Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

The lights are all blinking red.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

In my day, never was longer.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

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

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

This blog will pay for itself.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Let me file that under fuck it.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Readership Capture Open Thread: Bold Contrarian Matt Taibbi Has A New Theory

Readership Capture Open Thread: Bold Contrarian Matt Taibbi Has A New Theory

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Relentlessly mediocre “centrist” Jon Chait, at NYMag, gets an easy one — “Is the Entire World Conspiring to Make It Look Like Trump Lost the Debate?”:

… Why did so many journalists who witnessed the same event describe it so similarly? To Matt Taibbi, a popular commentator who has migrated from liberal-hating leftist to liberal-hating Trump apologist, there could be only one explanation: The entire news media was taking orders from the Democratic Party.

Taibbi’s post-debate column, headlined, “DNC Talking Points Become Instant Post-Debate Headlines,” advances a bold hypothesis. Taibbi amasses suspicious evidence of media collusion:

Conspiracies, pet-eating, and the “same old tired playbook” figured prominently in morning headlines. “Harris baits Trump over and over,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor. “Harris baits an aging Trump into being his grumpiest, weirdest self,” was Salon’s take. “Harris Baits and Batters Trump,” wrote the Miami Herald. “Harris Baits Trump Into Arguments,” added CNN. “Harris Baits Trump: Inside their Fiery Debate,” was another Times headline, while The Wall Street Journal went with “Harris Baits Trump in Fiery Presidential Debate.” There were cheers that Harris was able to “bait him into defending himself rather than talking about issues.” And on and on. Instantly, bait everywhere. No wonder Jake Tapper talked about fishing after the event.

“As one of the last relics of the ‘Boys on the Bus’ era, I don’t recall campaign messaging being this crude, or politicians, press, and audience acting so overtly as a chorus,” he writes, “the DNC or RNC just backing up to the commentariat, dumping loads of phrases, and seeing them instantly converted to conventional wisdom, that’s new.”

Taibbi’s theory suffers from two serious flaws. The first lies in the linear nature of time. Taibbi seizes on a Democratic Party press release summarizing reactions to the debate and concludes that the reactions were implanted by the party into the media. But the news release came after the reactions. That is how it was able to quote them…

The second flaw with Taibbi’s analysis is that the belief Trump looked terrible was shared by many people who could not possibly be controlled by the Democratic message machine. As the debate occurred in real time, online betting markets moved in Harris’s direction, and Trump’s scammy meme stock plunged.

What’s more, the conclusion that Harris effectively baited Trump into an incoherent performance was echoed by many observers who are sympathetic to Trump. “Trump Took the Bait. Harris Kept Her Cool,” wrote Eli Lake in The Free Press. “He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him,” moaned Brit Hume on Fox News. “She won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity that left her policies and history largely untouched. He always takes the bait, and Ms. Harris set multiple traps so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he’d improve the lives of Americans in the next four years,” complained The Wall Street Journal editorial page…

Interestingly enough, Taibbi’s assessment of Trump’s performance is much more forgiving than that of Trump’s own advisers, who were apoplectic over his incoherent rants. “The [former] president was supposed to pivot but Trump blew it,” a campaign insider tells Marc Caputo. “He was supposed to make her own the Biden record. That didn’t really happen.” Trump advisers unloaded to Axios, noting that Trump simply declined to exploit the opportunities given to him by ABC News. “He was told to hold her accountable for the deadly, hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yet when the moderators teed up that softball twice, he swung at other topics.”…

Yes, perhaps the only two sane people in the universe are Donald Trump and Matt Taibbi. Or maybe there is some other explanation.

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    KatKapCC

    Taibbi’s theory suffers from two serious flaws. The first lies in the linear nature of time.

    I usually can’t stand Chait but I admit, this was a good line.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    If I didn’t want to avoid giving Taibbi a click, I’d check to see if his piece mentions Hillary Clinton.

  4. 4.

    KatKapCC

    @Baud: I tried following Chait’s link, but Taibbi’s piece is paywalled and even the archive site can’t get around it, and it usually gets around all paywalls.

  5. 5.

