This is remarkable:
The video ends with the real Stormy Daniels conversing with Alec Baldwin’s Trump. The Post’s account:
“So, what up girl?” Trump says, before finally asking, “Just tell me, what do you need for this all to go away?”
“A resignation,” Daniels shoots back, eventually saying, “I know you don’t believe in climate change, but a storm’s a’ coming, baby.”
In the 900 years or so since Trump’s inauguration, there have been so many incidents that seemed like turning points that I hesitate to point yet another one out, but I’ll do it anyway: This business with Giuliani contradicting Trump’s original story about the Stormy payoff seems significant.
There’s no reason on earth why a lie about paying off Daniels should be any kind of turning point. It’s such a small incident in the scheme of things. Trump lies all the time — the official WaPo tally tops 3,000 lies he has told as president.
Trump is prolifically and openly corrupt, and his cabinet and adviser ranks are filled with crooks, crackpots and incompetents. Trump is appalling on every level as a person — trashy, vulgar, dishonest, self-aggrandizing and small.
But my sense from following media coverage across the spectrum is that this lie about Stormy Daniels is a final straw for some of the folks in the media who drive the narrative. There’s hand-wringing about Huckabee-Sanders’ loss of credibility — as if she ever had any. And the true believers seem even more bug-shit deranged than usual, as if they too sense that they’re losing control of the narrative. A sample:
14. Here's the part I was referencing in tweet #8 Rudy petting his hand like it's a cat and saying "nice nice Hillary"
He also says she wasn't under oath and says "we'll take that" – Rudy knows that someone doesn't need to be under oath to be charged with lying to the feds. pic.twitter.com/aJo97FpxYz
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) May 6, 2018
What the actual fucking fuck? Anyway, maybe it’s just a blip. But it feels like something has shifted. What do you think?
Baud
Smokey Eye Syndrome.
debbie
That was one jam-packed skit!
Mackinnon’s Rudi confused me a bit. What was up with his left hand?
debbie
@debbie:
Even better was Update’s feature on Kanye. “Pass.”
Amir Khalid
Clicking on the SNL video got me
“The uploader has not made this video availabe in your country.”
A synopsys, please?
Bobby Thomson
I’m old enough to remember when Trump obviously wasn’t really running for president. If I had a dollar for every time this time is different I’d have a car payment.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: The Post has a pretty good synopsis.
Zinsky
Betty – I almost always agree with your posts, but this one I have to disagree with. Nothing is going to substantively change until two things change: (1) the Democrats take back control of the House and maybe the Senate in November. Then, we can use the subpoena and investigative powers of Congress to rock the Republicans back on their heels and keep them off-balance and in deep legal doo doo for several years. (Forget impeachment – if there is 1/3 of the Senate controlled by Republicans they will never, ever, ever vote to convict Trump. It won’t happen). (2). Find some balls and go full on aggressive, anti-Trump, anti-Republican information storm and propaganda campaign against these reptiles until they are a beaten, battered and disgraced rump, minority political party.
zhena gogolia
I’m exhausted from looking for turning points. I was deeply depressed by a political cartoon in the Hartford Courant that showed Justice with the scales saying to Mueller, “So you’ve decided Trump’s guilty and now you’re looking for a crime?” It was worthy of Goebbels. And I intend to call and tell them so on Monday.
ETA: To be exact, she’s saying, “Let me get this straight . . . First you want to find Trump guilty, *then* you’ll figure out what the crime is?!
RandomMonster
@Baud:
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I had no idea that was Martin Short!
Baud
@zhena gogolia: From the media that brought you EMAILS!….
Wag
I agree that something has shifted. And I agree that Stormy gets a large amount of the credit. Simple greed? The evangelicals have always been down with that. Prosperity gospel anyone? But fucking multiple porn stars and having your story shift as often as Donald’s story has? That looking less Prosperity Christ-like, and more Caligula-like. It’s a bridge too far for most
Baud
I smell sex and treason here
Who’s that lounging in my chair
Who’s that casting devious stares
In my direction
Mama this surely is a dream
Yeah mama this surely is a dream
Yeah mama this surely is a dream
Lapassionara
Wish I could agree with BC, but this time next week Trump will back out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and the press will be breathlessly reporting on his macho chest beating. Ms Daniels will be old news.
I hope I am wrong.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker: j
Thank’ee.
WereBear
Even a giant steel bridge of denial starts warping when too much traffic drives over it.
Elizabelle
Thanks Betty. It was a good SNL segment.
Makes me sad that it’s often sex-related stuff that brings a politician down. Corruption? Starting a war on false pretenses? Torture? Financial crimes? They pretty much skate.
@zhena gogolia: That’s horrible, re the Hartford Courant. They should be shamed. Gonna check it out now. Wondering if it’s a Michael Ramirez (?) cartoon …
Betty Cracker
@Zinsky: To clarify, I’m talking about a shift in media coverage, not political sentiment in congress. Could be just a blip, but the Beltway beat folks really do seem outraged that they were lied to about the payoff.
Elizabelle
@Lapassionara: I think you’ll be wrong. Stormy is not going away, and some the press corpse realized we can see what they’ve (mostly not) been doing.
Lee
I agree I think the narrative has shifted. It’s like the moment right before ‘panic mode’. They are still trying to convince themselves everything will turn out fine and they are starting to fail in that endeavor. It is aided by the fact that a few in the media are finally starting to call them on some of their bullshit.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Trump gave them a lot of material to work with.
@Lapassionara: I agree with you.
WereBear
@Lee: Enron moment (to reference a previous Betty Cracker post.)
In any criminal enterprise (and come on, this is what it is, and also, what the Republican party has been for decades) there comes a time when the benefits of turning are better than the benefits of stonewalling.
Basic game theory.
Fenix
On a related SNL note, if you haven’t seen the Childish Gambino single that Donald Glover released simultaneously last night, please do. It is painfully powerful. (I may need to caution a gun violence trigger warning?)
sdhays
You could add the clip of Neil Cavuto talking to Spanky direct from Fox News saying that he’s created his own swamp and lies all the time to this post. That seemed significant. A lot of times when someone posts a clip of Fox News letting the truth peek through, I’m left thinking, “That was some very weak tea.” But the Cavuto clip was the real deal, as much as you could ever hope to expect from a Fox News toady. That it aired at all (and wasn’t Shepherd Smith) suggests that some of the powers that be at Fox News are getting very concerned that Spanky is going to bring them all down and they need to start moving away from being “the Trump Channel”.
The whole premise of Spanky surviving is built on the continued support of conservative media. If Fox abandons him, impeachment becomes plausible (after Democrats retake Congress).
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Really? It is a primal drive. Or so Mr. Freud said.
debbie
@Lapassionara:
Yeah, but NK is now calling bullshit on Trump’s claim he’s responsible for the thaw. Patience, grasshopper.
germy
The business with drumpf dictating his clean bill of health letter to Borstein would have destroyed any other president.
The NYT would have had a shit fit if HRC had done it (something she never would have done). It would be nonstop, 24-hour news.
Elizabelle
OT, reading a very good WaPost article (Justify shakes off muddy track, wins 144th Kentucky Derby in commanding performance), and saw this reader comment:
Yeah, pretty much.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: I couldn’t find it. Does not seem to be in today’s edition.
SFAW
@germy:
They would have had a shit-fit if Bill had done it while Hillary was running. Hell, they probably would have had a shit-fit if Alex Jones accused Chelsea of doing it during Hillary’s campaign.
Fucking Pinch, and now Pinchette (or should that be pinche?), those motherfuckers have destroyed a once-great newspaper.
ETA: Yes, I know, there are still some people there who do good reporting, etc. etc. But it’s not the same NYT that went against Nixon.
NotMax
Even baby steps will eventually get one over the goal line.
debbie
@Baud:
That’s a relatively obscure one-hit wonder to be pulling out now.
different-church-lady
@germy: We gotta remember how Trump Trolls operate: the less sense he makes, the bigger the jollies. They are clearly thrilled he’s incompetent and insane, because it makes “libtard” pain all that much more intense. There’s literally nothing he can do to turn them off, because they’re all basically Andy Kaufman without the talent at this point.
Betty Cracker
@sdhays: Yes, that was pretty amazing too.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
I think it says “Summers.” The guy is a terrible draughtsman on top of everything else.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
No, it was Friday. I just got around to reading it last night.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Stormy Daniels Crashes SNL to Taunt Trump: ‘A Storm’s a-Comin’, Baby’
germy
Cooley Law School motto:
“The spirit of the law is in the human heart”.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I am unfamiliar with that newspaper, but can you be sure they weren’t being snarky?
