WATCH: ABC’s @JONKARL TO @REALDONALDTRUMP:
“Why did you lie to the American people?
Why should we trust what you have to say now?" pic.twitter.com/p64myQBLyK
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) September 10, 2020
Thursday evening, erstwhile Young Republican Jonathan Karl got the first question at Trump’s hastily-called ‘presser’, and boldly demanded, “President Trump, why did you lie to the American people?”
Trump, predictably, responded by calling it ‘a very bad question’, ‘not true’, a ‘disgrace‘ promoted by The Failing Blah-Blah-Blah. Karl spent the first segment of the nightly national news taking a victory lap.
Sending them thoughts and prayers. https://t.co/SLaeRyGiCC
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) September 11, 2020
Comes a point, in every failed autocracy, where pulling down the wounded Beast becomes more rewarding than protecting It from Its many enemies. Annie Linskey made her journamalistic bones at the Boston Globe hate-stalking Elizabeth Warren during Warren’s senatorial campaigns; she was lured to the Washington Post to do the same job, then promoted to ankle-biting Joe Biden once he wrapped up the nomination. But now Trump is the ‘high visibility’ target!
Fearing a coming cash crunch, President Trump’s campaign has pulled back from television advertising over the last month, ceding to Democratic nominee Joe Biden a huge advantage in key states and sparking disagreements over strategy within the president’s senior team…
The complaints have upended the dynamics that dominated much of the race so far. With less than eight weeks before Election Day, the once-lean Biden campaign is flush with cash, while the massive Trump operation is facing tough budgetary decisions down the stretch that have increased tensions around the president.
Among those worried is Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, who recently told the president she was concerned his ads were not on television in states such as Michigan and Florida where Biden was blanketing the airwaves, according to people familiar with the conversation. The president shared the concern, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations…
The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, continues to oversee the campaign’s major financial decisions, and has signed off on Stepien’s new approach after previously backing spending sanctioned by his predecessor, Brad Parscale, who was demoted by Trump this summer.
Parscale’s planning had assumed a large influx of smaller, online donations at the end of the campaign, which Stepien is less certain will arrive, say officials familiar with the discussions. In August, Trump raised $210 million, compared with $364.5 million for Biden’s operation…
And of course the Son-in-Law is the one guy who can’t be fired. Lock on target!
The three top selling books on Amazon right now: "Rage," "Compromised" and "Disloyal" pic.twitter.com/8FD0qLgklx
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2020
It’s not gonna be pretty to watch if (as I sincerely hope) this shift in the political winds continues. But then again, it hasn’t been pretty to watch the ascendance of the Squatter-in-Chief, either…
dmsilev
Only real question is what fraction is being grifted away by Trump, his family, and all of the assorted hangers-on and parasites that surround him. I’m guessing it’s a big fraction.
cain
I’m praying for casualties. You can bet that if he fails to get money – he will fail to grift and siphon it to his hyenas. They will of course turn against him – other than his children of course. If Trump looks like he’s losing Putin might also do something as well. Casualties. A lot of them.
Chetan Murthy
AL, you and the other FPers are so great, keeping all these receipts! Indeed, when I saw that Jon Karl clip, I thought “how now brown cow!” I remember him, such a suck-up to the Dubya flacks back in the day. And now he’s relentless with Hair Furore? Heh, maybe he’s tired of not being able to eat out in restaurants, get his hair done at his favorite salon, and in general partake of the many services the servant class offers to men of his station. For. Fear. Of. Dying.
About time, Mr. Karl. About. Fucking. Time.
Villago Delenda Est
Annie Linskey is the perfect Villager.
Also, too:
My wise first First Sergeant once told me that assume makes an ass of you and me.
piratedan
sorry, right now I’m feeling very much like being in “no prisoners” mode for these elections. We can see what Barr and Trump and McConnell and Putin have in mind and if we defeat them, as soon as they get their due process, I would just as soon have their pieces removed from the board altogether. Maybe that makes me a bad person, right now, I not only want to defeat them, I want them to pay and each and every enabling asshat that looked the other way or was too much of a coward to do what needed to be done, be removed from public office and doing time, stripped of their assets or raking our forests…
Ken
I was a little surprised that they had to cut ad buys to pay for the campaign headquarters. I thought they got the use of the White House for free.
BTW, anyone know how Hatch Act fines are assessed? I know they’re a pittance, but if (for example) each misuse of the White House by each person counted as a violation, it could add up.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah. Gag — Annie Linskey.
