Here's the clip as Fox News finally pulls the plug on Team Trump https://t.co/7XPEBhWmdk
— Jack Blanchard (@Jack_Blanchard_) November 9, 2020
This has been brewing for some time, of course. From the Washington Post, “The long love affair between Fox News and Trump may be over”:
The last day of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign began just after 7 a.m., as polls opened on the East Coast, with a call to “Fox & Friends,” the television morning show that had turned the reality star into a U.S. president. He got his usual hero’s welcome. But it was no longer enough…
…[H]is remarks quickly turned pointed that Tuesday morning as he boasted about how well he had done in the job of president, despite unexpected challenges — not from China or Russia or North Korea, he said, but from the United States. And he mused rhetorically about what had changed the most for him since 2016.
“Fox,” he said, answering his own question. “It’s much different now.” As the hosts sputtered, he elaborated: “In the old days, they wouldn’t put sleepy Joe Biden on every time he opened his mouth. . . . It’s a much different operation — I’m just telling you.”
It was the last day of a campaign Fox had done so much to support, but it was a preview of the war — now one week old but months in the making — that may have permanently ruptured the bond between President Trump and his once-favorite television channel. As he faces expulsion from the White House, Trump has vowed revenge on the network that propelled his political career, according to close White House aides — perhaps by publicly attacking Fox or undermining its business model by endorsing a competitor…
In recent months, he had begun to complain — on Twitter and to his aides — that Fox had turned on him. That impression was only heightened when reports emerged that Murdoch was telling associates that the president was going to lose…
Which leads to this excellent, if daintily-phrased, NYTimes article from last week — “New York Post Shifts Tone on Trump as a Top Editor Plans His Own Exit”:
… With Mr. Trump headed toward a likely defeat, top editors at the tabloid told some staff members this week to be tougher in their coverage of him, said two Post employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
In addition to the shift in tone, there will be a change in personnel: Col Allan, the Australian tabloid wizard who was once seen in the Post newsroom wearing a Make America Great Again cap, will call an end to his career of more than 40 years at Murdoch papers in New York and Sydney.
Mr. Allan, who was The Post’s editor in chief from 2001-16, rejoined the paper as an adviser in January 2019, just as the presidential campaign was underway. Since his return, he has had a strong hand in shaping coverage, several staff members said. He confirmed his planned retirement in an email interview…
Several staff members said Mr. Allan had more or less run the newsroom since his return. “I have contributed little other than some minor advice,” Mr. Allan said of his work on the paper’s election coverage…
Col Allan is an old-fashioned tabloid thug who was brought back specifically to grease the skids for Trump’s re-election. If Murdoch (or whichever Murdoch kid is making the decisions this week) has given Allan his walking papers, it’s a pretty blatant announcement that they’re not throwing good money after bad.
Baud
I’ll always be grateful to the NY Post for their tireless work in uncovering what a great dad Joe Biden is.
LongHairedWeirdo
Since when did *FOX NEWS* care when Republicans said hideously, nasty, baseless things about Democratic folks?
(Well, obviously: when they think that it will actually hurt their brand. And what’s worse is, they might be right – they might be able to salvage their brand, by saying “see,
when it started to look like it might hurt our brandwhen he crossed a line, we stopped supporting him”)debbie
Can we get those “disputed fact” banners to slap on Trump supporters? They’re tossing out conspiracy theories like so much poo.
natem
Neil Cavuto is “Daytime Fox” (i.e. the “news” arm). Hannity, Ingraham, and Tucker are going to run with this as far as they can.
Viva BrisVegas
Lachlan is the RWNJ heir. The other son James bailed from the whole show, presumably due to an attack of decency.
