I’m not going to live tweet all the pre show stuff but Pierson pointed to the gigantic line and asked “where are the protesters”? The security perimeter, which actually expanded this morning, keeps them very far away pic.twitter.com/Qx15DxZEQL
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 20, 2020
Per commentor Another Scott, Wonkette has a liveblog:
… Rather than have a bunch of stuff about the rally gunk up the open thread, we figured we’d put up ANOTHER open thread, but this time just for talking about his dumb rally and how terrible it is. So that’s what this is. We’re not gonna go so far as to put up a live stream, but we will put up a bunch of videos of Trumpists saying very stupid things, for your entertainment…
A fuller view of stadium as program begins pic.twitter.com/xGdqTpwi1L
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) June 20, 2020
Some see a stadium and say it’s half full. I see a stadium and say it’s half empty.
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) June 21, 2020
There is no overflow crowd. https://t.co/UUF5J1BIX2
— Stephen Rodrick (@stephenrodrick) June 20, 2020
Prezdint BabyGates is sulking in his bunker:
President Trump will no longer deliver a planned address to the overflow crowd outside the BOK Center at his Tulsa rally, a Trump campaign source tells @ABC News. pic.twitter.com/dZq8DfUemF
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) June 20, 2020
Checkpoint Charlyhorse…
“Remove clothing with expletive messages” would knock out a bunch of shirts I’ve seen: “Fuck Your Feelings,” photoshop of Trump giving the finger, etc.
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 20, 2020
As others are reporting, looks like attendance here in Tulsa is well below campaign's expectations. Here's the main floor at the arena currently pic.twitter.com/EASfSHL5nN
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) June 20, 2020
Mary G
Steeplejack
Low-energy Trump so far. Rolling out the old clichés, interspersed with vitriol about recent events. Ranting about CNN now.
And now Seattle: “They took over a big chunk of Seattle.” “The mayor, who’s radical left.”
Gin & Tonic
Boy, this is exciting. Reminds me of Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault.
Chief Oshkosh
Any more word on the claim that teens across the nation “bought” those 800,000 tickets? That and the half-empty BOK are adding up to the sweetest Saturday night in a long time.
Raoul
@Mary G: I guess jet fuel is still cheap, huh.
pattonbt
Can’t they just do what the bundesliga is doing and put cardboard cutouts in the seats and pipe in crowd noise (in this case braying cows)?
Steeplejack
Did I just get a glimpse of Gym Jordan in the crowd?!
Oclday
Where is Spicey when you need him?
khead
@Steeplejack:
It’s like watching someone describe the events in an alternate Bizzaro World.
schrodingers_cat
So fewer people than at the inauguration or more?
Damned at Random
@Mary G: Pence doesn’t want to be around when the Toddler in Chief vents his wrath over the half empty venue.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: About even, I think.
Renie
Is it too mean to say how much I am enjoying this ‘low energy’ rally?!? Bravo to all those people who got tickets knowing they were not going to show up. Seems a lot of them were from the younger generation. Knowing this I guess there is hope for the future.
Raoul
I haven’t watched any of it, but I gather Eric was fully wound up about how Daddy is going to mop the floor of the debates with Joe’s deflated carcass.
So, in a couple months when Donald makes some utterly transparent b.s. excuse about the moderators of the debate not being 100% OAN robots, and he’s boycotting, folx are gonna clip that Eric screed, yes?
Please, yes.
CindyH
@Gin & Tonic: best laugh in a while
Martin
Next time the media suggest that Trump’s has some kind of campaigning genius or something, remember that he got trolled hard by a bunch of tik-tok k-pop stans that blindsided the campaign who couldn’t even be bothered to check how valid the signups might be by checking hotel availability in the area.
You can book a room at any hotel in Tulsa for tonight. Everyone has vacancy. They got the locals, a handful of people driving in and that was it, despite the fact that most of their tickets went to people well outside of driving distance.
Martin
@Steeplejack: Bolton is also radical left, btw. Just putting that out there for calibration.
Damned at Random
Sir, would you like to salute each cadet? Can you lift your hand 600 times? We have a bet…
Steeplejack
Oh, God, I think he’s about to defend his ramp thing at West Point.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: The EO about the long term visas is most likely coming tomorrow.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Are you watching? Brave man.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: It’s the Trump admin here. They don’t do “math” or “prepare” or “think”. They just fuck up and then blame the innocent.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
How many people do you FEEL were there?
p.a.
Smiling thinking about later tonight & behind scenes preznit ‘strawberries’ style eruption over missing crowd. #antifaboughtthetix!
Ken
@Raoul: I think it’s more likely Trump will miss the debates because he’s raged himself into a myocardial infarction – possibly tonight.
Achrachno
@pattonbt:
“pipe in crowd noise (in this case braying cows)?”
Cows moo or bellow. Jackasses bray — so that’s the sound you’d need for 100% authenticity with this bunch.
Ken
Calvin Klein’s Obsession has nothing on Trump.
Steeplejack
Yes! He has been telling a long-ass story about his long, grueling day at West Point, baking in the sun, listening to speeches, giving a speech, saluting individual pairs of cadets—600 times!
“Leather-bottom shoes!” That’s the culprit. “It was like an ice-skating rink!” And he keeps going on and on about it. Keep digging, Mr. President.
JPL
@Steeplejack: Oh my.. Wait until he tells everyone not to buy Bolton’s book.. That will take longer than his walk down the ramp.
CaseyL
OMG. There was a semi-organized campaign – by K-pop, of whom I have never heard before – to get the tickets and not show up. On Twitter are many folks claiming to have done that with their friends, family, and fanclubs.
Enough to make a difference? Who knows?
khead
@Steeplejack:
Fox chyron: “Trump Debunks West Point Ramp Fake News”
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
He’s acting it out! And then: “When I was 10 feet short [. . .] I ran down the rest.” But the fake news cut it out. “It ends just before I ran.”
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
I was an old-school newspaper reporter a long time ago. I have sat through some dreadful speeches.
FelonyGovt
@CaseyL: K-Pop is Korean pop music in general, and they have legions of social media-savvy, progressive minded fans who apparently indeed ordered lots and lots of tickets to this sorry event.
Steeplejack
Oh, God, now he’s going to do the two-handed water drinking! “I just saluted 600 times!”
I think I may pass out.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Worse than this one?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Steeplejack: Water Gait
Ken
@schrodingers_cat: It’s hard to compare the crowd sizes. The inauguration background was white, here it’s blue, so there may be an optical illusion involved.
Cheryl Rofer
Anecdotal evidence, but –
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
He was cradling the glass so he didn’t spill water on his tie.
And now he drank one-handed out of a glass in Tulsa. Literally getting a standing ovation from some in the crowd.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: How in the world can you watch? Aren’t you concerned about your brain?
Damned at Random
He couldn’t lift the water glass because he saluted 600 times in the hot sun and didn’t want to spill on his expensive tie. Oh, and I’m guessing Melania called him lame, but he left that part out
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: The bar (and Barr) is in the basement.
Cheryl Rofer
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I gotta say, the man knows his audience. My sister and brother-in-law are watching the rally across the wall from me and you wouldn’t believe how entertained they are. They think he’s funny. Can you believe that?
JPL
@Damned at Random: Is that true or you just spoofing. It’s difficult to say anymore.
