Archive
Mudline Archive
STICKS, STONES, BROKEN BONES
During the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race, we began collecting negative soundbites and posting them weekly on a MUDLINE ticker, as a temporary election feature. But in the aftermath of that tumultuous contest we realized that the tone of public discourse was unlikely to improve, and elected to continue the feature. Unfortunately, we were right; two decades later, incivility is hotter than ever. If you just can’t get enough snark on social media, this mud’s for you.
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November 3, 2025
....John Adams: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."....Trump on Seth Meyers: "May be the least talented person to 'perform' live in the history of television. In fact, he may be the WORST to perform, live or otherwise."....Rep. Clay Higgins on SNAP recipients: "Any American who has been receiving $4200 per year of free groderies and does NOT have at least one month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack."....Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on immigration enforcement operations: "The Trump Administration has a strong proclivity to lie."....Stephen Miller: "To all ICE officers: You have federal IMMUNITY in the conduct of your duties!"....federal agent, pointing handgun at face of veteran demonstrating peacefully: "Bang bang. You're dead, liberal."....federal agent to Latino American citizen, protesting peacefully: "You got no right here. You're an amigo, brother."....Gov. Larry Hogan: "Enough of the lies. Enough of the hate...America would be better off if the President would resign or be removed from office."....Gov. Gavin Newsom on Trump breaking off talks with Canada: "The man-child in the Oval got his feelings hurt, so he is punishing the American people with higher costs."....Trump on cattle ranchers: "If it weren't for me, they would be doing just as they've done for the past 20 years -- terrible! It would be nice if they understood that."....NYT editorial board on Trump: "He does not have a mandate to treat people cruelly or to break the law himself."....Bill Maher: "A crazy person does not live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there."....Andrew Sullivan: "Grandiose building projects -- like this giant gilded palace that will dwarf the old White House and the Arc de Trump -- have long been part of any tyrant's core ambition -- it's how the first Roman emperor, Augustus, declared to the entire world that the republic was dead. This is Trump's way of telling us the same thing."....Chelsea Clinton: "This is what happens when we take a wrecking ball to our heritage."....Donald Trump Jr. in response: "Your parents tried stealing furniture and silverware from the White House...and let's not talk about the intern. Sit this one out."....David Axelrod: "Trump has a manic desire to tear down history and write his own."....Rick Wilson: "He saw a place designed for civic honor, official tenderness, and historical respect and wondered why it didn't look more like a casino atrium, a glittery Liberace dreamscape."....Drew Magary: "When you elect Trump president, as Americans have now done twice over, you're voting FOR desecration. Trump is the rabble, the confusion and the theft all in one neat little package...He is not asking for permission, or for forgiveness. He's just taking."....Mona Charen: "No opportunity for notice and comment from the public. Just Trump's whim -- and a beloved national symbol tumbles to dust. It's obscene."....James Carville on Sen. Sydney Hyde Smith: "She has the unique distinction of being at least as dumb as Tommy Tuberville -- I think dumber."....Steve Schmidt on SecDef Pete Hegseth: "A broken child...The cringiest reality show buffoon in world history."....Jeffrey Toobin on commutation of George Santos' sentence: "Mr. Trump's worldview is characterized by amoral deal-making, where friends are rewarded and enemies punished, regardless of the merits of their underlying conduct."....Trump: "The 2020 Presidential election [was] Rigged and Stolen...Look what happened to our Country when a Crooked Moron became our 'President!'"....WH press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: "Karine worked for the most incompetent president in history."....Matt Taibbi: "The world could see that Biden was in drool-cup mode as far back as 2019."....Trump, on invasion of Iraq: "The single worst decision ever made."....Maureen Dowd: "Congress is adrift. The White House is a shipwreck. Trump is marauding in the Caribbean. James Comey and Letitia James are being forced to walk the plank, and next up could be Jack Smith and Adam Schiff. We are awash in nautical metaphors as the president plunders and pillages. He's a pirate -- and not the fun Halloween kind."....Billie Eilish at award event: "If you have money, it would be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to people that need it...If you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties."....
