Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

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

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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

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

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

This blog will pay for itself.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

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

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Open Thread: The Big Business People Are Losing Faith in TFG

Late Night Open Thread: The Big Business People Are Losing Faith in TFG

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I’m pleased to say that Trump is currently at the Economic Club of Chicago where he is getting torn a new one by the moderator. Every concept in his economic plan is being shredded. He can’t cope and he’s now just insulting everyone.
(???Credit: @acyn.bsky.social)

[image or embed]

— News Eye (@newseye.bsky.social) October 15, 2024 at 1:36 PM

Mr. Pierce, at Esquire — “Trump’s Interview with Bloomberg’s John Micklethwait Had Little If Anything to Do with Reality”:

… On Tuesday, some genius in the former president*’s campaign decided to put him in a one-on-one with Bloomberg EIC John Micklethwait. Moreover, C-SPAN decided to show the event live. It was a triumph in the history of human incoherence. The former president* didn’t so much dodge the questions as simply answer the questions that were being asked by the moderator in his head. Micklethwait tried nobly to haul things back to reality, as befits a man whose ancestors were clearly spawned in a Dickens novel, but there was no pulling the former president* out of his own private universe. To wit:

Micklethwait: Should Google be broken up?

Trump: [Deep sigh] I just haven’t gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday, where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes. And the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes, those illegal votes, back in and let the people vote. So I haven’t gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that, and they can’t even believe it.

M: The question was about Google, President Trump…

(Note: Apparently there were ten or twenty cult members in the hall who applauded at every bit of this authentic campaign gibberish.)

And then: the big, shiny new whopper that he and the oil slick he’s running with, as well as Speaker Moses in D.C., have been beta-testing around the country in the past several weeks.

M: Maybe I can ask you about something else. Business people in this room, capital markets, they all like the rule of law, they like certainty. The Chinese—they like it when things go wrong in America. If you look at the events of January 6, 2021, it showed too many people that America’s democracy was unruly and violent. Only three weeks to go until the election. Will you commit now to respecting and encouraging a peaceful transfer of power?

T: You had a peaceful transfer of power.

M: You had a peaceful transfer of power compared to Venezuela, but it was by far the worst transfer of power for a long time…

… Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait did not take it easy on Trump, and it quickly became clear that the former president has no conception of the mechanics of or the potential ramifications of the economic platform he’s running on. Bluntly, the former president was incoherent when pressed with real questions about his policies.

Micklethwait spent most of the interview attempting to break Trump out of what the former president repeatedly referred to as “the weave,” his term for his rambling digressions — with ever-decreasing intelligibility — and general inability to focus on a given topic for more than a few seconds during his rallies and interviews.

Micklethwait didn’t weave along with Trump, however, repeatedly working to bring him back on topic and answer the actual questions. The grilling exposed Trump’s total cluelessness with regard to his own economic policy, and led Trump to attack Micklethwait as biased.

Here are the most notable moments from the most rigorous round of policy questioning Trump has been subjected to in recent memory.

Trump gets schooled on tariffs…

Trump gets frustrated and bashes the interviewer…

Trump claims immigrants would kill an audience member when asked how deportations will affect the job market…

Trump is unable to say how he’d help small businesses…

Trump doesn’t deny he’s been talking to Putin since he left office…

Trump mocks autoworkers…

Trump says Jan. 6 riot was filled with “love and peace”
Trump tried yet again to rewrite history about Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. He said on Tuesday that it was a “peaceful transfer of power,” accused Micklethwait of being biased against him for asking the questions, and reiterated that he believes the 2020 election was “crooked.”

“It was love and peace,” Trump said of Jan. 6. “Some people went to the Capitol and a lot of strange things happened there, with people being waved into the Capitol by police,” he added, nodding to conspiracy theories that the federal government helped orchestrate the riot to make Trump and his supporters look bad.

Per The Hill, “Trump clashes with Bloomberg editor over tariffs”:

… Bloomberg’s top editor, John Micklethwait, repeatedly pressed Trump at the Economic Club of Chicago over his plans to impose a universal tariff on imports and his threats to use tariffs on American companies that outsource their manufacturing.

Micklethwait noted Trump’s plans would essentially halt trade with China, place at least a 10 percent tariff on European nations and have a drastic effect on the U.S. economy, where 40 million jobs rely on trade.

“That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy,” Micklethwait said.

“It’s going to have a massive effect — positive effect. It’s going to be a positive effect,” Trump responded. “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong.”

