The Myth of the Press’s Anti-Trump October Surprise
One of the most interesting narratives developing this past week through conservative circles, in the wake of the notorious tape showing Donald Trump make one of the few claims of his that end up fact checking as true, is this: The media conspired to suppress damning evidence against the weak Republican nominee throughout the primaries, only to release their Kraken as an “October surprise.”
There are various flavors to this conspiracy theory trumpeted by the alt-right and #NeverTrumpers alike. Some are asking why Trump’s GOP rivals didn’t commandeer their own oppo files on Trump. Others point to it as proof that the New York Times, Washington Post, and every other purporter of “so-called” journalism were always in the bag for Clinton. And because Donald Trump is Donald Trump, others have crafted Elders of Zion-esque conspiracy theories that map shadowy meetings of “hollywood elites,” “secret cabals,” and “international banks which seek to undermine global sovereignty.” 1 Everyone to the right of Joe Lieberman, it appears, see the shoes currently dropping as possible evidence or proof positive that the Fox-News set was right about the mainstream media all along.
There are two problems with this Planned October Surprise conspiracy theory, however. The first is that it’s demonstrably not true. The second is that the actual truth of what these shoes dropping reveal is much, much worse.
Before we get to that bad news, however, a little trip in the Way Back machine is in order.
In July of 2015, exactly one month after Donald Trump officially threw his hat into the ring for President on the United States, the Daily Beast ran an article detailing the aftermath of a botched surgery on Trump to remove a bad spot. The surgery had not gone well, according to Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, and the result was both painful and gruesome looking. Unfortunately for Ivana, she was the person who had recommended the hapless plastic surgeon to her husband. According to court transcripts, Mrs. Trump claimed that Mr. Trump raped her out of anger, tearing at her hair as he did so. Shortly after the Daily Beast story came out, Ivana Trump issued a statement walking back her previous testimony. Before she did so, however, the campaign’s response was to send Mr. Trump’s special counsel to the media and make the (extremely incorrect) claim that, legally speaking, “by… definition you can’t rape your spouse.”
Throughout the course of the primaries, the press constantly reported on accusations from various women against Mr. Trump, as well as comments by the then-candidate that seemed to confirm those allegations. For example, in October the New York Times reported that several Miss USA pageant contestants complained that Trump kissed them without permission, even when asked to stop. They also claimed that he would attempt to walk into dressing rooms to see the contestants nude. (Trump was the owner the Miss USA and the Miss Universe pageants.) In a May interview with the Times, Trump’s ex-business parter Jill Harth reported that Trump repeatedly tired to kiss her and stuck his hand up her skirt. (Harth was engaged at the time.)
Throughout the entire campaign, from June of 2015 on, a plethora of quotes from Trump about women have been unearthed on a regular basis. Statements he made on the Howard Stern Show — a lot of statements — have been recycled repeatedly over the past fifteen months, many of which echo the “new” stories being reported on these past few weeks. One more than one occasion, he bragged to Stern that because of his status and role with Miss USA and Miss Universe he was able to walk into dressing rooms to ogle contestants as they were undressing. He bragged that he had the foresight to dismiss contestants’ accomplishments such as going to medical school over how they looked naked or in a bikini. He joked with Stern that he had an “obligation,” as pageant owner, to sleep with constants. And that’s just what has been reported over the past year about what Trump said to Howard Stern. That new story about him referring to Alicia Machado as Miss Piggy (for being too heavy for Trump’s taste) and Miss Good Housekeeping (for being Latino)? It’s not a new story. It’s from the a front page NYT story published two and a half months prior to Trump’s accepting the nomination.
As I noted my tl/dr article for Marie Claire, in late 2015 and early 2016 the press regularly reported that Trump
publicly refers to women as bimbos, pigs, dogs, and “disgusting animals.” When running against onetime Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina this spring, Trump suggested she didn’t have what it takes to be a leader because she was a woman who was (to Trump’s eye) physically unattractive. Annoyed by a tough question tossed his way during a primary debate by Fox anchor Megan Kelly, he later suggested the reason she had been tough had been because she had “blood coming out of her — wherever.” He has repeatedly suggested the responsibility for male infidelity lies with women for not being attractive enough or not properly satisfying their husbands’ urges in the bedroom. He once walked out of a deposition after a female attorney asked to take a short break so she could be excused to breastfeed her three-month old daughter; Trump declared the very practice of breastfeeding “disgusting.” Earlier this year, he said in a television interview that if he were president, a woman getting an abortion would need to face “some form of punishment.” When being pitched an idea by a shapely blond underling on his reality TV show The Apprentice, he famously responded, “It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.” In his book The Art of the Comeback he reasoned that deep down all women are gold diggers, which likely explains why he was once quoted in New York magazine as saying the secret to communicating with women was “you have to treat ‘em like s**t.”
And it’s no different when you look at those so-called “media-held” stories that are unrelated to Trump’s treatment of women. Yes, the recent reporting by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold on Trump’s illegal using donations to his non-profit foundation as his own personal slush fund has indeed been damning. But the press was reporting as early as last January that money collected by Trump to go directly to veterans charities was being pocketed by Trump organizations. Not long after, the press looked into a veterans charity event Trump held in lieu of participating in a January, 2015 GOP primary debate. As you may recall, Trump had CNN televise an event that competed with the debate, where he collected and personally donated “millions” for “various” veterans groups. As it turned out, however, even though the Trump campaign said that the checks had been sent and cashed to undisclosed charities, Trump himself never donated any money, and Trump organizations pocketed the donations made by others. It wasn’t until this was uncovered by the press that monies were finally donated. Further, the press reported repeatedly from 2015 on that most of the multi-million “donations” Trump boasted of making over the years never actually occurred. Other “recent” scandals, such as the Trump camp’s ties to Putin, also go back to 2015. The fraudulent Trump University, was being reported on as part of the primary election regularly as early as September of 2015. The press’s coverage of Trump’s embrace of the racism and anti-Semitism of the white nationalist movement goes back even further.
All of which is to say that almost all of the “new” stories you’re reading about Trump these days aren’t actually new at all. They’re simply new occurrences of stories that have been reported on repeatedly over the past year. The press’s reporting isn’t really any different today than it was six or twelve months ago.
The audience, however, is.
And thus we circle back fro our bad news to our worse news. The truth is that what we’re finding out about Trump right now isn’t news to the Republicans that propelled Trump to nomination and power. It was reported all along. Constantly. They just didn’t care.
Worse, it isn’t just the far-right, Hannity-watching, Breitbart-reading, Kool-Aid drinkers that are now accusing the press of having hidden all of this until now. It’s pretty much every conservative in my Facebook and Twitter feed. Even the sane, moderate, intelligent conservatives that I respect the Hell out of — people from stand-out places like The Buckley Club, Decision Desk HQ, and Paradox Project. If these guys went through this past year and didn’t pick up on any of this coverage, that’s a really bad sign of just how off the rails everything is right now.
There are several possible reasons for why no one on the right seems aware that the press has been regularly covering these stories. It’s likely some combination of all the above and perhaps some I haven’t thought of, but none are good news for the nation at large.
