"It has not been easy for Trump to come to terms with the setback." https://t.co/gvOjnvK4a6
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) September 28, 2016
once more: the temperament of a winner pic.twitter.com/rziaTwqYUl
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) September 28, 2016
Justin Peters, at Slate, “The Ballad of Balloon Boy”:
… The Balloon Boy story crystallizes the problem of cable news in one historically stupid moment. Balloon Boy happened because CNN and its competitors couldn’t help it from happening, because the production demands of a 24-hour news network left it vulnerable to the chicanery of an unscrupulous jerk. It deserves to be remembered as the moment when cable news emerged from its chrysalis and became the entity it was genetically destined to become: a fundamentally unjournalistic medium uniquely susceptible to the wheedlings of vain and manipulative grifters, condemned to follow shiny objects until the end of time. Sometimes those shiny objects are balloons. Sometimes they’re loudmouths with dumb opinions. And sometimes they’re presidential candidates…
But the network wasn’t wholly at fault, either. The balloon was in the air. The boy’s family said he was in it. The boy was nowhere to be found at home. Who can blame CNN for going with it? It’s hard to report accurately on a story when the prime mover of that story is blatantly lying to you. It’s especially hard to report accurately when you carry the news as it happens, when you outsource the contextualization of the images you broadcast.
The media, especially cable news, seems essentially passive; they’ve been trained to wait for news to come to them. This assumed passivity conceals the media’s own role in setting the news agenda, in elevating things from curiosities to actual news stories. After picking up the story toward the end of its 2 p.m. hour, CNN broadcast an entire workday’s worth of Balloon Boy…
Today, I use the term Balloon Boy as shorthand for a special species of jerk, a catchall term for unreliable narrators whose studied theatricality and sociopathic zeal for attention lets them successfully prey on our media’s unceasing demand for new news. Unlike an actual boy in an actual balloon, America’s Balloon Boys will never disappear into the clouds. Balloon Boys will always remain just off in the middle distance, hovering in the periphery of consciousness, waiting around for the right breeze to ride into the headlines. Balloon Boys are the future of jerks: people who will do anything to attract and maintain coverage, who recognize that, these days moreso than ever, the public and the media will keep watching you if you commit to doing and saying the dumbest possible things with the straightest possible faces…
germy
I won’t leave a link, but the balloon boy family started a pro-drumpf heavy metal (at least I think that’s what it is) band. Another cry for attention and $.
debbie
The mic excuse is bogus. No one didn’t hear Trump.
germy
There was something wrong with his mic. It was on.
Trentrunner
Trump tweeted this 20 minutes ago:
Good GOD, he’s a toddler.
gocart mozart
In the end
All of cable news
Is just balloon juice
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
Chump will never come to terms with this setback. He still wants revenge for Obama mocking him at the WHCD. He still sends photos of his hands to the ‘short-fingered vulgarian’ writer. This is worse. He went in expecting to bully a woman on national television, and she dominated him, skewered his ego repeatedly, got the audience to laugh at him, and afterwards all his buddies told him he lost. I think we’ve barely begun to see the fallout of this debate.
EDIT – @Trentrunner:
He can’t let it go. If he gets embarrassed in the second debate, I don’t think there will be a third. That would be foolish, because Chuck Todd will be leaning hard on the scale in Chump’s favor.
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
If I understand correctly, the CPD did say there was an intermittent problem with the in-hall PA system, which was fixed in the first half-hour; the broadcast feed was fine throughout.
mapaghimagsik
Please proceed, Drumpf
Trentrunner
@Amir Khalid: Josh at TPM has said an inside CPD source said their anodyne non-specific announcement about an audio problem was a bone tossed to TanTrump to appease him. Only one person in the hall mentioned any audio problem, and he said it wasn’t consequential.
Iowa Old Lady
@Trentrunner: I hope he genuinely believes that and keeps doing so. That means he won’t learn how to do better.
Amir Khalid
@Trentrunner:
Ah. I sit corrected, then.
Ruckus
@germy: is right. We all know the problem with the mic. It was on and people could hear him.
