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.
-
March 12, 2024
....Elon Musk: "Winning an Oscar now just means you won the woke contest."....Trump on November election: "The only way it can end where they win is a rigged election."....Steve Bannon on Biden: "An illegitimate regime head. A usurper at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."....CNN's Bob Costa on Trump: "He is by far the most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history...A bubbling cauldron of loathsome traits. You have to be in the throes of some sort of toxic delusion and in a toxic cult to believe that Donald Trump has ever been in any sense -- emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, or ethically -- fit to be President of the United States."....Trump on Biden: "The guy can't talk, the guy can't walk."....Sean Hannity on SOTU: "Sounded like a hyper-caffeinated, angry old man."....Newt Gingrich: "The most destructive, hateful, and divisive State of the Union in our history...Biden never ceases to amaze with his pettiness, nastiness, and dishonesty."....Trump on Biden's delivery: "Angry, and obviously very Disturbed."....House Speaker Mike Johnson: "Hyper-partisan."....Trump adviser Jason Miller: "Partisan, bitter, unhinged, yelling."....Matt Taibbi: "Could state media in the GDR, Soviet Union, Maoist China, or Pinochet's Chile have reviewed a leader's speech as breathlessly as Joe Biden's State of the Union?"....NYT's Bret Stephens: "I marveled at the many ways Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, managed to approximate the expressions of a constipated turtle."....Sen. Katie Britt in GOP rebuttal: "Our commander in chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader."....George Conway on Britt: "She came off as the aunt who's going to tell you about sex dungeons beneath the pizza parlor."....GOP talking points on Biden and Britt, distributed before SOTU: "His speech was tone deaf. Hers was the perfect pitch."....Tucker Carlson: "The Democrat Party is the party of weak men and unhappy women."....Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "A complete and total POS."....Trump on Facebook: "A true enemy of the people."....Trump on the CEO of Meta: "Zuckerschmuck."....Mark Cuban: "X is such a cesspool now, right? It's a s***hole, right?"....Sen. Ted Cruz: "The cases against Donald Trump are complete garbage."....Trump: "If I fly over a blue state, the next day I get a federal grand jury notice. And they indicted me on bullshit. It's all bullshit. I think they truly hate me more than anybody that's ever lived."....Sean Hannity on CNN anchor Jake Tapper: "Fake Jake, are you really that dumb?"....Trump on immigrants crossing southern border: "They're rough people, in many cases from jail, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums -- that's 'Silence of the Lambs' stuff. Anybody know Hannibal Lecter?"....MA congressional candidate Lori Kauffman: "Long term goals are to ban same-sex marriage (never should have been legalized) and trans will be illegal. Yes illegal. I will also exile all Jews."....Trump: "Biden's conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America."....Ann Coulter: "Obama was the most articulate president we've probably ever had. Trump has a vocabulary of 50 words."....George Conway on Trump: "A deeply disturbed, a deeply morally bereft human being who has no conscience, has no morality, has no empathy, has no remorse. This is a sick man. He's a bad man."....Michigan voter Susan Titus on Trump: "I think he's pretty much an a**hole, to coin a phrase."....Trump on 2024 election: "We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all."....Kari Lake: "Reports: Nimrata Haley will suspend her campaign today after more humiliating, landslide loses [sic] on Super Tuesday."....radio host Mark Levin: "Media are so thoroughly corrupt. Trying to create the impression that President Trump has a memory issue when Biden's brain is mush...Biden is an imbecile. Trump is sharp as always."....George Clooney on Trump: "This idea that I'm somehow the 'Hollywood elite' and this guy who takes a s*** in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable."....Donald Trump Jr.: "There's literally no amount of Viagra on Earth that's going to give Joe Biden (who can barely walk without falling over) wood...He can't walk, talk, or think."....Trump: "Wi-ri-bi-gyu...ahhh."....
