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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Train Wreck II

Train Wreck II

by Betty Cracker|  August 4, 202010:11 am| 227 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Trumpery

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Did y’all see Jonathan Swan’s interview with Trump? Good God. Trump’s handlers should have staged a diversion to stop that disastrous interview. Pulled a fire alarm. Pumped laughing gas into the room. Set themselves on fire. Whatever it took.

“Train wreck” is too gentle a description. It was like a nuclear-armed jet crashed into a train, which then plummeted off the bridge and landed on a nuclear reactor, causing an explosion and meltdown that reached the earth’s molten core and triggered simultaneous eruptions of every volcano on the planet.

This exchange about statistics that prove how badly the U.S. (Trump) has bungled the coronavirus response in comparison to other developed countries:

.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”

Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

This incarnate illustration of the word “churlish” that should appear in online dictionaries forever:

.@jonathanvswan: “How do you think history will remember John Lewis?”

President Trump to #AxiosOnHBO: “I don’t know…I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration.” pic.twitter.com/LDv76rrIFc

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

This babbling nonsense about voting by mail:

Trump raised new alarms about the alleged danger of election fraud in an interview with #AxiosOnHBO, warning that “lots of things can happen” with voting by mail if the presidential race isn’t decided on election night.https://t.co/u2fx7XrRTM

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

Swan is being lauded for his interview skills, just as Chris Wallace was a couple of weeks back when his interview exposed Trump as an incoherent fool. Swan did better than most (including Wallace, IMO) by pushing back with some easily accessed facts to counter the lies and nonsense Trump predictably spewed. It ain’t rocket surgery.

The portion of the interview with the COVID-19 charts (first embed) unmistakably revealed why we’re in the mess we’re in for all who haven’t figured it out. It’s a Biden campaign ad and fractal portrait of Trump all in one clip. Trump’s people spend all day creating colorful, misleading charts to puff up the boss’s fragile ego, and Trump spends all day watching TV and throwing himself a pity party because no one else is praising his efforts. That’s the White House’s pandemic management strategy.

The comments about John Lewis are of a piece because they’re all about Trump’s feelings too. Lewis, a giant of a man — a central and inspiring figure in the ongoing struggle for civil rights — is dead, but Trump felt snubbed when Lewis didn’t attend his inauguration or state of the union speeches, so that’s the only noteworthy thing about Lewis in Trump’s solipsistic view.

Same with the vote-by-mail thing — there is no coherent strategy except ego protection. Trump’s donor/Postmaster General will try to use the levers of power to turn the situation to their advantage, but I’m convinced it began not as strategy but as a preemptive excuse for a possible election loss.

The Peppered Moth

Somewhat related, Politico has an article up about how Trump’s usual bag of tricks doesn’t seem to be working this time. The discussion isn’t about doing the actual job of the presidency, of course, since no one is doing that. It’s about campaigning.

The article notes that Trump’s “untamed political instincts, once treated by Republicans with an almost mystical revery [sic], look increasingly unlikely to stave off defeat.” Ya think?

Republicans have been bombarding Trump with advice, arguing that his insistence on stoking the same divisive issues — white resentment of minorities, the culture wars, and “LAW & ORDER” — that worked so well for him in 2016 appeal only to the Trump diehards and have turned off a broad majority of the country.

“It used to be that he would do five rallies a day and say whatever came off the top of his head and he thinks that won him the election,” said a senior GOP congressional aide, echoing the sentiments of a still-intact class of Republicans appalled by Trump and how he is turning vast swathes of Republican-leaning suburbs into Democratic territory. “It’s like when a 25-year old gets drunk and shows up at a family engagement. That can be cute. But if you’re a 50-year-old and you show up at the gathering drunk and embarrassing, that just hits a little differently. It’s not cute anymore.”

The analogy would work better if the 50-year-old showed up drunk at a funeral for a person he’d killed in a drunk-driving accident. You could see why the family wouldn’t find it cute anymore. But he won’t change — can’t change:

“I think it took several months [for the campaign] to realize that all the tools that worked brilliantly for four years were not in tune with where the country was,” according to Newt Gingrich…

But Giuliani suggested that Trump didn’t see things that way. “It’s worked before for him,” he said. “He believes it’s going to work again.”

Of course he does. Trump is a peppered moth:

The peppered moth, which is native to the United Kingdom, comes in two variants. One is black and white. This is perfect for camouflaging itself on lichen-covered surfaces. Another variant is mostly black. This version of the moth is much easier to spot under normal conditions so predators eat it more often. As a result, it makes up a tiny fraction of the peppered moth population.

But in the 1850s, something happened. When the industrial revolution kicked off, buildings and trees became covered with soot rather than lichen. The black version of the moth had come into its own. Effectively invisible and invulnerable to predators, it accounted for 98% of city-dwelling peppered moths by 1898.

But then things changed again. As air quality began to improve in the mid-20th century, buildings and trees became less soot-covered and the black version of the moth lost its advantage. Today, peppered moth populations in cities have returned to what they were in 1850 and the black peppered moth is, once again, rare.

The key point here is that the black peppered moth did nothing to earn its incredible success. It did exactly what it had always done. But a new ecosystem niche appeared that suited its “talents” and allowed it to thrive. When conditions changed again, the black moth did not adapt to these new conditions, no more than it had “adapted” to the old ones. A creature of instinct, its success was entirely because of dumb luck.

Exactly right.

Now, there are seriously evil and crafty folks with hundreds of billions of dollars on the line in this election who will stop at nothing — and I mean NOTHING — to shape the outcome. And there are tens of millions of our fellow citizens for whom the past three-plus years have been a Golden Age — they’ve gloried in letting their racist, sexist, xenophobic freak flags fly and seeing their own bigotry and self-pity reflected in the president.

The former group will find it extraordinarily difficult to prevail unless Trump changes his tune and quickly, and the latter will be demoralized if he does. But Trump cannot and will not change, no more than an individual peppered moth can alter its hue. To mix metaphors and paraphrase Nora Desmond, Trump is still small; it’s the problems that got big.

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Reader Interactions

227Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 4, 2020 at 10:26 am

    I’m about a third of the way through the full interview. Had to take a break — it’s a lot to stomach in one seating.

    I’d never heard of Jonathan Swan until snippets of this interview began showing up. He’s very impressive. Hope to see more of him.

    The Peppered Moth analogy is excellent.

  2. 2.

    Paul in St. Augustine

    August 4, 2020 at 10:26 am

    I found it hilarious when Trump forced one of his COVID charts on Swan, insisting he keep it.

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    August 4, 2020 at 10:27 am

    If we live through this, two words suffice:

    DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

  4. 4.

    SFAW

    August 4, 2020 at 10:27 am

    After hearing his comments on John Lewis, and making it all about himself …
    Although it would not be a solution, since we’d still have Pence to deal with, I wish that the narcissistic asshole would fucking stroke out already. My blood pressure would go down, I wouldn’t be subjected to his ceaseless barrage of vile, disgusting bullshit, and my use of the word “fucking” would decrease dramatically.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    August 4, 2020 at 10:30 am

    It’s like when a 25-year old gets drunk and shows up at a family engagement. That can be cute

    Of course, it’s not “cute” for a 25 year old to show up blitzed out of their mind at Christmas dinner or grandpa Mike’s funeral or whatever either.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    August 4, 2020 at 10:32 am

    @Paul in St. Augustine: It’ll be a collector’s item, just like a Sharpie-annotated weather map.

    Everyone who, a year ago, was using that episode as a warning sign for Trump’s ability to deny reality, stand up and take a bow. Yes, that’s just about all of us.

  7. 7.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:32 am

    Trump playing with charts and graphs reminded me of this, from The Sky’s The Limit

  8. 8.

    Baud

    August 4, 2020 at 10:32 am

    Isn’t Axios a Kushner business?

  9. 9.

    Ohio Mom

    August 4, 2020 at 10:32 am

    What timing — I just finished watching the interview.

    As an exercise, I tried  to pretend I was a Trumper, though I kept slipping out of character at every egregious claim (No, more testing does not create more cases! No, they are sending out applications, not ballots! And so forth).

    Still, I think that if one was a loyal Fox News watcher, one would be favorably impressed. Trump repeated everything they know to be true, and he pretty much kept a calm, cool demeanor, even as tne Axios reporter kept challenging him.

    I hate typing all that but I am trying hard these days to step out of my bubble as an anthropologist would.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    August 4, 2020 at 10:32 am

    @dmsilev:

    In a wing in the Smithsonian.

  11. 11.

    Salty Sam

    August 4, 2020 at 10:34 am

    The terror that shows in his eyes is revealing.

  12. 12.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:34 am

    @dmsilev:

    It shows how they think. I agree, it’s not cute for a young person to show up drunk at a family event.

