It's not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.
I had never read this essay. Very powerful. None of us who understood the immense disaster of 2016 will ever forget the moment we learned of the election outcome and what it portended. It was all clear in a flash from the beginning. Our lives have never been the same since that moment.
It's ben many decades in this country when rights we have previously enjoyed were taken away and criminalized. It remains shocking, and I hope young people will vote accordingly.
It was truly a "where were you when you heard about..." moment. I remember it like I do the Challenger explosion, and 9/11. I am a bit too young to remember the JFK assassination, but Trump's election is in there with those events.
Absolutely. I was 12 when President Kennedy was killed. I remember the moment my 7th grade English teacher announced that he had died. The 2016 abomination is like that--a dark, surreal, tragic event.
I hadn’t read that well crafted post by Jana before, nor had I seen any of the teacup summit at the WH, however, it certainly appears to mark a terrifying and shameful epoch !
Holy moly, what a screed! Not meant pejoratively -- some screeds are necessary and good. Anticipation (accurate to a pin) and rage (justified and then some).
I think you can divide us -- the sane -- by what we were thinking, and saying, in December 2016 (or on the night of November 8, for that matter): There were the "give him a chancers" and the "the sky is falling chicken littles." It's all too clear, now, who saw our near future with agonized clarity, who with gauzy delusion.
That, nearly seven full years in, Donald Trump -- President Rapist, Agent Orange ... no epithet, no matter how pejorative, has succeeded in fully capturing the black-hole obscenity of this diseased monster -- should seemingly be embraced by enough of this sad country's voters to have a very fair chance of again ascending to power is mindfuck of the very highest grade. Really -- it's real, real. It doesn't matter that it's unfathomable.
If only someone -- and I know some have tried -- could show the average MAGA how superior (yes, superior!) they are to Donald Trump. Whatever they believe, they are most likely good neighbors, trying to find meaning and the basic stature necessary to a satisfying human life, trying most of all to belong. They are not psychopaths, not serial liars, not hell-bent on winning, controlling, dominating everything they touch. They may be afflicted with ignorance and moved by confusion and anger (aren't, in some way, we all?), but they are nowhere near as weak as Trump in his insatiable needs and the grip those insatiable needs hold on his psyche and behavior.
If only somehow they could see it. If only someone could figure out how to show them. In the absence of that miracle, Trump will remain the stupid peg in the ground he has made himself -- and we will have to fight to save this country (ourselves and the MAGAs too). Fight with our votes, our money, our work, and, if those are not enough, our teeth and claws.
Perfect comment, Jon. Thank you for articulating all of that so well.
I would add two things: that the "give him a chancers" were, I think, largely in full-on denial mode, unable to accept what just happened; I don't know that many people beyond that idiot Van Jones thought Trump would ever be presidential. And: Fox News and the RW media seek to keep MAGA in that state of perpetual ignorance. Disgraceful. Rupert Murdoch's legacy is one of profound, almost unprecedented harm.
The prescience in Jana Martin's piece is stunning. Yet, all of us could see it coming. Referencing another comment here, I was one of the ones, who for a while, was a "give him a chancer," but it was only lip service, it's not something I ever believed. This "businessman" from New York had been on my radar for YEARS by the time he slouched toward the White House, and not for anything good, EVER. I never watched his stupid show, which is apparently the reason he got the following he has. Instead, I watched as he was either bankrupting his businesses or cheating on his various wives, and then marrying those mistresses and ALWAYS seemed to have the gall to spread his seed so that he could create another Trump. His wives, all of them, were for that purpose. Ivana came the closest to almost overshadowing him, but as soon as he saw that happening, he scurried her off to run a casino in Atlantic City, and when she was successful at THAT too, he dumped her. And now she's buried on one of his golf courses so he can get a fucking tax break! The leopard's spots DO NOT change. I think Jana knew that, and that's where this essay originates. She could clearly see where we were headed. That cancerous monster was NEVER going to become presidential, as stupid people like Van Jones thought.
