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.

  • June 6, 2022

    Trump on the US: "Our elections are rigged."....Vice's Cameron Joseph on Trump: "A lot of Republicans, even really hardcore conservative MAGA-y type folks, are sick of his bitching."....National Review's Rich Lowry: "Trump's signature 2016 boast of I Alone Can Fix It has effectively become I Alone Can Fixate On It."....Laurence Tribe: "Trump is now emailing that Kemp stole the GOP primary election in Georgia from Perdue, even though Kemp won by a staggering margin of 3 to 1. It's now clear what Trump means by a stolen election. He means any election whose result he doesn't like."....Gregg Barak, co-founder of Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime: "I study deception. I study mistrust. I study the con. Donald Trump is the archetype of all those things. He's a grifter, he's a racketeer."....Chauncey Devega on Trump: "Can fairly be described as a political crime boss."....SD Gov. Kristi Noem on Biden: "When is this country going to wake up and realize what a terrible president he is?"....Sen. Chris Murphy on mass shootings: "This only happens in this country...Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they may be shot that day."....Rep. Jim Jordan: "Today's left: Bend the knee. Wear your mask. Give us your guns."....Rep. Eric Swalwell to Jordan: "We're trying to make sure no more kids are put in the ground with a Superman coffin. Why aren't you trying to dramatically change the number of dead kids going into the ground?"....Emma Gray: "I cannot believe that this country has decided that fetuses are more important than women, and guns are more important than kids. I feel sick."....Maureen Dowd on GOP: "May as well change their party symbol from an elephant to an AR-15."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "If your representative thinks AR stands for Assault Rifle, FIRE THEM!"....Laura Miller on Kellyanne Conway's memoir: "500 pages packed with more score-settling than a Quentin Tarantino movie."....Rayla Campbell, GOP nominee for MA Secretary of State, on her state's teachers: "I don't think it's nice when they're telling your five-year-old that he can go and suck another five-year-old's dick. Do you? This is what they are doing."....

  • May 25, 2022

    ....Elon Musk on Democratic Party: "Has become the party of division and hate...The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter."....Charlie Sykes on Musk: "We live in an age of s***-posting billionaires...It's good to be f-you rich in an age without guardrails or shame."....Maureen Dowd on Justice Alito's leaked Roe v. Wade draft: "The Puritans' greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony."....Laurence Tribe on leaked opinion: "Whoever wrote it thinks they're really smart -- but their work turns out to be just plain dumb from start to finish."....Sen. Patrick Leahy: "Here we are today, a body of 100, 76% of which are male, making decisions about the private lives of the nearly 168 million women in this country. That's ludicrous."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Where the hell's my party? Where's the Democratic Party?"....Rep. Val Demings: "I'm sick and tired of Marco Rubio trying to tell women what to do."....MSNBC's Ari Melber: "So to Republicans, a 12-year-old is old enough to be forced to give birth, get married, or shoot an assault rifle, but is too young to say "gay" or see bad words in a book? Do I have that right?"....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "The Left thinks misgendering someone is a more heinous crime than dismembering and murdering a baby."....hate-preacher Greg Locke to his Tennessee congregation: "You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat! They are God-denying demons who butcher babies and hate this nation!...You God-denying communists, you'll find out what an insurrection is!...The Bible says we'll take it by force."....former Trump assistant Peter Navarro on Dr. Anthony Fauci: "Here's your future, Tony. Republicans are gonna take back the House. You're gonna sit your ass down in a chair, in Congress, and you're gonna confess to creating the virus...and we're gonna fit you for an orange jumpsuit."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "Today's Democrats believe in mob rule and intimidation, just like the Marxists and the Communists. They're willing to burn down our institutions to get what they want!"....Mike Pence: "This Administration has done more damage to America in a year and a half than any presidency in my lifetime."....Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Trump: "An unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service."....Trump on Esper: "Weak and totally ineffective...He would do anything I wanted, that's why I called him Yesper. He was a lightweight and figurehead and I realized it very early on."....Steve Bannon on Esper's book: "You're going to be held accountable for this, bro...When we come to power don't think you're skipping away from this."....Howard Dean on Sen. Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance: "A lot of B.S., not much loyalty to the United States of America, slick."....Ann Coulter on incoming WH Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: "The first person in that post who is a black lesbian. But in a bow to tradition, she IS a complete moron."....John Pavlovitz on Great Replacement theory: "I'm a white guy and I want white guys like Tucker Carlson replaced with anyone with human decency."....Ricky Gervais on Piers Morgan interviewing the Taliban: "I've lost all respect for them."....