One possible reason, of course, is that conservatives — even moderate ones — no longer read non-party-approved sources of news and information. Another is that they do read it but assume (because it’s not party-approved) that whatever is being reported is not worth taking seriously — a Dean Chambers Writ Large mindset. A third possibility is that they know full well (even as they claim otherwise) that these things have been reported regularly, but are cynically trying to make themselves look better by undermining the institutions that still (mostly) hold things together in an pluralistic democracy, such as the free press. The least charitable possibility — the one I remain convinced is true of only that small percentage of Republican and conservatives who truly merit the label “deplorable” — is that they know exactly who and what Trump really is, up to an including being a sexual predator, and they simply have no problem with it.
As I said, none of these possibilities speak to a better future any time soon. Each suggest that Trump and Trumpism are not the disease so much as they are the symptoms of a disease the Right does not yet know exists. As I’ve been saying for the past three months, the #NeverTrumpers are going to be vindicated on November 8. But if the aftermath of that defeat is a rejection of all data and narratives not approved by some branch of the party machinery, what the hell will it matter? It will be the 2012 Autopsy all over again, and there will be another Trump in four years. Or if not, someone equally but differently terrible. On top of that is the problem that the GOP base — the one that gushingly lifted Trump on its shoulders — is neither going to magically disappear nor have their brains swapped in 2017. That speaks to some very tough times ahead. And not just for the GOP, but for the country as a whole.
I hate to say this, but I fear it’s all about to get worse.
Image Credit: Screenshot of YouTube video.
- Laugh if you want, but those quotes are all from Trump himself at his West Palm Beach, FL rally yesterday morning.
I don’t know if this could have been planned better. My more paranoid instincts are suggesting Trump is a stooge for the HRC campaign. Others are telling me that it’s not the press doing it’s job and reporting but having this recent behavior handed to them by the rest of the Repubs (mainly the Bush team) as payback and to sabotage the campaign, ’cause HRC is “someone they can work with”.
Oh, the fun! I still cannot understand how anyone could vote for either one of these tool bags. Yall enjoy election day!Report
HRC gave Trump a price to lose. That was no guarantee that he’d actually take it, mind. He could have decided (when it was apparent that he actually had a chance to win) to go for it and take over a country about to head into a global recession.
The Bush Team was the Rubio Team (revised) and if they were competent enough to wipe their own asses… (I hear this from my friend the troll who worked the Bush campaign.)
HRC is being run by the Powers that Be. Who also have quite a bit of swing with the media (Santelli should ring a bell).
The idea that the “free press” is keeping us together is fucking laughable, by the way.
The revolution will not be televised … now has a great corollary: Don’t trust the revolution that starts on TV. You’ll recognize two in the past ten years. I can cite two or three “revolutions” (successful or unsuccessful, take your pick) that weren’t televised. They work a little differently… and most importantly, don’t cause “controversy.”Report
My more paranoid instincts are suggesting Trump is a stooge for the HRC campaign.
This is treated as fact by a large subset of RedState commenters, Probably the same ones who believed that Ben Domenech was framed.Report
Bravo Tod! Thank you for this article.Report
So, no mention of how NBC has had the tapes and held on to them?
Politico
Sure, they were putting up stuff about Trump and his horrible treatment of women, but it was not getting through, best to save this for a rainy day, when they really needed it. I mean, how long have they been the network that has the Apprentice? And they weren’t going over the tapes months ago? Is it their right to do this? Sure. As it is my right to consider them the propaganda wing of the Dems. Right now trust in media is at an all time low and this doesn’t help.
After Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Stephen Glass, Terry Gross, etc. I have no faith in the media anymore. You can tell me this was all above board, but the media has proven otherwise.Report
There’s a difference between NBC and WaPo. NBC, as the owner of the original footage and show producer, likely has significantly more contractual obligations regarding behind the scenes and found footage. The WaPo, just receiving the information, does not have those restrictions*.
The Harth accusation, Alicia Machado and a lot of unsavory stuff was published back in May. These aren’t October surprises, they’re a greatest hit boxed set.
* A good example is the tax stuff the NYT published. The NYT is legally in the clear to publish. But if the accountant or a state tax authority tried to publish it, they’d be up poop’s creek.Report
I’m not following your logic. NBC sitting on this isn’t NBC being a propaganda arm of the Democrats. It is NBC abandoning journalism entirely, in favor of protecting its commercial properties. Whoever fed the video to the Washington Post was clearly working to promote Clinton, but we don’t know who that was.Report
@richard-hershberger Not necessarily. Access Hollywood may have contracts with their guests that don’t allow publishing or distribution of new footage or behind the scenes without consent of the principals, so the lawyers could have been looking for a loophole to avoid losing a lawsuit.Report
The logic is that too much of our media has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar too many times. And in that, I no longer give them any benefit of the doubt. Could they just be protecting commercial properties? Not in my eyes.Report
But NBC didn’t release the video. Some unknown person fed it to the Post. Or are you suggesting that NBC did this, intentionally giving the Post the scoop to distance itself? This seems convoluted. Or you are suggesting that NBC is in the bag for Trump?Report
No, I am saying that NBC was sitting on the video to time it for the most damage. But the Post was able to pick it up.Report
This assertion (the first part, about NBC) seems awfully fact-free. Sure, you can spin it that way. We can also spin it that NBC was burying the video entirely.
Out of curiosity, what timing do you think would have been more damaging to the Trump campaign? Keep in mind that early voting has already started in part of the country.Report
Seems like a heads you win, tails NBC news loses.
When they are putting out unfair disproportionate and unobjective articles about Trump, they are just being their usual liberal leaning mainstream media showing their bias against the right wing candidate.
And when they do the exact opposite, they’re apparently doing the same thing, just 12 dimensionally.
I don’t buy it.
A news organization sitting on a scoop for months, at risk of losing the scoop the entire time, in an attempt to control it and then release it at a time maximally adverse to the candidate is tin hat territory.
Who can say now, but is this information of a different kind than all the rest of the stuff Trump has done? If I could go back in a time machine, I would have thought Trumps statements to the Khan family, or about John McCain being a loser for getting caught, or PTSD sufferers not being tough, or the 1000 examples of exasperating lies he tells. or paying DA’s off with his foundation, or paying his personal legal judgements through his foundation, all would have been worse than this, or at least as bad. Point being, is this SOOO bad, that NBC news could comfortably know THIS piece of information will finally be the piece that brings him down. Especially after so many other normally disqualifying events couldn’t?Report
I’ll ask the more important question: so what?
Lets assume, for a second, that NBC wanted to hold the video until it could most harm Trump (but WaPo got it out sooner). What possible significance could that have on how people should react to the true facts it disclosed? Should undecideds vote for Trump because of NBC’s tactics? Why?Report
@aaron-david is wrong in all of his assumptions, but in this case his instincts about being wary of NBC turn out to be justifiably well founded.
