Declaration of Incoherence

 

This guy just shut down the Department of Education. pic.twitter.com/SSwsrw7oll

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 1, 2025

I fully intend to add to this, but my word, it is made of stupid. The man literally seems to have no idea what the Declaration of Independence is. And he just says random things. 

 UPDATE: I do not know where his brain short-circuited, but Harvard went in one ear and Harlem came out of his mouth:

Smith asked Trump what he would say to those who view his attacks against the Ivy League school as “an attack on academic freedom, rather than a defense of fairness.”

“Well, I say this. We had riots in Harlem, in Harlem, and frankly if you look at what’s gone on—and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side,” Trump said.

“You know I got a very high Black vote. You know that? Very, very high Black vote. It was a very great compliment to me,” Trump continued.

You know what never happened? That. That never happened.  

Free Speech, Responsibility, and a Caution

 

I take potshots at VP JD Vance, as is my right as an American, and I do so only with a little guilt that he's a barrel of fish--a target-rich environment. All the same, something about him irritates me right in the patriotism.  I have described him as being if chewing on tin foil with a mouthful of fillings was a person, and I am not backing down from that. 

Take today as an example--he weighed in on Margaret Brennan asking Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a man chained in a dungeon of his own making, performing Trump's foreign policy while I guarantee you knowing better at any instance) if there was anything amiss in Vance's Munich speech regarding the "enemy within" and meeting with AfD where "free speech" led to the Holocaust. 

I' m going to help everyone out by stipulating that the Nazis were not big fans of free speech. They banned books, you know. "Un-German" books regarding different races, people who were considered deviant, people who were liberal or Communist. They would have really hated DEI. 

You Are What You Eat

 

You know, I would have bet anything that being Donald Trump's vice president, if nothing else, would involve eating a lot of shit. After all, he did try to get the last guy lynched. That said, I realized that JD Vance was just the guy for the job. Try to spin Trump's oddball pronouncements into something normal. Be willing to do anything for love of Trump. It's not that I like JD Vance--far from it.  

It's just that he has a very particular set of skills. 

So when Elon Musk has a racist manboy resign over making some very racist social media posts, we can see JD Vance fix his purty mouth to do that thing he does:

He "obviously disagrees" with the idea that marrying outside of your race is abhorrent and anti-Indian hate should be normalized--I assume? So says the JD Vance bio. But this is a kid, and his social media activity is "ruining a kid's life?" 

A 25-year-old posted that last year, player. 

Remarkable! Or, The Perpetual Trump Gluteal Osculation Machine

 

Sean Duffy, a reality TV star, Fox News guy, former US Congressman, now Department of Transportation guy, said Trump's leadership has been "remarkable".  Being on "Road Rules" qualifies you for DOT because "roads". It is known. And "remarkable" certainly is a word. 

It doesn't have to mean "remarkably good"--and it doesn't. Maybe he meant it that way.

But it was "remarkable" in the sense of being appallingly racist, sexist, stupid and self-inflating. A projection of blame onto other people as both a deflection and a cover-up for suborned insecurity. Duffy has his ass to kiss, and he did fine. 

And I don't care, because what followed was astonishingly typical and horrific. Trump blamed DEI (which seems to mean "people of color" in Trump's mind) and Biden for what happened, because he wants to speculate about who to blame and is uniquely incapable of either knowing his role or shutting his hole. 

On behalf of Generation X, I apologize for Sean Duffy. Being a sell-out Boomer ass-kisser was certainly a choice, and one he didn't have to make. I guess that's just the way the Reality Bites. Some of us still keep it real, though--and here's my opinion on Trump.

Oh, They'll Get in Line

 

I can recall finally understanding what "elitism" meant to anti-intellectual MAGAs, and basically, it was them being told they were wrong or cruel and being made to feel bad by...anybody. It wasn't about class or education status--it was the idea that someone out there was gonna tell you you wasn't exactly as good as them. So there! 