    But Lizza… wasn’t he one of the sex pests who “reported” on HRC’s presidential campaign?  I bet Matt Lauer envies him now.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    August 4, 2020 at 10:35 am

    Trump is down at the Crazification Limit in California

    Biden leads Trump in California by 39 percentage points, 67% to 28%, the poll found. That’s 9 points larger than the margin by which Hillary Clinton beat Trump statewide in 2016 — a record at the time. And the share of Californians who approve of Trump’s performance in office, which has held steady in the mid-to-low 30% range for nearly his entire tenure, has now ticked downward to just 29%.

    […]

    “There was a question of whether his support was already so low in the state that it couldn’t go lower,” said Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll “shows the answer is no.”

  14. 14.

    kindness

    August 4, 2020 at 10:37 am

    So in other words just another day ending in a ‘y’.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    August 4, 2020 at 10:38 am

    Trump could get away with practically anything in 2016, because he could say whatever made his followers feel good (or good and mad), he had no track record as an officeholder to bog him down, and the media were fixated on ButterEmails.

    This time, he’s got the unavoidable problem of ~160,000 dead (plus another thousand or so every day), not to mention the economic fallout which has made the Great Recession look trivial by comparison, neither of which he is the least bit inclined to do anything about.

    “It is what it is,” he says about the ongoing death toll, which is what you say when there ain’t a damned thing you can do. Except he could do plenty, he’s just not going to.

    Don’t ask me how stupid he must be to think that’s his best strategy. If, even now, he put people in charge of his Covid-19 response who knew what they were doing, and he invoked the Defense Production Act at their request and generally issued whatever orders they told him to, the media would fawn over him, saying this was the moment he’d finally become President, and yada yada yada. He’d save tens of thousands of lives (that shouldn’t have been in danger in the first place) and he might well win himself a second term without chicanery.

    But he’s too dumb to change course. He really is like those pepper moths.

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    August 4, 2020 at 10:38 am

    I put that tweet in the comments last night, because the “you can’t do that” was so gobsmacking, but I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the whole thing. I’m not too fond of Axios – they seem to have been founded by the guys who thought Politico wasn’t pro big business enough. Plus their articles are three short paragraphs with a “go deeper (102 words) link. Swan does seem to use this to his advantage – he seems to get people to blurt out stuff like this.

  17. 17.

    SFAW

    August 4, 2020 at 10:39 am

    @germy:

    Trump’s not as coherent as Benchley’s character. Hell, Trump’s not as coherent as the wildest incarnation of Professor Irwin Corey, not even close.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    August 4, 2020 at 10:41 am

    Trump is a peppered moth:

    Or, to use a slightly different analogy, Trump is a guy who won the lottery and who thinks the right way to maintain his fortune is to keep buying tickets so he can win it again.

  19. 19.

    Jinchi

    August 4, 2020 at 10:42 am

    I particularly liked when he bragged that the US had far fewer cases that “The World”.

    Not even “the rest of the world”: the whole world including the United States.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 4, 2020 at 10:43 am

    @Ohio Mom: What Trumpers think is irrelevant.  They will vote for him in any case.  Just like what Balloon Juicers think is irrelevant.  We will vote for Biden in any case.  What is important is that soft Ds, Soft Rs, and swing voters see it and recognize that, whatever they thought in 2016, this guy can’t continue in office.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 10:44 am

    I try to resist conspiracy theories, but damn me if he doesn’t make it hard, like with the stuff about Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell

    Jacob Shamsian @JayShams
    In the Jonathan Swan interview, at around the 26-minute mark, Trump just casually floats the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was killed in prison and says he “doesn’t know” that Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with child sex trafficking.

    also, “big deal”

  22. 22.

    mad citizen

    August 4, 2020 at 10:45 am

    The body language is great–the interviewer leaning back and relaxed, trump sitting upright (back brace to keep him erect?, is that why he always sits that way?) on a low chair.  I did notice Swan’s foot moving a lot during the COVID clip, though, had to be some nervousness there.

    Someone on twitter pointed out and thanked Axios for shooting it like a VEEP episode, and that’s what is so great about it.  This interview would have fit right in that show.

  23. 23.

    Benw

    August 4, 2020 at 10:45 am

    I mostly feel like everything that could be said about Trump(ism) by sane people’s already been said, but the moth analogy is fantastic.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 10:45 am

    @Baud: I don’t think so. I know Kushner once owned the Observer and ran that into the ground. I think Axios is where the worst of the Politico people went.

  25. 25.

    Cermet

    August 4, 2020 at 10:46 am

    Tragic that so many must now die, and so many more must suffer so horribly because an FBI director violated rules, and so many left wing purist all combine to let that orange fart cloud win. We can only hope the nightmare ends by Jan. at the latest.

  26. 26.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:47 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Trump just casually floats the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was killed in prison

    I wonder how Barr reacted to that part of the interview.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    August 4, 2020 at 10:48 am

    @lowtechcyclist: Trump’s approval rating in November 2016 was 38%. Now, it’s 41%. So he’s actually getting away with more now. The difference is that people who already disapprove of Trump don’t hate his opponent as much.

  28. 28.

    TS (the original)

    August 4, 2020 at 10:48 am

    The interviewer stopped him cold in the John Lewis excerpt  – Taking your relationship with him out of this

    Every interviewer should use that phrase.

  29. 29.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:51 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    Elizabeth Spiers was at the Observer during Jared’s time.

    I think Axios does a lot of access-driven stuff that's Bad for Journalism, but will make an exception for Swan, who's been pretty consistently great and somehow conducted this entire interview without spontaneously combusting into a smoking pile of WTF. https://t.co/H92sQexih7— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) August 4, 2020

  30. 30.

    Mary G

    August 4, 2020 at 10:51 am

    WaPo has a scathing “news analysis” piece  on this interview by Phillip Bump saying in not quite so many words that the president is an idiot:

    The Swan interview certainly suggests that someone is keeping Trump from understanding what’s actually happening with the pandemic. The odds are that the person who is doing so is Trump.

    After all, it is what it is.

  31. 31.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 4, 2020 at 10:53 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Hoover got nearly 40% in 1932.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    August 4, 2020 at 10:53 am

    there is no coherent strategy except ego protection.

    Same as it ever was.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/12/20/in-cabinet-meeting-pence-praises-trump-once-every-12-seconds-for-3-minutes-straight/

    The Emperor has such beautiful clothes. Nobody has ever worn such finery!!1…

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:54 am

    Notable that Trump didn’t call @jonathanvswan “nasty” or call his questions “so stupid.”

    — Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) August 4, 2020

    He reserves that treatment for female journalists.

  34. 34.

    Chris Johnson

    August 4, 2020 at 10:54 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Given that Epstein was killed in prison by Russians and that Trump is aligned (as well as he can) with the Russians and that Trump believes Ghislaine Maxwell is unshakably aligned with the Russians, it is in line with his ‘I wish her well’, which is both a threat (if she breaks) and a promise (if she remains on his and Russia’s side). And so, he ‘doesn’t know’ if she was involved in sex trafficking, because he knows (he was part of that circle himself!) but it’s his job to cover for her no matter what… IF she doesn’t break. Apparently Epstein couldn’t be trusted not to break, or had broken.

    Women are tough. It’s possible that Maxwell won’t go the same path as Epstein. But these are weird times. And it’s obvious that Trump will cover for Maxwell no matter what happens. He stands to be implicated as it all tracks back to Russia and a kompromat operation, which he was happy to help operate back in the day (he would be more in line of hooking people up with Russian money deals, Epstein was more about the sex trafficking)

  35. 35.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 10:56 am

    At this point, it should be clear that the GOP is just trashing the country on the way out the door so the increasingly inevitable incoming Democratic admin is stuck with a depression, while insulating corporate interests from the damage. https://t.co/iv979BGNoE

    — Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) August 4, 2020

  36. 36.

    Cermet

    August 4, 2020 at 10:57 am

    Read this in the comment section of “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” and it really tells us the real state of so-called journalism/reporting today with the orange cloud of gas.

    A lot of people are falling all over themselves praising Swan for his interview “technique” here, but I’d just like to note that he’s not using some form of journalistic sleight of hand to elicit the dumbfuckery from Trump, he’s simply not letting the president spout five moronic things and a couple of real whoppers per answer, and then trying to circle back and focus on the most egregious. No, Swan is interrupting Trump, and either challenging each moronic answer, or asking him to clarify the whopper.

    This is how you interview an inveterate liar. You don’t give them the opportunity to gambol across the fields of deception and dishonesty, leaving turds of deceit and disinformation sprinkled in their wanderings while you’re left sniffing out which one you’re going to step in.

    The press still hasn’t figured out that dealing with a man this dishonest, this reptilian, this bugfuck crazy, means you have to adjust your approach when dealing with him. Good on Swan for finally finally FUCKING FINALLY showing them all how it can be done.

  37. 37.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 4, 2020 at 11:04 am

    Okay, finished watching the full interview. Wow.

    That was a nice bit of production, during the end credits, showing one presidential portrait after another. Impossible not to make the contrast with the man we’d just seen blathering and obfuscating for the past 35 minutes.

  38. 38.

