I wonder if there is a group of people who are very unlike Bulwark readers and Bulwark contributers. I am thinking about people who may not have been exposed to or paid attention to Trump's many deranged and absurd statements at rallies, in social media postings etc. But then, out of curiosity, they might have tuned in and watched the debate last Tuesday night (with the 68 million Americans who apparently did). I think they would have witnessed a very crazy, very old man frantically ranting about Haitian immigrants catching and eating cats and dogs as if his life depended on his listeners believing such a deranged absurdity. This is not a matter of spin or interpretation. That is what unfolded on a TV screen right in front of 68 million Americans. Might not an uninformed but normal person with a little common sense conclude that such a deranged man must not be the President of the United States?
What is the big deal about the statement that no active duty troops are in war zones. Technically I think they are not. They are in really dangerous parts of the world, and are under attack in some of these places.
But we could say that our school kids are also in some dangerous areas.
Seems that in the ridiculous desire to appear fair and balanced that the media has tried to equate the one comment from Harris with Trump’s addiction to pet barbecues.
Can’t you get arrested for hate speech? For incitement to violence. Telling people that legal immigrants are eating people’s pets, which then leads directly to bomb threats against elementary schools, surely that qualifies. The media just sits back and says oh, how terrible what Trump said. Ah well.
just watched on youtube an interview Harris just did for a local ABC affiliate in PA. A sharp contrast to her debate performance. She seems to not have prepared her answers to some basic questions. She seems to know she's not prepared, as she is very stiff and nervous. It appears that she is so scared about an upcoming question that she fails to engage simple small talk. She doesn't even use the standard "That's a good question ..." stalling tactic that is basic politics 101. The interviewer was a very friendly guy, asking simple very questions to help her with PA voters. He seemed to be trying to help her. Imagine if he was an adversarial interviewer. She was the exact opposite of Pete Buttigieg.
Who the hell is on her team to help her flesh out her policies so that she can address them comfortably!? I gotta tell ya, if she doesn't get her act together, she will start to backslide in the polls. She needs to gather her team together, and lock themselves away for two days. Flesh out her policies and practice her interview skills. Have Buttigieg participate and give her lessons. DO THIS NOW!
I took the challenge and yes, I cringed. She has to do better than regurgitated stump speech/debate soundbites. It gives you the sense that she isn't doing better because there is no there, there. Nothing behind the slogans. I came away with a similar sense of dread when I heard that H. Clinton's economic plan in 2016 included training an army of window glazers to save us from global warming. Clean energy jobs! While Clinton succeeded in being specific she also succeeded in revealing she had no flippin' idea what she was talking about. The dread I felt listening to Harris was the completely lack of specificity, other than her own life experience, but it also highlights to me that there is no one around her to fill in those blanks with substance - and with anecdotes that go beyond after-school childcare. Does no one on her team have a clue how American industry works? What a plumber or electrician does? Supply chain stuff? Tech innovation? Come on. Somebody please round out her understanding.
I didn't want to believe you were right, so I watched the interview myself. I agree with you. She looked nervous and she did not directly address the questions. Politicians like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren would be eager to jump right on that first question about bringing down the cost of living because it is entirely predictable. They would have a solid one minute answer with specifics they could tick off on their fingers. Why she doesn't is beyond me. She is clearly smart, and this doesn't really even involve thinking on your feet: these questions are 100% inevitable.
She isn't going to suddenly become Buttigieg, but she has to get better, and it has to happen now.
And I should stress that I'm a lifelong Democrat and I'm excited about her candidacy, but I want to see that she's capable of this, too. Not as a precondition for voting for her, of course. I'd crawl across hot coals to vote for a porkpie hat over Trump. I just think it's a skill that's really important for presidents, so I hope she can get better at this.
That said, let's give her a little grace. She's human. She's been practically flawless, and she must be exhausted. I'm a good teacher, but I have bad classes. I know what I want to teach and I've taught it before, but I'm off and I look and feel like a bumbler. Maybe she was just having one of those days. I imagine debate prep is exhausting. The pressure on Tuesday must have been enormous. I'd want a week at the beach, but she has to hit the hustings and do all these local media hits. Little wonder that she's trying to answer questions with fragments of her debate answers and stump speech.
