Trump is a pathetic coward and a bully. Pass it on.
Pete Buttigieg sets the record straight.
— Molly Ploofkins™ (@mollyploofkins.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 11:26 AM
h/t sixthdoctor
This post is in: Open Threads, Trump 2.0
Trump is a pathetic coward and a bully. Pass it on.
Pete Buttigieg sets the record straight.
— Molly Ploofkins™ (@mollyploofkins.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 11:26 AM
h/t sixthdoctor
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Old School
The buck stopped with the last guy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The bodies are still being recovered and that fucker wants to bash on the vulnerable, all to avoid accountability.
I’m not that old, but I can’t recall any president or political leader ever doing this, blaming their predecessors without evidence, especially right after the disaster. There hasn’t even been an investigation yet! Ask Trump’s newest voters that and why they think that is
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Except for when Ronald Reagan blamed Challenger on Jimmy Carter.
…I’m being told Reagan didn’t do that.
Do remember the many “Is this Obama’s Katrina?” memes over those eight years. The desire has always been there, just took a manbaby like Trump to deliver on the concept.
Chetan Murthy
@trollhattan: Or, haha [narrator: actually, ugh] 9/11. All Clinton’s fault, as I remember being told repeatedly and insistently.
Quinerly
MSNBC reporting female helicopter pilot
Quinerly this AM
“This live statement of Trump has to be seen to be believed.
He is blaming DEI on the crash.
And speculating on what happened. ‘I have helicopters.’ Talking a lot about ‘height.’
Get ready….the pilot of the helicopter or someone connected with this who is not the American pilot is going to be a DEI hire….I will make book on that.”
zhena gogolia
Did the media shout insulting, hostile questions at him, as they invariably did at Biden?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
A quick google doesn’t turn anything up. That would be pretty silly, especially considering the Challenger Disaster happen in 1986, a good 5 years into his presidency. Plenty of time to identify and fix any supposed policy screw-ups from Carter. And even if it resulted from some Carter era policy, the question would remain, Well, Ronny, why didn’t you do anything about it?
Quinerly
@zhena gogolia:
Actually, there was some shouting. Trump told one female reporter that her question was stupid. (It wasn’t). NBC/MSNBC male reporter called him out on some lies. Trump cut him off.
SW
Trump didn’t run for president to do the job of the president. He ran for president to stay out of jail. And the looting. There is always the looting.
The Unmitigated Gaul
“We live in an era of tremendous and profound cowardice. Just shocking cowardice. ” (Joy Reid)
ExPatExDem
Summary of events:
Trump elected. Trump fires 100 senior FAA employees with decades of experience. Disaster follows. Trump blames black people.
Let me know if I left anything out.
Josie
@ExPatExDem: No, actually, I think you pretty well covered it.
I hope that one of our Democratic leaders with access to a microphone has the ganas to state it just like that.
The Unmitigated Gaul
@ExPatExDem: Nothing.
trollhattan
Wish me luck, am about to reboot the work PC following installation of Win 11 over Win 10 (it’s pretty old).
“Engage.”
Leto
This reminds me of Gov JB Pritzker’s 2023 commencement speech on recognizing idiots. It’s highly relevant right now. This is about a minute long, worth the watch.
Old School
@ExPatExDem: I’d say it’s more of Trump blaming non-white non-men.
NotMax
Anyone following the RFK Jr or the Patel hearings today?
catclub
Drill baby drill.
Steve Crickmore
@ExPatExDem: Trump forgot to mention that it is just “common sense” that it was this man who was responsible, for the accident, last night. https://moguldom.com/434390/fact-check-paul-e-williams-a-black-man-invented-the-first-helicop
scav
Oh, absolutely he’d leap at the chance to blame a woman for this, especially if she wasn’t wearing high heels, a frilly skirt and dared to be in the military doing anything other than stenography. Give him credit (spit) he’s almost equally opportunity on assigning blame to others.
