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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August 10, 2022
....Trump: "Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before...We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation...We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke."....Fox host Mark Levin: "The FBI is corrupt...The worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period."....Fox News' Jesse Watters: "What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence...We also have a hunch that they doctored evidence to get the warrant."....House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on AG Merrick Garland: "Preserve your documents and clear your calendar."....Jeanine Pirro on the FBI: "Everything you've done regarding Donald Trump has been illegal, illegitimate, and immoral....And it's not Donald Trump's fault, it's their fault."....FL state Rep. Anthony Sabatini: "Sever all ties with the DOJ immediately. Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested on sight."....Rep. Matt Gaetz: "This administrative state has been weaponized against our people in a very fascist way."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "DEFUND THE FBI!"....Rep. Jim Jordan on Mar-a-Lago raid: "One of the most frightening things I've ever seen in our country."....Sen. Rick Scott: "The way our federal government has gone is like what we thought about the Gestapo, people like that, that they just go after people. What we thought about the Soviet Union. We have got to say, 'We're a country of laws.'"....former GOP presidential candidate Joe Walsh: "The Republican Party can never, ever again call themselves the party of law and order. Never again."....Rep. Elise Stefanik: "If the FBI can raid a U.S. President, imagine what they can do to you."....Paul Graham: "The only thing worse than a country where the police can raid a former president is one where they can't."....far right influencer and "Pizzagate" conspiracist Jack Posobiec: "The federal state has declared war...Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Leviathan has awoken. Welcome to the end game."...Molly Jong-Fast: "The idea that you can't hold Trump accountable because his supporters might be mad at you is one of the stupidest ideas I've heard."....Sarah Huckabee Sanders (11-3-16): "When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing."....Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in unsent letter of resignation, to Trump: "You don't understand what [WWII] was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that."....Jon Stewart: "The Senate is where accountability goes to die."....Tucker Carlson on Stewart: "Looks like a homeless mental patient. He's shrinking and disheveled. And very short. Really short. Too short to date. Was he always that short? What happened?"....Slate headline: "'Peak Trump' Reached as Ex-President Appears Concurrently in News Stories About Both Toilets and Hitler."....Andy Richter: "They're coming for your stolen Federal documents next!"....Jonathan Reiner on Trump: "I like people who weren't raided by the FBI."....Stephen Colbert: "Okay, GOP, you win; we should arrest whoever appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray."....Sean Hannity on climate change: "If the world is gonna end in 12 years, I say the hell with it all. Let's have one big party for the last 10 years and then we'll all go home and see Jesus together, or at least half of us will."....Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart: "What's happened here in America is we've lost the groove."....
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July 29, 2022
....Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on GOP blocking burn pit bill to aid vets: "Total bullshit."....Jon Stewart: "Congratulations, Sen. Toomey. You successfully used the Byzantine Senate rules to keep sick veterans suffering...The Senate is where accountability goes to die."....Alan Dershowitz on 1/6 hearings: "A Fraud, and a disgrace to America."....former Trump WH aide Garrett Ziegler, after testifying before 1/6 committee: "They're Bolsheviks, so they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general."....Freudian-slip-tweet by House Republicans right after 7/21 hearing: "This is all heresy."....Clare McCaskill on Trump during afternoon of 1/6: "He was holed up in his dining room drinking a Coke like a big baby."....Rep. Matt Gaetz: "Our America is proudly ultra-MAGA, not some low-energy roadside RINO safari...Mike Pence will never be president."....former Pence chief of staff Marc Short in response: "I'd be surprised if he was still voting. It's more likely he'll be in prison for child sex trafficking in 2024."....Sen. Ted Cruz on DOJ: "Has turned into the partisan attack dog of the Biden White House."....Aaron Rupar: "Do you ever think about how Texas has 29 million people and yet they ended up with Ted Cruz and John Cornyn as its US senators, or is it just me?"....Fox host Tucker Carlson on Dems: "The great replacement? It's not a conspiracy theory. It's their election strategy."....Media Matters senior fellow Matthew Gertz: "The difference between a Tucker Carlson monologue and a white supremacist mass murderer's manifesto is the Tucker Carlson monologue gets aired in prime-time on the nation's most-watched cable news network."....Trump on 1/6 testimony of former WH official Sarah Matthews: "'15 Minutes of Fame Matthews,' who I don't know, is clearly lying."....Trump on Rep. Liz Cheney: "A sanctimonious loser."....Trump on Jake "Fake" Tapper: "So biased and pathetic. No wonder CNN's ratings are at an all-time low."....Trump on Elon Musk: "Another bullshit artist."....Trump: "Joe Biden, who many have said is our worst President, has come down with a case of the China virus...Doctors described my fight against the China virus as Herculean, and not meaning the woke Disney Hercules but rather the Kevin Sorbo one. The Lou Ferrigno one as well. Joe, I wish you a speedy recovery, even though you are taking America in the wrong direction."....Mark Leibovich on Trump: "Easily the sorest loser, the most prodigious liar, and the most interminable victim ever to occupy the White House...He is, quite possibly, the biggest crybaby ever to toddle across history's stage."....