Micklethwait noted that critics have said Trump’s tariff proposals for all imports would amount to a national sales tax, with $3 trillion worth of imports affected and companies passing on higher costs to buyers.

“That is just simple mathematics, President Trump,” he said.

“It is, but not the way you figured. I was always very good at mathematics,” Trump replied, suggesting higher tariffs would make it more likely for foreign companies to build factories in the United States.

Micklethwait told Trump that perhaps the gravest risk with tariffs would be on foreign policy, essentially hitting allies with economic penalties.

“How does it help you take on China turning all of your allies against you?” he asked.

“Tremendously, because China thinks we’re a stupid country,” Trump said. “They can’t believe somebody finally got wise to them.”

The former president has repeatedly pitched tariffs as something of a blanket solution for lowering costs, even in areas such as child care, as well as for reducing the deficit and encouraging domestic manufacturing…

Tuesday’s event marked a rare confrontational interview for Trump, who for the past month has largely spoken only to conservative media.

Reader Interactions

128Comments

  1. 1.

    Eolirin

    And all of this is not quite as lunatic as him twitching to music for 40 minutes instead of taking questions at a town hall!

    How the ever loving fuck are we where we are?

  2. 2.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Without reading it all, I just love the headline of you post. Need more hope.

    More people recognizing that weird crazy scary man is unfit, that gives me hope.

  3. 3.

    Pete Downunder

    Here in the land Downunder our politicians may be boring and spinless but at least they approximately sane and can express coherent, if a bit vague, thoughts. My friends here can not believe that Trump is not in an institution much less a serious candidate for President. Even Bush the Lessor was sane, stupid as a post, but sane. The mind it boggles.

  4. 4.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    One, the name “Micklethwait” sounds like it should have come out of one of Tony Jay’s Reports From Brexitlandia.

    Two, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a candidate for President be that completely incoherent without a major teleprompter malfunction.

    Three, Biden wasn’t even close to this bad at the debate, and that led to his re-election bid being prematurely terminated under duress. How is Trump still a viable candidate? Er, let me rephrase: can I get plane-shifted to a universe where Trump is held to the same standard as Biden? Er, never mind, because Trump would already have been sent up the river in that world…

  5. 5.

    Rusty

    Trumps inability to answer basic questions should be deeply disturbing,  but the press continues to clean up his word salad and present it as a gourmet meal.  It’s also becoming very clear that his supporters are in a form of denial where they don’t think he will implement what he says he will do.  Or more specifically, he won’t implement the parts they don’t like but will implement that the parts they do, that mix different for each supporter.  It’s all so maddening.

  6. 6.

    eclare

    The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.  That is one of my favorite sayings, proven daily by TCFG.  No limits on his stupidity.

  8. 8.

    Expletive Deleted

    I love that clearly some panicked assistant came up with “the weave” while he was pouting over media coverage and now he’s obsessed with it like a toddler with a compliment.

  11. 11.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Pete Downunder: we can’t believe it either.

    I say that I’ve sewn him an orange jumpsuit, am waiting for him to be in the place where it’s the right uniform.

    We get our hopes up, then some other legal snafu. He’s had some hold on folks.

  12. 12.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Let’s just have our own dance party. Or discuss, if the cake is in the oven, meaning nothing else to do but donate and GOTV, And vote ourselves, and otherwise we’re just waiting, it supporting… What kind of cake shall you bake?

    I’m in for lemon or lime pound cake. What about you?

    And I’ll bop to some Lisa Gerrard. Maybe the who, maybe tom Petty and the cars .

    It’s too late tonight for  anything other than engaging enlightening discussion, or fun stuff. Trying to stay upbeat. I’m not Pollyanna’s friend for nothing.

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    In Middle East/Military Hardware news, the B-2 stealth bomber made its debut over Yemen last night. Secretary of Defense Austin announced that B-2 bombers had attacked “five hardened underground missile storage bunkers” in Houthi-controlled Yemen.

    These strikes were part of a larger set of fifteen carried out by the US and the UK. They follow an earlier set of airstrikes on Houthi assets carried out a week ago.

  17. 17.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Jay: I love the lemon icing on spice cake!

    if I were to have booze,  maybe I’d have one of those rum soaked cakes like at Christmas. Or vanilla brandy, but it got discontinued. Tuaca is not close enough.

  20. 20.

