Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

We still have time to mess this up!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The lights are all blinking red.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

No one could have predicted…

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread: Brad Parscale Sleeps with the… Data

Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread: Brad Parscale Sleeps with the… Data

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Ferrari Brad’s not actually fired, because — apart from serving as the passthrough for Uday’s side piece’s and Qusay’s wife’s no-show ‘campaign jobs’ — he has too much information on the Trump campaign ‘data operations’ to be allowed outside the compound. But he’s been publicly demoted, which just may satisfy Velveetamort’s rage for a scapegoat, at least until the next rally-disguised-as-a-presser goes wrong…

Per the Washington Post, “Trump replaces campaign manager as polls show him trailing Biden in presidential race”:

… The president wrote on social media that Parscale “who has been with me for a long time,” will stay as a senior adviser focusing on digital and data strategies. Parscale has been marginalized in the campaign for several weeks, officials said, with Trump angry about a botched rally in Oklahoma, where far fewer people attended than expected, and his lagging poll numbers.

Parscale did not respond to a request for comment. The campaign referred a request for comment to the president’s Facebook and Twitter posts.

Stepien was the field director for the 2016 campaign and has worked for the president since the election. He’s known for a low-key style in Trump world and his knowledge of battleground states. He was formerly a top aide to Gov. Chris Christie…

Parscale’s standing with the president has been growing shakier since the spring, according to people close to the president who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal dynamics. The underwhelming rally in Tulsa, which failed to meet expectations Parscale had set for Trump, was broadly blamed on the campaign manager.

A senior Trump administration official said last week that Parscale “knows he screwed up” but that he maintained the trust of the Trump family.

“Trust”. Now there’s a word not usually associated with the Trump family…

… Trump struck in optimistic note about the presidential race ahead at the end of his message about the campaign shake up, although it wrongly claimed that polls were moving in his direction.

“This one should be a lot easier as our poll numbers are rising fast, the economy is getting better, vaccines and therapeutics will soon be on the way, and Americans want safe streets and communities!,” he wrote on Twitter.

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    Jeffro

    Winning campaigns always demote their campaign managers less than 4 months from the election, right?

    Looking forward to all the revised ‘marketing/messaging’ after such a bold shake-up…it’s not like the “policies” are going to change for the better.

  2. 2.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Fired on facebook? I mean don’t Trump have someone who manages his staff for this?

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    Irony: Brad Parscale just got demoted on Facebook.

    Probably because Twitter was in lockdown for a good chunk of the afternoon after that security breach or whatever the hell it was.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    Doesn’t give Stepien much time to grift.  Ferrari or Lambro, yacht within sight, but multiple million dollar homes not so much.

  9. 9.

    Calouste

    @Jeffro: 4 years ago the shitgibbon fired his campaign manager in June (Lewandowski) and then again in August (Manadort) before he ended up with Bannon.

  13. 13.

    Melusine

    ?????

    “Velveetamort”

    Oh Annie Laurie, you’re giving Betty Cracker a run for her money! Which doubles the joy of the jackaltariat. Thank you for the laugh, it was needed today.

  14. 14.

    marklar

    Parscale’s Wager: A deplorable person should live as though Trump will be re-elected and seek to believe in Trump. If Trump does not actually win, such a person will still get a Ferrari and yacht, and possess information that can be used for blackmail, whereas if Trump does win, he stands to grift infinite gains (as represented by fleecing the gullible for additional cycles) and administer infinite losses to the citizenry.

  15. 15.

    Martin

    I hope Stepian is making a lot given it’s the last job in politics he’ll ever get.

  16. 16.

    janesays

    @Jeffro: Don’t jinx us… Paul Manafort got canned as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 only three months before the election.

  18. 18.

    Melusine

    Also, missed the Find Something New thread, but wtf was Apple thinking??? I expect this shit from IBM – we all know how they sided last time the world fell apart (“our systems can crunch numbers over 6 million+”). But I would have thought Apple had more sense.

