Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

T R E 4 5 O N

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

The lights are all blinking red.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / ‘Every Accusation A Confession’ Open Thread: Trump & Musk, Dirty Birds Of A Filthy Feather

‘Every Accusation A Confession’ Open Thread: Trump & Musk, Dirty Birds Of A Filthy Feather

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Thing is… either or both of these grifters, they walk in soaking wet and say it’s raining, you check out the window before grabbing an umbrella. They lie to everyone, including themselves, and Don’t worry I’m good for it, soon as I find my wallet is among their favorite lies.

Yet Puck alum Teddy ‘I Am Mazed By the Smell of Money’ Schliefer *and* Maggie ‘Mar-A-Lago Court Dwarf’ Haberman get a joint hosannah in the FTFNYTimes — “Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump” [gift link]:

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history.

Elon Musk, seen over the weekend jumping for joy alongside former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., is now talking to the Republican candidate multiple times a week.

He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election.

He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44 billion and has used to spread conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and to insult its candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used…

These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic, about the stakes of the election and the need for Mr. Trump to win. He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire — he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, “I love Trump.”…

It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Mr. Musk is providing to Mr. Trump. This is in part because of his role on X, where he amplifies so much of the former president’s message. Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million.

But friends and colleagues say Mr. Musk is adopting the same strategy that he has used during other crises he has considered existential. Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment…

Mr. Musk, who once privately called Mr. Trump a “stone-cold loser,” possesses in abundance the things Mr. Trump values most: wealth, fame and a massive platform…

At the core of Mr. Musk’s project is America PAC, an organization that the Trump campaign is relying on for significant help in knocking on doors in battleground states and encouraging 800,000 to one million voters to cast ballots for the former president.

The group has spent about $80 million to help Mr. Trump according to federal records, primarily on its canvassing program. Mr. Musk’s advisers have told donors that the group has about 2,500 organizers in the field, and the group has effectively acquired the Wisconsin assets of another group, Turning Point USA, taking on about 200 new canvassers in the state. Some canvassers, during training, have been shown Mr. Musk’s social media posts about the group, as a way to encourage them.

The scale of Mr. Musk’s personal financial commitment will not be made public until the middle of the month. Initially, Mr. Musk and his friends in the group had spoken of a budget totaling from $140 million to $180 million, almost all it from Mr. Musk himself. The group has told other prospective donors in recent weeks that it is fully funded.

The Trump campaign is conducting something of an experiment by outsourcing portions of its voter contact operation to America PAC and other groups. That is possible because of new federal election guidance that allows political campaigns to coordinate their activities more closely with outside organizations.

The campaign signed a data-sharing agreement with America PAC and several others, and it works closely with them to assess which voters are most important to speak to at their homes…

IIRC, Elon ‘tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter’ turned out to be the opposite of useful — and his former minions have the PTSD to show for it — so we can hope his GOTV ‘improvements’ are equally helpful to his felonious friend’s efforts.


… Quite possibly under the headline ‘He LIED to us, the sumbitch!!!’

Reader Interactions

166Comments

  4. 4.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Aren’t there laws about how much one can contribute to a campaign? This seems very much oligarchy oriented, buying an election like this. Plus running a biased one sided “information “ source, his twitter X, as a propaganda arm.

    what loopholes need to be changed? How can this be stopped in the future?
    in order to avoid late night despair, I only skimmed your articles, but Jaysus!

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    Friends, I am enjoying a piping hot mug of coffee like a civilized woman because, for the first time since 7:08 PM last Wednesday, I have power! Woohoo!

    Nothing can harsh my mellow, not even the frog-faced grift-meister Musk and the vile orange fart cloud Trump, who should go try to colonize Mars immediately after they piss hundreds of millions of dollars away and LOSE the election. We’ll paint the following on the side of their space capsule:

    We’re not sending our best.

    Warm regards,

    Earth

  9. 9.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Chet Murthy: I have a whole plan of desired changes in my head for after we win.

    this citizens united , super pac thing

    serious accurate news reporting and eff3ctive stopping if misinformation and disinformation

    fix gerrymandering

    continued legal cases against maga activities and you know who.

    voting rights act

    dobbs overturned of course

    probably undo electoral college and go by popular vote, or proportional electoral votes like nebraska, so it doesn’t com3 down to a few districts in a few swing states again, ever.

    anyone running for office needs a background check, security clearance check, take and pass a civics test such as citizenship test. Release taxes information in advance.

    bust that family for all their emoluments breaking financial gain and grift they got from being in the White House.

    im just one person. It’s what I’m thinking. YMMV

  13. 13.