SFAW
@debbie:
What’s worse (for me) is that, for some reason, I thought it was a Nirvana song. I’m too effing old for this, I guess.
Got any Snooky Lanson songs? How about Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald?
p.a.
Disagree, BC. Wish I didn’t. Fascists overlook everything w respect to keeping power. They only turn on those Dear Leader tells them to. Donnie ain’t firing himself. Election may change things, but first I think we’ll see massive vote suppression attempts and irregularities, and even if unsuccessful and there’s a blue wave, Donnie won’t get dumped quickly: his pig people core of support will be needed as the base of the next zombie Rethug incarnation.
MagdaInBlack
@zhena gogolia:
That would be a response to that judges Friday decision regarding Manafort. I expected the Trumpers to grab on to that.
MomSense
The thing about l’affaire Stormy is that it is something that the majority of journalists (aka the idiots) can actually understand. Their eyes seem to glaze over at emoluments, and the democracy threatening serious matters but they do understand paying hush money to a porn star to keep the sordid details quiet before an election.
Will it mean anything changes before we hopefully elect Democrats to the house and senate? That is a much tougher question to answer.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
I would like to ask them why this lie is different from all the other lies.
sdhays
@germy: What makes it even more damning is that all you have to do is read the damn thing and know that that’s what happened. Bornstein admitting it is an important data point, but it’s not a revelation in any sense.
The press corpse laughed at it and then accepted that Spanky had “checked the box” on establishing his medical health and moved on. No other candidate could have gotten away with that absurd brush off, and then they had the audacity to actually make “Hillary’s dying!!11!!” a meme of the week, even though we practically had her blood pressure stats minute to minute.
Oh, but Hillary should have pitched a tent in Ann Arbor so it’s not their fault.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Exactly. This man has lied practically every day since the late 1970s. At least now his age and mental decline have made those lies more obvious and pathetic.
Elizabelle
@SFAW: Yeah. I think the rot is due to one Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. — “Pinch” — who presided from 1992 (GHWB in office) through 2017. Called Pinch to differentiate from his father, “Punch”, who was a far better man. Pinch’s son A.G. (for Arthur Gregg, aged 37) at the helm now as of January 1 this year; Pinch is still chairman of the NYT Company. But he did immeasurable damage.
Here’s the announcement. A.G. Sulzberger, 37, to Take Over as New York Times Publisher. Interestingly, mentions the Jayson Blair scandal, but you will find not one word of Judith Miller. They didn’t allow reader comments on this one either. Cowards.
Schlemazel
I’ll perform my function as the little black ray of dark shine and tell you this is no more a turning point than any of the last 471 days. It won’t shake his base or the GOP Congress. The GOP Congress won’t abandon him until his base does (and that aint happening because they have gone insane on Faux news and squawk radio propaganda). We are going to have to wait for Mueller and even then we need to work for the largest blue wave possible. Don’t just say you support the local Dems, don’t just drop $50 in the pot for them. Get out & make calls or drop literature, talk to folks and find people who want to vote but need help registering or finding a way to the polls and help them do those things.
Don’t count on human decency to save us because they have none
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
And their outrage is generally short-lived. Remember during the campaign when Trump kept them waiting for some large amount of time for a speech that was supposed to deal with policy, and ended up being yet-another “stay at Trump Hotels!” (or some such) pitch? The MSM was OUTRAGED I TELL YOU about being played (yet again). That “outrage” had the half-life of a mayfly.
So I am less than sanguine that this will be anything more than a 10-day blip. But I guess that’s just me being a cynical, doomsaying asshole.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Friday. I’ll see if I can find a digital link. Not that good with that sort of stuff …
Baud
@germy:
They would have just pretended she did.
germy
A hot take:
Another take:
GregB
The only thing that might dent some of the Trump zombies would be a Lonesome Rhodes moment where Trump is caught telling someone how ignorant and gullible his followers are.
Though with all the stories about the mimicking video technology I would assume they would seek refuge in screaming fake news.
I watched Kellyann Goebbels on Tapper for long enough to scream at the TV. Trained and ruthless liars and amoral sociopaths.
germy
@Baud: “The liar Gore claimed he invented the internet. Can you imagine?”
Johnnybuck
@Elizabelle:
Eh, we live in a tabloid world, sex, affairs, payoffs, people can understand that. It’s a lot easier to make judgements on a person’s character in a sex scandal than a political one. It’s easy for the press too.
BruceFromOhio
Enough people in positions of power and influence are benefiting from this horrific status quo, and so it will stay horrific until Trump is no longer president.
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
Yes, I am quite aware of all that. I had hoped that Pinche would be more like his grandfather than like his father, but from what I’ve seen since he took over, I think he may be worse.
SFAW
@germy:
Russian bots everywhere.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
There is a web site that carries a series of editorial cartoons every day, http://editorialcartoonists.com/
I can tell you that cartoons like that are a nearly everyday thing in papers across the country
germy
@sdhays:
Definitely. I believe there were even a bunch of threads here mocking the doctor’s note. It was obviously trumpspeak. And the villagers giggled, then moved on.
And he was well known for it, going back decades! The calls to journalists, pretending to be his own publicist. And letters like this:
germy
@SFAW: She’s not a bot. Just a college professor with opinions and numerous blind spots.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@MomSense: That’s my sense of it too. The stuff Mueller is investigating feels murky to most people. But cheating on his wife (with a new baby at home) with an adult film actress, then paying her off, and lying about it–that people understand.
ETA: Plus Avenatti is brilliant at keeping this in the news, and in Stormy, Trump has met his match in more ways than one.
marv
You were right very early on, BC, as I recall, about Parkland feeling different. I think you may be right with this one too.
sdhays
@germy: I can’t take anybody seriously who writes that the Mueller investigation is “continuing into infinity and looks quite pointless at this time” when it’s only been a year and several people in the President*’s campaign have already been indicted and the stories coming out of the White House keep shifting.
Steve in the ATL
@germy: is Cooley still the worst law school in the country (no offense, baud) it did one of these fly by night operations that sprung up in the 00’s take the title?
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Forgot to add:
מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה
מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת
Baud
@Steve in the ATL: None taken. I unfortunately couldn’t get into Cooley.
sdhays
@germy: But they don’t deserve to be mocked at their “prom”!
germy
@Steve in the ATL:
wikipedia:
WereBear
Brilliant! Performance art… without the art.
SFAW
@germy:
You are a generous soul.
One wonders if she teaches at Upper Lower Junior College, or perhaps Cooley Law School. Or perhaps Fantasy U?
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@sdhays: I look at Trump, Giuliani, Dershowitz, Bornstein, etc and I think, holy cow, demented old white guys are running the world and it’s not good.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: Didn’t ABL once use the Twitter handle Imani “I smell sex and” Gandy?
germy
@SFAW: That’s the sad part. That she’s an educator. Our young people deserve better.
Betty Cracker
Giuliani just concluded another disastrous media appearance, this time on the George Stephanopoulos Sunday show. Stormy’s lawyer sums it up:
Matt McIrvin
… I don’t buy that any narrative is shifting, myself. There are at least two narratives. The Trumpist one is driven by Fox News and this Fox you cannot change. Everyone else has already sort of priced in that Trump is a totally corrupt liar and either they just sort of accept it with a shrug or they don’t.
I know I sound like a broken record here, but Trump’s popularity is slowly rising, not falling. That’s former never-Trump conservatives deciding they’re OK with everything as long as they get their tax cuts. I don’t see that turning around. The people themselves have been corrupted in a way they weren’t during Watergate.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: More like Brain Dead Syndrome which would explain why the MSM just figured out that SHS is a Stone cold liar. That’s something the rest of us figured out from day one.
Juice Box
@different-church-lady: The Trump trolls hate the United States. Putting a buffoon into the leadership role is success for them. They’ve been trying to cripple the Union government for 150+ years.
Baud
@germy: Sounds like someone who follows GG’s twitter.
Mike in NC
CBS Sunday Morning is fluffing Nikki Haley, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
germy
@Mike in NC: The villagers want her to be the First Female President.
They’ve been building a narrative about her for some time now.
mai naem mobile
Don’t overlook the fact that Stormy Daniel is like a D list celebrity with the memorable scenes in 40 Yr Old Virgin and Knocked Up.
I just channel surfed to FOX and saw that Moscow Maria is on. Wonder what excuse she’s going to come up for Dolt45 today?
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Bookmarked. This almost makes me miss the days of Watergate and Paul Szep’s political cartoons in the Boston Globe. He was brutal.
schrodingers_cat
Some folks supposedly on our side are trying to rehash the last 10 years to show how Obama and the Ds have failed them, while T continues his ethnic cleansing campaign which for now has been mainly bureaucratic with some ICE and CBP heavy handedness thrown in.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
Other than the billionaires, I don’t think many of the never-Trumpers are old enough to have lived through Watergate (at least among the ones I know).