Another Scott
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: [ literal enthusiastic golf clap ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Corcorcan jump boots have leather soles. Just saying.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Okay, you’ve got me there. I was just saying that I built up some immunity.
Ken
@Steeplejack: With Trump, every day is Festivus and the Airing of Grievances. The best part is, most of the people in this crowd would never have remembered West Point if he hadn’t brought it up. Dare I hope that at least a few are now thinking of the ramp and thinking, “Run? Fast shuffle, maybe…”
Another Scott
@Ken: I knew what that was before hovering my mouse pointer over it…
Good show!
Cheers,
Scott.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Such is the infinite power of our protesters that we were able to decimate the attendance of Trump’s rally with a mere none of us. FEAR US, we brought cookies.
The Moar You Know
Parscale is a dead man walking. He promised crowds. He failed to deliver.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m staring into the abyss, and I think I see something staring back at me. Fascinating. What could go wrong?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Whoa
Magda GoebbelsKellyanne got a face lift (photo)khead
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I wondered who the people are that think this is funny.
Ken
Except now it’s not just his physical health…
Still, it’s good to know the Lincoln Project is getting their money’s worth. “I’ve lived with the ramp and the water since I left West Point….”
Steeplejack
Crowd just cheered at Trump talking about how well the stock market is doing. This crowd probably has fabulous portfolios. ?
On to Joe Biden: “helpless tool of the radical left.”
Immanentize
Trump rivals
Jake’s Excuses!
Ken
As always, the crucial question is, laughing at or laughing with?
Mary G
Not watching it, but left CNN on in a tab and Sanjay Gupta is going ballistic because apparently Twitler said “I told them not to test so much, because it turns up so many more cases.” Daniel Dale debunks all the greatest hits – he signed the VA bill when it was Obama in 2014.
Martin
@MisterForkbeard: But this is the campaign. The is the super-geniuses that realized if they hit the right 100,000 people in PA, MI, and WI on Facebook that they could win, or so goes the media’s theory.
This is the first shot of the Death Star and they didn’t even bother to do the level of prep work that I would have done for a 300 person academic conference.
Barbara
@Cheryl Rofer: No fucking way. JFC, how can anyone stand to be in his presence let alone showing him adulation? What is wrong with people? Yes, I might have had a few glasses of wine.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
I wish the radical left believed that.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Whenever I’ve listened to the man, I’ve never registered something I would describe as a joke (aside from the speaker himself). Cruelty and insults, yes. So I just assume every time I hear a laugh that Trump slaughtered a puppy on stage
Oh, laughing with. Somehow.
Damned at Random
@khead: Oh, it’s plenty funny, just not or the reason he thinks
Jeffro
@Steeplejack:
How’s that saying go, again: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”?
LO-SER
philpm
@Achrachno: Flatulence. Lots and lots of flatulence. Because that’s all this rally is.
Amir Khalid
@CaseyL:
Probably American fans of K-pop (South Korean pop music, which is currently enjoying a worldwide vogue). K-pop itself doesn’t really concern itself with American politics.
debbie
From The Guardian:
Seriously, “desecration”? You mean like what it is you do when you hug the American flag with that smarmy grin of yours?
Damned at Random
@JPL: spoofing mostly
Mary G
Steeplejack
This speech is like a late-night phone call with a drunk friend where you can’t get a word in edgewise. But you don’t hang up because you’re waiting to hear if you need to come make bail or something.
Oclday
@Steeplejack: From his own mouth he tells us he doesn’t have the stamina to make it through inspecting 2 buildings, walking three blocks, giving a speech, raising his fat arm 600 times and walk down a ramp.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I don’t know if you were deliberately being delicate, but what he does is grope the flag.
Butter Emails
@Martin:
Looks like they hit a star destroyer by mistake. Those Mon Calamari cruisers are crafty.
rikyrah
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think that they did???
Calouste
The shitgibbon used a racist phrase to refer to COVID-19. The US ambassador in Beijing can probably expect an invitation from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an explanation.
VeniceRiley
This is the best day of the pandemic. Those K-Pop kids saved lives
dmsilev
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Betsy Ross has joined #MeToo.
Damned at Random
Lots of sirs this outing.
Mary G
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
SC,
You were right about the Visas?
Ken
@VeniceRiley: Maybe Biden will make them the first recipients of whatever replaces the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(Replacement needed because Trump has ruined it, of course.)
Jeffro
WaPo seems to be reporting that protestors are a half-hour (walk? ride?) away from trumpov’s flail-fest…GOOD!
Also, whew.
Damned at Random
He calls Angela Merkel “Angola.” Bet she loves that
Steeplejack
@Damned at Random:
“He couldn’t lift the water glass because he saluted 600 times in the hot sun and didn’t want to spill on his expensive tie.”
That’s relatively close to what Trump actually said.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
p.a.
@Martin:For organization/operations, Putin can’t be bothered with this trivial shit, but his minions will be doing the heavy lifting for tRump on matters that = votes. We need tRump & co to dig a deep enough hole that Putin’s help (& the founders’ EC) won’t put him over the top.
Ken
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Quite a lot of the press is framing the event as a big loser. I have to wonder if that’s coming from on high?
Immanentize
@Mary G:
Hot stuff, comin thru. Watch your back!
?
Kent
Trump just now…
“many call it a virus, many call it a flu. Some call it Kung Flu”
Ummmmm???
Damned at Random
Open borders – done with the new material and back to his greatest hits. Good time or a bathroom break
Josie
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Actually, you’re being delicate, too. He humps the flag.
Steeplejack
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Just so you know, when you do one of your hilarious long no-space HAHAHA things, it fucks up the thread formatting for people reading with a narrower column width.
Baud
@Mary G:
Biden/Pink 2020!
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Legal immigration has always been their target. Do you have any favorites for Biden’s VP?
Villago Delenda Est
I’m going to have to obtain a new Schadenfreude meter.
My old one just exploded.
Immanentize
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Thanks for breaking the margins. Not
So fix it.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Thank you. It’s like not wearing a mask, but more irritating.
rk
I’m laughing at the speech. It’s so awful it’s laugh out loud funny. COVAD, Klung Flu, Chinese virus, long rambling justification for the ramp, showing he can drink water and on and on and on. He’s so pathetic. Like the village idiot. SAD!
Jeffro
I know it’s a little out there and conspiracy-theory-ish, but…what if trumpov’s support is actually much, much smaller than the polling, etc shows?
I mean, I doubt we will get below 27% support but man, the guy is flopping around like a fish on a riverbank, and it’s only mid-June. He can’t even get a decent crowd in OKLAHOMA(!) He’s getting punked by teenagers. His AG just pulled some serious amateur sh!+ and now all that’s left is for the incoming Biden administration/Democratic Justice League to let them all know, ‘there WILL be prosecutions for obstruction of justice if you try to cover up the evidence’.
Fire for effect, Dems! This is the weakest president*/human being we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes.
debbie
The Guardian:
NotMax
@Steeplejack
That’s Purple Heart territory right there.
//
Kent
Trump just now:
For real. He actually just said that on live TV.
Martin
@CaseyL: Let me break this one down, because I speak gen-z (cue Airplane clip).
K-pop is Korean pop music, which has quite a large fan base in the US. There’s also J-pop (Japanese pop), similar, but different in style. BTS is a good example of a very popular K-pop boy band. South Korea promotes these bands as way to help export Korean culture, which has been fairly successful. Japan has done the same.
