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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July 1, 2025
....Elon Musk on Big Beautiful Bill: "It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS, that we live in a one-party country -- THE PORKY PIG PARTY!"....Trump on Musk: "We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon."....Trump, asked if he would call Gov. Walz after shooting of representatives in MN: "Well, I may. He's a terrible governor and grossly incompetent but I may call him."....Garrison Keillor: "What sort of brain responds to that question with insults? Why not just say what you think, 'Those Democrats deserved to get shot.'"....Sen. Mike Lee, posting security cam photo of shooter: "This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way."...comments in Proud Boys chat, re immigrants: "Shoot one, the rest will go home." "Hang the traitors, expel the invaders."....former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer: "Why do these people think it's okay to threaten political violence? Well, probably because Trump has been handing out pardons like candy to people who commit crimes in his name."....Laura Ingraham: "If you can't survive in business without hiring illegals, then you shouldn't be in business."....George Conway: "Pretending to be an ignorant and impulsive sociopath by appearing to make sh*t up as he goes along is just Donald Trump's way of playing 7,822-dimensional chess."....Trump: "Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the 'dumbest' people in Congress."....Trump on Fed Chair Jerome Powell: "He's a very average mentally person...Low IQ for what he does."....Trump: "AT&T is totally unable to make their [conference call] equipment work properly...AT&T obviously doesn't know what they're doing."....sign at demonstration: "Don't blame Trump. He did everything he could to prove he was unfit to be president."...Donald Trump Jr. on NY Dem primary winner Zohran Mamdani: "I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it."....Mary Trump on Don Jr.: "A vile human being who's accomplished nothing in his meaningless, miserable little life."....WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Mamdani: "Is quite literally a communist, and condemns every value that makes this country great. Common sense, law and order, low taxes, working hard and earning your keep...He's against all of that."...Trump: "FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!"....Trump: "CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick."....Proud Boys on Trump attacking Iran: "F*ck this sh*t."....Tim Miller on Israel-Iran conflict: "I wish that a genocidal maniac was not leading Iran and that a corrupt, indiscriminate prime minister was not leading Israel and that a f*cking moron was not leading our country."....Kate Harding: "What haunts me is that I am just not smart enough for so many people to be this much stupider than I am."....Andy Borowitz: "Nothing damages the presidency more severely than the fact that Trump is president."...Dave Barry: "There's 23 million people in Florida, and is it fair to judge 23 million people because of the behavior of 21 million people?"....
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June 18, 2025
....Trump on Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell: "A stupid person."....CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten on polling unpopularity of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill: "Oh my God! You need Greg Louganis to get that far underwater!"....Trump on Sen. Alex Padilla: "Nobody's every heard of this guy...Looked like an illegal."....Padilla on Trump, speaking on Senate floor: "A vindictive president on a tour of retribution...We've never had a tyrant as a commander-in-chief."....Trump on Elon Musk: "The man who has lost his mind."....Steve Bannon on Musk: "He should be deported from the country immediately."....DHS Sec. Kristi Noem on LA: "They're not a city of immigrants. They're a city of criminals."....Trump on LA demonstrations against ICE raids: "These are paid insurrectionists, paid trouble-makers; they get money."....Tina Brown: "There's nothing Trump is better at than doubling down on a lie."....Speaker Mike Johnson on CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "He should be tarred and feathered."....Trump, on whether "border czar" Tom Homan should arrest Newsom: "I would."....ABC's Terry Moran on Trump adviser Stephen Miller: "He's a world-class hater...You can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate."....Steve Schmidt: "What the American people are witnessing is Trump and Miller's rolling Reichstag fire...A monstrous lie being used as a pretext to assert power."....Lucian K. Truscott IV on Trump parade: "The whole thing looked like amateur hour at Dictatorville."...Andrew Sullivan: "This, in the president's mind, is not America's military, but his own."....Rep. Jamie Raskin: "We clearly have too many DUI hires in the Trump administration, starting with Secretary Hegseth."....Trump on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard: "I don't care what she said."....Trump: "I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen."....Rachel Maddow on Trump: "For a would-be strong man he's not strong. He is a remarkably weak and feckless political figure, who is nonetheless trying to overthrow the American form of government."....Sen. Rand Paul on Trump disinviting him from annual WH picnic: "The level of immaturity is beyond words."....Robert Lipsyte: "Pete Rose and Donald Trump are the dregs of American maleness."....Fox host Jesse Watters on Sports Illustrated swimsuit show: "Remember back in the Biden era, all of the swimsuit models were obese?"....Elon Musk: "Is there a worse publication on the face of the Earth than the Wall Street Journal? I wouldn't use that to line my cage for parrot droppings."....