So, in the H-1B visa debate that is roiling TrumpWorld, Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have been part of the mild fracas happening on X by letting US (White) Americans know they culturally weren't producing well qualified tech job applicants because they didn't rise and grind the way Asian kids do. Too many jocks and prom queens and peaking in high school. MAGA was fine with "pull your pants up and take care of your kids" lectures directed at Black Americans, but if you tell them that their four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School doesn't qualify them for more than selling shoes, they are going to get Big Mad. 

And we already know where white supremacist Laura Loomer was on this one:

History is Looking at Us

 

Vice President Harris: The patriots at Normandy, Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall… They did not sacrifice only to see us cede our freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. In 7 days, let us turn the… pic.twitter.com/oCrGbk4EAg

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 30, 2024

This isn't about crowd-size or partisanship: do we believe in the arc of history bending towards justice? Do we believe in justice flowing like a river?  Do we believe in this nation, conceived in liberty, shining like a city on a hill? Do we believe in the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Do we believe in the faith of our pilgrim fathers there was a promised land for them? Do we believe that women matter? Are we here for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? And one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? 

Are we the last great hope of the world? 

Or do we think this country is a garbage can? 

Can we have a better movement than what Trump gave us on 1/6/2021?  Like the movement we always did have? 

Senator Saltine on Diversity

 

JD Vance laments the diversity of New York City ahead of Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally:

“London doesn’t feel fully English to me anymore. Right? New York of course is the classic American city. Over time, I think New York will start to feel less American.” pic.twitter.com/W8p4yXcZQS

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 27, 2024

Poor Jimmy Donuts. The swarthy children of the Empire came home to roost in London Town and assorted Caribbeans are trotting through New Amsterdam! It's a multicultural chaos I tell you!

Reminder:

 He knows better. But out loud and in public he's doing a whole different thing:

TWGB: Gonna Do Really Well

 

Trump thinks he has a little secret. And he must, you know--because what his campaign did at this Madison Square Garden rally was truly alienating and foul.  This rally wasn't intended to win hearts and minds in a blue state, it was a several hours' long hate rally, and this was only going to be ugly, because Trump, the Actual Candidate, is Ugly. If he had dreams of MSG being his coronation--no. 

What was promised here was slaughter and dehumanization. Puerto Rico was called an island of trash. Jokes about Black people carving watermelons was supposedly "humor". The Vice-President, a former US Senator and former state AG, was treated like a low-IQ mutt by people who associated IQ with race in the grossest, most late 19th century way. All Democrats were deemed the "enemy within". 

Because I am a person who tries to be logical, it seemed to me absurd that the Trump campaign would use its final push to just be the open enemy of decency that this shitshow was. It obviously isn't about winning votes--

It's about whipping up so much rage from Trump true loyalists that they are ready to do great violence. It's about keeping them raging and stimulated and certain that Trump is in peril from the murderous "them" and obvious "witch hunters" who seem to think, based on all the evidence, that Trump is likely to have committed crimes, to be determined by a rigorous legal process. 

I repeat, it seems to me they do not want votes, but violence, because they don't think they can get those votes. 

They can therefore not get votes and fight the world, then. Fuck all of them for this racist, murderous shit show where they let us know who they are. But there is no wishing them anything but failure from here. 

The Vitruvian Dipshit

 

Someone pointed out on that bird website that when Elon Musk does his weird belly-baring jumping jack thing whilst hyping whatever he's about--he's trying to make an "X" with his body, and I couldn't unsee it. Symbols can be powerful things. He's trying to be his own brand--the logo/sigil that is a powerful thing which he calls the $44 billion thing he regularly is losing value on. 

X. Which hardly anyone calls it, because it remains "Twitter." Because it really is stupid to name anything "X." 

When Musk hypes Trump, he's trying to be part of a political movement. And he's a multibillionaire with services few could offer, so why hype anyone? 

Well, maybe it's because he's gone down an apartheid rabbit hole and thinks the Great Replacement theory is a thing. 

