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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September 25, 2020
........Trump on a Biden presidency: "There will be no oil. There will be no God. There will be no guns."....Michelle Goldberg on Trump: "An aspiring fascist who would burn democracy to the ground to salve his diseased ego."....Bob Woodward on Trump: "Madness and organizational sickness...He failed himself, he failed the country, he failed the Republican Party, he failed the concept of the office of the president."....Trump on Woodward's book: "Very boring."....Woodward on Trump: "Putting a dagger in the Constitution."....Sen. Bernie Sanders: "This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy."....Gail Collins: "Most Senate Republicans were actually born in the exact same county, a woodsy place called Chutzpahina. You'll find it on the map tucked between South Cynicalassas and North Hypocritian."....AG William Barr on journalists: "They don't care if they're not telling the truth, because they don't believe the truth is a meaningful concept. It's about the pursuit of power."....Jennifer Rubin on Barr: "Seems to have gone overboard with his audition for a Bond villain."....Donald Trump Jr. on CNN: "Nothing more than a Super PAC for the Biden campaign."....Sean Hannity on Dems: "Do not care about our great system of justice. They want to burn down the system."....Trump on Sen. Kamala Harris: "If a woman is going to become the first president of the United States, it can't be her. That would rip our country apart."....former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor: "The president has done a very effective job of creating a culture of fear."....Trump on Biden: "Joe feels very safe in a mask. Maybe he doesn't want to expose his face. I don't know what's going on. There's no reason for him to have masks on."....former RNC spokesperson Tim Miller on large maskless Trump rally: "F***ing appalling."....Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak: "Reckless and selfish."....Trump on Sisolak: "Will cheat on the ballots, I have no doubt about it."....MSNBC host Joy Reid on Trump: "A baby Putin.".... Gov. Nikki Haley in 2016: "Donald Trump is everything we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten."....Trump on Biden: "Wants to quadruple your taxes and go to socialized healthcare. Depression!"....Rep. Bill Pascrell: "'We win, the hell with you.' That should be the GOP's permanent slogan.".....MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance: "Trump is not joking about a third term. Ignore it at your peril."....Trump-appointed HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo: "When Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin...If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it's going to be hard to get."....Jared Kushner in March: "Cuomo didn't pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state...His people are going to suffer and that's their problem."....Sarah Cooper "Why does every photo of Jared Kushner look like he's about to take the last slice of pizza?"....Trump on watching TV "Sometimes I have to turn it off. I can't watch me. I can't watch me."........
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September 14, 2020
........maskless attendee at Trump rally: "There's no COVID. It's a fake pandemic."....GOP strategist Stuart Stevens: "Watching the Republican Party is like watching your friend drink himself to death."....epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, on COVID: "The administration made every single mistake you could possibly make. We could have beaten it back."....Trump on Biden: "You ever see him with his little circles?...You know why he puts the circles?...Because they can't get anybody to fill up a room...Nobody wants to go."....Laurence Tribe: "Trump's dismissive attitude has shaped the course of this deadly disease. He's a killer."....Nicholas Kristof: "Because of COVID-19, Trump called himself a wartime president, but he didn't heed his generals and never ordered ammunition."....Sen. Chris Murphy on Trump: "His plan is to kill people. Let's just say it."....Biden on Trump COVID response: "The virus is not his fault, but the deaths are his fault. Because he could have done something about it...He waved a white flag. He walked away...It's almost criminal."....Trump on Biden: "I think there's probably, possibly, drugs involved. That's what I hear."....Donald Trump Jr. on Biden: "Are they giving him something so that he can appear even a little bit lucid or coherent at times for the few seconds that they put him on air?"....Sen. Ted Cruz: "Many liberal males never grow balls."....Trump: "My f***ing generals are a bunch of pussies."