     

  • May 4, 2022

    ....Fox News' Lisa Kennedy Montgomery on Bruce Springsteen: "I think he's a commie...He's turned into a massive pinko."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "The Left has gone beyond questioning man and are now questioning the will of God. Dangerous and demonic territory."....Fox News' Sean Hannity on NBC and CNN: "Both organizations are only propaganda arms for the DNC. They peddle in lies, conspiracy theories, always to advance the socialist agenda, hate on everything conservative, and all Trump supporters."....Elon Musk on NBC: "Same org that covered up Hunter Biden laptop story, had Harvey Weinstein story early and killed it, and built Matt Lauer his rape office. Lovely people."....novelist Jacob Bacharach on Elon Musk: "All the brain damage of Ronald Reagan, but none of the charm."....Mehdi Hasan on Musk: "A petulant and not-so-bright billionaire."....Sean Hannity on Hasan: "A not-so-bright MSNBC host...I don't really know this guy."....Mary Trump on her uncle: "He knows he's a deeply unintelligent person...He's always trying to fill a need that's deeply unfillable."....Tristan Snell on Supreme Court: "Won't force you to wear a mask in a pandemic -- but it'll force you to bear a child."....Russian oligarch and war critic Oleg Y. Tinkov: "I've realized that Russia, as a country, no longer exists...Why would we have a good army [when the country is] mired in nepotism, servility, and subservience?"....former Ukraine president Viktor Yushchenko: "The Putin I dealt with no longer exists."....Trump-endorsed AZ gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake: "I will not take any orders from Joe Biden. He's illegitimate, that election was a sham, and he's trying to destroy this country...I think we need to decertify that election."....GA gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor on Biden: "We have a fradulent pedophile in the White House."....Sean Hannity on Biden: "One of the dumbest, least capable presidents we've ever had."....Trump on Biden: "Taking orders from the Easter Bunny."....John Pavlovitz: "Nothing like reading Tweets from Republican politicians, with Scriptures from a Bible they don't read about a God they don't believe in and a Jesus they have no interest in emulating."....New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy on Russian disinformation: "They can just play clips of 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' and their job is done for the most part. They're basically at the Alex Jones-level right now."....Jimmy Kimmel on Carlson: "I think he's like the media version of the Sackler family. He's knowingly producing this deadly opioid of lies that has a devastating effect on the country. But he's OK with it, because it's making him rich."....Jonathan Alter on GOP: "Has become a white grievance party that is set to renominate an authoritarian, pro-Putin demagogue who tried to stage a coup."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Dems: "They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next."....National Review's Rich Lowry on MTG: "A bomb-thrower drawn to lurid conspiracy theories."....Rep. Ronnie Jackson on House Jan. 6 committee: "Illegitimate."....WaPo's Michael Kranish on Sen. Ted Cruz: "Somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside."....Trump on Prince Harry: "Poor Harry is being led around by the nose, and I think he's an embarrassment."....Trump on Ted Cruz: "Pussy."....Trump on Kevin McCarthy: "Pussy."....Trump on Mike Pence: "Pussy."....TN state Rep. Jerry Sexton on books deemed inappropriate for school libraries: "I would burn them."....Sen. Rand Paul on Dr. Anthony Fauci: "A man that is against everything that America stands for."....Ann Coulter: "Fauci is SO JEALOUS of Communist China!"....Trump on former AG Bill Barr's memoir: "Crummy book...So False."....U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton on Trump: "I think our democracy is in trouble because, unfortunately, we have charlatans like our former president who doesn't, in my view, really care about democracy but only about power."....Mary Trump: "It's Democrats vs. Fascists in 2022. Vote accordingly."....Rep. Madison Cawthorn: "I think we have bred a generation of soft men and that generation has created a lot of problems in our society and our culture."....FL Gov. Ron DeSantis on San Francisco: "A dumpster fire."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor."....Tucker Carlson on McCarthy: "A puppet of the Democrats."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "Hey libs, if you're mad about the mask mandates being lifted...start your own airline. Or just keep flying around on your private planes."....Fox News' Pete Hegseth: "Freedom smells even better when you take off your dirty mask."....James Carville: "Look at Peter Navarro...You're telling me he's a normal human being?!? No. And he's not even among the worst...A large part of the Republican Party is just out-and-out weird."....Rep. Eric Swalwell: "Imagine being a party that condemns Mickey Mouse more harshly than Vladimir Putin. That's the Republican Party. Tough on a fictional mouse and soft on Russia."....Putin on the U.S.: "Ready to fight with Russia until the last Ukrainian."....DNC Chair Jaime Harrison on GOP: "A party built on fraud, fear, and fascism."....Sen. Rick Scott: "We survived the War of 1812, Civil War, World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. [But] today, we face the greatest danger we have ever faced: The militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within."....Ruth Ben-Ghiat on FL and Texas: "Laboratories of autocracy."....George Carlin: "Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation."....

