Why, asks our Very Serious Media, must we Dems be so meeeean to poor Don TACO?
To piggyback on this slightly, this is why "TACO" is such a brilliant piece of political speech. You can say it anywhere, people can say it on television or in public without swearing or w/e, and it perfectly encapsulates the fact that Trump is a whiny baby in a way that will infuriate him.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 10:22 AM
I know this is a hard concept to grasp for most of the brainwormed political posters on this site, but one of the ways that Rs were able to pull down Bidens favorables was millions of tiny cuts in the form of mockery, derision, & shitposting online over the years. Volume mattered more than quality.
“Why mock Trump and point out that he sucks at doing the things that he says he’ll do?”
Bc Trumps *entire fucking political project* depends on projecting strength and inevitability. Mockery works to undercut that and the more of it that happens in places where ppl consume info online, the better.
We don't even have to guess on this! A reporter asked about it and he nearly lost his shit!
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 10:22 AM
===
Another day on bluesky
— tmbhmltn.bsky.social (@tmbhmltn.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 11:18 AM
BethanyAnne
“Ok, which one of you motherfuckers started calling Air Force One ‘Panda Express’ because it carries Orange Chicken?”
Anne Laurie
@BethanyAnne: Upvote!
trollhattan
I’ll continue endorsing Walz calling them weirdos. Because my god, they’re fucking weirdos in every conceivable way and several ways I don’t dare ponder.
Weirdos.
Baud
lowtechcyclist
“To piggyback on this slighhtly” – um, to piggyback on “the author of the quoted post has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites”? Ho-kay.
BellyCat
The TACO 🌮 problem is that Trump will double down on that which is perilous. The taunt works, but adversely.
RandomMonster
@BethanyAnne: That is the best thing I’ve read all week. Thanks!
MobiusKlein
I’m dubious about the “Mockery leads to declining influence / popularity” bit. Feels to me more of the “The Media is wired for Republicans”, where mockery of Gore stuck, but mockery of Bush did not.
Baud
@BellyCat:
If voters don’t want peril, they know who to vote for.
Scout211
Did we cover the DNC parking a taco truck outside of RNC headquarters on Tuesday, complete with free tacos?
I thought it was great but JD Vance was very critical, bless his heart
BethanyAnne
@RandomMonster: I’m gonna be giggling about it all day :-D
bbleh
I think this one cuts particularly deeply because it also clearly implies that his whole successful-businessman persona is a crock. He can’t negotiate with anyone remotely equal, which is why he’s such a spectacular failure in business. That persona is central to his self-esteem as well as his public image.
Grind his orange nose in it.
Scout211
@MobiusKlein: Maybe, but mockery goes viral and right now so much information about Trump’s actions is not penetrating the media news bubble and mockery is one way to push a meme through alternate means.
And Dems have been reluctant to lean into mockery historically, so Walz’s “weird” and “TACO” are tools in the bag of messaging that may help in this era.
ETA: clarity
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Agreed this is great.
So when does somebody (like consultants) start advising just how Dems shouldn’t do this? And then Dems drop it?
I know, I know, we’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer about how the “wierd” bit was dropped last year because whenever somebody says “consultants said to drop it”, somebody says “show me which consultants.”
And ‘wierd’ did seem to be working in a mocking way that was getting traction outside of people like us. Which is why I have expect Donny TACO to be last week’s news next week.
Chetan Murthy
@BellyCat: i have to disagree: at least on the issue where taco arose, tariffs, for the sake of our Republic we should hope that Trump gets enraged enough to not chicken out this time and actually does impose swingeing tariffs. The only way we’re going to keep our Republic is if We get a Great Depression fast enough that Trump’s fingerprints are all over it.
Chief Oshkosh
@Scout211: JD was just upset that they didn’t provide a sofa to “lounge on” while eating the free tacos.
Chief Oshkosh
Walz’s weirdo comment is good and useful, but I prefer “skipping dipshit.”
ExPatExDem
Fascists thrive on outrage. Mockery is their kryptonite. No would-be strongman can abide being laughed at. Keep on mockin’ in the free world!
Steve LaBonne
Throughout history tyrants have been exquisitely sensitive to mockery. That’s because it really does sap their aura of inevitably. Everyone should keep on making fun of the weird orange taco.
bbleh
Have finally found a use for GPT — image of chicken with Trump face dressed as Southern belle. Very fetching.
Hoodie
@bbleh:
Trump doesn’t negotiate; he postures. Everything is a reality show to him, the main purpose of which is to feed his notoriety , which he equates with popularity.
trollhattan
@Chief Oshkosh:
The sofa had Memory Foam cushions and punched JD the minute he sat down.