The Audacity of Krope
I was following the Patel hearings until Fox cut away to talk about the plane crash with no new information.
Very squirrelly, that man. Evasive.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Is it true that Musk was giving a hard time to the FAA Head about Space X bullshit which led to his resignation? it’s fucking impossible to find credible news anymore.
Quinerly
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
That is true based on everything I have read.
zhena gogolia
Could we stop everything and go back and do the election again? (Although I’m not confident of the outcome even so.)
zhena gogolia
OT, Marianne Faithfull RIP
Old School
@zhena gogolia: That’s too bad. RIP.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: I am not at all confident, which makes me feel like throwing up.
Nettoyeur
After campaigning on being the only one who can save us, Trump starts dismantling govt functions, and then denies responsibility for consequences.
Dangerman
I’m a terrible person. I heard military helicopter and thought Marine One.
Nettoyeur
@Dangerman: Better luck next time.
RaflW
We’re going to have to be relentless. It’s on us. The press is going to just let him spoon feed the racist, sexist, homophobic pablum. WE have to tell the press to do their g.d. jobs.
The freakout earlier this week against ‘the pause’ is instructive. All hands on deck does seem to eventually seep thru to media-brain folks. Hammer the Musk got the FAA guy to quit scandal. Endlessly.
RaflW
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Absolutely true. Here’s one from Space (dot) com back in September when Musk was really getting the drumbeat going. FYI he was confirmed 98-0 and should have served a five year term, but lasted less than 16 months.
Steve LaBonne
@Nettoyeur: Damn COVID virus didn’t do its job back in 2020. Must be a DEI virus.
Nelle
This is giving a meander down the memory hole to 1986. (My husband is a pilot with about 9,000 hours flying time, mostly in northern Alaska as a bush pilot.) We in a Piper Cherokee, with a reservation to land at National (never Reagan to us). So all was approved, we were on approach, and then got an off the books diversion. Couldn’t go fast enough for them, even though, as I said, the Piper Cherokee was approved to land at a specific time window and we were right on time. We expected to go down the Potomac, but instead were diverted over the Pentagon. There we were, a few hundred feet above the building, flying right over the open center of the huge building. Would never happen now.
Citizen Dave
I always go to “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” is a President’s Daily Brief prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency that was given to U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday, August 6, 2001.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Nelle:
That reminds me of a Pentagon story from the early 90s, specifically the First Gulf War.
Little known but during the First Gulf War, we had Army personnel on the roof armed with Stingers. The idea at the time was to shoot down somebody in a plane like yours intent on a suicide mission into the Pentagon.
We always snorted at that because a plane like yours hitting the Pentagon would be like a bug hitting a bug zap lamp, nothing would happen, the building’s that big. Or, if such an event happened and the plane was shot down, in all probability the debris would have come down over a neighborhood possibly killing people, injuring, etc.
Those of us who worked there back then would also say that damage to the Pentagon might be a blessing in disguise because back then, the interior was a dump. Little upgrades here and there over the years but 50 years after it was very hastily built, it was beyond showing it’s age. My first space there, you had to dust off your desk every morning because this mysterious “white dust” would settle on it overnight.
All pre-911 mind you.
Alce _e_ardillo
The post headline is going to be evergreen.
trollhattan
Whee, I’m back!
[checks System/About] “Windows 10 Enterprise Ver. 22H2”
WTF did I just spend 30 minutes watching? Mongo just pawn in game of life.
Captain C
@Citizen Dave: “No one could have forseen that thing that we were specifically and explicitly warned about!”
hells littlest angel
He is and always will be a small, shitty man.
WaterGirl
@Alce _e_ardillo: I was kicking myself for not going with Pete’s line for the post title: Trump should be leading, not lying.