I recently watched Spike Lee's "NYC Epicenters 9 11-2021½" from 2021 -- and by the way, if you haven't seen it, STOP your life to watch it! In it, he never referred to Trump, both in speaking and onscreen graphics, as anything but "Agent Orange," and during one of the episodes explains where the moniker came from. It is literally almost eight hours of talking heads, but some of the most compelling stuff I've seen in a long time. I have SO MUCH backlog to watch, and yet, may watch it again. It is just that good!
Excellent Five-8 this past Friday. Pete Strzok is the best, and the three of you together are even better. Pete needs a free night where he can hang out for an hour or more.
I won't even put Russell Brand in the same paragraph. Truth be told, I have NEVER liked him, not his humor, his schtick, or his political bullshit. The revelations in the Times of London ring so true of the type of person he has always seemed to be, that the story was shocking, but not surprising. It seemed, as you so well put it on Friday, "On Brand." Horrible, disgusting individual. In a now unimportant point, I have never forgiven whoever decided to remake "Arthur" with this goon and Helen Mirren (what the hell were you thinking, Helen?). That was a film that never needed to be remade, and although I've never watched it, I can only consider it an insult to the memory of the performances of Dudley Moore, John Gielgud, and even Liza Minnelli, in the original. So unnecessary. Russell Brand can't be CANCELED soon enough for me. Arrest, trial, and imprisonment would be a bonus!
Thanks for this, Steve. I didn't know about the Spike Lee series, and will seek it out. Generally I like things that look at 9/11, as I was living in NYC at that time and in Midtown when it happened.
Pete is always fun. Thanks for watching the show!
As a consumer of TV shows and movies, I always felt like Russell Brand was foisted on me...which, I suppose, is apropos, unfortunately. May shame follow him wherever he goes.
On the morning after, my partner, who had attended a Wurstfest event on the night of the election, had one thing to say, "What the F happened?" And good friends began immediately to make their plans to become ex-pats. Two now live in Spain; two now live in Mexico. Others are slowly getting their own preparations in order. Because it never seems to end. It never seems to get any better. And the drugged cultists are still out there, waiting to vote again. And the expressionless former porn star still hides - somewhere - while her predator owner has free rein with social media and msm and courtroom dramas excruciatingly seem to go nowhere.
I wanted to leave but my husband was eight years into Alz, and I could see no way. Now he is dead and I am old. I never thought people would be stupid enough to want him back. It will be worse if we resurrect his evil
I resolved always to stay and fight the guy. No way I was ceding ground to THAT asshole. I underestimated him for sure. If he wins again, I may have to leave.
One thing we learned in the last seven years is that Melania deserves no sympathy. She's of like mind with her husband. I don't care, do you?
Wow, Greg! There is so much to unpack here. I started reading this this morning but had to take a break. Jana’s analysis is as excellent as it is haunting. I generally do not like going back to 2016. It’s very uncomfortable because it is a time when we stood on the precipice, not knowing what was to become of our world. The picture has been with me all day - making me sad for Michelle, making me angry, and just leaving me with a yucky feeling. I began reading again tonight-with a program called “The Most Beautiful Places in Chicago” on in the background. One of the places they discussed was the South Shore Cultural Center. They flashed a picture of Michelle Obama on her wedding day (the Obama’s had their wedding reception at the South Shore Cultural Center). She was sitting in a chair in her wedding dress and Barack was kneeling in front of her taking off one of her shoes from her outstretched leg. She was laughing with this look of pure joy on her face. And he was also laughing and they both looked so Happy! That picture erased the yuckiness of the Melania picture.
Yeah, my mother was upset with me that I used the Sunday space for this kind of thing. It's supposed to be a sort of reprieve. But I felt like it was time to share the piece. It's hard to look back but we have to look back so it doesn't happen again.
We absolutely have to look back no matter how painful that might be. I just keep thinking...What are the odds that I would see that picture of Michelle Obama with a look of pure joy on her face on the same day that I read Jana's analysis of a not-so-nice moment in her life? It's a reminder that when things look bleak and dark, there's always light and hope just on the other side. I also want to thank you for the links to the Pro Publica article on Clarence Thomas and the link to Kavanaugh's involvement with the Alabama redistricting map. Both excellent and essential pieces of information. I can't help but to feel disappointed in Ken Burns and Deion Sanders.