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
She does look good compared to the rest of the clown car. That is a very low bar and CBS is making the most of it
germy
This person thinks he might have been targeted. Interesting thread.
Baud
Regardless of whether there has been a shift, our task is the same.
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
I seem to remember that from my childhood as a “shame on you” gesture, which Giuliani was apparently directing at Hillary. Yes, it does look weird.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I think we will find out who threatened Stormy and her daughter very soon, as well.
germy
So Giuliani and Avenatti were sitting together in George’s ABC green room?
If so, there should have been a camera.
“My issue is getting up to speed on the facts here,” he told ABC host George Stephanopoulos. “I’m about halfway there.”
The bar is indeed low for wealthy old white men.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes the task remains to defeat Rs at the polls this November. Building castles in the air about how to bring about a socialist utopia and blaming Ds for not being perfect is not going to do that.
Suzanne
I don’t think this is a turning point, because I don’t think there will be any turns. Liberals will control culture at large, conservatives will mostly hang on to government, and this will be how we live our lives.
debbie
@germy:
Did you see Avenatti on Colbert? LIke the cat who swallowed a billion canaries.
Van Buren
When I think about how involved Cohen, and by extension, Trump, is with unsavory characters, and how much the MSM has soft peddled all this, it makes me wonder how involved the MSM is with the same gentlemen.
satby
@germy: who the fuck is Clarissa and why would we give a shit about her “hot take”? I would venture to guess her influence is zero.
germy
@debbie: I haven’t seen the Colbert appearance yet.
I’m guessing he scares the crap out of Cohen. And what happened to Mr. Schwartz? He did some TV, then disappeared.
Jymn
With Dersh and Giuliani going off the rails on TV the last few days, the desperation is becoming more and more palpable. There’s victory to be had but are the Dems smart enough to capitalize? I doubt it. As for the media, there is still too much Haberman-style reverence for the office of the president for the media to truly respond with the kind of searing observations that are needed to make change truly happen.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Your memory is far better than mine! Google Images was no help, but I did find this of his “very good friend”; I guess odd hand gestures are a condition of friendship.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It was the way trump reacted to the drawing (“a person that doesn’t exist!”) that convinced me that not only did it happen, but trump knew it happened, recognized the guy, and knew he did it. And has done it before.
Forgot random capitalization: “A Person that Does NOT eXist! No Collusion! Expect by Dem Dems!”
Doug R
@Amir Khalid:
As a resident of Canuckistan, I am familiar with the geoblock-try this link-it’s from the Canadian network that broadcasts SNL here: https://globalnews.ca/video/4190020/a-storms-a-coming-baby-stormy-daniels-makes-surprise-guest-appearance-on-snl-cold-open
debbie
@germy:
He should terrify him; he’s a much, much better attorney. Though I probably am too.
sdhays
@germy: Avenatti’s a real lawyer, and Cohen’s used to dealing with rats like himself. He should be terrified.
Regarding Schwartz – I think Avenatti mentions the same thing in the Colbert interview (it could be that Colbert mentions it, now that I think about it).
Aimai
@Amir Khalid: he is patting his own hand as though it is the press patting hillary because she is so favored and fragile.
debbie
@germy:
For when you have time. I never stay up past his monologue, but I’m glad I made this one exception.
Suzanne
@debbie: Avenatti is exceedingly hot. Just saying.
Mmmmm.
germy
@debbie: Thank you for the link.
schrodingers_cat
@Van Buren: I wouldn’t be surprised if there are mutually beneficial shady connections between T and NYT.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: @Doug R: can you use a VPN to change your location to avoid these restrictions? Or am I hopelessly naïve about IT matters?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne:
If conservatives hang on to government, there won’t be a liberal culture; they will outlaw it.
germy
@Aimai: The hand patting motion is the “investigation” (his scare quotes) Hillary got. Brief testimony, not under oath, etc. He’s suggesting she was treated gently. He even goes on to say “We want the Hillary treatment!”
Damn, I would love drumpf and rudy to get the “Hillary treatment” because they’d never survive it.
sdhays
@Steve in the ATL: Actually, you can pretty easily. Opera has that capability built in. I actually used it for just that purpose when I was in KL last year.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@germy: Eleven hours of testimony. I can’t even imagine it.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: How is your wife doing? I read the late night post and saw your comment.
Steve in the ATL
@germy: Hillary testified under oath, in public, for 11 hours. What he wants is the George W. Bush treatment.
Jeff
Same shit. Different day.
debbie
@Suzanne:
He does have an incredible energy about him.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Steve in the ATL: It occurs to me he might be saying she never testified to the FBI under oath. Even if that’s true (and it may be, I don’t know), it doesn’t matter. Lying to a federal investigator is a crime even if you’re not under oath.
rikyrah
Rudy with George Stephanopoulos this morning??
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/993133919628341248?s=20
Steve in the ATL
@JPL: no change. Exploratory surgery this afternoon, hopefully to find and fix whatever they neither found nor fixed during Monday’s exploratory surgery. She’s been in on a dilaudid drip since Monday, so I’m worried about how long it will take her brain to bounce back after they do fix her.
Quinerly is off the hook, though, as I won’t be going to St. Louis tomorrow.
The once nice thing is that SiubhanDuinne’s local is next to the hospital so I’ve been able to pop over to the pub every day for a dose of vino and witty conversation.
sdhays
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It should become a meme: #IfTrumpHadTheHillaryTreatment.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne: serious question: would you have any qualms about dating a lawyer who represents porn stars?
Cheryl from Maryland
@Baud: Marcy Playground. Especially appropriate since in the 1990’s the local alternative radio station used it for Bill Clinton.
Amir Khalid
@Aimai:
That does make more sense than my read.
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
Best wishes for your wife and for success with the exploratory. May it be the last one.
Steve in the ATL
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): perhaps so. It’s reasonable that she didn’t, of course, since there is no evidence that she came anywhere nea committing any kind of crime. Unlike certain other persons….
Steve in the ATL
@debbie: thank you! I really wish we were back at Mayo; I suspect they would have straightened this out days ago.
trnc
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I think the question some enterprising journalist (or unicorn) needs to ask anyone who makes the “not under oath” claim needs to be asked how often the FBI puts ANYONE under oath for an interview. My guess is rarely or not at all, since lying to law enforcement is a crime without being under oath.
ETA: Ah, found this from:
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/12/factchecking-trumps-criticism-fbi/
“I’ve never seen an agent put someone under oath — that’s just not how it operates,” said Michael J. Clark, a special agent for 22 years who now teaches criminal justice at the University of New Haven.
Luke William Hunt, a former FBI agent who teaches criminal justice at Radford University, referred us to the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, a 258-page manual that details the agency’s intelligence-gathering rules. It makes no reference to placing witnesses, subjects or targets of investigations under oath.
In an email, Hunt told us that “FBI interviews (which ‘may become the subject of court testimony’) are recorded on the ‘FD-302’ form. This simply contains a ‘record of statements made by the interviewee.’”
germy
The vice president’s brother is running for office.
germy
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On Morning Joy, they just showed a clip of Rudi Giuliani implying that Stormy Daniels had undercut her credibility by appearing on Saturday Night Live. Huh. How about that.
ETA: I’m glad there’s at least one more live episode, I have a feeling they may have a bit of fun with those old clips
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: Well it sounds like you are in good hands with SD. I’ll be thinking about you and your wife.
sdhays
@germy:
Spanky’s solved Middle East Peace while we (and he) weren’t even paying attention! Nobel Prize please!
Brachiator
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
This is the same media that is butt hurt over being called out for their servile ass kissing by Michelle Wolf.
Still, I loved the cameo packed cold open. Stormy Daniels was a beautiful touch. I hope Trump chokes on it.
Rob Schneider can choke on it, too.
ETA. Just getting up on this lazy California Sunday. Was glad to see a nod to SNL. The open wasn’t the funniest ever, but loved how it mocked the hell out of Trump and his vile gang of weasels.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Last summer, they ran half-hour News Updates because there was so much stuff going on. I hope they plan to do the same this summer.
Amir Khalid
@sdhays:
Does it cost money? My new guitar habit is rather costly.
Feebog
Ghoulliani is being interviewed by George Stepenopouls right now. Holy cats what a moron.
Baud
@germy: Papa Smokey Eyes!
MagdaInBlack
@Steve in the ATL:
Why would it matter?
Amir Khalid
@Doug R:
Your suggestion worked. Many thanks.