Trentrunner
@Iowa Old Lady: Excellent point.
Which, writ large, is why we operate in facts-based reality: You can’t solve a problem you don’t acknowledge exists.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@Iowa Old Lady:
If he believed it, he wouldn’t make such a petulant fuss. He’s hurting. But if you’ll notice, his response to losing is everything BUT ‘admit what I did wrong and fix the problem.’
Ruckus
@Iowa Old Lady:
He hasn’t learned anything else in forever so I’d say the odds are pretty good that he’s not going to learn anything new. Ever again.
ThresherK
Time magazine said a Republican lost a prez debate?
When’s the last time they said that, without a subhed of “but the Democrat didn’t do what they needed to”?
Trentrunner
TrumpTweet, 3 minutes ago:
LOL at “so-called.” Are they neither presidential nor debates? DISCUSS.
Trentrunner
Trumptweet, 5 minutes ago (sorry if double-posted)
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
Let us not forget that Balloon Boy (the original) gave this little community one of the Best. Threads. EVAR.
NotMax
Well, he is full of hot air…
(Among other less savory things.)
Ian
Balloon boy and family are from my hometown (Fo-co Colorado). While this thread has been devoted to bashing trump and the media, it should be noted that the heart of this *thing*… for lack of better terminology, are the two terrible parents who were more interested in being on television for one short moment than the long term consequences of their actions. If this reminds anyone of the donald they get a free balloon ride.
germy
@Ian: The asshole father almost got away with it… until his son vomited from the anxiety of the situation.
smintheus
Trump’s complaints about his mic distill so much stupidity. He didn’t lose the debate because people could not hear what he was saying. He lost because people could hear what he was saying.
ETA As debbie and germy already said.
Major Major Major Major
@ThresherK: It’s a brave new world.
RealityBites
I voted yesterday. In Virginia, there are two proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. The really crappy one is to enshrine “right to work” in the Constitution. It is already a state law, but sticking it in the Constitution will make it nearly impossible to eliminate. Otherwise savvy people are thinking it isn’t a big deal because we already have it as law. If you know Virginia voters, please educate them about this idiot amendment.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
I don’t think Chuck Todd is moderating, though (if that’s what you meant). I think the announced questioner is Chris Wallace from FOX. But yes, he would definitely have his elbows on the scale.
Mai.naem.mobile
Trumps hired a bunch of inexperienced campaign staffers and experienced grifters and appears to have gotten outfoxed by a very experienced Clinton team. If he does Debate 2,he absolutely does Debate 3 because,duh,Chris Wallace unless Fox throws in the towel. The Clinton people structured it that way. I still cannot get over the GOP not getting a handle on this guy early on. Idiots. Political malpractice.
Felonius Monk
Intersesting opinion piece from LA Times:
Donald Trump believes he was born to be king
ETA: Just realized this is kinda old, but I think it’s still very relevant.
debbie
@Amir Khalid
You would think, with his business acumen, he’d realize hundreds of millions hearing him far outweighs the two hundred or so in the room.
Mai.naem.mobile
If by chance Mike Pence is stupid enough to bring up Bill Clinton’s affairs,i would have Tim Kaine interrupt and say very loudly – “Please proceed Governor.”
Princess
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: The helicopters aren’t laughing.
TriassicSands
Trump supporters:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on ?
Fool me a million times, shame on the fact that we’re all clueless idiots.
No matter how many times Trump blows up in full view; no matter how many times he openly reveals a character that shouldn’t be within a light year of the Oval Office; no matter how obvious it is that Trump is a cheap, slimy crook or how many times he shows it; and no matter how many times Trump displays behavior that would be shameful in a young child…his base sticks with him.
arielibra
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: Just rereading the original thread: “I have so many documents you’re head will spin”…IT WAS TRUMP ALL ALONG!
Baud
@TriassicSands:
Agree. I hope we jettison the idea that we can persuade them with better policies or by explaining what we stand for in clearer terms. They are unreachable except to the extent they are roundly defeated electorally.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Princess:
Whatever happened to “Michael Gass,” anyhow?
@arielibra:
Everyone is DougJ.