I felt better after reading your comment, realizing that the title I didn’t choose for this post will be evergreen, too.
hells littlest angel
@zhena gogolia: A good singer, but underneath a horribly elitist snob. The quintessential poor little rich girl.
zhena gogolia
@hells littlest angel: Yes, and miserable too, for all his gold toilets. That is the only thought that consoles me. But he is still making so many lives miserable for NO REASON WHATSOEVER
zhena gogolia
@hells littlest angel: I’m just reading her obituary — I knew nothing about her except the songs she did in the 1960s, which I loved.
John S.
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Also:
Link
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
1979’s Broken English is a phenomenal and gutsy record that had me completely reevaluate her as artist and performer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_English_(album)
rikyrah
Just disgusting.
Thank you, Secretary Pete
Chris
The fact that he said it as reflexively as he did kind of gives the game away.
There was absolutely no time to figure out anything about what happened, like, not even enough time to locate the nearest black guy who could be pointed to as the reason the crash supposedly happened. And if there was a government agency high-profile enough or ideologically salient enough for Trump or anyone around him to have become familiar with their hiring practices and decided that they were a true example of “DEI,” it would not have been the fucking FAA.
It’s just sheer reflex at this point. A bad thing happens, it’s DEI. Don’t even bother with the intermediate steps, specious as they would have been, to show how DEI supposedly caused this. It just did.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Thanks to all for my question about Musk. Initial search had msm reports not mentioning it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@zhena gogolia: The NO REASON WHATEVER is what’s so dumbfounding. Why bother with all this emiserating?
scav
@Dorothy A. Winsor: In a zero-sum world, if someone else isn’t miserable, that’s happiness you don’t have. Along those lined? Plus, the utter joy of control over others existence, well-being and mood seems to be addicting.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Dave:
And it was the last and most hair-on-fire in a sequence of about a half-dozen PDBs warning about the al-Qaeda threat.
But Bush and Cheney (a) had tunnel vision over Iraq from the get-go, and (b) disregarded anything having to do with non-state terrorism because that was Clinton’s and Gore’s thing, therefore it wasn’t going to be their thing.
I have believed ever since that if it weren’t for that damn Butterfly (effect) Ballot, the date 9/11 wouldn’t mean a damn thing to us because the attack would have been headed off by the Gore Administration before it came to fruition.
glory b
@ExPatExDem: Women.
People with disabilities.
Melancholy Jaques
@zhena gogolia:
Marianne Faithful also appeared in a very 60s film Girl on a Motorcycle with Alain Delon. Scenes from that film were used very nicely in the video for the song “Girl on a Motorbike,” by Swervedriver. She definitely had one of the defining looks of the 60s.
Dangerman
Year of the Snake (fitting). I don’t think he’s with us any longer but I’ll be happy imagining Jake The Snake pile driving the fucker.
I may be dating myself with a Jake Roberts reference. How about JYD? He still around? Who was the Dude that always carried the 2×4? A Clue x 4 would work for me right now.
ETA: JTS lives. Retired but breathing. Maybe I was thinking Macho Man. Reasonably sure about him.
exbarrowboy
@trollhattan: Marianne Faithfull’s “Broken English” is also the broken tape that’s still stuck in my 30 year old Miata’s tape player.
I did see her about 12 years ago when she played at the Mountain Winery. She was obviously not in great health at the time and if anything it’s a little surprising that she lasted as long as she did. I won’t say it was a great concert but it was a memorable one.
I pulled up a “Broken English” video to play in memoriam and it happened to be something made by Derek Jarman with images from way back that are a little bit too apropos for today
John S.
@Dangerman:
Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
bbleh
See also Jasmine Crockett’s post:
https://bsky.app/profile/repjasmine.bsky.social/post/3lgydxiy6r222
(h/t Cheryl Rofer at LGM, who still rocks)
Keith P.
@Dangerman: JYD died ages ago. Jake the Snake is still alive (somehow). The 2×4 guy is Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
John S.