    Don

    I don’t normally comment on all the stuff I read, (here), but I have to jump in and object to this constant complaining about Maggie Haberman. As a former journalist, she is as good as anyone I’ve ever seen at reporting facts, without her own opinion getting into it, even though she is not a Trump supporter. This notion she is carrying water for Trump is not only false, but indicative that some Democrats are not that far off from being like Trump supporters. I know when she speaks, I better listen, because Maggie knows.

    PS–Much love, Betty Cracker. I was devastated by your news and have been fervently hoping for a full recovery. Best wishes. I miss your biting commentary, even more than your butter sculptures. :)

  14. 14.

    Chet Murthy

    @Don: oh please, that’s bullshit.  She systematically normalizes Trump and those around him.  Hell, michael Cohen said it long ago: when they have something they want to get out in the Press they call Maggie to get it out there for them.  She and Fox News are Both sock puppetsFor Trump.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Don:

    You’re welcome to value MH if you prefer, but the idea that if people here disagree then it’s

    indicative that some Democrats are not that far off from being like Trump supporters.

     
    indicates a great disrespect for us that, frankly, echoes the disrespect Trump supporters have for us.

  17. 17.

    satby

    Heather Cox Richardson citing the book that was the most formative in my thinking on politics. This isn’t new, and influential people in the 1930s, like Charles Lindberg, were on the wrong side then too. We beat them before, we will again.

    Trump’s behavior is Authoritarianism 101. In a 1951 book called The True Believer, political philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that demagogues appeal to a disaffected population whose members feel they have lost the power they previously held, that they have been displaced either religiously, economically, culturally, or politically. Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again.

    But to cement their loyalty, the leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn’t really matter: the group simply has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters are suffering.

  18. 18.

    satby

    @Baud: I thought DougJ has gotten too busy as the Pitchbot to come back and troll for us here. This is “faxing my credenza” level.

  21. 21.

    Shalimar

    @Don: Maggie’s mom worked for Trump’s publicist when she was growing up.  She’s 4 years older than Don, Jr..  She has known the entire Trump family since she was a child.  She was given the Trump beat because she has access to the family that no other NYT reporter has.  The idea that she’s a brave truth-teller who reports what they don’t want us to know is laughable.

  22. 22.

    Chet Murthy

    @Baud: @Don: Don, you’ve (perhaps) inadvertently displayed the “tell” of the bad-faith actor: the pretense of “both sides”.  The idea that somehow we’re anything like Trump supporters is bullshit, and when you offer it, you out yourself.

    So Boris, go back to fucking Voronezh or wherever the fuck you come from.  Maybeou  sign up for one of those meat waves, you fucking Russian scumbag.  Eat a fucking bullet, dirtbag.

  24. 24.

    Shalimar

    @Don: Half of Maggie’s output in 2017-2018 consisted of “Jared and Ivanka are awesome and other people are unfairly mean to them” stories.  It was so blatant it became a running joke.  Who do you think the anonymous sources for those stories were?

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    The $47 dollar thing sounds like Musk thinks in terms of going viral online, and the real world doesn’t work that way.  We’ll have to see, but I suspect the money will go to cockamamie schemes rather than traditional canvassing.  He has poisoned Twitter too badly for it to help him as an advertisement tool.

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve had many conversations about the state of national political media in the U.S. with a lifelong friend whom I respect greatly and know to be an intelligent person and accomplished journalist. She finds the contempt for Haberman baffling, and at first I found her bafflement baffling.

    But after discussing it at length, we understand each other’s positions better, even if we don’t fully agree. Short version: Haberman is operating within a system that leverages access to produce horserace analysis content. That system is wired for Republicans not because MSM political reporters are drooling MAGA dopes but for reasons Josh Marshall ably explained here. (gift link)

    I think that system serves the people — and democracy — poorly. It’s a genuine crisis, IMO, but it makes more sense to hate the game than the players. Haberman, et al., are responding to existing incentives that need to change before coverage can improve.

    @Chet Murthy: As a fellow commenter rather than a board moderator, I am asking you to please dial it back several hundred notches. Not everyone who challenges the consensus here is a Russian troll, and urging another commenter to “eat a bullet” comment sidles up to an ugly fucking line.

  32. 32.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Here in Spain, saw Velasquez’s fabulous paintings a few days ago at the Prado, including his series of court entertainers.   Many of these entertainers had either physical or mental disabilities – so now the term of art for all of them, including those who were little people, is “buffoons”.  I like calling Maggie  Haberman a buffoon.

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     

    Friends, I am enjoying a piping hot mug of coffee like a civilized woman because, for the first time since 7:08 PM last Wednesday, I have power! Woohoo!

    Yay!!!!!!!!

  35. 35.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: I would respect your friend’s argument more if other journalists like James Fallows, Jennifer Rubin, Norm Ornstein, or James Risen hadn’t been freaking pleading with their fellows in the industry for well over two years to report the stakes not the horse race. It’s a high profile discussion in journalism.