    Chet Murthy

    @KatKapCC: Haha, it just occurred to me that this is proof that Taibbi isn’t on Putin’s payroll.  B/c if he were, his substance wouldn’t be paywalled!  Ha!

    P.S. I mean, I’m sure Vova has kompromat on Taibbi, but he’s not paying him, is all.

  6. 6.

    BR

    There’s nothing more tiresome to me than the fake leftist Trump supporters. Every time I pop over to bluesky I see some fake leftist telling us that there’s basically no difference between Harris and Trump and that Trump might even be more “economically populist” (whatever their twisted definition of that is).

  7. 7.

    karen marie

    Does Taibbi dip himself in hair remover every morning?

    Clearly, whatever he’s doing, it’s eaten his brain.

    Back in the early 2000s – maybe 2004, 2005? – when he was writing for Rolling Stone and everyone was raving over how clever he was, I took a look at one of his stories at the RS website and noticed his little “about me” blurb in which he had a joke about raping a woman or women. I was so appalled by it that I emailed him and RS to point out that it wasn’t funny, it was offensive, and should be taken down.  I got no response, and the “joke” stayed.  Since that time I will not click through to read – and certainly won’t subscribe – to RS, and Taibbi can fuck all the way off

    @BR:   I’m not on bluesky, I’m on Mastodon.  I don’t see much of that kind of thing but I just straight up block their asses.  I got no time for bullshit.

  8. 8.

    Shalimar

    If Matt Taibbi hasn’t been sharing his desire to rape Taylor Swift with all of the other rightwing assholes, I consider that a win.  The bar with him is very low.

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    Bonier: Our team has hard data where we can actually look and see people were coming to our file… what we saw was a more than quadrupling of these voter registration checks coming to us. These spikes in registration attempts started immediately following the debate and Taylor Swift’s Instagram post and have now actually continued days later… This intensity and enthusiasm is really unprecedented at this point. It’s even bigger than what we saw after the Dobbs decision.

  16. 16.

    Jay

    Taibbi’s time at The Exile in Moscow, the booze and drug fueled parties, the rapes of teenage girls, not paying the hookers they hired ensures that he stays “on message” for the FSB.

    The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/right-wing-influencers-working-autocracy-inc/679793/, sorry not a gift link, has an article by Anne Applebaum, on how the ruZZian propaganda/ US “influencers” relationship is reverse in many cases to what you would think.

    ruZZia doesn’t pay them to push ruZZia’s narratives, only. ruZZia pays them for the most part to create anti-American propaganda that they can then use theit output to better train their Saint Petersburg crews on what resonates with Americans, and provide social media posts their their bot’s can amplify.

  17. 17.

    hitchhiker

    I saw Hugh Hewitt claiming that now that viewers have had time to think about what they saw, they’re changing their minds about how trump did.

    And then I died laughing.

    That play actually worked against Al Gore in 2000, remember? He and W had a debate, and the consensus was that Gore had won, and then the mighty wurlitzer went into high gear and there were a million stories about Gore “sighing” … and pretty soon the universe righted itself and decided that W had in fact owned the night.

    But we are all so, so much older now. And trump yelling about pet dogs being eaten is not W making smug about his education plan. And, of course, Kamala Harris is not Al Gore.

  18. 18.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    “Descriptions of the Hindenberg disaster are remarkably similar. Did journalists collude beforehand on those descriptions?”

    “Every major news organization lists the same medalists in the same order for the All-Around title. Is this evidence that the Olympics colluded with the journalists?”

  20. 20.

    K-Mo

    I love how it’s implied that the people who thought “Trump had so many opportunities to talk about his plans for making other peoples lives better but he blew it” are completely sane and reasonable.

  23. 23.

    kwAwk

    While watching the debate I was thinking that having a formidable opponent like Harris actually brought out the best of Trump.   Yes, there was his normal weird self.  Eating cats and dogs.  Evading on Jan 6th.  Trump getting fact checked All the crap.

    But I also noticed Harris not always answering the question asked.  I thought she did an amazing job as I posted at the time and I think she won.  But I didn’t quite find it to be the knock out blow that others said it was.

  24. 24.