Someone was talking about Republican daddy issues downthread. They ought to look up Rupert’s old man. There was a piece of work.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
lamh36
hate to be a debbie downer, but unless TPTB at Fox also keep this off of the night showcase, then having Cavuto drop away really means notice and becomes a wash
lamh36
Uh huh, ya’ll notice how Hunter Biden hasn’t been mentioned since the election. It’s as if all the Hunter Biden stuff was A FAKE AND PHONEY DISTRACTIVE SMEAR ATTEMPT…smh
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fundraising. It’ll look good in the emaills.
Barr couldn’t even get his own hatchetman to issue that report (on the Russia investigation?) before the election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh36: do you think any of the mouth breathers remember cheering when he said we were gonna stop talking about Covid?
debbie
@lamh36:
They’re not mentioning him now by name; they’ve replaced it with “Biden crime cartel.” ?
TriassicSands
If Trump were intelligent (but he’s not), he could have conceded and announced his 2024 candidacy in the same breath. Then, he could have continued to damage the country nonstop for the next four years and continued to receive frequent infusions of adoration at his cult rallies. The MSM would probably have gone along and continued to cover (ad nauseam) his every word and misdeed.
There is some question about whether he could sustain a four-year campaign, but for now it would give him a way to remain in the spotlight. I don’t think he plans more than one sentence, possibly one word, in advance. He’s not only and idiot, now he’s a LOSER, too.
artem1s
What’s worse than ‘You’re fired’? ‘You’re CANCELED’. The Trump Show jumped the Shark in episode one and didn’t even make it to it’s fifth season so it could go into syndication. Sad.
Raven Onthill
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Barr authorizes DOJ to probe ‘substantial allegations’ of voting irregularities despite little evidence of fraud.” – https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1325946854530555914?s=20
“There are no ‘substantial allegations,’ but Trump, Pence, McConnell, and Barr are desperate to bring this election before the Supreme Court. They have something up their sleeves. We just don’t know what.” – https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1325949658875777026?s=20
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The dead have stopped talking about it.
Baud
@Raven Onthill:
They have fund-raising and GOTV in Georgia up their sleeves.
schrodingers_cat
In related news BJP’s online disinformation complex has gone all in on COVITA.
Kristine
Wondering whether GOP senators who have so far declined to acknowledge Biden’s win will change course. Which do the believe has more power, Fox/Rupert or rabid Trumpists?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
What does that mean? What are they lying about?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: As Olbermann said, IT’S A SCAM. It’s what Trump always does.
schrodingers_cat
Doctors are predicting that we will top 200,000 infections per day by the end of November and it will get worse in December.
Baud
@Kristine:
They don’t have to acknowledge anything so they probably won’t.
TriassicSands
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, duh. Trump and his subthugs are making all the accusations. One would think, if there were any “substance” to the accusations, someone outside the Trump team would have noticed.
Susan Collins may be “very concerned” right now that she was premature in offering her mealy-mouthed congratulations to Biden. I mean “substantial allegations!” Oh, my!!!
This is great:
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Making vague threats against KH. Saying that she is the power behind the throne, she will be running the WH. She is an agent of Pakistan. COVITA has won, surrender or die. Biden has dementia. They are flooding the zone with CRAP.
Meanwhile leftie Twitter from India
She is a cop. She is appropriating the black identity, appropriating the Indian identity, she should acknowledge her upper caste privilege. Oppose Modi’s agenda. And on and on it goes.
Geminid
@lamh36: Like the 2016 election, this one was close enough that any number of factors could turn it. One may be how, in the critical last weeks of the campaign, trump and his henchmen wasted valuable messaging bandwidth on a laptop scandal that flopped.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: A dire prediction. Sadly, I believe it’s also a plausible one.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
Did you already have your birthday and your trip to San Francisco? Or is that coming up this week? Apologies if I missed congratulating you and reading about your getaway — alternatively, if it all happens a few days from now, I hope you have a great day and a wonderful time!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Have the gotten to the Super Sekret Supercomputer that changes votes for Trump to votes for Biden?
different-church-lady
@?BillinGlendaleCA: 2016 was also a scam. Look how that turned out.
They do exactly what they say they’re going to do. They never bluff.