    Edit: and that doesn’t even touch on the whole issue of not reporting facts so that we can save them for our tell all book years after those facts might matter. Ethics fail.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    We’re in the minority of liberals who  recognize the NYT as a whole for what it is. So I’m not too surprised that some people really don’t get where we coming from.

  38. 38.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Betty Cracker:

    I had similar conversations back during the second Dubya term with my friend who was an actual WH reporter at the time.

    That person epitomizes the “Church of the Savvy” tag of political journalism but at least I understood the mechanisms behind what was making it to print (or the screen).

    It simply goes back to how the institution is warped at best, broken at worst.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: The system is rotten to the core, and the fact that political reporters squirrel away relevant facts and anecdotes so they can cash in later with a book or Netflix series is a prime example of the skewed incentives that must change.

  41. 41.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: Agree. And like most things that deteriorated in our lives, it started during the Reagan years, when “news” went from a utilitarian reporting of events to just another potential profit center for media companies. And exploded when cable became dominant. It wasn’t perfect before, but it’s basically garbage now.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  They were outdoing themselves yesterday.  The usually Dems “struggling”, Trump “gains.”

    They are full of it.

  43. 43.

    TBone

    Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist.

    The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.

    The other Margaret (Sullivan).

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty Cracker: I missed that piece by Josh when he first posted it. I must admit I find parts of it unsatisfying.  (I’m not used to that; I’m a big fan of his, have been supporting TPM for many years now, and usually he’s right on target.) Particularly:

    Are they secretly rooting for Donald Trump? Hardly. Or at least not in the great majority of the cases. Trump is a tiger on the savanna, dangerous but also fascinating and above all alien. That’s why the notorious rustbelt diner interview stories were and are such a staple. They’re safaris.

    If they find him so alien and fascinating, there’s plenty to cover that they’re not. Like his increasingly obvious dementia, or his ever more extreme eliminationist rhetoric. Or the Egyptian money. Or the Saudis’ continuing enrichment of Jared. Or the things that people in Trump’s entourage like Cheung are saying that would rattle their teacups if a prominent Dem said anything like it.  Or how much the things that Trump says in his speeches dovetails with things in Project 2025, no matter how much he claims to have nothing to do with it.  (The list goes on and on, that’s just what I had on the top of my head here in the pre-dawn darkness.)

    In short, if he’s so damn fascinating to them, he’s a target-rich environment for all sorts of stories that they’re taking a nearly complete pass on.  Frankly, I find his theory here even less convincing than that their editors are being ordered by their newspapers’ owners to cover Trump gently – and I’m pretty skeptical that there’s anything that direct going on.

  55. 55.

    TBone

    Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential nominee, accused ABC News host Martha Raddatz of “nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said” after she fact-checked the former president’s claim about migrants.

    “Martha, do you hear yourself?” Vance gasped. “And I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”

    https://crooksandliars.com/2024/10/vance-accuses-fact-checker-nitpicking

  58. 58.

    Soprano2

    @Quinerly: No, I had not heard about that until now. It’s horrifying, but ask me if I’m surprised. They want to crush all dissent against them with violence and intimidation. I’m convinced some of them get off on it. Yet it’s still Democrats who are told we should be more civil. 🙄🙄🙄

  65. 65.

    Elizabelle

    @TBone:  Thank you for the substack link.

    And she attributes quote:

    In parting, I’ll share with you a post from historian and author Kevin Kruse about Trump.

    Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist. The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.

    That, in essence, is the issue with these headlines.

  66. 66.

    p.a.

    @Betty Cracker: Haberman is operating within a system that leverages access to produce horserace analysis content.

     

     

    John Lydon, decades ago, on famous musicians whining about lost freedom to be out-and-about: “If you don’t like being a pop star, just stop…”

    Habs (should, by now!) has the wherewithal to just… stop.

  67. 67.

    satby

    Timothy Snyder on “impotence politics”

    Trump and Vance are teaching us that the government cannot do anything except turn us against one another.  They do so by spreading disinformation about critical matters like hurricanes, so that people despise and disrupt the government, the only institution that can help.  This is impotence politics, and it leads to fascism.

  68. 68.

    TBone

    Each year here in central PA, there is The Day That Winter Arrives.  Unmistakable.  The north winds blow in earnest, cutting right through everything.  Today is that day.  *teeth chattering F-f-f-f-f-f-COLD.

  70. 70.

    narya

    @satby: I’ve seen him on Lawrence O’Donnell; he’s quite good at explaining where we are (and being quite terrifying). I should have made my yearly doc visit for after the election rather than days before…

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    @satby:  Yes.  Lies running rampant in North Carolina.  Local police circling the parking lot outside a FEMA officials’ trailer to protect them from substantiated threats.

