Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

T R E 4 5 O N

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

When we show up, we win.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Friday Evening Open Thread: ‘… It Went CLANK Into the Hole’…

Friday Evening Open Thread: ‘… It Went CLANK Into the Hole’…

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A little light TFG-abuse to start off the weekend. Dave Roth, at Defector, always a fun read:

It is easy enough to imagine what Donald Trump’s customized personal hell might be like, and not just because there is already so much footage of it available. His hell would be one of his 2020 rallies, the ones in which he vamped and barked and drawled through distended 140-minute recitations of whatever was on cable news earlier that day. He did that in packed and distressingly humid Sun Belt convention centers while gleaming like a joint of char siu pork and he did it while swaddled in heroic overcoats on wind-blasted Great Plains airstrips. There was one where he brought up the rapper Lil Pump, whom he called Little Pimp; sometimes he would do a strange little mince-and-pump dance afterwards to The Village People’s “Macho Man.” Footage of him doing that was something like his campaign’s closing argument, in the election that he and many other people still can’t quite admit that he lost. Recently, after a rally in the town of Commerce, Georgia, he did it again.

Trump’s own hell is exactly that kind of event, except he is not onstage. In that hell, Trump can only stand there with everyone else, looking up at some other heedless wealthy man as he tells odd dilatory anecdotes about his own amazing success and nasty unfair enemies, or burps up half-digested chunks of cable news gristle. In that hell, Trump is instead stuck with the lumpen aspirants and stans, with their t-shirts and impacted opinions, stuck clapping and whooping whenever the big man in charge pauses to let them do it. In that hell Trump is consigned to the audience, cheek by jowl with swirly-eyed diehards who, but for their TV-watching habits or load-bearing personality disorders or some other unhappy demographic accident, might have been Parrotheads a tick or two too predatory or aggrieved or otherwise un-chill to really fit into the community.

But that is hell, and where Trump is now—definitively out of office, flitting through a gilded house arrest of his own making at various golf clubs bearing his name, banned from any social media site big enough for him to want to be on it—is much more like purgatory. He is still blithely sending to voicemail the consequences that he’s avoided for his entire life. The bet on which his entire being hinges, which is that someone born like him can pretty much do whatever he wants at all times without repercussion, is still very much in play. Breathtaking amounts of money, billed by the hour, and a quietly heartbreaking sum of (other people’s) labor and time are committed every day to maintaining this uneasy stalemate. As purgatories go, it is both luxurious and extremely high-maintenance.

Still, a well-appointed purgatory is no less purgatorial. Trump is swaddled in the high-thread-count luxury to which he has become accustomed, and surrounded by supplicants and greasy underlings in the ways he likes to be, but he is not really in the public eye anymore. Every now and then he calls into his favorite cable shows and does that thing he does where he kind of free-associates about the four or five things he cares about for nine consecutive chorus-free minutes like a septuagenarian RXK Nephew, which is mostly what he did as president but which no longer moves markets or even really makes news. He is banned from the social media sites that made him, and the janky fake Twitter that his people have made for him is so unwieldy and unpopular that he can’t bear to be associated with it. When he shows up on one of the lower-rung juche networks, he looks uncanny and medicated. The vibe is that of an infomercial advertising exquisite commemorative plates not sold in any store…

This is the purgatory made especially for this man, who needs more than anything else to be seen and heard. Trump is free to golf all day and watch his favorite TV friends endlessly ask and refuse to answer the question What Is Going On, and he gets all the steam-table beef flaps he can eat and all the selfie requests from psychotic realtors he can stand. But, and here is the purgatorial taunt in it, when Trump powerfully strokes a hole-in-one on a 181-yard par-three, blasting a five-iron that sailed magnificently through a very strong wind, he has to dictate the official statement to some aide for anyone to know about it, and then the aide has to push it out on a website, and then someone else has to notice that there has been an official statement from The 45th President Of The United States to that effect…

But because Trump is lucky enough to be in purgatory, this shot quite probably went in, and then it took days for anyone even to register him crowing about it, and when they noticed they mostly thought “huh” or “what a strange man.” It could be worse, but that is the fundamental fact of purgatory. In lieu of punishment, his stupid little triumphs are now his alone, and insignificant. Not quite hell, then, but not far off the green.

Reader Interactions

153Comments

  5. 5.

    lollipopguild

    When he was president he was both the most powerful person on the planet(nukes) and the most picked on and victimized person on the planet. He bragged non-stop how smart, good looking and talented he was and in the same breath whined endlessly about how mean everybody was to him. Maybe eternity in hell awaits him.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That was a thing of beauty.

