Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The willow is too close to the house.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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

Celebrate the fucking wins.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Open Thread: Young Prince Jared, Rear Admiral of the #FAIL Flotilla

Late Night Open Thread: Young Prince Jared, Rear Admiral of the #FAIL Flotilla

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MBA wisdom at work: When things go well, it’s because the Boss is a GENIUS. When things go badly, it means the staff screwed up.

… “[I]t’s not that he changes his mind. It’s that he wasn’t staffed correctly,” Kushner said to the Republican leaders. “People weren’t giving him all the facts and so he found out different facts. So you can’t try to trick him into making a decision and then expect he’ll hold to that decision.” (Former White House chief of staff John Kelly summed up Kushner’s theory in one word, “Crazytown.” )

Kushner describes Trump as seemingly going out of his way to kick up certain arguments, believing that he can manipulate the media into covering topics he likes.

“Controversy elevates message,” Kushner says. And by this, Woodward writes, he means that “a controversy over the economy… only helps Trump because it reminds voters that the economy is good…”

Elsewhere, Daddy-in-Law Dearest:

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  3. 3.

    Misterpuff

    Pro-Crime Judges – probably another Jared suggestion. /s*

    *We all know its the brainworm’s suggestion.

  4. 4.

    Patricia Kayden

    I’ve gotten tons of messages “I’m losing fans” by expressing my dissatisfaction with our corrupt, incompetent President. While I appreciate people encouraging me to choose fame and money over decency, I’m afraid I’ll never be Donald Trump.— Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) September 11, 2020

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I was struck by this bit:

    In his new book, Rage, Woodward writes that Kushner told him the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland can help a person grasp Trump’s unconventional management style. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there,” Kushner paraphrased.

    it’s the “disruptor” douchebag MBA version of my brother’s thankfully disappeared “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” bumper sticker. Alexandra Petri has actually read the book, and so gave it more thought than I did.

  6. 6.

    Misterpuff

    @Misterpuff: Sitting here listing to Pink Floyd Live From Pompeii (a pure shot of Space Floyd), thinking about Brainworms and I was enlightened as how Drumpf is Pink in The Wall.

    But then, I’m quite inebriated right about now.

  8. 8.

    Kent

    Kushner isn’t MBA dumb.  He’s rich dilettante douche guy dumb.  That’s a whole different other category.  What he studied in college makes no difference.  Rand Paul is exactly the same and he has an MD from Duke.

  9. 9.

    Kent

    @Misterpuff:

    Pro-Crime Judges – probably another Jared suggestion. /s*

    *We all know its the brainworm’s suggestion.

    No, it’s self preservation.   He meant what he said.  He has so many multiple and diverse crimes under his belt that he needs “pro-crime” judges to get him off.

    With Trump the simplest and most venal answer is usually correct.  There is a Josh Marshall rule to that effect.

  10. 10.

    danielx

    Jared Kushner told Woodward, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.”

    The jokes, they write themselves….

  15. 15.

    Vixen Strangely

    I haven’t sorted out whether it was really supposed to be Jared or Lindsey Graham who “talked Trump into” doing 18 phone calls with Woodward, but the funny thing is, I suspect Trump is seldom “talked into” so much as “nudged from an original trajectory”. So, say Trump has the idea that talking to Woodward would be supergreat and once the man hears Trump’s side of things, he’ll lavish him with praise for being a clear-eyed, level-headed SOB and runs it past the husband of Ivanka or Graham? The best case scenario is agree mildly and stand back from the blast site, because disagreeing with Trump makes him mad and then he goes and does what he wants anyway. But only Jared is dumb enough to strongly agree, because “branding”.

  23. 23.

    RaflW

    I just saw this photo from the indoor rally for Trump this evening in Michigan. These people are bugfuck nuts.

    Meanwhile ‘militia’ people (in scare quotes because what they are bears little resemblance to 1791) are setting up armed check points in Oregon looking for Antifa arsonists.

    I think Biden can win, and win a sufficient popular vote margin to be convincing, except for the nuts. But if the nuts are 27% of the population, the next 4 (or maybe 24) years are going to be …. rough.

  26. 26.

    Chetan Murthy

    @RaflW:

    But if the nuts are 27% of the population, the next 4 (or maybe 24) years are going to be …. rough.

    Disarm them.  And tax the ever-lovin’-fuck out of bullets.  Let the daughter-rapers make their own reloads, and get lead poisoning doing it.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    @RaflW:

    morons who don’t know the difference between the Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter,

    who of course, are heavily armed.

  28. 28.

    Jay

    i thought the Portland Police were recklessly firing lung damaging munitions but it turns out they were just preparing my body for mid-SeptemberThanks PPB!— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) September 10, 2020

  29. 29.

    patroclus

    @Vixen Strangely: What I don’t understand is why people continue to believe that talking to Woodward will necessarily result in a critical book. All the Bush people spoke to him and he responded with multiple hagiographical stenographies lauding Bush and his minions as strategic geniuses and military heroes. Mark Felt, Woodward’s famous Deep Throat, was one of the principal players in COINTELPRO, which suppressed dissent against the Vietnam War and Woodward somehow made him come out as a kind of a hero. His USSC book, with Scott Armstrong, derided the court’s liberals and celebrated centrism. For years, Woodward considered the sliming of Joe Wilson and Libby/Rove’s central roles as “inconclusive.” Why is Woodward continually regarded as some sort of saint? His actual record doesn’t reflect that.

    He’s a smarmy money-grubbing non-journalist and the epitome of what people describe as the Washington Swamp. And the “revelation” that Trump lied and downplayed COVID has been obvious to anyone with a brain since the beginning of this year.