    The Vichy Times and other MSM hiding Biden administration’s very real accomplishments behind their “he’s too old!” focus.

  74. 74.

    Elizabelle

    @TBone:  We just had a lovely cool and bracing breeze yesterday in central VA.  Not much going on here, but summer is over.

    How are the leaves in PA??

  79. 79.

    Hoodie

    @lowtechcyclist: Point taken, but I think Marshall’s theory offers an explanation for their apparent blindness to such things.  As he says, it’s a safari.  The things you point out are functionally equivalent to saying “a tiger hunts down it’s prey and eats it.”  There’s no news there.  On the other hand, a tiger completing a somewhat coherent English sentence is news!  In other words, the world of Democrats is the normal world where normal laws of political physics pertain.  In contrast, Trumplandia is an upside down world where the novel is actually the stuff that is not corrupt or bizarre.

  81. 81.

    SFAW

    @satby:
    That Lincoln Project thing is pretty much inside-baseball stuff. Jackals get it, but I’m guessing the “Arianna Grande voters” (to borrow a term from LGM) will have no idea who Thiel is, and will tune out about Musk and Murdoch. [ETA: Because the general populace associates them with other things.]
    I guess I should be glad they didn’t have a picture of Lachlan Murdoch.​

  82. 82.

    TBone

    @frosty: I miss the infamous DelCo weather bubble!  DelCo is impervious and has its own weather patterns.  Central PA is a rude awakening, sent a frickin’ tornado the year after we moved into this house (and on Tax Day) 😭

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    Love that Margaret Sullivan took a genteel swipe at Vichy Timester Michael Barbaro, who tried to disparage her take:

    Commenting on the second headline, the author Stuart Stevens, who writes about how democracies turn into autocracies, suggested: “These two headlines should be studied in journalism classes for decades.”

    After I responded, “Not a bad idea,” a prominent voice from the New York Times chimed in. Michael Barbaro, who hosts The Daily podcast, posed a challenge to me: “Care to explain what the issue is with these headlines?”

    Barbaro, whom I know from my days as public editor of the Times, is a smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he knows what the issue might be.

    But sure, I’ll explain: The Kamala Harris headline is unnecessarily negative, over a story that probably doesn’t need to exist.

    ….  I showed these headlines and stories to my graduate students at Columbia University’s journalism school on Friday morning. I didn’t ask leading questions or try to tell them what to think. They didn’t hesitate in identifying the problem.

     

    So yes.  Margaret’s students are more ethical and honest than Michael Barbaro, who climbed the greased Vichy Times poll, along with Mags Haberman.

    Who knows what the CU grad students will do once they’re out in the “real world” of journalism, though? As currently constituted, it’s a rotten system.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s revealing how they can’t accept criticism and feedback even from people with credibility to criticize them (as opposed to us peons).

  85. 85.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2: ​

    @Quinerly: No, I had not heard about that until now. It’s horrifying, but ask me if I’m surprised. They want to crush all dissent against them with violence and intimidation. I’m convinced some of them get off on it. Yet it’s still Democrats who are told we should be more civil.

    I hadn’t heard about this particular incident before, but by now it’s just one more data point in yet one more Trump story that’s being way undercovered: the way his cultists routinely threaten violence to even low-level public servants who rile them up just by doing their jobs.

    The first wave of this that I can recall was the stories about local public health workers in the spring of 2020 getting threatened for spreading the word about what precautions to take due to Covid. Then in November, it was the election workers getting threatened, and that went well beyond what Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss went through. And then of course once Christopher Rufo got the whole anti-trans, don’t-say-gay, ‘any books mentioning LGBTQ persons are porn and should be banned’ movement, it put local school board members, school principals, and even librarians on the line.

    So unfortunately it’s far from surprising that someone as comparatively prominent as a state Secretary of State has to receive this sort of protection. I worry far more about the many officials like those I’ve mentioned above who we don’t have the resources to provide that sort of protection to.

    Here’s the part of this story that disturbed me the most though:

    Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D), the top election official in that key battleground state, told Rolling Stone in January that the Biden Justice Department was failing to protect election workers from what he dubbed “domestic terrorism” and threats by pro-Trump extremists and others.
    “As cautious a person as Attorney General Merrick Garland is, I think he is being far too cautious here, when it comes to these investigations and prosecutions of threats against election administrators and election workers,” Fontes said. “I have a lot of respect for the attorney general, but he is not being nearly aggressive enough on this threat, which is imperiling our democracy, and he and the department are not devoting nearly enough resources to it. This should be treated like the emergency that it is.”