    Did TFG really call Lil Pump “Little Pimp”? Hahaha. (Have never heard of Lil Pump, but it’s still funny.)

  8. 8.

    burnspbesq

    Fani Willis is going to give Trump what he deserves. If Garland wants to pile on, so much the better.

    The most delicious part is that a racist, misogynistic pig is going to be taken down by an African-American woman

  10. 10.

    cmorenc

    Trump has lived the optimal life for a narcissistic sociopath:

    – ample wealth to indulge doing whatever you want

    – insolation from consequences or responsibility for your actions

    – ample supply of flattering admiters wishing they could be like you

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Oh, before the thread gets too clotted, a reminder for anyone who’s interested that Joy Reid is interviewing MVP Kamala Harris on her show. Don’t know what time the interview itself starts, but the program (MSNBC) begins in 15 minutes — 7:00pm Eastern.

  12. 12.

    Mai Naem mobile

    This is really well written. I still can’t believe this loser became POTUS. It still sounds like a bad bad attempt at a black comedy.

  15. 15.

    debbie

    @cmorenc:

    I hope it crosses TFG’s mind at some point that his admirers are probably just as honest as Putin’s advisors have been.

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    Last Saturday evening I was skimming around Twitter for reporting on trump’s Cummings, Georgia rally. One of the better tweets:

       Who wants to watch some old fart dance off-beat and jiggy to “YMCA”?

    Another wag posted a picture of Joe Biden in his convertible. Joe was pointing at the viewer, with shades on and a big smile. The caption above read, “Hi, I’m Brandon.” The one below read, “I’m the Guy who Kicked Trump’s Ass in 2020.”

  18. 18.

    Splitting Image

    I almost admire Trump’s efforts to reclaim the Village People’s music for straight white reactionaries. It may be the most ambitious, courageous, and dare I say fabulous thing that that troglodyte has ever done.

    As doomed to failure as everything else he ever did, true, but fabulous none the less.

  19. 19.

    JoyceH

    I do SO want Trump to get what he deserves, indictment, conviction and imprisonment. But in the meantime, it is some consolation to know that he despises the people who adore him, and the people he wants to adore him despise him.

  20. 20.

    lollipopguild

    @debbie: That will never happen. He is incapable of ever having a real doubt about anything.  It’s learned behavior and once learned and successful nothing short of a lightning bolt from God will change him.

  21. 21.

    Ken

    …It Went CLANK Into the Hole…

    … and the caddy, he turned to me with tears in his eyes, and he said ‘Sir…

    Oh, and the drop-off in registration for his site coincides with the new Russia sanctions. Just mentioning that as a fact, draw your own inferences.

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @debbie:

    I hope it crosses TFG’s mind at some point that these admirers are probably just as honest as Putin’s advisors have been.

    He is the kind of person he is largely because he is incapable of thinking of that kind of thing.  If he receives praise, it must be deserved.  If he receives criticism, it must be because he’s so great other people want to tear him down.  That the praise could be fake and the criticism deserved is literally unthinkable for him.

  23. 23.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Greatest Final-Four eavh assembled is about to tip off:

     

    South Carolina’s Gangstas vs Louisville’s Blues Brothers

     

    UCONN’s Dandies vs Stanford’s Three Headed MonsterK

  26. 26.

    Hoppie

    A fair afterlife is living it as you expect for others.

    A libertarian’s afterlife is a shopping mall parking lot two days before Christmas (hat tip Jack Chalker).

  27. 27.

    Benw

    Dave Roth is always on point. Even moreso since he dropped the “Lee.” His analysis of the TFG years while writing at Deadspin (RIP) were breathtakingly brutal.

  29. 29.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: If you read Mary Trump’s book, it happened a lot when his father was psychologically abusing the children and his mother. He just learned early on to become the abuser.

  30. 30.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    I hope it crosses TFG’s mind at some point that his admirers are probably just as honest as Putin’s advisors have been. 

    Not gonna happen, because the Rethuglican base isn’t acting like it’s white trash, it is white trash.

  37. 37.

    skerry

    The best thing about Trump’s Truth Social App is that Devin Nunes left Congress to run it.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    It’s hard for me to enjoy it because there’s still maybe a 60% chance this guy is President again in 2025.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Very strong, very powerful.

    The Joy Reid interview with VP Harris is good. No news broken so far, and maybe there won’t be, but it’s enjoyable and informative to watch.

