Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

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

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The willow is too close to the house.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

How stupid are these people?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

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

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

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

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Sideshow Open Thread: Colin Powell, Latest Victim of the ‘Trump Touch’

Late Night Sideshow Open Thread: Colin Powell, Latest Victim of the ‘Trump Touch’

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Gormless Midwestern bigot-politicians, anti-immigrant immigrant spokespersons, Mexican finance ministers — nobody who gets close to Donald Trump comes away without reputational damage. It’s like the Midas Touch, but in reverse!

Colin Powell has become another victim of the Trump Touch. Ever since garnering favorable attention from the Right People for his strong defense of William Calley, Gen. Powell has made a nice second career working the “We’re not racist, we just gave this reassuringly deep-voiced Black guy a six-figure sum to speak nicely to us” circuit. Not even his “aluminum tubes” stint shilling for Dubya’s Excellent Iraq Adventure could ding his reputation… maybe a few DFHs complained, but phhtb, hippies. Powell even made friends with Hillary Clinton, as they crossed paths while she was doing her own “We’re not vampire squids, we just gave this Democrat lady a six-figure sum” memoirs & speaking tours, and was kind enough to give her some advice about keeping her emails private.

But then Donald Effing Trump decided to get off the running-for-president pot, the Russian apparatchiks got busy in his support, and next thing you know, “Leaked Emails Reveal That Colin Powell, A 79-Year-Old Black Man, Acts Exactly Like Every 79-Year-Old Black Man“*. Very funny, VSB! Now Colin Powell is just another joke-target on the internets!

The Washington Post reports:

Donald Trump is “a national disgrace and an international pariah” who gave voice to a “racist” movement to question President Obama’s citizenship, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell tapped on his keyboard.

Hillary Clinton, he typed in an email to another friend, is a “greedy, not transformational” figure who messes up everything she touches because of her “hubris” and has a husband still, well, entertaining “bimbos” while she is away.

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney and his daughter are “idiots” flacking their new book, and the Iraq War was mishandled from the get-go by the Defense Department’s top officials.

Other than that, the retired general and statesman wrote in one exchange, “alls well with the Powells.”

That probably was not the case Wednesday, as the respected former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff became the latest chess piece in what appears to be nothing less than a full-bore attempt by the Russian government to embarrass the American body politic.

The Powell disclosures — more than two years’ worth, ending last month — were posted on a site that analysts have linked to the Russian government.

They come as the FBI is probing the extent to which Moscow is carrying out an unprecedented digital campaign to potentially undermine confidence in the political process here…

(h/t commentor Rikyrah)

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    BlueDWarrior

    And just think, somewhere around 45% of the population wants Trump to lay hands on America – even if that might result in ‘bad touch’.

    Something about getting the government we deserve, right?

  5. 5.

    Barbara

    I don’t know whether Clinton is or will be transformational but I know that even on her worst day she has more courage and conviction than Powell.

  6. 6.

    Barbara

    @srv: Assange can make his offer secure in the knowledge that the U.S. does not allow prison sentences to be served by proxy.

  7. 7.

    SenyorDave

    Until this week I assumed that the racist angle would win out in the end. I just knew that the media would eventually call him out almost as one voice and that would make a difference. Now I don’t believe that at all. I just watched ten minutes of four taking heads on CNN discussing the revived birther thing, as well as the tweet about the Flint pastor. They all treated it almost a joke, even the Democratic strategist. They talked about how he’s not really a politician, etc.
    Clinton will have to win these debates, and I think it better be pretty decisive.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    @SenyorDave:

    I am not panicking, because I watched the DNC and Hillary is going to pwn Donald at the debates. He has no clue what kind of buzzsaw he’s walking into, because his fake-macho bullshit doesn’t work on Hillary. She’s seen his type before, and she’s had them for lunch.

  10. 10.

