I haven’t loved the most recent couple Lincoln Project ads, but they’ve completely redeemed themselves here. This ad has an audience of one, Trump, and it really is trying to get into his head, especially since the basis of the ad is true: he’s surrounded by disloyal staffers who leak constantly. The whole tone and tenor is deliciously nasty.
While we’re talking about Trump’s psyche, his niece’s pitying psychological biography has to leave a mark, too.
Donald Trump’s niece writes her study of his character from the perspective of a trained clinical psychologist.
“Child abuse is, in some sense, the expectation of ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’,” she writes. “Donald directly experienced the ‘not enough’ in the loss of connection to his mother at a crucial development stage.
“…Having been abandoned by his mother for at least a year, and having his father fail not only to meet his needs but to make him feel safe or loved, valued or mirrored, Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.
Sad.
Mary G
Boo fucking hoo.
lollipopguild
Trump is always a victim and never to blame for anything.
Betty Cracker
The thing Mary Trump wrote that will probably bother Trump the most is that he cheated on his SATs. He’s highly invested in everyone else thinking he’s smart, which is why he brags about his (nonexistent) intelligence so much. Having that called into question — again — will leave a mark.
Here’s an excerpt of the book from The Daily Beast that rings absolutely true:
Yep. They weaponized Trump’s massive insecurities quite effectively.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: “I’m the goodliest at brain!”
different-church-lady
And speaking of sociopaths: looks like Zuckerberg’s little empire of manipulation is finally imploding:
lollipopguild
@Betty Cracker: “I am good enough, smart enough, and by golly some people like me.” I will take Stuart Smalley over “stable genius” trump any day.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@different-church-lady: So much more that I ever expected. My conclusion is that those big advertisers did some analysis and determined that Facebook ads aren’t effective in addition to whatever issues they have with the platform wrt racism.
Kropacetic
Well, let’s put him in a flight suit, land him on an aircraft carrier, and put up a big banner:
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Mary G
FFS:
Another Scott
@different-church-lady: Z said they’d come crawling back soon enough.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53262860
I’m sure Goldline and Blue Silver and all the rest will make up for losing all the other ads. Soon enough…
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
Oh no…
Oh… no no no no no…
Now I hate you for giving me that earworm…
mrmoshpotato
Oh that smrt! Even sooper jenus!
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Not just “Sad!” Low energy sad!
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic:
You mean stuff him into a flight suit.
Hell, even war criminal W kept up his physical health.
rikyrah
Just came to post about the ad?
trollhattan
@lollipopguild:
“I’m treated so unfairly” is the constant lament that catches me short every time. Poor little lord Donny.
His victims, now counted by the millions, I’m sure empathize with this lack of fair treatment.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
Yes, sad. Sad for a whole, whole lot of people.
Another Scott
It’s the whole lot of them – not just Donnie. We can’t forget that.
Cheers,
Scott.
LuciaMia
Yeah, that he used a proxy. Another shocker….not.
Alison Rose
I hope it works like the tell-tale heart on him.
oldster
I approve of the Lincoln project’s attempt to cause suspicion and distrust within the Trump crime family.
I note that this is also exactly what Putin has tried to do with the US as a whole for the last decade or more.
The Russian support of the NRA and other tentacles of white supremacy has all been intended to destroy our sense of national unity. Ideally, the Russians want to create the conditions for another Rwandan genocide, only with AR-15s in place of machetes.
And the Russian attempt to destroy the unity and purpose of the West has also succeeded because of Trump, and because of other flunkies like Farage and BoJo. Destroying the EU and destroying NATO are high on Putin’s list of life-time accomplishments, and he has succeeded far better than he ever imagined he would.
The key to his success? Encouraging the white nationalism that still infected multi-cultural western countries like the US and England.
The quicker that we can stamp out white nationalism and return to our manifest destiny as a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural melting pot, the sooner that we can defeat Putin’s ambitions.
Roger Moore
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
I suspect the big issue is that Facebook isn’t a reliable business partner. They allow companies to manipulate their algorithms, and it sure as hell looks as if how much you can get away with depends on how much Zuckerberg likes you. Of course that kind of thing probably affects how well their ad service works.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: I listen to MSNBC on my Sirius app sometimes, and the difference in the ads from TV is remarkable. Does Cars for Kids have a facebook ad? also Bill O’Reilly hawking some supplement, which always makes me giggle.