Brachiator
@Steve in the ATL:
Just saw this thing about your wife. Sincerely hope that everything turns out well.
Suzanne
@Steve in the ATL:
No. Just like I wouldn’t have qualms about dating a doctor who treated a porn star. I would have qualms dating someone who helped anyone do shady things, but representing a porn star in a legal matter doesn’t strike me as disqualifying.
Amir Khalid
@Feebog:
If Trump’s other lawyers had any sense, they’d have told Giuliani to quit doing any more TV.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Feebog: Apparently Stephenopoulus asked him if Cohen paid off other women too and Giuliani said he didn’t know for sure but thought that had probably been necessary.
Suzanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nah. Every single mainstream media product (movies, TV, advertising, social media, music, etc) supports the liberal worldview. We have all of the cultural influence.
Mandalay
@germy: That Guardian story on Trump seeking dirt on Obama officials may well be true, but it provided no evidence at all to back up any of its claims. It described “incendiary documents”, but didn’t show them, and as for “Sources said….” – meh.
But it’s interesting to see that our court stenographer was very quick to make the same point:
I’ve never seen her do that when she parrots bullshit fed to her from “sources” in the Administration.
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Rudy is helping Trump’s defence the way a mouse “repairs” a pumpkin. (Malay simile that I was taught in school, but have never seen used in real life.)
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): BI: Bannon said Trump’s fixers took care of 100 women (from January):
An awful lot of the “news” these days has a déjà vu quality to it… :-/ I can’t wait for summer.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who still has no plans to read Wolff’s book…)
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: I must have missed the thread, but I didn’t know that your wife was ill. Wishing you and her all the best of luck. Hoping for a definitive diagnosis and effective treatment.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think we’ve seen everything worth seeing, and maybe a bit more. I learned my lesson with Kitty Kelly’s Bush book. Spite will get me through about a hundred pages of boring, and doesn’t knock anything off the price of a hardback.
Yarrow
@Steve in the ATL: I must have missed earlier posts because I only just saw your wife was in the hospital yesterday. I’m so sorry to hear that and also that she’s dealing with an issue that requires more than one exploratory surgery. I hope they find something that can be easily treated and she gets to go home soon. Sending good thoughts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
another update from watching Morning Joy: Kanye talking about his bitterness toward Obama and support for trump reminds me of the stories about Sinatra turning Republican because JFK didn’t invite him to the White House
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Interesting. I’m not sure that this is the case. I see a lot of conservatives who are simply loyal to the Republican Party, no matter who is in office. They overlook Trump’s problems and magnify his achievements. They also hate the Democrats, so they got nowhere to go.
A recent CNN story mentioned how about 500 people surveyed said they were not seeing significant gains from the Trump tax cuts. So again, Trump supporters have to deny the reality of their own lives in order to rationalize why they keep on hanging on.
Uncle Ebeneezer
Here’s the Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) video mentioned above:
CN: graphic, gun violence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY
Gin & Tonic
I’ll just pop in for a moment to say how refreshing it is to spend time in a country where it’s not 24×7 Trump bullshit.
Enjoying a very leisurely late lunch/early dinner in the sun at Vaxholm harbor. Will be boarding a boat to sail the archipelago shortly. Spring has arrived here.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Uh, no. Sinatra and JFK had a relationship and Sinatra had stumped hard for the Democrats. Kennedy family brother in law Peter Lawford was a member of the Rat Pack.
Kanye is just a jackass with mental problems.
Shell
There are still public pay phones?
Uncle Cosmo
@Feebog: Ghouliani (in drag, Julie-Annie), America’s Goombah. Since Scumbag Scalia bought his Sicilian pea farm, the #1 embarrassment to any Italian-American with an IQ over 80 who’s not up to his/her neck in the Mob. (I speak as one.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: Uh, okay.
Another Scott
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Thanks for the pointer.
Here are the lyrics.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat: Mexico Slim, mebbe?
According to Bloomberg, Slim became the largest shareholder of FTNYT in 2015:
Carlos Slim plans to Slash NYT Holdings
Don’t know Slim’s politics.
Yarrow
@debbie:
I loved that. Michael Che’s face said it all.
Platonailedit
This corruptest thug was built and elected by the corrupt media. They are never gonna save the libruls’ asses. The day the left doesn’t need to be coddled & herded like cattle to voting booths is the day they will win back anything.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know this story. So, the fallout between the two had nothing to do with the lack of a White House sleepover.
Sinatra and JFK had a relationship. Obama and Kanye had none. Kanye is a jackass with mental problems.
mozzerb
@Amir Khalid: If Trump’s other lawyers had any sense, they wouldn’t be Trump’s other lawyers.
Elizabelle
@debbie: Yeah, I did not like the Rudi hand gesture either. Too inside baseball, whatever it means, and the visual distracts from what he’s saying.
You wonder “is SNL trying to build sympathy for Rudi by pretending he is physically disabled? What’s that all about?”
Did not recognize Rudi was played by a female, though. LOL. Shades of Spicey.
Elizabelle
@Platonailedit: I think we need to undo the media ownership in this country. It’s too concentrated, controlled by conservatives, and it shows.
debit
@Platonailedit: Mmmmm, pie.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: I have a travel question, if one is traveling to Bali and Singapore, would it be better to carry some extra cash in the local currency or $$?
Amir Khalid
@mozzerb:
True.
No Drought No More
Politico has this to say about Rudy G. and Jared K. “But his mention of the president’s son-in-law, who has been keeping a low profile in recent months, working on prison reform issues, was one of the comments he made on television that had White House aides watching his appearance on Hannity with mouths agape”.
Working on prison reform issues? Before he straightens out the mideast? Does he know how much money the United States stands to save once peace blossoms like a thousand lotus flowers over there? It’s enough to make me wonder if Kushner indeed erred when he counseled Pops to fire Comey.
cleosmom
@GregB: Well, Trump did say that he “loves the uneducated.” It’s only a matter of time before the grand entrance of popular pressure to replace “illiterate” with “member of the non-reading community.”
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Kate McKinnon has done many male impersonations. I think her first was Justin Bieber. Her Jeff Sessions is priceless! “Ah’m a grateful ‘lil possum!”
schrodingers_cat
@Dev Null: I was thinking about some local NYC real estate connection.
Steve in the ATL
Thanks, everyone—perhaps now the wife won’t think I spend too much time on Balloon Juice!
(And thanks SuibhanDuinne for your kind offer to pop over and add wine to her IV)
bluefish
I’m with you in thinking the current has changed course — slightly but significantly. For the reasons you state. Sooner or later we come to critical mass moments. Giuliani just gets in front of a camera and channels all the toxicity.
@Platonailedit
Plus, really, the left needing to be coddled and herded like cattle — to vote? It’s as though the current kingdom thrives on these sorts of fairy tales. If only the right hand had any real comprehension of what the left hand does. As a lament, not an expectation, ever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: Uh, okay.
Uh, I made a minor error in an offhand comment on the 10,000th-ranked political blog on the internet.
Uh, you win?
Uh, congratulations.
PIGL
@Matt McIrvin: this. The corruptible amongst electorate are corrupted; they are no more than an army of trolls, dim witted but full of malice withall. It’s happening around the Anglosphere, Fuelled by a Handful of spectacularly evil billionaires.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: Enjoy! Cruising around the harbor in Spring in Stockholm. Not shabby.
Ruviana
@Dev Null: Seems to me that Slim may be further distancing himself from Trump and his impact. Mr. Google tells me Slim has done various things to oppose Trump as far back as the presidential campaign.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Like Michael Che said about Kanye. Pass.
cleosmom
@Brachiator: Just remember the general rule: no pessimist is ever, ever, EVER “happy to be proven wrong.”
VOR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Wolff book was not boring. My take-away after reading was that the whole was worse than the excerpts made it sound.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Any time! Just say the word.
I do hope all goes well today. Just knowing something definitive would be a big relief. Any way the hospital can do a distance consultation with the specialists at Mayo?
Radiumgirl
@sdhays: Wholeheartedly agree. Critical editorials in the WSJ and the Neal Cavuto piece is very interesting from that perspective. A lot of Trump worship is predicated on people getting their information from only one source. If the coverage of Trump starts to turn at Fox, he may lose enough of his base to make a difference.
James Powell
I don’t really see anything with Stormy Daniels as a turning point. I see it more as another story that will dazzle the press/media and distract from the serious, long term damage that Trump and the Republicans are doing to the nation.
And the only change I’ve noticed over the past two weeks – at least as reported on 538 – is that Trump’s approval/disapproval numbers have improved slightly. I can’t explain why, I don’t get how he ever got more than the 27%, but I do know that an election is coming up and the Democratic Party doesn’t seem like it’s ready to exploit the situation. Their voters are ready, but I’m not seeing or hearing anything from them that looks like a winning strategy.