TriassicSands
@efgoldman:
Sadly, I think the number is greater than 27% today. That was a number that was widely cited during W’s reign of incompetence, but with Trump, whether it’s his racism, his sexism, his moronic loud mouth or whatever (hatred of Hillary Clinton?) his base seems virtually immovable and close to or greater than 40%. Even if Trump loses, this does not bode well for the country. These same die-hard supporters are going to continue to put GOP majorities in the House and (it looks like) the Senate. And those elected officials will continue to care not a whit for the welfare of either the country or its individual citizens, but will carry their current raison d’etre — prevent a Democratic president from being successful — into the Clinton administration.
Of course it was unfair. His opponent was an adult with a brain and no mental illness.
dmsilev
@Trentrunner: Look on the bright side: He’s evidently going to go with “more of the same, turned up to 11” for the next debate.
gf120581
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this here already, but:
1. Saw on TPM a Josh Marshall item about Trump wanting Maples to pose nude for “Playboy” (she said no);
2. Per CNN, we have a woman reporter talking about the time Trump called her a c**t.
Perfect end to his week.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Baud:
It always comes back to the Gilliard Doctrine:
“I’m not writing to make conservatives happy. I want them to hate my opinions. I’m not interested in debating them. I want to stop them.”
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/01/about-yesterday.html
It’s the best thing he ever wrote with the possible exception of “Fuck the Fucking Yankees.”
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
I had completely forgotten about that post. It has been one of the most hilarious posts ever.
Major Major Major Major
@TriassicSands: He couldn’t even beat an infirm epileptic body double with Parkinson’s.
dmsilev
@gf120581: And, of course, let’s note that Trump has now spent an entire week, of the 6 remaining until this is over, whining about how his poor performance is everyone’s fault except his own[*]. 90 million people heard Trump perfectly clearly, and made up their minds pretty quickly that he was appalling, and that was before he spent several days attacking a former pageant winner for being (in his eyes) too fat.
[*] “Whining about how his poor performance is everyone’s fault except his own” is probably something Melania has to endure every night.
smintheus
Curt Schilling is threatening to challenge Elizabeth Warren in 2018. Oh please please please please pleeeeeeaaase!
Warren wouldn’t need to raise a single penny from Wall Street for that battle, with all the money she’d have pouring in from Weybosset Street (Providence).
John Revolta
@Trentrunner: Well I heard that people who watched the debate on TV thought that Hillary had won. The people that listened on the radio thought that they had somehow stumbled upon an old episode of Fibber McGee and Molly.
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
Trump’s real issue is he wants to be a slave owner. And not just of people of color. Also people without enough money to buy their way free. That’s why he cheats people who have done work for him, it’s why he treats people like shit, because he thinks that anyone who isn’t him should be owned, if not by him, by someone else wealthy.
scav
Real winning temperaments are totally put off their stride and fatally distracted by minor microphone malfunctions. Only losers can continue to function in the presence of external glitches.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
This one goes completely over my head.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
To everyone based in normal reality populated with normal people behaving overwhelmingly normally, Trump’s meltdown this week has rung all the alarms that he’s psychologically disturbed – either drug related, or he’s actually mentally ill. Even people – read conservatives – who are pre-disposed to want to to vote for him, are standing stock still in disbelief at how off the rails he’s been this week. The media refuses to characterize him the same way, and will go out of their way to tamp that discussion down (they reserve that talk for Clinton, who clearly is not any of those things, so it’s safe to do), but, his downward spiraling, which is accelerating, is something everyone is watching with gaping mouths, knowing there’s no way he’s pulling out of the spiral and flying straight. He’s not capable of it. There’s no undoing the debate/tweet at 3 am damage, and obviously Trump in his weird deep psyche, understands it better than anyone,yet, is unable not double, triple, quadruple down. He’s in a psychotic break state right now. I can’t even begin to imagine how he is in private with his family members. I hope Melania’s phone is on 9-1- permanently.
Hob
@TriassicSands: Sadly, I think the number is greater than 27% today … [Trump’s] base seems virtually immovable and close to or greater than 40%
I think you’re comparing apples and oranges, or maybe apples and… some larger group of fruits that includes apples.
