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

u mad doggie

however his opinion of pixelated boat is the correct one

disagree

Was looking forward to gorilla channel evolving into a yeah jeets-level meme

This Wolff interview from this morning is worth watching. My favorite quote is "I absolutely spoke to the president. Whether he realized it was an interview or not, I don't know, but it certainly wasn't off the record."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REEg6Jwmp6s

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/us/politics/christopher-steele-dossier-judiciary-committee.html

Steele must be cursing the day he ever signed on to any of this shit.

man, wolff made out like a bandit with this one, good for him

I gotta say I'm pretty glad that the one WH reporter who had the balls to just totally abuse his access and take advantage of these people's general incompetence is making bank here. I can't think of a more deserving group of people to get burned like this.

so the republicans voted for a crooked suspect after all

On the one hand, an ad hoc Gorilla Channel cobbled together by the WH staff just for their boss is sadly not outside of the realm of possibility. On the other, the reaction to Gorilla Channel has demonstrated that even if Trump doesn't succeed in dismantling this country, the average American's dearth of basic critical thinking skills surely will.

In good news for Ohioans, Josh Mandel just dropped out of the Senate race. Not that he was going to beat Brown (he said hopefully) but good fuckin' riddance.

Wow. Huge shakeup for #OHSen. Mandel had a primary challenger who had picked up some nice endorsements but was still heavily favored to win primary. https://t.co/TAqa5LS5aB

— Henry J. Gomez (@HenryJGomez) January 5, 2018

xps Luckily, Wolff doesn't represent a news organization which can't afford to torch its WH access. The timidity of most WH reporters to go full ham on Trump is a direct reflection of the timidity of the news organizations behind them.

how vladimir chuckles sovietly as grassley and lindsay seek to prosecute a british spy and the DOJ investigates hillary's emails (again). thank christ the republicans got their dooH niboR tax cut : )

so the reason Wolff was able to get this much access basically boiled down to him telling Trump, "I'm gonna write a great book about you and your administration", and then just tagging along to everything?

he tom yates-ed him essentially fwiu

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/us/politics/christopher-steele-dossier-judiciary-committee.html

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Friday, January 5, 2018 12:51 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty good signal that Senate Rs will do absolutely nothing when/if Mueller gets fired

as always they'll do whatever ALEC and these guys tell them to

https://www.mercatus.org/

Early word is that Grassley's thing is pure stunt. It's about making someone look good, no more.

speaking of gorillas, here's a reminder that Trump has been coherent and empathetic enough to express a well-reasoned opinion exactly one time in the last 2.5 years, and it happened to be about Harambe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6eajHUqA8

also, holy shit what a difference one year has made

I just remembered that yesterday when I was trying to remember if Trump had shown any fondness for animals (given his naked contempt for the entire human race).

also to give some official sanction to breathless fox news reports about CRIMINAL REFERRALS

That Wolff interview is nuts. I don't watch a lot of tv, but I have to imagine that going on the Today show and saying what he said with such a high level of confidence and zero mincing of words has to be an utter disaster for team Trump.

If you mean that Team Trump's entire weekend is now ruined because they'll be pulling double shifts cleaning up after cwanky baby's widdle tantwums, then yes. If you mean that Team Trump will suffer any substantive consequences as a result of Wolff's book, well...

For fun!

These Corey Lewandowski book-signing publicity photos are the funniest thing I've seen all year pic.twitter.com/Mppq40qjB2

— David A. Graham (@GrahamDavidA) January 5, 2018

Mr. Ryan, it seems you have some competition.

If you mean that Team Trump will suffer any substantive consequences

Yeah. Although they may handle the power that comes with the presidency maladroitly compared to any recent administrations (or any administration ever), so long as Team Trump sits in the executive branch and Republicans control Congress, their collective power is only marginally impaired by looking like utter fools in the media. Witness the tax bill they have given us. They gave away $1.5 trillion to their backers. That is the real substance of power.

This Drew Magary GQ column is worth a read.