Emma from FL
@schrodingers_cat: An agent of Pakistan? That’s a new one, isn’t it?
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Bullshit. Almost everything they do is bluffing.
schrodingers_cat
@Emma from FL: Not new. I have seen it many times, it is aimed at Indians in particular. I got so tired of the bullshit in the family WhatsApp group that an idiot cousin had started, I gave them a piece of my mind after a week of being at the receiving end of the fuckery and left the group
There was a dichotomy in the group, the ones who were in the United States were Ds and pro-Biden and the ones rooting for COVITA were in India because that’s what their God Modi told them to do.
Calouste
@TriassicSands: Substantial allegations in this context means allegations made by someone on certain substances, like shitgibbon Jr.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Either a bluff or so ill thought out they end up getting laughed at.
oldster
It’s not just Murdoch who has written him off. Sheldon Adelson has also decided that he’s a non-performing loan.
The Las Vegas Journal-Review, which Adelson purchased for $140 million back in 2015, also led with a headline proclaiming Biden’s victory.
Adelson gave Trump and other Rs about $200 million this cycle. He is telling Donny that there’s no more credit after this.
different-church-lady
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s what I’m saying: they always try it.
HumboldtBlue
Fun fact: The Berlin Wall came down on this date 31 years ago.
Trump is now raising the wall outside the White House higher because he’s a fucking coward and a traitor.
Frankensteinbeck
@Raven Onthill:
No doubt whatever they had up their sleeves when they ordered two criminal FBI probes into Hunter Biden and came up with nothing. And the ones towards Obama and Hillary’s crimes in targeting Trump’s campaign, that also came up with nothing.
hueyplong
One thing today has done is put a little perspective on why the networks waited so long to call it.
schrodingers_cat
The Barr thing is a bluff according to lawyers, IANAL so I will provide you with a link and you judge
?BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady: Not always, probably about half the time.
Hoodie
@Baud: Maybe also laying the groundwork for new voter suppression tactics for 2022 now they have a compliant SC. Expect a bunch of new restrictions for mail ballots.
gene108
@LongHairedWeirdo:
I do not think Fox News breaking from Trump’s claims of voter fraud are about saving their brand.
I think it’s about insulating the rest of the Republican Party from Trump’s loser stink.
chopper
so even fox thinks trump is a lame cuck.
HumboldtBlue
@Hoodie:
Who is going to pass these new restrictions on mail-in ballots?
patrick II
maybe MAGA’s will be so angry with Pfizer for waiting until after the election to announce that they will refuse to get vaccinated. Then the Biden voters can get their shots and just wait for multiple Darwin awards.
Emma from FL
@schrodingers_cat: I am fascinated with all the crazy stuff but I am somewhat insulated by the fact that we’re (my sister and I) at best peripheral in the larger family. It must be horrid for you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hoodie: Doubtful, a lot of older voters use absentee ballots(aka mail-in ballots).
Aleta
So Cavuto is more principled than Susan Collins. And advocating for doubt about the election until a court says otherwise is just the beginning of what her patrons will ask of her as their spoils.
Hoodie
@HumboldtBlue: state legislatures controlled by GOP. The courts will uphold them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
my prediction: the rallies will continue, with paid admission “to help keep up the fight!”
different-church-lady
“You know, when they said that “Leopards Eating Everyone’s Face Party” was just a metaphor, some alarm bells went off in the back of my head, but…”
patrick II
@schrodingers_cat:
Trump will consider that inadequate revenge.
hueyplong
@patrick II: I kind of agree with this and find it both serious and hilarious
[ETA: this is in response to the post about the vaccine and the almost certain rejection of same by a non-zero percent of trumpers]
HumboldtBlue
@Hoodie:
Good point.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And then he’ll announce plans for re-election and go back to holding rallies.