    SenyorDave

    @Mnemosyne: I’m concerned, not panicking. But the fact that the racism goes uncalled is very disconcerting. I’m Jewish, and I would bet anything if a candidate for POTUS was half as anti-semetic as Trump is racist, the media would force that candidate out of the race. It would be talked about all the time.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    @srv:
    Who do you think you’re kidding? Assange is not about to go to jail for anyone — certainly not Chelsea Manning, whom he abandoned long ago.

  12. 12.

    piratedan

    @SenyorDave: I can empathize with you… and while I agree that Hillary should own his ass in the debates, my lingering fear continues to be will the fucking press let her?

    After all, they’ve already made it clear that they are in his corner, what’s to prevent them from not just putting their thumbs on the scale but an entire arm?

    I have absolutely no faith in them whatsoever, I mean, fuck… Matt Lauer? really, you knew it was a lie and just let him fucking go?

    I am at the point where I expect Clinton to show up with a clicker and see her noticeably use it each time he spews a falsehood. Then take the time to call him out on each and every lie because its readily fucking apparent, that most of the media simply won’t. I know that many folks would simply tut-tut the entire process, but they don’t seem to be as horrified about aiding and abetting a fucking racist from being elected to the highest office in the land.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    @SenyorDave:

    That anti-Hillary ad of Trump’s with the pile of money under a six-pointed star sure seems to have gone down the memory hole. Sadly, I don’t even think openly anti-Semitic attacks would bother Trump’s followers now. He hates the same people they hate, and that’s all they care about.

    That’s why we need to donate and volunteer and work our asses off. We have to win.

  16. 16.

    scav

    Horrors! A woman has ambition! Unlike all the transformational shrinking violet, poverty-devoted, males that have had to be forcibly dragged to the oval office until now.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    First World Problem of the day: I was trying to watch the BBC4 documentary about the Regency Era, “Elegance and Decadence” on YouTube, because it’s not available any other way. I was able to watch the first episode, but the second would. not. load. and the only other version of it had no sound.

    Hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. Argh.

  19. 19.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @SenyorDave:

    Clinton will have to win these debates, and I think it better be pretty decisive.

    You must have missed that Commander in Chief Townhall – the pundits already have the “it was a draw, they both came off looking bad” articles written. If something sink’s Trump is something we’ve haven seen yet and the press hasn’t got the narrative ready for.

    Anyway, I am surprised Trump didn’t take this opportunity to talk about how he planed out Operation Desert Storm in ’91.

  20. 20.

    JordanRules

    @SenyorDave: The normalizing of a lot of really destructive shit is one of the worst parts of this and can push on into subsequent elections. Trying to imagine how it all might play out after the election of either Hillary or asshat hurts my head…
    …Not enough to not be engaged though.
    GOTV! Fired up, ready to go!
    Still convinced she’ll win and loving her strategy in dealing with a lot of the dumb shit she’s faced.

    I hope the push back against the media continues because that also has implications beyond this election.

  21. 21.

    Mnemosyne

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I honestly don’t think the pundits’ comments will make all that much difference. I think the fact that Hillary and Trump will be standing next to each other and talking at the same time at the same event is going to have its own effect on viewers that the pundits are not going to be able to change.

    My one worry is ratings — if people don’t tune in, they won’t be able to compare and contrast.

  22. 22.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    Watching the gif of Fallon rubbing Trumps head made me wanna barf. Everything is entertainment. Nothing matters. Pure tribalism, and they are normalizing a sick demented man.

  24. 24.

    BR

    @Mnemosyne:

    There’s no chance the ratings will be low. People will watch. I keep thinking the key is for Clinton to cough on her hand when she shakes his hand at the beginning of the debate, then insult his intelligence subtly right off the bat, and then keep putting him in a non-dominant position by talking down to him (in a way that he and his diehards will hate but won’t sound weird to others). It will drive him crazy. I think there’s a big benefit to her “breaking the fourth wall” in the debate, to almost comment on Trump’s nonsense as if she and the audience are having a conversation about it — “can you believe what he just said? If it didn’t make a lot of sense to you, don’t worry, I think it just plain didn’t make sense. Looks like Donald is trying to bluff his way through this, but we know you can’t do that with the presidency. Maybe we’ll let him try again with his next answer.”