You might see the phrase ‘K-pop stan’ which refers to a fan of K-pop. ‘Stan’ refers to an Eminem song about an obsessed fan. So a ‘K-pop stan’ just means someone who self-describes as a huge fan of Korean pop-music.
Tik-tok is a social media platform accessed through a smartphone app. It used to be known as ‘musically’ and typically has videos of teens lip-syncing to popular songs, often in quite creative ways. Anyway, Tik-tok has a large k-pop fan base who are considered to be quite ruthless in mocking other tik-tok accounts and videos, but also other things. They are very good at banding together, so when the k-pop community commits to something, they bring a LOT of people to it.
The fact that so many of these communities exist outside of the middle aged american experience can be quite powerful for Dems. If you want to organize a BLM turnout, it’s going to be through channels like this – hidden away from the view of most media, like black twitter.
Think of it as old-school collective action work that used to be centered on labor unions but instead are centered in a social media context.
Immanentize
@NotMax: Trump already received a purple heart for the clap.
debbie
Andy Borowitz on Facebook:
Patricia Kayden
rk
Not one word about people who’ve died. Not one single word! Not even a token fake sentiment.
Mary G
Enough of the loser. Joe Biden talked to civil rights activist and famous bird watcher Christian Cooper over zoom, and it is heartwarming:
NotMax
@immanentize
It ’tweren’t the heart that was purple.
;)
Kent
@Martin: Exactly. I have a 14 and 17 year old girls. They are big BTS fans. Their social media following is extraordinarily enormous. BTS recently donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter as a nod to their enormous US following. And they did a live digital concert a couple night ago (it was 2 am here on the Pacific coast and all the kids were up for it. Absolutely massive. There is a whole different universe of social media channels that older adults have no clue of.
Steeplejack
“Democrats want to subsidize late-term abortions and after-birth executions.” This is like late-period Coltrane multi-mode improvisation.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Well, at least the Democrats will be happy for the ad copy. Seriously, how does he think this helps anyone? All it does is encourage the spread of the virus while maybe keeping the numbers down a little bit temporarily.
How can so many people listening to this not realize that this is a bad thing?
Immanentize
MODERATERS!!!
Please clean up the bullshit post in comment 88? So I can again enjoy the site?
Immanentize
@NotMax: ouch
Dorothy A. Winsor
Nicole Wallace just showed pictures from outside the rally where BLM and Boogaloo Boys are gathered. The Boys are carrying. Several have long guns. That looks scary to me.
Mary G
OK, one more:
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Who wants to kill afterbirth? Is it technically alive?
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: With protesters a half mile away behind the baby gate…. So?
Steeplejack
“We actually won on DACA yesterday.” We have to refile and do the paperwork right, basically.
dmsilev
@Kent:
Mordantly curious to see how his mouthpieces try to spin this.
Geminid
So far it’s been a bad weekend for trump, and it’s not over. His tweets tomorrow will make it worse.
Gemina13
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1274501498567897090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Intimation: Neener, neener, neener. It wasn’t a unanimous decision so it doesn’t count.
//
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Harris is my favorite.
I really want it to be her.
I wouldn’t be angry if it were Demings or Rice, I would just be disappointed.
I REALLY want Harris.
dmsilev
https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1274504896281182213
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Can’t you see? He speaks to the insecurity felt by so many Americans. People who go through their lives feeling utterly deplorable, but putting on a brave face to put down others despite that.
I see you Mr. President. Respect…/
Martin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If it helps, the anti-immigrant militia groups here in CA have a good history on turning on each other. They arm up because they’re afraid of us, and then one day they realize they’re more afraid of someone else in the group who is also armed and then someone gets murdered.
Their most likely targets are inside the arena, not outside.
debbie
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I usually go with “hump” because that matches the look on his face as he is groping.
Ken
So DACA’s safe, because on thing this gang has shown is that they can’t do anything right.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
They shoot horses, don’t they?
rikyrah
@Martin:
Peanut knows KPop, and some of her favorite programs on Netflix are Korean dramas.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: True, but when you have guns in a gathering of people from opposite sides and the B Boys want a new civil war, things can get ugly fast.
Bill Arnold
@CaseyL:
Big during recent Floyd-related BLM protests:
The K-Pop Stans Are Radicalizing (June 4, 2020, Kathleen Hou)
Jeffro
@Geminid: worse…for him. =)
From now ’til November (and then I guess until Inauguration Day) it will be rough, we will be tested, and yet…it will be so, SO worth it.
Tweet your brains out, Ill Douche! I just need a competent, genuinely American government to hit the ground running in January and keep us from having to shelter-our-seniors-in-place indefinitely, reopen K-12 schools, get the country to understand that wearing a mask is not a marker of political allegiance, and get all this shit straight before the next pandemic hits.
(and also, not bend over for Russia, MBS, Turkey, etc)
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Well, I will accept this as I refuse to observe what he does with his midsection as he performs…whatever heinous ritual with the flag.
NotMax
Any weather reports announcing the sudden appearance of a mass of hot air over Tulsa?
rk
I’m more handsome than the elites, I have better hair, I have more properties. They’re not the elites, you’re the elites.
Aleta
Can’t say if it’s true, but some of the replies to him:
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I did not have KPop Resistance on my bingo card. Love it.
debbie
@Mary G:
Have to wonder which hand he used.
Patricia Kayden
Gin & Tonic
Since this is an open thread, here’s a Twitter thread about football in Russia. Worth five minutes of your time if you’re at all interested in football or Russia. Or even if not.
Baud
@MomSense: How are you feeling?
Mallard Filmore
@Patricia Kayden:
I do not understand this. The K-pop brigades soaked up a lot of free tickets, so what? It gave Team Trump a stiffy, something to crow about, but any dedicated Trumper would still get in the arena. Nobody was frozen out of the experience. Its not like those phantom tickets were assigned to a seat.
Martin
FYI, Trumps statement ‘I would tell you if I had parkinsons’ can probably be taken as a straight up admission that he has parkinsons. We’ll know for sure if they accuse Biden of having parksinsons.
gwangung
@MomSense:
Does anyone have any sense what a massive success like this would do for political activism among young folks?
Raoul
@Martin: OMG, I just looked, the Hampt*n Inn a couple miles from downtown is $84. Tonight. The Courtyard right downtown is $129.
Jebus. Parscale is a complete jackass.
debbie
@Aleta:
If this doesn’t get Parscale bounced, nothing will.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT:
Geoffrey Berman is leaving office immediately after standoff with Trump administration
Horowitz is something of a company man, yes? SDNY also has suspicions that Barr is funneling politically sensitive cases to other US Attorneys Offices and keeping them within the DOJ itself
I don’t understand why Berman left, even if there was still going to be an SDNY person left in charge. He should’ve stayed and fought it out, actually made Barr present proof that Trump fired him. But then again, the man did donate to his campaign in 2016
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: In my last Zoom call with Dems in my town one Warren supporter (older white woman) was stating with absolute certainty how black women would be overjoyed with Stacy Abrams as the VP pick. I rolled my eyes so hard that my eyeballs were in my sockets.
ETA: Excellent choice with Harris. If she is chosen some Indian leftier-than-thou types will attack her for being upper caste. You can take that to the bank.
Damned at Random
Introducing the band now: Inhofe, the other senator, the gov, Gym Jordan, and others. My guess is this is almost over there will be on encores
Martin
@Mallard Filmore: Willing to bet more than a few supporters begged off not wanting to be stuck outside.