I did notice that it was young Republican Jonathan Karl asking that very pointed question.
I thought “the worm turns.”
Which can be both a figure of speech, and an observation of Karl.
Mike in DC
I really need old school establishment Dems like Biden, Pelosi and Schumer to discover their inner ruthless streak, politically speaking. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, former Trump officials and the crop of 2024 pretenders don’t deserve any mercy, nor will giving them mercy result in anything but the scorpion stinging our backs halfway across the stream. Throw them an anchor, step on their necks, back up and run them over again, etc.
Jeffro
It’s going to be interesting when the Repub donors find out where all the money got siphoned off to…
It’ll be even more interesting to watch what happens when GOP candidates all around the country figure out what a drag this orange loser is on the ticket and start to try and save themselves…
Go
Long
On
Popcorn
Futures!
Jeffro
An aggressive approach would take each violator, multiply by each violation, etc etc.
A really aggressive approach involves tarring and feathering (it’s in the fine print, take my word for it).
Ken
The Supreme Court might find otherwise, but it could take months for the cases to work their way through the system.
Princess
I’ll take it. I remember Obama getting the benefit of this in 08 and I’ll take it.
Leto
@Villago Delenda Est: I learned that same lesson about assume. All my troops learned it pretty damn quickly.
Jeffro
Speaking of getting people to switch sides…what’s YOUR plan for actually beating back the pandemic, mr. president* trumpov?
Here’s Uncle Joe’s
God willing, the country won’t wait until January 20th to start (finally!) doing the right things. But this is kind of a slam-dunk here: one guy has a plan, the other just wants to keep golfing and watching Fox News.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Woodward is going to be on 60 minutes this Sunday, with the NFL as a lead-in. Then he’ll do Maddow and CNN. It’ll be wall-to-wall next week, with the volume turned up to 11.
Then in two weeks, Showtime has a two night special movie on RussiaGate (video)
Bruuuuce
[email protected]:
Pretty, no. Satisfying, schadenfreude-y, even, you betcha.
And then we need to clear all of those weathervanes out so we can ensure fair reportage in the Biden Administration.
Calouste
You know, when there’s a horse race and one horse has a lead of three lengths and gaining, the commentary switches from whether the loser can still mount a challenge to whether it’s time to retire him, and if he could make money as a stud in retirement or if he maybe should be sent straight to the glue factory.
SFAW
@piratedan:
Not to be pedantic, but shouldn’t that be “I would just as soon have them removed in pieces”?
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
This.
J R in WV
@Villago Delenda Est:
I learned that in a systems analysis course. Assume = Ass|u|me she (the very excellent prof) wrote on the board.
piratedan
@SFAW: I dunno, myself, we could just give them the Colonel Turner treatment as far as I’m concerned, but I suspect none of them would take that option.
West of the Rockies
Not sure if this has been discussed yet on BJ, but if/when Trump loses, what do you all think will happen to AG Blob Barr come January 20th? Will he be investigated and indicted? I desperately hope he meets disgrace and ruin.
dmsilev
@Calouste: Have you seen his children? No reputable breeder would want him for a stud, so I guess glue factory it is.
noncarborundum
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is why I presume instead of assuming. I keep hoping it’s going to make a Pres. of you or me, or actually anyone other than the current defiler of that office. So far, though, no luck.
dmsilev
It never never fucking ends:
Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19
NotMax
Kushner adding FCC chairman Pai to his speed dial as we snark.
“Ours aren’t campaign ads, they’re valuable national security messages for the country.”
:)
Sister Golden Bear
Paging Tamara, paging Tamara, we have a challenger for the cutest duck:
Pet duck in NYC subway
Cheryl Rofer
ballerat
@Mike in DC: Co-signed.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ken: The penalties for Hatch Act violations include “removal from federal service, reduction in grade, debarment from federal employment for a period not to exceed 5 years, suspension, reprimand, or a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000.”
Kent
As far as I know, it can really only be meaningfully enforced as a practical matter on career civil servants by doing things like a reprimand in your personnel file that would jeopardize a promotion when the worm turns and the next administration comes into town. Or get you sent into the dungeon to count paperclips. Or even actual demotions.
I know one thing for certain. If I was still a Fed in a government agency and had some level of authority. I’d sure as hell be taking notes on who all is violating their oaths by acting in impermissible political ways for Trump. And then take it out on them and the next possible chance. Not just for Hatch Act stuff, but for deliberately fucking with the science due to political pressure. All that stuff.