-
February 27, 2024
Trump on the U.S.: "WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!"....Trump: "A Crooked New York State Judge, working with a totally Corrupt Attorney General...has just fined me $355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY."....Trump on Dems: "They've replaced law, precedent, and due process with a rabid mob of radical left Democrat partisans masquerading as judges and juries and prosecutors."....Trump on his indictments: "Stalinist show trials...We are turning into a communist country in many ways."....Rep. Lee Zeldin on Dems: "Are actively doing Biden's bidding as they also try to imprison his chief political opponent, Donald Trump, remove him from the ballot, and ensure he dies in prison."....Dinesh D'Souza: "Navalny = Trump. The plan of the Biden regime and the Democrats is to ensure their leading political opponent dies in prison. There's no real difference between the two cases."....Nikki Haley: "Donald Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents...with a man who's made no bones about the fact he wants to destroy America."....Bill Kristol: "The likely nominee of one of our two major political parties is pro-Vladimir Putin."....Liz Cheney: "The issue of this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House."....House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn: "That's what G-O-P stands for now, 'Groupies of Putin.'"....Zelensky on Tucker Carlson's Putin interview: "I don't have time to hear more than two hours of bullsh*t about us, about the war, about the United States, about our relations -- and this interview with a killer."....Andrew Sullivan: "Putin just got publicly fellated for two whole hours by Tucker Carlson, who never mentioned Navalny once."....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "Is trying to replace our democracy with a me-ocracy."....Mary L. Trump on her uncle: "Delusion wrapped in treason parading as grievance."....Trump adviser Chris LaCivita on Gov. Ron DeSantis: "Chicken fingers and pudding cups is what you will be remembered for, you sad little man."....Trump on Biden: "The crookedest, most incompetent president in the history of our country."....Trump on Jimmy Kimmel: "They could get a far more talented person, who would also get better Ratings, for 5% of what they are paying this Loser!"....Trump on the U.S.: "We're like a Third World nation. Look at our airports. I mean, how bad are the airports?"....Trump on the U.S.: "Sadly, in our country, Fake News is all you get."....Rachel Maddow on Trump: "Uncle Ramblestanding."....Biden spokesperson Jasmine Harris on Trump: "A poster boy for modern racism."....Kari Lake on Sen. John McCain in 2022: "Loser."....Meghan McCain on Kari Lake reaching out: "No peace, bitch. We see you for who you are -- and are repulsed by it."....Rep. Max Miller on NYC: "Liberal cesspool."....Eric Trump: "New York is a hopeless place at this point. It's so sad."....CNN chyron: "Is Biden's Age Now A Bigger Problem Than Trump's Indictments?"....Rick Wilson on Trump: "You are weak, you are desperate, you are pathetic...You never deliver, because you can't."....Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung: "Nikki 'Braindead Birdbrain' Haley reeks of desperation as it's clear she knows she has no shot, and is now auditioning for a cable news contract."....Desi Lydic: "That is the big split in the Republican Party today. Do you think Joe Biden won the election, or did you take a sh*t on Nancy Pelosi's desk?"....Stephen Colbert: "Voters are just going to have to choose between a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory or a contemptible, malicious, elderly rapist with a poor memory."....
-
February 12, 2024
Trump: "Biden didn't do anything for Taylor, and never will."....HRC on Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin: "He's like a puppy dog."....Julia Ioffe on Carlson: "Doing the Kremlin's job of misinforming, disinforming the American population."....CNN'S Chris Wallace: "Calling Tucker Carlson a 'useful idiot' is unfair to useful idiots."....Bill Maher on Kanye West: "A very charming antisemite."....Michelle Cottle on Trump: "When he sours on you, even slightly, the best you can hope for is to be casually tossed aside, covered in his slime, with your integrity shredded beyond repair."....George Santos: "Ann Coulter is a sour puss and her body will be discovered by her agonizing cats screaming for help the day she dies alone in her Manhattan apartment because nobody can stand her bitterness."....John Bolton on Trump and dictators: "Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and others -- they think he's a laughing fool. And they're prepared to take advantage of him."....Rep. Mike Collins on undocumented migrant accused of assaulting NYPD officer, then flipping off reporters: "We could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back."....Trump to lawyer Roberta Kaplan at the end of his deposition at Mar-a-Lago: "See you next Tuesday.".....MSNBC's Katie Phang on Trump: "His ego is writing checks his wallet can't cash."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "You wouldn't let Joe Biden handle the remote control on your television, and he's got the nuclear codes."....Gov. Chris Sununu on Trump: "If he is off the teleprompter he can barely keep a cogent thought. That's just fact."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Any Republican that isn't willing to adapt to [Trump's] policies, we are completely eradicating from the party."....Maureen Dowd: "We can't have a president who encourages violence, vomits misinformation, campaigns by humiliation and smears and, lately, portrays himself as divine."....Mary L. Trump: "How is there even one voter willing to pull a lever for a twice-impeached insurrectionist and rapist who is currently facing 91 indictments?"....Stephen Colbert: "It's not whether you win or lose, but how hard you laugh at Mike Johnson."....