....Michael Cohen: "Trump has stated to me that he believes anybody who went to Vietnam was stupid. He had no interest in going, he wasn't going, and anyone that went, he deemed to be stupid."....Gen. James Mattis, former defense secretary, on Trump: "Dangerous...Unfit...Has no moral compass."....chant for Obama at Nevada Trump rally: "Lock him up!"....Biden on Trump: "An absolute fool."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump desperately wants approval even as he seems relentlessly driven to prove he's not worthy of it."....John Heileman on Trump: "Everything that comes out of this man's mouth is either confession or projection."....Trump on The Lincoln Project: "I would have them change the name to 'The Losers Project.'"....Trump at rally, on CNN anchor Jake Tapper: "I know, you don't like him. Who likes him? Who the hell can like him?"....Michael Cohen on Trump: "He actually thinks it's a positive quality to skirt the law. He thinks that's how to really get s*** done, to be above it all and be able to do whatever you want."....Trump on The Atlantic article about his disdain for the military: "It's a terrible magazine. I don't read it...They made it up."....Rep. Matt Gaetz: "The Atlantic is Fake News. They make things up."....First Lady Melania Trump on former aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's book: "Delusional and malicious gossip."....Donald Trump Jr. on Biden: "It's truly sad that someone in his family hasn't stepped in and said enough is enough. At what point is this sham basement campaign considered elder abuse?"....GOP strategist Stuart Stevens: "Why do all these people around Donald Trump keep getting arrested? It is because they are crooks...The campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, the foreign policy adviser, the national security adviser, the chief political adviser -- all those guys are felons...Donald Trump is a wannabe gangster. Gangsters hire other gangsters."....Mary Trump: "When a family system arranges itself or organizes itself around the most deeply damaged person in the family, nothing good comes of that."....Trump on niece Mary Trump: "Unstable...Was rightfully shunned, scorned, and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by her own very kind and caring grandfather."....Joe Scarborough on maskless gathering to hear Trump's acceptance speech: "The Woodstock of germs."....Rep. Eric Swalwell: "Remember when Donald Trump said he was going to drain the swamp, and then held his re-election convention in DC?"....Robert Reich: "There is no longer a Republican Party. There is the Trump Party. No platform, no principles, no ideals, no vision. Just Donald J. Trump. GOP, R.I.P."....Mary Trump: "Almost every single participant in this convention was willing to lie, and knew they were lying, and didn't care...breathtaking."....Eugene Robinson on Trump: "Is running the most openly racist national campaign since that of George Wallace in 1968."....Tucker Carlson: "I think Black Lives Matter is poison...Black Lives Matter wants to run the country...Is definitely not about black lives...Remember that when they come for you."....Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler: "Do you seriously wonder, Mr. President, why this is the first time in decades that America has seen this level of violence? It's you who have created hate and division."....Ann Coulter on accused Kenosha shooter: "I want him as my president."....Rush Limbaugh: "It's time to choose. You are either with the mob or you are with the police."....Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts on Kenosha response: "Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, and Fox News are encouraging Americans to murder one another."....Trump: "Biden's plan for the China virus is to shut down the entire U.S. economy...wants to surrender our country to the virus...wants to surrender our families to the violent left-wing mob...wants to surrender our jobs to China...would immediately collapse the economy."....Michael Cohen on Trump: "All of the drama, my book included, is making him unravel, which you see on a daily basis in his psycho tweeting. The fact that he has absolutely no self-control is a testament to where his mind is at. It's dangerous."....Trevor Noah: "Since when is Donald J. Trump concerned about creating a panic? That is literally his favorite thing...His campaign slogan is basically, 'Look out behind you!'"....Seth Meyers: "The choices aren't lie or panic. There's a third option where you tell people the truth and then do something about it, which would reassure everyone. But no, we elected the guy who puts a piece of duct tape over the check-engine light."........