    The Moar You Know

    August 4, 2020 at 11:08 am

    DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:  Sign me up.  That’s a custom that badly needs to come back  into practice.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 11:08 am

    @Cermet: Spot on. It’s really simple to prepare to counter the lies because Trump is too stupid to invent new ones; he tells the same whoppers over and over. You could wake me up out of a dead sleep and ask “what lies will Trump tell about vote-by-mail, the pandemic, etc.,” and I could tell you. It ain’t rocket surgery!

  40. 40.

    geg6

    August 4, 2020 at 11:10 am

    @Baud:

    Definitely not.  It’s Van de Hei and Allen, originally of Politico.  They apparently have a former Biden staffer as Exec VP and a Bloomberg editor as editor-in-chief.

  41. 41.

    Jinchi

    August 4, 2020 at 11:14 am

    @Matt McIrvin: I think Trump’s 2016 approval rating was lower because it included a lot of Republicans like Lindsay Graham and Paul Ryan who were angry because they thought he was going to lose a winnable race against Hillary. But they voted for him anyway.

  42. 42.

    lowtechcyclist

    August 4, 2020 at 11:20 am

    @Matt McIrvin:  In an era where GOP politics is all about tearing down one’s opponent, one of Biden’s still-underappreciated attributes is that it’s next to impossible to get people to work up a good hate at him.  It’s like trying to get someone mad at Captain Kangaroo or Mister Rogers.

  43. 43.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 11:22 am

    @lowtechcyclist:
    They tried with Mr. Rogers (I’m not kidding):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5JkzyGXJ2w

  44. 44.

    leeleeFL

    August 4, 2020 at 11:24 am

    @The Moar You Know: I would agree that wiping his crimes out of existence is necessary and important.  But wiping his awfulness and that of his enablers and supporters will only leas to more, and worse, of same.

    Allowing the Lost Cause BS to overtake the collective memory of the Traitors Rebellion, led to today’s refusal to truly atone for America’s Original Crimes.

    Pardoning Nixon led to Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, plus Cheney.  And now, the final (hopefully) chapter, tRump and the present pile of shit.

    Ignoring, or forgetting has not done us well.

  45. 45.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 11:26 am

    @Betty Cracker: And yet they managed to do a better job interviewing the Orange Clown than the most esteemed newspaper in the nation.

  46. 46.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 11:28 am

    @Ohio Mom: Balloon Juice can get bubble-like too. During the primaries it was a Warren bubble with most FPers and commenters gushing about the senator.

  47. 47.

    Haroldo

    August 4, 2020 at 11:29 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    This.  Precisely this.

    @Ohio Mom: What Trumpers think is irrelevant.  They will vote for him in any case.  Just like what Balloon Juicers think is irrelevant.  We will vote for Biden in any case.  What is important is that soft Ds, Soft Rs, and swing voters see it and recognize that, whatever they thought in 2016, this guy can’t continue in office.

  48. 48.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 4, 2020 at 11:30 am

    The Axios interview has Charlie Pierce so incensed, he is actually spelling fuck with a “u” instead of fvck or f*ck.

  49. 49.

    blacque_jacques

    August 4, 2020 at 11:34 am

    @The Moar You Know:

    Give him a Presidential portrait like the one they gave Marin Faliero, the 55th Doge of Venice. Scroll down for the one that actually went up on the wall of the grand hall.

  50. 50.

    A Ghost to Most

    August 4, 2020 at 11:36 am

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’d never heard of Jonathan Swan until snippets of this interview began showing up. He’s very impressive. Hope to see more of him.

    He’s married to Betsy Woodruff Swan. Their kids will be skyscrapers.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    August 4, 2020 at 11:36 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    A lot of people here figured she had the strongest policy chops. Which she probably did.

  52. 52.

    jonas

    August 4, 2020 at 11:41 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    If we live through this, two words suffice:

    DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

    Quite the contrary, I think. There must be thorough investigations and exposures of the damage this administration did to democracy and the citizens of this country and those revelations must be published, remembered, and preserved in all their gory details. Those who forget the lessons of history and all that…

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    August 4, 2020 at 11:41 am

    Am imagining Trump showing charts and graphs to women to explain why they needed to have sex with him. “You can see here why you’ll have a better time with me than literally anybody else on earth.” Such an excellent salesman.

  54. 54.

    zzyzx

    August 4, 2020 at 11:43 am

    This is a minor deal, but listen to Trump pronounce “Yosemite” as “Yo! Semites.”

    Here’s the clip pic.twitter.com/b4NtCuEa2z— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) August 4, 2020

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    August 4, 2020 at 11:44 am

    @SFAW: in trumpov’s world, “I don’t know him” is considered to be about the biggest insult he can come up with, because it means in his view Lewis was a nobody.

    gosh, Donnie, if you don’t know him I guess he isn’t worth knowing!

    ?

  56. 56.

    There go two miscreants

    August 4, 2020 at 11:45 am

    @Cermet: That middle paragraph is a thing of beauty!

  57. 57.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 11:47 am

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t need you to mansplain politics/policies of the sitting senator from my state to me. This is not the first time you have done so either.

  58. 58.

    Chyron HR

    August 4, 2020 at 11:48 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    So are you actually not aware that Biden has not just one but TWO failed primary campaigns under his belt, or is your contempt for Warren and her supporters just an example of what you obliviously described as “the misogyny of Indian women”?

  59. 59.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 11:49 am

    @Chyron HR: I am aware of Biden’s failed campaigns. You are calling me a misogynist because I don’t worship your heroine.  I like women who stand for other women, like Hillary Clinton.

  60. 60.

    joel hanes

    August 4, 2020 at 11:50 am

    @mad citizen:

    is that why he always sits that way?

    Fat person here.

    When an obese man reclines even a little without Aeron-quality back support, it stresses the lower back — and what others see is a face atop a receding mountain of abdominal fat.    Uncomfortable and not flattering — Trump’s suit coat would open, and the white shirt  would emphasize a big, round gut in the eye of the camera.

    Trump needs the low chair so that he can sit with his legs apart so that the lap band portion of his abdominal fat can be accommodated between his legs.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    August 4, 2020 at 11:50 am

    This interview proves how ridiculous our so-called MSM is.

    This interview should not be an anomaly. It should be the norm.

    And, because it’s not – this proves how crappy the MSM is.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    August 4, 2020 at 11:51 am

    @zzyzx:

    So Yosemite Sam was actually Jewish? Is killing wabbits Kosher?

    Good Christ, he’s so fucking stupid

    ETA: Yeah, I know I’m mapping Elmer Fudd’s speech tics onto Yosemite Sam. So sue me.

  63. 63.

    scav

    August 4, 2020 at 11:52 am

    @blacque_jacques: Good plan, but it must definitely not involve any gilt lettering or frame — he’s just too fond of cheap glitter. We need to think hard about the most bland, generic and insulting colors and typeface.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    August 4, 2020 at 11:52 am

    @lowtechcyclist: Obviously you’re not on Twitter.

  65. 65.

    Kelly

    August 4, 2020 at 11:53 am

    @SFAW:I wish that the narcissistic asshole would fucking stroke out already. My blood pressure would go down,

    Mrs Kelly got a smartwatch last week. She reports her pulse rate goes up 50% when she sees Trump in the news.

  66. 66.

    SFAW

    August 4, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @Kelly:

    She reports her pulse rate goes up 50% when she sees Trump in the news.

    Mrs. SFAW knows to turn off the sound, or change the channel, when Diaper Donnie comes on the news. Sh’e worried I’ll throw a rock through the TV screen.

  67. 67.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @Kelly: I don’t watch him on TV at all. I change the channel. I have blocked him on Twitter too.

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    August 4, 2020 at 11:58 am

    @Jinchi: That’s probably true. Trump’s approval numbers jumped way up immediately after the election: all those conservatives who’d grudgingly voted for him, and “independents” who supported him out of pure hate for Hillary Clinton, decided he was a great guy after all.

    Trump was never as loved at any time in his life as he was on Inauguration Day 2017, when he was almost at fifty-fifty support. I remember reading that he didn’t get a honeymoon period, but he really did–“almost not net hated” was just as good as his honeymoon got.

  69. 69.

    MisterForkbeard

    August 4, 2020 at 11:58 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Right. Don’t you understand? Biden is a child molesting dementia patient who is hiding in his basement and simultaneously rapes every woman he can find. He’s also apparently the REAL racist candidate and hates poor people because he doesn’t back M4A.

    Though I get the larger discussion point; even the really deluded people don’t seem to hate him with a passion, they just…. try hard to despise and pity him. It’s weird, like they want to hate him but have to keep forcing themselves to do it through increasingly outlandish arguments.

  70. 70.

    planetjanet

    August 4, 2020 at 12:00 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: There was nothing misogynist about @Amir Khalid’s remark.  It was a statement of fact.  Your attack is unwarranted.

  71. 71.