    Shalimar

    @realbtl: I thought when I first read Taibbi that he was a Hunter Thompson imitator with actual talent and promise.  Then I read about his time in Moscow the decade before (all of which he had proudly reported himself) and to hell with that creepy evil asshole.

  29. 29.

    rikyrah

     

    David Yankovich (@DavidYankovich) posted at 5:05 PM on Thu, Sep 12, 2024:
    As a Democratic social media strategist, I’ll cut to the chase: Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris is a big deal, but not just for the reasons you might think. Yeah, it’s going to have an impact on the election, but this is about so much more than just votes.

    We’re talking about a culture war that’s going to outlast Trump and shape the future of our politics. Taylor Swift has one of the most passionate, engaged fanbases on the planet. Many of them are young, just starting to form their political identities, and now they’re hearing about our values and our vision in a way they might not have before.

    This is a moment where we can build something that lasts—a movement that isn’t just about winning one election but about showing a whole new generation what happens when we show up and fight for what we believe in. Taylor just gave us the chance to reach 300 million Swifties and create a wave of new voices and new voters who can change the game not just today, but tomorrow as well.

    So, yeah, her endorsement matters for 2024. But this? I think it’s bigger than that.
    (https://x.com/DavidYankovich/status/1834352607881830817?t=0egSwx8gPo8bYm2nKvX2LQ&s=03)

  32. 32.

    Raoul Paste

    It’s been two days, and it is still engrossing to see all the responses.  The whole thing feels very historical, and in a good way

    With all of the campaign events, how are Harris and Waltz not hoarse?

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @KatKapCC:

    Taibbi’s piece is paywalled and even the archive site can’t get around it, and it usually gets around all paywalls.

     

    Makes we wish Chaitt had just ignored it.

  37. 37.

    Scout211

    Thanks for featuring this, AL. I read about the Taibbi theory earlier today and then read some great take-downs.

    It defies logic.  Like Trump minions and fluffers who declare that Trump was fact-checked and Kamala wasn’t. It’s not at all because he lies and she tells the truth.  Oh no, it’s because the moderators were mean and unfair.

    Taibbi sees similar reactions all over the internet and media so it must be the all powerful Democratic talking points police controlling everyone and not that everyone saw the same thing and it was blatantly obvious that she baited Trump and he took the bait.

    I guess Taibbi needed some attention.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    @hitchhiker: I dunno, I’ve seen stranger things. Maybe by this time next week all the newspapers will be saying the guy on the television must have seen all those Haitians eating cats.

  39. 39.

    MattF

    I think Trump-adjacent commentators are unhappy with the notion that he was so easily manipulated by Harris. It’s… unmanly.

  40. 40.

    danielx

    Oh, bold contrarian Matt Taibbi! I heard Matt Taibbi and thought douchebag extraordinaire.

    My mistake, to be sure.

  41. 41.

    K-Mo

    @kwAwk: I thought the Bulwark crew had it right: MVP went in with a long list of things to accomplish, and she miraculously managed to check them all off.  First and foremost was showing she could take command in a hostile environment.  Holly crap did she deliver on that.  I really don’t think explaining the details of her policy positions was on her list at all.

    It would be fair to point out that she benefited greatly from Trump’s lack of focus.  A better opponent would have given her a much harder time, and she should prepare to give better answers if she ever gets pinned down. There are some things she can get pressed on for which there aren’t any great answers, and she should be ready to make do. But then again, her advantageous vantage points throughout the night were often attained by her own deft maneuvering.

  47. 47.

    Suzanne

    Taibbi is just trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.

    Life must feel disorienting to shitty men. Every sitcom seemingly convinced them that they could be gross and old and still have a hot young wife. They were also trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.

  48. 48.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MattF:

    I think Trump-adjacent commentators are unhappy with the notion that he was so easily manipulated by Harris. It’s… unmanly. 

    She’s also a woman.

  49. 49.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @K-Mo: First and foremost was showing she could take command in a hostile environment.  Holly crap did she deliver on that.  I really don’t think explaining the details of her policy positions was on her list at all.

    Truth. And why should “explaining details of her policy positions” have been on the list for that event? 90 minutes head to head with Donald Trump. Was there anyone watching this who had the least interest in policy? This was so clearly a test to see whether Kamala Harris can stand up to Trump and she passed with flying colors.