I'm a woman. I break glass ceilings. I don't like that essay at all. It consigns women to being powerless victims, eyelash-flapping wombs at the service of men. Women are not victims, except of their own laziness and ignorance. I grew up with pictures of teacups. I like tea. I like manners. I grew up in a poor town. But I worked hard, studied, broke glass, picked shards out or my heart and soul. Trump the Rapist was not put in office by men alone. He was put there by ignorant, lazy women just as by ignorant, lazy men. Women are not victims. If there are more women in this country than men, then women can ensure that Trump loses in 2024. Or women can put him back in control, in which case, women will not be victims of anyone but themselves. Time to put down the eyelash curler and own responsibility.
Fuck the teacups! Brilliant, Greg. Brilliant Jana!
It's not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.
What Happened 📖 Hillary Rodham Clinton
HRC, right as usual.
#ButHerEmails
Thanks, Nina!
Thank you for your service, First Lady Michelle Obama 👏🏻 I look forward to reading your book!
The light we carry 🕯Michelle Obama - America, please go high!
Overcoming in uncertain times.
Michelle Obama x Colbert - EXTENDED INTERVIEW https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8gfqh-ZrHY8
God, Greg; you have outdone yourself. Brilliant!
Thanks, Gwen.
And the women dressed as prey, Melania with long, drapey hair and Michelle's poor feet in foot binding-
I had never read this essay. Very powerful. None of us who understood the immense disaster of 2016 will ever forget the moment we learned of the election outcome and what it portended. It was all clear in a flash from the beginning. Our lives have never been the same since that moment.
Yet even in my despair the morning after that election, I never in my worst nightmare thought that Roe could be overturned. Fast backwards to now!😱
Yes. It is truly worse than any nightmare.
It's ben many decades in this country when rights we have previously enjoyed were taken away and criminalized. It remains shocking, and I hope young people will vote accordingly.
It was truly a "where were you when you heard about..." moment. I remember it like I do the Challenger explosion, and 9/11. I am a bit too young to remember the JFK assassination, but Trump's election is in there with those events.
Absolutely. I was 12 when President Kennedy was killed. I remember the moment my 7th grade English teacher announced that he had died. The 2016 abomination is like that--a dark, surreal, tragic event.
Those are the moments when hope is under attack, along with our faith in humanity.
Such dread I had never felt before. Creeping, sickening, debilitating dread.
Astoundingly brilliant piece Greg!
I hadn’t read that well crafted post by Jana before, nor had I seen any of the teacup summit at the WH, however, it certainly appears to mark a terrifying and shameful epoch !
The 5-8 with Pete was exceptional as well!🙏🙏
Thanks, Patrick! Pete is always great.
Holy moly, what a screed! Not meant pejoratively -- some screeds are necessary and good. Anticipation (accurate to a pin) and rage (justified and then some).
I think you can divide us -- the sane -- by what we were thinking, and saying, in December 2016 (or on the night of November 8, for that matter): There were the "give him a chancers" and the "the sky is falling chicken littles." It's all too clear, now, who saw our near future with agonized clarity, who with gauzy delusion.
That, nearly seven full years in, Donald Trump -- President Rapist, Agent Orange ... no epithet, no matter how pejorative, has succeeded in fully capturing the black-hole obscenity of this diseased monster -- should seemingly be embraced by enough of this sad country's voters to have a very fair chance of again ascending to power is mindfuck of the very highest grade. Really -- it's real, real. It doesn't matter that it's unfathomable.
If only someone -- and I know some have tried -- could show the average MAGA how superior (yes, superior!) they are to Donald Trump. Whatever they believe, they are most likely good neighbors, trying to find meaning and the basic stature necessary to a satisfying human life, trying most of all to belong. They are not psychopaths, not serial liars, not hell-bent on winning, controlling, dominating everything they touch. They may be afflicted with ignorance and moved by confusion and anger (aren't, in some way, we all?), but they are nowhere near as weak as Trump in his insatiable needs and the grip those insatiable needs hold on his psyche and behavior.
