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Trumpdates: 'My Daddy Helped Build the Log Cabin That He Was Born In'

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 11, 2020 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 11, 2020 |

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Sunday 10:30 a.m. — Jonathan Karl says that the White House refused to let Anthony Fauci or anyone else from the White House coronavirus task force appear on ABC’s Sunday morning news program.

— You know how sometimes you wake up with a great idea at 3 a.m. and are so convinced of the idea’s greatness that you write it down, only to return to it the morning after and realize it was total gobbledygook? That’s this idea, that Trump nearly went through with.

— This reminds me of a joke that my grandfather used to make often: “I helped my Daddy build the log cabin I was born in!”

— I am here for the Jake Tapper of the last few weeks, who has been attacking the hell out of Trump’s moral character.

— If the South Carolina election were based purely on the ability to raise money, Jaime Harrison would win in a landslide. Remember, however, that the record that Jaime Harrison is breaking here belongs to Beto O’Rourke, who lost. In other words: Vote, South Carolinians. Vote your goddamn faces off.

— Early voting, by the way, is going well.

— Amy Coney Barrett’s opening statement (which will be read tomorrow) is the usual bullsh*t from conservative judges, who castigate activist liberal judges while making clear value judgments themselves based on their readings of the ephemeral originalists texts.

1:00 — Anyone who is familiar with The Villages knows what a big deal this is. It’s not only a hotbed for conservative old folks, but also of venereal disease!


12:13 — Last night, ahead of the debate between himself and Jaime Harrison, Lindsey Graham inexplicably refused to get a COVID test, though everyone else — the candidates, the moderators — did. It forced a format change, but more importantly, why did Graham — who had sat near Senator Mike Lee, who has since tested positive — refuse the test? Is it because he knows he’s positive? Is it because if he tests positive, it will delay the confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett?

It’s a mystery. What’s not a mystery? This statement:

Honestly, I don’t know if this helps Graham or hurts him in South Carolina. It certainly reveals more about his character, though.


Saturday, 10:30 a.m. — Trump appeared on camera last night on Tucker Carlson’s show. As expected, it was completely useless.

— Chris Christie was released from the hospital this morning. He was hospitalized for a week.

— The Debate folks officially canceled the second debate.

— In Texas, a federal judge (appointed by Obama!) struck down a proclamation saying that there could only be one ballot drop-off box per county, which is a big win for Democrats.

— Trump’s North Korean policy is going well.

— Trump’s holding a rally at the White House today with, reportedly, 2,000 folks. He is still contagious.

———

3:00 — Three things: 1) Trump was on Rush Limbaugh so long that Limbaugh had to shoo him off.

2) They are desperate to do 2016 all over again.

And 3) This is Kamala’s uncle. I love him.


1:40 — Trump has been talking to Rush Limbaugh for an hour and a half. Again, not a serious person, so nothing that Trump says matters, except that LeBron is a good basketball player. That is not fake news (he’s also aggrieved because Paul Ryan is on the board of Fox News, and therefore, Fox News no longer loves Trump, which … has he not been watching Fox News?)

12:00 — I dunno, y’all. Nancy Pelosi introduced a bill today to establish a “Commission on President Capacity,” which would allow Congress to intervene under the 25th Amendment when it believes that the President is unfit to serve. There is no chance that the bill will pass (although, if it did pass, the Republicans would use at their first opportunity after/if Biden is sworn in). Pelosi is just trolling Trump, which is to say: This is just political theater. I don’t see what Pelosi or the Democrats gain by it, so I don’t really understand what purpose it serves.

Meanwhile, the big conversation on Twitter right now (participated in by several of our illustrious commentariat, both on Twitter and here) is this tweet.