But mostly, Trump’s kryptonite is being seen as a loser, and this makes him look like a loser given how much they were overselling the turnout.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
my god
I know I’m not the target audience, but I’ll never process that this gibbering buffoon somehow reassures them of a lifetime of resentment and insecurities. That kind of third-rate Benny Hill, un-self-aware grand guignol histrionics makes them believe him when he says he’s smarter than all them perfessers and know-it-alls who look down on them, so they must be smarterer too.
Ken
@Mallard Filmore: They overbooked worse than any airline – 800,000 tickets for 20,000 seats. In some ways it’s lucky for them that most of those were bogus, can you imagine the chaos if 800,000 people had shown up? Tulsa’s population is only 400,000.
(Course Parscale said the quiet part out loud, when he called it the biggest data grab ever. It looks like he might have to clean that data a bit – it wouldn’t surprise me if they already had the names of 90% of the people who actually attended.)
dmsilev
Headlines:
Washington Post: Trump blames media and protesters for empty seats, says he ordered slower coronavirus testing
FTNYT: Crowd Is Sparse as President Tries to Reignite Campaign
LA Times: Trump wanted big crowds at his comeback rally in Tulsa. They didn’t show up
AP: Trump comeback rally features empty seats, staff infections
and, just for giggles, Fox News: Trump mocks Seattle ‘anarchists,’ touts ‘law and order’ presidency in Tulsa rally marking campaign relaunch
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
I have to say I like the idea of Rice as VP. We got an awful lot of repair work to do in the world.
Jeffro
@Raoul:
@debbie:
Rooting for injuries; specifically, a footprint-sized bruise on Mr. Cambridge Analytica’s rear end and (if the FSM is generous) a lawsuit for “false crowdification” or some other nonsense from the Ill Douche
Wyatt Salamanca
@Jeffro:
I don’t know if Trump is the weakest President we’ve ever had, but he’s far and away the dumbest, the most corrupt, and the laziest.
Tonight’s speech like every other speech Trump has delivered is 100% substance free, it’s simply a super sized steaming pile of excrement unworthy of the office of the Presidency.
Every day, through his words or his actions, Trump proves that he’s unfit to run a lemonade stand let alone run this damn country.
Biden will need to hire a great cleaning service in order to remove the overpowering putrid stench that Trump leaves on the White House.
FUCK Trump and his whole goddamn fucking family.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
MoonGoonwalking.Steeplejack
@Damned at Random:
Okay, Gym Jordan doesn’t wear a coat. That’s his brand. But why the hell is he wearing a tie, especially at this “casual” event?!
Yutsano
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I’mma gonna stop you right there chief. He doesn’t “think”. He acts in the moment as to what he feels will meet his narcissistic needs then moves on to the next moment. There is no underlying strategy. He is nothing but contemporaneous reaction. We shouldn’t ascribe that to him of which he is not capable.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It legitimately looked like he was mocking himself. And his brain dead worshippers fucking cheered!
Immanentize
@Wyatt Salamanca: I hear Hercules has been furloughed and is available to clean out the muck
jackmac
My just-turned-21 daughter was among the hundreds (thousands?) who punk’d Trump tonight by reserving a spot at his Tulsa rally. She had no intention of attending, of course.
The empty lots and seats inside in the upper level was delightful to see.
Nothing like a little guerrilla political activism. I’m so proud of her!!
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: She is a political novice, I want a politician in that job. Preferably the kind that has won statewide elections.
Ken
I also suggest sweeping the Oval Office for bugs. When was that Russian news crew allowed in, again? And am I mis-remembering, or were they unsupervised at Trump’s insistence?
NotMax
@Steeplejack
In case Ron Perlman showed up?
“I’m not dressed for a match.”
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Is he wearing his ugly yellow tie?
Martin
Heh, my wifes minister reserved a bunch of seats. Smart enough to use a burner account too.
I mean, when you’re getting trolled by clergy, you really need to re-evaluate things.
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: A friend who teaches ESL is out of a job because foreign students don’t want to come to the US. It’s awful because our friend just started treatment for cancer.
khead
Mars, bitches
Also, Biden War Room twitter is rolling.
HumboldtBlue
Hello darkness my old friend.
MomSense
@debbie:
More important for VPs to have good relations in the Senate because their role tends more to pushing legislation.
I’d love to see Rice at State.
Ken
@dmsilev: Interesting that so many of the headlines – even Fox’s – are calling this a comeback, relaunch, rebrand, etc. I suppose it’s the right idea when someone has dropped so far in the polls, but it’s a bit surprising to see it acknowledged by the media.
tarragon
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I also think he’s funny. But not intentionally.
catclub
I am more appalled that these are our same fellow citizens who voted him in the first time, than I am at him. They apparently lap it up.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jesus H Christ that Fox Chyron is REAL?
“Trump debunks fake news”. What awful, useless people. They’re see that Trump medicated and practiced and now he can… when prepared… walk down a ramp and hold a glass with one hand. When stage managed. And this is “debunking fake news”.
dmsilev
Via the Post, the clean-up attempts have begun:
Odds are pretty good he’ll contradict that on Twitter sometime tonight.
Martin
RIP Eskimo Pie. Getting rebranded.
Sports teams better get ready.
Steeplejack
Trump apparently back on the prepared speech, racing through it by rote. Looks like he realized he’s about 30 minutes behind after all the ad-lib vamping he did.
khead
@MisterForkbeard:
Yes. It was real. Pitiful, but real. @khead:
Bill Arnold
@Ken:
Shhh. :-)
(This is the funniest part of that op, IMO)
catclub
Mostly true. I would say the only strategic thought is “never apologize”.
It is the only constant I can detect.
different-church-lady
A major party candidate for president just felt the very strong need to prove to the country that he can… (checks notes) … (double-checks notes…) …drink a glass of water.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
To attempt to answer my own question, perhaps they listen to Trump the same way I listen to rap and hip hop. I let it wash over me. Appreciating it for aesthetic enjoyment but rarely picking up much of the lyrics.
I hope my answer is wrong, the implications would be horrific.
sdhays
@Steeplejack: Umm…Republicans are the ones who don’t give a shit about babies after they’re born. When they’re a fetus, there’s nothing more sacred, but after they’re born, they’re damn sinners who need to take care of themselves. AND STAY OFF THE TAXPAYER’S TEAT!!1!
ETA: More projection, I think…
Steeplejack
Abrupt finish, and now the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Why does he think that’s a great song for him? And why haven’t the Stones’ attorneys crushed his nuts for continuing to use it?
Suddenly Judge Jeanine on Fox. My eyes! Click.
Ken
Hundreds of thousands, if you believe Parscale’s claims about the number of registrants. In which case, the 10,000 or fewer who actually showed up are a rounding error.
Martin
@Dan B: It’s not so much that they don’t want to come, it’s also that they can’t. But the ones that do want to come are afraid that Trump will issue an order to revoke their visa as is happening now with Chinese students. Much safer to pick another country than to potentially lose a year of study.
Jeffro
@debbie: I am fine with Rice and she would do an excellent job. This upcoming Biden presidency, presumably a 4-year project, has a LOT of clean-up work to do, and putting Rice in there has a lot of side benefits for the Democratic party.