NBC wasn’t “sitting” on this tape. TV networks are distributors of their syndicated shows, not executive producers. They don’t have possession of show property that does not make it to air. (Though they may contractually have an ownership piece to it). In this case, we know that the tape was leaked to NBC News and the Washington Post around the same time, a week prior to when the story broke. It wasn’t released by anyone immediately, because both NBC News and WaPo have editorial standards that require an attempt to have sources verified, and to have the parties involved provide context as part of the story. (e.g.: Yes, the tape is real, but it’s been substantially edited to make the recorded person appear to say something they did not.) So to that extent, we know that aaron is mistaken in his specific assumptions.
However, it appears he’s right bout mistrusting NBC here. It now appears that the reason WaPo beat them to the punch is that NBC was unaware another news organization had been given the tape, and they (NBC) were contemplating editing out the comments made by Billy Bush, an anchor on their morning flagship show.
That’s pretty terrible, and NBC absolutely deserves to be judged harshly for this and to have their future decisions help up to deep scrutiny. But there ethical error was on the business/profit side, not the partisan side.
On the other hand, the accusation being made/implied here against David Fahrenthold is pretty scurrilous.Report
Fahrenthold, by all accounts, basically just trying to verify something Trump said DURING the primaries.
The veteran’s fundraiser thing. He kept trying to find out first who got the money, then whether anyone got the money, then whether Donald donated any money at all. And as he pulled that string, it led to “Wait, has Donald always donated what he said” which led into the Trump foundation.
In fact, in an interview, he mentioned he accidentally sat on a story for months because he didn’t realize what he had. He didn’t know what self-dealing was, didn’t realize it was illegal for a charity like Trump’s foundation, and it wasn’t until he was buried in the weeds of the law and the Trump Foundation that he realized information he’d gotten months back was a blatant violation of the law.
Which led into a much deeper look at the history of the Foundation, and the discovery that it was being used for tax avoidance, to pay off lawsuits, all sorts of blatantly illegal stuff. (Culminating in finding out it was never even properly registered with the State and couldn’t legally solicit more than 25k a year in donations).
He reads like an actual reporter who set out to answer a simple question back during the primaries (“During Trump’s charity stunt when he skipped a debate, how much was raised and who got it”) and just kept doggedly pursuing it, mostly because everything connected to it seemed to connect to something else weird.
And it all started because a regular reported just wanted to know how much had been raised and who it went to.
He literally reported what he found as he found it, complete with verification.
Which is what reporters are, you know, ideally supposed to do.Report
1. That doesn’t answer the “so what” question about the Trump story.
2. I generally find it hard to be outraged about people considering stupid ideas unless they also, you know, do them. Do we know NBC would have done that?Report
I’ve got no issue with needing to be wary of NBC. Not defending their behavior at all.
Just stating that the idea they sat on it in order to increase the damage the story would do to Trump, rather than to protect an asset of theirs (b bush) is in tin foil hat territory.Report
If the press was really sitting on the video they would have dropped it the next day during the first joint appearance between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.Report
I with you, but darn if it doesn’t seem there was at least of little rope-a-dope going on (esp, as Aaron says above, the NBC media collective)Report
@kolohe
I do think it’s true that there’s been a shift in coverage, but it’s not due to held cards. Quoting myself from the comments section over at Will’s joint:
Report
In 1968, Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam. When he came back, he reported what he saw: the war was a stalemate. He editorially suggested that the US should negotiate on that basis, rather than in the belief of imminent victory.
The right had three available reality-based responses to this. It could argue that Cronkite was wrong about the situation in Vietnam and that victory was in fact imminent–a hard argument to make, given the reality on the ground. It could concede that yes, the war was a stalemate and agree with Cronkite’s recommendation about negotiations. Or it could concede that yes, the war was a stalemate and offer some constructive ideas about breaking the stalemate. Note that this was past the point where more boots and the ground and blowing more stuff up really qualified as a constructive idea. That was the strategy that got us into the stalemate in the first place.
Instead, the right blamed the messenger. They never forgave Conkrite in particular or the media in general. I came of politically aware age in the late 1970s. It was standard dogma from the right that we could have won the war by staying the course, but for the demoralization on the home front caused by the media.
The media’s role, in this worldview, is not to present to the best of its ability objective reality, such that a free people in a democracy have the best information possible to make decisions. Rather, it serves as a propaganda arm. The only question is whose. The mainstream media, by telling us that the war was not going well, proved itself the propaganda arm of the other side. That it was telling the truth simply did not enter into the discussion.
Fast forward some years and we get Fox News as the product of this worldview. It might be possible to make a reality-based argument that the existing media, exemplified by CNN, was indeed biased, and that Fox News served to present an unbiased perspective. This was the natural interpretation of the “fair and balanced” slogan, but what they really meant was that they believed that the mainstream media was the liberal propaganda arm, and so Fox News balanced this by being the conservative propaganda arm. Whether their reporting was objectively true was irrelevant, just was it was irrelevant that Cronkite was right about the situation in Vietnam.
Trumpism is the logical outcome of this choose-your-reality approach to the world. But it isn’t just the Trumpists. The “liberal media” trope is an article of faith even among the oh-so-reasonable conservative intellectuals. Trumpism is merely the most extreme manifestation.
As for why the Access Hollywood video broke through the bubble when prior reporting did not, this is not that difficult a question. A video with an easily digestible sound bite makes a stronger impression than more abstract written reporting. The timing of whoever fed it to the Washington Post is clearly strategic, but the Washington Post didn’t decide when it would receive the video.Report
I think there is a lot to this notion. Witness:
1. The notion that it is the media itself, not the stories it reports, doing “harm” to the Trump campaign. “You’re making us lose enthusiasm so we will lose” is not why the press reports things.
2. The rosary-like repetition of mantras like “corrupt Clinton Foundation,” “Benghazi,” “Hillary enables Bill’s rape habit,” “Democrats are the real racists,” and “e-mail.” Not that there might not be points there, but they’re devoid of meaning at this point through repetition and reduction, itself reinforcing another reductive mantra: “Hillary would be worse.” Worse than what, you ask? Application of hypotheticals may well yield the answer “Worse than anyone calling themselves a Republican, no matter how awful that person actually is.”
3. All of us know people who will only get information about current events from FOX News or other similar conservative media. Everything else is lying propaganda written by lying propagandists.
4. Climate change denialism, with its close cousin historical revisionism. Revisionism reached a summit of sorts yesterday when Rudy! Giuliani tweeted that he didn’t remember Hillary Clinton being in NYC on 9/11 over a picture of himself walking down the street right next to her.
5. Remember Karl Rove flipping out at the 2012 Presidential returns because his “unskewed” poll numbers told him it was going to be a Romney landslide? Remember how, apparently, Team Romney believed those numbers too? There’s some “unskewing” going on this time around, too.
“Choose-your-own-reality” is not limited to conservatives, of course, it’s not even BSDI, it’s human nature to seek and observe and interpret information so as to affirm oneself. Rather, it’s a matter of degree. There seems to be an increasing trend of CYOR in that corner, and there’s some sort of positive feedback loop making it continue to increase.