The idea of the 27% “crazification factor” wasn’t that that was the average right-wing base vote, or that there was any real chance of getting their support down to that level in general. It was “how many people will vote Republican when the party affiliation is literally the only reason they could possibly want to do so.” The number came from Alan Keyes’s support vs. the then-unknown Barack Obama – a contest in which both candidates were Black and male (so racism and sexism were not distinguishing factors), Keyes was clearly incompetent by any possible measure, and neither candidate was particularly well known. In the current election, Trump is a rich(ish) TV star, lots of people had strong opinions about Clinton to start with, and sexism is obviously a factor.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Ruckus:
I think it was a mashup of some of the wilder “Clinton’s health” conspiracy theories.
Ken
@dmsilev:
MEME IT! MEME IT ON EVERY FORM OF MEDIA YOU HAVE ACCESS TO!!!
Villago Delenda Est
Justin Peters missed one of the most hilarious aspects of the original “Balloon Boy” incident: when Leslie Blitzer argued with his on the air experts about if it was possible for the boy to be taken aloft, by whatever means, in a helium balloon of that size. Blitzer kept insisting it could happen, and the experts were telling him it was a simple question of weight ratios…
GregB
It’s watching the perpetually put upon Trump, always the victim, knowing that 90% of his shtick is that he knows how to win friends and influence people hugely.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
OK…. Maybe it hit just a little too close to home, or I was trying to place a name on it.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@Trentrunner: It recently dawned on me that 75+% of what he says could be fairly described as “pouting.” …I don’t want to see a 22 yo pouting, much less a septuagenarian who wants to be CIC and fancies himself a “man’s man.” Dealbreaker!
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Sometimes I really, really want a “like” button.
different-church-lady
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
Point of order: he did that all by himself.
Tom
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, and at one point during their milking the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines plane over the Indian Ocean, Don Lemon asked if it was possible the plane could have been swallowed by a black hole, so the torch is just waiting to be passed to a new generation.
cynthia ackerman
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: Thanks for the 2009 BJ link. That’s some funny shit. Whatever happened to Michael Gass? He’s like a lesser Adam Silverman wanabee in sixth grade. BTW, there’s a difference from before we all stopped adding “+(x)” — not wanting to criticize sobriety, but those were fun days.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
Although I agree with Ken @50 re: MEME-ing it, I would question your freq assessment. I don’t believe he has the stamina to perform more than once per week, let alone “every night.”
And, yes, the truncation of “frequency” was deliberate. (I guess I could have also said that something else of his was truncated — Trump-cated? — but that one hadn’t occurred to me originally.)
Of course, even thinking about this is “Eewwwwwww!”-inducing.
SFAW
@cynthia ackerman:
Michael’s credenza were eated by the FAX machine, and he slunk off in shame. Or not. I don’t actually remember, nor care.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Tom:
Didn’t he also suggest the plane might have been abducted by aliens? Or was that somebody else? Or am I hallucinating?
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
I have a call into Bill Frist on that one.
cynthia ackerman
@SFAW: Yeah, I don’t care either, but the linked post brought back oddly nostalgic memories of a bad smell.
SFAW
@cynthia ackerman:
A la recherche du Chump perdu?
cynthia ackerman
@SFAW: Exactement!
hovercraft
Good news.
Waynski
I think this song is on point.
Ken
@hovercraft: Any word on the Republican numbers? Trump’s must be YUUGE if loser Hillary got $154 million, right?
Chyron HR
@Ken:
Well, the Clinton campaign sends me 5 e-mails a day begging for (more) money because Trump is out-raising them, so who knows?
hovercraft
@Ken:
No totals yet, they usually don’t release them right away, since she’s consistently outraised him, he’ll do it quietly. He did say at one of his rallies that he raised 18 million after the debate.
different-church-lady
@cynthia ackerman: someone named “khead” went +8 on that thread. That’s a bit spooky.