    Anoniminous

    August 4, 2020 at 12:00 pm

    Exposing Trump as an incoherent fool is a three step process:

    1.  Ask him a question

    2.  Record his response

    3.  Broadcast his unedited response

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    August 4, 2020 at 12:02 pm

    @joel hanes: eww

  73. 73.

    Yutsano

    August 4, 2020 at 12:02 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: I hate his voice. It’s why I can’t do anything with Sarah Cooper. She’s brilliant but I have to listen to him. I just can’t do that. Hell even the Swan interview I can only watch in snippets.

  74. 74.

    Jeffro

    August 4, 2020 at 12:04 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: same here – I bet I have watched him speak on TV maybe two or three times in the past two years

    But then again, I hardly ever turn on the cable TV news channels anymore. Maybe once a week at most.

  75. 75.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:06 pm

    @planetjanet: He always comes to explain why I am wrong about Warren and other BJers are right. I have painstakingly and politely explained my difference of opinion more than once (probably 4 or 5 times if not more).

    And no it is not a fact that she is better at policy than the other Democrats who were running for the nomination. It is an opinion. An opinion I disagree with.

    She won 14 towns in Massachusetts on Super Tuesday.  So most people in MA disagree with the BJ bubble.

  76. 76.

    WaterGirl

    August 4, 2020 at 12:07 pm

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Biden is a child molesting dementia patient who is hiding in his basement and simultaneously rapes every woman he can find.

    I hope that doesn’t come up in a google search about Biden.  That would not be helpful.

  77. 77.

    Formica

    August 4, 2020 at 12:10 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I like women who stand for other women, like Hillary Clinton.

    I must profess ignorance here, which may be due to my dudeness, or possibly because I was on a “politics diet” for quite a while; perhaps both. That said, I have not heard this criticism levied at Senator Warren before. Do you have the time and inclination to enlighten me? TIA.

  78. 78.

    scav

    August 4, 2020 at 12:10 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: But that nevertheless doesn’t make him misogynist. He continues in his opinion – you continue in yours. Deal with the fact that others aren’t persuaded by your assertions and pronouncements.

  79. 79.

    Doug R

    August 4, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

     

    Balloon Juice can get bubble-like too. During the primaries it was a Warren bubble with most FPers and commenters gushing about the senator.

    Yes, and?

  80. 80.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    Will Tuesday be less stupid than Monday?

    *checks*

    NOPE!

  81. 81.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:15 pm

    @scav: That is okay by me. Was just pointing out the Balloon Juice can be a bubble too.

  82. 82.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    August 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    My wife said the other day that Donald Trump couldn’t hold a job at McDonald’s.  Every week he does something that would get him fired from McDonald’s.  The only thing he’s qualified to do is own something that somebody else gave him and bark orders at people.

  83. 83.

    cain

    August 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    Is Train Wreck II’s byline  – “Electric Boogaloo” or is it something else?

  84. 84.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    have a laugh at his expense, it’s him, but only 12 seconds

  85. 85.

    planetjanet

    August 4, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: It is not misogynist to say a lot of people on Balloon Juice thought she was better on policy.  You disagree on policy.  You don’t have to malign people with a different opinion.

  86. 86.

    jc

    August 4, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    I think Trump’s only metric is: is my base fooled by [my latest bogus claim]? I brought out charts and waved them around, pretending to sound authoritative — and 60+ million suckers thought: oh look, he’s got graphs, he must be telling it like it is.

  87. 87.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    It was like a nuclear-armed jet crashed into a train, which then plummeted off the bridge and landed on a nuclear reactor, causing an explosion and meltdown that reached the earth’s molten core and triggered simultaneous eruptions of every volcano on the planet.

    Every volcano going boom makes it art.  Was the train also nuclear-powered like Supertrain?

  88. 88.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    @Formica: She said that the DNC rigged the nomination for HRC in  2016. Sneered when Kamala Harris suggested that the Orange Clown be banned from Twitter.

  89. 89.

    MazeDancer

    August 4, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    If Ghislaine wants to postpone her entry into hell, she better sing fast. Spill all the Trump stuff.

    Because that was a ” you gonna die, too, girl” threat for sure.

  90. 90.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    @cain: Electric Boomaloo

  91. 91.

    cain

    August 4, 2020 at 12:19 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    @Cermet: Spot on. It’s really simple to prepare to counter the lies because Trump is too stupid to invent new ones; he tells the same whoppers over and over. You could wake me up out of a dead sleep and ask “what lies will Trump tell about vote-by-mail, the pandemic, etc.,” and I could tell you. It ain’t rocket surgery!

    Yeah, but this whole thing is about getting people to keep staring at their 80″ screens. So of course they are going to focus on the whoppers because the whoppers will get more people watching.

    The goal isn’t to illuminate or anything like that – it’s to get ratings.

    Now of course, if the ratings for the Axios interview is very high and there is a lot of social engagement – then you can expect similar interviews.

    (ob: these rules do not apply to Democrats, where shitting on them is expected and always gets the ratings they want)

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:20 pm

    Why does Dump always sit like he’s about to wipe his butt?

  93. 93.

    Danielx

    August 4, 2020 at 12:20 pm

    All the Gingrich types who recognize that what worked four years ago ain’t working now: fuhgeddaboutit. He will continue to do as he always has and changing his campaign staff won’t help. He is incapable of learning or listening, and no amount of wanking on the part of political operatives is going to change that.

    A slight variation on the one trick pony: the president* is a one trick horse’s ass.

  94. 94.

    scav

    August 4, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Please note the disagreement was concerning your accusations of misogyny.

  95. 95.

    MisterForkbeard

    August 4, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    @cain: Pretty sure “Electric boogaloo” is ruined for everyone now.

  96. 96.

    EthylEster

    August 4, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    His handlers are as stupid as he is if they give him more than one chart.

  97. 97.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:21 pm

    @planetjanet: I didn’t call him a misogynist those are your words. He has explained the exact same thing to me n number of times. So I called it mansplaining after the nth time he repeated it

    Mansplaining: explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.

  98. 98.

    planetjanet

    August 4, 2020 at 12:22 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: mansplaining is misogynistic behavior.  I respect your opinion.  Try to be kind.

  99. 99.

    Immanentize

    August 4, 2020 at 12:23 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    This is not the first time you have done so either.

    Is that on your auto key type now?

  100. 100.

    cain

    August 4, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: Emphasis on “loo”

  101. 101.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    @MisterForkbeard: Maybe that’s the Trump Effect. I don’t know. There are legit reasons to have misgivings about Biden that an opponent who’s not committed to outlandish attacks could inject into public discourse. He has a lot more baggage than Hillary Clinton, IMO, though, critically, has spent less time as a target of the wingnut smear machine for obvious reasons. I’ve been waiting (with dread!) for those attacks to be unleashed. But maybe they aren’t coming. Maybe standard political attacks just don’t cut the mustard anymore — not on the alt-right or the alt-left.

  102. 102.

    cain

    August 4, 2020 at 12:28 pm

    @MisterForkbeard:

    @cain: Pretty sure “Electric boogaloo” is ruined for everyone now.

    I’m sure we can find something else for subsequent sequels and there will be more.

  103. 103.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 4, 2020 at 12:29 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Yes, this was very much a pro-Warren blog during the primaries.  The majority of commenters were quite passionate about her.  It was not an unreasonable position.  It wasn’t mine, but it wasn’t unreasonable.  FWIW immigration isn’t a top issue for most people here.  It’s not that they don’t care or don’t think it is important.  It’s just that, in their ordering of priorities, it isn’t at the top.  That’s just this blog.

  104. 104.

    cain

    August 4, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    Has rose twitter declared themselves to be alt-left? I would say they are not remotely left – they are just demagogues. They are a grievance factory just like Trump supporters.

  105. 105.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    @Betty Cracker: they’re coming, those attacks. I’d comfortably bet $100 bucks that Barr will announce… something… some kind of “investigation” into Hunter Biden, and maybe one of Biden’s brothers. I suspect he and whoever he works with in the campaign (Kellyanne? Chris Christie?) are trying to find the right tack between the maximalist offensive I’m sure trump wants, that would probably backfire with moderates/suburbanites, and something more insidious aimed at the “they’re all the same” types of low-info regular voters. But subtlety is not their strong point.

  106. 106.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    My bad,  I commented on this thread. Amir is not a misogynist.

  107. 107.

    Cameron

    August 4, 2020 at 12:32 pm

    @zzyzx: “Yo, semites!”  WTF?

  108. 108.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:33 pm

    I admire – and am very concerned about – those of you subjecting yourselves to this “interview.”

  109. 109.

    Steeplejack

    August 4, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne, @germy:

    I’d never heard of Jonathan Swan until snippets of this interview began showing up. He’s very impressive. Hope to see more of him.

    I will disagree a bit about Swan, or at least put in a caveat. I haven’t followed him closely, but I have read some of his articles at Axios and seen him regularly on Morning Joe. On the latter he comes across as snarky, sometimes to the point of dickishness. He is not a superstar. He is squarely in the Axios zone of insidery, both-sides-y (but with a GOP/​corporate tilt) horse-race coverage.