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August 28, 2020
........Trump on Obama: "They say he was a great president, but you can't be a great president when much of what he's done we've undone.".....Mike Pence: "The hard truth is, you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America."....Eric Trump on Biden: "Has been a total pushover for Communist China...Has pledged to defund the police and take away our cherished Second Amendment."....Tiffany Trump on 2020 election: "This is a fight for freedom vs. oppression."....Donald Trump Jr. on Biden: "The Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp."....Molly Jong-Fast on Donald Trump Jr.: "A disgusting racist trying desperately to get a narcissist to love him."....Ann Coulter: "Imagine a world where you get a prime time speaking slot at a major party's convention simply by being related to the president!"....Jennifer Rubin "75% of people speaking at RNC are employees or stand to inherit money from him."....Trump on Biden: "He is the destroyer of America's jobs, and if given the chance he will be the destroyer of America's greatness."....Dan Rather: "The Trump re-election strategy seems to be to argue that only Donald Trump can save America from Donald Trump's America."....Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz on Biden: "Catholic in name only."....Sen. Joni Ernst on Biden-Harris: "They would essentially ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars. It would destroy the agriculture industry."....former Sen. Claire McCaskill: "I am furious at this little, small man trashing the people's house with his narcissism and his ego. Using those people that were becoming American citizens as props."....former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub on using White House as setting for convention event: "This abomination may be the most visible misuse of official position for private gain in America's history."....former FL AG Pam Bondi on Biden: "Has been writing the textbook on abuse of power for over 50 years."....Trump on Sen. Chris Coons: "A very weak and pathetic Schumer puppet."....former NFL safety Jack Brewer on Black Lives Matter: "Calls for the destruction of the nuclear family."....Trump on Biden: "He supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of birth."....Trump: "If Biden is elected, China will own our country...They own Joe Biden."....conservative activist Charlie Kirk: "This election is a decision between preserving America as we know it and eliminating everything that we love."....Trump: "If you want a vision of your life under Joe Biden, imagine the smoldering ruins of Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, and the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago coming to every city and town in America."....Rick Wilson: "Trump is the bad tattoo you get in Cozumel when you're drunk and you're 19."....WaPo editorial board: "History will record Mr. Trump's presidency as a march of wanton, uninterrupted, tragic destruction."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Postmaster General Louis Dejoy: "Flat-out lied to the Senate."....Trump on Biden: "A puppet of the radical-left movement that seeks to destroy the American way of life."....Fox News' Andrew Napolitano on AG William Barr: "Stalinistic."....Greg Sargent on GOP convention: "Sheer unbridled messianism."....Rush Limbaugh: "The Democrat Party has been devoted to the apocalyptic future of this country for quite a while."....Al Gore on Trump: "Putting his knee on the neck of American democracy."....Ann Coulter on Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of killing two Kenosha protesters: "I want him as my president."....David Frum on Fox News' Tucker Carlson: "A professionally competent white supremacist."....Robert Reich on Carlson: "Racist, murderous rants."....Sen. Sherrod Brown on Trump call for Goodyear boycott: "Absolutely despicable...He betrays workers in Akron."....Brian Klass on Fox News: "Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Jeanine Pirro are the modern-day versions of Potemkin, set on ensuring that their leader sees a world constructed for him and not the grim reality that lies beyond the airwaves."....Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Trump: "Coward in chief."....Trump: "If we don't win, it's all gone...It'll be a totally different country."....Trump on Biden: "Mentally shot...Not all there."....Tucker Carlson on Dems and Biden: "The most radical mass political movement in American history has found a front man who seems like he should be feeding pigeons."....Mary Trump on her uncle: "He has been rewarded for bad behavior his entire life."....David Plouffe on a second Trump term: "It will be Moscow's for the taking."....Jim Gaffigan on Trump: "A traitor and a con man who doesn't care about you. Deep down you know it...Trump is a liar and a criminal."....former Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon on Donald Trump Jr.: "A guy who believes everything on Breitbart is true."....Jeffrey Toobin on numerous Trump Administration indictments: "An extraordinary record of sleaze."....Rachel Maddow on Trump and Bannon: "When you are running against an incumbent president, the incumbent president doesn't usually do you the favor of having their third straight campaign chief arrested on the day that the opposition party picks its nominee."....Renato Mariotti on Bannon: "A garden variety fraudster."....Seth Meyers on Bannon: "A baked potato Fabio."....Jimmy Fallon on Bannon: "Looks like someone you'd find sleeping in a bathroom stall at Margaritaville."....Sarah Silverman on Bannon arrest: "We've got to stop the White House-to-prison pipeline."....Stephen Colbert: "The last four years are like Trump is Dorian Gray and we're the picture."........