@bbleh:
That was excellent. She did a great job connecting the dots and brought the receipts to back it up.
Keep up the good work, Rep. Crockett!
trollhattan
@exbarrowboy:
I’d have gone given the chance. Even if the performance is mixed that’s history on the stage.
Saw Etta James three(!) times at Mondavi Winery and there are performers who simply defy age and sketchy health—Etta was all that. I think she and Margrit Mondavi had become good friends along the way, making the venue a destination for her.
Ron
Feel like the wheels are getting loose and gonna fly off already. Completely unprepared for anything. Just like Covid.
bbleh
@zhena gogolia: it’s literally pathological. He’s a narcissist, and the root of narcissism is a terrible lack of self-esteem. He makes other people miserable because it makes him feel — momentarily, marginally — better about himself. But the need — the craving — is always there, and by all accounts it gets worse at an accelerating rate with age.
I suppose if it’s any consolation (ok not much), inside he is almost certainly a seething mass of anxious — sometimes frantically anxious — self-doubt.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Old School: RIp but also anecdotal proof that taking a lot of illegal drugs does not prevent one from living to a ripe old age.
karen gail
We should never expect leadership from either Trump or his cronies; they don’t want to lead they want to rule. Cruelty fuels their existence.
Josie
When I went to see Congresswoman Crockett’s statement on Bluesky, I saw in the comments a clip of Leader Jeffries making a strong statement. I’d be willing to bet that won’t make the news.
scav
Move Fast and Break Things.
Mission accomplished, the breaking stage has already commenced.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Reagan definitely blamed the early 1980s recession on Carter though.
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
So did literally the entire political media and nearly everyone in the United States. That’s the only way they could have 4.3% inflation, 7.2% unemployment, and average 30 year mortgage rates over 13% and call it “Morning in America.”
Betty
@RaflW: I have to say Nicolle Wallace is doing the job right. She was scathing in reporting on Trump’s steps to harm the FAA. Vaughan Hilyard on the other hand was soft selling the whole situation.
danielx
Unable to keep his mouth shut or to show a minimum of empathy and grace. And people actually voted for another four years of this shit.
schrodingers_cat
@danielx: They wanted excitement because Biden was boring. Competent but boring. Whatever Orange is, he is not boring
Although truth be told I am bored of his schtick.
BTW Question for the hive mind. I am upgrading my router-modem combo. Suggestions welcome. I am with Comcast.
Glory b
@Josie: It won’t, and then we’ll here the yelling that Dems aren’t saying anything & are afraid to fight.
ChrisSherbak
@rikyrah: I hope he continues as “Shadow” DoT Secretary and comments on transportation issues and events.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: To me he is insufferably boring.
Horrible, disgusting, yes, but also BORING
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: People, including the media treat elected Ds like they are the help and Rs like they are the bosses.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Same here. But we are in the minority. Unfortunately.
Old School
Via Pitchbot, here’s a Please Don’t Destroy video on the New York Times.
Princess
@trollhattan: Broken English is one of the best albums ever.
Sally
Trump is killing Americans.
Score 11 days in: 67
Tim C.
@schrodingers_cat: No, I think most people think he’s boring. The number of his own voters who worked themselves to voting him more based on hate for others than love for him is real. Sadly I thought it would take more than 10 days for people to start dying from his actions.
I was wrong.
Fight Nazis
Princess
It seems to me that, given the direction the administration is going, Vivek Ramaswamy was fired from DOGE because he is brown. Musk and Trump didn’t want that there. Ramaswamy will never admit it, maybe not even to himself.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
How big is your space and do you have coverage issues?
Upgraded our router to a TPLink Deco mesh system with three individual routers, which do a much better job with our spread-out home and handle bandwidth demands of several gizmos at once. Mesh would be overkill for, say, an 800 ft sq apartment, unless 2-story.
Can’t respond re modem; we have our ISP’s box, which I’m guessing is not the best. (it’s fiber-optic service)
HTH at little.