    I would liken his tremendous success in the Trump interview to an average player having an MVP-level performance in one clutch game. And he is not on the White House beat and didn’t have to worry about his status if things went really badly with Trump. So he could go for broke. Which is not to say that other journalists shouldn’t get tough(er) with Trump.

    Interesting tidbit from Wikipedia, which may explain why Trump put up with so much from Swan and didn’t shut him down:

    While at Axios, Swan broke several stories about the Trump administration. Former Washington Post journalist Ronald Kessler claimed in his 2018 book The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game that Swan is among a handful of reporters to whom President Trump feeds information, with instructions to attribute quotes to an unnamed White House official.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    Massive explosion in Beirut. Let’s hope this is all it is:

    David Wessel @davidmwessel 43m
    CNN: The source of the explosion was a major fire at a warehouse for firecrackers near the port in Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.

  111. 111.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:36 pm

    @Cameron: Just be glad he didn’t go, “Yo!  Anti-Semites!  Where my Nazis?”

  112. 112.

    geg6

    August 4, 2020 at 12:39 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    So….

    Although I donated to and canvassed/phone banked/sent postcards for Clinton, I don’t stand up for women because I wanted Warren as the candidate and still would be thrilled if she was the VP nominee?

    Seriously, this is your argument?  I know  you have some sort of vendetta against Warren, but this is ridiculous.

  113. 113.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: You are right in that assessment.  I am the one  that doesn’t belong. That’s just the way it is.  I have no idea why I keep commenting here. I guess habits are hard to break. And I have made friends here who I miss and so I drop by.

  114. 114.

    Just One More Canuck

    August 4, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    @SFAW: Say your prayers, varmint

  115. 115.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 12:41 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re probably right. After the Trump campaign pulled its ads when it shit-canned Parscale a while back, I wondered if they’d put up new ones that were more in that vein, i.e., an appeal to “both sides suck” low-info voters.

    Nope. The “new” ads are a continuation of the “Biden is the puppet of the radical left” and “lawn-order” themes. Maybe they are waiting for Barr to shit out something.

  116. 116.

    Alien Radio

    August 4, 2020 at 12:44 pm

    @Paul in St. Augustine: Sir, this is a Children’s placemat…

  117. 117.

    Geminid

    August 4, 2020 at 12:47 pm

    I wonder who will get trump’s next interview. Someone like Lou Dobbs, I suspect.        I read Axios from time to time, and they seem to very neutral and detached in their reporting, which I myself don’t mind. That may be how they got the interview.             But a strong and capable chief of staff- and Meadows is neither- would have known trump would be asked tough questions, and that trump simply is not up to it.                    If Casey Stengel looks down at the White House from baseball heaven, he probably wonders, “can anybody play this game?”

  118. 118.

    Kent

    August 4, 2020 at 12:47 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:@scav: That is okay by me. Was just pointing out the Balloon Juice can be a bubble too.

    What do you mean here by bubble?   Yes, a number of BJ commenters liked Warren. So did I.  In fact I still do.  But how is that a bubble?  A bubble implies that we are sheltered from or impervious to outside information such as Fox News Trump supporters.  Are you accusing Warren supporters of being oblivious to outside information?  When she didn’t win we reassessed and moved on.  That’s the very opposite of a bubble.

  119. 119.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:48 pm

    @SFAW:

    ETA: Yeah, I know I’m mapping Elmer Fudd’s speech tics onto Yosemite Sam. So sue me. 

    Libelslander!

  120. 120.

    Sab

    August 4, 2020 at 12:48 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: “I have painstakingly and politely explained..” Seriously, you think you have been polite about it? Amir says politely! Warren has good policy chops. You say he is “mansplaining.”

    You are usually in my top 10 among commenters here, but I think you have Warren Derangement Syndrome. During primary season I pie-filtered you.

    I am a woman who has worked in Warren’s fields of expertise and I like her policy chops and admire her. My younger sister lives in MA and works in computing and science research and she also has a mild case of Warren Derangement Syndrome.I understand my sister’s position ( I don’t agree with it.)

    I just don’t understand your position because you don’t explain it. You just insult polite commenters and otherwise rant. It’s not typical of your other types of comments.

    I would like to know what your issues are with Warren other than you seem to viscerally dislike her.

  121. 121.

    MisterForkbeard

    August 4, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I think it’s just hard to get excited about hating him when Trump is really and obvious bad, and when they raised the bar so much on Hillary with “War criminal! Murderer! Purposefully killed brave Americans in Benghazi! Forwarded e-mails!” shenanigans.

    With Joe, they tried this with Ukraine (fell apart, Trump got impeached for it) and with Tara Reade, which people were skeptical about and which fell apart due to severe credibility issues.

    Now they’re trying hard to get the “he sniffs kids” going, but even they know it’s enormous bullshit so they can’t put real emotion behind it.

    @cain: “Train Wreck III: Son of Train Wreck” and “Train Wreck IV: Revenge of the Train” come to mind.

  122. 122.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 12:51 pm

    @Geminid:

    I wonder who will get trump’s next interview. Someone like Lou Dobbs, I suspect. 

    Hasn’t Faux News been too much of a big meanie to the Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby lately?

  123. 123.

    James E Powell

    August 4, 2020 at 12:54 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    A lot of us (me) were Harris supporters, but she dropped out early. It did seem that most people here were favoring Warren, but it was definitely not a bubble.

    Why are people arguing about this now?

  124. 124.

    Ken

    August 4, 2020 at 12:54 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s what Betty’s description was missing!

    It was like a nuclear-armed jet crashed into a train, which then plummeted off the bridge and landed on a nuclear reactor, causing an explosion and meltdown that reached the earth’s molten core and triggered simultaneous eruptions of every volcano on the planet, all in a firecracker factory.

  125. 125.

    Kent

    August 4, 2020 at 12:55 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: It’s gonna be OAN news.  They are the last ones left who will unreservedly lick his boots.

  126. 126.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 12:55 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:   You belong, SC.  You are usually one of my favorites, too, because you generally have interesting and intelligent comments to make.

    But listen to what others are saying about the Elizabeth Warren derangement syndrome.  You were a pill during the primaries, whatever your reasons.

    I am fine that you don’t like her.  I am sure you do have reasons.

    But showing up and constantly dumping on her is like another jackal showing up on this blog and suggesting, over and over, that we should just euthanize unwanted animals, and that none of us should have more than one or two because …. ewww.

    Please do not take the wrong lesson, SC.  Of course you belong here.

    There were a lot of primary candidates that did not float my boat, either.  I saw no reason to dump on Democratic candidates.  We have a national media that does that already.  Reflexively.

  127. 127.

    Cameron

    August 4, 2020 at 12:57 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: “Yo, semite! Eighty-eight bro here!  Who’s your gauleiter?”

  128. 128.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:01 pm

    @Paul in St. Augustine:

    I found it hilarious when Trump forced one of his COVID charts on Swan, insisting he keep it.

    It would be good if journalists arrived, prepared with colorful charts that are easy to understand (we are talking Trump here, putative POTUS) and not too many words. Big Print. As a handout.

    If nothing else, it’s a paper he can carry back and beat up his own staff with.

  129. 129.

    Another Scott

    August 4, 2020 at 1:02 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Gore lost Tennessee in 2000.

    So?

    You really should let this go, IMHO.

    OT – Did you hear the recent Radio Lab about the 1918 Pandemic?  A segment on its effects on India, Gandhi, etc. – https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dispatches-1918

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    Ken

    August 4, 2020 at 1:05 pm

    @EthylEster: His handlers are as stupid as he is if they give him more than one chart.

    Yeah, with only one, the worst that they might expect is that he’d hold it upside down and claim it was a picture of Greenland.

  131. 131.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    @MisterForkbeard:

    @cain: Train-nado V: So terrifying we couldn’t make the first four!

  132. 132.

    Formica

    August 4, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    She said that the DNC rigged the nomination for HRC in 2016.

    A woman in a very strong position to speak with authority on that topic said the same thing. Do you hold a similar opinion of Donna Brazile? (Hopefully that doesn’t come across as sealioning.)

    Sneered when Kamala Harris suggested that the Orange Clown be banned from Twitter.

    I don’t know that I would use the term “sneered”; they were opponents for the same nomination and it’s a very politically charged issue. Candidates get fierce in primary contests, and to me, I don’t understand what role gender plays in how they interacted with one another. But we have a difference of opinion there, and clearly different viewpoints. Bear in mind I say this as someone who greatly favored Senator Harris over Senator Warren for president, and who would much prefer her in the veepstakes.

    I dunno, again, maybe my dudeness makes me blind or ignorant on this topic, but to me, I don’t see how those incidents qualify the Senator for Secretary Albright’s “special place in hell”.

    Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it.

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    August 4, 2020 at 1:09 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: Lou Dobbs will steadfastly support trump to the bitter end. But his show has few viewers. Dobbs is the kind of interviewer trump needs, but trump is such a mess he could screw up even a soft pitch from Dobbs.