Whatever is causing that positive feedback to happen is the root of the problem Our Tod hints at towards the end of the OP, and is probably also the taproot of his IMO eminently plausible “Sailing Away To Irrelevance” hypothesis (that the conservative movement has been taken over by for-profit media, to its own long-term intellectual and political disadvantage).Report
Conspiracy! See how in the photo Clinton was slightly behind Giuliani? She stayed behind him the whole time, running in circles to stay out of his field of view whenever he turned around. There are probably photos (suppressed by the lying liberal media!) where she does bunny ears behind his head.Report
Serpentine!Report
I don’t have the context here, but it sounds like he was just being sarcastic. I mean, that’s how I’d interpret any statement of that form.Report
If memory serves, that Cronkite trip was instrumental in producing LBJ’s, “I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party…” And Nixon’s “secret plan to win” won the day in 1968.
So yeah, CBS definitely had it in for Republicans.Report
You know who else has a secret plan to win a desultory war in an ill-understood foreign land against an irregular opponent?Report
Zapp Brannigan?Report
He has cunning plans, not secret ones.Report
That’s Baldric.Report
Daenerys Targaryen?Report
I’m not so sure she has a plan. She may not need one. She has dragons.Report
You know who else thought that overwhelming airpower superiority meant you didn’t need to do planning for what you do after you shocked and awed?Report
Giulio Douhet?Report
As if Iraq II didn’t clearly demonstrate to us the limits of air power.Report
No need to go that late. The Eighth Air Force demonstrated this over seventy years ago.Report
How much would have changed if Goldwater had waited to run until 1968?Report
He might have gained more sense than to talk about issuing field commanders tactical nukes.
Or not.Report
… and it was about generic white women. Hence the reactions of so many empathy-free republicans who suddenly saw Trump coming after their daughters, but couldn’t see the same problem when it was directed at Rosie, Machado, specific beauty queens, or whatever else.Report
A minor note: Jill Harth’s allegations were reported in February by the Guardian, though they left her anonymous at that time.Report
Again, I am on Richard’s side here. Trump is the logical conclusion of the increasing right ward drift. Maybe it started with Talk Radio in the 1980s and then amplified with Fox News and blogs. But the GOP has spent most of my life sneering against the MSM. They have spent most of my life thinking that the Democratic Party and its supporters were at best inconvenient but most likely illegitimate. This includes places that sound reasonable like the Buckley Club.
You are right that this is probably going to get worse. Trump never received more than a plurality of the GOP but I think that plurality likes the racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, Xenophobic,homophobic, etc. This loud ugliness is not going away and is growing bolder.Report
I totally agree. The outcome of this election is going to be ugly no matter which candidate wins. As Josh Marshall argues convincly over at TPM, Trump has normalized a new level of racism, misogyny, and anti-semitism in American political discourse. What regular Republicans once winked at in the Limbaugh wing of the party, Trump says aloud. Now that he’s gone full Brietbart, there’s no putting the ugly back in the bottle.
I fear what’s to come.Report
He only normalizes it if he wins. If he struggles to get the 40% that would vote for Dead Fish (R) against Hillary Fishin’ Clinton, then those views become poison. And if they lose the House (or get within 5 seats of losing it), they become doubly poison.Report
Not if it’s profitable to the people driving the party. And by all indications, it is.Report
Profitable to whom? Bannon and Trump? They’re done after November. The donors that run the show are a lot wealthier and have more riding on this. If there’s a risk that this becomes normal and folks like the Kochs decide it’s bad for business, they will make sure to smother it, by dumping money in primaries instead of merely sitting on the sidelines.
The Trump name has become so toxic, that they’ve started to brand some of their properties Scion.Report
@mo & @saul-degraw You’re both wrong here. Trump is going to be ratings gold for a long time after this election, because of this election. He now has 20-30% of the Republican Party willing to listen to his every word. He’s going to do what his people have been saying all along — he’s going to have a conservative media network to compete with Fox, which by the look soft things is preparing to be less Fox like, which will create a vacuum just waiting for Trump.Report
Is Roger Ailes available to head it, or does his non-compete apply? I’ve read both.Report
Most likely a both/neither.
Unlikely he doesn’t have one, but at this level it usually means lawyers haggling and coming up with a buy out price.Report
Yeah, he wouldn’t get the really stringent one like sandwich makers have.Report
Well that’s depressing….Report
I agree with Tod. I think that Bannon, in particular, is salivating over all the money he’s going to make. Though I also think that the last week has burned up a bunch of money on other projects, and his children (who are in charge of those projects) have been saying as much.
To answer Mike Schilling – In CA, I am told by those who should know, a non-compete for more than 6 months is unenforceable. In NYState, it might go out to a year, tops. They can shade this, though, with “consulting” contracts, etc. But honestly, I expect Bannon to try to decapitate Ailes so he can be The Guy.Report
@doctor-jay That typically only applies for ordinary employees. For officers, which would include FNC’s CEO, you can get much stricter non-competes.Report
IANAL, but I’d guess it’s an entirely different story if they’re compensated, the way a C-level employee’s is, or uncompensated, like a sandwich technician’s.Report
What sort of numbers does One America Network get regularly? I know they got a spike when Trump was regularly there early in the campaign (it was I think the highest ratings Sarah Palin ever got in her run there), but do they have enough viewers of the right sort to make it more than just another wingnut welfare joint (lIke e.g. Washington Times)?Report
If he loses by 8% to Hillary, he’ll be a laughingstock. His brand is “winning” and he lost, embarrassingly, to a girl. He will be a joke everywhere else. He may get good ratings, by cable news standards*, but he won’t have influence. Also, the upcoming Trump U and Trump Foundation suits will have an effect.
* Which is NBA summer league levelsReport
Maybe. But he’s already laying the groundwork so that the base thinks he’s been stabbed in the back by the party.
And the WNBA might have better ratings than Fox News, but when Ailes left it had revues of over $2 billion a year. Assuming Ailes is part of the network (and I do), I think you’ll see a lot of investors put up a lot of capital.Report
But he’s already laying the groundwork so that the base thinks he’s been stabbed in the back by the party.
And the liberal media, and the election process, and government generally … This is one of the more nerve-wracking aspects of his message both now and going forward.
Adding: it’s noteworthy to me that Trump keeps saign Dems (and the media, etc) are trying to influence or even “rig” the election when the mounting stream of reports connecting Trump to Russian-government hackers and Wikileaks leaks indicates he’s actually engaging in the exact thing he’s accusing, without evidence, his perceved enemies of.Report
But how much of that success was finding an uinserved market and serving it, with little to no competition. Trump Nuze would a) need to peel off FNC viewers and b) need to get picked up by cable networks. Fox News had the advantage of being attached to a company with properties that cable companies wanted, so they could be bundled together. What will Ailes, Bannon and Trump offer cable companies?Report
If I may step in, I think they have succeeded in A already. In the circles that still adore Trump, Fox news is being lumped with the normal GOP as part of the Liberal front. The declaration is that they’ve changed from being ‘just barely neutral’ and have now shifted wholly to the left. They’ve felt that way of the GOP for some time and held strong the label that the Republicans and Democrats were just the same party. When Trump, a real republican came out, Fox showed their true colors.