Everyone around Donald Trump is too polite to Donald Trump. Democrats, foreign dignitaries, underlings… all of them. And the White House press is perhaps the worst offender. From the media pool playing along with Sarah Sanders during press conferences—conferences where Sanders openly lies and pisses on democracy—to access merchants like Maggie Haberman doling out Trump gossip like so many bread crumbs, too many reporters have been far too deferential to an administration that is brazenly racist, dysfunctional, and corrupt. And for what purpose? It’s clear to me that Haberman and the like aren’t saving up their chits for just the EXACT right time to bring this Administration down. No, the only end goal of their access is continued access, to preserve it indefinitely so that the copy spigot never gets shut off. They are abiding by traditional wink-wink understandings that have long existed between the government and the press covering it.

But Wolff didn’t do that. He did not engage in some endless bullshit access tango. No, Wolff actually USED his access, and extended zero courtesy to Trump on the process, and it’s going to pay off for him not just from a book sales standpoint, but from a real journalistic impact. I am utterly sick to death of hearing anonymous reports about people inside the White House “concerned” about the madman currently in charge of everything. These people don’t deserve the courtesy of discretion. They don’t deserve to dictate the terms of coverage to people. They deserve to be torched.

https://s10.postimg.org/3sh312oll/Gordon_Corey.png

The Wolff book with its descriptions of Trump’s piggish phobias is “What About Bob?” meets Tony Clifton. https://t.co/dW9WeRDsxY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 5, 2018

Hey @pixelatedboat the gorilla channel thing even made it to old timey ass republican talk radio pic.twitter.com/PQ7iD4bcGM

— Bill (@AnimeLiteweight) January 5, 2018

Worth noting who else fell for it.

Liberals aren't the only ones falling for gorilla channel pic.twitter.com/cxGvlhCnt6

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 5, 2018

hahahaha

Slowly scrolling the page up, seeing the top of 'Gordon' and going "Hello....?"

I NEVER SPOKE TO HIM FOR BOOK

(what accent are we supposed to read comrade combover's twitter bursts in?)

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/01/roy_moore_accusers_home_burns.html

uh

let's sic Uttam Dhillon on the criminals

I NEVER HIM. FOR BOOK.

Some news from Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/romantic-encounter-set-off-australias-role-in-triggering-donald-trump-investigation-20180105-h0e34r.html

I like the newspaper's URL, fits the mood of the news

smh indeed

Nicole Panter's take (or at least she posted it):

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17796478_10154456356971485_3594357894815632604_n.jpg?oh=9e5ab395f98574707b315cdf45337034&oe=5AF36868

after the republican senators subpoena the british spy for lying to them, are they going after jared kushner for lying on his security clearance forms? or is that a states' rights issue?

That fire is some dodgy shit.

I hate pixelatedboat and wish he would go away with his dumb ass tweets

like it's not actually funny in this day and age this gorilla hoax now is going to be accepted as fact and discreditng to the book by all those morons

Pay Steele to investigate Trump since you don't want him to get your own party's nomination. When he wins the presidency go oh shit and press charges to try and cover up the fact you originally funded the dossier.

lmao Wolff opens his book with a "enhhh some of this is bullshit" note and some of y'all are worried about joke tweets

Spotted in the new Michael Wolff book about Trump: A Four Seasons breakfast featuring "Washington Post national reporter Mark Berman"

(I have never had breakfast at the Four Seasons, never actually been there) (but now I wonder if I can use this to go eat there and expense it?) pic.twitter.com/bWgVAwrEfj

— Mark Berman (@markberman) January 5, 2018

like it's not actually funny in this day and age this gorilla hoax now is going to be accepted as fact and discreditng to the book by all those morons

― Joan Digimon (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 5, 2018 10:44 PM (fifty-eight seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uhm hey, the fact that morons will accept this as fact is not something to blame pixelatedboat for? That's a rather absurd take. He's not to blame for the stupidity of others, no matter how funny or unfunny you find him.

We need more Veblen jokes in the world:

Resharing an article I wrote a long time ago about an incident that made me a permanent nihilist about the internet, an article that is suddenly relevant again thanks to @pixelatedboat: https://t.co/qFQ2ncarw7

— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) January 5, 2018

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wd4bgz/i-accidentally-fooled-conservative-twitter-with-a-fake-lena-dunham-quote-106

https://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/189811/1.jpg