  19. 19.

    Renie

    Maybe Brad should talk to Ivanka to “FindSomethingNew”.

    On another issue, very disappointed to find out Biden doesn’t like windows.  Guess he is more of a Doors person.

  21. 21.

    Danielx

    @p.a.:

    If he’s got a lick of sense he will specify that his compensation be heavily front loaded. I can imagine the train of thought now:

    ”If I’m going to give up my regular life, my integrity and my immortal soul to try to keep the Titanic afloat, I want 8 mil of my compensation in a fucking Channel Islands bank account by Friday or no deal, capisce?”

    Which would probably be prudent. If Trump loses, nobody in any way affiliated with his campaign will see another dime out of him no matter what they may be owed. It can’t be his fault he lost, so they failed and they’re fired.

    Those scenes will be epic: everybody is weak and has betrayed me, including the American people! Be lucky if the motherfucker doesn’t order a nuclear strike on Chicago.

  23. 23.

    dmsilev

    @WaterGirl: Apple and IBM cosponsored some sort of round table meeting associated with the Trump ‘lost your job? Think of it as an opportunity’ pr campaign. Not a good look for either company.

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    @Calouste: wait…that was 4 years ago?  Feels like 40.

    Good point.  Also good that the Ill Douche is not getting the “earned media” this time around, and has a record he has to run on, as much as he would like not to

  25. 25.

    kindness

    People who work for Trump should expect to be pin cushions as they will be stabbed in the back.

  26. 26.

    JAFD

    Good evening, jackals !

    Have any of you heard of, or from, an outfit called TurnoutPAC.org ?

    Somehow I’ve gotten on their email list, messages showing up in inbox with ‘clickbait’ subject lines in odd fonts.  Wondering if they’re on the level.

  27. 27.

    Jinchi

    The campaign referred a request for comment to the president’s Facebook and Twitter posts.

    I dream of a future where that comment seems as preposterous as it would have 4 years ago.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    I, and I imagine most everyone else, have been getting a lot of mail/emails asking for money and a lot of them I’ve never heard of.

    Example Progressive TurnOut Project, the letter is signed by Harry Pascal, founder. I’ve never heard of them but they of course want money. I get the usual suspects but there are tons of new or newish entities asking for donations – has the democratic side of the aisle just inherited all the fund raising outfits now that it looks like they are going to win and the republican side of the aisle looks to be a vlad project for the foreseeable future?

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @JAFD:

    I see we are on the same page.

    I looked at their webpage and didn’t recognize any person involved. It’s not a small outfit, lots of people work there, but I’d bet your question is the same as mine, is the money better spent on a direct donation to a candidate or to one of these outfits that I’d bet keep a fair (or unfair!) percentage of the donation, for operating costs.

  35. 35.

    different-church-lady

    I mean, I’m sure if John McCain were still alive this would be good news for him.

    (DCL +10^36)

  38. 38.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @NotMax:

    Listen man, you wouldn’t believe some of the bizarre, non-sequitur stuff that gets put in cartoons sometimes, particularly from the 80s-90s

  39. 39.

    Martin

    @WaterGirl: They do this now and then. Some anodyne program that keeps them in the room. Last time Tim Cook agreed to serve on some committee and then used his time to just talk about the benefits of immigration.

    Yeah, it’s annoying.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @different-church-lady: Let’s not silly here.  Death does not prevent this from being good news for John “Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain.

    Also, to hell with John McCain and whoever his name-dropping daughter is.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @NotMax: Apparently for Rocky and Bullwinkle they simply didn’t deliver the episode until about an hour before it was to air, so the network censors didn’t have time to review it. South Park did the same thing.

  44. 44.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @NotMax:

    I also find it really interesting that there’s a (real) world map shown in that clip. According to TV Tropes, their version of the internet doesn’t work anything like ours, then or now

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Even had her own theme music.