Thus the numbers that kept Hannity and Rush high on the hog are following Trump wherever he goes. A good few are now thinking he’ll lose but see it less as Trump failing and more of this country failing to accept him.
They are more than primed to give up on Fox and any other news outlet that doesn’t follow the Trump banner.
As for B, I take note that my TV is off and my computer is on this website. Trends are seeing that this is an increasingly regular event. And Trump has shown himself capable of handling the internet. The group will find their home here somehow and the audience will follow him.Report
I agree. In my view, Trumpism grew out of conservative’s intense and total rejectionism of All Things Dem (governance, politics, media, etc). It was only a matter of time before that same hyper-paranoid rejectionist inclination was directed at the GOP and conservatism itself.
For those folks, conservatism wasn’t failed, it was failing.Report
@dakarian The problem with your take on B is that the median Fox News viewer (68) is older than the age which one maximizes their social security payout (67). There are cord cutters and there are Fox News viewers, but that Venn diagram has about 3 people in the overlap.Report
I doubt this. Big donors are fleeing the GOP. Trump’s properties are losing lots of business because of the toxicity of the campaign.Report
Citation needed.
AFAIK, big donors are expressing skepticism about Trump, and shifting focus downticket so as to not absolutely waste their money on a doomed campaign. But I don’t think they’re withdrawing from politics and I don’t think they’re becoming Democrats.Report
@burt-likko
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/gop-donors-want-the-rnc-to-disavow-trump-gop-voters-dont.html
On Thursday, several such GOP donors informed the Republican National Committee that Trump had finally gone too far. This coalition of temporarily embarrassed billionaires called on the RNC to disavow Trump now that the mogul’s apparent affinity for sexual assault was threatening “to inflict lasting damage on the party’s image,” the New York Times reports.
“At some point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly justify support for Trump to your children — especially your daughters,” David Humphreys, a Missouri business executive who’d provided $2.5 million to Republican candidates in recent years, told the paper.Report
Not really directly relevant to the discussion here, but there’s a non-trivial overlap between people who “question the timing” of the tape’s release and people who think the stolen Podesta emails are super-important. The whole objection seems particularly strange from Trump supporters: “Our candidate is an irredeemable shitbird, and it’s your fault for pointing it out at an inconvenient time.”
Even if it’s true, so what?
I have a good deal more sympathy for frustrated #NeverTrump folks. Nonetheless, I think at least part of why even many of them didn’t pay sufficient attention to the fact that we knew Trump was a pig all along is that they routinely share the belief, prevalent on the center-right, that “political correctness” is a dangerous scourge [1]. In my experience, people who believe that often underestimate or downplay the importance of even openly bigoted or misogynist remarks.
[1] “Trump is really a reaction to out-of-control SJWs,” has real currency among #NeverTrump people.Report
Not really directly relevant to the discussion here, but there’s a non-trivial overlap between people who “question the timing” of the tape’s release and people who think the stolen Podesta emails are super-important. The whole objection seems particularly strange from Trump supporters: “Our candidate is an irredeemable shitbird, and it’s your fault for pointing it out at an inconvenient time.”
I think it’s more along the lines of showing that the Clinton campaign, like the GOP, is part of a secret cabal of power brokers who determine outcomes via demonstrably (OBVIOUSLY!) undemocratic mechanisms. Everything’s “rigged”, from the timing of the HotMic! video to Podesta’s emails to Hillary’s not being in jail over Benghazi to Obama’s being the first Kenyan Muslim President to Ryan’s refusal to be nice to Trump. It’s all rigged, part of a Grand Conspiracy.
It’s not that they think their candidate is a shit-bird. That’s actually besides the point. It’s that their candidate is exposing all the corruption in the political process they’ve been nurtured on over the last … oh… Put it this way: the paranoid style in American politics runs deep.Report
As another note: The GOP candidates did very little opposition research on Trump. They didn’t take him seriously as a candidate, thinking he’d flame out early like all the other vanity candidates.
Even once that seemed unlikely, they were hamstrung by time, by tactical considerations (they needed Trump’s voters, which limited attack avenues. If 20% of the primary voters like authoritarian figures, you can’t really attack hard on how authoritarian he is. You might damage him, but you’ve cut yourself off from that 20%), bu the number of candidates needing oppo research, and by coordination problems (nobody wanted to take the hit for the team). Again, the sheer number of candidates and the fractured GOP base hurt. A line of attack might cost Trump more than you, but might actually help a third candidate.
Clinton did not face those problems. She had months where her oppo team knew Trump was more than a vanity candidate, and they had already done their jobs on both Sanders and Clinton herself. (More on that in a second). She also had fewer problems with ‘friendly fire’ — the GOP base was never going to vote for her, so she was more unconstrained with attack lines as she didn’t have to worry about turning off GOP base voters. Clinton is still constrained, but not nearly as badly as the GOP primary politicians were. She had more information, more lines of attack, and frankly more resources.
Lastly, and probably the most damaging — unlike every other SERIOUS candidate (Clinton included), Trump refused to have oppo research done on himself. It left him uniquely vulnerable, unable to anticipate attacks or surprises, much less have pre-planned responses.
It’s not the media or a conspiracy or 11D chess. It’s a combination of a highly amateur campaign, a very undisciplined candidate, and a base that approves of some things far more voters dislike.Report
I actually like Ezra Klein’s take best.
Report
Good post Tod.
A fourth (or is it fifth?) possible account for why conservatives and GOPers in particular turned a blind eye to all the reporting on Trump’s character over this cycle: they’ve internalized Cleek’s Law as the fundamental operating principle defining national level GOPism today. IOW, opposing Democrats has been elevated to an end in itself, and Trump, being a not-Dem, served that purpose just as well as any other candidate.Report
Better, even, because his revolting behavior does a great job upsetting liberals. He’s a much easier person to truly loathe than Kasich or Jeb.
(This might also explain why Cruz basically came in second.)Report
Fred Clark at Slacktivist has an interesting piece on Trump supporters in general, and Evangelicals in particular. He divides them into two groups: Team Because and Team Despite. Team Because supports Trump because they are enthusiastic about all his behavioral traits. Team Despite supports him despite these traits, because they habitually vote for whoever has the “(R)” after their name. The interesting question is whether, or to what degree, Trump’s behavior will keep Team Despite from voting for him, and the effect on the down ticket.Report
@richard-hershberger
If Nate Silver is correct, Trump is going down in flames because women are abandoning him droves. This means Republican women especially. There was some tweetstorm about an alleged conservative activist who is leaving the GOP because she is tired of defending their record on women and this week blew it up in her face.