@different-church-lady: I put The Bridge (mellow geezer pop from the 70s) on a Sirius preset in the car because I am an old man, and they’ve been playing that fucking song a lot for the last month
mdblanche
@different-church-lady: A deviated prevert like Zuckerberg was always going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company eventually.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: one of trump’s biographers, I think Tim O’Brien (sp?) said trump and his siblings are pretty much estranged, but they’ve been circling the wagons about this book. Maybe the statute of limitations hasn’t run out on everything, and I’m guessing the corrupt judge would know that better than any of rest.
CaseyL
I understand why the oligarchs,neo-Confederates, Nazis, and theocrats support Trump. I totally get that.
What I don’t get is why lower middle class and lower class men look at him and see a He-Man bestriding the world like a Colossus. He’s not even a charicature of a Manly Man. He’s like an 18th Century European courtier: corsetted, wigged, cosmetic-smeared, and teetering on high heels.
Kropacetic
You think one of those sausage making machines will work?
Barbara
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Others have made the point that brand advertising on Facebook has limited return on investment. On the other hand, advertising for smaller companies, especially those with e-commerce platforms, probably yields greater returns.
low-tech cyclist
“Los Angeles is a lonely town to grow up in, especially if you’re a small boy named H.R. Haldeman.”
-Mark Slackmeyer
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/05/25
different-church-lady
@mdblanche: Seeing what you did there was a lot of fun!
Calouste
@Another Scott: FB makes most of its money of smaller advertisers, so they can afford to have some larger ones drop out for a while. But even so, not having major brands advertising on there is going to make it feel cheap. And showing disdain for your customers isn’t exactly enticing them to come back.
stinger
I’m not crazy about the Lincoln Project. Does anyone seriously think that once Trump’s out of office they won’t turn that clever nastiness against Democrats?
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This lawsuit raises some interesting issues. “Prior restraints” on publication are so disfavored that I knew the publisher, at least, would be able to get out of the lawsuit. Mary Trump could be on the hook for return of whatever was paid to her, but in a case like this, the language of the contract will be examined with a fine tooth comb to determine what she actually agreed not to disclose. Any words that describe what she agreed not to discuss will be read as words of limitation, meaning that she was free to discuss anything not specifically outlined in that clause. And then, of course, there is the issue of how long that contract should be viewed as being in effect.
Barbara
@stinger: I share your sentiments. Their commercials are not intended for people like me. The jury is still out as to whether they actually understand their role in bringing us to this sorry state.
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic:
That would literally have to involve making mincemeat out of Dump.
I mean, we could try…
Kropacetic
We could convince him as long as we could show it serves his ego.
“You’ll have this bigly military celebration on an aircraft carrier. And only a fit, macho man can wear one of these flight suits. I have just the plan to get you in and you can have as many hamberders as you want.”
Gin & Tonic
@LuciaMia: I know a guy from more or less that vintage, probably 5-6 years younger, who earned a pretty good amount of money taking SAT’s for people. Went on to a faculty position at a well-known university.
mrmoshpotato
@stinger:
They most definitely will. Look at who’s associated with it. Professional Ratfucker Rick Wilson? C’mon!
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, and all these fuckers want is a quieter, Republican president who will slyly fuck over most of the country, not this screaming, orange baffoon who yells the quiet parts.
japa21
@mrmoshpotato: On the day AZ hit triple digits in deaths, the beginning of a long length of days where that will happen.
mad citizen
I put a hold on the Mary Trump book this afternoon at my library. I had one for the Bolton book but couldn’t imagine myself reading that one, so I cancelled the hold.
I too was hoping for the Andrew Gold song in the Lincoln Project ad. I’m just “meh” on this ad. Once in a while I really like one–the out of tune harmonica one for the Tulsa trip made me laugh out loud. By far my favorite one. They should hit hard and regularly on the dementia theory if they really want him out of the picture.
As for Katie Miller, wtf? These people claim to be Christians?
MattF
The word that comes to mind about Trump these days is ‘damaged’.
Cameron
I do hope Trump gets a taste of his own Michael-Cohen-style medicine:
“Mr. President, about Donald Trump…”
“Trump…Trump. No, sounds a bit familiar, but….Kamala, do you remember a Donald…Now I have it! He was the janitor who inspected the bunker, wasn’t he?”