    Paraphrase of one Hexadecimal bit, after release from being bound, gagged, and tortured.

    “You mean she could have freed herself at any time? Why didn’t she just do that?”

    “She seemed to like it.”

  47. 47.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I vaguely remember Bonkers.

    I miss when animation was hand drawn like that

    Do you remember Captain N: The Game Master, the Legend of Zelda cartoon? Man, did those suck.

    Apparently back in the day, Nintendo didn’t give DIC much background information on the games they adapted so they had to make shit up most of the time

    Speaking of DIC, they were did the Sonic SatAM show, which rocked

  48. 48.

    sdhays

    @Martin: I doubt it. He’s not some guy completely from Dump-land like Parscale – he was a top aide to Chris Christy. These guys are like cockroaches; they just keep coming back.

    And I think even if the Democratic Tsunami in November is bigger than anything since 1932, the Republican Party will be doubling down on Dumpism for many more election cycles until they work it out of their system (or the American people decide to reward that thinking again, in which case we’re all going to die…).

  54. 54.

    janesays

    @HumboldtBlue: I saw John’s tweet about that description right after it was posted in the comments and unless that’s already been introduced I think the creator deserves a shout-out just out of laughing fairness.

    Cough, cough…

    I’ve been calling him that for some time now, but I think it stole it from someone on the Twitter machine a few years back…

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Until 1952, anyway. It’s been said that Eisenhower could’ve run as either a Democrat or a Republican. I never understood why he ran as a Republican when he was fairly moderate.

    As it turns out, segments of the GOP back then were almost as nutty then as it is now. It’s an interesting counterfactual history question to consider if Taft had won the 1952 GOP nom and the subsequent consequences for the course of the Cold War.

    Then again, the isolationism he was known for was pretty well discredited at that point

  60. 60.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m leery that Ike would’ve been elected running on the Democratic ticket.

    After all, the Republicans hated that Democrat who was elected 4 times in a row so much that they passed a Constitutional amendment to prevent that from happening again.

  62. 62.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @mrmoshpotato:

    In the case of Captain N, I don’t blame you. You weren’t missing much, honestly. Mostly poorly written, cliched crap.

    Liked the art style though and the animation could be very fluid (probably because it was animated by a Korean/Japanese studio, like a lot of shows of that era)

  64. 64.

    Kelly

    Just returned from a drive to see comet Neowise. Found a good view and several more on the way home. Higher in the sky than I expected. A fine outing with Mrs Kelly on a warm summer evening here in the western Cascade foothills. Off to bed now.

  66. 66.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    True, but I swear there were quite few crazies proposing bonkers constitutional amendments that would abolish the Separation of Church and State and other crazy shit like that during his admin

  67. 67.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Eh I think he could’ve been. He was a popular war hero, having been a US general and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe

  71. 71.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Kelly: Oooh, lucky you! I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time and trouble trying to see it – got up at 5 am twice (fog the first time, turned out to be 15 minutes too late and sky too bright the second time), scanned the evening sky with binoculars until my family hollered at me for delaying dinner, etc., etc. I finally got the tiniest tantalizing glimpse last night between patches of blowing fog and city lights, not to mention dirty windows, but still could make out the tail. Of course it’s foggy again tonight.

    Nevertheless, I persist! (Or will again tomorrow.)

  75. 75.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Yup, watched most of those too.