-
January 22, 2024
Nikki Haley: "Every one of Donald Trump's commercials is a lie. Shocker, right?"....Trump in Iowa: "These caucuses are your personal chance to score the ultimate victory over all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps, and other quite nice people...Tomorrow is your time to turn on them."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "January 6 is the radical left's excuse to persecute the political opponents of Joe Biden."....retiring Sen. Dan Coats on Cruz: "He's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen. And you can quote me on that."....Mark Jacob on Sen. Mitch McConnell voting Trump "not guilty" of insurrection at J6 impeachment: "Trump is a threat to our democracy now because McConnell betrayed our democracy then."....Sean Hannity on CNN's DC anchor: "Jake Tapper is not a journalist. He's a political hack. He's a Democratic operative. He's living a lie."....Trump on NBC and CNN: "They are crooked. They're dishonest, and frankly they should have their licenses -- or whatever they have, take it away!"....radio host Mark. R. Levin: "The media class in America has a great deal in common with the state-run media in Iran, China, Russia, and all of the other genocidal regimes."....former WH attorney Ty Cobb on Trump: "I think the lack of accountability which he desires, which Putin has, which the Ayatollah has, which Xi has...he may want an America like that."....MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Trump: "He's running for a situation in which he is The Leader, there is no government, there isn't a policy process, because there's just what he feels like on a day."....Sean Hannity on Maddow: "Part-time make-believe journalist and full-time left-wing hate-Trump conspiracy theorist."....Jonah Goldberg: "Sen. Lindsey Graham alone has inserted his head into his own ass and then pulled it out of his mouth like a lantern more times than I can count."....Trump on Biden: "The worst president that we've had in the history of our country. He's destroying our country."....Eric Trump on Biden: "Arguably the most incompetent president in the history of our nation."....Trump: "Joe Biden has destroyed America."....Trump in New Hampshire: "We need a big, big win against these terrible people."....Gov. Chris Sununu on Trump: "I'm so tired of losing with this guy."....Trump on Sununu: "Chris Christie without the weight...Just spews out false fact after false fact."....Trump to climate protesters interrupting Iowa rally: "Go home to mommy. Your mommy is waiting."....Trump making up Biden anecdote: "Crooked Joe is staging his pathetic fear-mongering campaign event in Pennsylania today. Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing...'He's a threat to...duh...duh...duhmocracy.' He couldn't read the words."....Mary Trump on her uncle: "If he can in any way profit from your death, he will facilitate it and then ignore the fact that you died."....Ron Filipkowski on Trump: "Is physically and mentally unraveling before our eyes. He slurs his speech more, he sweats more..."....Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg on Trump's behavior: "I would liken him to the Titanic, but at least the Titanic had a band."....Elon Musk on John Oliver: "Weak sauce."....
-
January 8, 2024
....Trump on special counsel Jack Smith: "The personification of evil."....on Rep. Debbie Dingell: "Loser."....on Jan. 6 Committee: "Political Thugs and Misfits."....on former House Speaker: "Crazy Nancy Pelosi."....on Nikki Haley: "Birdbrain...She's a globalist. She loves the globe."....on Liz Cheney: "American Disaster...Suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome."....Matt Taibbi on Trump: "Listening to this stuff is like watching a Pope open the Vatican door with his balls hanging out."....former Rep. Adam Kinzinger: "I'm genuinely surprised how people close to Trump haven't talked about the odor. It's truly something to behold...Take armpits, ketchup, a butt, and makeup and put that all in a blender and bottle that as a cologne."....Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheun on Kinzinger: "Disrespects everyone around him because he is a sad individual who is mad about how his miserable life has turned out."....Meghan McCain: "Trump is a piece-of-shit, election-denying huckster whose own wife won't campaign with him."....