But here's the thing: unfair as it is, the structural disadvantages any Democratic faces in our presidential election system mean that she has to continue to be near perfect. It's not right, and the shitgibbon she's up against is a font of disconnected , hateful nonsense and still has a floor of about 46%, which, horrifyingly, could be good enough to get him a narrow electoral college win. He can be Mario Mendoza; she has to hit like Tony Gwynn or Ted Williams.
Not fair, but that's where we are.
So one bad interview is not a big deal.
But they have to watch the tape and adjust. They can do it and she can do it.
What gets me is that she doesn’t have a stock sentence lined up to respond to predictable questions. Like, “I came to support fracking when I realized it was essential to energy independence and growing the economy” or “The rule of law is the bedrock of this country, including at the border, and the only immigration I support is legal immigration” I’m not asking for policy details. I’m not asking for promises. I just want her to answer the questions asked and reassure us of her common sense.
Some people are good at one on one interviews and answering questions on their feet. Some aren't. It isn't a skill one can just work up in a few days. Buttigieg is a natural and exceptional at it.
Donald Trump is fine and comfortable doing interviews where he says nothing, never really answers any questions and simply lies.
To be honest I think most people intuitively identify with the discomfort of being interviewed. It is uncomfortable to watch someone wriggling under the lights. Since most of her answers in that interview were just recaps of her talking points that were made in her CNN interview and during the debate. It's not like she was bringing anything new for people to think about.
The You-Tube video has, of course, gone viral in the right wing social media market. So viral that Trump was able to talk about it at his rally the same day and accusing her of making word salads which is ironic coming from the king of word salads.
I say if she doesn't do well in interviews just don't do them.
Thoughtful analysis. Sarah Longwell has made the wise, practical point that candidates need to get a number of "reps" under their belts to feel comfortable [and thus likeable and relatable] under their belts to thrive in this environment. But in this compressed timeframe, aimed at a ridiculously small percentage of persuadable voters, who knows? insert shrug emoji.
I didn't realize that it has gone viral, I just happen to see it on my youtube recommendations, as typically I follow news channels. I don't bother to ever read any rightwing clips.
I think not doing interviews because you are bad, is really just trying to 'ride the vibe'. The problem is that you are turning what should be a race with a 65% chance of victory, into a nail bitter. It doesn't need to be this way.
Vibes are not votes. Yes, it's unfair since she has only had a number of weeks to get a fleshed out platform together. But, that just means that they have to focus some attention on it, hence my recommendation for the policy/interview, cram session. We need more votes, not necessarily more vibes.
BTW, I have a number of ideas on how she can explain things, and especially flip the script on the economic performance from a weakness into the strength it really is, or at least dull the weakness feeling enough so that voters will put their attention to what each candidate will do for (or 'to' in Trump's case) the economy. See my substack post titled "The debate, and a next debate" (yes, I know, a shameless plug)
I watched on the basis of this analysis and I agree that she was neither dynamic nor relaxed, but she was far from "bad." The standard being applied to her is indeed perfect or terrible, nothing in between. That's wrong, and the call for grace is right. Meanwhile, Trump's nonsensical and vile non-answers are absorbed as "that's just Trump", isn't it wonderful that he can just be himself?
while she only needs to be 'good enough', The problem is that this is in the eyes of the undecided swing voters, not in our eyes. I'm voting for her no matter what. But I want to her to win, and a performance like that makes it much more dicey than it needs to be.
What troubles me most is how few elected Republicans have the integrity to condemn the putrid words and actions from Trump! We need 2 honorable political parties to sustained our democratic republic, and right now we only have one: the Democratic Party!
By the way it’s not the Democrat Party —- Democrat is a noun , not an adjective. Trump consciously did this to annoy Democrats, but too many reporters, etc. have been hoodwinked by Trump and bought into the plot!
The intentional misnomer of the Democratic Party has been around since at least Newt Gingrich's term as Speaker of the House when all Republicans were instructed to always refer to the "Democrat Party." 30 years later it has become so ingrained in the culture that most reporters and even Democrats themselves have grown accustomed to the usage.
I gave up trying to educate anyone who would listen a decade ago.
Actually, it goes back even further with Joe McCarthy, the odious Wisconsin senator who lead the communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. He coined the term, "Democrat party."
Tim Miller is on MSNBC right now. And it's a long segment; he's been on since 6:00 PDT, talking about how Trump/Vance are openly spreading the racist lies, and expanding on it. And the scary (my word) part is that the official R party is okay with it, though it seems that Tim is also frightened by the poison of it. And talking a little about the Snake's new "girlfriend", Laura. It just ended. Go, TIM!!!!