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August 20, 2020
........Barack Obama on President Trump: "Hasn't grown into the job because he can't."....Sen. Kamala Harris on Trump: "Cares more about himself than the people who elected him."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "COVID-19 was Trump's biggest test. He failed miserably."....Sen. Bernie Sanders: "Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs...He has made the unthinkable routine."....Sen. Claire McCaskill on Trump: "Wouldn't know humble if it hit him in the head."....Michelle Obama: "Whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consultation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy."....Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama speech: "A total and complete crock."....senior Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson on Michelle Obama: "The last person I want to be lectured to about the morality and the patriotism of the United States."....Dinesh D'Souza: "If we were honest about it, Kamala Harris is an Indo-Jamaican posing as an African American."....Rudy Giuliani on Biden-Harris: "I feel sorry for Joe. I feel sorry that he has senility. I feel sorry for the country that he picked that horrible prosecutor. That woman is a bully."....Trump on Kamala Harris: "She is very bad on fact. She is very weak on facts."....Pat Buchanan on Harris: "She's not really an American black."....Rush Limbaugh on Harris: "She's not African-American. She doesn't have slave blood."....Ann Coulter: "I don't know why anyone would vote for the Democratic Party, but I REALLY don't know why any white male would vote Dem."....Trump on Biden choosing Kamala Harris: "I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements...I have no idea if that's right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked this out."....Jeb Bush on QAnon: "Nut jobs, racists, haters have no place in either party."....James Carville on Trump: "This giant, infected wisdom tooth that is...hurting the body politic of this country."....Irish Times: "The United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity."....former Acting AG Sally Yates on Trump: "Rather than standing up to Vladimir Putin, he fawns over a dictator who is still trying to interfere in our elections...He treats our country like it's his family business."....WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on the Obama-Biden administration: "They cozied up to America's enemies."....former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor: "Sometimes it felt like the president was on the Russian team and not the American team, and we were having to run the football into the end zone against the president to secure our own country."....WH spokesperson on Taylor: "Just another creature of the D.C. Swamp who never understood the importance of the president's agenda or why the American people elected him and clearly just wants to cash in."....Donald Trump Jr. on former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "Is obviously a little upset because we're not in endless wars because of Donald Trump...All he is is a warmongering leftist."....Trump: "Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he'll be just another guy."....Rep. Eric Swalwell on Trump blocking USPS funding: "Has never met a deal or seen an election he wasn't willing to cheat. He will do anything to avoid losing this election."....Politico's Nancy Cook on Trump pandemic adviser Dr. Scott Atlas: "The anti-Fauci."....Trump: "Joe Biden is whatever they tell him to be."....Donald Trump Jr. on Biden: "Can't unify words to make a complete sentence."....George Conway: "In November, vote for the guy who isn't a narcissistic psychopath."....Trump on Dems: "We're saving the world from a radical-left philosophy that will destroy this country, and when this country is gone, the rest of the world would follow."....David Plouffe on Trump: "Running around the country like some washed-up vaudeville performer."....Trump: "AOC was a poor student...This is not even a smart person...She goes out and yaps."....AOC: "Let's make a deal, Mr. President. You release your college transcript, I'll release mine, and we'll see who was the better student. Loser has to fund the Post Office."....Tucker Carlson on Cardi B's 'WAP': "It's garbage...It actually is filth."........