    This has been a national problem for years now, and it needs a Federal response. So yeah: where the fuck is Merrick Garland? What has he been doing about this? People are thinking twice about being a public health worker or running for school board because of these threats. This is an attack on our democracy, and it doesn’t seem like DoJ is doing a damned thing about it.​

  86. 86.

    TBone

    @Elizabelle: dollars and cents usually prevail 😔 unless a student is financially independent.  And even then, most times.  But we do have our valiant fighters!

  88. 88.

    SFAW

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
     

    So yeah: where the fuck is Merrick Garland? What has he been doing about this?

    You just don’t understand, these things take time. Garland needs to be sure the Ts are dotted and the Is are crossed before he can think about considering whether to proceed with assessing the problem.

  89. 89.

    Chris Johnson

    @MagdaInBlack: “The purpose is two-fold, Rosenberg said: To excite Trump’s base and discourage Vice President Kamala Harris’ supporters, while also providing Trump with ammunition to say the election was rigged if he loses.”

    The ‘while also’ is really important. All this stuff is manufacturing fake support for an insurrection. It’s preparatory.

  90. 90.

    K-Mo

    @Betty Cracker: agreed.  I think MH is good at what she does, but what she does is frustratingly bad for the country.  We don’t have to hate the player but then again, also she shouldn’t be famous either

  91. 91.

    TBone

    @frosty: I used to have a “two weeks” rule when I lived in DelCo and commuted back and forth to my weekender cabin in Union County.

    I don’t know if that two weeks still applies, but it used to be a good rule of thumb for weather – we are two weeks ahead of you up here.

  98. 98.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Hoodie:

    As he says, it’s a safari.  The things you point out are functionally equivalent to saying “a tiger hunts down it’s prey and eats it.”  There’s no news there.  On the other hand, a tiger completing a somewhat coherent English sentence is news!

    That would make sense if Trump were an actual tiger.  But it is certainly different, in a way that one would expect to be news, when a candidate for President of the United States hunts down his political prey and eats it.  Or says he’s going to do just that.

  99. 99.

    TBone

    I am still formulating my response in case fElon knocks on my door in his campaign error effort.  First, I will have to restrain hubby (I’m hiding our home security system baseball bat).

    So many things to say in what would be a very short time.

  100. 100.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Betty Cracker:

    Haberman, et al., are responding to existing incentives that need to change before coverage can improve.

    This rather ignores that there are many journalists who do NOT respond to those incentives the way Haberman and others of her ilk do, exemplified by those who publish at Pro Public, some at the Philly Inquirer, other traditional media scattered around the nation, and many online places. Their existence and work suggest that, though the situation can be gussied up, all that’s happening is that some go into journalism as truth-seekers and -tellers, while others are in it for a buck, and maybe some cocktail weenies.

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: +1

    When I was a kid in the Atlanta suburbs, I would watch professional wrestling on the TV.  I had my favorites and those I rooted against.  But I never could understand why they didn’t follow the rules.  Why did they let the bad guys cheat?  Why was it so unfair and why did the audience cheer anyway?

    Because it’s not a sport, it’s “entertainment”.  It’s not about fairness, it’s about getting people in the seats and watching on TV every week.

    Similarly…

    Fallows and the others are right.

    Something something it’s my nature.

    … believe them the first time.

    We can decry Maggie and the rest, but we’re not the audience if we actually want information we can act on.  We have to find other places because, like TV wrestling, they’re not what they claim.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    JML

    @K-Mo: there’s a real disconnect between what MH’s job is supposed to be, what people think it is, what it apparently actually is, and what she actually does. She’s an access-dependent gossip columnist masquerading as a political reporter, backed up by a corrupt editorial structure that backs TFG with their headline designs and allows supposed reporters to hoard critical information to publish in the books.

  109. 109.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: that their journalist are feeling the pressure to come into obscure blogs to lecture us peons to mind our place and not question our betters suggest we may not be in the minority with our contempt for the NYT.

  111. 111.

    Tokyokie

    @MagdaInBlack: I had reached that story’s conclusion a week or so ago, just as I realized that J.D. Vance, coffee boy to the Afrikaner billionaires, hopes to invoke the 25th Amendment to complete an autogolpe.

  112. 112.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Don: I know when she speaks, I better listen, because Maggie knows.

    Ok, hit us with the harsh truth then. What is it we don’t know then that we not seeing over these petty distractions like Trump tried having his own vice president lynched for not throwing an election and considers this nations worst enemy a close personal friend?

  115. 115.

    danielx

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Name Joe Biden’s biggest mistake: Merrick Garland.

    Leaning so far over to be even-handed that he ends up falling on his ass, much to SFB’s benefit.

  116. 116.

    TBone

    @NotMax: 😆 I have stories about that!!!