MattF
It’s unlikely that Trump will ever back down. He’s already made so many utterly delusional assertions that everyone has lost count. “Well, I’ll retract the one about being the healthiest person who as ever been President, but not anything about Stormy”. Not gonna happen. OTOH, Rudy is succeeding in making everything worse, if you can imagine that. But the rational response is to opt out.
And about the SNL opening sequence, I thought the Melania “asking for a friend” sub-segment was quite funny.
Brachiator
@debbie:
She is a comedy national treasure. At first I didn’t recognize her as Rudy G in the SNL open. But there is something about her sly smile, no matter how much face altering make up they use.
debbie
@Brachiator:
It took me awhile too. Even worse, I spent more time than I should admit to trying to figure out which cast member was playing Stormy.
afanasia
@Suzanne: Absolutely
Brachiator
@James Powell:
Maybe they are waiting until after Summer, closer to the actual midterms?
I would think that the Democrats could beat the GOP to a pulp just over health care and the tax cuts. We will see what happens.
Brachiator
@debbie:
That’s funny.
She seemed to be having a good time.
Baud
@MattF: I liked that the best too.
Kelly
The Dr. Bornstein letter was so plainly written in Trump’s voice. I wonder if Dr. Bornstein left it like that and signed it sorta like hostages blinking Morse code whilst confessing to crimes on propaganda videos.
Baud
@Brachiator: Still in primary season.
Sister Golden Bear
@Brachiator: IIRC, the stats I’ve seen are that Trump’s approval is trending upwards with Republicans — but those stories fail to note that the number of people identifying as Republicans is simultaneously dropping.
We’ll see if the trend continues until Dear Leader gets 100% from the 27%.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne:
MmmmHmmm ?
Brachiator
@Baud:
Tell me about it. The California primary materials are like a huge, heavy novel. And I think 100 people are running for governor.
Elizabelle
@Kelly: That’s what I think. Bornstein has a medical license to protect. As does Ronny Jackson, currently an Admiral. Will be interesting to see what happens with those physicians.
Elizabelle
@MattF: Yeah. I loved how Melania periscoped up and down. Very effective.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Liberal media culture is a millimeter thick. If they think bigotry is better for their bottom line they’ll embrace it in one second.
Baud
@Brachiator: “It was a dark and stormy nation…”
Kathleen
@Suzanne: A few of us wimminz were fan girling over him on Twitter.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
That’s just sad. And weird. It’s like nothing he does can shake their faith in him.
This is a very hopeful sign. I also hope he is losing with swing voters who may not be registered Republicans, but sometimes vote that way.
Wild Cat
@Feebog: Which one?
Kelly
@Elizabelle:It feels like Bornstein was waiting for his moment to make a break for it. All the leaks from Trumpworld suggest many others are watching the exits.
Kathleen
@Steve in the ATL: I hope all goes well for you and your wife and that you get some answers.
Wild Cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Or a schmuck like Marxist Christ Brother Cornell West.
JR
Was that Bob Odenkirk as Bornstein? Sure looked/sounded like him. That might be the first time Stiller and Odenkirk worked together since The Ben Stiller Show way back in the earlier nineties.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
Yes!
Loved the hat, too. Well done visual gag.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It reminded me of that weird Megyn Kelly story about the strange driver who gave her coffee causing her sudden intestinal distress. That sure seemed like a warning to ease up on the trump criticism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JR: I think it was Martin Short. I didn’t recognize him at all.
It occurred to me when Stiller entered to wild applause that he was fired from SNL years ago
(Uh, no, his departure was a mutual decision between Stiller and Lorne Michaels…)
ETA: @MomSense: holy god, I never heard that. I wouldn’t put anything past that crew, especially if Ailes was still around
Ruckus
@Zinsky:
@Betty Cracker:
The media has enabled drumpf from the get go. Enabled may be way too polite a word here. It gave him coverage with a tremendous number of his not totally in the bag followers, people who didn’t really know who he was but heard a lot of crap about HRC. We know that there is a percentage who voted for him as an against HRC vote. They didn’t really see all the crap, the extremely racist stuff, the bluster, the bullshit. I know because I work with some of them. Only one out of 4 saw that and he was giddy about being able to elect a complete ass and absolutely not a strong woman. They are now seeing the horror that is drumpf, the massively incompetent ass that they voted for.
The change in the media is what is showing them that. It’s the first step to changing the minds of enough people, to get them to see what we, and 63 million of our friends saw 16 months ago. This is what, unfortunately, it takes to change the views of lazy people. It’s not like the info wasn’t out there, a lot of us saw it. I saw somewhere that the last 4 republican presidents didn’t win the popular vote but got elected in spite of it. GWB didn’t even actually win the electoral college vote in the end. But he was president anyway, to the detriment of every one of us. drumpf won by what 80K votes, out of 120+ million. Had we swayed those 80k votes, we wouldn’t be in this mess. And that’s on the media and those 60 million who voted for this ass. You know that 30 million are always going to vote for the worst ass possible, but that 30M doesn’t put that ass in the WH.
We don’t have to sway even 30M but just a few hundred thousand to easily change history for the better.
Shana
@JR: Martin Short was Bornstein.
germy
@Shana: Mike Myers did a nice Bornstein imitation on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last Wednesday.
Gelfling 545
@debbie: Yes, but rarely is it the worst thing they’ve done. With sexual matters, unless it’s abuse, yeah, he’s a jerk; so are others. But corruption, torture, colluding with foreign governments to subvert an election, starting wars under false pretenses, really should be seen as more serious. Shows that our media and way too many of our voters are still teenagers in their minds.
FlipYrWhig
@James Powell:
Am I just obtuse or something? Because I have no idea what a “winning strategy” is supposed to look like. What was the “winning strategy” for Ralph Northam? He won, right, but what was the strategy? I think we collectively over-interpret things that happen by ret-conning them as “strategies.”
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Matt McIrvin:
Maybe, but not enough to numerically matter. As Sister Golden Bear notes, the numbers of registered Republicans is dropping; they’re being reduced to dead-enders
Sister Golden Bear
@Brachiator: it’s moe a case that the only the hard core deadenders — who support Twitler regardless — are continuing to identify as Republicans, so that’s pushing up his approval rates among Republicans.
The Republicans who don’t support him anymore are frequently not self-identifying as Republicans these days. Although I have no doubt many of them will return to the party when Lord Tiny Fingers is gone.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: adding my good wishes for a successful treatment and speedy recovery to your wife, and hopes that the exploratory surgery can discover the problem without further delay.
James Powell
@FlipYrWhig:
You might be right, we will see. But it always seems like the Republicans run one coordinated and endlessly repeated message for each election, while the Democrats run several different campaigns that don’t necessarily go well together. I’m certain that you know this.
2006 was a very good year. What powered the Democrats that year? Iraq weariness, Katrina, Bush’s grab at social security, general Bush fatigue? What am I forgetting?
What do we have this year? What’s the big reason for our voters to go out and vote? Trump isn’t on the ballot, but his argument – the Republican theme for the last 40 years – that they are fighting for the preservation of white supremacy at home and abroad is still enough to get his people out. And let’s be clear. The press/media do not want Trump to lose. They want him in the game and fighting because that is what is getting them the eyes, ear, and clicks.
I’d really like to see a Democrat or three step forward and start hammering messages that they need to get out and vote Democrat because [most people have no idea what goes here]. I’d like to see that blank filled in.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@James Powell:
It’s apparently enough to get our people out too, only in opposition to that message, as evidenced over the last several special elections.
B.B.A.
@zhena gogolia: It’s how Republicans have treated Hillary for decades. Sauce for the goose…
@James Powell: Oddly, their message for this fall is going back to the old reliable “Hillary’s a c*nt.” She’s not on the ballot, but that doesn’t mean they still can’t run against her.
rikyrah
@Steve in the ATL:
Sending your wife positive thoughts and prayers ??
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James Powell: I keep going back to Conor Lamb. The Village portrayed that race as a contest between Trump and Pelosi. Lamb himself talked a whole lot about Social Security, the social safety net in general. When he gave his (low-key) victory speech, he didn’t get up and talk about how he was gonna go vote against Pelosi, he talked about Social Security and FDR. Trump won the nomination and the electoral college in no small part (IMHO) because he kept promising he wasn’t gonna touch the social safety net, in fact he was going to expand it (of course he didn’t know he was saying this) by fixing health care– something terrific, it’s gonna be easy, believe me. I think this is the Dems’ winning message. And to their credit, they’re trying to talk about those things.