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July 19, 2022
....Newsmax's Greg Kelly on NY Gov. Kathy Hochul: "Has not really done much of anything, other than, I'm sorry but, be somebody's wife."....Rep. Lauren Boebert on Dr. Fauci: "He belongs in jail."....Gov. Kristi Noem: "Joe Biden's like the George Costanza of politics. Every single instinct he has is wrong."....Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Biden: "Are they...feeding him drugs to allow him to function?"....Joe Walsh: "I'm no longer a Republican because my former political party is now authoritarian. F*** authoritarianism."....Trump: "When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me to help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it's electric cars that don't drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he'd be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, "Drop to your knees and beg," and he would have done it."....David Brooks on Trump: "We've got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar."....Dinsh D'Souza: "Biden and the Left...established a cross-border sex trafficking operation in conjunction with the Mexican cartels."...AZ gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Meghan McCain: "Like a rabid dog who's been cornered...thrashing round."....former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis: "Fittingly, Biden awarded his presidential medals to fellow losers, Biles and Rapinoe."....Mike Lupica on Ellis: "Losers work with Giuliani and try to overturn elections. Losers try to turn the Constitution into a dishrag. Losers can't even win in traffic court."....Trump: "The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I'm talking about."....Trump on 2020 election: "CORRUPT, RIGGED, & STOLEN!"....Ted Nugent: "People that are just maniacally drunk on hate towards Donald Trump -- you know what they really hate? They hate America."....Garrison Keillor: "We've had one 15-year-old president and now we get a new look inside his world, there's no need to repeat the experiment."....Alex Jones, in speech on 1/5/21: "We're going to take on the Soroses and the Bezoses and the Gateses, we're going to take it directly to those scumbag Nazi bastards who thought they'd kill this country...They will be in their Goddamned bunkers when we come for them. They will be hiding. They will pay. They will be destroyed. Because America is rising. 1776 is the answer to 1984. 1776! 1776! 1776!"....
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July 8, 2022
....former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis: "Fittingly, Biden awarded his presidential medals to fellow losers, Biles and Rapinoe."....Trump on 1/6 hearings: "The highly partisan Unselect Committee of political Thugs."....Rudy Giuliani: "The January 6 Witch Hunt Cabal."....Rep. Matt Gaetz: "An unconstitutional political sideshow."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "This is a joke. Nothing but a political ad for Democrats."....Steve Bannon: "J6 is about shutting down the Army of the Awakening. It's shutting down Trump but it's also coming after you."....radio host Mark Levin on media and Dems: "Through the Stalinist January 6 committee, are trying to portray Trump as an emotionally unbalanced, foul-mouthed man."....podcast host Joe Rogan on Trump: "An existential threat to democracy itself...I don't want to help him."....Trump on Rogan: "Lyin' Joe would rather have second rate President like Gutless Ron DeSantis on his LOW RATED show."....Trump: "How did the great state of Arkansas ever have a total RINO Stiff like Asa Hutchinson as their Governor. Any relationship to Lyin' Cassidy Hutchinson, another real loser?"....Trump on George Will: "His mind is decaying with hatred and envy before our very eyes."....James Woods on Dems: "A mob that lied, cheated, burned, and looted to get their way."....Larry Kudlow on Biden: "Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame and...commits so many falsehoods? On any given day he's out there saying stuff that just ain't true."....Arianna Huffington: "So, to sum up the Supreme Court's week: life begins at conception and ends in a mass shooting."....Jon Stewart on Supreme Court: "The Fox News of justice...States can't regulate guns, but they can regulate the uterus."....Twitter meme re GOP: "You people went from "Don't tell us to wear masks!" to "Have that baby!" in like two months. You realize how crazy that makes you?"....Brandon Burns: "New rule: You can't tell me when life begins when you don't even know when an election is over."