But the folks like Barr who aren’t going to be around for a Biden Administration? I don’t think there is all that much you can really do. The fines for folks who don’t care about Federal careers are pretty trivial
The Hatch Act is mostly a hammer against Democrats buried in the Federal Bureaucracy, not for top level political Republican appointees. That’s why it is called the Hatch Act. After Orin Hatch
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@West of the Rockies: I don’t remember ever being quite so aware of the dates of transition of power before. So I only learned this year that the new Congress begins January 3. If we have a Democratic majority in both houses, Barr’s troubles might begin earlier than Jan 20.
HumboldtBlue
I posted this link a few threads down, but here’s something to smile about, animal pictures.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev:
Good. (Seriously.) Let them rob the RNC and their racist, fascist white trash supporters blind. I’m so fucking done with these idiots who drool over a racist conman.
West of the Rockies
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I hope you are correct and that Barr’s BP jumps to about, oh, 240/110.
prostratedragon
@dmsilev: So, in March Blabby Boy is telling Woodward how he likes to “play it down,” and in April he’s installing the team at CDC that is supposed to see to it.
sdhays
@West of the Rockies: I’m not getting my hopes up. I suspect that Barr has committed ethical breaches worthy of getting him disbarred, but hasn’t committed any crimes that are on the books or are easy enough to prove/clear enough to explain for a Biden AG to prosecute.
But I also believe he’s not as clever as he thinks he is, so maybe the knives will come out next year.
Jay Noble
@Jeffro: Jan. 20th will be a very busy day. I hope Joe is getting his signing arm some reps.
Citizen Alan
@J R in WV: Similarly, Samuel L. Jackson taught me that assumptions make an ass out of you and umption.
Citizen Alan
Yeah, but remember — when you presume, you press you to me!
prostratedragon
@Cheryl Rofer:
Deputy Minister Helpmann.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: In college, the jazz band director told someone this who was late to class because we had a bomb scare, and he just assumed the class was cancelled.
They moved the class to the director’s backyard, about 3 miles from campus but they had to wait for enough people with cars to show up so they could move the big instruments.
And there was no bomb.
Nettoyeur
@dmsilev: Not a guess, it is a certainty. The last stage of smash and grab is when they take the silverware.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: My fave is the birb with the fish perched on the No Fishing sign. Not a single fuck to give.
Nettoyeur
@Jay Noble: WH has a signature machine that duplicates the POTUS signature.
RaflW
@Jeffro: With just over seven weeks left, I’m thinking that if they’re just now discovering his broke-ass, sinking like a Lake Travis anchor chain candidacy, they’re a) not too bright and b) fucked.
Or at least I hope so. Susan Collins pulling her patented “I refuse to be pinned down on wether I’ll vote for the top of the ticket upon which I am also running” is just so hilariously, perfectly Susan. And useless. Which is Susan.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay Noble: You get an Executive Order, you get an Executive Order, everyone gets an Executive Order to lay waste to the past four years of shit!
Lyrebird
@Chetan Murthy:
Three things:
1.
QFT
2. Yeah about time. I went to school with Jon Karl when he was heading up the Buckley newspaper on a liberal campus, seemed like all they wanted to do was see how close to slander & harassment they could get without getting charged.
3. Thank you for understanding and correcting my wording mistake the other night. Yes I meant Biden making an overture to Prof. Hill, not the other way around, whoops!
One more thing to all o’y’all:
I miss efg! I recall him saying it might be like this, like Nixon days, where it took forever but the rats did leave the ship…
West of the Rockies
@sdhays:
I suspect the porcine racist walks but loses any future position of power. I know this probably sounds terrible, but I truly hope his health immediately deteriorates and he ends his days in misery. He has caused so much damage and destruction.
Amir Khalid
Trump can run from these questions, but he cannot hide.
Kay
Be careful out there. The Trump supporter has an extensive criminal record with 4 violent crimes, one of them killing or injuring a dog.
Bruuuuce
@J R in WV: I first heard the split of “assume” on The Odd Couple. Laughed my ass off as a 12-or-so-year-old.
Nettoyeur
It has always seemed to me that the DC establishment press are medium size piranhas. They have been subsisting on a diet of the minnows of access journalism, but now they are starting to smell the blood of a fat, wounded animal— that means talk show invites, pundit perches, book advances, Pulitzers, and screen plays. If a few chunks of flesh start appearing, there is going to be a rush . . .Youtube has a number of piranha feeding videos.