RevRick
@Leto: Felon 47 is the embodiment of stupidity— the certain belief that he knows more than anyone else.
trollhattan
@Old School: Cruel, and utterly fair.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: Its a 2 story colonial. About 1800 sq ft.
Currently we have Arris SBG6700-AC gateway with a range extender. But its about 8 years old and due for an ungrade.
RevRick
@danielx: People voted for that shit, because a huge percentage of them have been propagandized to believe that we are Demonrats. You hear it when they loudly declaim they are free from the four years of tyranny that they had to endure. And we are rightly baffled, and wonder WTF are they talking about. But for them, all sorts of terrors have spun around in their brains. And we have sinisterly plotted to make their lives miserable.
Geminid
@bbleh: I checked out Rep. Crockett’s statement and it’s damned good.
Then I followed the comments and one linked to an excellent, short video statement by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader.
Miss Bianca
@ExPatExDem: No, I think that just about covers it.
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: I understand the sentiment of wanting to redo the election and hoping for a better outcome. More importantly, I feel the despair that lies beneath that wish.
I try not to let that garbage human occupy too much headspace. It’s why I’m like a WW2 bomber pilot here, dropping my load and then flying away… to go for a walk, color on Happy Color, solve puzzles.
He. Is. Just. Not. Worth. My. Mental. Health.
Shalimar
@Tim C.: It’s a small sample size, but the Trump voters I know personally don’t even try to defend him. They admit he’s horrible. They voted for the anti-immigrant hysteria.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Melancholy Jaques:
And what came out of that as a “solution”: trickle-down, Reaganomics…the costs of which we pay for every damned day.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
Sounds ideal for mesh, then. Tasks are 1. picking brand and model and 2. determining # of units. Can begin with two or three and add later, if needed because of gaps. They will sync right up.
ETA as you move around the house, they hand off to the nearest unit with no re-connecting like range extenders can require. Seamless.
Suzanne
My SNORT of derision is getting to be a habit today. I suppose I’ll be doing it a lot for the next four years.
Secretary Pete’s response was perfect. Something tells me that that guy is going places. May it be so.
ETA: “Trump should be leading, not lying” is perfect. Put that on T-shirts. Every elected Democrat should make that their catchphrase. Repeat it 500x a day. Drill baby drill, into people’s heads.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
They grow up so fast. :-)
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: We have some problem areas where the wifi is spotty like the guest bedroom which far from the router.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t have mesh at home but lemme echo trollhattan’s recommendations. Don’t sweat the modem, again per trollhattan, use whatever your service provider provides and then go with a mesh approach.
8 years is a looooong time for a router upgrade. You’ll be amazed at the improvement even with a conventional, newer, setup, ala a single router.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: If you look at the polls, Trump is more popular now than in November. That’s because he won– that’s how it always works. Same pattern as in 2017. But his “honeymoon” barely brought him even and now the numbers are dropping again.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Comcast gave us a choice of buying our own gateway and that’s what we did. Do you have any suggestions for the modem?
matt
@RevRick: it’s amazing how widespread the opinion is that the last four years were the worst four years in the nation’s history and that Biden was the worst president ever.
so unhinged.
Starfish (she/her)
@Dangerman: We were looking at favorite political t-shirts in earlier threads, and Betty Cracker really liked this one.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh I don’t know … Most of us are pretty boring in ourselves, but when that’s combined with his insistance on nevertheless being in everybody’s face at all times it creates something as toxic as anything about him. I think that’s going to wind up very far-reaching.
SpaceUnit
Plane crashes make great tee-vee. Media win.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: I think the right word is “tiresome.”
Not “boring,” because that leads to just turning off from it- but we can’t shut it out because it’s everywhere and has real, visible effects on real people.
But damn, it’s so fucking tiresome.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Trump is leading.
But it’s to chaos and ugliness and corruption.