    One is that my rumpy neighbor dad quit teaching in a less rumpy local school district after J6, and now teaches there, despite the added commute (he leaves much earlier and arrives home much later to start up the gas powered daily leaf blower).  What a putz.

  117. 117.

    frosty

    @TBone: Good article. It mentioned the DC Split which I can attest to. When I worked for Arlington DPW we had to do storm sampling for a stormwater permit and invariably a front would come from the west, then split and go around us. We’d be in the field, all prepped, and left with just a false start.

  118. 118.

    Hoodie

    @lowtechcyclist: @Another Scott: Part of the explanation here.  In the wrestling metaphor, Trump is the heel.  His acting badly is entertaining, but it’s also what he’s expected to do.   Political journalists at the high end are insulated (or at least assume that they’re insulated) from most of the ill effects of people like Trump.  Their careers as journalists depend on finding novelty. Trump acting badly is not novel in the context in which they operate.  When he actually does something that can be perceived as somewhat coherent, that’s news.  Hence the sanewashing, i.e., political reporters trying to make it sound like there’s something sensible in what Trump is saying, which would be against type for Trump.  They  thus discount his weird behavior.  They don’t get a lot of kudos from their superiors for reporting it.

  119. 119.

    TBone

    @frosty: 😊 it’s not foolproof 😆 but we like to think so!

    DelCo has started flooding too much to deny that the bubble has popped!

  122. 122.

    TBone

    @NotMax: 😆

    I have a can of hairspray and a Bic lighter so I can yeet him off my front porch and save hubby from doing hard time!

  123. 123.

    lowtechcyclist

    @TBone:

    So many things to say in what would be a very short time.

    I’d propose stepping outside, walking over to the chauffered limo that would undoubtedly be his means of conveyance, and spitting all over it.

  124. 124.

    TBone

    @RevRick: ❤️ it is actually a reference to something a child was overheard muttering under her breath after being told not to touch a very fascinating object on a Christmas table.  I lifted it from the recent Family Stories BJ post by WG.

  127. 127.

    Soprano2

    @Elizabelle: We had a high of 90 degrees here on Saturday. Now a cold front has come through and I had to switch from air conditioning to the furnace last night. I’ve got whiplash!

  129. 129.

    Kay

    The news that Musk is the new Rupert Mudoch and Twitter is a wholly Right wing platform can be discouraging and can make one feel outgunned. I was particularly bothered by the conspiracy theories about the NC flooding that originated on Twitter and were spread by the site, to the extent that I (successfully) avoided media (including social media) for weeks. I am not suprised by it – I predicted Musk was the new Murdoch when he took over the site.

    However, I’ve found staying busy with voter contact IRL is a good reminder that Twitter is NOT real life and is a kind of cure for billionaire/media induced election anxiety.

    But we are outgunned. Don’t kid yourself. This is an uphill battle.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    Twitter isn’t that much different than Fox news, really. It’s slightly worse because so many elite journalists spend their entire day on Twitter so they tend to spread Twitter’s Right wing frames more widely than Fox does, but just add Twitter to the pile of Right wing outlets and keep going trying to reach voters directly.

  132. 132.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: So has anyone else read that TCFG used the “r” word to refer to Harris at a private fundraiser? He said that instead of saying she’s “mentally impaired”. He’s going to say the “n” word before it’s all over, especially if he loses.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    I am amused at the silence of Bari Weiss and Taibbi and Greenwald though. Our 1st amendment warriors seem to have left the field now that their patron is silencing political speech on his platform!

    Absolute clowns and hacks along with all the mainstream journos who took them seriously.

  134. 134.

    Geminid

    Trump fears a Harris win and with good reason. He has a lot to lose if he doesn’t win in November.

    I wonder if Musk is also afraid of what could happen to him and his businesses under a Harris administration, and if that is why he’s making these extraordinary efforts to put Trump back in the White House.

    I talked with my Atlanta friend yesterday and he was very alarmed by Musk’s Pennsylvania push. I tried to talk him down but he’ll be stressing out over this election until it’s over.

    Later, I found an account by a canvasser in Bucks County, Pa. that encouraged him. The canvasser found Democratic enthusism was high, and was  was struck by how eager some Republicans and Independents were to stop Trump.

    I think I encountered this story through Ragnarok Lobster. Of course it was anecdotal evidence, but I think the people in Bucks County are a lot like the people in Fulton County and Maricopa County so I found it encouraging.

  135. 135.

    Kay

    Some good news. I went to a political event yesterday and apparently Republicans are now mad they chose Bernie Moreno to run against Sherrod instead of Matt Dolan and they blame Trump.

    They call Moreno a “used car salesman” now :)

    Matt Dolan’s only talent is being the son of a rich person, so maybe he WOULD have been better for the GOP.