If Fascism is Baked in, Why Choose Fascism?

 

Q. Hearing John Kelly's disturbing revelation about Trump's admiration of Adolph H!tler, does it change how you feel about Trump?

Chris Sununu: No. We've heard a lot of extreme things from Trump. With a guy like that, it's kind of baked into the votepic.twitter.com/sMTbZicUrJ

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 24, 2024

So, I wanted to get this off my chest--fascism being "baked in" is the reason you REJECT a candidate, not the reason you support him. 

I might charitably presume Chris Sununu thinks this is Trump saying "extreme things" that he does not mean, and that he can differentiate the extreme things Trump says from what he intends to do, and from what those who surround him want to do. If this is how he is looking at it, he is deeply stupid, because people who support extreme words do so because they like them and want them to be so. Trump says them because he gets away with saying them and presumes that he can do what he likes later on, because he has persuaded enough people that the previously unthinkable is permissible. 

Sununu tells himself this is the direction that he believes people are going. So--he is following a multitude to do evil?  He is being a go-along-to-get along, imagining someone else will fix the problem of fascism? Or is he willing to get his hands dirty, too?

TWGB: Resorting to Crimes

 

Former President Donald Trump "resorted to crimes" to attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, federal prosecutors allege in a newly unsealed court filing released Wednesday.

In the filing submitted by special counsel Jack Smith,… pic.twitter.com/lr2ut8tFn2

— PBS News (@NewsHour) October 2, 2024

You know, it seems like it was just yesterday that current Trump running mate JD Vance was trying to focus on the future instead of discussing whether Trump lost the 2020 election, and I love that for him. Corey Lewandowski was also stuck in the same groove when asked--unable to admit His Nibs lost in 2020. 

Judge Chutkan has done the world a favor by airing out Jack Smith's brief regarding how the Trump Team, with reckless disregard for the truth, democracy, the Constitution, public safety or any other damn thing, resorted to crimes in an attempt to defraud the American people regarding our presidential election. Trump and his people did everything they could to delay his reckoning regarding January 6th, but he can't actually delay people being forewarned and forearmed--he lied about one election, and he is just bound and determined to lie about this one. 

What Trump tried to do in 2020 was election interference. This right here right now, is letting you know what he does and plans to try again. Disenfranchising people in swing states, by fraudulently messing with our votes, is something I take very personally. He says bad things happen in Philadelphia, and I may be a bad thing happening in Philadelphia myself, but I am a very legitimate voter and you DON'T try to throw out my vote without me taking it very personally.  

My feminist foremamas didn't hit picket lines and get forcefed in prison for me to not get pissed when someone tried to first of all steal my vote and then use it to support anti-woman policies like banning abortion, birth control, or any other thing that liberates me and my sisters. And I fucking mean as a White lady to correct the past by supporting the right to vote and the right of having the votes counted of the Black and Brown people Trump (and the Republican party) want to exclude.

One Rough Hour, One Rough Beast

 

Trump says his idea for stopping crime is to allow for “one really violent day”: “One rough hour, and I mean real rough...” pic.twitter.com/6XeVXL6R8b

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 29, 2024

When someone shows you who they are the first time--believe them. This is Trump, ostensibly talking about crime. But what I think he means here is--what he calls "a crime". And that could be any damn thing. Making his hair look bad on television.  Saying he didn't win in 2020, or that Russia helped him in 2016. Crimes are crimes in the run-up to a dictatorship, and then things the dictator doesn't like are crimes. 

It's a "crime" that people believe him capable of crimes. It's a "crime" that his rallies aren't attended to his liking. They have a fix for that, in North Korea. 

I remember thinking that the Telegraph and other right-wing comms in advance of 1/6 reminded me of "The Turner Diaries"--specifically, the "Day of the Rope" part. Multiple posts from Trump-affiliated right-wingers were looking to do something to "antifa". And I don't think they were at all confused that "antifa" means "anti-fascist". This is why there was only Trump fans there.

