Election 2008

For about 20 hours and counting, Steve Schmidt has been roasting the bejeebus out of Meghan McCain on Twitter in multi-threaded tweets powered by an incandescent fury that makes the sun look like a 5 watt bulb. Why?

From the context, I gather John McCain’s DaughterTM blamed Schmidt for the Palin pick and heaped other abuse on him* in her whiny flop of a book. (I haven’t read her book – no one has! – but we can safely assume it’s whiny.)

Well, Schmidt is not having it anymore. He beholds his field and finds it bereft of fucks.

It doesn’t speak well of my character, but I am so here for this kind of petty shit. In addition to uncut personal rancor so pure that injecting it directly into your veins is dangerous, Schmidt reveals more about the Republican Party-Russia connection, which he says originated with McCain 2008, not Trump 2016.

In a thread that starts here, Schmidt talks about McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, whom Schmidt blames for the Palin fiasco since he says Davis was in charge of vetting her, and Davis’s corrupt ties to Russia. Some excerpts:

@MeghanMcCain this is the story of the man you call Uncle Rick and it explains how we met

Your Father tolerated his campaign chairman being in business and working for Putin through his association with Yanukovych.

Yanukovych, as you probably have no idea, was Putin’s puppet in Ukraine. The story of American corruption in Ukraine starts here. It starts in John McCain’s operation, not Trumps.

Schmidt informs MM that her dad spent his 70th birthday aboard Oleg Deripaska’s yacht and that it was Davis’s grotesque Russia connections that caused McCain’s campaign to implode in the summer of 2008.

Schmidt claims he was brought on as a volunteer to reset the flailing campaign for the nomination, which he did, with no gratitude from Meghan McCain, whom he calls “the singularly most rotten person I have ever met.”

He also calls out The McCain Institute for having “Putin and Yanukovych alumni on the Board,” saying it’s “gross” in “an era that requires the exposure of corruption and hypocrisy not its accommodation.”

Do you have any idea how disappointed the brave people in Ukraine would be learning that one of Victor Yanukovych right hands is on the Board of the McCain Institute. Let’s ask. @visegrad24 @KyivIndependent @olex_scherba

was outrageous then and it is outrageous now. Here is the serious part. The person I’m talking about, is the one who was in charge of VETTING the VP candidate. True. Putin’s guy, the one who was Victor Yanukovich’s henchman was in charge of ALL of the DUE DILIGENCE around Palin. I wasn’t.

This was reported at the time and is detailed in Game Change. I was focused on dealing with a different catastrophe. Get back to me @MeghanMcCain if you want to hear more.

In another thread, Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop:

I was the first adult that @MeghanMcCain ever encountered that she heard the word NO from. I told her she was unimportant and that the Presidential election wasn’t about her. I left her on the tarmac when she didn’t make the plane because as I explained to her, the 5000 people

who were waiting to see her father speak and took the time to do it deserved to have him show up on time. That was the way John McCain saw it. He was appalled by @MeghanMcCain conduct on the campaign. Appalled and embarrassed. The tantrums were beyond anything I have

ever witnessed from any other human being. They were epic meltdowns that would test the range of Meryl Streep, Kate Winslett, Jodi Foster and Anne Hathaway on their best days. Raging, screaming, crying, at the staff, at the makeup people at Secret Service. Without any doubt

it was the most rotten, entitled, spoiled, cruel, mean and bullying behavior I have ever witnessed. It was my job to confront it and I did. I talked to 24 year old @MeghanMcCain the way an adult should have talked to the Trump kids. I talked to her the way a retired USMC

Star General failed to do in the WH with Ivanka, Jared and Jr. They are all the same people. I told her that she was unimportant and that everything around her had nothing to do with her. I told her she was privileged and lucky and should be grateful. She told me and

anyone else who would listen in response, “Do you know who the Fuck my Dad is” It was the miserable anthem of the total chaos that was the McCain Campaign. It never stopped until one day when I said ENOUGH!

@MeghanMcCain is a bully, entitled, unaccomplished, spoiled and mean. She has rejected her Family’s history of service for a shallow and purposeless celebrity where she trades on a famous name like a fourth generation wannabe clipping coupons while pretending to be an heir

I was a volunteer for John McCain. He called me when that campaign went belly up. Everyone quit and he called and asked for my help and I never asked him for a dime. I never took a dime. I left my three year old for a year and did everything I could for John McCain.

He was the only person I ever worked for who put in a position where I became involved in a public lie. When that campaign ended, I made a vow that that would never happen again and it hasn’t.

Excerpts don’t do justice to the supernova of rage that is Schmidt’s Twitter feed right now. Read it for much, much, much more.

Open thread!

PS: Schmidt’s rants attracted outraged howls from a certain resident of Brazil, so Schmidt’s accusations about the GOP-Russia connection have been confirmed.

*Schmidt says Meghan McCain called him a pedophile, which is Republican for “I disagree with you.” We live in the dumbest fucking timeline ever.

Steve Schmidt vs Meghan McCain in epic Twitter wig-snatchPost + Comments (207)