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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April 2, 2021
....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Dr. Anthony Fauci: "Dr. Always Wrong."....former Trump adviser Peter Navarro on Fauci: "He's simply a sociopath. He just lies to advance his own interest."....Trump on Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx: "Two self-promoters trying to reinvent history."....FL spring break partier Kyle Mrzena, aka "the Miami Joker," on the pandemic: "We were invited to come here by the governor...COVID is over, baby! F*** that sh**!...It's all a joke. It's all propaganda."....Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt on Georgia voter suppression law: "If you go to Yankee Stadium, and you stand in line and get a ticket, do they serve you water?"....Steve Doocy: "I have been voting for over 40 years and I have never thought o myself, 'Okay, I'm gonna go vote today. Will they have snacks?'"....former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal on Trump: "The only president to have more open grand juries than election wins."....Noam Chomsky on Trump: "The worst criminal in human history."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "The contempt of Democrats for prayers is an odd sociological thing."....Molly Jong-Fast on Cruz and Sen. Lindsey Graham: "The lessons these Republican senators learned from Trumpism is performative assholism."....AOC on Cruz: "Your resignation is 84 days past due. At least."....Sean Hannity on former House speaker John Boehner: "Will go down in history as one of the worst Republican speakers in history...There was not a single time I was around him when he didn't just reek of cigarette smoke and wine breath."....Michigan GOP chair Ron Weiser on top Dem officials: "Our job now is to soften up those three witches and make sure...that they are ready for the burning at the stake."....Sen. John Kennedy: "The people that President Biden has put in charge to make border security policy are not qualified to manage a food truck."....James Carville on White House press corps questions at first Biden press conference: "I give them a D+ today."....Jeanine Pirro on Biden presser: "Most of it made no sense to me."....Sen. Steve Daines on cartel meth in his home state: "Twenty years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And you had purity levels less than 30%."....
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March 22, 2021
....Stacey Abrams on Georgia voting changes: "Jim Crow in a suit and tie."....David Plouffe on Sen. Ron Johnson: "Sounds like a senator from Alabama in 1921."....Rep. Chip Roy defending his comment about stringing up bad guys: "We need more justice and less thought policing."....CNN's Don Lemon on Roy and others: "Stop making it about you -- 'My freedom, my freedom to be a bigot, to say racist things.' Please, I'm sick of it. Shut up. Take a good long look in the mirror. Stop being a bigot."....Rudy Giuliani on Biden: "He and his socialist, internationalist advisers reject America First. They see the U.S. as just a nation among others."....Jennifer Weisselberg on former father-in-law and Trump exec Allen Weisselberg: "He has more feels and adoration for Donald than for his wife...For Donald it's a business, but for Allen it's a love affair."....home video by QAnon adherent: "The COVID-19 shot is an experimental bioweapon...You can see the harm it's causing...It's killing all the people."....Sen. Rand Paul to Dr. Fauci: "Such a government worrywart...You've been vaccinated, and you parade around in two masks for show."....Trump on vaccine: "If I wasn't President, you wouldn't be getting that beautiful 'shot' for five years, at best, and probably wouldn't be getting it at all."....Fox News' Juan Williams on Trump: "He will be remembered for his jealous rage...The bottom line is that he produced the greatest failure of presidential leadership in history."....Steve Marmel: "Biden tripped. Hillary coughed. Trump killed 500,000 Americans."....Tucker Carlson: "Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It's a mockery of the U.S. military."....Sen. Tammy Duckworth: "F*** Tucker Carlson."....Jon Stewart: "I called Tucker Carlson a dick on national television. It's high time I apologize -- to dicks. Never should have lumped you in with that terrible, terrible person."....Donald Trump Jr.: "The Washington Redskins [sic] just got rid of their cheerleaders. Apparently they didn't have the decency to tell them face to face...Apparently they read about it on Twitter. This is insanity, guys."........
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March 11, 2021
....Sen. John Kennedy on COVID relief bill: "The only way I know how to improve it is with a shredder...Calling this a coronavirus bill is like calling Harvey Weinstein a feminist."....Sen. Joni Ernst: "A porky partisan pricey pet project package."....Piers Morgan on Meghan Markle interview: "A diatribe of bilge...I don't believe almost anything that comes out of her mouth."....WSJ on Trump: "Unhappy with us for recognizing reality."....House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on For the People Act: "[Would] put a thumb on the scale of every election in America."....Rep. Lauren Boebert on Dems: "They don't want you to have freedom of speech. They don't want you to have freedom of religion."....Hannity on the radical left: "They want to control your life, your business, your car, your house, your education, your food, what you read, and what you can watch on television. They believe the American people need to be ruled with an iron fist."....Newt Gingrich on Joe Biden's goal: "An America in which transgender dominates Christianity and Judaism."....Donald Trump Jr.: "If it wasn't for double standards, the Democrats would have no standards at all."....Donald Trump Jr. on Cuomo: "Groper-in-Chief."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "Today's Democratic Party will do anything in pursuit of political power."....former House Speaker John Boehner on Cruz: "There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless a**hole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else."....Laura Ingraham on CDC: "Guidance disconnected from reality."....face-covering worn by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on floor of House: "This mask is as useless as Joe Biden."....Biden on Texas Gov. Abbott lifting COVID restrictions: "Neanderthal thinking."....Rep. Veronica Escobar: "Defies logic."....John Oliver on Royals: "An emotionally stunted group of fundamentally flawed people doing a very silly pseudo-job."....Stephen Colbert on QAnon Shaman: "On the endangered dumb-ass list."....