    TBone

    Today’s Fix the News letter has this great tidbit:

    How’s the biggest global election year in history going?
    Sixty-seven countries with a total population of about 3.4 billion people have already held national elections this year. Another 440 million people will have their say before the end of 2024. With almost 90% of votes around the world cast and tallied, what’s evident so far? The Economist 🎁

    Democracy has proved to be pretty resilient.

    Voter turnout has risen for the first time in two decades, signalling engagement by citizens in the political process.

    Efforts to undermine elections have mostly failed, and disinformation campaigns haven’t made much of an impact.

    Voters have held leaders accountable, with a swing against incumbents in well over half of the democratic elections held so far this year.

  27. 27.

    BellyCat

    Gotta say,  Fux Knews has realized the Orange Menace is on the ropes and is trying to buy their way back into Kamala’s good graces with that interview. COULD NOT HAVE GONE BETTER FOR HER. 💥

  28. 28.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Pete Downunder: Many of us have been baffled for years now… it’s partly that he’s built a cult of personality and that portion of his base will just not abandon him. They follow exclusively news sources that polish his every turd to a diamond shine so they don’t see the decline and even if they did would still support him anyway.

    Another problem is mainstream media sane washing. The NYT etc. will describe this meltdown as “Trump Discusses Economic Policy in Chicago” and write about a contentious discussion about tariffs and international trade. Then they’ll edit things to present only his most coherent snippets so he looks as with it as they can make him look.

    So few people will actually watch the whole thing that they won’t see what actually happened. Why every media outlet in the county other than late night talk show hosts feels like they have to cover for him rather than expose the truth is something of a mystery but theories abound.

    But it’s definitely super surreal and disturbing. We’re as confused as you.

  29. 29.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby: ​
     

    And since I’m coffeed up, here’s a link to Politics Girl’s latest video. Which I intend to share with every female I know.

    Share it with the men you know too! That’s appalling that she can’t even use the normal words to talk about this stuff. Clearly she couldn’t say ‘rape’ or ‘incest’ which she should have been able to, but could she really not even say she had been pregnant without her post getting flagged? That’s insane.

  31. 31.

    Princess

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: It’s not a mystery at all. It’s money. All major American news sources are owned or funded by people who will benefit from Trump tax cuts that are set to expire. So are a lot of the reporters. There are other reasons but they all boil down to money.

  32. 32.

    hueyplong

    @mrmoshpotato: “Would Putin’s orange bitchy manbaby just croak already?”

    I call up this site each AM hoping for such a headline.

    Ond day it will happen.

  34. 34.

    Tony Jay

    @Expletive Deleted:

    Money down on him overhearing some underlings giggling about his terrible hair weave and they had to think up some bullshit on the spot to avoid his purple faced wrath.

    “Uh.. it.. uh… we were just saying how.. Um…”

    “You weave around with your speeches…”

    “Yeah! Yeah, like Muhammad Ali!”

    “Bobbing and weaving. Never letting anyone pin you down.”

    “Like Muhammad Ali?”

    “Yessir!”

    ……

    “I like it.”

  35. 35.

    lowtechcyclist

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    Another problem is mainstream media sane washing. The NYT etc. will describe this meltdown as “Trump Discusses Economic Policy in Chicago” and write about a contentious discussion about tariffs and international trade. Then they’ll edit things to present only his most coherent snippets so he looks as with it as they can make him look.

    And they defend it by saying there’s no point in their calling out Trump because his supporters and potential supporters don’t read the NYT.

    But excuse me, FTFNYT, if when there’s stuff we can see and you don’t report it like it is, but instead describe that turd as being shiny copper, why on earth should we believe you anymore when you’re reporting on stuff we can’t see? Why should we ever give you the benefit of the doubt on anything anymore?

  37. 37.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Princess: IDK though…how are they going to fare under his tariff plans? Or are they also susceptible to the “he’ll do the things I like and not do the things I don’t” thing. Seems like they’re smart enough to see through that. My theory is they can’t admit the Republican party has gone off the rails because they want to be balanced and impartial. This slide has been coming for decades now and it’s a frog in a pot of water situation – they’ve been covering on some level for so long it’s just reflex at this point and it’s been gradual enough that they can’t feel how extreme heat’s gotten.

  41. 41.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Princess: It’s easy to assert things. Having trouble seeing how they think they’re still in charge after the first four years and especially how they ended, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on our theories. Like I said they abound but also aren’t all mutually exclusive.