Matt Yglesias was responding to some Village chatter about this the other day, that “the Dems” are making a mistake by focusing on Daniels, because the MSNBC (etc) schedulers and producers are, apparently, ‘the Dems’
Neldob
We can all see him accusing others of crimes loudly and very entertainingly, sort of the Rickles of politics, dancing around and making a spectacle while the Republicans are not being either patriotic nor family values. They are in it for the money, Mitch Mconnell is the worst.
You are either the resistance or a collaborator. We did not choose to be in this war with what is supposed to be a loyal opposition; but they are not a loyal opposition. (hat tip to Masha Gessen) If only the New York Times could see this, and Fox News and CNN etc.
Brachiator
@James Powell:
Many of the news stories I see point out how disorganized the GOP is, a problem magnified by Trump’s inconsistency and inability to stay on message.
Again, the two big issues are health care and the tax cut giveaway. Don’t you remember Republicans running away from their constituents, ducking town hall meetings? There have been stories that the GOP is trying to quietly back away from their phone repeal and replace promises.
Someone here suggested that the Democrats need an Obamacare fix that they can introduce into Congress on day one. I don’t know if an actual plan is necessary, but the Democrats need to show that they have this covered.
The Democrats should be able to beat the shit out of the Republicans on health care and the tax cuts.
For example
This shit ain’t that difficult.
Elizabelle
@James Powell:
Seriously? Now you are just fucking with us.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Also, “the other guys suck” has worked out extremely well for Republicans time and time again. For some reason the media and the online left frowns at this when Democrats do it.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: LOCAL REPUBLICAN is a tool of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is mindbogglingly corrupt and incompetent and doesn’t care about you or the country. Show Donald Trump that LOCAL DISTRICT is better than that. LOCAL DISTRICT can’t afford LOCAL REPUBLICAN.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good observation about right wing manipulation. Wasn’t there some infamous story about some Midwestern guy who said Hillary made a mistake talking about transgender bathroom issues when she in fact never brought it up?
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Depends on the district. Won’t work if we are trying to flip a GOP district. They are more tribal than many of our voters.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
I think that a lot of people want a direction, a time line, a strategy, a roadmap, that will get them from point A (now) to the endpoint, B (winning). There are strategies for selling everything, so it must take a roadmap to get from point to point or time to time. But they forget that not every one buys the same soap and that a lot of times the company makes several “different” soaps to increase the market, while we elect only one person for a particular position.
IOW, If there isn’t a roadmap then how do we win? Well there is a roadmap of sorts, you talk to people, you tell them why you think you can do a good job, why they will be satisfied with your work and you talk to them like a normal person. If they want those things they will vote for you, if they want corruption, lying and cheating they will vote for the other person. And if they never know anything about you because you don’t do either, they will vote for someone else.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This Rudy Giuliani?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I don’t remember that specific case, but I do know “bathrooms” seemed to have been a trigger for a lot of the fabled WWC interviewees.
FlipYrWhig
@Ruckus: I think that’s right, and it also goes to show that there’s a huge difference between how the ads sound and how the candidate talks to people in public appearances. IMHO the blogosphere gets way too hung up on ads. I keep going back to Ralph Northam, who’s mostly a decent-but-dull guy, not a firebrand, not all that creative, just kind and trustworthy. If Democrats can win with Ralph Northam they don’t have to overthink all this other stuff that comes down to marketing as judged by people who aren’t the intended audience in the first place.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
This can be more than “the other guys suck.” It should be easy to hold the GOP accountable for their lies and false promises.
Ordinary people were angry at Republicans for dismissing them and their concerns over health care. I would think that any Democrat with half a brain would try to channel this anger.
Again, this should not be hard. In 2008, Obama said to the Republicans, “You fucked up the economy, and you don’t know how to fix it, You fucked up in Iraq, and you don’t know how to fix it.”
The Republicans shut the Democrats out of everything, health care, tax reform, everything. And the Republicans have failed. It’s not that they suck. It’s that they have failed.
Seems to be a simple, clear message.
r€nato
so what’s the over-under on Ghouliani not even lasting the 10 days that Scaramucci was around???
Elizabelle
@r€nato: Excellent question.
I think only thing that keeps him is a long history with Trump and Trump is invested in Giuliani (earlier supporter; gives him some cred in GOP and media circles). Rudy likes the spotlight more than Trump, though …
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What Baud said: Good observation about right wing manipulation.
There is a GOP political strategist, John Thomas who pulls this shit all the time during local talk radio appearances. Unfortunately, the dumb ass host let’s him get away with it.
Frankensteinbeck
@James Powell:
The strategy may not be visible, but results over the last year suggest it is ab-so-fucking-lutely brilliant. What I have read suggests they’re going hardcore into GOTV methods, including new ones that work closely with local minority groups like churches. A lot of armchair quarterbacking focuses on messaging as the primary strategy. Perhaps that’s not true.
NotMax
@r€nato
As Giuliani was hired on April 19 (18 days ago), put your money on more than 10 days.
r€nato
@NotMax: crap! I thought it was just last week…
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
You might be slightly burying the lead here. Being “kind and trustworthy” is exactly what some voters are looking for. He sounds like a good guy.
NotMax
@r€nato
Yeah, Dolt 45’s “It was his first day on the job” was another steaming pile of merde.
Aleta
@Steve in the ATL: I hope this ordeal ends soon, with good information, remedy and relief for your wife and you. My sympathy and much respect to her for enduring the pain for so long.
A good teaching hospital, we were once told, may work for a serious ailment that has not been solved. Specialists from around the world visit to teach and observe. So if a case is unusual, many people will discuss it and the total of their knowledge and experience goes at the problem. This worked for my relative. Eventually we sent her and her case to a teaching hospital at the University of Penn. (or another one in Pennsylvania–it was many years ago). They figured out the correct diagnosis, gave her a state-of-the-art treatment that was not being used where she lived. (She had been at a good enough dr./hospital in Boston, but their diagnoses and methods missed the mark.)
Sending good wishes and energy out to the two of you and your family.
Suzanne
The Dems need to go all in with the brand, not with a message. The GOP has an identifiable brand, and the Dems jerk around thinking that if they craft a message and say it a lot that it will make a difference. NO. No one votes for anyone because of their positions on issues anymore. They vote because of how they want to see themselves reflected in government.
Our strategy should be: We are the party of diversity, of success for everyone, of fair play. We are the party of the smartest, coolest people—the people whose lives you actually want to live. We are the party who cares about your health and success, not what happens on your bedroom. Unspoken is that the GOP is the party of the bitter and trashy and old and stupid. Every single candidate and every single ad needs to reinforce this brand. BRAND BRAND BRAND. Like it or not, that matters.
Doug R
@Amir Khalid: Good. I wasn’t sure the link would work outside Canada.
James Powell
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m not saying primary strategy, but a message is central to every PR and ad campaign. Perhaps message is disparaged by some other armchair quarterbacks because they recognize that the Democrats are not very good at it. And that might be because the Democrats are a coalition that includes groups who are not exactly close personal friends and others that are fair-weather Democrats and inconsistent voters. In contrast, the Republican triad of owners/managers, religious bigots, and racists is bound together like the particles in the nucleus of an atom. Some groups are just easier to cook for.
trollhattan
@r€nato:
Trump has ripped up time-space laws. Thanks, Donny!
James Powell
@Suzanne:
I don’t want to get hung up on semantics or terms of art, but when I say message I mean what you are describing as brand. By message I don’t mean policy proposals at all.
gbbalto
@Steve in the ATL: Best wishes and the best of luck/medical skill to you both!
Doug R
@Sister Golden Bear: Yeah, those polls are always weighted for party affiliation and Rasmussen uses likely voters. When Republicans who tend to always vote get discouraged and quit, I think their models overcompensate. Note ipsos has trump dropping a point may 2 – may 3.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
Many of us here are the outliers, we don’t have TV, we are not inundated with ads constantly. But most people are, it becomes a form of propaganda, and if you look at it from a marketing standpoint, Fox is pure marketing. Women in short skirts and cleavage for the old geezers to lust after, and authoritative male voices to lull the women to buy the product of stale conservative bullshit. The product is not as important as making the mark feel like the sales pitch is aimed directly at them. It’s telling that people write that after they have placed parental controls on their parents TVs that it only takes about 3-5 weeks for them to return to sanity. The product is crap, which is why the message has to be repeated constantly. You buy soap that causes you to itch, you don’t buy it again. But after a while you forget which one made you itch and bam, they’ve sold more soap. This is the world that we live in, and it isn’t going away because it works for the people selling the product. Mad Men was more than a fictional TV show.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Great comment.