Hoodie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Easy, do what Texas does, put age and health restrictions for absentee status. Automatically qualified if over 60 or whatever. The idea is to make it too much a hassle for younger voters, and then reduce early voting and poll locations in urban areas.
Yarrow
@lamh36: Well, this tidbit dropped today re: Hunter Biden:
lamh36
sounds to me like maybe Pence don’t yet want any of the stench of this to stick to him? Maybe him and mother are going to the beach so they can start thinking about trying to salvage what they can for their after-Chump life. We’ll see how long before he falls back to his knees for dear leader.
Steeplejack (phone)
@lamh36:
Yes! I was cleaning up old browser tabs today and realized that Tucker Carlson never did reveal his Hunter Biden documents after he miraculously got them back from FedEx or UPS. ?
Kent
What is the end game? Do they not have an interest in cultivating a good relationship with the new administration?
trnc
@Raven Onthill:
I suspect the election talk is not so much a bluff as a smokescreen, and I wonder if there is any thread to tie this with the firing of several appointees who are not household names – Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Maybe they were all insufficiently loyal, but that could describe a lot of federal agency managers.
horatius
I guess their coup is not going to work with Video Rwanda calling it quits.
Splitting Image
Murdoch and Adelson have one thing in common with Donald Trump: loyalty only goes one way.
Trump was useful to them as long as he had something to offer. Now he doesn’t and he isn’t. So long sucker.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hoodie: So back to the pre-Covid status quo.
(shrugs)
Baud
Joy Reid isn’t scared.
schrodingers_cat
@lamh36: I remember reading an article about the Pences and their rescue animals during the 2016 transition, they bought their bunny and kitties and I think a dog with them when they moved from Indiana. So far I haven’t read a single thing approaching normalcy about the Orange person.
May be mother has had it.
LongHairedWeirdo
@gene108: You raise a good point, but I still feel it’s “po-tay-to/po-tah-to” where the real point is “of course we have ethics! Look
away from when and why we stopped supporting Trump,er, at how we turned away from Trump in support of the nation!”schrodingers_cat
@Kent: The RWNJ Twitter and BJP’s flying monkeys fancy themselves as the next Likud.
Lefties are just random people blathering on Twitter, who understand little of our politics but have bought in to Cold War narrative that we are the great Satan.
Steeplejack (phone)
@schrodingers_cat:
Is “COVITA” Trump? Or what?
Splitting Image
@gene108:
The two are actually very closely linked. They need a resurgent Republican party that is loyal to them in order to protect their brand. So rather than burn through capital to protect Trump, they are going to insulate the party from the loser.
Dan B
@hueyplong: 60 Minutes had people who were preparing a massive vaccine distribution on yesterday. One of them said only 60% of medical workers would take the vaccine and the general population was less likely. The Covid task force will need a massive marketing campaign.
Hoodie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No, other places were not as restrictive as Texas, even before Covid, but now they might try to move in that direction in places like WI. NC had excuse-free absentee ballots before Covid, albeit with a witness requirement, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them place some additional restrictions targeted at younger voters.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack (phone): He is. I should have added the adjective Orange.
Jeffro
@trnc: I think they’re firing these agency heads so that a) it’ll be easier to get the lower-rung staffers to shred the evidence of all the criming that’s been going on, and b) it’ll jam up the Biden transition across the board – no one will be able to give Biden/Harris an accurate readout of each agency’s status, pressing issues, and needs.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Well, nice to hear.
You know what this feels like? This feels like the end of every Roger Moore Bond film, where it seems like the villain is vanquished, but then the henchman comes back for one more attempt.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: llrc, Shitgibbon mocked them for it in one of his speeches.
Jeffro
@Dan B: And they need to talk to American businesses, too (especially movie theater owners, concert promoters, restaurants, etc) about promoting it – hell, requiring it, however that might be do-able.
“No Covid-19 vaccination record? No Guns-n-Roses reunion tour ticket purchase for YOU, my friend!”
j/k but I wish I wasn’t
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Bond always wins.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: After the President-elect’s victory speech on Saturday, Nicolle Wallace was saying how normal the Biden and Harris’ families looked.