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October 16, 2025
Speaker Mike Johnson on 'No Kings 2': "This hate America rally that they have coming up for October 18th? The antifa crowd, the pro-Hamas crowd, and the Marxists, they're all going to gather on the Mall. It is an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes."....Rep. Tom Emmer: "We call it the 'Hate America' rally because you'll see the hate for America all over this thing when they show up."....homeland security adviser Stephen Miller: "The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization."....Tina Brown on American life: "Has turned into a dream sequence from a bad horror movie."....Trump to reporter: "You're 'ABC Fake News.' I don't take questions from 'ABC Fake News.'"....Trump: "MSNBC is dying and CNN is dying like a dog. It's so pathetic. Did you see their anchors in the evening? Nobody's ever heard of them...I could take anybody off the street in Washington, DC, they'd do a better job."....Trump at press conference: "This is one of the worst reporters that you'll ever -- I don't even want to take your question. It's a waste of time."....Trump to ABC's Jonathan Karl: "You're not a wonderful person. Frankly, you're a terrible reporter. You know it and so do I."....Trump nickname for co-anchor of "Good Morning America": "George Slopodopoulos."....JD Vance on Gov. JB Pritzker: "There are thousands of innocent Chicagoans who are dead because he failed to do his job."....Pritzker on Trump: "He's copying the tactics of Vladimir Putin...There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked."....Will Saletan: "To bring a democracy under authoritarian control...you need politicians who will assure the public...that nothing odd is happening. That's the role Johnson is playing in Trump's takeover of America."....Chris Christie on Trump DOJ: "What it is now is a Capo regime who goes out and executes hits when directed by the Don to do so."....Trump on "the Epstein whatever": "I don't comment on something that's a dead issue."....Fox host Jimmy Failla on Bad Bunny: "Don't be mad that we have a cross-dresser who doesn't speak English doing the halftime show, because if Kamala won, he would have been a cabinet member."....Andy Borowitz: "Bad Bunny was born in America. The same cannot be said about 67 percent of Trump's wives."....Rep. Jim McGovern: "Donald Trump has kept his promise to run our government like he ran his companies: shut down, with unpaid workers and blaming everyone but himself."....Trump: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats. They want to give all our money to illegal aliens."....Rep. Jasmine Crockett: "It is the old white nepo baby that is sitting in the White House that is causing all the destruction, pain and problems that you are enduring."....Trump: "We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms."....retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey on Trump and Hegseth at Quantico: "One of the most bizarre, unsettling everts I've ever encountered. The president sounded incoherent, exhausted, rabidly partisan, at times stupid, meandering, couldn't hold a thought together."....Don Knight: "Two men wearing more makeup than their wives just stood on stage and lectured 800+ military generals on how to be 'real men.' Satire did a double backflip."....Paul Krugman on SecDef Hegseth: "I think he's living in the 4th century BC."....Stephen Miller: "Those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing, you are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred...You can build nothing, you can produce nothing, you can create nothing."....Jimmy Kimmel on Trump construction projects: "By the time he's out of office, the White House will have slot machines and a water slide."....Trump on Rep. Ilhan Omar: "I think she's a disgraceful person, a loser...I think she's a disgusting person."....Peter Navarro, who went to prison for contempt of Congress: "There's a disturbing asymmetry between what the left is doing to us and what we're not doing to them...Bannon and I went to prison. Now they got Charlie."....Dean Blundell on AG Pam Bondi's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: "So blinded by loyalty to Trump, she couldn't even fake professionalism."....Rick Wilson: "It was the fake orgasm of committee hearing performances...meant to trick just one man into keeping her around by flattering his ego."....Sen. Dick Durbin to Bondi: "What has taken place since January 20th, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy...It will take decades to recover."....Bondi to Durbin: "I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump."....Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, denying MAGA influencer Candace Owens entry: "Inciting discord might be the way some people make money, but it's not welcome in Australia. Australia's national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else."....Andrew Sullivan: "Trump is a tyrant in every cell of his lardaceous body. There is a reason he bonded with Kim Jong Un and has a soft spot for Putin and Xi. He envies their total control, and, more importantly, the opportunities for cruelty that come with it."....Trump, in 2023: "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."....Donald Trump Jr on Fox News: "Honestly, I don't watch it anymore because it's so ridiculous."....Trump on David Letterman: "He looks like hell, but at least he knew when to quit. LOSER!!!"....Andy Borowitz: "Soon the only comedian left on TV will be Karoline Leavitt."....Trump on new kickoff rule: "'Sissy' football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL."....Trump on Greta Thunberg: "She's just a troublemaker...I think she should see a doctor. For a young person, she's so ANGRY, she's so CRAZY!"....Trump on Biden having cancer: "He was a stupid guy. But he was always a mean son of a bitch...It's not working out too well for him right now. So when you start feeling sorry for him, remember he's a bad guy!"....Charlie Kirk: "Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia-filled Alzheimer's corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America."....JD Vance on Trump UN speech: "It's nice to have a president with a brain!"....Trump on the US: "A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. The country was going to hell."....Jon Stewart: "Chuck Schumer is a human flat tire."....Hitler's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, ending the professional careers of five 'Aryan' actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich's Chamber of Culture in 1939: "In their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades."....