    Captain Planet has an (earned) reputation for being narmy and honestly dumb, but there was one episode that really stuck in my memory and I think it was about virtual reality where they were playing some kind of game about extinctions

    It began at the start of the industrial revolution up until the near future. Pollution and climate change increasingly destroyed the Earth until eventually most species, including humanity, went extinct

    It was a powerful message from a normally stupid show

    Still, I’ll never forgive Ted Turner for killing SWAT Kats

  89. 89.

    piratedan

    now, just because the GOP appear to be a group of idiots, it doesn’t mean that their paymasters (the GRU and the Organized crime oligarchs) are… starting to suspect that there’s a method to some of this madness.. so hear me out and see if this strategy that I see unfolding has some merit…

    so while the country continues to spiral downward, there are a couple of related events unfolding…

    1. DJT is trying to (and looks like he will) circumvent the data going to the CDC, which means that he will control the information and will lie about it to his hearts content to indicate that we’re suddenly turning the corner on controlling the virus.  This will make it tougher for the real numbers to be tracked and make it tougher for all organizations big and small to know what to do to try and handle this effectively.  Because he has the numbers under his thumb, he can continue to kill Americans in pursuit of his policy gains (because apparently that’s what the GRU is telling him to do, one more societal underpinning kicked away)
    2. The same paymasters are pulling strings with the GOP Senate, which means no more relief bills to float the American economy and the workforce, which will lead to massive evictions and foreclosures starting in August thru who knows how long… and what does that imperil?  Voting.  If you don’t have an address or are out on the streets, how do you enforce your franchise?  Who is likely to vote for Trump, mostly people who aren’t affected by all of this.  They aren’t losing their houses or their livelihood.  So where are the evictions likely to take place?  Why in the big cities and if the big cities are mostly the Democrat base, well that just kind of sucks doesn’t it?  So I would anticipate there being a buttload of poll watchers who are specifically tasked with watching the residencies of voters and keeping those folks who have been moved in with their families or have been moved into shelters being disenfranchised at just the right time to prevent them from trying to vote, at the same time that their lives are collapsing around them.

    i would expect to see some serious shenanigans in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina where people become in transit and are denied access to vote.  I would like to be wrong and please reassure me that someone else is thinking about this and if this is getting played out by anyone else who might be paying attention.

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    Hehehe

    Thanks to streaming, I'm going to spend retirement watching the same TV schedule I watched when I was 10.— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 16, 2020

  94. 94.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @piratedan:

    Can’t the international community condemn this and the EU at least put sanctions on the Trump administration?

  96. 96.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @piratedan:

    By hampering the minority-rule of the GOP and delegitimizing them

    Like the other commenter noted above, you can’t hide dead bodies. If Trump is narrowly re-elected through hinky means with foul play, the majority of people will not accept it and the GOP will be overthrown

  101. 101.

    Jay

    ?‍♀️If you listen to the dashcam audio from the minutes prior to the shooting, you can hear Anderson & McNew cruelly mocking Charleena. They psyched themselves up to harm her before they entered the building.Suicide by cop?Try premeditated murder.https://t.co/CL5gn9rFaA— Tae Phoenix is an Anti-Fascist ☂️ (@TaePhoenix) July 16, 2020

  103. 103.

    Jay

    On the bright side, T and I fucked off from the Feral Fundi house, by going to a Hotel. From a Hotel, we have gone to house sitting in a beautiful, quiet house, for Alice and Jennifer. Next week, beautiful house sitting for Kareen, then a beautiful apartment of our own.

    No more toxcicity

  104. 104.

    Jay

    All I hear is an argument for defunding the police and investing in a robust mental health system. Then we are one step closer to abolishing the police and stoping them from murdering us. Because make no mistake about it; Charleena Lyles was murdered by SPD officers. https://t.co/OmtJeUFI9k— Nikkita Oliver (@NikkitaOliver) July 16, 2020

  107. 107.

    Zzyzx

    @piratedan: to have evictions on a scale big enough to affect the election means that you’d have tens of millions of frustrated and desperate  homeless people. That would crash the economy so hard that there’s no way Trump wins the election. Besides, a lot of his supporters would end up caught in that trap.

    Admittedly, Trump is dumb and shortsighted enough that I could see him thinking of that as a clever plan, but I don’t see how food riots and people terrified that they’d be next and plummeting home values gets a president re-elected.

  112. 112.