Matt McIrvin
If almost the ENTIRE Republican Party is supporting Trump’s bullshit as a bloc, do you really think Murdoch isn’t going to flip back?
geg6
@Frankensteinbeck:
I do not understand people who think Bill Barr is some kind of legal wizard. He has proven over and over again that he’s a shitty hack.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: Of course. Why doesn’t that surprise me?
cain
Some black man comes into my twitter feed – ostensibly triggered by my crown moldings and then told me that this is proof that I am not a ADOS (a descent of slaves) – I of course quiped back with “I thought my race would have clinched it. Alas, my crown moldings have betrayed me.” Then he starts talking about my caste and stuff.
I wonder if he’s been reading this crap too. Or maybe he’s just jealous because a bunch of black women made some nice comments about my skin. Whatever.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hoodie: Unless there are federal laws to standardize voting procedures on the federal level, states are going to do what they are going to do. They can’t overtly discriminate on a racial basis, or have an explicit poll tax, but it’s a state matter. Their citizens either have to elect folk in their state to expand voting rights, or elect folk on the federal level(the Senate) to do it. What I think the Dems should do(and have done), is pass expanded voting access in the House and have President Biden say he’ll sign it and point at Moscow Mitch.
Frankensteinbeck
@trnc:
Yes, it was. Trump is throwing a temper tantrum because he can’t fail, he can only be failed, waah, it’s your fault I didn’t win, you, tell me that I’m going to win after all WHERE IS MY ICE CREAM. As I have said a dozen times today, and have said a few times before the election and in the last couple of days, this is what narcissists do when they lose. They attack their allies first, because they can’t do anything to their enemies or they would have already, and it must be their allies’ fault.
cain
I’m glad that we have family harmony – we only have one uncle who is doing the bakt curious thing. But he’s definitely in teh “u.s. politicians cannot comment about India’s affairs” and so is against any U.S. politician saying – I pointed out that I’m here too and I also believe what’s happening is bullshit. Silence.
I also plan on pointing out – what’s the point of all this – yous hould support the administration that will protect your grand children from racists – those kids have only been to India a few times – they know nothing about it.
Ken
@lamh36: Do the Pences know that there’s a hurricane zig-zagging along the Florida gulf coast?
Personally, I would have spent the time house-hunting in Indiana. They’ll have to move in a couple months, and – as was noted when they voted – they don’t appear to own a house in the state, since they listed the governor’s mansion as their address.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
wait, what ?
PsiFighter37
Guys…there is NO grand plan. The GOP keeps getting lucky. You think with clowns like Trump and the rest of his low-quality hires that there’s an actual plan? Bill Barr tried to ‘plan’ a great big case around unmasking and other bullshit that nobody with a brain gives a damn about – and it backfired when the assistant US Attorney quit, and even the Trumper put in charge did not want to pursue it.
These fools are high as hell on the right-wing Kool Aid. It’s going to come crashing down on them very quickly, and I suspect Perdue’s and Loeffler’s joint statement was the first big misstep of the runoff. We didn’t run our campaigns perfectly, but at least there was a plan of some kind. Literally the only thing the GOP does is shout Big Lies and hope they get lucky enough.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Thanks for being the voice of reason and calm. You’ve been doing it consistently.
Ken
So Barr and McConnell are going to be set on fire and thrown into the ocean with a bomb stuck down their trousers?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And you as well. Thanks.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Raven Onthill:
This is the Trumpist equivalent of “credible allegations of sexual harassment” which turn out to be 100% bullshit.
A person making allegations may be known to be “generally credible”, but the allegations themselves aren’t credible unless properly tested.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
What @schrodingers_cat: said. It has helped a lot to have someone else chime in with similar sentiments.
WaterGirl
@PsiFighter37: We want to make sure your votes don’t matter.
Vote for us!