  50. 50.

    RevRick

    @rikyrah: The GOP today is rotten to the core. It’s composed of Trump’s eager collaborators and his silent, cowardly acquiescers. The heart of Trump’s fascist agenda is the creation of a white herrenvolk state.
    We see it all laid out in the smears leveled against drag queens, immigrant from Central and Latin America, and Haitians. The point of all these outrageous lies is to prime his supporters for the “bloody story” (his words) to come. The message is they are an existential threat to you.
    Trump only needs a shock troop, the American version of the Brownshirts, to do the actual dirty work. He just wants the rest of his supporters, like the Good Germans of old, to avert their eyes and provide cover.

  51. 51.

    sdhays

    @kwAwk: Debates aren’t actually about asking and answering questions. They’re bullshit verbal wrestling matches. That’s why people who play by the “rules” usually don’t do as well as they could.

    Trump has always been an awful debater by any standard measure. But he won against the basket of buffoons in the 2016 Republican primary because it’s not about policy, it’s nerd WWF and that’s what he can do. Hillary won her debates against him, but she didn’t take him down because she played by the rules (and I’m not sure she had any other choice, what with how primed so many people, particularly in media, were to being offended by anything she did). Biden was doing ok in his debate with Trump in 2020, but decisively took control when he told him to shut up.

    It’s a game. Which makes debates hard to watch many times because they trivialize politics for entertainment. But it is what it is. Harris won decisively because she was so good about figuring out when to engage in the question and when to let it go, when to correct a detail and when to stay on the big picture.

  52. 52.

    KatKapCC

    @mrmoshpotato: Most of their hosts, including Wallace, have been very loud and clear that Trump is a bigot, and she in particular has often avoided playing clips of him or airing his speeches. No, they did not just realize it.

  54. 54.

    Mousebumples

    Listened to Majority 54 today. They thought Taylor Swift’s endorsement might spread beyond the Swifties. For younger kids, who is likely taking them to the Swift concert? Who is hopefully seeing how much Swift empowers their kids and gives them joy.

    I don’t think many would just say, “I’ll do what Taylor says”… But it might persuade some independent/conservative voters.

    I do appreciate the thought that her advocacy could also increase younger age turnout. We’ll see. Here’s hoping.

  55. 55.

    RevRick

    @sdhays: How many debates do you recall being decided by an actual discussion of the issues? At best, we recall a gaffe or a quip. Other than that, they’re dominance displays.

    Even the much vaunted Lincoln-Douglas debates often descended into name-calling and attempts to trip the other guy up. It’s interesting how the rhetoric each employed shifted as they moved from the Southern sympathizing area known as Little Egypt to the abolitionist sympathizing North.

  56. 56.

    RaflW

    @rikyrah: I had not heard about Sasse’s $39,000 Christmas party sushi bar. The dollar amount is staggering.

    But also, is serving sushi to mark the Christmas season traditional? Is it better or worse than Starbucks saying “happy holidays”?

    News reports called the event a Dec. 7th holiday party, but he’s an evangelical Protestant and more importantly, he’s a Republican, so if he did call it a “holiday party” he should be fully cancelled by the GOP.

    So I’m gonna say it was a Christmas party. With live, hand-rolled sushi. Bing Crosby and the Gipper would both roll their eyes so hard.

  57. 57.

    catclub

    My understanding is that about 20k immigrants have been recently located to Ohio.
    Have they all been put in one town? Anybody have a better handle on the actual statewide and Springfield numbers?

  58. 58.

    sdhays

    @RevRick: Exactly. I actually saw a Lincoln Douglas reenactment years ago in my home town and it was interesting how much Douglas particularly needled Lincoln about how his rhetoric changed when he was further south.

  59. 59.

    BellyCat

    Taylor Swift transcends geographic  political alignments and age categories. I suspect her endorsement will be bigger than anyone suspects.

    Oh… and fuck Taibbi.

  61. 61.