Being optimistic here:
And on and on. Just focus on cleaning up the mess, instituting safeguards in our politics, and executing the Warren/Harris agenda of a more just and equitable country.
I’ll just stop there after saying I’m also fine with Warren or Harris as VP. The main thing is Biden, the main thing is to be the not-trumpov, the main thing is to register and GOTV, crawl over broken glass, all that. You know the drill. ;)
Poe Larity
Jared loves the Stones
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes.
sdhays
@dmsilev: Extra credit for the subtle slam at Jeb “Please clap” Bush!
TS (the original)
@Steeplejack:
The toddler when they stop using a sippy cup – and the family applauds. Why do I keep thinking this cannot be true
different-church-lady
@Ken:
Both kinds.
Gin & Tonic
Seems Drudge (who knew he was still a thing?) is not impressed.
Jeffro
@Wyatt Salamanca: agree with all but…wouldn’t dumb + corrupt + lazy automatically put a president in the bottom tier if not the worst of all time? ;)
And doubly agree with FTAHWGFF!
CaseyL
@Martin:
@Kent:
Interesting! As an inhabitant of a few “hidden universes” myself (various fandoms and interests) this intrigues me. Particularly as the kids are using social media as a political tool/weapon, pretty effectively.
I hope they use this power more often… like, say, GOTV.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Immanentize:
Yes, cleaning the White House after Trump’s departure would be comparable to cleaning the Augean stables.
@Ken:
You raise a good point. The White House will need to be swept for bugs as well as cleansed from Trump’s putrid stench.
sdhays
@different-church-lady: The Secret Service is duty-bound to defend the primary bug infesting the Oval Office. Orkin isn’t going to cut it.
Morzer
@Chief Oshkosh: I am seeing claims that it was specifically a bunch of k-pop fans who decided to use their expertise in gaming ticket sales and bought up a bunch of tickets with no intention of showing up. Looks like they understand the art of the deal a damn sight better than Deadbeat Donnie ever did.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
Trump doesn’t give a fuck what Mick and Keef think of him. Also, he has this one clever trick: his people blame the venue for playing the song.
dmsilev
Via a commenter at LG&M, this was the Reichstag Fyre Festival.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rick Wilson’s attack ads are living rent free in his head
Immanentize
@Martin: I understand and I support the change. But it makes a little sad to lose esquimaux pie.
But fuck the Redskins.
Jeffro
@different-church-lady: Manly, though, wasn’t it? Remember that time that Obama tried to drink water?
Er, my bad, that was one of the many times he just stood there in a downpour, getting wet and being presidential and awesome. ;)
sdhays
@Morzer: But does that mean that they gave a bunch of money to the Dump campaign? Or were tickets free?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Martin: As long as they don’t touch Count Chocula
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: The ultimate truth is, those guys don’t own the rights to that song anymore.
Jeffro
@Wyatt Salamanca: it’s time to perhaps think about making the WH the people’s house/museum, and building a new POTUS executive office building with a separate residence.
Some funk just won’t wash out.
gwangung
@CaseyL: Like I said before..they did a little political guerilla warfare…and it looked like they had an effect.
I would think it would encourage them to engage in other political activity…
geg6
@Yutsano:
Presackly.
?
Steeplejack
Where are these MSNBC correspondents getting these cool (and comfortable-looking) masks? I’m in the market. I have one that a friend made for me, but the fit is not quite right. It gives me Alfred E. Neuman ears. Now I’m planning for the long, long haul that this coronavirus thing appears to be.
dmsilev
@sdhays: Tickets were free. Well, you had to give Trump’s campaign your email address, but throwaway accounts are trivial to get.
bluehill
Keep Pascale! He’s doing great. If Trump would have kept Manafort and Lewandowski last time, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Geminid
Stacey Abrams is an very talented and capable politician, but Biden won’t pick her as VP and that’s just as well. She has unfinished business in Georgia, namely a rematch with cheatin’ Brian Kemp. Georgians badly need a good governor, and Abrams could be a great one.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Drudge has come out as a Never Trumper. Those Swift Boat guys’ heads are spinning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
from Heilemann’s keyboard, et cetera, et cetera
sdhays
@dmsilev: ? Idiots!!
Wyatt Salamanca
@Jeffro:
When I saw you use the word weakest, I thought you meant weakest in terms of his polling numbers and not as a synonym for worst.
I think Trump is the absolute worst President in our history.
I also forgot to include that he’s the most malevolent, heartless, and mean spirited President, in my opinion.
Mr. Robinson in The Graduate best sums up my feelings about Trump: “I think you are scum. You are a degenerate!”
Steeplejack
@Immanentize:
Oh, no, another casualty of Allen Klein and ABKCO?
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Tonight, Trump got loser stink dumped on him like pig blood at Carey’s prom.
debbie
@MomSense:
That would work for me too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the very well-sourced Jonathan Swan on MSNBC: “this is not going to be a very pleasant plane trip home” on AF1
“there will be recriminations…”
aren’t some goons from the original campaign gunning for Parscale’s job? Lewandowski and that goon who helped Dan Burton shoot up some honeydews in his backyard?
debbie
@Aleta:
“Girl scout cookie competition” Priceless!
Redshift
@sdhays: Tickets were free.
Dan B
Trump mocks the Seattle CHAZ / CHOP as a 19 year old black man was killed by what appear to be white separatists in a drive by. Another young black man is in ICU. The police were slow to respond as have the police in other areas with George Floyd protests.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wonder how many staff members will miss the flight. I have this vision of Trump alone on the plane except for two secret service members and the pilots.
Mary G
Immanentize
@Steeplejack: sort of. ASCAP and BMI will also go to hell for these affronts.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Steeplejack:
As a huge Rolling Stones fan and of this song, in particular, it pisses me off to no end that Trump continues to abuse it
From the few stories I’ve read on this subject, musicians don’t have much leverage from a legal perspective to prevent their music from being played against their wishes.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought Lewandowski was indicted as part of the Mueller investigation. I’ve probably mixed up the actual felons with the crooks.
Redshift
@Morzer:
I believe it. A couple of weeks back in response to the protests, #whitelivesmatter started trending on social media, and K-pop fans flooded it with pictures of Korean pop stars and anti-racist messages, killing any further interest from racist white people.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: How many people do you need to fire before the country starts obeying your fantasies?
Wyatt Salamanca
@Jeffro:
You may be right.
I just hope that Trump’s defeat will be as humiliating as humanly possible.
Steeplejack
In looking at footage of people filing into the arena tonight, I didn’t see anyone taking their temperatures or handing out masks. Did anyone else?
BruceFromOhio
@Martin: Thank you for this forensic detailing. There are powers in the universe that can bring change, and these are some of those powers.
Redshift
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The “recriminations” are especially sweet because the entire reason for today’s super spreader event was to make the manbaby feel better, and it’s completely failed.
Redshift
@Steeplejack: Ms. Redshift noticed that too.
Ken
@Steeplejack: Various news reports say that both were done, but that many attendees immediately threw the masks away. Also if someone flunked the temperature test, they were put in a cool room and retested a few minutes later.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: With the increasingly apparent dementia, I wouldn’t place any bets on what Dump “knows” from minute to minute. But, deep down in his core, he’s always known that he’s a loser and he sucks, and that’s the source of his unquenchable neediness for undeserved adoration. No amount of dementia is going to cure him of that.
