the only way to stop him. The tank has a range of about 300 miles, so that could have gone on for quite some time.

    OJ was just a year earlier, so we were already well familiar with what overpass we’d use as a viewing platform had he come our way.

  226. 226.

    Jeffro

    @Wyatt Salamanca:If Biden wins, I hope he’ll move quickly to have these military base names changed regardless of what polling data shows because it’s simply the correct thing to do.

    One significant benefit of having a candidate who in all likelihood is only planning to serve a single term, and certainly has NFLTG, is that he can go full-bore on many issues that need addressing in this country without worrying about re-election.

  227. 227.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Some people in the comments speculated that the police/military would’ve gotten snipers involved at some point. Or maybe some special anti-tank teams. Waiting until he ran out of gas may have cost some lives

  228. 228.

    Martin

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, and? Is the goal to stop them or not? That would have just stopped them more.

    Reminder here that USSC ruled in 1980 that the land around Mount Rushmore was taken illegally by the US. There’s $1B in an account to resolve the claim, which the Lakota have chosen to not accept because the settlement wasn’t argued on behalf of the tribe. It’s still earning interest. It’s Lakota land. They’re being arrested for unlawful assembly on land the Supreme Court said is theirs.

    If there was ever a time to set a forest alight to remind the public of this situation, it’s right now. We’re in a social justice mood.

  229. 229.

    Jeffro

    @PsiFighter37: No. Way.

    Kansas?

    I’d better have a spotter on Election Night…someone who will make sure I have a couple glasses of water as the evening progresses, and a few Advil before I go to bed that night.

  231. 231.

    Jay

    ICE are massively funded, militarized police whose function is to deport people of color. Ethnic cleansing in America. Now they are a massively funded, militarized SECRET police (SS) that don’t have to identify themselves or answer to anyone. What could go wrong? #AbolishICE t.co/B8DSrbWcG1— Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) July 3, 2020

  232. 232.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay: 

    Now they are a massively funded, militarized SECRET police (SS) that don’t have to identify themselves or answer to anyone. What could go wrong?

    If they’re plainclothes and don’t identify themselves, then I wonder if some Stand Your Ground issues will come up?

  234. 234.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    The situation would’ve had to have gotten pretty bad to resort to that. Good thing it didn’t

  236. 236.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): K-rails are kind of easy. We always have highways under construction, so they’re pretty much everywhere. Just build a box a few miles ahead of him, and have another team ready to close the box a quarter mile behind him. Maybe it works. Worth a shot. Key is finding a spot on the highway where offramps are infrequent enough you can pull it off. Not super common around SD.

    Thankfully the guy figured out he couldn’t knock an overpass down. Good seismic codes really helped us out on that one.

  238. 238.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev:

    […]

    But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.

    They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

    It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

    […]

    Magnificence!!

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  240. 240.

    Matt McIrvin

    “Trump/Pence 2020: America’s Infestation Of Carbon Units Must Be Sterilized”

  242. 242.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kelly:

    Just saw this clip of Peter Navarro arguing to Ali Veshi that this is a “weaponized virus”. The crazy is strong in this one.

    Sheesh, watched that whole interview (on youtube). Strong interviewer. Wingnuttery is strong in that one. He is so arrogant; he needs (deserves) some major humiliation IMO. He is asserting that the CCP knew that it was a pandemic in November and certainly in December. That’s an assertion that is without evidence AFAIK.

    The hydroxychloroquine study in the news (that PN mentioned); large-ish, but not randomly controlled (or well-controlled in general):
    Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19 (July 01, 2020)

    An early response outlining weaknesses in paper.
    An Observational Cohort Study of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin for COVID-19: (Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (July 02, 2020)

  243. 243.

    MoCA Ace

    Don’t know if there is a pool or something but I tried to bet my MAGA brother-in-law $1,000.00 that the orange menace would mention in the speech or tweet/retweet within 24 hours that “many people are saying” he should be on Rushmore.  I offered to write and sign the check for him to hold but he wouldn’t bite.

    I put the odds right up there with the sun rising tomorrow.

  246. 246.

    Jay

     

    Vote Vets ad,……

    <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>This July 4th, there is a new name synonymous with traitor. Move over Benedict Arnold. Meet…<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/BenedictDonald?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#BenedictDonald</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/TRE45ON?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#TRE45ON</a> <a href=”https://t.co/zH0TgMf0Rb”>pic.twitter.com/zH0TgMf0Rb</a></p>&mdash; VoteVets (@votevets) <a href=”https://twitter.com/votevets/status/1279097817240305670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 3, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

  247. 247.

    Jay

    Hey, so, I got #Covid19 in March. I’ve been sick for over 3 months w/ severe respiratory, cardiovascular & neurological symptoms. I still have a fever. I’ve been incapacitated for nearly a season of my life. It's not enough to not die. You don’t want to live thru this, either. 1/— Dani Oliver (@DaniOliver) July 3, 2020

  248. 248.

    artem1s

    @Kilgore Trout: “We Need to Live With It Because We F&#ked Up Everything We Touched.”

    “We need to live with the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor.  They will just go away when it gets hot outside”.  FDR

  250. 250.

    different-church-lady

    @artem1s: “It’s just like 15 bombers and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to Zeros.”

  253. 253.

    catclub

    ‘Do your actual job, competently’ is the correct answer here, but somehow I’m guessing that wasn’t a plausible option.

    from dmsilev.

     

     

    Thats what paul Waldman wrote in his WAPO  column, on ‘Trump could get re-elected if he…”

    and then concluded no risk of that happening.

  254. 254.

    Brantl

    @Wapiti: Thinking that would be a mistake, Pence is the guy who wanted to force you people to have funerals for miscarriages.

  255. 255.

    Bill Arnold

    @Martin:

    That’s what he’s always been like. Nobody can stand him.

    Then why the fuck is he in a position of power? Is there some physical (or metaphysical :-) force of attraction between assholes?

  259. 259.

    Ruckus

    @Bill Arnold:

    Yes, yes there is.

    They like being assholes. They like being bigger assholes than their asshole associates. They like to out asshole each other. They work at it, they live for it.

  260. 260.

    low-tech cyclist

     “Why June Was Such a Terrible Month for Trump”

    Because it was an even worse month for the family of George Floyd?  And for another 20,000 Americans who died of the coronavirus during June, not to mention their families and loved ones?

    Just spitballing here.

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