    Jay

    @catclub:

    “Recently”, means over the past 30 years, and there is about 30,000 Somali Americans living there. Basically, one guy or gal, moved to the dying town of Springfield 30 years ago, found a niche and a better living than where they were, and then brought their family there. Family invited family and friends, who when they found it was a good place, invited more friends and family. Eventually, there were enough Somali American’s living there that they had a self supporting community, which is what any new Immigrant American looks for, a place where their language, customs, food, culture are all accepted

    And Springfield is no longer a dying town, instead it’s growing.

  63. 63.

    TS

    @kwAwk:

    But I also noticed Harris not always answering the question asked.

    You were really searching hard for a negative – There has NEVER been a political debate where anyone answered every question exactly as was asked. Kamala was brilliant and the only ones arguing against this fact are those who will always vote for the other side.

  66. 66.

    TS

    @hrprogressive:

    The have no morals, they have no laws. They cannot win – so they cheat. The US elections need  unbiased internationals to check how illegal are the actions of some states. Never again, should the US be out there complaining about how other countries vote, until they fix up their own system.

    Is there any way the Federal Government can be in charge of all elections/enrollments/voting etc as it is in other democratic  countries.

  67. 67.

    wjca

    @rikyrah: Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris is a big deal, but not just for the reasons you might think. Yeah, it’s going to have an impact on the election, but this is about so much more than just votes.

    The critical impact may prove to be the various Republican officeholders denouncing her for doing do.  Her endorsement was just for Harris.  But having a bunch of these other fools trashing her is likely to make the Swifties vote Democrat all the way down the ballot.  Regardless of whether they have any engagement on policy at all.  Make that a habit….

  69. 69.

    karen marie

    @UncleEbeneezer: He singlehandedly ruined The Intelligencer.  It used to be one of my go-to places for amusing yet informative reads.  Then he started vomiting out “content” and then they put it behind a paywall.  I was grateful for the paywall.

  72. 72.

    pacem appellant

    @karen marie: ​
      I stay off bluesky (and threads) as well and also stick to Mastodon. But I do dabble in Insta from from time to time.
    Also, Taibbi and his rape joke are horrible and though I usually like Rolling Stone, this is a huge black mark.

  73. 73.

    Mrscoachb

    @KatKapCC: I watch a lot of MSNBC and they do a pretty good job of pointing out Trump’s racism, particularly on the evening opinion shows and on Morning Joe. Not perfect but good…

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @TS:

    That was a problem when the country was formed, everything done from afar so less to have many people get involved. To me the biggest problem is that so many citizens seem to not vote. I’d bet if we get more people to vote, especially if they saw what conservatives want that we’d have a better country. But there seems to be a segment that just lives and doesn’t understand/or seemingly care, how politics works in this country.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @Ruckus

    Since 1932 (ref.) the highest percentage turnout among voting age population was 62.8% in 1960. In 2020 it was not all that much lower at 61.5%.

    Lowest in that time frame was 49% in 1996.

  81. 81.

    wjca

    @Ruckus: To me the biggest problem is that so many citizens seem to not vote. I’d bet if we get more people to vote, especially if they saw what conservatives want that we’d have a better country.

    The trouble with this theory is that, as we have recently seen, there is a chunk of the potential voters who, if they get motivated to vote at all, are like as not to be motivated to vote by and for an accomplished grifter.  (Could, just as easily, if not more easily, have been a charismatic preacher — which might well have been worse.)

    I think that, on balance, I’d rather have those who are too disinterested to vote continue to choose not to vote.  At least until they get interested enough to have some clue about what a government does, and what it can and can’t do.  I’d like it to be as easy as possible to vote if you’re so inclined.  But definitely not required.

  84. 84.

    MinuteMan

    @Ruckus: ​To me the biggest problem is that so many citizens seem to not vote.
     

    Probably because so often, at the national level, they see either nothing getting done or at least nothing that benefits anybody but the greedheads. The media is complicit in this since it’s more “newsworthy” to convert big fights than to herald imperfect accomplishment. If the Dems do obtain both houses and the WH they need to get stuff done and not whine about only having a majority in the Senate. The only way to really seriously set bask the forces of authoritarianism is to show folks that the system can work when manged by people of good faith; otherwise politics might as well be a WWE type of entertainment.

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