1) The Trumplicants behavior vis-à-vis Springfield’s mayor et al. is just another example that they care not one whit for any collateral damage that they do. They simply don’t care. If you don’t support Trump in all of his insanity, then you deserve whatever happens to you. Here in Arizona in 2021, Rusty Bowers (Az Speaker of the House at the time) refused to go along with Giuliani’s plan to decertify the Arizona election. So those noble, decent, patriotic Trump supporters rewarded him by driving up and down his street making all kinds of racket and generally making his life miserable while his daughter was inside his house literally dying of cancer. And, of course, all of them have apologized for their disgusting behavior (not). These people have no souls.
But this isn’t a recent phenomenon for the GOP. Remember how the GOP tore apart Monica Lewinsky’s life for no other reason than they just had to “get” Clinton. Not because he was a threat to this country or its institutions (as Trump is). It was because he wasn’t on their team.
2) And now the same types of people who harassed Bowers when his daughter was dying are now harassing Nathan Clark. It matters not that he lost a child in such a tragic fashion. All that matters is that he isn’t on their team.
3) And just as night follows day, there is a conspiracy that this is really happening but the “elites” are covering it up. Just like the reason that there isn’t any evidence of voter fraud. It’s not because it didn’t happen. It’s because the conspiracy involves such high-up figures (starting with George Soros, I guess) that they are able to cover it up. In other words, the lack of evidence is itself evidence of a conspiracy.
4) When Kaitlan Collins pointed out to JD Vance that the “eating cats” story wasn’t true, Vance countered with “they’re not saying it’s not true, they’re saying they don’t have any evidence” that it is true. But that’s really all anyone can say about any claim. No one can prove a negative. To borrow an example from Collins, what if someone claims that Bigfoot is living in a basement somewhere in Springfield? Since no one can prove a negative, all anyone can say is that there’s no evidence that it’s true. Using the logic that Vance uses, I could claim that aliens are living next door to me.
And, of course, contrary to what Trump seems to believe, the number of people who believe something doesn’t affect its veracity one bit.
Critical thinking skills are in short supply on that side.
I used to have a pretty decent vocabulary. Not so much anymore, and even though I am indeed old, I don't think cognitive decline is the entire reason. (Thank you for asking the question, for which I now know the answer, disgusting though it may be).
The point of my comment is not one of snark nor judgement. Anytime I come across a word of which I do not know its meaning, I stop reading and look it up on my online Miriam-Webster Dictionary. That "button" is as worn out as my Google one is, however. I also check to see how it fits in the context of the sentence (syntax, of course). Have a great weekend!
She's not doing a great job of it so far. She comes across to me as 1) one of those 'just asking questions' people, and 2) not giving a damn about real world consequences of slandering an ethnic group with no SOLID evidence. One cannot prove a negative so the default answer has to be that the rumor should be discounted unless there is conclusive evidence to the contrary. She displayed a kind of moral neutrality that is so prevalent in masters-of-the-universe types.
As someone growing up in that time, even back then, I thought they were naive children who cared only about themselves. Not to mention a whole lot of them were stoned out of their minds.
Operative phrase here: "...a whole lot of them were stoned..." The lot of them were essentially harmless. I was in my teens throughout the 70s. NEVER tried weed. Never cared to. The people of today have become meaner and more of a self-entitled attitude. I am not using the broad brush, because I know there are good and decent people in this country.
I was roughly 10 years older than you. Never smoked weed or anything else. (Ironic that many of those against smoking in general don't seem to have a problem with smoking weed - even in my senior community, I can smell it.) I agree that there are good and decent people - see them all the time. I just hope to God they vote! But the discouraging, frightening part is how many that I thought were respected principled people in politics have been bought by a monster named Donald Trump, including those who once despised everything he did and said. Because, as you said, many people have become meaner and more self-entitled. I keep wondering what's in the water, or in their upbringing, or what is it that makes them so cruel to others. Unless we, as a society, figure it out, even if Trump loses, we're going to continue to see people like him, like Vance.
I am in my 70s. I used pot in my teens and early 20s.
Smoking was always a very risky delivery system for THC. My own preference was pot brownies. Tasty and leaving no tell tale odors. A "radical fairy" taught me how to get the right balance of brownie to marijuana so as to deliver an effective dose without wasting pot.
