Trump Discusses a Back-Stabbing

 

Trump: If I don’t win this election.. the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that if that happens pic.twitter.com/N9skHU0hnu

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 20, 2024

This reminds me of so much history that as human beings, we all should shudder to repeat. Trump has moved on from how US Jewish people would be crazy not to support him, to possibly threatening them that they should support him, if they understand what's up. 

There's an ambiguity there, as the threats of strongmen sometimes contain--a plausible deniability, Maybe the "blame" won't be repaid by anyone associated with Trump at all.  But maybe he wants people thinking about that. 

Here's what I'm not going to do--pretend I don't notice it. That was a threat. Maybe he meant that a Democratic administration would not be as supportive of Israel as his would be--but that is also conflating Jews with the state of Israel--not the same thing at all. He's basically saying what a "good Jew" is vs. someone who might "have it coming." 

I need not tell you what it reminds me of because most of us won't ever forget. 

You Know They Knew About Mark Robinson

 

Trump: We have to cherish Mark Robinson. You have to cherish him. He’s like a fine wine. He's an outstanding person. I've gotten to know him so well pic.twitter.com/ffkjfi56X8

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 19, 2024

This man's public comments were already a damn disaster: let's take us to before women were voting? Some people need killing?  His household has been sued by Girl Scouts and massively screwed up daycare . He said heinous things about civil rights. And we knew he was on the downlow and sleazy but we didn't know how downlow and sleazy. 

And now we have a very good idea what this man was about, and it was calling himself a "Black Nazi" and being down with golden showers and porn regarding the trans people he would oppress or even persecute right now. I don't know much, but I know one thing, Mark Robinson isn't too diverse to the NC GOP. They are, as a popular song once had it, standing by their man. 

Coleoptera

Minus the Southern patois that sounds like Senator John Kennedy as rendered by bad AI, Donald Trump talking about groceries sounds like Jerry Lewis talking about "coleoptera" at about 2 minutes in. 

Just so we are clear, Trump thinks no one can afford bacon and we need to show ID at the grocery store to buy anything.  But long story short, if we made more gas and had less windmills and had huge tariffs on food not made here, you could probably buy a banana for ten dollars. Isn't that what a banana should cost? 

Now, I totally understand how windmills are killing the pork industry because that is exactly what you would expect--when pigs fly. Somewhere in Trump's mind, he's got it imbedded that if the costs for goods in the US market were higher because of tariffs, they (I think, China) would have to produce at a lower cost, which means they deregulate (snerk), and try to whoop up more "productivity" at lower costs from their workers. 

Now, Let's Play "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

 

Having a hard time coming to any conclusion besides the obvious one about what Rich Lowry catches himself blurting out here pic.twitter.com/PFHQMCS8UP

— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) September 16, 2024

Now it's time to play the inciting new game show, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" where the contestants try to make out whether it's the word we are not supposed to say, or just a terrible, terrible slip of the soft palate. In our clip today, we have Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, on Megyn Kelly's show, which I guess is a thing, extremely butchering the word "migrants" or "immigrants" until it sounds like....

Well, you be the judge. 

OK, time's up, audience. So, as is the catch phrase of our show: "Did you hear what I hear?"

No. You actually don't need more time for this. I don't know what part of NR or Megyn Kelly or Rich Lowry confused you about whatever is "in their heart". The actual answer is--the reason people are hearing it isn't about whether it has been said out loud, it's about this dumb dance we are doing around immigration trying not to make it about---that, when we know damn good and well it is. 

You can actually not use that one word and still be saying that word more than you know. That's the  whole answer. We don't need a whole lot more episodes. 

So those of you who got the right answer here, you win a lifetime supply of the baggage of knowing about it, and for those you who didn't know, you get the parting gift of probably figuring it out but most likely not from this blogpost. 

Thanks for playing everybody! And let's meet again probably sooner than we think we should right here in the 21st century but apparently not!