  136. 136.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Hoodie:

    Part of the explanation here. In the wrestling metaphor, Trump is the heel. His acting badly is entertaining, but it’s also what he’s expected to do. Political journalists at the high end are insulated (or at least assume that they’re insulated) from most of the ill effects of people like Trump. Their careers as journalists depend on finding novelty. Trump acting badly is not novel in the context in which they operate. When he actually does something that can be perceived as somewhat coherent, that’s news. Hence the sanewashing, i.e., political reporters trying to make it sound like there’s something sensible in what Trump is saying, which would be against type for Trump. They thus discount his weird behavior. They don’t get a lot of kudos from their superiors for reporting it.

    That makes even less sense than before. “Trump speech addresses immigration issue” which is where they sanewash him to, is boring as shit. Where’s the novelty? I see none.  If their sanewashing was presenting him in a new and entertaining way, at least your explanation would make sense. But they make him boring.

    Look, he’s the heel. Fine. Maybe his acting is what he’s expected to do, but it’s entertaining, so fucking report the entertainment. Surely all that eliminationist rhetoric is entertaining, right? So cover it, show people the highlights. Even if they want to report it in a way that suggests he means none of it, at least the fact that he’s saying this stuff will get through.

    I assume wrestling commentators don’t talk about the heel like they’re reporting on yesterday’s water board meeting, y’know?

  137. 137.

    RevRick

    A thought occurred to me after I posted in response to WaterGirl last night, and it has to do with family systems theory. Specifically, it has to do with what constitutes leadership. A leader is the non-anxious presence in the system.
    Rudyard Kipling hit upon this concept in his poem If.

    If you can keep your head when all
    about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ….

    I think the antidote to all the Democratic freakouts about the polls is to focus our attention on our leader, Kamala Harris. She clearly embodies that non-anxious presence. There is a calmness and levelheadedness about her. Instead of paying attention to every distraction and bump in the road, let’s take our cues from her.

  139. 139.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    I am amused at the silence of Bari Weiss and Taibbi and Greenwald though.

    I notice you did not say “surprised/amused.” [Which did not surprise/amaze me.]

  140. 140.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Elizabelle:

    After I responded, “Not a bad idea,” a prominent voice from the New York Times chimed in. Michael Barbaro, who hosts The Daily podcast, posed a challenge to me: “Care to explain what the issue is with these headlines?”

    It would be delish if a subscriber/listener member* asked Mikey Boo-boo “Care to explain how it felt when Margaret Sullivan named checked you and handed you your ass in her most recent column?”

  142. 142.

    Chris Johnson

    @Chief Oshkosh: I don’t hate the shit in a clogged toilet, but there is an appropriate place for it to be and it is not there. And I’ll do what I must, to move it along.

  143. 143.

    unrelatedwaffle

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’ve already seen calls for salting or just signing up to get some weed money and doing a piss-poor job on purpose. I am personally so off-putting and horrible at persuasion that I’ve considered canvassing for Republicans.

  144. 144.

    Hoodie

    @lowtechcyclist: You don’t seem to understand that, in the current political media environment, the job of reporters is not to report.  If they simply report his nuttiness or corruption, then the entertainment is him, not them.  Their world revolves around themselves, the subject matter of their reporting is just a raw material to which they add something to have a saleable product that they can differentiate from their competitors, at least in the sight of their bosses.  In the context of Trump, content they can add includes sanewashing.  They even market them themselves like this, e.g., “we help you make sense of the news.”  Ideally, a true reporter would do nothing of the sort.  Ideally, you provide information and let the public figure it out.  Other content they can add is horserace stuff and gossip about fights among staffers, campaign strategy, etc.  Trump deliberately puts out a river of nonsense at least partly because of this.  He understands that, from the point of view of the political media, it destroys the novelty of any particular outrageous thing he says or does.  It’s Bannon’s “flood the zone with bullshit.”

  145. 145.

    Mark’s Bubbie

    @Geminid: Glad you mentioned Republicans and Independents. I had just been thinking about them. We know that plenty of them voted for Haley in the primary. Just the fact that they voted for a woman of color gives me hope. If they did it then, maybe they’ll do it now? Maybe some of them voted early? A girl can dream…

  149. 149.

    Geminid

    @Mark’s Bubbie: Some exit polls from this Spring’s primaries showed half of Haley voters said they would not vote for Trump in November. My recollection is that Haley won 20% of the vote fair consistently.

    Even after subtracting Democratic crossover voters–and I don’t think there were very many– this is a big problem for Trump. He’s losing a lot of otherwise reliable Republican voters, and I don’t think he can find replacements even with Musk’s help.

    Ed. And my math tells be that if Musk can bring a Trump voter to the polls he’ll have made up for the loss of a Republican or Independent who voted for him in 2020.