Dan B
@different-church-lady: The advertisers may be back in a month so stubborn Zuck may wait them out. Until there is an alternative platform or government pressure nothing may change. Public pressure may help. There are a number of tech bros making headlines on the intertubes being monsters that the worship of tech billionaires is in jeopardy.
germy
Joe Shapiro. I wonder if he’s commented yet.
rikyrah
I’m going to keep on asking this. Where are the Governors of AZ, TX and FL on tv, with the Army Corps of Engineers, pointing out the field hospitals that they have created at – convention centers or professional sports arenas? Why aren’t they on television asking medical personnel from around the country to come and help them through this, like Cuomo, Pritzker and Inslee did?
THEIR HOSPITALS ARE FULL.
FULL
FULL
MaryRC
@CaseyL: He’s a bully who treats everyone as his inferiors, even his family. He does what he wants, gets what he wants and doesn’t seek anyone’s approval (we know that’s not true but that’s how his base sees it). He eats what he wants and instead of lecturing him about cholesterol, his doctors tell the world that he’s in perfect health. Even his personal slovenliness is a sign of a top dog who doesn’t need to dress to impress. All this plus his supposed billions makes him look like an alpha male to these people. He’s what they would be if they could.
germy
Kent
I use FB on occasion, mostly to keep in touch with family and far-flung groups like Peace Corps alumni that I served with. But I don’t ever remember seeing any Fortune 500 company ads in my FB feed ever. I occasionally see some ad for a some sort of tiny niche mail order company selling something like survival gear or a weight loss/exercise plan. But that’s about it.
Maybe I have just aged out of the target market for most of these companies. But based on the FB feed that I see, I don’t know how any of these companies make any money on FB. Now YouTube, that’s a whole different story. I see stuff there all the time. the difference is that YouTube forces you to see at least a part of the ad while FB lets you scroll right past without stopping.
I don’t get how they make billions in ad revenue based on the FB that I see. Maybe the whole thing is all just fake and built on FB’s own internal algorithms that have never really been critically evaluated by these big companies.
Dan B
@stinger: Lincoln Project has said they’ll go after Tom Cotton and Lt. Gov. Patrick after Trump is out. I believe they would di well to target every current cabinet member as well. The competent quiet ones scare me. And it is a choice between my rights being constrained by so-called social moderates, and recession versus depression – fiscal conservatives do not understand economics, period, but they are not as bad as the current cabinet.
What troubles me is the idea that Trump is the cause of our troubles. There’s the cabinet and the GOP. Plus the Democratic leadership is barely okay at communication. They don’t put effort into exposing the monstrous right wing bias of the MSM and many social media outlets.
After watching the PBS special on the women’s suffrage struggle it was interesting to note they knew to keep in the media non-stop and how this was the key. All the lobbying produced nearly nothing until the media, often hostile, was relentless.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: It’s almost like he’s a man you can bait with a tweet.
germy
The Lodger
@rikyrah: Ducey in AZ isn’t likely to ask medical professionals to volunteer. I think he expected Pence to just stuff a few hundred of them into a box and Fed Ex them from DC.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin: I wonder if he can be trusted with nuclear weapons.
clay
@stinger: Who cares?
a) They’re helping now
b) You can only play one game at a time. I’m worried about 2020 right now. We can worry about 2021 if we survive this year.
Martin
@rikyrah: Because the field hospitals didn’t get used and Republicans point to those as failure of Dem governors.
And to be fair, the military didn’t want to fill them with infected, which was much of the reason why they didn’t get used. Even for non-Covid cases, they were afraid a heart attack coming in also had Covid and would infect everyone due to inadequate testing.
In short, we’re unwilling or unable to run these like the Chinese did. And I kind of get that – we don’t have the fluidity of infrastructure that the Chinese do, so their approaches don’t really translate here. For instance, in their field hospitals they were using portable CT scanners to image the lungs to detect Covid without having to do a viral test. That was part of their intake process in their field hospitals.
Portable CT scanners are rare here in the US. We tend to have large fixed CT scanners and bring patients to them.
There’s just so many things that they do differently (and for something like a pandemic, much better) than we do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@stinger: @Barbara: as the O’Bros pointed out, and I think they’re both right and a little defensive, these ads are aimed at, and resonate among, a demographic that’s pretty small in the electorate and overrepresented among the sort of people who work in politics and media, highly educated and higher income.
Martin
@mrmoshpotato: Of course not. Thankfully, the football doesn’t send instructions to the missiles. There are human generals that the President doesn’t fetishize in the sequence.
Adam would understand this better than me, but I’m pretty sure that a strike would not get called by NORAD or whoever if they didn’t see for themselves the threat, even if they got valid codes from the WH. I think they have to know that a scenario is underway which might involve the codes before they would accept the codes at face value. After all, they’re part of the chain to notify the president of a threat. I don’t think the Prez can just out of the blue nuke someone.
