US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

I will say there's a certain cinematic quality to the fact that Trump is on TV all the time while Mueller seems to only be seen in stock photos

idk one thing you could do is not perjure yourself

do you know who we're talking about here?

Grab 'em by the perjury

lmao Trump would perjure himself in about 30 seconds without even being asked a question

What's the Twain line? You never have to remember what you said if you always tell to truth?

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

are these interviews done under oath?

it's not perjury, it's "truthful hyperbole"

(Twain did not say that)

Ned LOL

^whoops referring to sex joke

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

"I don't remember. I don't remember."

I liked this nice little short Q&A

Q: Are you suggesting we should then not try and refute Trump's falsehoods if that only helps him?

A: No, I am not saying don't refute them. I am saying you don't refute them by repeating his language and repeating his claims. You refute them by undermining them, you refute them by understanding what you are doing and saying the opposite in positive terms not in negative terms.

you refute them by understanding what you are doing and saying the opposite in positive terms not in negative terms.

this might work on the retail level, just talking to this or that co-worker or friend. on the wholesale level, trump will always have the biggest megaphone and spread his lies further and faster than anyone else can keep up with. schumer or pelosi can talk until they turn blue, but trump will get 20 minutes to each minute they get in the media.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/senator-reportedly-had-to-be-talked-out-of-retiring.html

manchin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-asked-the-acting-fbi-director-whom-he-voted-for-during-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/23/2cb50818-0073-11e8-8acf-ad2991367d9d_story.html?utm_term=.5118bd8bb4c8

Shortly after President Trump fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.

The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, Trump, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?

McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter.

Trump, the officials said, also vented his anger at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.

I liked this nice little short Q&A

its kind of funny cuz this is almost verbatim what the Dilbert guy says, except the Dilbert guy is so desperate for validation and a fanbase that he's had to frame these things as virtues - "Trump would make a great president b/c he's good at repeating lies"

there's definitely some merit to it - I still think the "Obama and Hillary created ISIS!!!" tweet was just to bait the media into talking about the failures in the Middle East over the last 8 years. I don't think Trump is very savvy in general but I feel like he's got a handle on this sort of thing. ditto for the "actually Hillary was the original birther!!" thing. I get why the media didn't latch onto this at first but they sorta played into his hands for basically the entire campaign

white trash house. no one wants to say it

Hmmm...

There’s news in the Manafort/Gates case tonight: Longtime Manafort ally RICK GATES is potentially negotiating a plea deal as additional charges are expected soon (likely superseding indictment) https://t.co/QmpZXbV6O6

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) January 24, 2018

what a cast of characters

Evangelicals are the worst (look at some of the vids/articles on CNN front page for context)

Just a Supreme Court justice sitting in on a little gop senate caucus strategy session. https://t.co/JosBnlDW0y

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 23, 2018

It’s spelled “stategery,” matthew

Anyhoo with Gowdy and Nunes leading the charge I am certain the FBI is really in for it over these MISSING TEXTS

We must find those uranium one email texts between Hillary and her FBI love triangle! Our country depends on it

God, I hope she doesn't get elected president for a second term, such a criminal. We have to purge the government of people like her. Hillary Clinton, resign now!

I don't think Trump is very savvy in general but I feel like he's got a handle on this sort of thing

Big deal. Every schoolyard bully in 1976 had it down too. I know you are but what am I. I'm rubber, you're glue. Why are you hitting yourself?

Righteous indignation was no comfort then, and it's no comfort now. Then as now, the solution is to dethrone the bully and make him irrelevant. Don't fight on his chosen ground; move toward a situation where you have the advantage, not him.

All it'll take is a WH staffer with a flathead screwdriver and the chutzpah to wedge it into a bathroom door jamb during a POTUS tweet jag.

Get the upper ground. Like say this grassy knoll here

mad puffin otm, this is why i’m so dismayed by the “re-appropriation” of all his semi-literate sloganeering

it just drags everyone even closer to his level

All it'll take is a WH staffer with a flathead screwdriver and the chutzpah to wedge it into a bathroom door jamb during a POTUS tweet jag.

I'll trust their judgment wrt the wisest employment of said screwdriver.

fuck i screwed up my strikethrough formatting there but i trust you get the gist

The best examples of re-appropriation have been pretty organic, but there's really no template. It happens if it happens. For example: I believe that "gay" and "queer" were pretty skillfully turned, by people who were skilled in messaging.

I'm a known Hillary stan (sorry) but as a student of branding, I acknowledge that "deplorables" was happily embraced by garbage people and robbed of its negative power. That there are now dating websites for deplorables confirms this. Further, I don't think "the woman card/deal me in" worked very well.

Not Trump but I think "nevertheless, she persisted" will ultimately turn out to be a success story for progressives.

"Pussy grabs back" would have been legendary if it had worked.

The world awaits someone with the right trolling skillz to take Trumpoid trolling and flip it successfully.

It took Trump and company approximately fifteen minutes to completely appropriate and subvert the term 'fake news'. It's kind of impressive, tbh.

Not Trump but I think "nevertheless, she persisted" will ultimately turn out to be a success story for progressives.

honestly i can't remember the last time i heard this in public discourse

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/01/when-selection-mechanisms-fail.html

'fake news' was already dumb and meaningless when it was exclusive to the Frederiks of the webosphere

It's dumb meaninglessness is, I'm sure, a large part of the reason why it was appropriated. They're monosyllabic words that Trump recognizes. Which is I'm sure why we've yet to see a subverted 'nevertheless, I persisted' tweet from our beloved POTUS.

honestly i can't remember the last time i heard this in public discourse

But do you know any 45-year-old women with ready access to a tattoo artist? I do.

Ha, or a similarly-aged neighbor who recently found just the right sticker for her car bumper?

(NB, I live in a deep, deep blue city, so my experience is probably not emblematic of the US as a whole.)

It may be a trivial bit of virtue-signaling but I think these things are important. If your enemy's entrenched and rallying around slogans, why should you not be also?

There's a Newsweek "She Persisted" special on newsstands right now.

lol

Simona Mangiante — fiancée of former Trump campaign worker George Papadopoulos — told the WashPost: “I believe history will remember him like John Dean."

she is very in love with this man

honestly i can't remember the last time i heard this in public discourse
But do you know any 45-year-old women with ready access to a tattoo artist? I do.

― bannonality of evil (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, January 24, 2018 2:52 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya real talk maybe filter bubble in play here but i see enough lefty women continuing to mock this slogan that it suggests to me *they're* continuing to see it out there

Unfortunately, the one thing that works on school bullies like 45 - being a small person with an unexpected haymaker/left hook/nut kick and an audience of your peers - is not available because rich bullies have security.

the question then becomes "if schoolyard bully tactics are so effective in winning elections, why was Trump the only one smart to figure that out?". which I think points to what's so unique about Trump - not only was he a man born into wealth who was given infinite chances to fuck everything up, he also possesses an extraordinary shamelessness that's practically inhuman. as craven as the GOP is I don't know how many of them could stand at a podium and vehemently insist that Hillary started the birther movement.

i'm sure lots of them could (and would), but only trump could get away with it