  44. 44.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @TBone: The three boneheads that Black’s spot (see what I did there?) highlighted reminds me of the situation Kay discusses here a lot – young white men with no fucking clue about anything. At all.

    It’s not like this type of mook didn’t exist back in the day, but somehow their numbers have grown. I don’t know if it’s something about the Joe Rogan types being so easily accessible or whether it’s the outcome of red districts constantly chipping away at education, but there does seem to be a greater percent of these sadsacks moping around, breathing good air, and never quite getting around to “doin’ mah own research.”

  45. 45.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @satby: for sone inexplicable reason, this is making me start to cry. It’s so deep. That they bleep out the words pregnant, rape, incest.

    Rape and especially incest, are crimes resulting in vast years of deadly silence and silencing.

    People want to kill themselves after bring raped. ( autopredict changed that to “roses” I kid you not). What a person goes (“gives”)  through, it lasts (“acts?”).

    And now they want to silence what happens in the absence of consent. Which is another word they want taken out of school instruction and books.

    Now I’m shaking. This is very, very real.

    Statistically, if one in 2, or 3 or 4 women has or will experience rape or incest, and greater than one in 10 boys ( always underreported, so could be much more), then we have a bunch of people right here, tonight, today, tomorrow, who understand how deep this goes.

    I’m shaking.

    thank you lee McGowan, you are brilliant, you nail it every time.

    (“___”) indicates what autopredict put, where I needed to retype my desired word

    i am trembling uncontrollably. This is a bit unexpected; I don’t usually land here)

  48. 48.

    Quantum man

    He could have dropped his pants and taken a big old crap on the stage and his cult would have gave him a standing ovation, and the FTFFNYT would write it up as “Trump breaks new ground in metaphoric campaign expression”.

  52. 52.

    jowriter

    @satby: Thank you.  I will definitely pass it along.  One of my best friend’s nieces (in Tenn.) does not vote.  Maybe this will help her think about the consequences of letting the chips fall where they may.

  54. 54.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @satby: Yep. A Day 2 agenda item for President Harris’ AG is full investigation of the illegal connections between the Musk PAC and the Trump campaign.

  55. 55.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Is NYT’s captive audience stupid or do they like what the NYT dishes out.

    I for one haven’t forgiven them for their complicity in the Iraq War. They were Cheney’s outlet of choice for disinfo about the war through Judith fucking Miller. Who went to jail for Cheney’s chief of staff. Who are these people that think that the NYT is liberal

    I don’t think they are stupid, so they must like NYT’s polite, sane washed racism. Or as I call it racism with a thesaurus.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat:

    My own theory is that the NYT is to savvy liberals what Fox is to MAGA: News for like minded people to talk about when they get together socially. Lots of libs would feel icky and low class of forced to talk about the latest piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer or the LA Times at their dinner parties. Reading the NYT is a type of status symbol, and the NYT knows it.

  60. 60.

    Princess

    @schrodingers_cat: The white men I know (and a few white women but much fewer) like NYT (it was easy to see who they are by reading Fb posts during the Biden take-down) would never ever see themselves as racist — might even describe themselves as anti racist. But…mmm…they do really really like being on top, they do not want to surrender or even share any power. So I see it.

  63. 63.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Eh, maybe. I don’t think these wunderkind are sentient enough to observe “our rapid progress” and so internalize it, resulting in psychological distress. But maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying

    ETA:’ “our rapid progress” = “our rapid success”

  66. 66.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Pete Downunder:

    I posted this yesterday but it’s pretty on point in explaining your observation from outside:

    The GOP weaponized the stupid and then was surprised at the results. It’s why I don’t give a pass to most Never Trumper conservatives.

    We are where we are because of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades, to demonize its opponents, to polarize and obstruct, to pursue policies that enfeeble the political weal and to yoke the bigot and the ignorant to their wagon and to drive them by dangling carrots that they only ever intended to feed to the rich.

    Trump’s ascendancy was laid down and paved by the Southern Strategy, by Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, by Faux “News” and the Tea Party, and by the smirking cynicism of generations of GOP operatives, who have been fracking the white middle and working classes for years, crushing their fortunes with their social and economic policies, never imagining it would cause an earthquake.

    I think in the beginning, Republican leaders couldn’t do a thing about it because they carefully molded this most spiteful segment of their party—angry, racist, sexist, and conspiratorial—for over a decade — and when it became the Monster and they they collective Dr Frankenstein, they didn’t know what to do other than ride the whirlwind. Fox News’ whole existence has been a buildup to this.