Dev Null
@schrodingers_cat: Money is fungible. I read somewhere – possibly the Bloomberg link, possibly elsewhere – that Slim rescued FTFNYT with a 250M infusion of $ in 2009. I didn’t bother to track down the high-water mark, but guessing Slim might have owned as much as 25% of the shares of FTFNYT. Slim also seems to have non-trivial real estate holdings in NYC.
I know it sounds paranoid, but again and again I find myself wondering whether these gazillionaire oligarchs – Russian (e.g. Deripaska), American (Mercers, Kochs, Murdochs), and maybe Mexican – are somehow connected behind the scenes.
Perhaps you had a more local NY real estate tycoon in mind, but surely not Trump or the Murdochs … FTFNYT is too snooty to be bought by a poseur such as Trump, and was unwilling to be bought out by Murdoch (IIRC).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: Or put as a bumper sticker, “If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat”.
Ruckus
@James Powell:
Dems have a brand and a marketing strategy.
It’s called the truth. And you can trust us not to fuck you. Take Al Franken. A lot of us think he’s not a bad guy and he probably isn’t at all. But he told us early on that he had a history that might make it hard on the party if he won or ran for president. He’s been a great senator. But just the possibility that his past may be not up to the standards of what we’d like it to be meant that when accusations came, even if those were false (you might remember that I’ve been on a first name basis with one of them) there actually are others out there. They may be minor but they will be dragged through the mud till it doesn’t matter. Edwards, Weiner, Clinton……
We have a message, we are better, we aren’t crooks, perverts or lecherous old farts. And that’s all that’s left of the republican party. Many/a lot of them are all three, crooked, lecherous old perverts.
ETA A lot of us are mad that we aren’t held to the same low standards. I’m not, I want better, not more of the same. There really hasn’t been a decent republican president in my life after Ike. That’s what the republicans are, indecent. And that’s their message.
MattF
@Doug R: Discussions of polls going up or down a point or two are useless. People don’t know what noise and randomness actually look like.
I used to do a demo of mixing little white balls and black balls and pouring the mixture into a glass beaker– if you look at the mixture of balls through the beaker sides, you see rather large blotches of black and white– and then I’d ask for an explanation for the size of the blotches. The explanation is ‘it’s random’. People often think ‘random’ means something like ‘evenly distributed’, but that’s false. In fact, random distributions contain every type of deviation from the mean– long, short, large, small, whatever. So, just be cautious about drawing conclusions from random processes.
ETA: Yeah, it’s a pet peeve. So sue me.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: That sounds pretty similar to what the Democratic convention was, and it had rave reviews. IMHO our side’s pros have been doing this for a long, long time. And Team Hillary did it AND IT WORKED. And it would have worked even better but for the narrative (ugh, I hate that word) that Hillary Clinton was shady and corrupt. I think the _message_ is fine. What has been variable is _organizing_. But it seems possible to organize for Doug Jones and Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe, not just Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, so I’m not in despair over how well “we” do it.
Dev Null
@Ruviana: Ah, could be. I have only vague memories, and would certainly trust teh Goog rather than my own (ahem) search engine.
That said, I seem to remember reading that Slim’s business dealings were perhaps not entirely open and above-board, which after all would hardly be a surprise given Mexico’s business / political culture. (No first-hand experience, entirely from reading.) I did a quick online search, but didn’t have the stomach to read my way through all the encomiums, although I saw a BI comment that the Mexican government gives Slim a free hand in the telecom sector.
Even if Slim is not a fan of Mr. Trump, Slim might find a regulation-averse regime more profitable than a Hillary regime.
I can’t find the quote on a quick search, but Philip Marlowe dryly commented that the Mr. Bigs of the world rarely get to be Mr. Big by playing by the rules.
Which proves exactly nothing, of course. It’s a heuristic.
Suzanne
@James Powell: Sorry. I used to work in marketing, and so I am using terminology from that world. Branding is the more holistic identification process that seeks to associate desired qualities with a company, product, candidate, whatever. Messaging is a more specific idea or directive or call to action.
Historically, I think that we (Democrats) have done a shit job of shifting from messaging to branding. Messaging is very 20th century. Branding is what we need to do, because brand identifications are very long, and can be lifelong. I struggle with this, because branding is kind of dumb. Messaging assumes that claims are verifiable and measurable and comparable and logical, and branding is very emotional, and honestly, the idea that a candidate for a position of responsibility is the same as a consumer product is really discomfiting. But I really think that there has been a shift in how the populace makes decisions. We all want to project and reflect ourselves in the consumer choices we make.
The behavior of the Trumpanzees is entirely logical and predictable in the context of branding. And Trump himself is exceedingly good at branding himself to the point that the GOP—who is also bad at it—has been completely subsumed by the Trump brand. We need, as a party, to be incredibly coordinated on how we rebrand. Every candidate, every commercial, every piece of collateral, every piece of clothing they wear, etc…..all should be selected with the concept of image in mind.
And honestly, I think that means letting part of the coalition go. The WT Obama-to-Trump people are gone. (Note that that isn’t to say that the white working class is gone, but the dumbasses who just want to flip a middle finger at the status quo are voted off the island.) We have a huge advantage in that the aspirational life is really correlated with our party: urban, educated, diverse, young. Look at the reaction to Kanye West this week—all of a sudden, he’s considered a fucking leper. THAT IS GOOD.
Here is another thing I struggle with: reinforcing the brand might mean we have weaker candidates. For example, here in AZ, there is a contest upcoming for Jeff Flake’s seat. The progressive candidate is an awesome woman named Deedra Abboud. She won’t win the primary. Kyrsten Sinema will win the Dem primary, and she has a pretty good shot at winning the race. Sinema is a total piece of shit. She has no principles and votes however she thinks will be popular. But. Sinema is young, attractive, dresses really cool (for a politician), bisexual, educated, and endured a stint of homelessness as a kid. She is fucking GREAT for the brand. Total up-by-the-bootstraps story, someone the youngs can relate to, etc. If a Democrat wins a fucking Senate seat from ARIZONA, it will be her. These kinds of shitty choices will be in front of us.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
There are far more vile things lawyers do than rep a justifiably terrified porn star.
We had a good friend (guitarist) W. who brought a friend with T. who also played guitar well, but aws a lawyer who specialized in getting corporations who paid no attention to worker safety out of workers comp cases by attacking the injured parties, we told our friend that his friend was not welcome in our house the next day.
Funniest story was how T. went to court with video/film of injured totally disabled former employee carrying a “concrete bird bath” around his yard. Alleging this proved totally disabled former employee was a fraud in good condition.
In court, victim’s lawyer asked permission to depart from the court room briefly to fetch a piece of evidence, came in carrying birdbath, which was plastic and weighed like 12 pounds total…. asked for and received an end to harassment of his client. Wish I could have been there!! Solid gold!!!
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig:
I hate to say it, because it is shitty and unfair, but there was no rebranding HRC. Team Hillary really fucking tried, but there was no way to make her appeal to a large subsection of the coalition. She isn’t young, and she isn’t cool, and she doesn’t have that lack-of-thirstiness that the kids loved about Bernie Sanders.
Is any of that logical? NO. Is it still real, in that it influenced people’s voting decisions? Yes.
Dev Null
@Sister Golden Bear: Agree with this generally, but what surprises me is that evangelical approval has risen monotonically (so far) through the 16-odd months of Trump’s presidency. I don’t have the link (perhaps Kevin Drum) but IIRC Trump was barely over 50% (60%?) of evangelicals in November 2016. At the most recent accounting Trump was over 80% support.
I srsly do not get that level of support for Trump, racism and “status anxiety” notwithstanding.
Brachiator
@Dev Null:
For the evangelicals, it’s abortion. Also, abortion.
Suzanne
@Dev Null:
There is no way for anyone in the evangelical community to plausibly support anyone else and still been seen as a “good” evangelical by the rest of their community. The brand association is complete.
J R in WV
@Steve in the ATL:
Steve, there are air ambulances, where patients are escorted by someone expert in care, to distant places where treatment can be continued or begun, like Mayo Clinic. A friend of mine, ER doc for many years, did this work as a sideline.
Not cheap at all, but I so wish we had flown my father back to Houston’s M D Anderson center when he became ill here in WV.
Maybe ask about it.
Dev Null
@B.B.A.: “Hillary is a c*nt”
I sorta wonder if we’re not getting “branding” backwards to some extent.
Republicans have been stomping over large parts of their (one-time) brand: “the Daddy Party”, “the party of law and order”, and “the party of the economy”, even if stomping on “the economy” (e.g. tariffs and tax cuts for the wealthy) has yet to catch up with them.