....Stephen King: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, you must be Susan Collins."....Jonah Goldberg on Trump: "He thought he could simply reenact Mussolini's March on Rome and stay president."....Capitol Police officer Daniel Hodges: "The President of the United States set us up."....Michael Beschloss: "Never seen a President in history who seemed so relaxed about the possible imminent murder of his Vice President."....Andrew Sullivan on Trump: "No guiltier man in the entire history of America."....Laurence Tribe: "Alito's boast that his shredding of fundamental personal rights in Dobbs v Jackson needn't worry anyone except women capable of serving as breeders is, shall we say, troubling...Since when was it a defense to say "I only hurt women.""....Sen. Ted Cruz: "The approach of the Democrats is to take away firearms from law-abiding citizens."....Jeff Tiedrich: "BREAKING: Well-Regulated Militia Opens Fire On Fourth Of July Parade in Highland Park, Illinois."....HRC: "It shouldn't be harder to obtain an abortion than an AR-15."....sign at rally: "He who hath not a uterus should shut the f***et up.-- Fallopians 13:13"....Lindy Li: "Texas GOP declares homosexuality "an abnormal lifestyle choice." You know what's abnormal? Worshipping at the altar of a twice-impeached criminal psychopath. Kids running around w/ AR-15s decapitating kids. Policing our vaginas. Terrorizing our Capitol. The GOP is f'ing abnormal."....George Takei on Texas GOP platform: "Neo-fascist dehumanization."....David Cross: "We're a little over five months away from burning witches."....J.D. Vance: "If your worldview tells you that it's bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you've been had."....Tucker Carlson on Biden: "The single most destructive force in the history of the United States."....Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan: "Trump was the least popular president in American history until Joe Biden."....Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, performing in London: "F*** America. I'm f***ing renouncing my citizenship...There's just too much f***ing stupid in the world to go back to that miserable f***ing excuse for a country."....Yellowstone park ranger on difficulty of developing a garbage bin bears can't break into: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."....
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June 20, 2022
....Sen. Ted Cruz on 1/6 hearings: "Boring. It's not news. It's like an MSNBC panel."....Fox News host Tucker Carlson: "The whole thing is insulting. In fact it's deranged...They are lying."....Rudy Giuliani on Trump staff members Jason Miller and Bill Stepien: "Are they being paid to lie?"....Rep. Andy Biggs: "The January 6 committee is nothing more than a partisan sham perpetrated by Democrats."....Alan Dershsowitz: "I have never seen a congressional hearing like this since McCarthyism."....Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington on Bill Barr testimony: "Cowardly RINO and shill for the Marxist Democrats."....Steve Bannon: "Thirteen or fourteen generations of this country have sacrificed to hand us the Republic we have, and we're not going to be blown off by someone like Bill Barr. Bill Barr, we're coming for you, bro."....Jennifer Senior on Bannon: "An American Rasputin...Attempting to insert a lit bomb into the mouth of American democracy."....Mary Trump on her uncle: "We need to be very blunt on what happened. He handed down a death sentence to Mike Pence."....MSNBC's Ari Melber on Trump lawyer John Eastman: "'I've decided I should be on the pardon list' is one of the most incriminating, damning, guilty and also dumb things a lawyer could ever put in writing. Literally."....Andrew Sullivan on Trump's 12-page letter in response to 1/6 hearings: "The work of someone with no grip on reality, absurd lie after lie after lie, barely literate, the kind of thing you'd think was written by a lunatic if you received it in the mail."....Sen. Lindsey Graham on GOP: "If we nominate Trump we will be destroyed...and we will deserve it."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "If you vote for gun control, you are not on the side of America."....Rep. Louie Gohmert on Dems: "If you're a Republican you can't even lie to Congress, or lie to an FBI agent, or they're coming after you, they're going to bury you, they're going to put you in DC jail."....NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson: "We are called to be led by men. God sent women out...When it was time to face down Goliath, [he] sent David. Not Davida."....