  40. 40.

    germy

    NEW: Trump’s White House glossy, photo book, which has earned him millions of dollars, preempted a book that his own chief White House photographer had been planning. with @maggieNYT https://t.co/FxeuY2rdJI

    — Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) March 31, 2022

    i can’t believe a tradesperson got screwed over and scammed by a guy who has screwed over and scammed every tradesperson he has ever encountered https://t.co/2kx63omEFu

    — lauren (@NotABigJerk) March 31, 2022

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    During America’s golden years if the 1950s

    Annual Inflation 1950 – 1959
    The decade began with deflation. Each 12 month period ending in January through June of 1950 was deflationary but the first full year of the decade (ending in January 1951) was highly inflationary at over 8%. For the next several months inflation hovered around 9%. 1952 and 53 were better as inflation moderated while 1954 and 55 fell into deflation.  Through out the remainder of the decade inflation remained moderate.

     

    I hope voters don’t destroy democracy because of a bad year caused by external factors.

  45. 45.

    Ruckus

    @Ivan X:

    I hope you were crying from laughing to hard.

    I mean sure we are all crying a bit because we had to attempt to live through his taking a public dumb on the country every time he opened his McDs hole but him suffering is just icing on the shit cake.

  48. 48.

    eclare

    @debbie:   Suddenly it’s dusty.  I don’t remember my elementary school librarian, but I definitely remember the one at the neighborhood library.  She had a great librarian name:  Mrs. Longfellow.

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    Best covid-related news seen in ages.

    For the first time in more than two years, UC Davis Health said its hospital had no COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit for two consecutive days, and other local hospitals said their ICUs had seen a similar trend.

    “The first COVID patient to arrive in our ICU did so in February 2020, and the unit treated at least one positive individual every day since for at least 761 consecutive days,” UC Davis leaders said Thursday.

    Dr. Parimal Bharucha, a pulmonary and critical care doctor who practices with Dignity Health, said: ‘I’m at Folsom, and we have no patients in the ICU with COVID.” Bharucha is the director of the ICU at Mercy Folsom Hospital and chairman of the department of medicine at Mercy San Juan Medical Center. He said they are now finding that many patients with COVID-19 were actually admitted for other emergent conditions but were incidentally diagnosed with COVID-19 because all patients are tested for it. This is a far cry from where things stood a few months ago.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article259999150.html#storylink=cpy

  52. 52.

    Mike in NC

    Just before the election I caught a clip of the Fat Orange Clown at a rally, where he sort of danced to “YMCA” by The Village People on stage with a demented smirk on his bloated face. Nobody ever accused Trump of having any dignity.

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m not sure that trump has a 60% chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2024.

    If he does, I think that Joe Biden is right when he says that he would be fortunate to face “that person” in the next Presidential election.

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Ok. I don’t want to be picking on someone. Especially since I’m a Matt too.

    I wouldn’t want to cause a Matt-astrophe.

  65. 65.

    CaseyL

    Devin Nunes – nothing so became his time in Congress as the method and outcome of his leaving it.

  67. 67.

    TonyG

    I wonder whether Donald Trump has done anything in his life that has not been a total failure?

  69. 69.

    StringOnAStick

    Tales from covidiots file: a friend’s boss just turned down a free trip to Spain and the Canary islands because they refuse to get an mRNA vaccine.  They’ve been holding out for Novavax to be approved since that’s a standard vaccine platform, but apparently mRNA is a tool of the debil his ownself. The same boss nearly died of Covid last year and was saved by the monoclonal antibody drug infusion (can’t remember the drug name), which as I recall was also new with little history.

  73. 73.

    germy

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Maybe he likes this part of the song:

    And I went down to the demonstration
    To get my fair share of abuse
    Singing, “We’re gonna vent our frustration
    If we don’t we’re gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse”

  76. 76.

    zhena gogolia

    I want to thank the BJ community. You all alerted me to the beginning of Ramadan this morning, so I wished a student a happy Ramadan today and she said I was the only professor who had ever done that. It made me cry.

  80. 80.

    StringOnAStick

    @eclare: My friend is meeting a friend in order to “drink away the stupid”.

    This brings up something I haven’t heard about though, that maybe hardcore R idiots who won’t get a Pfizer or Moderna might be willing to get Novavax because it isn’t mRNA?  Is that worth pursuing in order to get more people vaccinated, even if Novavax isn’t as efficacious as Pfizer or Moderna?  I’m at the “to hell with any antivaxxer” stage in my thinking, but if I put on my rational thinker of the greatest public good hat, is it that many people who would get Novavax?  I haven’t heard about that vaccine and it’s progress through FDA approval for a long time now, and maybe that’s why the antivaxxers who need cover from being thought an idiot are clinging to the idea of an approval that may never come.