BellyCat
@Chetan Murthy: Agreed that Trump’s fingerprints need to be on what’s ahead (which will bad to very, very bad) but will his prints be apparent to enough people?
bbleh
@Hoodie: But he can bully people in inferior positions — think glaziers or piano vendors in Atlantic City — and he looks on that as “negotiation,” and I think it satisfies an internal need as well as an external purpose.
trollhattan
Can anybody do the Trump-to-English translation?
trollhattan
@bbleh:
IIUC the Trump Discount goes something like—You bill for your services as per the contract, let’s say installing 100 hotel bathrooms, Trump pays 30 cents on the dollar “because reasons” e.g., shoddy materials, not enough gold, etc, with the amuse bouche of a $20million lawsuit over that purportedly shoddy work.
At some point you end up with 20 cents on the dollar billed. There are reasons Trump never builds in New York today.
Baud
This is an opinion piece, but I thought people would be interested in the underlying subject. It links to a Politico article.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@trollhattan:
Uh, huh
Another Scott
Hmm… Maybe FTFNYT was on to something with their EmailGate, etc., etc., stuff. Maybe perpetual, unrelenting coverage is the only way to break through…
TACO Now
TACO Tomorrow
TACO Forever!
(via nycsouthpaw)
Best wishes,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Tak tochno.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
The commissioned study can be summarized as follows:
Democrats are losing young men voters, so they talked to Will Stancil, Larry Summers and Matt Yglesias about how to win them back.
That entire piece highlights this problem. Dems have spent, and are again spending, millions researching Black voter outreach, yet they’re still losing working-class Black support and seeing turnout drop in key cities.
You can’t just keep throwing money at a problem and expect trust to magically appear, particularly when for the last dozen years, local Dems running cities have done everything policy-wise to screw the exact same voter blocs they’re now gonna spend $20m to figure out why.
Democratic donors treating men like an endangered species on a remote island they need to study probably won’t rebuild trust.
This kind of top-down, anthropological approach misses the point: people don’t want to be decoded, they want to be understood and met where they are.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
It did strike me as a waste of money too.
StringOnAStick
A local bagel shop has been doing a good job on the local subreddit showing how tariffs are impacting her business. Like how a huge container of tahini used to be $69 and is now over $120, or how the paper products are all from Canada and are now a huge cost for business. I support her by going to her shop, plus it’s good stuff.
Jeffro
110%
count me in on Team Mock The Shit Out of Him
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: Doesn’t sound like a good use of money. I really wish there was more focus on state and local party efforts. Talking to people in person is a better bet than trying to conjure up a magical YouTube persuader.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think the problem is that there is a segment of Democrats who don’t seem to want to win unless it’s done the “right way”, which is to be serious and get people to vote for us because they like our policies. This is a losing strategy, but too many people listen to it. The mockery thing works!
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Here is DeepSeek R1’s cleanup of Mr. Trump’s recent Truth on the matter. I approve of the change to “Thank you for your attention to this update.”
It also including editing notes:
Soprano2
@Baud: It’s because Democrats value people other than young, white men, and tell them to be decent people to others. Can I get $20 million please?
Hoodie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
This is a key point. This reinforces a type of dialog, e.g., “I’m trying to help you, dumbass,” that some men may interpret as patronizing or demeaning and/or futilely leading to some sort of dysfunctional or corrupt bureaucracy that doesn’t directly benefit them. My sense is that group might be better attracted by straightforward wealth redistribution proposals than talking about programs like Medicaid. I’m not saying those programs aren’t worthwhile, but they may not get you a lot of male voters.
satby
@Soprano2: They should just send the $20mil to Pete Buttigieg right now. He seems to be racking up points with that demographic: The Pete Buttigieg Apology Tour Starting Right Now ( which is young guys apologizing for dismissing Pete earlier).
glc
@lowtechcyclist:
As you say, that’s striking.
Quiltingfool
@trollhattan: Leslie Jones calls them “goofy-ass motherf**kers.” She was mainly talking about Musk, RFKjr, Vance and Linda McMahon.
Pretty funny bit. I found it on you tube.
In discussing Musk’s numerous baby-mamas, she stated that she “wouldn’t f**k him with my worst enemy’s p**sy.” Heh.
Kirk
@lowtechcyclist:
At best the request is performative. At worst it’s an attempt to ignore the Bluesky terms of service. 2Diii reads:
Paul in KY
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You can never discount ratfucking by a consultant traitor.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Those would be ‘Adlai Stevenson Democrats’. Also known as ‘losers’.
Matt
Apparently “people are mean to us on Bluesky” was also a core complaint of the “Abundance” centrist griftathon earlier this week 😂
Captain C
@Scout211:
He was just annoyed it didn’t have a couch for him.
glc
@Kirk: All requests are performative: “Relating to or being an utterance that performs an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered”. That’s the point of making a request.
It is an odd sort of request though. There are internal mechanisms for actually controlling distribution, which are widely used.
MinuteMan
Time for opposition celebrities to start being videoed eating tacos or orange chicken. Maybe a new wave of youtube videos of folks doing the Taco Challenge—much tastier than Tide pods. Or a Hot Taco match like Hot Ones.