    But now, the angry, racist, sexist and conspiratorials. ie., the Frankenstein Monster(s) run the GOP. Mission Accomplished!

  67. 67.

    schrodingers_cat

    Not to be catty and shallow but am I the only who thinks that Olivia Nuzzi’s face resembles that of a horse? I fail to see her  beauty. Or is being a blonde enough for white women to be deemed attractive?

  68. 68.

    Princess

    Hey, should we be paying more attention to Tammy Baldwin’s senate seat in WI? I see it’s now ranked as a toss-up.

  71. 71.

    Liminal Owl

    @satby: Wow. (And blech.). Thank you. I’ve watched PoliticsGirl occasionally on YouTube but intend to follow her podcast now.

  73. 73.

    Tony G

    What a debacle.  But the punch-line is that most of the rich bastards in attendance at the Economic Club of Chicago will vote for Trump — and donate money to him — anyway, because of those sweet tax cuts and because they like his attacks on unions and the untermenschen.  It happened with that other guy, the one with the mustache, more than 90 years ago.

  74. 74.

    TBone

    In other shocking news, fElon’s campaign “events” in Pennsylvania run afoul of federal law:

    popular.info/p/why-elon-musks-events-in-pennsylvania

    Hansen explained that to violate the federal law that prohibits vote buying, “it is not necessary to offer that a person vote for or against a particular candidate.” Any financial inducement to vote or not vote is enough. In this case, Musk is offering something valuable — an invite to hear him speak — in exchange for voting. “Just like one cannot give out free ice cream or car washes or concert tickets,” Hansen writes, “one cannot give out free admission to hear a speech by a tech entrepreneur.”

  75. 75.

    Chris

    The Chinese—they like it when things go wrong in America.

    Not that he cares, but this is very much not true.  America remains one of China’s most important trading partners, and they very much do not want it wrecking itself with all the consequences that would have for the world economy.

    The Russians like it when things go wrong in America.  They’re the bomb-throwing anarchists of the modern world order, the people whose approach to the world is that if they have to eat shit, everybody does.

    All the way back in 2008, it was reported that the Russians had approached the Chinese with a suggestion that they take advantage of the financial crisis by coordinating economic policies to maximize the damage to the U.S. economy.  The Chinese, who needed the U.S. economy to survive and remain in good shape, refused.  It pretty well summarizes the two governments’ Chaotic Evil vs Lawful Evil approaches.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @mrmoshpotato: In 2021 I over-confidently predicted his family would have That Talk and get him declared incompetent, then hide him away in a nursing home somewhere. I think I overestimated how much they cared about him, or underestimated how much they thought they could still make from him.

    Maybe the past few years have shifted that, especially if any of them get the idea that such a declaration would somehow make the fines for his convictions go away.

  79. 79.

    Kosh III

    Heather Digby Parton in Salon wrote about the Felon’s appearance at the Chicago Economic Club.
    This is the key to it all:
    “They rationalized their support for him by saying they didn’t believe Trump would actually carry out all those unseemly threats he makes about deporting millions of people or going after his political enemies.  They told the reporter they believe the media blows it all out of proportion or it’s all just an act.”
    Exactly what the Junkers and other “important” Germans said about Hitler.

    If Pussy-grabber does get power, I hope these useful idiots are the first against the wall.

  81. 81.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Ken: In 2021 I over-confidently predicted [Trump’s] family would have That Talk and get him declared incompetent, then hide him away in a nursing home somewhere. I think I overestimated how much they cared about him…

    …every bit as much as he cares about them…

  83. 83.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @TBone: oh, is that valuable?

    (to hear Elon  speak?)

    i sure hope they sue him for a lot, and that it’s a prosperous endeavor to do so.

  85. 85.

    Chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    @Baud: Is NYT’s captive audience stupid or do they like what the NYT dishes out.

    Besides the people who don’t care about the politics and are just reading it because they’re New Yorkers and it’s the city paper, and besides the people who are just buying it for Wordle, you mean?

    They’re too-broad-minded-for-their-own-good liberals who think it’s a good sign when their media of choices shits on the politicians they vote for, because that’s how they reassure themselves that they’re good and responsible citizens and not just sheeple who only read party propaganda, and also that the media they read is objective and trustworthy and asking the hard questions rather than just following their own liberal bias.  (Of course the New York Times’ natural bias is liberal.  It’s the liberal media.  How could it not be?)