  134. 134.

    Cacti

    August 4, 2020 at 1:09 pm

    When asked about 150,000 dead from Covid, his literal answer was:

    “It is what it is”.

    Donald Trump is a monster.

  135. 135.

    smedley the uncertain

    August 4, 2020 at 1:10 pm

    @jc: Too bad Ross Perot is not around to show him Chart Dazzling at it’s best…

    //

  136. 136.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:14 pm

    @cain: Yes.  And a loo that never gets cleaned.  Such an outhouse of an administration.

    (No offense to outhouses.)

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 4, 2020 at 1:14 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Jesus Fucking Christ!  The majority of the blog frequently disagrees with me about the importance of issues.  They are wrong.  But it’s not personal unless you make it so.

  138. 138.

    The Pale Scot

    August 4, 2020 at 1:15 pm

    @Paul in St. Augustine:

    I found it hilarious when Trump forced one of his COVID charts on Swan, insisting he keep it.

    He should have asked him to sign it so as to have irrefutable evidence what an imbecile he is

     

    Because you know this is going down the MSM memory hole as soon as it can be arranged.

     

    “This artifact, miraculously protected in a sealed portfolio was recovered from the ruins of a hotel 50 meters below the Atlantic Ocean. Has been described as a documentary evidence that the mythical court fool, one Donald Trump, did actually exist. The great debate is could it be that the court fool is the same person as the Donald Trump whose name has been found on plaques in other archeological sites around the Western Hemisphere.

     

    The antimony of a court fool also being a factor in the building of a score of temples celebrating wealth would seem to a be heaven sent  gift to the Contemporary New Cynic school of human history.

    by

    Dorito Pepsi Checkers Camacho

  139. 139.

    Kent

    August 4, 2020 at 1:15 pm

    @James E Powell:A lot of us (me) were Harris supporters, but she dropped out early. It did seem that most people here were favoring Warren, but it was definitely not a bubble.

    I expect a lot were like me.   I thought both Biden and Sanders were too old and sucking up all the oxygen for younger candidates.  I especially disliked Sanders who was not a Democrat.

    I thought all of the other middle aged white guy senators and congressmen were pretty undistinguished and uninteresting.

    That left Warren, Harris, Booker, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, and Castro.  Of those seven I though Harris was the most promising candidate.  But by the time her candidacy failed in the run-up to Iowa, Booker, Beto, and Castro were also gone as well.  That left Warren, Buttigieg and Klobuchar as the alternatives to Biden and Sanders.  Of those three, Warren was by far the most impressive candidate on every level:  Policy chops, charisma, experience, and policy positions.  Both Buttigieg and Klobuchar turned me off with their constant homages to “heartland values” and other bullshit like that, which is usually a middle aged white guy sitting on a tractor spouting conservative nonsense.   They were both way too quick to accept conservative frames on issues….like “we can’t afford X”

    Once it became clear that that part was coalescing around Biden to oppose Sanders I was fine with that.  I canvassed for Warren in WA but ended up voting for Biden.

    Of the final 5 or so candidates, Sanders was the only one I truly disliked.

  140. 140.

    Martin

    August 4, 2020 at 1:18 pm

    Massive explosion at the port in Beirut. Odds are just an industrial accident, but it looks Texas City bad

    [Edit] Actually maybe more visually dramatic than actually destructive. But it was very visually dramatic.

  141. 141.

    Emma from FL

    August 4, 2020 at 1:18 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Oh, for God’s sake. You have friends here. Me, for instance. I love your updates on Indian politics and culture. You are my source, and I thank you. I also love your updates on American life, personal and political. It gives me a pov that I wouldn’t otherwise have,

    But  you sometimes assume malicious intent and fire before considering every angle. Examine the statement fairly. And if you still consider it malicious, pie the offending person and move on.

  142. 142.

    Sab

    August 4, 2020 at 1:19 pm

    Shrodinger has fled to the next thread. I am disappointed, because I do admire her, most  of the time.

  143. 143.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:20 pm

    @Kent: You’re probably right.  John Oliver had a good main story on those nutjobs a few weeks ago btw.

    ETA – three months ago.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 1:21 pm

    @Formica: I remember reading that Brazille piece nd thinking she didn’t do much to persuade me that HRC cheated by having more and broader support, and re-reading this should-be-infamous, self-beclowning and more than slightly creepy opening paragraph, I wonder if she wasn’t the first major Dem to wildly misread the 2016 campaign. She certainly wasn’t the last.

    Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.

  145. 145.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    @Martin: Here’s an alleged video via Twitter:

    This looks so bad. My mouth literally dropped. #Beirut pic.twitter.com/HnNH2x2h93

    — Shannon FM (@Katpa73) August 4, 2020

    Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  146. 146.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:23 pm

    @Martin:   Yeah.  Texas City comes to mind.

    It certainly was a technicolor blast.  On an otherwise beautiful day in Lebanon.  Hope it is just a terrible accident and nothing malicious.

  147. 147.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 1:24 pm

    @Kent:  @mrmoshpotato: there was a story a few weeks ago about bigly successful and muchly independent businessman Donald Trump Jr was leading a consortium to buy OANN, which I figured was the first sign of a post-presidency return to the real 2016 goal (I will die on this hill, or at least hang out on it) of building a cash-cow media operation with Russian cash.

  148. 148.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:24 pm

    @Betty Cracker:   Good god.

    That looks like hundreds or thousands dead and injured.  The shockwave, at that distance.

  149. 149.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 4, 2020 at 1:25 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Sweet jesus!

  150. 150.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 1:27 pm

    @Elizabelle: It really does. I’ve seen speculation that it was a firecracker warehouse. Before the huge blast, it looks like you can see bottle rocket-type trails around the plume of smoke. But that giant blast that causes the shock wave? Damn.

  151. 151.

    Ruckus

    August 4, 2020 at 1:28 pm

    @MisterForkbeard:

    It’s difficult to hate an actually nice human being. Joe is not a snotty 4 yr old racist asshole, like his opponent.

  152. 152.

    Cacti

    August 4, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, this was very much a pro-Warren blog during the primaries.  The majority of commenters were quite passionate about her.  It was not an unreasonable position.

    It wasn’t unreasonable, but it certainly didn’t reflect the feelings of the majority of Dem voters. So the bubble comment about the BJ front page was accurate.

  153. 153.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    @Betty Cracker:   It’s terrible to wake up, thinking one personally dodged a bullet (Hurricane Isaias, the gloom and doom forecasts), but sunshine and dry.  Beautiful morning, full power.

    And then to see that happen to other people on the other side of the world.  Looks like whole apartment/office buildings might have been consumed.  Ships moored nearby — they will have been destroyed or on fire.

    Those folks were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    I hope the rescuers do an excellent job, and that people do not suffer a second wave of Covid morbidity in a few weeks.

  154. 154.

    rp

    August 4, 2020 at 1:30 pm

    @Kent: Ha! Get out of my head!

  155. 155.

    zzyzx

    August 4, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m more moderate than many people here. I think that this group has a tendency to get over-pessimistic about Corona (although obviously, I take it seriously, rarely leave my house, wear a mask whenever I’m going to be in a store or around a group of people outside, and haven’t even formed a bubble). However, I think this is a good place where you can discuss issues reasonably sanely and it’s always good to have that in case you’re wrong.

  156. 156.

    germy

    August 4, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    CNN:

    The source of the explosion was initially believed to be a major fire at a warehouse for firecrackers near the port in Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.

  157. 157.

    Gravenstone

    August 4, 2020 at 1:32 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Visible ongoing fire, huge cloud of red gas (likely nitrogen oxides) immediately following the explosion, supersonic shockwave compressing the water vapor (that’s the white haze that obscured everything after a second or two). I’d be curious what that warehouse actually held, because I doubt it was just “firecrackers”. You don’t get that sort of shockwave with propellants (like the gunpowder used in firecrackers). Probably a goodly deposit of some military grade high explosive.

  158. 158.

    PenAndKey

    August 4, 2020 at 1:33 pm

    @Betty Cracker: If the death toll from this isn’t in the thousands I’ll be shocked. The amount of energy required to cause an shockwave intense enough to go white like that, that moves that fast, is just… scary.

  159. 159.

    Betty Cracker

    August 4, 2020 at 1:33 pm

    @Elizabelle: Yep — life hangs on such tenuous threads, wrong place, wrong time or the reverse. Someone in comments just the other day mentioned paddling a kayak down a river and having a huge tree fall over and just miss him. A couple of seconds earlier, and it would be a different story.

  160. 160.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:34 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    a post-presidency return to the real 2016 goal (I will die on this hill, or at least hang out on it) of building a cash-cow media operation with Russian cash. 

    Yup.  Remember Trump TV?  Even Fox doesn’t sufficiently suck these deranged bastards’ asses anymore.

  161. 161.

