h/t to KC who clued us in to this yesterday with this stellar comment:
Christ, this shit is insane.
@kccomplainsalot
Okay, so Trump hated Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” and called him out on it. Then the stupid dope agrees to be interviewed for Bob Woodward’s new book, and agrees to allow himself to be recorded.
And then you get shit like this;
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/bob-woodward-rage-book-trump-coronavirus/index.html
Trump on tape admitting that he downplayed the coronavirus. ON TAPE. HE PURPOSELY LET HIMSELF BE RECORDED BY SOMEONE WHO WAS GOING TO BE WRITING A NEGATIVE BOOK ABOUT HIM AND THEN SPILLED HIS OWN TEA ABOUT LYING ABOUT THE PANDEMIC.
And then tweeted that the book was all Fake News when HE’S ON FUCKING TAPE AND IT’S HIS VOICE TALKING.
I…I just…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I don’t ask that all of our politicians not be corrupt supervillians, but I at least ask that they be competent supervillians.
Bonus points to @ Blue Dog Collar as well:
First, I have to say this is a textbook case of when a writer has to forget any agreements he might have with a publisher, sources, whatever. Woodward needed to go public with the tape ASAP.
@bluedogcollar
Second, the DC press needs to give up on any semblance of normal relations with Kayleigh McNameny and the rest of the press office. She blatantly lied even with Trump on tape. They have to stop covering her, they need to bury any responses from her in the final lines of their stories, they need to explain that they are doing his because they can’t be trusted.
They won’t, because they like her just like they liked Conaway and they thought Spicer was just fine. It’s all just business for them, and they can’t wait until they all get together at the next press dinner, whenever that will be.
ITMFA!
“the powers of salesmanship that have sustained him his entire adult life”
The fuck? Are they talking about Donald J. Trump? Because he’s been “sustained” by theft, mostly.
Yes, because Narcissist with Antisocial Personality Disorder will always think that *he* is smarter than ANYONE else in any given room, and that he can spin/bluster his way into getting everyone on his side…
Partly because *it DID used to work for him* but ALSO, because he’s been so surrounded by sycophants & Yes-Men (AND Yes-Women!), that he really *does* believe it, when they tell him “Everybody LOOOOOVES You!”
The Cult of Personality that *is* Donald Trump runs in BOTH directions–*out* toward his “fans” and also *internally* to himself
Because I am a “big picture” guy I immediately noticed that Chad Wolf is probably the hottest member of the traveling circus/revolving door that is the endless reshuffling of the chaotic Trump administration. A little too much hair product, perhaps, but I admire a man who knows his way around a jar of Brylcreem.
On wiki it says that he has a wife and two children (all unnamed) and is “46 or 47.” Discretion, Chad, that’s how you do it!
…can’t lie…was not expecting to find something to chuckle about in that tweet…bravo, sir
He definitely is the best-looking member of the cartel, but let’s be honest, the bar is set really low. I mean, Christ, Bannon looks like he should be holding a “please help” sign at the interstate on-ramp. This has been, almost without exception, the ugliest administration since Nixon. And by ugly I mean appearance, not morals.
For my AP American history class in high school the teacher assigned us to write a paper about something he had never mentioned in class. Genius on two levels: independent research on the part of the students and a test to see how attentive the class was.
I chose to write about Julie and David Eisenhower. Jules is Nixon’s daughter and Dave is Ike’s grandson. I found this interesting because Ike loathed Nixon, his VP. Ike was alive when they got married (1968 and he died in 1969) but I could never find any evidence that he attended the wedding. He might not have been well enough. Nixon wanted them to put off the wedding and get married at the White House, he had just been elected president but hadn’t taken office yet, but they chose Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church (a very social group and more like a private club than a house of worship) and the reception was at the Waldorf Astoria, of course it was. I got an A.
Anyway, here’s the cute couple and a “where are they now” article. How human they look compared to those dreadful cyborgs Ivanka and Jared.
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-12-2010/where_are_they_now_julie_and_david_eisenhower.html
*would*
Woodward wrote not one but two books about the Bush administration and the Iraq war: Bush at War and Plan of Attack. They weren’t exactly hagiographies but they weren’t received warmly by anti-war critics. There is almost no discussion about whether this was a worthwhile thing to do, it was mostly about how, and Woodward showing off how much access he has, and has long had, with members at the most senior levels of every Presidential administration.
I doubt Trump has ever heard of, much less read, either of these books, but people around him probably told him that Woodward doesn’t ask a lot of hardball questions and is more interested in presenting interviews without much comment. Earendil’s CNN excerpt above is a good example of this. I bet Woodward himself doesn’t say that Trump lied about the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, just lets the man speak for himself. Which is valuable but shades into stenography.
…but if he’d held off going to print with the Watergate stuff until he’d lined up a sweet book deal would we all know his name the way we do?
…I’m not saying it’s not a big deal…or even that continuing to record interviews with the man didn’t provide further damniung material…but I question whether this was the best he could do with what he had considering the stakes & the relative timing?
…basically I’m with bluedogcollar on this, I think
Oh me too, I’m not disagreeing. And releasing this book in the run-up to the election, with the pandemic barely six months old (this is lightning speed in the book publishing industry) is all to the good!
…so it seems like he didn’t get to the bottom of where the february claims came from source-wise until around may…& I guess you can’t exactly blame him for not being sure whether something tangerine twitler said was true
…but even so, I feel like there were grounds to do more in terms of “public interest” than hold it back for the book?