  81. 81.

    Booger

    @Geminid: Hey, off topic, but do I recall you live in Green County? I drove through there today on the way from Stanardsville to Crozet and my god, it’s beautiful! I’d never been through there in six decades of living in Virginia. Wow.

  85. 85.

    eclare

    @StringOnAStick:   If the mRNA technology is the issue, why not get J&J?  That’s what I don’t get.  To be fair, I haven’t read much of anything about Novavax, so I don’t know about the differences.

    I just know I want the Cadillac of vaccines.  First three were Moderna, and I have an appt for Pfizer on Sunday.

    Can I haz free vacay now?

  89. 89.

    different-church-lady

    Could just be that once Russia got isolated from the world’s economy there just weren’t enough rubles to pay the pros manipulating his numbers up in the first place?

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @StringOnAStick:

    This brings up something I haven’t heard about though, that maybe hardcore R idiots who won’t get a Pfizer or Moderna might be willing to get Novavax because it isn’t mRNA?

    Some have said they would, but I suspect they’d find a reason to move the goalposts.

  94. 94.

    dexwood

    Fuck tfg. Tired of hearing about him though I know his influence still holds among the redhat idiots. The Orange Stain on America won’t come clean anytime soon.

    ETA: Just saw z g’s comment at 3. Beat me to it, should read comments first.

  95. 95.

    debbie

    @TonyG:

    He was all over the society pages in the 1980s and early 1990s. There wasn’t much analysis of his activities back then, but he had a reputation for success (probably self-constructed).

  97. 97.

    Captain C

    @TonyG: Well, he’s gotten a shitload of people to pay his luxurious way for pretty much his whole life, despite the fact that he screws over, fucks up, and/or turns to shit everyone and everything he’s involved with.  The man couldn’t make money at gambling and football in the USA, for crying out loud!

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    Right wingnut Sen. Mark Obenshain claims suspending the 26 cents/gal gas tax would save VA taxpayers $1,000/yr. That implies each taxpayer buys ~3,800 gal/yr, or 74 gal/wk. In fact, the avg American consumes ~300 gal/yr, <10% what Obenshain is claiming… https://t.co/ryhQIwMik6 pic.twitter.com/lCQvTHptqq

    — Blue Virginia (@bluevirginia) April 1, 2022

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    They just make stuff up – they don’t even try.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @Booger: Yes, I live in Greene County, five miles south of Stanardsville. Depending on your route, you passed a half mile or four miles from my home on your way to Crozet.

    Before I found a fortunate home here, I lived in Augusta County, between Waynesboro and Stuart’s Draft. That area may be even prettier than where I live now. I still miss the Valley, especially the people.

  112. 112.

    luc

    Perhaps a social network just can’t thrive if there are exclusively morons participating in it ???

  119. 119.

    Starfish

    @Baud: That is exactly why it did not catch on. What fun is it for people to say they believe in something completely stupid when everyone just agrees with them.

  123. 123.

    Booger

    @Geminid: I thought Rappahannock co. Was something (which it is) but the greater distance from NoVa really seems to make Green shine. Well done, and i get missing the valley!

  126. 126.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Baud: In related news, the Pentagon announced it will name a urinal after Dump.

  127. 127.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Geminid:

    @Baud:

    I don’t know how you guys can remain so optimistic in the face of all the bullshit. Reading a reddit thread about that Florida “Don’t Say Gay Bill” really depressed me. It’s not just about being anti-LGBT+, it’s an attempt to also bankrupt the public education system to replace it with charter schools and create an uneducated underclass that’s easily manipulatable:

    I don’t understand why Republicans think that this stuff is a winning play.

    Because they’re winning while doing it.

    The combination of bigotry and the hyper focus on intangible, made up, culture war nonsense have a majority of conservatives living in absolute terror, thinking they’re fighting for their lives, checking under their beds for CRT 5g trans migrant caravans.

    Before someone counters me with “it’s not a majority”, what I said is the core platform of the Republican party. Stupidity, the culture war, bigotry, and crazy conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are so central to the Republican platform that it is a core requirement to leave the door open to the idea of the 2020 election being stolen from Trump – and if you don’t, you get primaried with a serious risk of losing. Or, if you’re Ron DeSantis, you can’t even mention the fact you got your booster shot because your base is legitimately insane and that would hurt your numbers. You can’t name multiple tangible policies Republicans run on, because they don’t exist. This is what people are voting R for – a vast majority of them.
    The insane people run the party and they vote. It’s mainstream. We can argue on if this is going to be a successful longterm strategy in appealing to voters, but we can’t pretend like they aren’t sweeping their way to the midterms this year and Virginia was the first big clue that these people believe in utter nonsense and are highly mobilized to vote because of it.