    Kent

    August 4, 2020 at 1:34 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:@Formica: I remember reading that Brazille piece nd thinking she didn’t do much to persuade me that HRC cheated by having more and broader support, and re-reading this should-be-infamous, self-beclowning and more than slightly creepy opening paragraph, I wonder if she wasn’t the first major Dem to wildly misread the 2016 campaign. She certainly wasn’t the last.

    Cheated and rigged are loaded words.  They imply improper or malicious activity.  But I don’t think it is uncontroversial to suggest that the Democratic primary process has always been tilted towards mainstream establishment candidates.  It is, after all, a political party and not some random forum for all comers to crash.  Closed primaries, were one of the Sanders campaign’s examples of a “rigged” process.  Really?  Limiting the vote to actual Democrats is rigging the process?

    Of course the Sanders campaign did its own rigging by trying to capture and control the undemocratic caucus process.  That’s how politics work.  You press your advantages.  And in the end the person with the most votes usually wins unless we are talking about the horror that is the electoral college, which is a true example of actual election rigging.

  162. 162.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:35 pm

    @Gravenstone:   Yeah.  Maybe munitions.

    I am imagining that going off in Barcelona.  Albeit Barcelona’s port does not have apartment and office buildings right up next to it.  Much more safely designed.

    Or any other port city, because the port is always ancient and the city’s development radiates from it.

    Thinking of the underground bunkers all over the place at a Navy weapons storage facility in Seal Beach, CA.

    WTF was the source of that explosion, and why was so much of it on site?  If it was an accident.  Too soon to know.

  163. 163.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    But that giant blast that causes the shock wave? 

    Lots and lots of gunpowder going boom at once.

  164. 164.

    Mike in NC

    August 4, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    The hurricane blew through here in the middle of the night. No damage to the houses on our street, but tons of downed branches. Spent 2 hours cleaning up the debris. Noticed the Trumpy neighbors next door have a new yard sign: one of those black and white “cop flags” that look so ugly. Neither of them were ever in law enforcement, so maybe this is some wingnut thing that’s going around. Will look for others in the development to see if FOX News put out a memo to show fealty to the heroic boys in blue.

  165. 165.

    Cacti

    August 4, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    @zzyzx: I’m more moderate than many people here. I think that this group has a tendency to get over-pessimistic about Corona

    I don’t think it’s pessimistic at all to say that as long as Trump’s in charge, we’ll never get control of Covid in any meaningful way.

    We’ll limp along with periodic death spikes at least through January, when a new administration is hopefully sworn in.

  166. 166.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    @Kent:   I hope Democrats lose caucuses, like a rash.

    Wholly undemocratic and unrepresentative.  You always get a better  sounding with an actual primary.

    And Iowa should never, ever, ever go first again.  No more Iowa caucses.

  167. 167.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:39 pm

    @Cacti:  I really wish there was a way we could dump Trump and administration very soon after the election results come in.

    Because he is just too dangerous, and too many will die or lose their financial/health security during the lame duck period.

    Trump is toxic.

  168. 168.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:42 pm

    @Betty Cracker:  Yeah.  That kayaking story was sobering.  Time to paddle one stroke.

  169. 169.

    Cacti

    August 4, 2020 at 1:42 pm

    @Elizabelle:   Same here.

    The third death spike is going to be when the idiot states force kids back into classrooms this fall, on the recommendation of Trump and Betsy DeVos.  Anyone who isn’t willfully blind can see that coming a mile away.

  170. 170.

    Elizabelle

    August 4, 2020 at 1:45 pm

    @Cacti:   I am hoping the school district superintendents are going — wait a minute.  If they are at all courageous, empathetic, and believe science.  And don’t have a Caligula type governor.  (But even there, getting fired is better than complying.)

    New thread up about the Beirut explosion.

  171. 171.

    Brachiator

    August 4, 2020 at 1:45 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    FWIW immigration isn’t a top issue for most people here.

    Yep. You’re right. But it probably should be more of an issue, given how it animates aspects of Trump’s racism, and it is good when commenters bring it up.

    Out here in Southern California, I saw how much this was a hot button topic for early Trump supporters. And it continues to be.

  172. 172.

    zzyzx

    August 4, 2020 at 1:45 pm

    @Cacti: I didn’t say that I was optimistic per se, just that I’ve noticed the bias is towards pessimism in questions like immunity where worst case scenarios get floated a bit.

    I mean that could end up being true which is why I read the posts.

  173. 173.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 4, 2020 at 1:46 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    Dear gods.

  174. 174.

    snoey

    August 4, 2020 at 1:46 pm

    delete, see new thread

  175. 175.

    TriassicSands

    August 4, 2020 at 1:48 pm

    “Train wreck” is too gentle a description.

    Yes, Betty, but there is what we see and hear and then there is what the “independents” and “undecideds” see and hear. Those are people who are ignorant, uninformed, misinformed, etc. And their votes are critical. They probably see a decisive, strong, committed president who’s putting an upstart (Swan) in his place. Trump’s main strategy seems to be to dominate the exchange, which he does. He never yields, admits, or retreats. Lots of Americans, who are dragging this country down to the level of a banana republic, are impressed by a performance like that.

    Neither Swan nor Wallace ever lays out the economic reality in this country. Trump inherited a growing prosperous (within limits) economy. Neither he nor Obama was primarily responsible for that state, because the reality is that presidents don’t control the economy. That said, Obama probably had a greater impact than Trump, because he inherited a disaster. Trump inherited a growing economy. But interviewers don’t or rarely challenge Trump on his absurd economic claims.

    Swan did challenge Trump’s preposterous claim that he has done more for African Americans than any president except Lincoln. Pointing out that LBJ got the Civil Rights Act passed was important, but Trump just talked all over it. Do those who need to get the message, get it? That’s a good question.

  176. 176.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 4, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    @Mike in NC:

    The hurricane blew through here in the middle of the night 

    Obligatory

  177. 177.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 1:50 pm

    @Formica: Both DB and EW were wrong on that one HRC won fair and square.

  178. 178.

    ...now I try to be amused

    August 4, 2020 at 1:53 pm

    @Yutsano:

    I hate his voice. It’s why I can’t do anything with Sarah Cooper. She’s brilliant but I have to listen to him. I just can’t do that. Hell even the Swan interview I can only watch in snippets.

    We need someone like Janey Godley, who does voice-over videos of First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, to do voice-over videos of Trump.

    Hey! I just remembered that Billy West did some voice-overs of Trump in the character of Zapp Brannigan. It worked really well.

  179. 179.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 1:54 pm

    @Cacti: Thanks. This blog is overwhelmingly white and college educated, the overall Democratic electorate is not.

  180. 180.

    Brachiator

    August 4, 2020 at 1:55 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    I almost cannot believe that I am looking at such incredible destruction.

    And now, I am almost hesitant to read about details of this thing.

  181. 181.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 1:57 pm

    @Sab: I went to have lunch. I don’t flee.

  182. 182.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:01 pm

    @Another Scott: Tennessee was trending red when Gore ran for president. MA is blue and some parts are deep blue. If a sitting senator comes third in her own state she might not be as popular as her supporters think she is.

  183. 183.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:02 pm

    @Brachiator: Immigrants have been the beta test case for the Orange one to try out his oppressive and dictatorial tactics.

  184. 184.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:03 pm

    @Cacti: It wasn’t unreasonable, but it certainly didn’t reflect the feelings of the majority of Dem voters. So the bubble comment about the BJ front page was accurate.

    No, “bubble” implies that we were shutting ourselves off the outside sources of information and perhaps deluding ourselves as to her chances.  We can all read polls.  We can all read the media environment.

    SC is way off base with her bubble comment and has a habit of inferring way more than the facts support in her zeal to trash Warren.

  185. 185.

    Gin & Tonic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:04 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    They are wrong.

    Fuck you, asshole.

  186. 186.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:06 pm

    I am upset about what is going on India right now. It’s not temple that the BJP is building in Ayodhya it is India’s grave. I am sorry about displaying my ill temper.

  187. 187.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:06 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: That was overwrought and unnecessary. I agree.

  188. 188.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:07 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Tennessee was trending red when Gore ran for president. MA is blue and some parts are deep blue. If a sitting senator comes third in her own state she might not be as popular as her supporters think she is.

    You don’t think that people’s votes may have been affected by considerations about the state of the race? Or the media coverage that mostly treated anyone besides Bernie and Biden as an afterthought?

  189. 189.

    MomSense

    August 4, 2020 at 2:09 pm

    This is a very white blog and I have noticed a lot of dismissive and condescending comments (even micro aggressions) directed to the BIPoC jackals.

  190. 190.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:11 pm

    @MomSense: Thanks.

    As for why I don’t think EW was the best candidate for President ( or now for VP). I have made my case innumerable times during the primaries, people who are interested can google those responses.

  191. 191.

    Brachiator

    August 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Immigrants have been the beta test case for the Orange one to try out his oppressive and dictatorial tactics.

    True enough. But it is also odd, for example, how Trump sometimes sucks up to the Indian American community, but then puts forth anti immigrant policies.