So the despites seem torn. The ones that stay seem to be older Evangelicals who abhor Trump’s vulgarity but mainly care about social issues and the know that HRC is not likely to appoint any judges or Justices who agree with them.Report
I know that I’m not the median voter, but I could care less if this were true or not. Part of the president’s job is to deal with a media that is often antagonistic, although more often not antagonistic enough. Part of the president’s job is to lead his or her own party and manage the relationship with the other party. Part of the president’s job is to negotiate foreign policy in a world of actors who are openly hostile to American interests. If you can’t do that, then you’re not right for the job. It doesn’t matter to me at all if you can’t do it because you’re incompetent or you can’t do it because the whole world is out to get you. Those two things are the same as far as I am concerned.
Which reminds me how I thought it was so odd a few weeks back when Hillary was having her rough couple of weeks and her supporters were lamenting about the supposedly unfair treatment she was getting because the press dared to ask her questions. Why would Hillary being a victim of the media make me want to vote for her more? That’s about how I feel about Trump now. Why would I vote for a victim? Again, I’m probably not the median voter.Report
+1
A candidate that can not handle a hostile media is ill suited for the job.Report
@j-r
Assuming members of the media actually conspired against Trump*, I think there are two big questions to ask…
1.) What does this tell us about the media?
2.) What does this tell us about Trump as a candidate?
The answer to 1.) is a conversation worth having.
The answer to 2.) is, as you point out, not particularly meaningful.
So why is this narrative being floated?
Two reasons, I suspect:
1.) If the media is willing to conspire with the timing, maybe they are conspiring on the news itself. These reports can’t be trusted!
2.) Certain folks can’t differentiate between media outlets they perceive as being biased and those they perceive as the outlet being biased towards or against. So if the media is bad and bad in favor of Clinton, than Clinton is bad, too. And they can’t vote for the bad person!
* And I think Tod perfectly lays out the case for why that isn’t true.Report
Well, I have to say that there’s a difference between reporting of a bad behavior and a tape or video of it. The latter is much, much more powerful, and works much better on broadcast media outlets.
Nevertheless, they could have seen this coming. The reason they didn’t is that the primary voters who voted for Trump were voting for someone who transgresses. The fact that he transgressed in the past does not make him undesirable, it makes him more desirable. His trasngressive nature is what they wanted – they wanted someone to burn the system down, and he’s doing exactly that. Although not in the way that they thought, but quite possibly in the way they need.
You see, I happen to think that a fair fraction of Trump supporters are people who are suffering, and feel forgotten and left out of the political system. And to some extent they are. The austerity caucus and the opposition to anything that might make their lives better has come from the Republican leadership, but it’s been blamed on Democrats. The system has failed them, both in the sense of care, and in the sense of truth.
They understand this and want to wreck things. And wreckage is what they are getting. It might even, in the long run, make some things better for them.
The other factor is that Republican poltics these days is run by media figures – Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, et al, who maybe care more about ratings or click throughs than they care about winning the presidency.Report
Even setting aside the new stuff about Trump, a lot of what is damning is stuff he said publicly, to millions of radio listeners.
Its weird, like, aren’t there millions of people who remember hearing the Howard Stern show?
And didn’t New York based media like Spy Magazine make a cottage industry out of documenting his boorish braying? I’m an out of touch LA native, and even I heard about his ugliness long ago.
Yet somehow its being treated like some sooper sekrit DaVinci Code.Report
I doubt many Howard Stern listeners are being convinced not to vote Trump by those transcripts. There are, however, a lot of voters who never listened to Stern.Report
I’ve seen a more cynical interpretation of this being the camel-breaking straw with two slightly different bends…
1.) Women have been saying Trump is a serial sexual assaulter for years and we only believed it when a man (Trump himself!) said so.
2.) We tolerated first hand evidence of Trump’s attacks on more marginalized groups (e.g., Mexicans, Blacks, people with disabilities) but would not tolerate first hand evidence of his attacks on a less marginalized, more media-sympathetic group (i.e., white women).
I think there is actually a blend of the two that needs to be considered: video evidence is always going to land differently than other forms of accusations. But, yes, many of us were surprisingly okay with much of his ugliness when it was directed at groups we are less connected with.Report
Don’t worry. It turns out a lot of the people who were okay with it, then suddenly NOT okay with it, became okay with it again as polls indicated remaining “not okay” would anger their voters.
We can just ignore that unfortunate blip and assume they were okay with it all along. Members of LDS excepted, as they seem to have been pretty unhappy to begin with and have moved onto “furious” with not a lot of movement back.Report
The counter to this hypothesis was Megyn Kelly. (which, to be honest, I thought *was* going to be the end of Trump, because you can go after immigrants and minorities with impunity but not photogenic white women *that are on your side*)Report
Sadly, we all overestimated the GOP base’s views on putting uppity women in their place.
It’s worth noting that Trump is hemorrhaging women over this, not men. It’s been awhile since the primary for me to recall for sure, but I think he won the primary election with a male-heavy vote, at least prior to the bandwagon effect kicking in.
As I’ve said before, the cleft that GOP politicians are stuck in is that while this offends lots of people, a rather shocking amount of GOP core voters actually approve of it.
Ditch Trump and offend at least 1/3 of your voters (who like Trump) and another 1/3 who are Team Red For Life or at least Team Anyone But Hillary. Stick with Trump, and offend the 1/3 of your base that’s standing there slack-jawed that the GOP is sticking with a guy who bragged about sexual assault.Report
@kolohe
The hyper cynical response is that the right ultimately saw her as a woman (and dismissed her) and the left saw her as a white conservative (and dismissed her).
Note: I’m not necessarily advancing these theories as much as reporting on them. They’ve been present on my (largely liberal) FB feed lately.Report
It’s less this and more the fact that GOP women abandoned him in the primary, but they had insufficient numbers to prevail and liberal women also have insufficient numbers to affect a Republican primary.Report
Repeating my own comment above, but I think it’s more:
1. GOP does not engage in empathy when contrary to white male interests. So the reaction was: sucks for Megyn, but I’m going to keep my head down.
2. Liberals were too busy with the popcorn to interject themselves into a circular firing squad (which I’m not saying is objectively admirable).Report
My friends weren’t too busy.
They were explaining to Bush, again, why he wasn’t going to win.Report
I remember quite a bit of shock and outrage in liberal corners after the thing with Megan Kelly, but there really isn’t a plausible mechanism for liberal shock and outrage (alone) to derail a GOP primary candidate.Report
@pillsy
Yes but it wasn’t entirely clear how much was “This is awful!” and how much was “This is awful… for Trump.”Report
I think the issue is how does Trump handle the election when he loses (which looks like an increasing certainity). The answer seems to be like he is not going to handle it well and the norms of democracy depend on gracious losers:
http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/10/14/13277626/losers-democratic-transition-sanders-trumpReport
In Adrian’s thread on guns, I discussed how open carry can often be an implied threat to those that you dislike for other policy reasons. Seems to be the case and with Trump’s rhetoric encouraging this sort of behavior.
http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Legally-armed-protester-hangs-outside-Dittmar-campaign-offices-for-hours-397039141.html
I expect people to handwave this way in 3 … 2….Report
While I’ll not handwave this away, this appears to be a pretty rural area of VA. I hardly think carry is rare there. Maybe the guy should not have stared at them all day?Report
I’m a little unclear what the protest actually was about.