ALL of my Harris/Walz friends who smoke pot are militant voters. Most of them smoked when they were young, stopped to get on with their professional lives, and picked it up again recreationally after retirement.
Performance Politics keeps dividing us. If it weren’t so disgusting, purile and terrifying, it would be just terribly sad that a once great Party would have to resort to these tactics to get Newsfeeds. We know Donald Trump needs constant praise, stroking and conspiracy theories to breathe. Hence the latest Witch of the West. Remember all the wicked monkeys?
The quote from Marianne Williamson left me gobsmacked. Wasn't she the peace and love guru who ran for the Democratic nomination years ago? When did she become bigot-friendly? Must be (and I'm assuming here) a loyalty to RFK Jr. A certain kind of human-potential guru type appears to be susceptible to the dumb mind virus.
The key to understanding MAGA (or, one of the keys - JVL is absolutely right about pro wrestling being the other) is that you have to look at it as a conspiracy theorist community, not a political movement. I know that sounds like stating the obvious at this point, but it means something specific, I and people I know have followed those communities - particularly the ones that have gathered in their various holes and corners of the internet for years before Trump brought them mainstream - for a long time, and they have a very specific culture to them that has roughly the same texture regardless of whether it's about crystal healing or aliens or Bigfoot (or Jews). And one of the very odd and unintuitive things about is that the spread of cultish and sometimes outright fascist thinking into those spaces over the past decades has been *remarkably* consistent. It doesn't happen in every group, but it seems to happen in every *type* of group. Marianne WIlliamson is only slightly removed from some of the real weirdo peace-and-love-anti-pharma-new-age-medicine folks I've seen. Her going down this track is disappointing but not surprising.
A guess about why Trump seems to be keeping Laura Loomer close.
Trump is decompensating and desperately needs to be surrounded by enthusiastic approval. Harris dealt him a giant narcissistic injury. He's likely to respond with increasingly extreme behavior. Despite the public face, Trump's Team probably can't fully hide their panic. Loomer, delusional herself, might be helping to buffer Trump from reality.
Kamala did indeed deal him a "giant narcissistic injury." I want DonOLD to go to jail, but the fact that she handed him his arse to him - Read that: Embarrassment! Humiliation! Little Man-child! - was so satisfying. Instant gratification in 90 minutes. And that's just the debate alone. The aftermath has the Monday morning media all clucking amongst themselves.
A bunch of us think there's another reason as well. Check out Charlie's Substack. Melania might be getting nervous at some of the pictures of them together.
I doubt Melania gives two shoots- probably glad to have him off her dance card. They haven't shared a bedroom for ages, rumor has it. And I'm sure her pre-nup is RTG. However, I don't see Loomer as "his type." To use his own expression.
It's likely that Team Trump is more cynical, than delusional about Trump. They understand that Trump's appeal for many of his followers have nothing to do with policy and everything to do with their identification with his winning behavior. Trump was humiliated before them at the debate, and the attachment of even a whiff of humiliation is likely to reduce his voter turnout.
This is a long way of saying the realists in Trump's camp have reason to be anxious, and may not be able to entirely hide their panic from Trump.
But Trump, as his whole history shows, desperately needs to be cocooned in approval. If Team Trump cannot provide that, maybe the completely delusional Loomer can. I don't want to even think about whatever physical comfort may be involved, but I'd bet that she's providing psychic comfort that's essential to him right now.
Fascinating what upsets Republicans about Trump during debate.
They’re not upset he told blatant, toxic lies, such as “immigrants are eating pets in Ohio,”+ “Democrats let babies be executed after birth.”
They are upset he was responsibly fact-checked on his toxic lies.
I wonder if there is a group of people who are very unlike Bulwark readers and Bulwark contributers. I am thinking about people who may not have been exposed to or paid attention to Trump's many deranged and absurd statements at rallies, in social media postings etc. But then, out of curiosity, they might have tuned in and watched the debate last Tuesday night (with the 68 million Americans who apparently did). I think they would have witnessed a very crazy, very old man frantically ranting about Haitian immigrants catching and eating cats and dogs as if his life depended on his listeners believing such a deranged absurdity. This is not a matter of spin or interpretation. That is what unfolded on a TV screen right in front of 68 million Americans. Might not an uninformed but normal person with a little common sense conclude that such a deranged man must not be the President of the United States?