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June 6, 2025
....Trump on Dems: "They stole the 2020 election and hijacked the country using a decrepit corpse as a front man."....Elon Musk: "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it; you know you did wrong."....Steve Bannon: "If progressives rub him the right way, Elon will write a $500M check to Hakeem Jeffries. He'll help steal the 2028 election."....Trump on Gov. Tim Walz: "He's a sick puppy, that guy. I feel sorry for him."....Andrew Sullivan: "Trump has the civic virtue of Jeffrey Epstein. The pardon power was always going to be a loaded gun in his tiny, careless hands."....former WH lawyer Ty Cobb on the current WH press secretary: "I don't think creepy Karoline -- when she speaks -- I don't think anybody in America really takes her seriously on a matter of substance."....Lawrence O'Donnell: "The stupidest president in American history backed down again. The only felon to serve as POTUS backed down again...And in backing down Donald Trump once again became a loser."....HHA head RFK Jr.: "We're probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they're all corrupt."....Maureen Dowd on Trump and Musk: "One of the most flamboyant, destructive bromances in government history."....Steve Schmidt on Trump military parade: "The world will witness a day of shame, and fully understand that America has grown hollow, weak and corrupt."....former Rep. Joe Walsh: "A tyrant sits in the White House. The very thing our Founders feared most is here."...Rep. MTG on PBS and NPR: "Fake news."....Bob Costas: "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 the president of the United States."....Ben Krauss: "I would like history books to refer to DOGE as 'The Trump/Musk program that saved zero money while decimating federal research and killing poor people in developing countries.'"....Joyce Vance on Trump attacking Harvard: "Flipped the crazy switch."....Rep. Mary Miller: "The whole 'climate change' is a sham. First of all, God controls the climate, because he controls the sun, and the sun controls the weather primarily."....Ron Reagan Jr.: "My father would have been embarrassed and ashamed that a president of the U.S. was as incompetent and traitorous as Trump."....Bishop Talbert Swan: "Calling a Black POTUS married 25 years to 1 wife with 2 children, no mistresses, affairs, or scandals, 'the antichrist,' but a white POTUS married thrice, 5 kids by 3 women, mistresses, affairs and scandals, 'God's anointed,' proves your religion is white supremacy."....Elon Musk on Trump's golden Oval Office re-design: "Finally has the majesty that it deserves."....Maureen Dowd on same: "Tarted up to look like a Vegas gift shop."....Bruce Handy on the new Tom Cruise movie: "It's hard to suspend disbelief watching a picture when you're thinking about how much Tiger Balm went into its making."....
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May 19, 2025
....Sen. Richard Blumenthal: "Donald Trump is selling cryptocurrency like snake oil in the Wild West, and he's put a for sale sign on the White House..."....Sen. Chris Murphy: "The Trump meme coin is the single most corrupt act ever committed by a president."....Jeff Tiedrich: "It's a shame they don't give out a Nobel Prize for Total F***ing Incoherence, because Mad King Donny would be a lock."....Megyn Kelly on Anna Wintour: "One of America's richest, meanest bitches...The biggest bully in America."....Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Trump administration: "It's only been a hundred days, a hundred long, terrible days for anybody that absolutely believes in reality."....Alex Shephard: "America seems to be waking up to the fact that they have elected a ruinous madman."....Michael Tomasky: "In 100 days, Trump has invented something new: clown-show fascism."....Karl Rove on Trump's tariff plan: "Made him sound like Scrooge. 'Get less, pay more' isn't a winning message."....Trump on Rove: "A total loser who's been wrong about almost everything."....Rove: "I'm a bit cloudy on how I got under the president's skin...Maybe my praise wasn't lavish enough."....Slate's Dan Kois on WH press pool: "They ask where he's taking Melania for dinner, or how he's able to shoot rainbows out of his butt day after day."....Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Trump and Musk: "Our federal workers don't deserve to have a 19-year-old Doge-bro called 'Big Balls' destroy their careers."....Kevin O'Malley on FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino: "A right-wing rage maniac turned law enforcement czar, who's now sitting behind a federal desk like a bulldog in a suit."....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?"....Sen. John Kennedy: "I trust Qatar like I trust a rest stop bathroom."....
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April 30, 2025
....Trump on NPR and PBS: "The radical left 'monsters' that so badly hurt our country."....Trump on China: "They were ripping us off like nobody's ever ripped us off."....Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent on China: "Playing with a pair of twos."....Trump on Iran: "Stone-cold broke."....national security adviser Mike Waltz: "Ukraine was and is one of the most corrupt countries in the world."....Trump on NYT, ABC/WaPo, and FoxNews pollsters: "Negative Criminals...THEY ARE SICK...AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!"....Steve Bannon: "Orban was Trump before there was Trump."....Rick Wilson on Trump: "Nobody around him has the balls to tell him how stupid he's being. That means he actually thinks he's doing a good job."....border czar Tom Homan on Rep. AOC: "On the smart meter, she's a zero."....Trump: "I think Harvard's a disgrace."....Steven Beschloss on JD Vance: "Bullying is not negotiating. Nor is pretending to be a negotiator when you're really just there to serve Putin. Appalling."....Donald Trump Jr. on GOP senators critical of Vance's Houthi policy: "These seven cowardly neocons attacking JD anonymously are genuine pussies."....Tom Homan on Sen. Chris Van Hollen attempting to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia in prison: "Disgusting."....Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Abrego Garcia: "Now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody."....Jill Lawrence on Trump: "The guy who pardoned the January 6th rioters was never going to be President Due Process."....Trump on Fed chair: "'Too Late' Jerome Powell of the Fed...is always TOO LATE AND WRONG...Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"....Larry Summers on Trump: "The first rule of holes is to stop digging."....former Fox host Megyn Kelly on "Conclave": "The most disgusting anti-Catholic film I have seen in a long time."....Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on Sen. Lindsey Graham: "Can we send a rescue party? I've never seen a person so far up someone's ass."....Carolina Miranda on Trump: "Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute...God save us from the king."....Trump: "This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's."....Trump on Ukraine: "This is Biden's war. This is not my war."....John Cleese: "The Trump administration is now engaged in a life-or-death struggle with reality. The smart money is on reality."....Andy Borowitz on Kristi Noem: "Shouldn't the secretary of homeland security be able to secure her own purse?"....