Dan B
To add to my observations about the Lincoln Project folks is they probably wouldn’t steal Social Security and end the ACA like Trump’s cabinet and many GOP leaders but we’d probably have regular recessions that allowed big business and Wall Street to snap up a lot of bargains. Their version of tha American Dream is eating people who are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s different than locking up the weaker.
Patricia Kayden
Ken
Why’s she dredging up these ancient family scandals? I’m sure that was ages ago, probably before she was 18 – like when he said more-or-less the same thing about his daughter. Why can’t she move on, like his daughter has?
The Pale Scot
This is the best LP ad so far
Fellow Traveler
Danielx
@CaseyL:
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: It’s pretty common. One of the reasons why UC has been giving standardized tests a diminished role is because of this.
I’ve been somewhat successful steering my institution to think of cheating as an economics problem. We will advocate that a degree from our institution is worth $x in future earnings, with the expectation that they can contextualize that well enough to sway their decision making.
Ok, so if you’re assuming they can contextualize that, then you have to assume they can run that backwards and determine a value for admission to your institution of $y. You’ve now given them a budget to work with to secure that admission. If you rely on a 4 hour long test to secure that admission, that’s a hell of a big budget. You can pay a lot for someone to help for you for such a short period of time. The whole test prep industry hangs off of this very premise, and that extends equally to outright cheating.
And if you look at cheating as an economics problem, then rather than try and change this massive culture, and people’s insecurities, and all that, simply change the cost/benefit. Balance your admissions criteria to reflect the commitment of time necessary. Paying someone to impersonate you for 4 years of high school is not economically viable for all but a few people. But paying someone to cheat on the SATs is cheap enough almost anyone can do it if they accept the premise of the value of a college degree.
Instructors – this applies at the course level. If the grade is solely dependent on the final, you will have far more cheating than if the grade is distributed across the course. It is economically unviable to cheat through a continuous assessment course. Its also often economically unviable for the instructor to do manual grading through one as well. [Topic #1 in: how to rethink online learning]
But just so people know how far this goes, we do now have students impersonating other students for a full term. They get a fake student ID made, show up to the first day of class as the other student, and ride it through to the final. Works best for large enrollment classes where students are not called out by name and where the friends of the impersonated student can’t call out the fraud because they are unaware it’s happening.
If your institution doesn’t put photos on your student roster, demand that. That has helped us because the fake student ID doesn’t change the photo in our database. And the other students are your best defense against this by creating opportunities for names and faces to be connected. Someone will inform you of the deception if they see it happening. They are relying on the anonymity that large classes provide to hide it.
Patricia Kayden
@germy: So Trump has no qualms making comments about the body parts of close female relatives (including both of his daughters). Gross but White evangelicals are cool with that as long as they get their far right judges.
KSinMA
@oldster: Well said.
Harold
I made a petition here to revoke Trump’s Wharton degree due to the revelations in the book. Sign and Share!
Martin
@Patricia Kayden: I think Pence is pretty solid evidence that a lot of white evangelicals have massive struggles with internal preferences and outward social behavior.
Given the routineness that we learn some holy roller has a rent boy hobby, I think their view of Trump isn’t that he wants to bang his daughters, because who doesn’t? – am I right fellow congregants – but that he’s not strong enough to resist those urges from living in modern day Sodom, aka NYC.
Unlike raising taxes, having unpure thoughts can be forgiven.
Kent
If he cheated on his SATs he probably no doubt cheated his entire way through Wharton and his undergrad degree as well. That kind of money can buy a LOT of cheating, even at a place like Wharton.
Captain C
Ivanka’s still hot for Donald (or at least happy to pretend to be to gain favors), Mary never was.
Martin
@Harold: Man, if Wharton rescinded the degrees of everyone there who cheated on their SATs…
Kelly
A more recent example of cheating pointed out by the Jackaltariat is that the Trump business have been getting by while the Trump family spend more time on phony baloney politics than their phony baloney jobs.