What is the big deal about the statement that no active duty troops are in war zones. Technically I think they are not. They are in really dangerous parts of the world, and are under attack in some of these places.
But we could say that our school kids are also in some dangerous areas.
Seems that in the ridiculous desire to appear fair and balanced that the media has tried to equate the one comment from Harris with Trump’s addiction to pet barbecues.
Remember, the president, VEEP, senators, and Congress work for us… work for us. Would you hire Donald Trump for any job or JD Vance either?
Good grief! Not on my life! Trump was fired by us before. Let’s make it “You’re fired” twice 😎
Can’t you get arrested for hate speech? For incitement to violence. Telling people that legal immigrants are eating people’s pets, which then leads directly to bomb threats against elementary schools, surely that qualifies. The media just sits back and says oh, how terrible what Trump said. Ah well.
just watched on youtube an interview Harris just did for a local ABC affiliate in PA. A sharp contrast to her debate performance. She seems to not have prepared her answers to some basic questions. She seems to know she's not prepared, as she is very stiff and nervous. It appears that she is so scared about an upcoming question that she fails to engage simple small talk. She doesn't even use the standard "That's a good question ..." stalling tactic that is basic politics 101. The interviewer was a very friendly guy, asking simple very questions to help her with PA voters. He seemed to be trying to help her. Imagine if he was an adversarial interviewer. She was the exact opposite of Pete Buttigieg.
Who the hell is on her team to help her flesh out her policies so that she can address them comfortably!? I gotta tell ya, if she doesn't get her act together, she will start to backslide in the polls. She needs to gather her team together, and lock themselves away for two days. Flesh out her policies and practice her interview skills. Have Buttigieg participate and give her lessons. DO THIS NOW!
I took the challenge and yes, I cringed. She has to do better than regurgitated stump speech/debate soundbites. It gives you the sense that she isn't doing better because there is no there, there. Nothing behind the slogans. I came away with a similar sense of dread when I heard that H. Clinton's economic plan in 2016 included training an army of window glazers to save us from global warming. Clean energy jobs! While Clinton succeeded in being specific she also succeeded in revealing she had no flippin' idea what she was talking about. The dread I felt listening to Harris was the completely lack of specificity, other than her own life experience, but it also highlights to me that there is no one around her to fill in those blanks with substance - and with anecdotes that go beyond after-school childcare. Does no one on her team have a clue how American industry works? What a plumber or electrician does? Supply chain stuff? Tech innovation? Come on. Somebody please round out her understanding.
I didn't want to believe you were right, so I watched the interview myself. I agree with you. She looked nervous and she did not directly address the questions. Politicians like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren would be eager to jump right on that first question about bringing down the cost of living because it is entirely predictable. They would have a solid one minute answer with specifics they could tick off on their fingers. Why she doesn't is beyond me. She is clearly smart, and this doesn't really even involve thinking on your feet: these questions are 100% inevitable.
She isn't going to suddenly become Buttigieg, but she has to get better, and it has to happen now.
And I should stress that I'm a lifelong Democrat and I'm excited about her candidacy, but I want to see that she's capable of this, too. Not as a precondition for voting for her, of course. I'd crawl across hot coals to vote for a porkpie hat over Trump. I just think it's a skill that's really important for presidents, so I hope she can get better at this.
That said, let's give her a little grace. She's human. She's been practically flawless, and she must be exhausted. I'm a good teacher, but I have bad classes. I know what I want to teach and I've taught it before, but I'm off and I look and feel like a bumbler. Maybe she was just having one of those days. I imagine debate prep is exhausting. The pressure on Tuesday must have been enormous. I'd want a week at the beach, but she has to hit the hustings and do all these local media hits. Little wonder that she's trying to answer questions with fragments of her debate answers and stump speech.
But here's the thing: unfair as it is, the structural disadvantages any Democratic faces in our presidential election system mean that she has to continue to be near perfect. It's not right, and the shitgibbon she's up against is a font of disconnected , hateful nonsense and still has a floor of about 46%, which, horrifyingly, could be good enough to get him a narrow electoral college win. He can be Mario Mendoza; she has to hit like Tony Gwynn or Ted Williams.
Not fair, but that's where we are.
So one bad interview is not a big deal.
But they have to watch the tape and adjust. They can do it and she can do it.
And they have to.