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September 3, 2025
Trump on Chicago: "A killing field...Everyone knows that Chicago is a hell hole."....Trump on Dems: "The party of hate, evil, and Satan."....Trump on Biden: "Not a smart man...He was just a horrible, corrupt president."....WH press secretary Karoline Leavitt on UNICEF: "Crap."....Trump adviser Stephen Miller on DC protesters: "We are going to ignore these stupid white hippies, that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."....Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Trump: "Things people are NOT begging for: 1. An authoritarian power grab of major cities."....former US Attorney Joyce Vance: "Force and intimidation are not strategies we associate with American presidents...That is how dictators operate. That is how Trump operates. Let's call it what it is."....Fox host Jesse Watters on posts by CA Gov. Newson: "Greasy Gavin is out there jocking Trump's style. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But why doesn't Gavin imitate his policies?"....Newsom: "Because they are trash."....Swedish economist Anders Aslund: "Has anybody in a position of power ever lied as much as Donald Trump?...How can Americans tolerate such lying?"....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "He wants to live in the Whiter House...Now he's trying to say that we shouldn't dwell so much on slavery. He's a walking, talking deepfake."....historian Douglas Brinkley on Trump: "It's the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America."....Gov. Tim Walz: "If you're trying to erase history, you're on the wrong side of it."....Trump on MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace: "She is a loser, with bad ratings, who was already thrown off 'The View.' She will be fired soon! MSNBC IS DEAD!"....Trump on Dems: "They love crime."....Michael Wolff: "In Trump world things are exactly what they seem."....Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung on Wolff: "A lying sack of s***."....Jack White on Trump's redecoration of the Oval Office: "It's now a vulgar, gold-leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler's dressing room."....Steven Cheung on White: "A washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career."....Trump on MSNBC becoming MS NOW: "They are looking to change their name in order to get away from the stench of their fake news product."....Trump on Gov. Gavin Newsom: "He's an incompetent guy with a good line of bullshit -- and he doesn't get the job done."....Newsom on Trump: "Such low energy. SAD!"....Trump on Dems: "They are led by insane people."....Trump blaming Zelensky for Russia invading Ukraine: "You don't take on a nation that's 10 times your size."....Russia analyst Fiona Hill: "Everybody has to give Trump credit for everything. This is just now the price of admission for a civil meeting."....Lawrence O'Donnell: "We are watching the worst president in history manipulate the worst White House press corps in history, every single day."....Trump on Putin Alaska summit: "I think the meeting was a 10 in the sense we got along great."....Rick Wilson: "A reality-TV set piece where the world's most servile, cheap crook slobbered over the boots of a KGB thug and called it greatness."....Trump on his appointee Jerome Powell: "A terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed."....George Conway on the president: "We don't have Ronald Reagan anymore, we have Tony Soprano."....Trump on Dems: "They want transgender for everybody -- 'Everybody transgender!'"....
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August 7, 2025
....Trump on Epstein inquiry: "The whole thing is a hoax...total bullshit."....Trump on windmills: "They're killing us...The whole thing is a con job."....Trump on Democrats: "Country-hating THUGS...THEY ARE EXTORTIONISTS!...The Dems are CRAZED LUNATICS!!!"....Trump on Rupert Murdoch and WSJ: "I'm going to sue his ass off, and that of his third-rate newspaper."....Trump on Josh Hawley: "A second-tier senator."....Scott Galloway: "If Trump brought half the competence, expertise, and elegance to governance as he does to grifting, the country would be in a much better place."....Fox host Megyn Kelly on Stephen Colbert: "He desperately wanted to be Keith Olbermann. And guess what? Keith Olbermann is a failure, and now so are you, Stephen Colbert."....Maureen Callahan on Colbert: "He is such a schoolmarm. He is such a hectoring, humorless lecturer."....Trump on Rep. Jasmine Crockett: "Very low-IQ person."....Laura Ingraham on Crockett: "Having a law degree doesn't mean you're smart."....Trump on Rep. AOC: "She's very low-IQ, and we really don't need low-IQ. Between her and Crockett, we're going to give them both an IQ test and see who comes out best."....Trump on CBS co-host Gayle King: "[Her] career is over...No talent, no ratings, no strength!"....Trump on French President Macron: "What he says doesn't matter."....Memes reposted by Trump: "It's time to indict Obama the traitor!" "Joe Biden's presidency was the biggest scam in U.S. history."....WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on NPR and PBS: "These are not honest news organizations."....Matt Taibbi on NPR: "National Propaganda Radio."....Lev Parnas: "Trump's favorite lie: that he was the victim of a deep state conspiracy."....Pete Buttigieg: "The President sees a bad jobs report, and responds by getting rid of the person in charge of the statistics. This is how America becomes a third-rate country."....Sen. Ron Wyden: "Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books."....Dan Rather on Trump: "Changes course more often than he changes his socks."....Tina Brown on Andrew Cuomo: "Has the air of a man on his way to a colonoscopy."....White House on South Park depiction of Trump in bed with Satan: "No fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak."....Jason Kander: "You know that scene in an action movie when the bad guy runs through the kitchen of a restaurant and pulls down all the pots and pans behind him to slow down his pursuers? We're in that part of the Trump presidency."....
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July 14, 2025
....Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Laura Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the Mook...You're not an American, you're a South African...If we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult alert...Everybody is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution...Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East...The difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their income...The USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly bill...This is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....Garrison Keillor: "Every morning the news hits us like a baseball bat. How did this crook and clown achieve the White House so he could wage war on science, higher education, the Constitution, regulatory agencies, and the world economy, while redecorating the Oval Office to look like the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for."....