  • April 9, 2022

    ....former Trump national security adviser John Bolton: "If Trump had been re-elected, Putin would be in Kyiv already."....Russian Defense Ministry on photos and video of slaughter in Bucha: "Another hoax, a staged provocation by the Kyiv regime for the Western media."....conspiracy theorist Alex Jones: "The Ukrainians have a very sophisticated movie-propaganda system...They've been caught staging all these fake massacres and these fake events."....Trump: "They say that in Russia the people don't even know they're having a war because they have rigged press. We have the same rigged press. Maybe not quite as severe."....Rep. Matt Gaetz to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: "I'm embarrassed by your leadership."....Trump adviser Peter Navarro: "It was a tragedy that Mike Pence decided to be a traitor to the American Caesar of Trump."....NH Gov. Chris Sununu on Trump: "He's f***ing crazy...I don't think he's so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution, but I think if he were in one, he ain't getting out!"....Sen. Rand Paul on Dr. Anthony Fauci: "This is more like what you'd see from a Mafia don that from a government bureaucrat."....Sen. Ron Johnson on the Bidens: "The most corruption I've ever seen in the U.S. federal government."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "The only thing Jen Psaki did as press secretary was prove to America how much better Kayleigh McEnany was."....Newt Gingrich on House January 6th committee: "It's basically a lynch mob."....Colorado congressional candidate Tim Reichert on abortion: "Fuel for the demonic, because it is the sacrifice of a child at the altar of Baal."....Rep. Lisa McCain on southern border crossers: "Terrorists, convicts, murderers, and rapists."....Trump on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Was unbelievably disrespectful to Republican senators....She had total disdain and even hatred for them."....Sen. Lindsey Graham on Jackson: "She gets the outcome she wants no matter how the law's written."....Sen. Tom Cotton on Jackson: "Has...shown real interest in helping terrorists."....DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison on Cotton: "The lowest of the low...A little maggot-infested man."....GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger on his party: "We are being governed by a bunch of children, by a bunch of people that are not serious about running the United States of America."....Anne Applebaum on Fox News' Tucker Carlson: "He is literally a useful idiot...He is acting as a conduit for Russian propaganda."....Sen. Ted Cruz on Biden gaffes: "He would have been better off simply throwing up on foreign leaders."....Rep. Liz Cheney: "I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what his duties and obligations are, and was willing, frankly, to set that aside."....Rep. Lauren Boebert: "Biden is not playing some sort of 4-D chess...He has no idea what he's saying."....venture capitalist Peter Thiel on Warren Buffett: "A sociopathic grandpa."....Trump on GA Gov. Brian Kemp: "A turncoat, a coward, and a complete and total disaster."....Trump on GA gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: "A socialist, extremist, and racist lunatic."....Mary Trump on her uncle: "The most colossal and fragile ego on the planet."....Ann Coulter's new book: "Adios, America! The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole."....comedian Adam Carolla on what's wrong with America: "It used to be 'bring us the best and the brightest.' Now it's 'bring us the least-Whitest.'...It's a constant obsession in 2022 of a problem that has essentially been solved years ago."....