    Zzyzx

    @Jay: sure, a real estate business might be interested in temporary low housing prices, but that’s a completely different argument than trying to steal an election by having so many people get evicted that they can’t vote. It’s a counterproductive strategy. The marginal gains you get from a few thousand people being off the rolls are more than offset by the economy taking.

  113. 113.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @piratedan:

    You forgot to mention the destabilization of the post office in your list of upcoming voter fuckery.

    Every time I hear someone say Trump’s reelection chances are nil I want to strangle them with the straps from my face mask.

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @Jay:  I listened to a long interview with Christopher Plummer. He talked some about The Sound of Music , but also talked about his stage career, and a Shakespeare production when William Shatner was his understudy.            Before Gene Rodenberry produced Star Trek he worked on Have Gun, Will Travel with Richard Boone. Like when Captain Kirk is captured by aliens, Richard Boone’s Paladin would get cornered and roughed up by outlaws, and deliver a soliloquy about the indomitable nature of Man. Then he’d  turn the tables on the bad guys.

  116. 116.

    low-tech cyclist

    Ferrari Brad’s not actually fired, because — apart from serving as the passthrough for Uday’s side piece’s and Qusay’s wife’s no-show ‘campaign jobs’ — he has too much information on the Trump campaign ‘data operations’ to be allowed outside the compound. But he’s been publicly demoted, which just may satisfy Velveetamort’s rage for a scapegoat, at least until the next rally-disguised-as-a-presser goes wrong…

    Velveetamort – I don’t think I’d heard that one before!  That’s now my new fave.

    And now I know which one’s Uday and which one’s Qusay.  And I bet Barron’s dreaming of the day when he can lure a girl into his life by dangling a six-figure income in front of her.

  117. 117.

    Mary G

    Andy Slavitt, Obama’s healthcare head, took Ron DeSantis out behind the woodshed but good last night on Twitter. I am posting the whole thread compiled by @threadreaderapp, it is so good.

    The state of Florida now has more daily cases now than NY at its peak. A couple things need to happen now.

    We need to get enough Rem & Dexy to the state (therapies). We will need a lot. Those drugs weren’t around as common treatments when NY had its peak. This can keep more people alive.

    But first we have to reduce hospitalizations or find capacity and medical staff.

    Particularly in the densely populated areas of Miami & Tampa & the LatinX communities, we need to increase testing. An 18% test positive rate means uncontrolled spreaders, many asymptomatic.

    Someone needs to talk to DeSantis about schools & what will happen if the schools open face to face. Individual districts should defy state orders if they have unmitigated spread.

    Florida has no state tax dollars and counts on tourism for growth & jobs.

    He may or may not care about the immigrant communities that make up so much of Florida’s rich culture, but the rest of the country does.

    DeSantis is the slowest to catch on that death follows hospitalization which follows cases. That older people get it after younger people.

    He must get past the point that he believes he has super skills that others don’t to battle the virus. He lacks even the most basic disposition for a crisis & his defensiveness clouds his judgement.

    The business community & civic leaders have attempted to help increase testing capacity & help in other ways. Last I’ve heard he hasn’t answered the calls or arranged a meeting.

    This week I’ve talked to three different families who had the means to leave the state and have. They both believed an airplane ride was an easy decision and much less risky.

    I need a cigarette after that. Hope all Florida jackals stay safe.

  118. 118.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @De-lurking just this once:  Apparently The Knucklehead Of The Frozen North must. Complete with misspellings and shitty grammar.

    Oh, and he’ll tell us at length everything we Yanks are doing wrong. When he hasn’t been able to find his arse with both hands since he was potty trained.

    Occasionally he c&p’s an interesting tweet. Other than that – worthless.

  124. 124.

    Barry

    @Danielx: “If he’s got a lick of sense he will specify that his compensation be heavily front loaded. I can imagine the train of thought now:”

     

    And/or he’s got a data processing system where he controls the bottlenecks for the compaign.  Either pay his wholly-owned company or no work gets done.

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