Sebastian
@sdhays:
Accessory after the fact. Obstruction of justice, at least ten counts. Bill Barr will die in prison.
Sab
@Jeffro: Sort on topic. Ohio’s Health dorector quit months ago after the crazies started harassing her family and neighbors. So we have had only an acting director since then, and it shows.
Gove DeWine anounced Thirsday that he had found a new director. Twelve hours later she announced that she was withdrawimg her acceptance. No explanation why.
Now we know. It turns out that while she was busy fighting the pandemic in South Carolina, she hadn’t noticed how Dr. Acton was being treated in Ohio. After she accepted and started to touch base for the transition she learned, and decided she was not going to subject her own family to that.
Kay
@Sab:
Anyone who takes that job in Ohio needs a security detail. The Trump nutters are going bonkers.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Why would Trump trash be assholes over a hoax? SAD!
sanjeevs
@NotMax: This Caputo?
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
I’m serious. That person needs 24/7 security. Between the Q nutters and the enraged racists with violent felony records someone is going to get hurt.
Amir Khalid
@Bruuuuce:
It’s used by Jack Crawford in The Silence Of The Lambs, both book and movie, at his first meeting with Clarice Starling.
prostratedragon
@sanjeevs: Why, it does seem so doesn’t it?
Thanks!
Chetan Murthy
@prostratedragon: Y’know, I don’t like the way this conversation about Caputo is going: how’s a guy supposed to pay for his kids’ college without betraying his country, eh?!?!?!
Kay
@Sebastian:
I’m so pleased ethical lawyers are resigning. Barr is a fancy person with a very high opinion of himself. That will humiliate him.
Kay
Another hard day at work for the low quality Trump hires. I’ve noticed over the years none of these people do any actual work. I feel like that should be mentioned more.
HumboldtBlue
@Alison Rose:
I kind of like the swinging monkey, I can almost hear mom and dad sighing.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: I agree. I assumed it was because of COVID-19 deniers so I had to mock them and their dumbassery.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Stop making me want to watch The Silence Of The Lambs.
...now I try to be amused
I’ve long thought the media are a lagging indicator of public opinion. You articulated a good reason why.
ellie
@Bruuuuce: That’s where I heard it too! The Odd Couple!
piratedan
@Kay: agreed, there’s not even a bad faith effort being made, hell they just copy down some notes from the RW pundit du juor and then try and pass that off as some kind plan. No numbers, no structure, no bullet points, everything they toss out consists of crappy premise —–>underpants gnomes—> fairy dust —-> profit!, shit we saw more planning out of a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “let’s put on a show!” than with these cretins…
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
It puts the lotion….
MomSense
@piratedan:
I’m at gallows or firing squad. I’ve never felt more full of rage in my life. Sometimes it surprises me how present it is even when I’m doing something totally unrelated – I’ll hear some NPR host tiptoe around an atrocity and the fury comes pouring out of me.
Bruuuuce
@Amir Khalid: Yes. Saw that much later, though.
@ellie: :-)
MomSense
@West of the Rockies:
The GD rack should happen to that corrupt asshole.
Redshift
@mrmoshpotato: From a year and a half ago:
The one positive thing Trump has done is infesting the RNC with grifters from top to bottom, and whatever amount of money they claim to raise, a large portion of it will be siphoned off.
I’m fully expecting we’ll hear stories of House and Senate campaigns who had reasonable expectations of investments from the RNC, only to find out that “the money wasn’t there.”
But I’ve always been an optimist.
(I’m also hoping the grifting culture is hard enough to eradicate that it drags then down well into the future.)
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Kay: Baghdad Barbie
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
You could always just read the book. ?
MomSense
@Lyrebird:
I miss him so much and I think of Mrs EFG, too. I remember that she loved to watch all the hallmark Christmas movies. Lately I’ve been so stressed out I’ve started watching cheesy movies like those and I was thinking of Mrs EFG.
MomSense
I hate his stupid accordion hand gestures. I just watched the stupid video and there he goes with the accordion hands.
randy
Those of us who manage to conceal our predatory nature may use empathy or intelligence or cowardice. So the most visibly criminal predators are those who lack all three, where lack of prudent cowardice comes through as arrogance. The social pathology we call trumpiness is built on cowardice frozen into a desperate deceit, the pretense of arrogance. The most spectacular predators are the most pathetic when they fall, very attractive to lessor predators in the feeding frenzy that covers each ones terror of yos own similar weakness.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid:
Not in two hours. :P
mrmoshpotato
@MomSense:
LOL
Tiny accordion hands.