UPDATE: Here's a bonus round, Christian supremacist edition:

JD Vance Creates Stories

 

I know this might get lost in the swirl of yet another Republican-ish white male gun-owner possibly trying to take a pop at Donald Trump (thoughts and prayers) but this is really rather serious: Trump's running mate admitted he sometimes creates stories (lies) because he wants people to see the truth (also different lies). To be more exact:

In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

And what suffering was that? Because the "suffering" was supposedly happening before the acid thrown on cars and the Proud Boys marching through town and the Klan fliers posted hither and yon. The college campuses going virtual and the suspected arson. 

He can call that the "hecklers' veto" and pretend that people who threaten violence or do vandalism aren't going to do the real thing. We know in El Paso and Buffalo and Squirrel Hill sometimes bad things happen to real people because the real people and the real bad people do exist. 

That isn't "stories". 

Trump on the Bomb Threats

 

Q: Do you denounce the bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio?

Trump: I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants pic.twitter.com/LVtWfxnXIm

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 14, 2024

I think this horror show individual has taken a hard look at the polls and thinks to himself, "Well, maybe we'll just have a little race war before the election, as a treat." And I suspect Vance is a sociopath and fully along for the ride.

This was the start of a longer post but goddamn it. Look at the man. There's nothing new here. 

Trump is Going to Take the Money and Run to Venezuela

 

Trump just said he wants to deport Haitian migrants — who are in the country legally — from Springfield, Ohio to Venezuela. Deporting legal migrants.

This is always where it was going to end up.pic.twitter.com/plm8NTDsUa

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 13, 2024

I guess I know what probably happened here. Trump was going to use the "Venezuelan gangs took over Aurora, Colorado" thing but then his brain got hijacked into the Haitian story.  Which being all about Ohio is obviously a JD Vance joint. But because his few braincells are just playing a massively information-losing game of "Telephone" amongst themselves, he forgot why deporting people to Venezuela wouldn't be correct. 

Trump has been referencing Venezuela a lot though. Maybe he thinks he wants to do like Matilda in the old Calypso song. He takes the money and runs to Venezuela. He surely thinks Caracas is nicer than Washington DC. He wants to meet with his friends there. I guess they don't have extradition to the US. Maybe he has his mind set in the Carribean for some reason. Not everywhere has the Pacific Ocean, but the Carribean is quite nice. 

Guess Who Lauded a Hitler Enthusiast?

 

NEW:

Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club hosted a convicted Jan. 6 rioter and alleged Nazi sympathizer twice this summer, where he was celebrated and gave speeches.

At one event, Trump sent a video praising the attendees as “amazing patriots.”

At the other, he won an award. pic.twitter.com/g7EMJiIvfg

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) September 12, 2024

If I know my readers, you probably guessed "Trump" with a quickness and only wondered "Which Hitler enthusiast, though?"  But this is where Trump's "MAGA movement" is right now, with Trump clearly saying "we" when referring to the 1/6 insurrectionists during the very revealing debate (because he did want to be there--and also did not turn up and he did tell them to be there and they understood the assignment).  

But the answer is the guy who was most obviously Hitler cosplaying as if that was natural.  Which Hitler enthusiast even being a question, just like sitting down with obvious antisemitic clowns Kanye and Nick Fuentes, or cozying up to Laura Loomer today, or spreading a blood libel about legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio, is a hell of a sign that Trump has gone mask-off. Or maybe that needs to be: "hood-off"? 

Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities--

 

I recall in the aftermath of 9/11, one of my concerns was for the potential of people seeking vengeance for the tragedy and wreaking havoc on innocent people who had done nothing at all but were just nearby and brown.  Your basic American bigot just wants a reason to start the fuckery. Just like people had conspiracy theories, blamed Muslims, and fucked around post-OKC (even though that was a white supremacist, Christian ID-associated attack), after 9/11, innocent immigrant citizens got profiled, and sometimes experienced tragic racist violence. 

Laura Loomer is an Islamophobe and 9/11 truther and was a guest of Donald Trump at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony. She posted the above racist stupidity targeting VP Kamala Harris as a person of South Asian descent. That was three days ago. The Trump campaign was unaware of this? To her credit--a thing you won't hear me say often--she got called out for her racism by Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

And think what that says about the Trump campaign association with Loomer (IMHO, as dangerous for them as an association with Nicholas Fuentes). Did they not know she said this about people of South Asian descent? When the Trump campaign needs the support of people like Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Usha Vance?  Isn't attacking Harris on the basis of her heritage so obviously wrong the campaign should step back from her? 