Barbara
@mad citizen: My husband bought the Bolton book. I made it half way through the first chapter so far. At least from what I have read so far, Bolton’s attempt to thread the needle is basically, to say that if he had been on board from the beginning Trump would have been more effective because Bolton would not have resisted Trump’s (in his view) reasonable preferences — with the only real example he gives being pulling out of the JCPOA with Iran. He basically says that people around Trump thwarted these preferences “out of self-interest,” which seems to me to be a real slur. I mean, I don’t have much appreciation for Kelly or Mattis or Tillerman but I don’t think anything they did to “thwart” Trump was triggered by their own self-interest. Anyway, in Bolton’s tale, the fact that Trump felt thwarted by his staff meant that he stopped paying attention to experts altogether, so when Bolton came on board he had basically no chance to rein in Trump’s worst impulses. No, I don’t buy it, but at least I saved you wondering what you are missing.
The other thing that comes through loud and clear is that it’s still 1981 in Bolton’s head. His view of the world and how to make it better is unimaginative and deeply retrograde, and his world view basically revolves around Iran.
Jay Noble
@Martin: There was tale back in the 80’s that the Freshman class at Iowa or Iowa State got together and made a chimp part of their class. Students took turns taking classes for their simian classmate and then on graduation he came across the stage to get his diploma.
Shana
@mad citizen: Much as I hate to admit it, Stephen Miller, and I assume Katie, is jewish.
Chris Johnson
So, don’t be as much of a monster as Trump.
If we have Dems that can be Lincoln Project-ed, fuck those guys. It’s a process. Our job is to get better, not to make the world safe for Dem-colored monsters. I think it’s pretty easy for us not to be as much of a monster as Trump.
catclub
and decided to use the racism excuse to cover their incompetence in not doing the effectiveness analysis first.
FTFY
Formica
@stinger:
Your point is well taken, and I think that “the enemy of my enemy…” only goes so far. Their complicity in creating the conditions which lead to the Orange Menace making it into the White House shouldn’t be overlooked, either.
All of that said, the fact that they are going after not just Trump, but also Trumpist senators, etc. bodes well for the overall campaign. I mean, seriously: Rick Fucking Wilson is busting his ass not only to evict Twitler from the oval office, he’s trying to flip the Senate for the Democrats! That’s certainly no guarantee that The Lincoln Project’s principal members won’t turn back to attacking the left in 2022, but I have a smidge of hope that they will keep fighting to return the GOP to a pre-Trump status. Pre-Newt is too much to ask for, I’m sure, but I can dream.
Slightly more realistically, I hope that the success of The Lincoln Project might shift the Overton Window in our favor. To wit, there is a constant refrain in response to the Project’s ads which boil down to “why don’t Democrats/progressives/The Left/the DNC make ads like this?” It’s not like these folks are stupid; basic political science will tell you that fear and anger are powerful tools to motivate the electorate. The answer, as I understand it, is that the Beltway Chattering Classes, who define “the rules” and “civility” and all that, would have a collective seizure and excoriate the Democrats for their “nastiness” and “incivility”. Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza would browbeat the Dems into submission, demanding apologies from the Left acting like, well, Republicans.
To put it much more succinctly: Republicans are assholes. Everyone expects them to be assholes. And for some reason, this means Democrats perpetually have to bring a knife to a gunfight. But maybe, just maybe, the success of The Lincoln Project will change the narrative enough to allow Democrats to go for the jugular every once in a while. I’d love to see them make hard hitting, mean spirited, fucked up ads that hit where it hurts, instead of erudite think pieces that preach to the choir and have zero chance of swaying anyone in the middle.
Ryan
They do seem to have a throw spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks approach.
Gvg
@Formica: it won’t exactly work.
this is kind of like I used to see as a GOP delimma. They knew the white vote power was shrinking and that they should appeal to minorities. They said so in analysis, but they never did it. Why not? Because it would take time and proven actions to woo some minorities back to them. In the mean time they would lose a greater number of voters they already had because they had concentrated racists in their stable.
The LP ads are not coming from Democrats, therefore Democrats are not responsible for what they say. Loyal already democratic voters can ignore the ads and won’t call and yell at their reps to complain. LP is beneficial to us because it’s only peeling off some Republican voters, not trading gain a few Repubs, lose more Dems. Our voters don’t want the same kinds of ads as wavering republicans. What you want is not identical to what every democratic voter wants…and I think the less engaged than people who spend allot of time on blogs don’t match those that do.
That’s not to say, we might not need to re evaluate messaging after the election and change some style things. But I doubt the results are going to be as blunt as you want.
LP has a kind of freedom in not being responsible to anything except themselves. They can’t go back by the way. Some of those ads mean their colleagues will never forgive them. They are really neither D nor R. Some people have said they will revert after the election. I don’t see how they can after some of the ads they put out. they really burned bridges.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris Johnson: Max Cleland would like a word with you.