  25. 25.

    Splitting Image

    With luck, at least one good thing will come out of Powell’s emails being leaked. They may shed some light on the poorly-documented interregnum between the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Historians aren’t even sure who was President in those turbulent years, and almost nothing is known about America’s foreign policy.

    I’m sure journalists will get right on it as soon as they’ve solved the mystery of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

  26. 26.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Dog Dawg Damn: TPM coined the term ‘tire swinging’ to talk about cases where members of the media had an uncomfortably close relationship to politicians leading to more favourable coverage (from an incident at a McCain bbq I believe). I think this and a variety of other small and large media sins this election go past that, all culminating in Fallon endearingly rubbing the head of the would be racist shitgibbon in chief. This, I believe calls for a new turn of phrase which connotes both the complicity of the media in the mainstreaming racism in the name of false balance and the total crumbling of all news media in the face of clicks-moar-clicks. I humbly submit “polishing the head-ferret”

    Ex: “The poor quality of the NYT coverage of the 2016 election is not just a product of a few editors who hate the clintons, the whole newsroom seems committed to polishing the head-ferret for those sweet sweet politico re-tweets”

  27. 27.

    SenyorDave

    @Mnemosyne: I don’t think ratings will be a concern, they should be pretty high. And I agree that the pundits don’t matter very much. I remember in 2008 when Biden and Palin debated, many of the pundits loved Palin. I just looked at the Wikipedia page, and the polls listed had Biden winning by 12 to 25 points, so the people actually did discern what they said, not just style. Of course, Mark Halperin graded both of the as a B

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @TheMightyTrowel:
    As I recall, McCain’s barbecue area at home (well, at one of his homes) has an actual tyre swing. Which I presume grown-up and even middle-aged journalists, many of them stars in their profession, get to swing on. Man, I’d love to see those photos.

  34. 34.

    ? Martin

    Slate has an article that I want to respond to (yeah, Slate, why bother, I know)

    Enter the age of big data. Recently, college admissions offices have begun to use algorithms that work on an individual-student basis to profile and predict their behavior. They use social media data, as well as the data supplied by the applications, to compute the likelihood a given student will enroll if accepted, the extent of financial aid needed by the student—or needed to seduce a relatively well-off student—and the chances that student will graduate. It’s the big data version of the exact same game, with the exact same goal: to increase the college’s ranking.

    For the record, I don’t know of a single public university that does this. I’m at a top 10 public and you’d think we of all people would be doing this to get where we are, and the folks who determine who get admitted aren’t even aware of how the rankings work. I cover both admissions and rankings and the admissions folks have never asked, and I’ve never offered.

    I can’t speak for the privates, who I wouldn’t be surprised to learn were doing this because rankings often relates to their funding (unlike a public) but I assure that the publics really don’t work this way at all. We don’t even work that way at the graduate level where rankings matter a lot more. You do what’s best for the student and the taxpayer and just trust the rankings will follow. I’ve never met someone in public education that didn’t take that attitude.

  36. 36.

    hitchhiker

    Weird that with all those private emails from HRC’s history, there’s nothing near as arrogant and hostile as what Colin Powell had to say.

    Somebody’s got a hubris problem, but it’s not her.

  38. 38.

    Anne Laurie

    @TheMightyTrowel: One revision: I’d call it “stroking the head-ferret”. Cuz the (mostly) guys engaged in doing so seem to take a distinctly sexual glee from the process.

    (Fairness notice: Jimmy Fallon is a professional comedian, not a reporter; he trained up in actual entertainment. Even though too many Americans get most of their news from the late-night comedy shows, Fallon really can’t be held to the same degree of responsibility as the Media Village Idiots at NPR and the NYTimes!)

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @Taylor:
    There’s video! Thank you! It looks like I thought it would: amusing, but doesn’t inspire confidence in the journos’ professionalism.

  42. 42.