  • March 26, 2022

    US Army vet and Ukraine volunteer James Vasquez: "When I need to amp myself up for battle, I just think about the most punchable face on the planet -- Tucker Carlson."....George Will on Carlson: "Vaudevillian-as-journalist. Speaks like an arrested-development adolescent."...Charlie Kirk on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Their Affirmative Action pick for the Supreme Court."....Donald Trump Jr. on Jackson's nomination: "Democrats really doing their best to secure the pedophile vote."....Rex Huppke on Sen. Ted Cruz asking Judge Jackson if babies are racist: "The collective eye roll was so intense the Earth briefly tilted off its axis."....Biden on Putin: "A war criminal."....Rep. Elise Stefanik: "Biden has played directly into Putin's hands."....Sen. John Kennedy: "Weakness invites the wolves...In too many critical respects, President Biden has been Bambi's baby brother...I think it's clear that the leader of the free world is President Zelensky."....Sen. Lindsey Graham: "Putin owns Biden...The Biden administration looks at Putin as a partner for climate change and an Iran dealmaker, rather than a war criminal."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "What got us in this mess is Biden is afraid of Putin."....Candace Owens on Ukraine conflict: "WE are at fault."....Mother Jones' David Corn: "Top conservatives and GOP officials have practically pinned 'I'm-with-Vlad' buttons onto their lapels."....Bill O'Reilly on Corn: "Is in the vile human being hall of fame."....Putin on anti-invasion Russians: "Scum and traitors."....Russian state TV host Vladimir Solovyov on sanctions: "You took our money, you're the thieves. Our talk is short with you: a bullet to the head...If you think we're going to stop with Ukraine, think 300 times."....Zelensky chief of staff Andriy Yermak: "It is impossible to listen to how Russian TV reporters around the clock publish absolute bullshit."....Newt Gingrich on Kamala Harris: "The dumbest person ever elected Vice President."....Fox's Dagen McDowell on Harris: "Her husband got COVID and she didn't because even COVID doesn't want to have anything to do with her."....Erick Erickson: "Unfortunately, it seems clear now that Kamala Harris was not a choice for diversity, but a choice to forestall the Twenty-Fifth Amendment."....Samantha Bee on Putin: "All this suffering can be laid at the manicured feet of one deranged man-baby."....Garrison Keillor on Putin: "The only decent thing about him is that he doesn't appear in public with his daughters or his girlfriend, he spares them the shame."....Stephen King: "The more I listen to Donald Trump, the more appalled I am. Not as a Democrat; but as a human being. He's a genuinely nasty man."....Trump on Sen. Mitch McConnell: "Stupid, corrupt."....Trump on NATO: "A paper tiger."....Trump on George Conway: "A stupid son of a bitch."....Trump on Rep. Adam Schiff: "His head is shaped like a watermelon."....Joe Scarborough on Trump: "This is a guy who worked for four years to try to disembowel NATO."....Jimmy Kimmel: "Trump as president was a Russian invasion -- of us."....Howard Stern on Trump: "It was absolutely absurd that this guy got to be the president of the United States."....Jeremy Newberger: "Tucker Carlson was created in a Russian biolab. They mixed 100 lbs of frozen fish sticks, a shitty bow tie, and a dump truck full of bullshit."....