…if all the shit the so-called president gets to say in defiance of twitter’s published terms & conditions is because it’s in the public interest to have him speak directly in a barrage of untrammelled frothing hysteria then how is it irresponsible to say “he says one thing to the world but he said something very different to me”
…hell, he could have been an off-the-record source & let someone else write it up & go after it & maybe even still have got the rest of his interviews…I dunno…he’s not the first & doubtless won’t be the last to go about it this way…& maybe the collective attention span is such that it’ll carry more weight electorally now than then, even
…but I’m still finding it doesn’t sit right with me, if I’m honest
Bluedogcollar is correct. While this “blockbuster” is certainly interesting, it’s not like we didn’t know the asshole was an asshole. And would coming forward earlier have saved lives? Maybe. Woodward is going to have to live with that.
No no that guy dumb. He dumb very much. No good brain dumb very much him.
I hope you’re referring to Bob Woodward and not Cousin Matthew.
I’ve since been reading more commentary about the timing of the release of the tapes. Many feel that if they had been released earlier it might have shamed the White House into acting more quickly and more forcefully than it did, and thus would have saved lives. The counter-argument is that this White House is beyond shameless, and in New York, for example, where there is no lack of medical and scientific knowledge and no love of Trump, both Cuomo and de Blasio also took this tack. Don’t panic, not a big deal, go about your lives. Nancy Pelosi made a much remarked upon visit to SF’s Chinatown and brushed off Covid concerns, essentially saying, “Nothing to see here, and if you bring up the virus you’re being racist.”
On the other hand, I remember exactly where I was when I first felt a twinge of concern. Packed into a jury room/holding pen, there were hundreds of us, no masks, on February 18th, Year of Our Lord 2020.
The courts in Manhattan are near Chinatown and cutting through there I saw more than a few mask wearers. Surely, I thought, this entire community doesn’t regularly travel between Wuhan and NYC. But after the day was over I went back through Chinatown, thinking I’d pick up a few masks, just in case until the virus blew over. None were to be found. Sold out everywhere.
Back home I went. There is a small medical supply store near our apartment and I found a box of masks there, at their normal price. The person ringing me up laughed at me. “Virus panic, huh?”
“Well, you never know.” And now we do, almost 200,000 American deaths later.
Me talk about blue dogcollar. Bryansplinter wrong. Bluecollar Dog guy is dumb guy. Not good smart writer not at all.
Trump has had a lot of fondness for guys from the GW Bush orbit — Bolton, Abrams, Kyl, Yoo. His Iran fixation is straight out of their playbook, and he got them on board by giving them a lot of latitude as long as they left Putin alone. I would not be surprised if Woodward worked that group to get recs for Trump, and used his early Bush-Iraq stroking to convonce them he would be a suckup. And then Trump’s ego took over.
…also…I recall roo on kinja being fond of this tune…& it seems like today might be a good day to dust it off?
I think the thing that really grinds my gears about Trump is the amount of unforced errors he has that are due to little more than his own ego. It’s like watching Mr. McMahon in the WWF Attitude Era, only worse because Trump is actually President.
Like, of course Trump was lying about the severity of the pandemic. That much was known. But the fact that he willingly was recorded admitting as much…it’s fucking mind-blowing.
It’s a testament to the fact that Trump fancies himself a wonderful pitchman, when the only thing he’s been good at is convincing dumb bastards to give him gobs of cash and then stiffing them on the bill. Trump isn’t a good salesmen or a good negotiator; he’s just been lucky enough to find the right rubes to sling his bullshit too. I would love a portrait of how Trump’s businesses actually operate, since I’m almost positive that the ones that have been relatively successful like his hotel chain and his shitty clothing lines have only being successful because someone (probably his kids) had the brains to keep him as far away from the actual day-to-day decision making as possible.
I do recall that Trump’s hotels were known to be tacky and trash before his children got involved and turned them into something that was more akin to an actual luxury experience. God only knows how many more monuments to Trump’s failure we’ll have to endure before this shit gets any better.
…I don’t have an actual diagram but I’m fairly confident that you can find a strong correlation between the degree of personal involvent he has in an enterprise & its profitability…strongly negative, that is
…the ones that just bear his name & are otherwise fuck all to do with him have a tendency to remain broadly profitable but the ones at the other end of the spectrum have more or less universally ended in bankruptcy…& even then he doubtless prides himself on clawing up all the cash in sight & then walling himself off from the creditors he’s bilked…it’s like the anti-midas-touch
That’s really it. Trump’s entire life has been him trying to do the stupidest thing possible in any given circumstance, and other people trying to talk him out of it, with varying degrees of success.
I guess he really, really, really wants to be the only the president to have been impeached twice.
2020 strikes again! #RIP
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54106509
Actress Dame Diana Rigg, famous for roles including Emma Peel in TV series The Avengers and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, has died at the age of 82.
Her daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, said she died of cancer, after being diagnosed in March.
“She spent her last months joyfully reflecting on her extraordinary life, full of love, laughter and a deep pride in her profession,” she added.
Shit.
defector.com just went live today. Why your team sucks. Jamboroo. Daniel Radcliffe reads the worst tweets of 2020.
I subscribed, but I have an endless thirst for punishment so I will keep coming back here too.
I look forward to having to explain to my wife while I’m spending money to read a very good website, her not getting it, and then just keeping doing it anyone because eff it.
It does remind me that I’m going to have to cancel one of the subscription services that keeps showing up to surprise me every month to sort of balance it out.