Emma from FL
One question: why are so many assuming, against all evidence, that the only people with power and agency are the Republicans? You think maybe Joe Biden is going to sit on his hands while this is happening? Or that there aren’t lawyers on our side willing to take them on? Or that even state-level officials aren’t getting fed up with the bullshit? (witness Georgia’s AG)?
People, even Voldemort got it in the neck and Barr isn’t half as scary as Ralph Fiennes in snake makeup.
(edit) oops. it was more than one question.
cain
I took a selfie in the kitchen and the man took a gander at my cabinetry and decides to “out me” because of my crown moldings. The cabinetry was some pre-manufactured stuff. It was cheap.
He went on a diatribe about how Indians make more than black people and white people and caste etc etc. I just didn’t understand what triggered him. I asked if he had a point – he said no. :shrug:
ETA:
Man, good thing I didn’t have a picture of my countertops!
Jeffro
So…you’re saying there’s nothing to Hunter’s laptop??? ;)
What about the Clinton Foundation?
Caravans??
I got nothin’…and neither do they!
schrodingers_cat
@cain: At least you didn’t get called a CIA agent.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ken:
Barr can go to the John Mitchell cell out of a sense of nostalgia.
cain
HeyI would accept that as a compliment and sent him some more selfies with me in a suit!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If you don’t know who Seth Mandel is, he’s the editor of the Washington Examiner.
If you don’t know what the Washington Examiner is, you’re like most people, but it’s the failing right-wing newspaper in DC
hueyplong
@Ken: “So Barr and McConnell are going to be set on fire and thrown into the ocean with a bomb stuck down their trousers?”
That’s right, Mr Kidd.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Emma from FL: The President-elect has some of the best election attorneys working for him, they are unconcerned and expected much of this.
And Trump has…Rudy.
different-church-lady
@geg6: He’s a shitty hack with the power of the entire Justice Department at his disposal. It’s not about who he is, it’s about what he controls.
Redshift
@Geminid:
No it’s not. This wasn’t a close election, just one that took a long time to count. Biden won without any states that are within 2016’s margin of cheating in 2016.
zhena gogolia
@Emma from FL:
This is what my husband keeps saying (not the Harry Potter part).
trnc
@Frankensteinbeck: If it were just DT, I’d say it was a tantrum. Barr and McConnell do not throw tantrums. They have knives they know how to use them. We trivialize these actions at our peril.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@cain:
We’ll be sending someone by to inspect those.
different-church-lady
IT WOULD SEEM THAT A LOT OF YOU ARE TRYING TO TELL ME NOT TO PANIC WITHOUT ACTUALLY SAYING THOSE WORDS.
hueyplong
@different-church-lady: Don’t panic.
Redshift
@different-church-lady:
He’s really not. He’s the head of it, but it’s filled with people who swore an oath to the Constitution, not to the president or Bill Barr. In a lame duck period, there’s very little risk to refusing to go along with his corrupt efforts.
schrodingers_cat
Don’t panic, they win when we fall into apathy and disengage. They are losing and they are scared hence the frequency of tantrums is increasing.
Jeffro
@different-church-lady: I’m with you in that near-panic, but…I’m turning it over to my critical thinking skills and also a naive faith in good over evil. ;)
HumboldtBlue
Interviewing people for positions in a Biden admin.
Emma from FL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think we need to train ourselves out of the flight response (me included, so I’m not throwing stones).
Dan B
@Jeffro: Who tells people to get vaccinated matters more than the message.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: Are we going to have to break in and remove your CAPS LOCK key? :-)
Did I see over the weekend that you are waiting for COVID test results?
Emma from FL
@different-church-lady: His control is large but shallow. I don’t think he bothered to replace every clerk and every mid level career manager. And mid-level management has the “drag your feet” technique down pat.
Steeplejack
@Aleta:
Collins congratulated Biden today, joining Mitt Romney (UT), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Ben Sasse (NE).
