Trump’s campaign ends not with a bang, not with a whimper, but as comedy

There was a curious juxtapositioning of events yesterday morning.

When the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden at 11:25 am, Trump was on the golf course, no doubt cheating at the game as he is often accused of doing. He apparently was told the news while he was playing and he looked decidedly glum as his motorcade went back to the White House, accompanied by the jeers of people on the streets, extended middle fingers, and chants of “Lock him up!” He is playing playing golf again today, with protestors at the gates of the golf club. Maybe he will play every day until it is time for him to leave the White House. That would be a good thing because that means he won’t be doing any more damage.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, things were even weirder. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accompanied by Trump’s second idiot son Eric and members of his legal team, were holding a press conference, for reasons that are not clear, in the back parking lot of a landscaping company, not the most impressive of backdrops.


[Read more…]

Trump’s speech yesterday, for the record

I usually try to avoid listening to Trump’s speeches but there was so much consternation at the vast number of lies in a speech he gave at a press conference yesterday that I felt obliged to watch it in its entirety. He delivered the written remarks in that weirdly flat monotone he uses when he is reading a script. It was pretty bad. Daniel Dale, who has been assigned the thankless task of fact-checking Donald Trump for CNN, lists all the lies in that short speech, that he called the most dishonest speech of his presidency, which is clearing a very high bar. (One thing that struck me is that Trump referred to ‘Mr. Biden’ and ‘Joe’ and did not use the usual insulting ‘Sleepy Joe’. But that was the only positive thing I heard.)
[Read more…]

Meyers and Colbert on the election aftermath

Breaking all the norms for his own benefit as usual, Trump held his ‘victory party’ on Tuesday night in the East Room of the White House, which is not supposed to be used for partisan activities. Wednesday evening both Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert discussed the election results so far and had clips about Trump’s weird remarks to his supporters in the White House on election night. [As an aside, I am always captivated by Trump’s weird hand gestures when he talks.]

Here is Meyers. At the 18:20 mark, he shows a clip of Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster with an outfit called the Trafalgar Group, who asserts without evidence that Pennsylvania has a long history of systemic voter fraud that will steal the election away from Trump. That part is at the 18:20 minute mark.


[Read more…]

Samantha Bee on the children separated from their parents by the US government

The way that hundred of children were separated from their families for years and whose parents cannot now be located is truly a scandalous indictment on a country that proudly professes to uphold the highest values. But hey, we’re the country that loudly proclaims its belief in God and family, so what we do can’t be wrong, right?

Jared Kushner’s gives advice to African Americans on how to succeed

I do not know who I despise more, Donald Trump or the smug Barbie and Ken dolls that are his daughter and son-in-law, all of whom represent in almost caricature form the utter cluelessness of privileged white people with inherited wealth and family connections who think that they got where they are because of their intelligence and hard work.