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February 26, 2021
....John Boehner on Sen. Ted Cruz: "I get along with most everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."....Bret Stephens on Cruz: "He's Shakespeare's Richard III as interpreted by Mr. Bean."....Sen. John Kennedy on Interior Department nominee Deb Haaland: "A neo-socialist, left-of-Lenin whack job."....Tucker Carlson on Joe and Jill Biden's 44-year marriage: "Their love is as real as climate change."....family members to Rep. Adam Kinzinger, in public letter criticizing his vote to impeach Trump: "Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!...You should be very proud that you have LOST THE RESPECT of Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Greg Kelly, etc., and most importantly in our book, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and us!"....Rush Limbaugh on feminism: "Was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."....Rush on birth control being covered by health insurance: "Feminazis, if we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."....Rush: "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."....Rush: "There are a bunch of really crafty guys out there who probably, in the normal course of events, can't get women to look at 'em. And they've decided, 'You know what? I'm gonna go be tranny.'"....Jill Filipovic on Rush: "He was the right wing's misogynist id."....Bob Moser on Limbaugh: "One of the most influential subversives in American history. No single person...has contributed more than Limbaugh to the mass derangement of white America."....CNN anchor Brianna Keiler on Fox News: "Worshp Trump, blame Democrats, spotlight fear. Rinse, lather, repeat."....Megan McArdle on Trump: "A singular and selfish figure whose coattails are far too tattered for anyone else to grasp."....Stephen King on Trump: "Worst. World. Leader. In. The. History. Of. The. World."....Thomas L. Friedman on Trump: "Believed that he could shoot a whole branch of the U.S. government in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and his base would stick with him. And he was right!"....Seth Meyers on the pandemic winter: "it's like my soul has a hangnail."....
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February 15, 2021
....Sen. Ben Sasse on GOP: "I still believe, as you used to, that politics isn't about the weird worship of one dude...We're going to have to choose between conservatism and madness."....Sen. Marco Rubio on impeachment: "A waste of our time."....Sen. Rick Scott: "It's vindictive, it's backward-looking, it's unserious."....Judge Jeanine Pirro: "Aburd political theater."....Fox News chyron: "Dems Wasting Time With Bogus Impeachment Trial."....Donald Trump Jr.: "Beating these establishment clowns twice after years of BS and under unprecedented circumstances is a badge of honor."....former CIA director John O. Brennan on Trump attorney Michael van der Veen: "One of the most venal, soulless, and perfidious individuals ever to speak in front of the U.S. Senate, which is quite a feat."....Sen. Mitch McConnell after voting "not guilty": "There is no question -- none -- that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."....former Rep. Donna Edwards: "I almost lost my lunch listening to Mitch McConnell today."....Maureen Dowd on impeachment defense: "Just another Trump flimflam reality TV show, meant to prove how HE was wronged, not how he wronged the country."....Rep. Jamie Raskin: "President Trump may not know a lot about the framers, but they sure knew a lot about him."....Rep. Lynn Cheney on Trump: "There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."....Sen. John Danforth on GOP: "We have become really kind of a grotesque caricature of what the Republican Party has traditionally been."....Nikki Haley on Trump: "He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "[The media] is just as guilty as QAnon of presenting lies that divide us."....Sen. Mitch McConnell on Greene: "Looney lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country."....Rick Wilson on Greene: "Crazier than a s***house rat in a sugarcane field."....former WH chief of staff Mark Meadows: "President Biden is putting America last."....Pete Hegseth: "The party that Joe Biden represents is not just the party of America Last, they're a party of America Was Never Great."....Peter Wehner on Trump legacy: "Carnage and death and a lot of ruin...There was a savagery to our politics because of him."....Tucker Carlson on AOC's account of hiding in a Capitol office for six hours during attack: "Wallowing around in Lake Me like it's interesting to anyone but her. Narcissism on parade, the perfect symbol of a culture dying from self-involvement...There were no rioters in Sandy Cortez's hallway."....opposition leader Alexei Novolny on the Russian government: "They're imprisoning one person to frighten millions."....Thomas L. Friedman: "Russia once gave the world Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Dostoyevsky, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. Putin's Russia will be remembered for giving the world poisoned underwear...Putin has become America's ex-boyfriend from hell..."....