They're Eating the Dogs! Debate me!

 

What a split screen. I mean. pic.twitter.com/pKW39fDfoh

— Annika Brockschmidt (@ardenthistorian) September 11, 2024

They are not eating the dogs. Putin is eating Trump's lunch. Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden, and every state has laws against infanticide. Trump's "concepts of a plan" are not a goddamn plan and he looked weak, delusional, unfocused, changed the subject and rambled like a lunatic, and demonstrated why 81 million people voted against him four years ago. Trumps history of racism was discussed. as was his weakness and lack of patriotism. 

Vice-President Harris had reasons to smile, to express pity for delusional old Trump mingled with the satisfaction of having a new crotchet of his to seize on with any given response. He was baited on his weakness, on people leaving his rallies, on his former staff having bad things to say about him--

And he rose, or should we say, sank, to each allusion. 

He messed up by showing up thinking his act was all he needed. The ABC team did a good job of fact-checking, which Trump fans will no doubt view as putting their thumbs on the scale. I guess my point about that is--why are the facts so stubbornly aligned against what Trump says, though?  That is certainly something you might want to consider!

Maybe Trump is just a pathetic liar. 

The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

Little Jimmy and the Operation: A Trump Fable

 

Trump: Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school and your son comes back with a brutal operation. pic.twitter.com/ChmwpavFAH

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 7, 2024

The school nurse can't even give out aspirin*, and now kids are supposed to be getting "a brutal operation" in school? What "brutal operation"? Are they handing out appendectomies? Emergency tracheotomies? Is there a full surgical theater in your son's or daughter's school you need to worry about? (Are they more likely to be slapping on tourniquets in the case of an actual bloody emergency--all too probable.)

Long story short--Little Jimmy is not going to get his Liitler Jimmy whacked off while at school. Teachers are paying for glue sticks and dry erase markers out of pocket and supposedly school districts are doing bottom surgery on your precious wee manlet? You would think Trump of all people would be skeptical about the promise of free vaginas being handed out. And it's not escaping me that he is afraid for little Jimmy, not little Agatha getting a double mastectomy. 

This is not happening. This is on the "furry kids using a litter box at school" level of not happening. It's simply nucking futz. It's on the same level of not-happening as the supposed latest term-post-birth abortion. He's now said it more than once, and maybe that means it's going to be a part of stump speeches, now. And it speaks to other fears parents might have: their boys aren't transgender--but just a bit queer. Maybe they are autistic, artistic, kind, sensitive, don't do sports, respect women, aren't about to grow up and ride a Lingam-1500 male-insecurity wagon with truck nuts and a Trump flag to their he-man signifying maleness job. Maybe they just have to also compete with girls who are smart as fuck and might be better at them in things. 

TWGB: The Failing Man

 

Trump's having a weird week--yesterday, he gave an answer to the question of how to make childcare more affordable that made JD Vance sound like Mr. Policy King by giving us nothing and landing on we're a "failing country". He was applauded when he finished his rambling response which did not go into policy details (sorry to Chris Sununu) and didn't even contain a complete sentence (sorry to Bobo Kennedy) but because he finished talking, which was all anyone wanted him to do at that point. 

Then, earlier today, he decided that the best way to handle his appeal of the first civil case judgment of defamation for his sexual assault victim would be to give a press conference where he defamed her(again!) and mentioned other (alleged) sexual assault victims of his. And he referred one of the women as not "the chosen one" as if to indicate sometimes he does pick out potential assault victims, but in his long career of doing this, she does not meet his exacting standards. 

He followed this up with another rally thing where he forgot he wasn't running against Joe Biden and also made a weird non-joke about Nancy Pelosi's house having walls that did not stop the man who attacked her husband and gravely injured him. (Which says something about walls not working. An odd thing to note about a crucial gimmick of his political career.) 

This is why Joe Biden nailed Trump today, calling him "a failing man." 