    Elie

    It’s not the media. Hillary has to grab a hold of this despite them. She is letting Trump dominate the spirit of the campaign that only she can seize back Obama nor Bill can help her here. It’s her battle. It’s her vision that has to disrupt him somehow. I don’t think that the answer is in straight attack but a mixture of that and positive themes. Somehow she has to find it and the media will follow that energy. These debates are so important it’s scary. Not so much because of what she says but what she projects as energy.

  47. 47.

    Elie

    @shomi:
    No expert here. I want her to be successful and she’s in a bit of a slide. What do you want? The slide to keep on? If you are totally confident then great.

  49. 49.

    Amir Khalid

    @Micheline:
    She has been doing that all along. The national media has been pouting because she’s mostly ignored them, which they say shows a lack of transparency and accountability.

  50. 50.

    R-Jud

    @? Martin: One of my main clients is a higher education marketing agency. They are using big data methods to evaluate whether a given student prospect is likely to succeed in the program. Ranking has never been mentioned as a rationale.

    Of the dozen or so schools I’ve worked on with that agency, only one is a public university, and they’re only using those methods for three programs as far as I’m aware (all graduate management programs).

  52. 52.

    Botsplainer

    @Elie:

    This year is our Brexit vote. It is spite voting, pure and simple, and based on what I’m seeing, if we do it, middle class white America is going to deserve every goddamn thing that is going to happen to it in terms of economic dislocation, combat deaths and misery.

    All the while, they’ll remain clueless as to the cause.

    There is no progressive unicorn waiting in 2020, because Mike Pence will likely be the LAST President of the US. Dunno what follows after – some form of a North American confederation involving a quadruple economy of weakened regional states united with Canada. It’s gonna suck ass. There will be ethnic cleansing and war crimes, too – some international tribunals will be involved.

    Hope I’m wrong.

  54. 54.

    Botsplainer

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Finally fell back to sleep after laying awake from 1:30 to 4:00. Woke up a bit when the dog jumped up on the bed, which I usually like. Finished completely waking up when I heard him throwing up on the bed.

  55. 55.

    magurakurin

    @Major Major Major Major: The polls are tightening, but odds are they will move the other way again. Clinton had a bad week (not her fault, she got sick and the national media used it to attack her.) The Shitgibbon is now a bit over confident and he will step on his tiny hands soon enough. 270, that’s all we need. She still has that behind a dark and medium blue fire wall. PA and WI will be what holds the line.

  56. 56.

    Ramalama

    Given how lousy Trump is paying off contractors, I’m really surprised some … Ukranian hasn’t hacked into his emails and website and let loose. I’ve worked with a fair number of Ukranian programmers and their skills are superb. Or maybe some disgruntled unpaid American web programmer. But then again, he probably didn’t hire an American for his IT.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    My middle son got a Clinton canvass call last night. He’s in the elusive “22 year old demo” and he voted for Bernie in the primary. Anyway, he told the canvasser he would vote for Clinton, which is the first time I’ve heard him commit to doing so. They must have good lists. The phone number they used rings on a landline in the house and it’s new(er)- we got it free with an internet package. We didn’t have it in ’12. It’s early to be doing “commit” canvass calls.

  61. 61.

    geg6

    @? Martin:

    Ummmmm, we use probability scores and we are a major public. We use them to determine the probability of a student enrolling and to focus our limited recruitment scholarship funds on those who are likely to attend and those who are persuadable. We also use them to focus admissions’ efforts on students who are most interested in us rather than wasting time and effort on those who are unlikely to attend. It has nothing to do with our rankings. It is used for efficiency.

  63. 63.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mnemosyne:

    honestly don’t think the pundits’ comments will make all that much difference. I think the fact that Hillary and Trump will be standing next to each other and talking at the same time at the same event is going to have its own effect on viewers that the pundits are not going to be able to change.

    Well again the Townhall, what happened? The mediator let Trump ramble and then trolled Hilary. I suspect though the ratings will be up because of all the drama the media is creating.