What gets me is that she doesn’t have a stock sentence lined up to respond to predictable questions. Like, “I came to support fracking when I realized it was essential to energy independence and growing the economy” or “The rule of law is the bedrock of this country, including at the border, and the only immigration I support is legal immigration” I’m not asking for policy details. I’m not asking for promises. I just want her to answer the questions asked and reassure us of her common sense.
Some people are good at one on one interviews and answering questions on their feet. Some aren't. It isn't a skill one can just work up in a few days. Buttigieg is a natural and exceptional at it.
Donald Trump is fine and comfortable doing interviews where he says nothing, never really answers any questions and simply lies.
To be honest I think most people intuitively identify with the discomfort of being interviewed. It is uncomfortable to watch someone wriggling under the lights. Since most of her answers in that interview were just recaps of her talking points that were made in her CNN interview and during the debate. It's not like she was bringing anything new for people to think about.
The You-Tube video has, of course, gone viral in the right wing social media market. So viral that Trump was able to talk about it at his rally the same day and accusing her of making word salads which is ironic coming from the king of word salads.
I say if she doesn't do well in interviews just don't do them.
The first rule of politics 101 is "Do no harm."
Thoughtful analysis. Sarah Longwell has made the wise, practical point that candidates need to get a number of "reps" under their belts to feel comfortable [and thus likeable and relatable] under their belts to thrive in this environment. But in this compressed timeframe, aimed at a ridiculously small percentage of persuadable voters, who knows? insert shrug emoji.
I didn't realize that it has gone viral, I just happen to see it on my youtube recommendations, as typically I follow news channels. I don't bother to ever read any rightwing clips.
I think not doing interviews because you are bad, is really just trying to 'ride the vibe'. The problem is that you are turning what should be a race with a 65% chance of victory, into a nail bitter. It doesn't need to be this way.
Vibes are not votes. Yes, it's unfair since she has only had a number of weeks to get a fleshed out platform together. But, that just means that they have to focus some attention on it, hence my recommendation for the policy/interview, cram session. We need more votes, not necessarily more vibes.
BTW, I have a number of ideas on how she can explain things, and especially flip the script on the economic performance from a weakness into the strength it really is, or at least dull the weakness feeling enough so that voters will put their attention to what each candidate will do for (or 'to' in Trump's case) the economy. See my substack post titled "The debate, and a next debate" (yes, I know, a shameless plug)
I watched on the basis of this analysis and I agree that she was neither dynamic nor relaxed, but she was far from "bad." The standard being applied to her is indeed perfect or terrible, nothing in between. That's wrong, and the call for grace is right. Meanwhile, Trump's nonsensical and vile non-answers are absorbed as "that's just Trump", isn't it wonderful that he can just be himself?
while she only needs to be 'good enough', The problem is that this is in the eyes of the undecided swing voters, not in our eyes. I'm voting for her no matter what. But I want to her to win, and a performance like that makes it much more dicey than it needs to be.
What troubles me most is how few elected Republicans have the integrity to condemn the putrid words and actions from Trump! We need 2 honorable political parties to sustained our democratic republic, and right now we only have one: the Democratic Party!
By the way it’s not the Democrat Party —- Democrat is a noun , not an adjective. Trump consciously did this to annoy Democrats, but too many reporters, etc. have been hoodwinked by Trump and bought into the plot!
The intentional misnomer of the Democratic Party has been around since at least Newt Gingrich's term as Speaker of the House when all Republicans were instructed to always refer to the "Democrat Party." 30 years later it has become so ingrained in the culture that most reporters and even Democrats themselves have grown accustomed to the usage.
I gave up trying to educate anyone who would listen a decade ago.
Actually, it goes back even further with Joe McCarthy, the odious Wisconsin senator who lead the communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. He coined the term, "Democrat party."
In some places, I see "Demo-rat" or "Demonrat". Even "Pedo-rat". You're right of course, but I'll settle for Democrat. :-)
https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/trumps-bigoted-freaky-new-bff?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9tet7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Tim Miller is on MSNBC right now. And it's a long segment; he's been on since 6:00 PDT, talking about how Trump/Vance are openly spreading the racist lies, and expanding on it. And the scary (my word) part is that the official R party is okay with it, though it seems that Tim is also frightened by the poison of it. And talking a little about the Snake's new "girlfriend", Laura. It just ended. Go, TIM!!!!
A few comments...