If they were protesting, I dunno, Ditmar’s voting record on abortion and they happened to be open carrying, that’s certainly likely a non-issue.
From what I can tell from the interviews of each of them, however, they don’t seem to be protesting anything. They just showed up saying they supported Donald Trump and stood in front of a window with guns and stared at the people inside. Not enough data here yet to draw definitive conclusions, but that feels more like a threat than a protest.Report
It it’s a threat, it’s an criminal offense. Did they call the cops? Or did they just whine about it? I saw no info in the article that the police were called.Report
Well, if what they did was legal, certainly it’s completely OK and nobody should object to it.Report
Virginia is a Stand-Your-Ground state, so if the folks inside had guns of their own they should’ve just killed those shitbags.Report
@tod-kelly and others
Some questions that might or might not be related:
Last week when Republicans were distancing themselves from Trump because of the Hollywood Access sexual assault remarks, a lot of them were talking about how they were repudiating Trump because of their wives and daughters. On the Democratic to Left-side, I saw a lot of tweets along the lines of “I wish a GOP politician could repudiate Trump’s comments without needing a daughter” or “Wouldn’t it be great to hear a Republican say he is withdrawing an endorsement for Trump to impart values to his sons?”
What do you think accounts for the differences in the Democratic and Republican POVs? Do you think it says anything about future difficulties in communication and get-along (but still disagree) spirit that democracy seems to require? Are Democrats and Republicans just on different planets for this issue?Report
My guess is tradition. To many conservatives, protecting your wife and daughters from harm is an important part of what a man is supposed to do. It really isn’t about the violation of a woman’s autonomy and body for it’s own sake. Its an attempt to demonstrate chivalry.Report
There’s certainly a cultural aspect to the precise wording people use. But the thing I notice is that liberals are attacking conservatives who’ve abandoned Trump for not expressing the right reasons for doing so. It reminds of a Dan Savage quote I read a while back. He was asked about HIllary’s opposition to SSM back in the 80s and if he thought that ought to be disqualifying. And rather than go into purity tests and consistency and long-held grievances, his answer was that she holds the right view now, so there’s nothing more to talk about.
Liberals often have a very special way of missing the point, seems to me.Report
It’s Calvinism without Christ.
Or, wait… maybe Arminianism without Christ.
One of those.
Unitarianism ain’t for everybody.Report
There is a reason why I think that Social Justice Calvinism makes a lot more sense as an insult than Social Justice Warrior. I’ve even accused certain bloggers on other blogs of Calvinism.Report
Your problem is that you see it as an insult.
Become crazier and just see it as a description.Report
When I accused people of Calvinism they knew I did not mean it as a good thing or a descriptive.Report
Then we agree on the nature of your problem.
We merely disagree on whether it is one.Report
A lot of the LGBT community was opposed to SSM during the 1980s to. When Sullivan started to advocate it, he was seen as betraying the LGBT movement for being to middle class basically. For everybody else, SSM was hardly on the radar.Report
So you agree with Dan Savage, but for the right reasons?Report
Sure, why not.Report
Well, it was either that or you felt the need to defend Hillary in a conversation about why GOPers and Dems seem to respond to states of affairs so radically differently.
Maybe you should shoot Dan S an email with your views. It might get him to think about these issues a bit more seriously.Report
I generally find Dan Savage to be annoying, so I try to avoid him. I disagree with a lot of what he says.Report
What do you disagree with him on?Report
I think it’s all politics.
I think the Rs need to communicate to the base why the tape makes them want to pull away. I think the response from the Ds has more to do with blocking off a line of defense. God knows I’ve heard a lot of male Dem pols and pundits use the “wives/daughters/etc.” Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a broader point that might have merit, but that’s not why you see Dems doing it. They’re trying to box all of the Rs in with Trump.Report
Attack, attack, attack.Report
Pretty much, yeah. And it’s damn effective so far on the Trump end. We’ll see how it shakes out with the Senators and congress critters.Report
Isn’t that what the Clintons did to Bill’s accusors did I mis-remember their actions?Report
Is it that different than Obama saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin.” Personalizing things is human.Report
That’s the comparison I came up with as well.
Of course, the umbrage is going the other way this time.Report
@mo @autolukos
I think it is in terms of the debates on sexual assault that are going on.
Obviously no decent human wants his or her daughter to be the victim of sexual assault and to be “grabbed by the pussy” to use Trump’s words. This includes GOP politicians.
However, I think that in terms of the broader conversation, a GOP politician saying “I can’t stand by Trump because of his comment because I want to set a good lesson for my sons’ would get someone kudos on the left because it showed he or she (especially he) “got it.” They got that sexual assault starts and end with men and how men encourage each other in the ways we talk about women. It would say “This is an unacceptable way for men to talk and act.”Report
@saul-degraw
Here is where a little empiricism needs to come into play. You can’t solve a problem unless you know what the problem is. We all agree that sexual assault is bad. The average liberal perspective on sexual assault is that the ratio between perpetrators and victims is roughly one to one. If that is the case, than the liberal critiques of what causes sexual assault, rape culture, is correct and liberal solutions would probably solve the problem.
I believe that there is recent research that suggests that the perpetrator:victim ratio is not one to one. Rather, you have many women that are sexually assaulted but a much smaller number of perpetrators with many victims. This means that the idea of rape culture is at least partially invalid because most men know not to sexually assault women despite media’s presentation of women. This means that the problem is entirely different and you are dealing with a small number of men that basically feel free to do anything to want for whatever justification they can muster. This means that simply arresting them, putting them on trial, and punishing them appropriately if convicted is the best way to reduce sexual assault because it will send a message that you got caught.
Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, Dov Charney, and Jimmy Savile got away with sexual assault for decades because of their power and status. They committed grave acts of sexual assault because of they believed their status gave them that right and their ability to get away with it reinforced that belief. If this is the normal rationalization behind sexual assault than simply punishing perpetrators more frequently through the criminal justice system is a better way to lower the amount of sexual assault than deep talks about rape culture or toxic masculinity.Report
My reading of what rape culture describes is not so much that all the men are out doing horrible things to women. It is that a few men are doing horrible things AND that too many otherwise decent men are either standing by and doing/saying nothing or they diminish the seriousness of the situation in a misguided effort to help a friend or something. Hearing men that are as offended by comments such as Trump’s or by too weak punishments by the CJ system (a la Brock Turner) goes a long way towards making women feel like men are finally understanding what too many women have experienced in their lives. And having men acknowledge that how boys are raised matters as much as how girls are raised in helping to reduce harassment and violence against women is important. For every Trump you have many Billy Bushes.Report
How did Bill Clinton get away with it?Report
I’m quite confident that the internet left’s response to a GOP politician’s comment along those lines would have been, “why do they always make things about men?”. The phrasing could well indicate some dubious ideas, but it is also obviously a rhetorical device used to emphasize concrete connections to and empathy for women, many of whom have personally been victims (whether or not the speaker is aware). I find the determinedly uncharitable reading of it deplorable and corrosive.