    Also, I note again how Trump used immigration to build his base. Some conservatives were fed up with how the GOP leadership waffled on the issue. These people welcomed Trump’s simple minded hard core hatred. In this, Trump was seemingly inspired by the fiercely anti immigrant Know Nothing Party of the 1850s.

  192. 192.

    catclub

    August 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm

    @zzyzx: not yosem – ite?

  193. 193.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm

    @Emma from FL: I know that’s why I still comment and will continue to do so.

  194. 194.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:15 pm

    @MomSense: SC’s comments were condescending and the initial disagreement was with a person who’s from the same region as she is.

  195. 195.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:15 pm

    @Brachiator: Do we know that he doesn’t get kickbacks from the Saffron junta?

  196. 196.

    catclub

    August 4, 2020 at 2:15 pm

    @Kropacetic: or they wanted to keep her as senator

  197. 197.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:17 pm

    @catclub: No, obviously everyone hates Warren in a state where she only got 2/3 of the vote in the last election for her seat. That’s the only rational explanation ::rolls eyes::

  198. 198.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 4, 2020 at 2:19 pm

    @Kropacetic: India and Malaysia are not really the same part of the world.  Also, s_c is now a US citizen who lives in MA.

  199. 199.

    patrick II

    August 4, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    @Ken:

    You forgot the Chinese biological warfare lab.

  200. 200.

    Brachiator

    August 4, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It would not surprise me to learn that Trump was getting kickbacks. Did you see his latest move (not formatted well, I am posting on the fly):

    President Donald Trump said Monday that he had fired the chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, criticizing the federally owned corporation for hiring foreign workers.

    Trump told reporters at the White House that he was formally removing chair Skip Thompson and another member of the board, and he threatened to remove other board members if they continued to hire foreign labor. Thompson was appointed to the post by Trump.

    The TVA was created in 1933 to provide flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region that was hard hit by the Great Depression. The region covers most of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky as well as small sections of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

  201. 201.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:33 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: They’re pretty damn close.  1900 miles, a distance similar to the length of our east coast.

    I actually agree with MomSense’s comment just taken as a standalone statement.  But I don’t think it applies in this situation.

  202. 202.

    dgm

    August 4, 2020 at 2:35 pm

    @lowtechcyclist:  Reminds me of the joke “The reason God was able to create Heaven and Earth in six days is that he didn’t have to deal with an installed base.”

  203. 203.

    MomSense

    August 4, 2020 at 2:37 pm

    @Kropacetic:

    SC is getting “scolded” for previous threads.

  204. 204.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 4, 2020 at 2:37 pm

    @Brachiator: I did see that. He is just doubling down and replaying the old hits.

  205. 205.

    patrick II

    August 4, 2020 at 2:39 pm

    @The Pale Scot:

    I am curious as to what was on that chart.  Was it real or was it doctored with good numbers so that Trump wouldn’t get angry?

  206. 206.

    Kropacetic

    August 4, 2020 at 2:51 pm

    @MomSense: Tiny nitpick. Yes, that’s happening, but in the next thread about an interaction that started in this thread.
    But I don’t see that this was racially motivated or particularly condescending, more like belligerent. Condescending is what SC did to “most” of the people here, as she put it.

    ETA: People will harp on people around here about certain things for years on end.  I agree that it isn’t right.  But I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions about people’s motivations for this either.

  207. 207.

    different-church-lady

    August 4, 2020 at 2:56 pm

    …Trump’s usual bag of tricks doesn’t seem to be working this time.

    2016: “My, isn’t the Emperor is wearing the finest suit of elegant silk and velvet?”

    2020: “Not only is this goddamned Emperor naked, but he’s given everyone in my family a venereal disease!!!“

  208. 208.

    Brachiator

    August 4, 2020 at 2:59 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I did see that. He is just doubling down and replaying the old hits.

    Trump has been desperate to play to his base’s racism as part of his re-election campaign strategy.  He’s not even pretending to care about anyone other than white conservatives.

  209. 209.

    different-church-lady

    August 4, 2020 at 3:01 pm

    Future generations will look back on Charles Pierce the way we see the legends of early 20th century journalism:

    Or was it one of those terrifying moments when looking into the face of the president* of the United States was equivalent to staring down a well that went dry decades ago. Drop in a stone and wait for long minutes until you realize, finally, that there will be no splash, just the dull thump of rock on lifeless dirt.

  210. 210.

    Chris Johnson

    August 4, 2020 at 3:05 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: It’s ok. I have been you, in other times. Like you I’m trying to get over it (I posted under a different nym for the worst of it). These are really tough times and the important thing is to be able to roll with whatever’s coming down the pike, and it’s good not to be too hasty when everybody suddenly and inexplicably seems to be turning monstrous.

  211. 211.

    The Pale Scot

    August 4, 2020 at 3:08 pm

    Hey, my comment got eated, it bestest, most humorous comment ever in the history of…… my commenting, I’m too busy to remember it. FYWP

    Video recreation
    The Funniest Joke In The World

  212. 212.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    August 4, 2020 at 3:18 pm

    but Trump felt snubbed when Lewis didn’t attend his inauguration or state of the union speeches, so that’s the only noteworthy thing about Lewis in Trump’s solipsistic view.

    Are we talking about the President of the United States or some 50’s housewife named Karen?  For a man his age that is pretty lame behavior.

  213. 213.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 4, 2020 at 3:20 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:  ??? Pretty sharp retort for a pretty innocuous comment.

  214. 214.

    geg6

    August 4, 2020 at 3:22 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Or it may just be Massholes being Massholes.

  215. 215.

    Soprano2

    August 4, 2020 at 3:25 pm

    I listened to the whole thing, and my overall impression is that Trump is a huge WATB. He couldn’t even let Swan ask a question before he was trying to give an answer, and sometimes the answer didn’t really go with the question! You can tell he’s used to the Fox News canned interviews, where they only ask him about how great he is. I guess that’s what Trump thought he was going to get from Swan. He was defensive for much of the interview, almost pouting because he didn’t think he was getting enough credit for all the “wonderful” things he’s done. The part where he was impatient about how many Americans are dying, as if he didn’t think he should be asked to care about them, was particularly telling. Geez, I haven’t been exposed to that much of him talking for a long time. His constant defensiveness was wearing me out!

  216. 216.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 4, 2020 at 3:28 pm

    @James E Powell:

    Why are people arguing about this now?

    Day that ends in ‘y.’ I was also bigly pro-Kamala, and remain so.

  217. 217.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    August 4, 2020 at 3:31 pm

    @zzyzx:  Trump also mispronounces Nevada as Neh-VAH-da to the annoyance of Nevadans. There is a video of Trump’s supporters booing him at a rally for while Trump lectures Nevadans on the correct pronunciation of their state name.

    Stuff like that makes me wonder if it’s less Trump hates West Coast blue states and simply just hates everything west of the Rockies.

  218. 218.

    Paul in St. Augustine

    August 4, 2020 at 3:37 pm

    @zzyzx:  Looking forward to Sarah Cooper’s take

  219. 219.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 4, 2020 at 3:38 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The majority of the blog frequently disagrees with me about the importance of issues. They are wrong.

    Yes, but with a loving and respectful degree of wrongitudeness. And the occasional whoopee cushion cues.

  220. 220.

    Aleta

    August 4, 2020 at 3:47 pm

    @geg6:  I don’t see it mentioned much, but some MA voters are not supportive of female candidates.  Reasons I’ve  heard for the sexism in MA elections have been the working class areas and Catholic voters.  (I lived MA for about 6  years, still have many political  friends.)  Despite primary  votes  for Bernie, iirc Warren received around 60% in one of her general elections, which seems to speak well of  her ability to get support despite sexism.

  221. 221.

    BruceFromOhio

    August 4, 2020 at 3:47 pm

    @MomSense: Noted, will watch out for this and try to do better. Agree on the demographics.

  222. 222.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    August 4, 2020 at 7:02 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: it’s not an unreasonable position but it’s not an unreasonable position to not like a particular politician either. People are allowed to have differing opinions and it’s beyond annoying to be able old your opinions are unreasonable.  Politicians are politicians. Not the second coming.  It’s exhausting to have people treat a person like they are unreasonable just because they don’t like someone you might think is great. I live in New England. I am familiar with Sen. Warren. She is great on some subjects and in my opinion pretty abysmal on others(tariffs for one) YMMV

  223. 223.

    brantl

    August 4, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: She was certainly much better at explaining her policy.

  224. 224.

    brantl

    August 4, 2020 at 10:38 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: >”Sneered”? Your bias is showing.

  225. 225.

    Tehanu

    August 4, 2020 at 10:43 pm

    @SFAW: You and me both.

  226. 226.

    brantl

    August 4, 2020 at 10:49 pm

    @The Pale Scot: “antimony” doesn’t mean what you think it does, unless auto-correct abused you.

  227. 227.

    Terry Sanders

    August 4, 2020 at 10:56 pm

    Here, here. Couldn’t have expressed it better@SFAW:

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