I think it’s still too early for Dump to really begin to comprehend that this is what he has to look forward to in the 2020 campaign. Presumably, they’ll try harder to prevent gaming the issuance of tickets in the future, but COVID-19 is going to put a damper on his rallies for the rest of the campaign. If the spike in COVID-19 cases is on the worse end of the possibilities, it might prevent anyone from allowing him to have another rally like this again all year (except for the evil shit in Floriduh).
When that reality settles in (if it ever does), hold onto your butts….
jl
‘ “Remove clothing with expletive messages” would knock out a bunch of shirts I’ve seen: ‘
Does the third line of the sign in that Weigel tweet say ‘Leave balls ON’?
Edit: Oh… belts…? OK. Never mind.
Redshift
The best short-term outcome would be if today is humiliating enough that the other planned events get cancelled, and we don’t have any more plague rallies.
Ken
@sdhays: I think the next two events were in Arizona and Wisconsin, be interesting to see if either of them cancels.
@Redshift: I had the same thought, but there’s no way he cancels. He needs the hit of unthinking adulation to counter reality.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
I saw several clips where (it looked like) people were streaming in three or four abreast with no pausing at all, or even anyone waving a thermometer.
Martin
@CaseyL: It’s kind of always been like this. I think what really woke me up to it was the immigration rally in 2006. Half a million people in LA, and NONE of us knew about it. I asked a few students and they were incredulous, it was 24/7 on spanish language radio here, and facebook but it never broke out of those communities. I remember around the same time that there was a racist incident at UC San Diego – one of the frats, IIRC, which the university did a poor job of responding to, and there was a big boycott of applications there that year. It never seemed to be a big enough news event to trigger that kind of response but it turns out that spread through the black barbershop network.
I some ways, this is no different from how 4chan works – mischief for the lulz. But these communities are quite a bit more diverse than their meatspace counterparts so they become quite strongly inclusive on race and gender and whatnot. And these are communities that they control, which is very appealing to young people that have suffered through overpoliced schools and, well, a lot of bullshit from the olds.
If you can reach them on their terms – something that Obama did a good job of and still gets a ton of praise for the effort – then you can win them over in big numbers. Not sure the Biden campaign can pull that off, but that’s why I like Harris on the ticket – she (and moreso Maya has that eye). They know how to reach and motivate young voters.
In some ways, I think that’s why POC and young people are important to campaigns. They don’t see the world of reaching voters as Fox vs MSNBC. They roll through an entirely different space, and they get that lots of people do. I think that’s why AOC shocked everyone with her win – she reached a whole other group of voters entirely out of view of the political class.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Immanentize:
Did you learn this information from a magazine or newspaper article?
Do you know how much else of their catalog Mick and Keith no longer own?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s certainly noteworthy how Trump’s approvals are so much higher than the support for Trump’s actual policy. I take to mean a lot of his voters aren’t showing up in November.
TS (the original)
The response to Coronavirus could have re-elected trump. If he’d done it as per NZ or similar he would have got support from “both sides” for his actions – but he is just too stupid – or he really has the worst people on the planet working for him – or both.
jl
@Wyatt Salamanca: They lost the rights to most of their songs? Wow, so many Trump could play at is rallies:
100 years ago
Sympathy for the Devil
Slipping Away
You don’t have to mean it.
p.a.
JFC. Suggests. SUGGESTS. FECK THE AP
@ZekeJMiller
The Latest: Trump suggests he urged slowing of virus testing (from @AP)
jl
@sdhays: Trump really does seem to have this sincere fixed notion rattling around in his head that if you don’t test for the disease, somehow, it won’t be a problem.
mad citizen
@Ken: Or one final confirmation that he has NO chance this time and it’s time to execute the exit plan to FLA.
Ken
I put that down to the sunk cost fallacy – people who voted for him in 2016 and continue to support him rather than admit they made a mistake.
Martin
Yeah, this is not rocket science. Booking.com will tell you in 30 seconds if you fucked up your event or not.
Don’t expect this to work on the future. They’ll come up with a different mechanism to get seats. I hope the k-pop stans feel emboldened to rise to the challenge, but eventually they’ll get it sorted out.
Obama’s monster outdoor rallies were the way to go, though.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Morzer:
Trump could not find his ass with both hands and a map. He’s a single digit IQ President.
Jeffro
@Steeplejack: Because he wants that bitter resentment coursing through his people’s veins when they leave, the same way it always does when he’s alone and thinks of how Fred trumpov never loved him, that’s why.
TheOBP
@Gin & Tonic: ? I remember watching that dud. It’s frankly a testament to his tenacity, luck, or possibly negotiated soul settlement, that he still has a career after that debacle
Kent
She would also make a good secretary of state, which is a pretty damn important job too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: This.
Kay
Ha! I’m so glad it was a flop.
I’m in western Michigan and people I know here say they are getting tons of mailers on Trump and the environment- “Trump Has Been Toxic for Michigan”. It’s a conservative part of the state. It’s the League of Conservation voters who are doing all the advertising. There’s a lot of fishing, hunting, boating, camping here- I just thought it was interesting. Not “jobs” but contaminated water.
Ken
If they’d done it properly this time, they would have known the arena would be at best half full. Who breaks that to Trump? Or would they find some reason to cancel?
Villago Delenda Est
@Wyatt Salamanca: Someone owns the rights and probably expects royalties for public performances.
They should sue Donald into penury.
Wyatt Salamanca
@jl:
I don’t know the answer, I just posed the question.
Of all the Rolling Stones’ songs, I’ve always thought that Salt of the Earth would make the best campaign song.
HumboldtBlue
Great bumper sticker
also, just because Obama
St. Louis
Pete Mack
The security cordon was immaterial. Black leaders in Tulsa recognized that Trump feeds on controversy and wisely decided to starve the beast. They asked protestors to stay away from the event. Trump ended up with crappy turnout and an unengaged opposition. Sad!
Kent
True, but it completely fucked up their planning. Because they ended up having no fucking clue about how many were attending, and the initial reports of the event being sold out and that overflow crowds would have to watch remotely on big screen TVs may have put off a lot of people who might otherwise have come but decided it wasn’t worth it because the crowds and traffic would be too much trouble.
Plus, if they actually knew in advance that they were only going to get 10,000 people to show instead of 20,000+ they could have engineered the arena to make it look full. As it happened, they didn’t know until 30 minutes before the event started what kind of crowd they were going to have. And we can thank the Kpop kiddos for that.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, i’m all for it. Sue this clueless, gutless blob of neuroses.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s a little scary that that was my first thought.
mad citizen
I thought artists can request their songs not be used but can’t stop it legally.
Do Mick and Keith own their post ABDCO songs? Or all of them? Google doesn’t say either way. I’ve read a lot about them and never that lost publishing on their songs, say like Fogerty did.
Jeffro
@Martin: this assume a candidate who can a) draw monster crowds and b) withstand normal temperature ranges, walk up and down ramps, etc etc.
Jeffro
@Pete Mack: that is just awesome! My biggest wish for the protestors was that they would find someplace well away from the trumpov event and do their own thing, preferably in a nice park.
I doubt they were looking to me for advice…=)
…but still glad that it worked out so well!
CaseyL
@Redshift: I’ve dipped into some RW-attempted tweetstorms and saw those, and didn’t get what it was about. I thought it was just a fanbase trolling every thread they felt like, because that happens, too. Didn’t realize it was spamming with purpose, for Good.