Frankensteinbeck
@trnc:
Christ almighty, no. Barr is incompetent. He’s not wildly incompetent, but he is not very good at his job and mainly succeeds by going “Nuh-uh, won’t!” Come to think of it, 90% of McConnell’s victories have been doing that. Barr’s term has been a lengthy series of attempts to do dirty work for Trump that ended up failing so pathetically most people don’t even remember when he ‘proved’ that Biden was part of an illegal plan by the Obama administration to frame Trump. And McConnell barely passed a gigantic tax cut, the thing his caucus wanted more than all else, then barely failed to pass an Obamacare repeal, the thing they wanted second most. Neither of these people are geniuses with a secret plan we should be afraid of. Barr is giving Trump pacifiers and McConnell is being an insulting asshole. That’s what they do.
HumboldtBlue
@different-church-lady:
Don’t panic.
We have no control over the situation, allow those who have influence play it out.
Don’t waste your energy.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: That was cute.
CarolPW
@cain: Kitchen looks very nice, but not so nice to be prompting anyone to be crapping on you. You can get extraordinary moldings and ceiling roses made out of fucking styrofoam, and when painted you cant tell them from the real thing. One can create a palace for next to nothing, and unless one sticks a fork in it you can’t tell the difference.
On the other hand, you are a handsome man which may have been the source of the rancor.
Ken
@HumboldtBlue: I had completely forgotten the demon semen. Whatever happened to that person? Is she part of the Trump covid response team?
Kristine
@Frankensteinbeck: Holding onto comments like yours because when I first saw this story, my good feelings of the last few days fizzled.
Resigned to not being able to well and truly relax until January 20, 2021, because I know this swamp gas is just going to keep bubbling to the surface until then.
Jeffro
@Dan B: So…Axl Rose doing PSAs, then? I like it.
HumboldtBlue
Jeopardy! will air the final 35 episodes Alex Trebek recorded.
@Ken:
Your guess is as good as mine.
The Thin Black Duke
Remember folks, there’s more of us then there are of them, which is why Biden won. As long as we show up, we gain that precious inch which becomes that mile further down the road. When we show up, we win.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
I doubt very much that he has the whole department at his disposal, especially now. His appointees are hacks and the career people, I have no doubt, hate his guts and won’t be falling all over themselves to please him.
Dan B
@Jeffro: That might get .0001% of the target. Kardashians, Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Ryan Reynolds,, Beyonce, and similar, would up the return.
kcinthedmv
@cain: Going through this person’s time-line, I think the agenda they’re pushing has little to do with the advancement of the black community.
cain
aww – thanks – I think that might have been it – there were a number of black women who made some comments and that must have triggered him. Otherwise, I have no idea why he showed up in time line. I did thank him though!
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: Oh. Yeah, a relative of someone who we were filming was tested positive during a routine screening. She’s asymptomatic, and we don’t think we ever came in direct contact with her, but the production company paid for us to get tested up anyway. The quick one came back negative, and I’m still waiting on the full one.
(PS: that now makes five negative tests I’ve had so far, although those first two when I was in the hospital… hmmmm…)
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
Hm. Every day that the Rs bad-mouth the Bidens, these sound better.
“The Trump Crime Cartel” (in post title)
“The Trump Crime Family”
“The Republican Crime Syndicate”
Jeffro
@Dan B: Ok look just say it, I’m old and hard-rock oriented
Pop, rap, hotness: all these things are beyond me
Geoduck
@Steeplejack: As already noted, Collins didn’t earn squat with her typical shifty mealymouthed “apparent victory” comment.
Geminid
@Redshift: I guess it comes down to how you define close. It may not have been as close as 2016, but was too close for me. And I know people here were really sweating it out for a couple days. Weren’t you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Hoodie: Why Wisconsin?
kindness
Trump probably thinks he can brand the OAR network the Trump Network. Use it as a platform and take branding money. Trump thinks he has the makings of a media mogul. Problem with that is those folks work for a living. Something Trump has never done. Delusion runs deep with that one.
lamh36
@SiubhanDuinne: yep. I did. It was great and it was safe.