Biden: My predecessor believes America is a failing nation. He is a failing president and a failing man pic.twitter.com/ZTnez17ImR

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 6, 2024

And that sums it up--Trump projects: nothing is his fault, his blame, his fuckup.  But the more he casts his insulting, perverse, negative view of the world, the more you can understand the sickness in him. 

This Tenet Thing--

 

Since 2016, I've felt sort of hyperaware about the potentiality of Russian disinfo because obviously, WikiLeaks and the IRA. Per the Senate Intelligence Committee, in multiple volumes, this was anything but a hoax. The claim Trump didn't welcome it and appreciate it is more than answered by his campaign's silence about it and even attempted cover-up. Money was funneled through Facebook and Twitter ads and RW-pressure groups like NRA. I joke that we are still living in 2016 because we are still finding out how that election was, well, weird. 

I deleted a post about how weird it was that Benny Johnson was a dupe to launder Russian talking points in the Tenet exploit because I realized that his basic dopiness and right-wing credulity is a whole fucking bigger mood than I was handling at the moment. We get that RW dopey incendiaries are out here--and they are pretty well-funded domestically as it is. Like, you pick a random concern-trolling "Liberty" "Freedom" "Heritage" or "Family"-labelled group from the last 100 years, and it was probably founded by some freaky Christian billionaire bigot family like the DeVos, Wilkes, Prince, Mellon, Coors, Koch, Busch, etc. The family-tree of theocratic and Bircher-light think tankitude has been incestuous and generously endowed since forever. 

But where there is money and batshit, you have a real problem--people who love the hell out of money and don't care what degree of batshit they spew. If you wanted useful idiots for foreign actors, this is one way you could open up a path for useful idiots to wrongfully mobilize people by playing on their fears and so on. Propaganda is cheap and effective. Even when we try to sanction the fuck out of the players to try and make it prohibitively costly to shit in the US litterbox--someone will try it.

A Fact of Life

 

I don't know if referring to school shootings as a "fact of life" can be seen as anything but weird, but somehow, it made sense in the mouth of JD Vance. I grew up watching "Facts of Life" and I'm struggling to recall the episode where Mrs. Garrett lunged to put herself between a bullet and Tootie, but then again, when I was a kid we didn't have active shooter drills with the frequency we had fire drills. 

It's not a "fact of life" in any other country. Just this one. 

Now, a guy like Vance doesn't think it weird to be more concerned about kids having access to porn than guns. Republicans believe weird things. They believe in things like "post-birth abortion" which isn't happening and are concerned with that, not the school shootings which clearly are.  Then again, maybe folks like Vance have warm and fuzzy memories about unsecured firearms. 

Just like Mamaw used to have. 

TWGB: It's a Holy Perfect Angel You Guys!

 

This is mind-blowing: An American flag tangled into the shape of an angel before the #Trump rally yesterday. pic.twitter.com/81btUcr8Lp

— America Strong (@itsthereelthing) August 31, 2024

I don't know if you were ready to believe in God yet, but did you see the perfect holy angel Trump was talking about? Because OMG, the guy who was saying he was just being martyred like Jesus when he was starting to sell Trump Bibles has now been rescued by Jesus so he can save the country you guys, Merry Eargrazemas to you!  

Because how the hell can you ever say "Merry Christmas" again without acknowledging who has made it all possible by being made a little bit dead--but then totally saved to unfuck this apparently fucked-up country? You know who--the guy who was more indicted than Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Al Capone--not to mention Hannibal Lector! You might not have believed in Jesus before you guys, but since he saved Trump. you kind of have to, right? 

I'm an agnostic and this sort of thing offends the heck out of me, so I don't even know how it sits with my actually Christian brethren. He believes in God to the extent he can see God on his side. God exists to magnify Trump--not the other way around. .Donald Trump is to faith what Lara Trump is to music. 

This is the credibly accused serial adulterer and harasser/rapist of women. And he's trying to tell you divine intervention saved him from anything.

Where Were Your Candidates on Labor Day?

 

Celebrated Labor Day with workers in Detroit and Pittsburgh—both cradles of the American labor movement.