    In other words, yes, they’re pretty stupid.

  89. 89.

    Kay

     

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Nuzzi had a deal with Bloomberg to do a political show before her fiancee ratted her out for her affair with RFK Jr.

    Bloomberg quietly dropped her (probably becoming aware that she’s unstable and unethical) and all of political media blamed liberals for Bloomberg dropping her. The claim was we “cancelled” her because she criticized Biden. Then the RFK Jr news came out.

    None of them have admitted they were wrong to blame liberals or that they were wrong about Nuzzi.

    It’s another cult.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    In some ways they’re like the undecided voter. People who think that withholding good judgment is good judgment in itself.

  95. 95.

    Kay

    I sent my son’s gf pix of our MI get together this past summer and she texted me back that she (absentee) voted in WI.

    I love that she knows I would want to hear that :)

  96. 96.

    Chris

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    We are where we are because of conscious and deliberate choices by the GOP, going back decades, to demonize its opponents, to polarize and obstruct, to pursue policies that enfeeble the political weal and to yoke the bigot and the ignorant to their wagon and to drive them by dangling carrots that they only ever intended to feed to the rich.

    As I’m always happy to note, this process, in its modern form, goes all the way back to the days of kindly old moderate Dwight Eisenhower.  The John Birchers, their barely respectable cousins in the National Review, and the whole McCarthyist movement came from that era.  Eisenhower wasn’t one of them and held them in a fair amount of contempt, as his private letters make clear, but he was also happy to turn them loose against his Democratic enemies and let them rip the nation apart in the process, safe in the knowledge that he could put them back in their box once election season was over.  Which worked out… that time.  It also gave a blueprint that every Republican since has repeated, and every time the clowns were harder to put back in the box, until one day the clowns were all that was left.

    (There are probably earlier analogies to be made too, but it’s harder to map pre-Great-Depression party alignments onto contemporary ones.  Ike I’d say is when the modern version started).

  97. 97.

    Chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Huh.  I don’t play Wordle, but my understanding was that it was one of the most popular components of the New York Times, so I just assumed it was part of the subscription.  You learn something every day.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well, we cancelled  her ex fiancée for sexual harassment and he was then fired by the New Yorker and now she’s suing him so she should have listened to us. The “woke” people had some excesses and they can be a PIA but they’re always correct on the merits. They were right about Matt Taibbi too.

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The “woke” people had some excesses

     
    This always happens. A few people go overboard, and the haters cling to them to tarnish the movement and halt progress and accountability.

  100. 100.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Kay: The claim was we “cancelled” her because she criticized Biden. Then the RFK Jr news came out.

    None of them have admitted they were wrong to blame liberals or that they were wrong about Nuzzi.

    It’s another cult.

    Liberals cancelling people is the current in vogue description of a long favorite conventional wisdom myth, the liberal scold. Even if professional consequences aren’t brought to bear, people feel unsafe when they’re called out for disrespecting others. They have channeled this insecurity into an archetype of a person they never actually quite met but are assuredly everywhere.

    Likewise, the in-group/out-group attitude exists beyond movement Conservatives. If you have the right attitudes and the right enemies, you should be secure in the in-group. That isn’t what happened here. For other reasons, but outsiders don’t see what her coworkers see. But convenient scapegoat remains convenient.

    In summation, none of us really left high school.

  101. 101.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    A ton of these people are actual Democrats who will definitely check the box for Kamala Harris next month, though.  They just feel a pathological need for the media they need to be contrarian, and end up spreading a bunch of bullshit that way that absolutely ends up depressing turnout.

    Ever notice how many right-wing memes end up repeated far and wide on the left side of the aisle, not just by ConservaDems or Dirtbag Leftists but by regular liberals who damn well ought to know better?  “There’s a crisis at the border!” “Crime is rising in the big cities!”  “A recession’s just around the corner!”  “Biden said he wouldn’t run again!”  This is how it happens.

    Again, the job of outlets like the NYT is to launder right-wing talking points into liberal audiences, and they do a sterling job of it.  But they’re helped along by the fact that a stupendous number of liberals, and especially the educated ones that follow politics closely, consider the fact that their side is getting slagged and the other side’s talking points is getting a fair hearing, as the side of a good and unbiased media.  Apparently no one ever told them that just because somebody’s slagging on your side doesn’t mean they’re right.

  103. 103.

    BritinChicago

    @Kay: That’s great! I hope she gets her friends (male as well as female) to vote too. Perhaps the kids will save us!