They’re doing it still/again. Check out “Trump2020Landslide.” It’s amazing.
HumboldtBlue
Sarah Cooper on Father’s Day.
Just brilliant.
jimmiraybob
I hope you know that you’re all being sued. For treason! Everything Trump said was Top Secret and Classified at the highest levels of top secrecy and classification.
catclub
I am glad I have nothing of counter protestors and violence.
Frankensteinbeck
My takeaway from this dumpster fire: Yes, Trump has had a stroke or some other degenerative neurological issue. Of all the things he could be angry or sensitive about right now, and he has a ton of them, the one he devoted tons and tons of time and energy to was people making fun of his lifting the glass and having trouble going down a ramp. That means he is deeply emotionally invested in those events, which means that there is a real problem that he desperately wants the public to not find out about. He’s so stupid he does that by… reminding the public with lengthy, unasked for denials.
Kent
As I said in the last thread. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band drew more people to my local county fair last summer
High school football games in Texas draw bigger crowds.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HumboldtBlue: my god, The Beast knows that Don Jr did, in fact, turn out to be a loser, and Don Jr knows his father thinks he’s a loser
doesn’t excuse what an awful person Junior is, but it goes a long way toward explaining it
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I suppose I will now have to perform an inquiry into becoming a K-Pop fan.
Wyatt Salamanca
Actual Mediaite headline:
Tulsa Rally Crowd Goes WILD After Trump Successfully Drinks Glass of Water
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/tulsa-rally-crowd-goes-wild-after-trump-successfully-drinks-glass-of-water/
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Solid headline. Rates three chefs’ kisses.
VFX Lurker
@rikyrah:
Peanut has good taste. I recently watched the superb KINGDOM on Netflix, and it had everything I could ever want in a show. Medieval Korean setting, palace intrigue, zombies, great characters, awesome action scenes, and magnificent production value. I can’t wait for Season 3.
dmsilev
dmsilev
When you’ve lost Maggie Haberman…
James E Powell
@dmsilev:
If Maggie wrote that, then I’m betting the two sources are Ivanka and Hope Hicks.
Wyatt Salamanca
@dmsilev:
Great, now Trump will need an extra dose of Maalox.
jl
@dmsilev: Mega MAGA meshugenneh mess
Calouste
@dmsilev: I’m surprised Maga Haberman goes as far to use the phrase “falsely claimed” in relation to a shitgibbon campaign operative.
dmsilev
@Wyatt Salamanca: Look, he’s proven he can drink a glass of water, so that’s step one.
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
May have to get the British to come back and help disinfect it.
Wyatt Salamanca
@dmsilev:
I wish I had a dollar for every article written over the past 3 years about Trump being angry or upset about something.
This fucking guy is afflicted with approximately infinite butthurt.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Might look into getting some of those straps the ear elastics attach to so they don’t hook behind the ears, the strap they’re then attached to sits on the back of the noggin instead.
dmsilev
@Calouste: I think the answer might be in this bit:
That’s the narrative of the day, and political hacks like Haberman love their narratives. How long they’ll hold it before trading it in for a ‘Trump comeback!’ story is of course an important open question, but for now, enjoy it.
different-church-lady
OK, so who wants to help me start a rumor that Trump can’t survive a 40 foot head-first fall onto a concrete block?
Gremcat
So when do you think he’ll blame this on South Korea committing election inference by sabotaging his rally in order to get Biden elected?
Wyatt Salamanca
@dmsilev:
I look forward to the day when we have an actual adult serving as President.
@Ruckus:
It’s almost getting to the point where I think a Hazmat team may need to enter the White House after Trump moves out.
dmsilev
Robert Costa of the Post (and formerly National Review, so not exactly a flaming liberal):
Trump rallies in red-state America — and faces a sea of empty blue seats
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
GWB got a reprieve from possibly being in the bottom 5 worst presidents.
shitforbrains has taken all 5 bottom spots all on his own. He owns them, all 5 of them.
dmsilev
@Wyatt Salamanca: One of my neighbors has had, for the last several months, a yard sign reading ‘Any vaguely competent adult 2020’.
NotMax
Dolt 45’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. Tulsa receiv’d a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
.
/steal from the best
Gravenstone
@NotMax: Commonly called “ear savers”.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Frankensteinbeck:
Trump has the most fragile fucking ego of any human being I’ve ever seen. His brain dead followers think he’s John Wayne or Clint Eastwood but he’s just a nail biting, bed wetting coward with the emotional maturity of a five year old child.
BBA
@Ruckus: no president will ever be worse than Andrew Johnson. He pardoned the Confederates when every last one of them should have hanged.
Gemina13
@Martin: If Parscale could find a way to get people to attend Trump’s rallies in the numbers of Obama attendees, he’d have it made.
But he’d have to offer them something they’d want – like Trump stroking out onstage.
Keith P.
LOL…Brad Parscale is trying to save his ass by emphasizing large numbers of online viewers. He is TOAST.
Renie
Topping off the day, someone leaked Bolton’s book into a PDF online. LOL
Yutsano
@Wyatt Salamanca: I’m just curious: how do you get blood from that turnip? He’s broke. He’s so far underwater to so many entities that demand he give them scratch as soon as he gets it that there is no wealth there. He’s a complete fuck-up and tax cheat. He qualified for a NYC tax break that you can only get if your income is $550,000 or less. There is so much shell accounting going on around him that forensic accountants will be spending years if not decades trying to trace it all. Id it’s even there.
Steeplejack (phone)
@different-church-lady:
I’m in!
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
Might do, but the fabric and fit aren’t great either.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yep. Besides all the age, neurological issues, he’s dumb as a stump.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Ruckus:
@dmsilev:
Thanks, you both made me laugh which is important because you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.
I wish Trump could be compelled to take an IQ test and a citizenship test. I’d love to see those results.
I also wish I could be around to read what future generations of historians and political scientists write not just of Trumpenstein but his despicable enablers like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and all the other cowering bed wetters in the House and Senate,
Martin
Hmm. So, it hit 100F in the arctic for the first time ever in recorded history.
That’s uh, bad.
Wyatt Salamanca
@different-church-lady:
Sure, put me in on that.
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
I was thinking War of 1812.
Dropping fire plane/helicopter loads of bleach might do the outside but pressure washers filled with bleach is possibly the only answer to the inside…..
dww44
@TS (the original): I think it’s as simple as the recognition by Trump, as well as by the rest of us, that managing something like a public health response to a once in a century pandemic is simply beyond his abilities. If a member of the Trump cult cannot recognize the pitifulness of our response to the pandemic for what it is, then they are truly not worth anyone’s time and effort to persuade differently.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Staple gun. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
:)
Actually, the additional pulling of the elastics could conceivably make the fit more amenable. I didn’t like the look of the straps most generally out there (both the ones with buttons and those with notches) so repurposed these cable ties, and so far they function great. Work with the ear elastics sitting either across the ears or totally underneath them.
different-church-lady
Greatest self-own in Twitter history: nominee.
Wyatt Salamanca
@dmsilev:
I’ve never forgiven WETA for hiring him to replace Gwen Ifill as the host of Washington Week in Review
Also too, a few weeks back the lead singer of the Village People requested that Trump stop playing their songs at rallies after that disgusting Bible photo op at the church so he’s lost the support of at least 1 member of the Village People.
Kent
How many were Russian bots?