If only somehow they could see it. If only someone could figure out how to show them. In the absence of that miracle, Trump will remain the stupid peg in the ground he has made himself -- and we will have to fight to save this country (ourselves and the MAGAs too). Fight with our votes, our money, our work, and, if those are not enough, our teeth and claws.
Perfect comment, Jon. Thank you for articulating all of that so well.
I would add two things: that the "give him a chancers" were, I think, largely in full-on denial mode, unable to accept what just happened; I don't know that many people beyond that idiot Van Jones thought Trump would ever be presidential. And: Fox News and the RW media seek to keep MAGA in that state of perpetual ignorance. Disgraceful. Rupert Murdoch's legacy is one of profound, almost unprecedented harm.
The prescience in Jana Martin's piece is stunning. Yet, all of us could see it coming. Referencing another comment here, I was one of the ones, who for a while, was a "give him a chancer," but it was only lip service, it's not something I ever believed. This "businessman" from New York had been on my radar for YEARS by the time he slouched toward the White House, and not for anything good, EVER. I never watched his stupid show, which is apparently the reason he got the following he has. Instead, I watched as he was either bankrupting his businesses or cheating on his various wives, and then marrying those mistresses and ALWAYS seemed to have the gall to spread his seed so that he could create another Trump. His wives, all of them, were for that purpose. Ivana came the closest to almost overshadowing him, but as soon as he saw that happening, he scurried her off to run a casino in Atlantic City, and when she was successful at THAT too, he dumped her. And now she's buried on one of his golf courses so he can get a fucking tax break! The leopard's spots DO NOT change. I think Jana knew that, and that's where this essay originates. She could clearly see where we were headed. That cancerous monster was NEVER going to become presidential, as stupid people like Van Jones thought.
I recently watched Spike Lee's "NYC Epicenters 9 11-2021½" from 2021 -- and by the way, if you haven't seen it, STOP your life to watch it! In it, he never referred to Trump, both in speaking and onscreen graphics, as anything but "Agent Orange," and during one of the episodes explains where the moniker came from. It is literally almost eight hours of talking heads, but some of the most compelling stuff I've seen in a long time. I have SO MUCH backlog to watch, and yet, may watch it again. It is just that good!
Excellent Five-8 this past Friday. Pete Strzok is the best, and the three of you together are even better. Pete needs a free night where he can hang out for an hour or more.
I won't even put Russell Brand in the same paragraph. Truth be told, I have NEVER liked him, not his humor, his schtick, or his political bullshit. The revelations in the Times of London ring so true of the type of person he has always seemed to be, that the story was shocking, but not surprising. It seemed, as you so well put it on Friday, "On Brand." Horrible, disgusting individual. In a now unimportant point, I have never forgiven whoever decided to remake "Arthur" with this goon and Helen Mirren (what the hell were you thinking, Helen?). That was a film that never needed to be remade, and although I've never watched it, I can only consider it an insult to the memory of the performances of Dudley Moore, John Gielgud, and even Liza Minnelli, in the original. So unnecessary. Russell Brand can't be CANCELED soon enough for me. Arrest, trial, and imprisonment would be a bonus!
Hadn’t heard about the Spike Lee joint, but I’m definitely stopping to find it. Hope I’m technologically savvy enough. Thanks for the tip.
It's on HBOMax, or Max, or whatever they're calling it these days.
Why do all these things gravitate toward the letter X? Do they think it's cool? Are they in third grade?
😂 Yes.
Thanks, Steve B. Now all I have to decide is whether to pay for another service. It’s all about the Benjamins.
Do a free 7-day trial on Amazon. They seem to be the hub of all of these services except AppleTV+ and Hulu.
Thanks for this, Steve. I didn't know about the Spike Lee series, and will seek it out. Generally I like things that look at 9/11, as I was living in NYC at that time and in Midtown when it happened.
Pete is always fun. Thanks for watching the show!