1) The Trumplicants behavior vis-à-vis Springfield’s mayor et al. is just another example that they care not one whit for any collateral damage that they do. They simply don’t care. If you don’t support Trump in all of his insanity, then you deserve whatever happens to you. Here in Arizona in 2021, Rusty Bowers (Az Speaker of the House at the time) refused to go along with Giuliani’s plan to decertify the Arizona election. So those noble, decent, patriotic Trump supporters rewarded him by driving up and down his street making all kinds of racket and generally making his life miserable while his daughter was inside his house literally dying of cancer. And, of course, all of them have apologized for their disgusting behavior (not). These people have no souls.
But this isn’t a recent phenomenon for the GOP. Remember how the GOP tore apart Monica Lewinsky’s life for no other reason than they just had to “get” Clinton. Not because he was a threat to this country or its institutions (as Trump is). It was because he wasn’t on their team.
2) And now the same types of people who harassed Bowers when his daughter was dying are now harassing Nathan Clark. It matters not that he lost a child in such a tragic fashion. All that matters is that he isn’t on their team.
3) And just as night follows day, there is a conspiracy that this is really happening but the “elites” are covering it up. Just like the reason that there isn’t any evidence of voter fraud. It’s not because it didn’t happen. It’s because the conspiracy involves such high-up figures (starting with George Soros, I guess) that they are able to cover it up. In other words, the lack of evidence is itself evidence of a conspiracy.
4) When Kaitlan Collins pointed out to JD Vance that the “eating cats” story wasn’t true, Vance countered with “they’re not saying it’s not true, they’re saying they don’t have any evidence” that it is true. But that’s really all anyone can say about any claim. No one can prove a negative. To borrow an example from Collins, what if someone claims that Bigfoot is living in a basement somewhere in Springfield? Since no one can prove a negative, all anyone can say is that there’s no evidence that it’s true. Using the logic that Vance uses, I could claim that aliens are living next door to me.
And, of course, contrary to what Trump seems to believe, the number of people who believe something doesn’t affect its veracity one bit.
Critical thinking skills are in short supply on that side.
Critical thinking and feeling skills are completely gone from the Snake's party. Unless it applies to him. How DARE Harris make fun of him!
Uh, what’s a “thot”?
I used to have a pretty decent vocabulary. Not so much anymore, and even though I am indeed old, I don't think cognitive decline is the entire reason. (Thank you for asking the question, for which I now know the answer, disgusting though it may be).
I wondered as well I wasn't sure if it was a word or an acronym.
It took ages and the "Urban Dictionary" to discover the meaning of GOAT.
Being hip, slick and cool was never my forte.
The point of my comment is not one of snark nor judgement. Anytime I come across a word of which I do not know its meaning, I stop reading and look it up on my online Miriam-Webster Dictionary. That "button" is as worn out as my Google one is, however. I also check to see how it fits in the context of the sentence (syntax, of course). Have a great weekend!
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/thot
I hate that I knew this.
I just learned it by clicking your link. Yeah, worse than useless.
I wondered the same thing.
Wait, has Marianne Willamson joined the ranks of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard?
Pretty much, but she's trying to walk it back. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Marianne+Willamson
She's not doing a great job of it so far. She comes across to me as 1) one of those 'just asking questions' people, and 2) not giving a damn about real world consequences of slandering an ethnic group with no SOLID evidence. One cannot prove a negative so the default answer has to be that the rumor should be discounted unless there is conclusive evidence to the contrary. She displayed a kind of moral neutrality that is so prevalent in masters-of-the-universe types.
That is really sad. Makes me question whole swaths of the '70s peace and love human potential movement. Especially its charismatic leaders.
As someone growing up in that time, even back then, I thought they were naive children who cared only about themselves. Not to mention a whole lot of them were stoned out of their minds.
Me, too, Eva!
Operative phrase here: "...a whole lot of them were stoned..." The lot of them were essentially harmless. I was in my teens throughout the 70s. NEVER tried weed. Never cared to. The people of today have become meaner and more of a self-entitled attitude. I am not using the broad brush, because I know there are good and decent people in this country.