Plenty of GOPers have actually said outrageous things; there is no need to go fishing for offense in boilerplate.Report
We live in a media world where the Secretary of Defense is on a late night comedy show in the same week that the US Navy is weapons hot, while some dude who appeared on TV in a red sweater is being scrutinized by the New York Times.Report
If he wanted to publicly communicate that he hadn’t yet decided to vote against Trump, he deserved everything coming to him.Report
I just read the NY Times article on him and it was quite sympathetic. It seemed more like it was chastising Gizmodo and their ilk.Report
Things I learned from the article chastising Gizmodo and their ilk:
Ken Bone had a vasectomy.
He commented on the stolen nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence.
He commented on the deliberately posted pictures on the Bodyperfection and RealGirls subreddits.
He had a take on the Trayvon Martin shooting that was !woke.
He works at a coal plant.
He forged insurance documents in his teens.
None of this is shit that I should freaking know about the guy who asked a question at the second debate.
It all freaking started with pictures of Ken Bone and captions with stuff like “How will you protect my job as a card in Guess Who?” and “This (12letterword) looks like a guy who wiggles his fingers and says ‘Don’t mind if I dooooooo…’ as he takes a donut”.
It’s freaking Joe the freaking Plumber all over again and it’s communicating to Joe Freaking Average that he has no freaking place questioning his freaking betters.Report
I agree and disagree. None of this would have happened if he didn’t cash in on his fleeting internet fame. Fame ain’t free.Report
I remember arguing about how Joe the Plumber deserved to have his garbage dug through but Sandra Flake didn’t.
Good times.Report
Why is it always Joe the Plumber with you instead of Graeme Frost?Report
Because, right freaking now, it’s Ken freaking Bone the freaking Fat freaking Guy who is getting freaking doxed by the freaking NYT and not someone better compared to freaking Graeme freaking Frost.
Is that a miscalculation?
Should I instead be comparing Ken Bone to Graeme Frost?Report
Uhh dude did an ama on reddit. Not sure if you knew. Hes cashing in, so he stepped into arena his own damn self.Report
If there isn’t a person who deserves every thing who comes to him, It’s the guy smack dab in the bone zone.Report
Probably not, but then again, going after the dude just because he was going for 15 seconds of being Internet Famous seems… pointless and petty.
And what did we find out? A guy who seemed pretty dorky and clueless is, indeed, pretty dorky and clueless! Talk about information that’s enriched my life.Report
I completely agree. But the dude hangs out on Reddit, he should know what comes next*. Also, he should know what wearing that short skirt leads to.
* This is not a defense of what comes nextReport
None of this would have happened if he didn’t cash in on his fleeting internet fame. Fame ain’t free.
Wait, is his fleeting internet fame the “cash in” or did he “cash in” by asking the question at the debate?Report
No, the cash is cashing in. Which, good for him.Report
For what it’s worth, I saw my first “heck with Ken Bone” prior to his Uber endorsement.
Much like with Joe the Plumber, it’s the “see? He’s trying to make bank on this!” that comes after the whole “we’ve dug into his past and found the following things and the following things we’ve found makes our digging into his past okay” that people point to as their justification.
Much like with Joe the freaking Plumber.Report
To be fair, reddit seems to remain entirely charmed by him.
Rookie mistake (1) not having a separate porn account; and (2) not using a separate AMA account. Which people also are sympathizing with.Report
The more heavily trafficked, traditional media (NYT and Slate) are defending him. It’s the C and D list sights that are creating stupid click bait articles.Report
Haven’t read most of the comments since i’ve been flying all day. However re: October surpirse.
There is definitely one going on right now as we speak. The instigators have admitted it and want to knee cap a prez candidate. Of course this is Assange and wikileaks and very much maybe the Russians. Assanage said he wants Clinton to lose and all those hacked emails are coming out right now trying to sink her. And it’s October. So you wants and October Surprise you gots one. Stolen emails from a variety of D’s coming out since the D convention. Of course the emails don’t add up to squat but thats the sad fact for R’s and Assange.Report
If Wikileaks was actually doing what it claimed, it’d have simply released ALL the emails the moment they were vetted and scrubbed of personal information (which they have gotten increasingly bad at doing), rather than dribble them out a few at a time trying to manipulate public perception.
The purpose of Wikileaks is, ostensibly, not to shape public opinion or news — but to give out the facts and information that are hidden from the public but might be relevant to making decisions.
Of course, Assange has a Kim-sized hate-on for HRC and is clearly happy to be spoon fed by Russia. And by god, the saddest part is — this is the most damaging Russian intelligence and Assange can put together.
A giant, fat, nothingburger.
I think the Clinton’s carry a curse with them, one that inspires in their enemies hope — solely that the Clintons can crush it by being ordinary politicians doing ordinary stuff. All that smoke, never a fire.
Hey, there’s an irony. The most Bond Villian thing about the Clintons is that they’re not Bond Villians, and that’s deeply upsetting to their political enemies.Report
Why do you ask Wikipedia to accomplish something the state dept can’t do?Report
Veni, vidi, wiki.Report
Do you not know the difference between Wikileaks and Wikipedia? Or the supposed mission statement behind Wikileaks?
Oh wait, I forgot who I was talking to. You read about half sentence, made up the rest, and responded in a way that’s hilarious to everyone but you.Report
Yes it hould have been wikileaks but so what? Blame auto correct. You seem to expect more of them than state. State has trouble producing any docs in a timely fashion and then they go whine to a judge about it. Boo hoo.Report
>>I hate to say this, but I fear it’s all about to get worse.
What positive indicators are you looking for?
I’d like to see the party do two things:
(1) Kill your darlings. Actually acknowledge that Marco Rubio – the standard bearer the party had chosen for the next generation – distinguished himself by arguing that Obama was willfully (rather than misguidedly) trying to destroy the country. That Ted Cruz’s entire presidential career was calculated around praising and denouncing Trump whenever it was politically useful. That Mitt Romney – the man on hundreds of #NeverTrump “Miss Me Yet” memes – was the very person who launched Trump into political respectability simply to please the base (the same base he then returned to criticize after Trump decided to skip the middleman). That 83% of the party voted for Trump or people that actively endorsed Trump. And that this will not be undone by simply editing Trump out of the GOP historical photos.
(2) Point to alternative media institutions. The problem with conspiracy theories about the mainstream media is that there is not a single example of conservative media that can be held up as a model. FOX straight news is indistinguishable from the rest of network media (see also: Major Garrett). The Daily Caller, Free Beacon, etc. are just repackaging AP wire stories with punditry mixed in (which is wrong often enough to discredit their contribution). NRO + Weekly Standard have ditched the wire entirely and just run the punditry. And I’m not even getting into Rush, Levin, and Hannity. If James O’Keefe can get millions for an investigative compound (and still not know how to operate a phone) then there is plenty of opportunity for a conservative @Fahrenthold. There’s just no interest.Report