Think Josh Marshall’s “nonsense debt” … the internal contradictions of the GOP message can’t be papered over forever, and while “forever” can take a long time to arrive, the swing towards the Dems in almost every special election since Trump took office suggests that “forever” might not be too far away.
To take one instance of many, savor the schadenfreude: convict (and in the opinion of many: murderer) Don Blankenship running for Senate in WVA on the Law & Order Party ticket … Politico reports today that Gooper strategists are concerned that Blankenship has an edge over his Republican primary rivals.
The fact that the GOP is campaigning against Hillary, Pelosi, and Obama – none of whom wields power, two of whom will never run for office again – says that the GOP has run out of ideas. Not only have Republicans put nothing positive forward, the electorate seems to have noticed that they’ve tried to destroy ObamaCare. And that tax cut Republicans planned to run on? That $1.50 more in the paycheck every week? hahahaha…
Sure, Dems need to run the best possible campaign … but does anyone think we’d see the run of special election swings had the GOP not put its ugly id up-front and public?
Dev Null
@Brachiator: Not racism? Yeah, abortion, sure, but historically speaking evangelical opposition to abortion arose from the Southernization of Republicans politics.
Which is to say, racism.
Denali
I am awaiting the moment when it becomes public knowledge that Trump paid for numerous abortions for women with whom he had affairs. Will the Evangelicals still support him?
Dev Null
@Suzanne: Perhaps I misunderstand you, but you seem to be stating conclusions rather than arguments.
I grew up in the South, I went to college in the region. While I haven’t kept up connections to the South, other than family, I am just gob-smacked at 80-90% approval of Trump among evangelicals. That’s a larger margin than Putin racked up winning the Russian election earlier this year (to wit: 76%.)
And there are what amount to NeverTrumpers among evangelical leadership. Russell Moore is most prominent name that occurs to me, but a quick online search turned up this:
Why Hundreds of Evangelical Leaders Oppose Trump’s Refugee Ban
which if nothing else suggests that some evangelical leaders have no problem with tactical opposition to Trump policies.
I just don’t get it. Perhaps the memories of my youth are seriously outdated…
Dev Null
@Denali: Yes.
“This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions …”
Seriously, Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins said so … “that was then, this is now.”
Or more accurately, “Donald Trump is a changed man.”
And not to be too glib, but it’s “white evangelicals”, not all evangelicals. Not may evangelicals of color in Trump’s camp.
Some, but not many.
Suzanne
@Dev Null: There isn’t a good argument as to why evangelicals are supporting Trump. I observe that they are doing so because support for a candidate is an important way to signify allegiance with their tribe. We could say it’s abortion, we could say it’s because they’ll get right-wing judges, we could surmise that they’re calculating that they’ll get Mike Pence’s influence…..but really I think they they’re doing it because Trump has come to stand for opposition to secular liberalism, the value of education, and women/minority/other-than-Christian ascendancy.
These are people who are deeply, DEEPLY anxious about their lives. Not really “economically anxious” in the way that we mock, but they have lost the culture war and they know it. No one aspires to have their lives, and that is deeply destabilizing to the sense of self. Trump has associated his brand as a way for them to express their anxiety about that change. Ergo, supporting Trump is a proxy for supporting the things they value—and if they didn’t support him, it would be akin to betrayal of those values.
Yes, that is illogical. Yes, that is fucked up.
gorram
@GregB: He already did that. He bragged that they have lower educational statuses and that they’d vote for him even if he killed someone. It already happened.
James Powell
@Suzanne:
This is what I was driving at, but stated better than I did. Some years back I read a book called Lovemarks. It was written by an advertising exec. Have you heard of it? As he defined it, lovemarks are beyond brands, they produce loyalty beyond reason. I think that’s what the Republicans have built over the last 40 years.
The Democrats are the ones with better products and services, but haven’t really been able to exploit that to our advantage.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mandalay:
Interesting comment on Haberman’s Twitter feed:
Mandalay
@Denali:
All that is a separate mulligan.
And since he sleeps alone now, and can’t safely get up to any hanky panky any more, there is zero risk of future abortions. I doubt if Trump has even had sex with anyone apart from his right hand since he became president.
Dev Null
@Suzanne: All good points, although I’d argue “racism” rather than “economically anxious”, because science…
… but I was making a slightly different point: that evangelical approval of a deeply corrupt CHINO [1] is at levels that would make a tinpot dictator blush. (To first approximation let’s take the Sermon on the Mount as the ethical core of Christianity.)
I’m not surprised that most conservative white evangelicals support Trump, because racism … but 80-90% of them? (Fun fact: the CPSU won 76.1% of the vote in the 1937 Soviet legislative elections. Not even Stalin needed 80-90% of the vote…)
And yeah, I get “tribal”, but (silly me) I would think that “Christian ethics” or morality or whatever you want to call it would work against evangelical tribal support for Trump.
But that’s not the reality. I just don’t understand why so many professing Christians have mortgaged their beliefs to an incompetent law-breaking racist. This does not seem likely to end well for (white) evangelicals.
[1] “CHristian In Name Only”, in the unlikely event that the acronym isn’t obvious.
Mandalay
@Steeplejack (phone): Heh. I thought that was a cute but glib comment, but I just checked and it’s actually true!
Haberman tweets so much that I’m amazed that she can find the time to be a stenographer as well.
James Powell
@Dev Null:
Because the Christianity they profess has got nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount or Matthew 25:31-46. Their piety is a pose. It’s a cover for their racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. Nothing more.
FlipYrWhig
@James Powell: You might say it’s a… brand. They wear the gear and rep the tribe.
Dev Null
@James Powell: Well, OK, I accept the truth of what you (and Suzanne) say.
Nevertheless, you are stating conclusions. You are not arguing for the validity of your conclusions.
May I restate the question? The critical question is not “why so many professing Christians mortgaged their beliefs”, it’s “why so few professing Christians affirmed their beliefs…”
I lived in the South for 20-odd years. My experiences there led me to expect that more than 10-20% of Southerners would reject Trump’s Devil’s Bargain.
In the event, my expectations were wrong… but why?
If you’re going to sell out, sell out for 90 cents on the dollar. Or 75 cents. Or 50 cents.
Not five cents on the dollar.
Taking my childhood friends as proxies for today’s Southern adult boomers, how did they wind up this way?
I ran across an article today (sorry, it’s on my desktop; I’m on my laptop) which argued that today’s evangelicals’ relationship with Trump is similar to German Protestants’ relationship with Hitler in the 1930s…
… the phrase in the essay which struck me was “Jesus Christ’s storm troopers.”
The delusion must be strong …
Dev Null
@James Powell: I realize that I mis-stated a point.
It’s not “10-20% of Southerners”, it’s “10-20% of Southern evangelicals”. I don’t have numbers, but guessing that about half to two-thirds of Southerners are at least nominal evangelicals. (I know … teh Goog is my friend …)
Still, the point remains: how is it that no more than “10-20% of Southern evangelicals” rejected the cheap sugar high that this CHINO is selling?
Even allowing for the attraction of short-term gain, in the long run,
we’re all dead(almost)everyone knows that cheap highs turn into crashes.James Powell
@Dev Null:
I’m stating conclusions without argument because these conclusions seem to me to be self evident. They buy what “this CHINO” is selling because they, too, are CHINOs. Their enthusiasm for him during the campaign was only dampened in the early days by their belief – shared with nearly everyone else – that he was going to lose and cost the RWers the senate. Now that he is in office, they are very happy with him. If they ever have any doubts, they just check to see that he is still infuriating the people they hate.
EM
It was Martin Short.
Dev Null
@James Powell: The problem with “self-evident” conclusions is that I rarely learn anything from them.
If they’re all CHINOS, then why bother to think about them, eh? They might as well be roaches, to be crushed underfoot without hesitation.
That way lies madness.
Ohio Mom
@satby: “Clarissa” (I think that is a nym) is a language professor in, from what I’ve been able to gather, an Illinois State college just across the river from St. Louis. She is a Ukrainian immigrant who recently became a US citizen.
I read her blog sometimes. She can be entertaining and insightful at times but is also capable of making ridiculous and preposterous claims. My all-time favorite was when she proclaimed that breast cancer is caused by unresolved psychological issues (somehow, my breast surgeon and oncologist have never mentioned this to me in five and a half years…).
IRL, I am surrounded by people talking about Trump. Sometimes it is only an aside, sometimes it is a friend announcing, “I can’t stand to talk about him right now,” sometimes it is a more involved discussion. But my reality can’t possibly be true because in her little Illinios town, Clarissa doesn’t hear anyone talking about Trump.
Tl/dr: She’s a blogger.