To assail him for not being the usual leader: not what his voters elevated him to do.
Timill
@schrodingers_cat: Looking at the specs, all you would need to add is a mesh system, and like the others round here I have TP-Link Deco units. 3 should be good enough (we have 4, but we have an outbuilding as well as a 2-level house) and you just plug one into an Ethernet port on the gateway. After that you just tell the other units to talk to each other and off you go…
Elizabelle
@RevRick:
Yes. He cannot live in our heads, rent free.
Sister Golden Bear
@WaterGirl: Still good for a rotating tag.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chris:
It’s straight out of the Christopher Rufo playbook where he explicitly talked about how he wanted anything conservatives hated to be “critical race theory.”
Sister Golden Bear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: @scav:
In Trump’s worldview you’re not winning unless someone else is losing. I’m sure other MAGAts think along the same lines.
Sally
@Sister Golden Bear: I think it should lead with the lede.
Trump – lying not leading.
Evergreen!
Sally
And maybe :
Trump – golfing not leading (per Gov Walz)
Martin
@Princess: I think it was pretty clear that his defense for H1B was responded to by the base with pretty blatant anti-Indian racism. Someone misunderstood the room.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: Republicans are notoriously zero-sum thinkers, and Trump is about as bad as it goes on that front.
tokyokie
I’m surprised the trump administration didn’t blame a Lunar New Year celebration that got out of control for the plane crash, but then that would require somebody in his administration realizing that such a holiday exists.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: surfboard
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: Our political adversaries are really good at repeating lies so many times that they feel true. Repetition is effective. It’s hard to fight.
Jay
@ExPatExDem:
President Musk and his flying Nazi’s harass the head of the FAA for years, and knowing what is coming, he resigns on Jan 20th. Congress must confirm his replacement and there is no Dolt 47/Musk/DOGE/Federalist nominee.
Dolt 47 freezes all ATC hiring, Jan 20, leaving 99% of all US Airports understaffed
Dolt 47 fires all the Board members of the Aviation Transportation Safety Committee.
WaterGirl
@Starfish (she/her): I love that one, but I can’t tell where that one is available.
WaterGirl
@Sister Golden Bear: I added it as a tag earlier this afternoon!
It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax!It’s a post title and a rotating tag. :-)
Ruckus
@danielx:
It’s not another 4 years of the same shit.
It will be a hell of a lot worse.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
No, it’s not boring.
He is pure shit walking though.
David T Rickard
Just the Party of Personal Responsibility™ up to its usual tricks.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
BINGO
Quinerly
Amazon has several sellers for the “is he dead yet?” T shirts. I found the seller where I bought my “Fuck 45” and “Resist” shirts from 4 plus years ago. Bought a black one. (I like black t shirts) Different sellers have different scripts/fonts. Most appear to be under $15. Lots of color choices.
Yes, I know….Amazon. I am just not cutting my nose off to spite my face by leaving Amazon….or FB for that matter
FelonyGovt
OT —anyone know if you can have more than one BlueSky account? Two of the private Facebook groups I’m in are considering moving to BlueSky and I’d prefer to keep my FelonyGovt account separate.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: Blaming Black People (and other groups too) for everything is as American as apple pie. I have relatives who were convinced Affirmative Action!!1! was the worst evil imaginable, ranting about it going back to the 70’s. DEI is just the new version of the Affirmative Action/Political Correctness bogeyman.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: i think it would have been a historical footnote. 9/11 would have been averted, but when the gore administration announced what had nearly happened, the entirety of the republican party and their lap dogs in the MSM would have mocked, literally mocked, the idea that terrorists could have successfully hijack planes and flown them into buildings. They would have insisted that the whole thing was just gore wagging the dog to distract from his imminent impeachment over that time he talked to a chinese-american donor and used the wrong telephone.
janesays
@Chetan Murthy: Sure, but not by the sitting president of the United States.