As a consumer of TV shows and movies, I always felt like Russell Brand was foisted on me...which, I suppose, is apropos, unfortunately. May shame follow him wherever he goes.
The last two episodes, which I watched first, are all about 9/11. Great work by Spike Lee.
This was powerful. Thank you.
On the morning after, my partner, who had attended a Wurstfest event on the night of the election, had one thing to say, "What the F happened?" And good friends began immediately to make their plans to become ex-pats. Two now live in Spain; two now live in Mexico. Others are slowly getting their own preparations in order. Because it never seems to end. It never seems to get any better. And the drugged cultists are still out there, waiting to vote again. And the expressionless former porn star still hides - somewhere - while her predator owner has free rein with social media and msm and courtroom dramas excruciatingly seem to go nowhere.
I wanted to leave but my husband was eight years into Alz, and I could see no way. Now he is dead and I am old. I never thought people would be stupid enough to want him back. It will be worse if we resurrect his evil
Thanks, Ellen.
I resolved always to stay and fight the guy. No way I was ceding ground to THAT asshole. I underestimated him for sure. If he wins again, I may have to leave.
One thing we learned in the last seven years is that Melania deserves no sympathy. She's of like mind with her husband. I don't care, do you?
Both did what they had to do, most women do.
What a brilliant piece of writing; one I had missed because of my own rage and digust after the election.
Thanks, Sherryl.
Wow, Greg! There is so much to unpack here. I started reading this this morning but had to take a break. Jana’s analysis is as excellent as it is haunting. I generally do not like going back to 2016. It’s very uncomfortable because it is a time when we stood on the precipice, not knowing what was to become of our world. The picture has been with me all day - making me sad for Michelle, making me angry, and just leaving me with a yucky feeling. I began reading again tonight-with a program called “The Most Beautiful Places in Chicago” on in the background. One of the places they discussed was the South Shore Cultural Center. They flashed a picture of Michelle Obama on her wedding day (the Obama’s had their wedding reception at the South Shore Cultural Center). She was sitting in a chair in her wedding dress and Barack was kneeling in front of her taking off one of her shoes from her outstretched leg. She was laughing with this look of pure joy on her face. And he was also laughing and they both looked so Happy! That picture erased the yuckiness of the Melania picture.
Thanks for sharing that, Gail.
Yeah, my mother was upset with me that I used the Sunday space for this kind of thing. It's supposed to be a sort of reprieve. But I felt like it was time to share the piece. It's hard to look back but we have to look back so it doesn't happen again.
We absolutely have to look back no matter how painful that might be. I just keep thinking...What are the odds that I would see that picture of Michelle Obama with a look of pure joy on her face on the same day that I read Jana's analysis of a not-so-nice moment in her life? It's a reminder that when things look bleak and dark, there's always light and hope just on the other side. I also want to thank you for the links to the Pro Publica article on Clarence Thomas and the link to Kavanaugh's involvement with the Alabama redistricting map. Both excellent and essential pieces of information. I can't help but to feel disappointed in Ken Burns and Deion Sanders.
Wow! Just fucking wow!
Wasn't it such a beautiful moment when Melania extended her hand to Dr. Jill Biden to welcome her in the White House?
Oh- nevermind that never happened.
And every fear and gut wrenching disgust I felt, just like Jana, came true.
Thank you for sharing Greg, that momentum swing in 2016 was raw and still plagues our country.
I'm a woman. I break glass ceilings. I don't like that essay at all. It consigns women to being powerless victims, eyelash-flapping wombs at the service of men. Women are not victims, except of their own laziness and ignorance. I grew up with pictures of teacups. I like tea. I like manners. I grew up in a poor town. But I worked hard, studied, broke glass, picked shards out or my heart and soul. Trump the Rapist was not put in office by men alone. He was put there by ignorant, lazy women just as by ignorant, lazy men. Women are not victims. If there are more women in this country than men, then women can ensure that Trump loses in 2024. Or women can put him back in control, in which case, women will not be victims of anyone but themselves. Time to put down the eyelash curler and own responsibility.