    It doesn’t matter if what these people believe is nonsensical BS, they’re primed to think they’re fighting for their lives and way of life and they’re highly motivated and mobilized to vote because of it. A bunch of other states are considering similar legislation. The SCOTUS isn’t going to stop them. Who’s going to stop them? The constitutional structure of the US combined with demographic changes a la the Big Sort along with anti-democratic sentiment is going to ensure minority rule. I see opportunities for myself just going up in smoke because society is going to self-destruct because of these types of laws. It just seems like everything’s going to hell and there’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it. I’m trapped here and I can’t escape because I don’t have the skills other countries I’d consider moving to wan

    ETA: I’m sorry for being such a downer, guys. I’m just not feeling good right now

  128. 128.

    SFAW

    @burnspbesq:

    Fani Willis is going to give Trump what he deserves. If Garland wants to pile on, so much the better.

    The most delicious part is that a racist, misogynistic pig is going to be taken down by an African-American woman

    I will make you a bet that I truly hope to lose:

    I will bet you two six-packs of your favorite beer* that TFG never spends a day in jail, nor convicted of anything, as a result of the esteemed Ms. Willis’s efforts.

    There ain’t a jury in the land who would convict that traitorous, possibly-treasonous mofo of anything more than jaywalking.

    As I said, I truly hope to lose that bet, and would gladly send you the mentioned amount. But my assessment of the jury pool is somewhat less optimistic than yours.

    ** NB: If you are not a drinker, beer or otherwise, I will gladly substitute something appropriate.

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SFAW:

    There ain’t a jury in the land who would convict that traitorous, possibly-treasonous mofo of anything more than jaywalking.

    My skepticism on that score is different from yours– I don’t think trump will ever be brought before a jury. But I do appreciate the rare fellow traveller who remembers that there’s a great deal more to the criminal justice system than prosecutors, from the state to federal level, having ballz!

  134. 134.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I graduated over two years ago, never got licensure, realized I didn’t really enjoy it with the benefit of hindsight, and I was never that good at it; I was always a nervous wreck during clinicals

  135. 135.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Trump is issuing official ex-Presidential statements about his golf scores? ROFL

  136. 136.

    Poe Larity

    Oh, I thought this might be a thread on clanking replicators and niche sci-fi stories. Never mind.

  138. 138.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @geg6:

    I saw some bizarre video posted by a right-winger on Facebook that shows Pelosi unveiling a statue in Congress (I think) with the caption “Wait for it”. And when the cloth is removed it’s Trump doing that same stupid dance.

    I don’t get it. Do they consider that “owning the libs”? It’s bizarre and lame

  139. 139.

    caring & sensitive

    For those who don’t subscribe to Defector the best comment was “I believe “it went CLANK in the hole” is a partial transcript of the Stormy Daniels deposition.”

  140. 140.

    Mike in NC

    I thought I read that Rep.Ted Lieu has proposed a bill where nothing in the US government would ever be named after the Fat Orange Clown. Updates?

  146. 146.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @eclare:

    Y’know the hilarious bit? Trump probably thinks he was hot shit dancing like that. Let that sink in lmao

  148. 148.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    It was.

    SFB started with enough money to make most humans very happy and all he had to do was invest it and he’d have been a hell of a lot wealthier than he really is. But no, he had to show that none of his bullshit was fake. And all he proved was that all of it was. But you can convince some people of anything if polish bullshit to a high enough sheen. And he was willing to polish to that level. It was and is his only skill. Unfortunately for most of us there are far too many people that think polished bullshit is as good as it gets.

  149. 149.

    eclare

    @Ruckus:   From what I’ve read, as a guy from Queens, he was desperate to be accepted in Manhattan.  The elite there always saw through him.

  153. 153.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I wasn’t addressing whether I think he’ll ever go to trial — I think it’s (a wildly optimistic) 50-50 at best — I was merely addressing the bold/unwise statement that That Fucking Guy “is going to be taken down” by the Fulton County AG. “Taken down,” to me, means he actually suffers consequences. I think that’s less likely than the Jets winning the next Super Bowl.

    But as I said: it’s a bet I would love to lose.

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