It’s nonsense, of course. That house would have been the nice one in my neighborhood growing up, and that’s leaving aside the thousands of dollars spent on firearms. Folks are also dragging Donald Trump Jr. for asking why you never see an American flag in a yard with a Biden sign, which is obviously bullshit, but the thing that everyone rightly brings up is that you never see a Confederate flag in a yard with a Biden sign, and the above is a pretty good example of where you are likely to find Confederate flags in Michigan, which … wasn’t in the Confederacy.

Elsewhere, there’s another NYTimes report on Trump’s taxes, and this one again illustrates how easy it might be to indict Trump for tax fraud once he is elected out of office.

Oh, and finally: Seth told me to add this from Mike Schur. It’s a good point.


9:30 — Donald Trump will appear on camera tonight for an interview for the first time since he tested positive for COVID (not for the first time since he was infected with COVID, mind you, because he was at the debate with COVID). He’ll be on Fox News on Tucker Carlson’s show with Dr. Marc Siegel, the “Person, woman, man, camera, TV” doctor.

In other words, it won’t be on a real network, and it won’t be with a real doctor, and so it doesn’t really count, anyway. It is not a serious interview, because if it were a serious interview it would be with a serious journalist and a serious doctor. Fox News is not a serious source of news. Tucker Carlson is not a serious journalist. Donald Trump is not a serious President.

Honestly, I don’t care if he’s sick or not. I don’t care if he dies or not. All I care about getting him the hell out of office. Anything that Donald Trump says on Fox News with Tucker Carlson will be of interest only to the people who already support Donald Trump, and I have given up the illusion that their minds can be changed.

I’m also in a pissy mood because of NYTimes’ The Daily podcast this morning. They went to a blue-collar Pennsylvania county, where everyone is still a Trump supporter, despite the fact that it used to be a Democratic stronghold. And their story is very similar to one I have told here before, about a New Hampshire voter. He was an unhappy, overweight man with some congenital disorders. My father-in-law was a poll worker in 2016, and when that man — who honestly had probably been made fun of and shat upon all his life — handed his ballot to my father-in-law, he said to him with as much disgust as he could muster, “This is from one of the deplorables.”

I cannot stress how often that “basket full of deplorables” comment is referenced in these “white working class” stories, and it distresses the hell out of me because there is a very chicken-and-egg problem here. All of these Trump voters who once voted for Obama think that the Democrats look down on them and think they’re all racist, and the thing is, they really are racist and we do look down upon them, but they also don’t think they’re racist because they believe that anything short of an actual lynching does not constitute racism. There was a guy on that podcast who literally said that he’s not a racist because he likes baseball and “90 percent of them ballplayers are Black.”

But we are also a party that has basically given up on the “deplorables” because they are lost causes, and when they’re sticking 57 Trump yard signs in their yard and worshipping Q and saying things like, “I’m not racist because I watch baseball,” then it feels like giving up on them is the only thing we can do, which also sucks because we used to be the party of the blue-collar union worker, and we still are, but those blue-collar union workers in Pennsylvania think that Joe Biden is being controlled by Nancy Pelosi, who — uh — is as moderate as Joe Biden, so what’s the problem, except that she’s a woman? So, instead, they worship a billionaire who shits on gold toilets. I mean, how far gone are they that they will vote for a man who cheated his way into an Ivy league colleague and makes fun of Joe Biden for going to a lesser college while they most of Trump’s white working class voters didn’t even go to college?

Anyway, I’m mostly like, “F**k em,” but also, that’s exactly why they hate us because we have given up on them, but also, they’re Trump supporters, which necessarily makes them racist, xenophobic bigots, so again f**k em.

No, but really: Fuck them. They are deplorable.

And not to judge a book by its cover, but give me a f**king break, Laura. They look exactly like every Trump supporter in the midwest. These are your viewers, lady. You have helped to radicalize them. You are making millions of dollars off the backs of these “deplorables,” and you wouldn’t spend 20 seconds in a room with them without calling security. Take some responsibility, you asshole.

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Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. You may email him here, follow him on Twitter, or listen to his weekly TV podcast, Podjiba.


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