Omnes Omnibus
Ahem…. A man of wealth and taste. Disqualifier right there.
Wyatt Salamanca
@NotMax:
Thanks for that post!
As a native New Yorker who has heard and seen far too much of Trump, I always regarded him as an idiot full of sound and fury.
Omnes Omnibus
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: It is okay to appreciate what they did from afar.
Ruckus
@BBA:
I agree that AJ is absolute shit. A racist fuck of a human being, not worth the spit and urine on his grave.
But.
shitforbrains took a world pandemic and turned 5% of the worlds population into 25% of the deaths. By stealing PPE. By doing nothing or worse by doing the worst possible things at the worst possible times.
Andrew Johnson set the tone for a very long time that slavery should never have ended. shitforbrains has actively caused the deaths of tens of thousands of the citizens of the country he is supposed to be the leader of, has torn apart families of people looking for a place to work and live because their home country doesn’t seem to give two shits about them, has created death squads of our border guards, who were assholes to begin with. Andrew was a shit of his own time, and there is no excuse for him, shitforbrains is a man of no time and there is even less of an excuse for him.
We are a fifth of the way through the 21 century and we are still discussing slavery and hate and racism and shitforbrains is as much an asshole as Andrew was but he’s not just OK ing racism and slavery, he’s actively tryin to bring it back and killing citizens.
I give shitforbrains the bottom 5 spots. YMMV.
different-church-lady
Hey, now look, they may have screwed things up about the overflow crowd, but the underflow crowd loved it!
Wyatt Salamanca
@Yutsano:
Great question for which I have no answer.
I know it will never happen, but i wish this rat fucking pathological liar could face criminal charges once he leaves office.
Jackie
@Steeplejack (phone): I love the masks the MSNBC reporters wear, too. I’d love to get a couple. I ordered two pairs of the Nancy Pelosi masks – a bit spendy – but, for every mask ordered, a matching one is donated. So, I donated two masks to someone who needs one. Win Win.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: Balloon Juice: come for the political commentary; stay for the IEEE 754 snark.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Ruckus:
Now you’re talking. That sounds like it could work.
Feathers
If you want to know what this arena actually looks like when sold out, here’s a tweet with footage from a recent Cardi B concert. Huge difference.
There’s a saying in politics that you can survive anything but people laughing at you. They are laughing at Trump tonight. I don’t know if I missed it earlier in the thread, but they built a huge, elaborate stage outside, so Trump and Pence could speak to the expected enormous and adoring crowds outside. Those speeches had to be cancelled when they realized the arena wasn’t going to be close to full.
Huge fuckup. As to them getting it right? I don’t know. I knew somebody who had a pretty high up position in the Romney team. They had been let go from a mid-level dot.com job when that all went bust and hadn’t found another tech job in the next twelve years. Got a sweet title as an actual hire on the Romney campaign, though. Wasn’t able to parlay that into a private sector social media job. Why? They had taken shitloads of classes, but done no actual work. The problem the Republicans have with this shit is that it is grifters all the way down. They have sympathizers within Facebook, etc., but those folks aren’t going to throw themselves away working on a campaign.
L85NJGT
Some thoughts from The Boss.
Calouste
Has someone dug up footage yet of the shitgibbon saluting 600 times at West Point? Because of course that is a lie.
philpm
@Wyatt Salamanca: At minimum, Biden needs to have a film crew document everything Trump and crew have damaged, sabotaged and stolen as soon as they move in, and then disseminate it on YouTube.
Feathers
Ha ha! The Lincoln Project referred to tonight’s speech as the “Emptyburg Address.” Ouch.
Wyatt Salamanca
@TS (the original):
@dww44:
If stupidity were something that could actually be quantified or measured, then “trump” would be adopted as a unit of stupidity just like “watt” was adopted as a unit of power.
Yutsano
@Feathers: I saw their ad venerating Mattis over President Toadface. I gagged a little at that. I know Mattis still has a good reputation in the regular community but between Theranos and him waiting so damn long to speak out my respect is diminished.
Wyatt Salamanca
@L85NJGT:
Thanks for that link, it’s always good to hear from Bruce.
@philpm:
I like your idea.
Given that Trump is clearly an emotional basket case, I expect the absolute worst from him if he loses in November. First he’ll contest the results, ranting and raving like a lunatic about voter fraud. Once that fails to change anything, God only knows what depths this asshole will sink to in order to sabotage and undermine Biden before he’s sworn into office.
piratedan
@Ruckus: and you didn’t even mention the treason, the perjury, the money laundering, the civil rights violations and tax evasion.
Kent
@Ruckus: If there positions were reversed. If Trump was president in the 1870s and AJ was president now. I think it is safe to say that Trump would have been WORSE back then and AJ might perhaps have done a better job managing Covid and would have been less corrupt than Trump. Trump would have probably restarted the damn Civil War. I mean Trump is corrupt and venal in ways that most normal people do not even have the imagination to think up.
Mary G
Tom Petty’s family is not happy that “I Won’t Back Down” was played at the “rally.”
sdhays
@Martin: Putin must excited. All that farmland waiting to be unleashed in Siberia.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: @rikyrah: Harris is my favorite too. In fact she was my favorite candidate from the beginning. I’m really happy to see that both of you like her for VP (If I’m reading your comments correctly).
Wyatt Salamanca
@Kent:
That’s a good thought experiment. Based on all I’ve seen and heard from Trump, I believe your assessment is correct. As horrible and vile as I knew Trump was before he took office, I didn’t think he’d mount such a vigorous defense to preserve Confederate statues and military base names. As several people have recently noted, he is basically the second president of the Confederacy.
Yutsano
@Mary G: Sigh. So of course they bring up the fact that he wore the Confederate battle flag on tour in 1985. He expressed regret for that later, but they don’t care. It’s just another “pwn the libz” moment for them.
bluehill
I still think that the repubs in senate are on board until the end, but after tonight’s performance, I’m more open to the possibility that a few of them may reconsider. Team Trump needed the rally to cheer him up, but they also needed it to reassure their side that victory was still possible. That didn’t happen. Now just need someone other than Mitt to defect and who knows what could happen.
bluehill
Standing ovation for drinking water. And these guys mock participation trophies.
Sebastian
@Kent:
Not only that! Can’t believe you aren’t aware how awesome they are.
KPop took down QAnon and other right wing groups during BLM. Whenever the nazis tried to organize something on Twitter the BTS Army descended onto their feed and basically DDoS-ed by tweeting thousands and thousands of messages into a thread.
haha it was DELICIOUS!
Sebastian
@Martin:
They took down QAnon during BLM
https://mashable.com/article/kpop-flood-qanon-hashtags/
Anne Laurie
New post, with more hand-picked snark, up top. For freshness!
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
Thank God.
Mel
@Omnes Omnibus: Also leather soles: ballet pointe shoes – and yet, no Trump tiny tot shuffle step action on stage at the NYC Ballet. Mysterious and baffling!
Ruckus
@piratedan:
@Kent:
That’s why I give him the bottom 5 slots, look at all I left off…
Of course we weren’t there and I don’t know about the two of you but I don’t have a family history of racial discrimination and deaths. So I’m not contesting if someone wants to put AJ at the bottom. Let’s call it even, a tie, two of the worst human beings in the last 200 yrs have been presidents of the US. Not exactly a winning sales pitch for us.
joel hanes
What if they gave a war and nobody came?