  64. 64.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    @Barbara:

    I don’t know whether Clinton is or will be transformational but I know that even on her worst day she has more courage and conviction than Powell.

    This. I technically worked for Powell on the Joint Staff back in the day. Okay, he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and I was an intelligence officer working for the J2 so there were more than a few layers of management between him and me. I did do the occasional briefing to the combined Joint Staff.

    Even back then his reputation was one of “I don’t care about anything unless it’s gonna bite me in the ass at some point”. He was a political creature and while you don’t get to that position without some political skill, I know subsequent Chairman’s didn’t have the reputation of “I never want to look bad”.

    Betty C here described him best earlier in the week: “…Powell sounds like a petty, sniping, ass-covering, blame-shifter to me.” I’d been searching for decades for a succinct summation of the man and that’s spot on.

  65. 65.

    Chris

    Fuck Colin Powell. He’s a fucking weasel who’s spent his entire career serving the GOP rather than the country and richly deserves whatever is visited on him by them now.

  66. 66.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    @Micheline:

    She needs to get around national media by going on local media.

    She’s been doing that this entire time. I think there were at least two front page items over at Teh Orange (dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/30/1565168/-The-DC-press-corps-doesn-t-matter-Clinton-is-right-to-ignore…) that went thru a laundry list of local press interviews, etc., that Clinton’s been doing in order to circumvent the likes of Mrs Greenspan and Mara Liarsson. There are all kinds of pieces that highlight the campaign’s strategy of targeting local media outlets. Of course the Villagers take umbrage at that

  67. 67.

    Chris

    @comrade scott’s agenda of rage:

    I know somebody who was posted for a few years at the Pentagon in the eighties (assistant to somebody important, I think, but damned if I remember who) and I once asked if he’d known Colin Powell. The response was something along the lines of “well, sure, I remember him, but he was a politician, not really a serviceman.”

    Granted that you can’t be posted at the Pentagon without being politicized to some degree (including my acquaintance I’m sure), but the response struck me all the same. That even by the standards of the other Pentagon-assigned soldiers, Powell was viewed as a political creature more than a military one.

    Then again, I know somebody else who served in the State Department (career) including through Powell’s entire time there and had nothing but good things to say about him. (Not a Republican, either). So I suppose he had his good points too.

    Not sure which of them to believe, but as you can tell from above, I tend towards thinking that he’s a slimeball. Although my view has more to do with his role on the national stage than the way he related to the military and diplomatic personnel under him.

  68. 68.

    The Other Chuck

    Powell had one shining moment of character: when interviewed about Obama possibly being a Muslim, he said “The correct answer is no, he’s not a Muslim. The right answer is: so what if he was?” And then proceeded to describe that now iconic photo of a grieving mother over her Muslim son’s grave in a military graveyard. It was a strong stand against bigotry.

    But you don’t get to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in a Republican administration without being a political weasel.

  69. 69.

    ? Martin

    @geg6: Oh, of course. We do that as well – all over the place – likelihood to be retained, enroll, etc. But the focus is entirely on the welfare of the student. We don’t want to admit students that have a low likelihood of being successful, particularly when we have to reject so many qualified students (we get 100K applications, we can’t possibly take them all). The challenge is to make sure we’re able to graduate as many students as possible across all income levels, school districts, and learning opportunities, that we truly are serving the entire state. You have to do a lot of this statistically, but almost every aspect of it actually makes our rankings worse because its usually the lower SAT student with more coursework and not necessarily higher GPA that is going to be more successful because they were motivated to take classes they weren’t required to take, to participate in educational programs they didn’t need to do, but which they wanted to do (rather than mom and dad wanting them to). Those self-motivated students do great, but they undermine the rankings. Oh well. Everyone hates the rankings, so it’s not hard to side with the student even when your job is to focus on the rankings.

  70. 70.

    karen marie

    @amk: It was always worthless. He’s a disgusting excuse for a human being, having demonstrated muliple times he has no morals or courage.

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