Every person in our nation has benefited from the work of our brothers and sisters in the labor movement. pic.twitter.com/PhI3fD26He

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 3, 2024

Mine was working. 

I don't know where Trump was, but wherever JD Vance was, he was Tweeting unadvisedly. 

This man may have worked a service position once according to his book (and probably does not have it still on his resume), but he has demonstrated no feeling for working people. He's used to no-show jobs. Just like he doesn't show up to vote for working people. 

The Things They Say

 

The desperation is hilarious. https://t.co/8OZ0H0y44C pic.twitter.com/Owr6iTAPaO

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) September 1, 2024

(This post been busted--here's a link adjacent as fuck.) I should have saved the image. 

The same kind of people who think Kamala Harris never saluted also are mad Barack Obama saluted once with a coffee cup or wore a tan suit that one time.  The same kind of people will boldly assert she doesn't know where Arlington Cemetery is, when she knows the route. Someone like Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a book about Arlington, can say with some confidence that Biden and Harris should have attended an event to which they were not invited on his weekly Sunday chat shot hit. (Yes, weekly, and why? Do people want to see this mook?) He says it with confidence not because it's true, but because he doesn't expect to be thrown out on his ear. 

This is the guy who wrote the letter ages ago that recommended we back out of the JCPOA, and it was literally one of the dumbest foreign policy decisions ever. He's an open partisan whose opinions aren't to be trusted--ergo, he's on tv every week. 

Apparently, the media just exists to air opinions without context. 

TWGB: He'll Dance to Anything

 

Wow. This is a new low, even for Trump.

“It Was a Setup,” “Could have been the parents” Trump tries to blame Gold Star families for the Arlington incident
pic.twitter.com/7eO9CZ3tag

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 31, 2024

Maybe the Gold Star families, who invited him and have signed statements to the effect that they think his being there was cool and totally legal--fucked him over by posting pictures and videos. That's what HE SAID, babies, not me. He tried to suggest the people who were there to back his ass up backed his ass over. So he suggested he didn't know anything about the strategy of his dumb stunt and maybe he was stunted upon. Maybe it was the White House that he was going to claim bailed on a solemn event they totally were clued into.  Kamala Harris called him on it, and now that stunt is supposed to be "he said and she said". 

I'm not here to belittle the Gold Star families because their grief is real and how they feel is real regardless of the facts on the ground. Their loved ones saved people in assisting the evacuation that day and died in a suicide bombing from ISIS-K. Nearly 170 Afghan people also were killed by that blast. The war had been 20 years long. And many servicepeople cycled through that assignment.  They can cast their blame any and everywhere it feels valid. But we all know that serving in the armed services can mean being placed in danger. Their safety was not guaranteed, they guaranteed the safety of others and that was their great sacrifice and why Section 60 is hallowed ground. 

Nothing I can say makes that right. Throughout the war on terror, we have not stopped the tactic of extraordinary violence. The results are appalling and personal. I demur from politicizing it. I have my own ideas about why the withdrawal sucked, but it was a group effort. And yet, for the Abbey Gate tragedy, I still blame ISIS. There was one airport, and there were so many people who were running out of time to be safe.   It was time to leave, and the crowd itself was an exploit. An opportunity for terror. One last kick in the slats before leaving. One demonstration of the ideology that faced the country we tried to rehabilitate into something like a Western image.

It's 2024, Asshole

 

BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview. pic.twitter.com/c6nfcJrFJy

— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 29, 2024

It's not that Kamala Harris doesn't deserve this because it's obviously childish and a reference from the Year of Our Lord Grumpy Cat 2007--it's that Caitlin Upton doesn't really deserve that noise, either. She was trying to handle a lot of question for a teenager and being a beauty queen doesn't mean you are one-dimensional, but it seems like Vance is trying to make it seem like Kamala Harris is cute but dumb. 

Her vastly more experienced than his ass is cute but dumb. Her public service resume versus his pitiful Potemkin VC-supported behind. My stars and garters. 

Does he come home to his far more intelligent wife with that attitude?  Does he girl-dad with that face? 

Is it 2024 and he's belittling the intellect of the Vice-President to make himself feel like he's smarter with a spent-ass meme?