  105. 105.

    p.a.

    @Chris: That was the modern seed, but the Dems weren’t guiltless; it was still the Solid South at the time.  It took the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of ’64, ’65, to make it a wholly R endeavor.  Johnson said “we’ve lost the south for a generation.”  He underestimated.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @satby: That’s messed up. I’m sure all the people who are obsessed with social media censoring conservatives will get right on exposing that. /s/s/s/s/s

  109. 109.

    TBone

    A senior lecturer in the Psychology Department at Cornell University and in the Psychiatry Department at Weill Cornell Medicine, Harry Segal says Trump’s awkward display at his rally was another clear sign of mental decline. Via Cornell:

    Segal says: “What’s alarming is how the rate of Trump’s bizarre speech and political decisions have been increasing. He gave an answer about childcare to the Economic Club of New York so incoherent that even his supporters were concerned. Last week he got cognitively lost in a rally and began to talk about the ‘eight circles’ that Biden filled up with journalists. No one on his staff has been able to explain the reference.

    crooksandliars.com/2024/10/cornell-expert-describes-trumps

  111. 111.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Chris: good and unbiased media.

    The media can not be unbiased.  The media can fake an air of impartiality, that makes them not good.

    Concealing bias and leaving a person to guess at the motives of the writer makes the reader unsure how to interpret the material. Luckily, our culture provides us a lens to interpret through, the notion of a liberal media.  This is obviously false if you follow mainstream political coverage for any sustained period and take a second to think, but we are still left to deal with this notion.

    One thing that recently occurred to me, especially if you believe that the media is liberal, a reason that the media may be so unwilling to discuss substantive policy is that such proposals are “good” and, if we achieve successes, “great.” This allows the simple act of discussing a policy in procedural, factual terms to be conceptualized as biased, as you are describing a good.

    The way the media has traditionally moved around this is to get opinions from dissenters.  But for Democrats, people with good-faith criticisms of their policies are somehow internal. If it’s the left, this is coming from a purportedly extreme, rather than alternate, point of view.  Disagreements with the moderates would have been ironed out before a proposal was made public, otherwise it’s going nowhere.

    So reporters turn to the bad faith criticism, because that’s what the other pre-ordained “serious” party offers alongside their extreme centrist allies like Manchin and Sinema. The sanewashing comes because they have to present something in a way their readers might believe and, unless you watch Republicans every day, it’s tough to believe what they get up to.

    All of this is why I believe emphatically that bias disclosures are a better approach to bias than attempting to portray information in an unbiased manner.

  112. 112.

    Chris

    @p.a.:

    @Chris: That was the modern seed, but the Dems weren’t guiltless; it was still the Solid South at the time.  It took the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of ’64, ’65, to make it a wholly R endeavor.  Johnson said “we’ve lost the south for a generation.”  He underestimated.

    It’s been a hell of a long time since liberal and moderate Democrats were willing to weaponize Southern Democrats, their prejudices, their conspiracy theories, their authoritarian tendencies, etc, and turned them loose against liberal and moderate Republicans, in the same way that “liberal” and “moderate” Republicans like Eisenhower were willing to weaponize their equivalents during the Red Scare and ever since.

    In fact, this is pretty much the entire history of the mid to late twentieth century, and how we’ve ended up here.  The Democratic establishment led the charge to defeat the reactionary and fascist-curious elements of their party, while the Republican establishment indulged, unleashed, and turbocharged their own reactionary and fascist-curious elements, eventually even to the point of welcoming former Democrats of that persuasion.

  113. 113.

    Emily B.

    @Baud: The NYT still sets the agenda, for a certain group. It curates the news in a very influential way. Readers are not necessarily getting the best reporting, they are not getting comprehensive coverage (despite the NYT’s pretensions to the contrary), but they are getting the “important” news. And for many people that is useful and reassuring.

  114. 114.

    RevRick

    @Eolirin:

    @Pete Downunder:

    @TS: It’s all very simple really. Trump is preaching fascism to a choir that craves it. And the basis of all fascism is the claim of some racial/ethnic superiority. It’s what Mussolini preached to the Italians, what Hitler preached to the Germans, what the militarists preached to the Japanese.
    Years ago, there was a socialpsych experiment which asked participants to choose between two simple options.