I got back Saturday. The AirBNB was great and the weather was perfect. There was def more tourists there than I expected (probably because of the NFL home game) but it was still nothing like it’s heydey. i posted a pic or two on FB and Twiter
LongHairedWeirdo
@different-church-lady: While Barr has done a lot, and done a lot of evil, he’s been very careful not to cross certain lines. He’s failed to do certain things that he clearly should be doing for his client (the United States); he’s wildly misrepresented data, but in ways he can defend; he’s engaged in wild discretion that is, nevertheless, within his domain; but he hasn’t, for example, opened an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, because he knows damn well there’s no “there”, there.
There are lines he won’t cross, though I’m quite confident it’s *only* self interest that prevents his crossing them. Nevertheless – he hasn’t crossed those lines when they mattered, so there’s no reason to expect he’ll grow a backbone when the President he considers his “real” client is certain to go down in defeat.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: Good that you are getting tested, also good that it’s very likely going to be negative. Have you been tested for antibodies yet? Because the COVID tests are surely looking for active infections now, right?
Uncle Cosmo
@LongHairedWeirdo: It’s like watching a Mafia family in the touchy and tricky process of trying to “go legit.”
On that note –
/rimshot
(Not to everyone’s taste, I realize, but it seemed à propos…)
Uncle Cosmo
@schrodingers_cat: Did you notice (of course you did) that Modi tweeted congratulations to Harris on her election & didn’t even mention Uncle Joe? Slimy motherfucking racist. I wish we could get him & Erdogan in a death cage match with a guard outside to shoot whichever survived.
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud: Just about every atrocity of the Third Reich was discussed in Mein Kampf, but “serious people” pooh-poohed the content as “oh, you know, just political chatter, he’ll get more moderate if he ever enters government.”
Which only proves Robert A. Heinlein’s observation that, while the second-best way to lie is to tell the truth but not all of it, the best way to lie is to tell the truth, and tell all of it, but in such a manner that your audience is convinced you’re lying.
Uncle Cosmo
@Frankensteinbeck: They might be laying the groundwork to defend a Democratic appeal to the Extreme Court after they persuade the AZ, GA and PA legislatures (all GOP-controlled) either to certify Trump electors or to refrain from certifying any electors at all (which would throw the election into the House where they hold a majority of state delegations). No idea whether “Dis” Barr and his swine are thinking that way but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility,
Vhh
@Viva BrisVegas: u betcha. Keith Murdoch tried to interfere with Aussie and UK policy in WWI and used volonence on competing papers. Rupert inherited his papers and methods. Judt like Trump.
Uncle Cosmo
And we got crushed nearly everywhere, up & down the ticket.
The only things that went right were Mark Kelly in AZ and Biden/Harris (and the latter still may be fucked with). Not much of a vote of confidence in Democratic electoral competence.
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
You actually think Fat Barr controls the entire DoJ?
There are rules and laws, and Barr is trying to work outside those rules and laws. No DoJ lawyer is going to actually do anything outside the rules and laws at this point in our history. It would be professional suicide!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@PsiFighter37: I have heard the plan, such as it is, it keep this alive as long as they can so Trump can milk his idiot followers for donations so Trump can pay his debts. After Jan the 20th the bills come due.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Uncle Cosmo: To much History Channel dude, I am pretty sure Hitler didn’t lose the election first, went golfing, dissed the military, his staff and then staged a coup.
Not to mention the right wing reactionary coup in Germany was in 1919 with the suppression of Bavarian Soviet, long before Hitler was fixture in German politics. Which of course wasn’t much a stretch in Germany was right wing monarchy since it’s foundation. I really wish people would just stop with the nonsense that Germany was some kind of paradise of Jeffersonian Democracy before Hitler showed up and ruined it all.