The GOP and Cheap Grace

 

Johnson: Clay Higgins is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana, and a very frank and outspoken person. He's also a very principled man. I didn’t even see it but he tweeted something today about Haitians.

Reporter: He told them to get out of the country by Jan 20th… pic.twitter.com/Y0oFz727WO

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2024

There's a formula here that the GOP employs again and again: the Tweet/statement/activity was terrible, but this is a good person (because I said so), and while I didn't see the Tweet/know all the details, I will forgive/absolve this person, even though I was not the person hurt by the activity.  Because it's the Christian thing to do. 

It's a lie. They aren't forgiving a "real" transgression (to them), and they don't care if the person is a good person--that person is "good enough for the political moment" and requires a permission slip. The permission slip has been pre-written, and we are only really just viewing what the in-group's tolerances are.

This type of cheap grace applies to Higgins, to Mark Robinson, to JD Vance, and entirely explains Trump. 

Instead of this statement vouching for Rep. Higgins, who is not noticeably repentant, I would throw it back to Speaker Johnson--why do have such a nasty racist for a good friend? 

The Lies Vance and Trump are Selling

 

The most striking thing that JD Vance has admitted out loud and in public is that even if Haitians are supposed to be here legally, he's still going to call them "illegal aliens". He knows and knew that the "people eating pets" thing was a lie when he spread it. He could easily bother to check whether crime really was up or whether communicable diseases were up, But the point isn't whether he's being honest--he's not. 

It's whether he can induce people to follow up on his story and keep it alive as if it were a big deal. Just like big public lies could induce people to follow up on a land deal in Arkansas, or a lie about a man's honorable service in Viet Nam, or a lie about a fully American man's birth certificate, or an attack on an embassy in Libya by Islamic terrorists, or an email server, or a man's son's laptop, and try to make that into a big deal, whether it really is or not. 

But there is something else in Vance's particular set of lies that is revealing--the idea that if a person can wave a wand over someone and declare them citizens, having a particular office means you can "uncitizen" them.  Or unperson them.

Trump Discusses a Back-Stabbing

 

Trump: If I don’t win this election.. the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that if that happens pic.twitter.com/N9skHU0hnu

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 20, 2024

This reminds me of so much history that as human beings, we all should shudder to repeat. Trump has moved on from how US Jewish people would be crazy not to support him, to possibly threatening them that they should support him, if they understand what's up. 

There's an ambiguity there, as the threats of strongmen sometimes contain--a plausible deniability, Maybe the "blame" won't be repaid by anyone associated with Trump at all.  But maybe he wants people thinking about that. 

Here's what I'm not going to do--pretend I don't notice it. That was a threat. Maybe he meant that a Democratic administration would not be as supportive of Israel as his would be--but that is also conflating Jews with the state of Israel--not the same thing at all. He's basically saying what a "good Jew" is vs. someone who might "have it coming." 

I need not tell you what it reminds me of because most of us won't ever forget. 

You Know They Knew About Mark Robinson

 

Trump: We have to cherish Mark Robinson. You have to cherish him. He’s like a fine wine. He's an outstanding person. I've gotten to know him so well pic.twitter.com/ffkjfi56X8

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 19, 2024

This man's public comments were already a damn disaster: let's take us to before women were voting? Some people need killing?  His household has been sued by Girl Scouts and massively screwed up daycare . He said heinous things about civil rights. And we knew he was on the downlow and sleazy but we didn't know how downlow and sleazy. 

And now we have a very good idea what this man was about, and it was calling himself a "Black Nazi" and being down with golden showers and porn regarding the trans people he would oppress or even persecute right now. I don't know much, but I know one thing, Mark Robinson isn't too diverse to the NC GOP. They are, as a popular song once had it, standing by their man. 