    They could either live in a neighborhood where they earned $50k and everyone else made $25k or they could live in one where they made $100k but everyone else made $200k. And half chose to live in the $25k neighborhood!
    The emotional coinage of superiority was worth more to them than the actual coinage of a doubling of income!
    The white supremacy that Trump preaches activates the lizard brain desire to feel superior and dominate in all those who feel threatened by all the demographic and cultural changes of the last half century.
    Taken as a whole the average white, working-class male has been economically downward since 1973 and can only find consolation in the cheap coins of white supremacy and anger at the “theys” who caused his distress.

  116. 116.

    mrmoshpotato

    The Big Business People Are Losing Faith in TFG

    That’s a pity.  How about they shove the Sears Tower up their asses and pay their fair share of taxes?

  117. 117.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @sab: it sounded as high pitched as a viola or a violin, and it surprised me, plus he was playing more the left hand strings, I thought those were the lower pitched strings. Do you know?

  118. 118.

    different-church-lady

    @TBone: ​”Trump’s recent performances at his rallies are further proof that Biden needed to step aside.”

  119. 119.

    Chris Johnson

    @TS: No, absolutely not.

    Firstly it’s not 47% and second, they don’t want him. They want a fantasy person they have made up, in their heads, by that name, whom they have never met.

    They know him about as well as they know JESUS.

  120. 120.

    different-church-lady

    @TBone: ​

    He gave an answer about childcare to the Economic Club of New York so incoherent that even his supporters were concerned.

    But until those supporters start writing Op-Eds for the New York Times Trump will remain their nominee.

  121. 121.

    different-church-lady

    @Yutsano:

    “You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”

    ​People want a president they can identify with!

  123. 123.

    Tony G

    @Kosh III: Actually, the German capitalists did very well during ww2 (all that free slave labor!) and mostly got a free pass after the war.  It was the ordinary Germans who suffered as a result of Hitler.

  124. 124.

    CaseyL

    The racist v. not-racist stuff is multi-layered.

    Many people were anti-racism when all that meant was opposing the Jim Crow laws and outright lynching.  Those were not only overt enough, but also distant enough, there was no loss of implicit status in opposing them.

    But then being not-racist or anti-racist meant having peers and even superiors who were people of color, and that’s when a lot of white people checked out.  It may not even have been obvious to them.

    “Not obvious?” you say.  “How could it not be obvious??”

    Here’s what I mean by that:

    There was a thing for a while, an “implicit bias” workshop, that allowed (or forced) white people to recognize bias they either weren’t aware of or didn’t know was a form of bias.  One part of it was picking out who the higher-status individual was, based on their job title, in a series of quick images of photos with job titles underneath.  A lot of people (including people who work at being anti-racist) found themselves responding to the photo rather than the job title, and choosing the white man over the black man or the white woman over the black woman, and so on.

    That kind of racism isn’t overt or obvious.  It’s the difference between having a couple token middle managers who aren’t white males, and seeing EVERY non-white non-male as a potential leader or boss. People you don’t personally know, people whose abilities and credentials you have to accept as a given.  That’s where the implicit bias comes in:  people do still tend to automatically assume any random white male has a level of competence and ability they do not automatically extend to any random non-white/non-males.

    It’s seeing someone you subconsciously consider “lesser” in a role you don’t automatically assign them, and feeling a dissonance.  Not a huge dissonance, but a constant aggravating one, like a poke in the ribs every time you think about it.  And I think enough of that dissonance can make people uncomfortable enough, or angry enough, to decide “anti-racism has gone too far!” because it is challenging some really bedrock, subconscious-level, assumptions.

    And at the risk of angering everyone, I have to say that the anti-racist movement and training can run roughshod over people who want to support it.  I’m speaking from personal experience, having participated in a few anti-racist workshops, where I was a stand-in for All White People Everywhere, and was targeted by a lot of anger, dismissiveness, and assumptions about what I believed and felt.

    Yes, you could say it was a salutary lesson in what non-white people put up with every day – believe me, I did recognize that!  But it did not engender in me any desire to stay active in the anti-racist movement, because what would be the point?

    It was exhausting.  I was (am!) on the side of anti-racists, and I found it exhausting and disheartening to participate.  Imagine the effect on someone who doesn’t know history, doesn’t understand how racism is an underlying motif in nearly all of our institutions… someone who just “wants civil rights for everyone” but does not want to open one can of worms after another all day every day.

    They’re not going to join the KKK.  But they’re definitely susceptible to a rhetoric that says “anti racism has gone too far!” and maybe vote for whoever says it.

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