TS (the original)
@Elizabelle:
I’m amazed they stopped leaving it to the women to ask the pointed questions. Trump will have to think up a new word for mail press pundits. The women are nasty people, it’s taken a long time for the men to realise what they are dealing with.
ballerat
@MomSense: I’m there too.
It’s the calculatedness and yet the arrogant casualness of the abuse that ought to enrage and horrify any decent person.
Consider this: These are people who sat down and thought about how they, with the powers, personnel and offices of government under their thumbs, could best harm, humiliate, degrade, agonize and destroy people, children, families, the powerless, the weaker, the vulnerable.
These are Nazi times.
Brian
@opiejeanne: Must have been after my time
James E Powell
Maybe. But even if they do, we still need to destroy them.
Hob
@Kent: I’d be somewhat surprised if the Hatch Act were named after Orrin Hatch, given that it was passed in 1939 when he was five years old.
opiejeanne
@Brian: I wasn’t in the jazz band yet when it happened. Maybe I’m remembering two things that didn’t happen at the same time, though. I know John said it to someone, and I remember them taking the equipment to his house to practice the day of the bomb scare. Probably my first year back at college, 1973-74, and possibly before I met you.
randy
@randy: lesser, not “lessor”. Rent slave was not my intended meaning.
Geminid
Sarah Gideon and Susan Collins debated last night, along with two independent candidates. From accounts in Slate and the Bangor Daily News, they sparred over health care, judges, and Collins’ reticence regarding whether she will vote for trump. Polls are showing Gideon even or with a slight lead, trump down by double digits in Maine. Freshman Democrat Jared Golden is in a close race in the ME 2nd District he flipped in 2018; this one is getting extra money and attention as Maine, like Nebraska, awards an electoral vote to the party winning a congressional district.
bemused
@Kay:
Right. I’ve thought for a long time, what in the world do these trump employees do all day because they appeared to be not only totally incompetent but the laziest people on earth.
Just read interview with Samantha Cohen in Hive, Vanity Fair. Samantha got an intern job at WH but thought she’d go crazy after a week. “No one was doing anything. I would sit at my computer screen just staring. Everyone looked liked Kellyanne Conway.”
Frankensteinbeck
It just occurred to me: These tapes might make a bigger difference to the press than us. The press has a huge ‘you can’t know what is in a man’s heart’ thing. (Like all press traditions, Republicans get more benefit of the doubt.). The have said repeatedly they don’t feel comfortable using ‘lie’ because maybe Republicans believe what they say? How can we KNOW??? Well, this fits their pathologically strict requirements for proof. Trump said, on tape, shoved in their faces by someone they respect, that he knew. Not just contradictory statements. He said he knew. ‘Lie’ is now an okay word. He still can’t be called ‘racist’ because he hasn’t been recorded sayin n-clang.
@sdhays:
Barr isn’t a fraction as smart as he thinks he is. What has he succeeded at other than “You can’t make me turn over documents”? He throws out bullshit attempts to smear Trump’s enemies and they flop. With a friendly Supreme Court his DoJ still has a shitty record of winning cases and uses transparently stupid arguments. Hell, he can’t get “Nevermind, we’re dropping the case” to stick.
Salty Sam
Seconded!
cleek
i see plenty of Trump TV ads. well, plenty of the same one over and over.
cleek
@Salty Sam:
one nice thing about 2020 – i haven’t listened to NPR since March,when i stopped driving to work.
different-church-lady
@dmsilev: All of
themit, Katie.evodevo
@sanjeevs: Yes, yes it is..
Oops…someone got there first
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Caputo
Tokyokie
@piratedan:
Yes, but Judy and Mickey usually had Busby Berekeley on standby to do the choreography.
dww44
@Kent: Interesting. I didn’t know this was a GOP initiative. More along the lines of what’s good for me is not necessarily good for thee. Dems definitely need to become better at aggressive pushback.
AnotherBruce
@Alison Rose: That’s a Kingfisher. And boy do they have an attitude.
Brian
@opiejeanne: I was in the jazz band pretty much continuously from 1972 through 1977. The only time I wasn’t was when DeFoor did his jazz symposium thing.