Now, Let's Play "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

 

Having a hard time coming to any conclusion besides the obvious one about what Rich Lowry catches himself blurting out here pic.twitter.com/PFHQMCS8UP

— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) September 16, 2024

Now it's time to play the inciting new game show, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" where the contestants try to make out whether it's the word we are not supposed to say, or just a terrible, terrible slip of the soft palate. In our clip today, we have Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, on Megyn Kelly's show, which I guess is a thing, extremely butchering the word "migrants" or "immigrants" until it sounds like....

Well, you be the judge. 

OK, time's up, audience. So, as is the catch phrase of our show: "Did you hear what I hear?"

No. You actually don't need more time for this. I don't know what part of NR or Megyn Kelly or Rich Lowry confused you about whatever is "in their heart". The actual answer is--the reason people are hearing it isn't about whether it has been said out loud, it's about this dumb dance we are doing around immigration trying not to make it about---that, when we know damn good and well it is. 

You can actually not use that one word and still be saying that word more than you know. That's the  whole answer. We don't need a whole lot more episodes. 

So those of you who got the right answer here, you win a lifetime supply of the baggage of knowing about it, and for those you who didn't know, you get the parting gift of probably figuring it out but most likely not from this blogpost. 

Thanks for playing everybody! And let's meet again probably sooner than we think we should right here in the 21st century but apparently not!

UPDATE: Here's a bonus round, Christian supremacist edition:

Trump on the Bomb Threats

 

Q: Do you denounce the bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio?

Trump: I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants pic.twitter.com/LVtWfxnXIm

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 14, 2024

I think this horror show individual has taken a hard look at the polls and thinks to himself, "Well, maybe we'll just have a little race war before the election, as a treat." And I suspect Vance is a sociopath and fully along for the ride.

This was the start of a longer post but goddamn it. Look at the man. There's nothing new here. 

Guess Who Lauded a Hitler Enthusiast?

 

NEW:

Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club hosted a convicted Jan. 6 rioter and alleged Nazi sympathizer twice this summer, where he was celebrated and gave speeches.

At one event, Trump sent a video praising the attendees as “amazing patriots.”

At the other, he won an award. pic.twitter.com/g7EMJiIvfg

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) September 12, 2024

If I know my readers, you probably guessed "Trump" with a quickness and only wondered "Which Hitler enthusiast, though?"  But this is where Trump's "MAGA movement" is right now, with Trump clearly saying "we" when referring to the 1/6 insurrectionists during the very revealing debate (because he did want to be there--and also did not turn up and he did tell them to be there and they understood the assignment).  

But the answer is the guy who was most obviously Hitler cosplaying as if that was natural.  Which Hitler enthusiast even being a question, just like sitting down with obvious antisemitic clowns Kanye and Nick Fuentes, or cozying up to Laura Loomer today, or spreading a blood libel about legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio, is a hell of a sign that Trump has gone mask-off. Or maybe that needs to be: "hood-off"? 

They're Eating the Dogs! Debate me!

 

What a split screen. I mean. pic.twitter.com/pKW39fDfoh

— Annika Brockschmidt (@ardenthistorian) September 11, 2024

They are not eating the dogs. Putin is eating Trump's lunch. Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden, and every state has laws against infanticide. Trump's "concepts of a plan" are not a goddamn plan and he looked weak, delusional, unfocused, changed the subject and rambled like a lunatic, and demonstrated why 81 million people voted against him four years ago. Trumps history of racism was discussed. as was his weakness and lack of patriotism. 

Vice-President Harris had reasons to smile, to express pity for delusional old Trump mingled with the satisfaction of having a new crotchet of his to seize on with any given response. He was baited on his weakness, on people leaving his rallies, on his former staff having bad things to say about him--

And he rose, or should we say, sank, to each allusion. 

He messed up by showing up thinking his act was all he needed. The ABC team did a good job of fact-checking, which Trump fans will no doubt view as putting their thumbs on the scale. I guess my point about that is--why are the facts so stubbornly aligned against what Trump says, though?  That is certainly something you might want to consider!

Maybe Trump is just a pathetic liar.