I was roughly 10 years older than you. Never smoked weed or anything else. (Ironic that many of those against smoking in general don't seem to have a problem with smoking weed - even in my senior community, I can smell it.) I agree that there are good and decent people - see them all the time. I just hope to God they vote! But the discouraging, frightening part is how many that I thought were respected principled people in politics have been bought by a monster named Donald Trump, including those who once despised everything he did and said. Because, as you said, many people have become meaner and more self-entitled. I keep wondering what's in the water, or in their upbringing, or what is it that makes them so cruel to others. Unless we, as a society, figure it out, even if Trump loses, we're going to continue to see people like him, like Vance.
I am in my 70s. I used pot in my teens and early 20s.
Smoking was always a very risky delivery system for THC. My own preference was pot brownies. Tasty and leaving no tell tale odors. A "radical fairy" taught me how to get the right balance of brownie to marijuana so as to deliver an effective dose without wasting pot.
ALL of my Harris/Walz friends who smoke pot are militant voters. Most of them smoked when they were young, stopped to get on with their professional lives, and picked it up again recreationally after retirement.
Performance Politics keeps dividing us. If it weren’t so disgusting, purile and terrifying, it would be just terribly sad that a once great Party would have to resort to these tactics to get Newsfeeds. We know Donald Trump needs constant praise, stroking and conspiracy theories to breathe. Hence the latest Witch of the West. Remember all the wicked monkeys?
Thanks for the excerpt from Haley Byrd Wilt! I hadn't known she'd gone to NOTUS - looking forward to reading more of her reporting on Congress.
The quote from Marianne Williamson left me gobsmacked. Wasn't she the peace and love guru who ran for the Democratic nomination years ago? When did she become bigot-friendly? Must be (and I'm assuming here) a loyalty to RFK Jr. A certain kind of human-potential guru type appears to be susceptible to the dumb mind virus.
The key to understanding MAGA (or, one of the keys - JVL is absolutely right about pro wrestling being the other) is that you have to look at it as a conspiracy theorist community, not a political movement. I know that sounds like stating the obvious at this point, but it means something specific, I and people I know have followed those communities - particularly the ones that have gathered in their various holes and corners of the internet for years before Trump brought them mainstream - for a long time, and they have a very specific culture to them that has roughly the same texture regardless of whether it's about crystal healing or aliens or Bigfoot (or Jews). And one of the very odd and unintuitive things about is that the spread of cultish and sometimes outright fascist thinking into those spaces over the past decades has been *remarkably* consistent. It doesn't happen in every group, but it seems to happen in every *type* of group. Marianne WIlliamson is only slightly removed from some of the real weirdo peace-and-love-anti-pharma-new-age-medicine folks I've seen. Her going down this track is disappointing but not surprising.
A guess about why Trump seems to be keeping Laura Loomer close.
Trump is decompensating and desperately needs to be surrounded by enthusiastic approval. Harris dealt him a giant narcissistic injury. He's likely to respond with increasingly extreme behavior. Despite the public face, Trump's Team probably can't fully hide their panic. Loomer, delusional herself, might be helping to buffer Trump from reality.
https://x.com/Photoonist/status/1834451407375925444
Kamala did indeed deal him a "giant narcissistic injury." I want DonOLD to go to jail, but the fact that she handed him his arse to him - Read that: Embarrassment! Humiliation! Little Man-child! - was so satisfying. Instant gratification in 90 minutes. And that's just the debate alone. The aftermath has the Monday morning media all clucking amongst themselves.
A bunch of us think there's another reason as well. Check out Charlie's Substack. Melania might be getting nervous at some of the pictures of them together.
I doubt Melania gives two shoots- probably glad to have him off her dance card. They haven't shared a bedroom for ages, rumor has it. And I'm sure her pre-nup is RTG. However, I don't see Loomer as "his type." To use his own expression.
Check out the photo of him and her here: https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/trumps-bigoted-freaky-new-bff?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9tet7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
She is sure showing up everywhere with him.
It's likely that Team Trump is more cynical, than delusional about Trump. They understand that Trump's appeal for many of his followers have nothing to do with policy and everything to do with their identification with his winning behavior. Trump was humiliated before them at the debate, and the attachment of even a whiff of humiliation is likely to reduce his voter turnout.
This is a long way of saying the realists in Trump's camp have reason to be anxious, and may not be able to entirely hide their panic from Trump.
But Trump, as his whole history shows, desperately needs to be cocooned in approval. If Team Trump cannot provide that, maybe the completely delusional Loomer can. I don't want to even think about whatever physical comfort may be involved, but I'd bet that she's providing psychic comfort that's essential to him right now.