  31. 31.

    Jay

    There is a billboard now up in the heart of Times Square. Directly across from the NYPD station. With this message: “Hey NYPD. It’s us. NYC residents. The ones who pay your salary. “We paid $300 million to settle your lawsuits. You paid nothing. We need to talk.” Watch: pic.twitter.com/JaU3bSCqnL— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) September 10, 2020

  33. 33.

    TS (the original)

    @RaflW:

     These people are bugfuck nuts.

    I will never understand how they can believe his lies – let alone go to covid-fest events.

    Is his plan to have no-one left to vote for him? or to spread the virus to every election day voter?

  34. 34.

    Jay

    @patroclus:

    Woodward has a “nym”, so did Kennedy.

    it’s mediocre white men coasting on their “nym”, for either something they once upon a time did, or a relative did.

    Decades a go, I commuted to Milwaukee, 3 weeks a month, to be the Milwaukee Plant’s Master Production Scheduler, while still being a Purchaser in Vancouver, (BC), ( gotta love the time difference and 16 hour/7 day weeks).

    Guy who got the promotion.? Married money, f’d up production in Vancouver by constantly making changes inside the supply lead time, and spent most of his time getting an online MBA at work.

  36. 36.

    Chetan Murthy

    @TS (the original):

    Is his plan to have no-one left to vote for him? or to spread the virus to every election day voter?

    Fredo: I’m your older brother Mike and I was stepped over! … It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things. I’m smart. Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!

     

    Kaiser Quisling doesn’t have a plan: he doesn’t have the neurons to have a plan.  He just acts on his short-term schemes, and when they fail, he just hopes that something will come along to save him.  That’s how he burned thru $400m of his father’s money (well over $1B in today’s money) in short order and needed Russian money to stay afloat.  He’s been able to avoid consequences all his life that way.  The idea of consequences, I’m sure, doesn’t occur to him … or when it does, he just concocts another scheme to somehow avoid them.

    That others might die doesn’t even register for him.

  37. 37.

    West of the Rockies

    Said it before, will say it again:  Kushner looks like ventriloquist dummy Jerry Mahoney.  It’s weird.

  38. 38.

    Vixen Strangely

    @patroclus: True enough–he’s basically coasting on the Watergate thing and is the personification of access journalism: even Trump decided he wanted to give Woodward his fresh hot takes so he could get a better treatment in the book because he vaguely understood that’s what Woodward was here for and figured the last book suffered from his lack of input–it’s only Trump’s misfortune that any of it was damning enough to normal people when said out loud where they could hear. It’s that damning because Trump is uniquely bad. But Woodward did not “go to the authorities” (as Trump charmlessly put it, which I see as “Hello, 911? I’d like to report a criminally negligent mass homicide.”) because he didn’t actually see the entire issue, either. Or I guess it could have been a Page 1 story. Only I have my doubts that mass negligent homicide is even a needle-mover with Trumpers. (There goes that “gotcha media” again.)

  40. 40.

    patroclus

    @Jay: I understand that.  But my point is that people who talk to him almost invariably come out looking good.  Felt did; Bush’s minions did; the clerks and Justices at the Court did.  Only Belushi stands out as an exception but Woodward had no prior relationship or desire or need not to burn him.  Jared’s advice to talk to him was not necessarily bad advice – Woodward’s track record is to suck up to powerful sources.  Burning Trump is out of character for Woodward (although he did sit on the tapes/interviews for months and months).

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @Cacti: Meritocracy as a concept was a warning. It was known that the rich would buy their credentials, and use the meritocracy to justify their appointed position.

    Jared is the poster child for why a meritocracy is a bad idea.

  42. 42.

    Vixen Strangely

    @RaflW: Poor hypothetical fellow, torn between the Daddy issues of one and vitamin D deficiency from being so deeply closeted of the other. I shudder to think he’d have any time to clean anyone’s pool.

  47. 47.

    Jay

    As part of an attack on the Woodward book, Trump's now comparing his response to covid-19 to Churchill's leadership during the Blitz. "They wanted me to come out and scream: People are dying. No, I did it just the right way."— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 11, 2020

    What Churchill actually said: "We are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history… I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind… many, many long months of struggle and of suffering." https://t.co/nR7xrDPu6X— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 11, 2020

  49. 49.

    Jay

    Mainstream media been mighty quiet about this. Hmmmm. "@CNN head Jeff Zucker offered @realDonaldTrump debate advice, floated 'weekly show,' leaked 2016 Cohen call reveals" https://t.co/42lTlRi26O #FoxNews— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) September 10, 2020

    CNN head Zucker offered Trump debate advice, floated ‘weekly show,’ leaked 2016 Cohen call reveals
    Zucker told Cohen of his fondness for Trump, who the CNN president described as ‘the boss’

  50. 50.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kent:

    Kushner is MBA dumb.  I won’t speculate on how much that overlaps with ‘rich dilettante’ dumb, but Kushner does MBA shit.  He spouts buzzwords as if they were genius plans, then leaves employees to try to turn that into sense.  He replaced all the PPE and ventilator buyers in the government coronavirus response with young business executive types, believing those would make faster, better deals.  Of course, that was a disaster.  That’s MBA stuff.

  52. 52.

    Gvg

    @patroclus: what the heck are you talking about? He wrote scathing books about how incompetent Bush was. Some of my most enjoyable reading from those years.

  53. 53.

    Gvg

    @patroclus: did you even read the books? Bush did not come out looking good. His whole administration came out looking like self absorbed reality denying idiots, many with no morals.

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