James E Powell
I am sad to read that the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association voted overwhelmingly (216-68) to endorse Trump for president. The Cleveland Police evidently do not care how this will be received in a city in which non-Hispanic whites are only 1/3 of the people who they serve.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: holy fucking shit is all that can be said right now.
TS
@Trentrunner: Even the debate people – why does EVERYONE have to appease Donald. Absolute joke
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
As a side note, what’s that about good cops, and I mean both of them?
Steeplejack (phone)
@efgoldman:
Unreal finish.
Jeffro
@TriassicSands:
Most of his base, yes, but I think enough folks have peeled off that his loss will be significant in a year where ‘generic Republican’ might have even had a slight lead.
Not sure if someone on BJ quoted him, but I thought I saw a Chris Rock quote about Trump saying things “that would get you fired from Burger King, much less serve as president”. I think a post-election Truth & Reconciliation committee might be in order, just so Trump’s 41-42% gets pared back to its natural 27% by Inaguration Day.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Hey! I’m not short. Any more. (was short until I grew, a lot, after HS) I’m average height. Along with so many other things.
cynthia ackerman
@different-church-lady: Sobriety is way better, just saying this blog is missing a coeficient once proudly on display.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
You didn’t read far enough, last I saw on there he was +9.
But I’m not sure about that, his typing was still decent and his logic was OK. A +8 or 9 usually sees a lot of deterioration.
Ruckus
@Chyron HR:
How did you get it down to 5ish a day? I get 10-15 at least and I’m not an easy mark. OK I think I may have seen the issue.
Just checked my email for the second time today and I had 20 new ones this afternoon.
Ryan
My greatest fear is that this is the lesson that Ted Cruz internalizes in time for 2020.
Slaughter
Trump could confess to a crime — Trump University, anybody? — and his base would defend him, saying he had to say that but he didn’t mean it.
Bobbo
@John Revolta: ftw
patroclus
I watched the first Obama-Romney debate and thought Obama won it clearly. But that wasn’t the judgment of most who watched it and, after reading and internalizing what they said, I accepted that Obama had lost the debate. And more importantly, Obama and his team did the same, and they made adjustments in both preparation and presentation, and did far better in the later debates. Losing a debate is not the same thing as losing an election – Trump could easily have behaved like a normal person, accepted the loss and internalized that he needed to do better. But he didn’t and hasn’t. More than anything, this has demonstrated what a terrible President he would be.
TriassicSands
@Jeffro:
The most recent polling I saw on “generic” party had the Democrats up 3 points or so.
However, generic polling is pretty meaningless to actual election results. Remember, we can expect a Democratic advantage in generic preference at the same time Republicans either pick up seats or continue to hold their lead. Thanks to gerrymandering.
Suzanne
@SFAW:
Yes, please stop painting the mental picture of that thing having teh secks. I would like to have a libido of my own, and you’re killing it.
Soylent Green
@Felonius Monk: From that LA Times article:
Yeah, no kidding.
Dolly Llama
Any time I hear the term “Balloon Boy” now, I can only think of Michael Gass. Does anybody else remember that classic thread?
“The. Helicopters. Are. Not. Laughing.”
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I believe that spiders and scorpions are related.
@Dolly Llama: Ahem.
Dolly Llama
@cynthia ackerman: Holy shit, I should have read the thread. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Good times, those were.
Dolly Llama
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, should have read the thread.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dolly Llama: When has not yet having read the thread ever stopped anyone from commenting?
Dolly Llama
@Omnes Omnibus: It really does speak to the longevity of this community when you think about. Michael Gass was seven fucking years ago, but look how many people were here, and whose minds went there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dolly Llama: I’m still pissed off that I missed the thread in real time.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Trentrunner:
Counsel for toddlers just returned from a dinner engagement and would like a word. Legal action being messy and expensive, and preventable with an apology (very public and profuse) and all.
TriassicSands
@Soylent Green:
Not since Peter Pan has anyone worked so hard at remaining a child forever. And Pan had the help of Never Never Land. Trump just has his own diseased cranium and rooms full of fun house mirrors.
Villago Delenda Est
@James E Powell: Not one of those who voted for Drump is fit to carry a badge.