    That’s if the former Trump voter stays home. If that voter comes out and votes for Harris, Musk needs to bring another voter to match Harris’s new voter..

  150. 150.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2:

    So has anyone else read that TCFG used the “r” word to refer to Harris at a private fundraiser? He said that instead of saying she’s “mentally impaired”.

    See, now there’s an instance where “access journalism” could actually contribute a useful tidbit.

    I’m not totally against access journalism, but it really needs to add value to the understanding and knowledge one would get from a thorough reporting of the stuff that’s publicly available, including what can easily be gotten through FOIA requests.  There’s tons of stuff like that out there – ProPublica is doing terrific work just reporting on that, and they’re breaking big stories by doing so.  The bits and pieces one gets from access journalism should be the side serving of cole slaw or brussels sprouts to the main meal of covering what’s out there.  Like covering what Trump is actually saying at those rallies that few of us could stand to sit through a recording of.  It shouldn’t be the main course, just because Bob Woodward got a few pointers from Deep Throat half a century ago. There’s almost never enough ‘there’ there for that.

  151. 151.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Tokyokie:

    @lowtechcyclist: That’s just wrong. What were you thinking? A quick trip through the car wash and it’s all gone. At least spray something corrosive on it.

    Well, I don’t like to do harm, even to people who would surely regard me as an enemy if they had to pay attention to me in the first place.

    Also, there is the matter of avoiding criminal charges or lawsuits, especially when suggesting a course of conduct to a person that I have only positive thoughts about and don’t want to cause bad shit to happen to.

  153. 153.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Hoodie: ​
     

    @lowtechcyclist: You don’t seem to understand that, in the current political media environment, the job of reporters is not to report. If they simply report his nuttiness or corruption, then the entertainment is him, not them. Their world revolves around themselves, the subject matter of their reporting is just a raw material to which they add something to have a saleable product that they can differentiate from their competitors, at least in the sight of their bosses.

    And stuff like “Trump addresses immigration issues” does that? You see, there’s the problem. Sanewashing not only makes Trump less interesting, it makes their coverage of Trump less interesting and gives it all a sameness. Making him out to sound like any other standard-issue politician is boring as shit.

    For whatever reason, making Trump boring clearly seems to be their goal, at the expense of making themselves and their coverage be the entertainment, and at the cost of significant differentiation from their competitors, who are all largely doing the same thing.

    You need an explanation for this, but if anything you seem to be avoiding the fact that this is what’s happening, which makes it rather difficult to explain it.

  157. 157.

    dnfree

    @Don: Haberman may be good at reporting, but she also knows she needs to maintain her access, so she definitely shades it a bit and leaves some things out to assure future access to her sources.

    I was disappointed a couple of years ago to find that the Supreme Court reporters I followed and thought were very knowledgeable do the same thing.  They don’t report everything that is newsworthy, to maintain their access.  I don’t know what the answer is.

  158. 158.

    AWOL

    @Don: Bollocks!

    That asswipe was openly working against Hillary Clinton on-air in 2016 on NY1, the NYT’s cable channel in NYC, on a fucking political show she co-hosted every fucking Sunday with her father, Clyde Haberman.

    Don’t. Rewrite. Fucking. History.

  160. 160.

    K-Mo

    @JML: I mostly agree with you.  I don’t think “gossip columnist “ is quite right- I like the Safari analogy better- but she does share a key characteristic of gossip columnist: she implicitly tells people that the things she reports on are what is important, when by and large it is made up of trivial details that one might find interesting in a decontextualized sense but is in fact beside the point.

  161. 161.

    Bill Arnold

    @Tokyokie:

    J.D. Vance, coffee boy to the Afrikaner billionaires, hopes to invoke the 25th Amendment to complete an autogolpe.

    A reminder; the 25 amendment has two relevant sections.
    Section 4 is the complicated one, that people talk about.
    Section 1 is also surely interesting to Mr Vance and Mr. Thiel. Bold mine. (Mr. Musk has allegedly called Mr. Thiel a sociopath.)

    Section 1: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

  163. 163.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chris Johnson:

    Musk has said he’d be effed.

    He’ll be effed either way. He’s rapidly descending into Howard Hughes level insanity, and he’s gullible. His businesses will (continue to) be damaged where they have not crafted defenses against his interference.

  164. 164.

    worn

    @Don: My recently deceased father, former executive editor of the AJC, was a principled journalist in a way that Maggie will never, ever be. Not withstanding your parachuting in like this in an attempt to provoke folks here, no I will not be listening when Maggie speaks. She really has not earned that. Access does not equal wisdom nor erudition.

  165. 165.

    worn

    @Chet Murthy: Really, dude? A bullet? I generally enjoy your comments, but really and truly, this is absolutely toxic shit. You need to do better. I know you are able.

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