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August 12, 2020
........maskless man, subsequently carried out of Tucson store, on fellow-shoppers: "You're a bunch of idiots wearing masks, you know it's not real! Look at you fools. You got a f***ing doily on your face!"....Trump on Kamala Harris: "She was very, very nasty. She was probably nastier than even Pocahontas to Joe Biden...It's hard to pick somebody that's that disrespectful."....Amy Klobuchar on Trump: "Went before the country and called Kamala Harris 'nasty.' I think that's crap."....Tucker Carlson on Harris: "Transparently one-dimensional...There are timeshare salesmen you would trust more...You could find payday lenders who are more sincere."....Donald Trump Jr.: "We all know phony Kamala and her radical leftwing friends will be calling all the shots in a 'Biden Administration,' not slow Joe!"....Trump campaign on Kamala Harris: "She is proof that Joe Biden is an empty shell being filled with the extreme agenda of the radicals on the left."....Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Biden: "Viewed the whole thing as a box-checking exercise for the 'woke' crowd. He should have made his choice just on merit but now he's stuck with Harris."....Trump senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson: "Wouldn't it be nice to focus just on qualifications instead of identity politics?"....Trump: "If I don't win the election, China will own the United States. You're going to have to learn Chinese, you want to know the truth."....Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates on Trump: "Has been the weakest president in American history with respect to China."....Sen. Ben Sasse on Trump executive orders: "Unconstitutional slop."....Trump on Sasse: "RINO...Gone rogue, again."....Sasse in response: "America doesn't have kings."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Trump: "Ignored science, fanned the flames of racism, and employed tactics from the playbook of fascists and dictators."....Trump on former national security adviser John Bolton: "One of the dumbest people I've met in government."....former Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Trump: "The king of cheap shots."....MSNBC contributor Joyce Alene on Trump: "Has shown more outrage in the last few days about Americans voting by mail during a pandemic that he has ever shown about Russian efforts to interfere with our elections."....Bill Gates on US COVID-19 testing: "It's mind-blowing because you can't get the federal government to improve the testing because they just want to say how great it is...[We are] paying billions of dollars in this very inequitable way to get the most worthless test results of any country in the world."....Gail Collins: "One thing I have to give Trump credit for is a general lowering of expectations."....Trump: "With Universal Mail-In Voting...2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. It will be an embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election...?"....Steven Calabresi, former Trump supporter and co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society: "I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats' assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president's immediate impeachment by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate."....Trump on former WH Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci: "A loser who begged to come back."....Scaramucci to Trump: "The Loser is you. 162,000 dead, 40 million American jobs lost on your watch. We are tired of all the losing."....Trump adviser Peter Navarro on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "Goes out every day with her scarves flying and just beats the heck out of us for being cruel people."....Steve Schmidt on Trump Bedminster event: "An utter f***ing disgrace."....Ken Olin: "I'm sorry that Kanye West has serious psychological issues. But we've just spent three and a half years living with a President who has serious psychological issues, and frankly I'm all out of tolerance for anyone using the White House as a substitute for a mental hospital."....Paul Krugman: "Payroll tax cuts are the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy."....Trump on German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "Stupid."....Rush Limbaugh on Dems: "Folks, you cannot be an American leftist today, and also be religious in the traditional sense. You just can't be. They are not pro-God type people, certainly not pro-Christian."....Trump on Biden: "[Will] take away your guns. Destroy your second amendment...Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He's against God."....Kevin M. Kruse on Trump: "The president's campaign themes: 1. Joe Biden is very weak and feeble...2. Joe Biden is so powerful he will hurt an omnipotent deity and somehow hurt a holy book as well."....CNN's Brianna Keilar, interviewing Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp: "This is just pointless. I get it. You're just saying a bunch of crap. Okay, you're saying a bunch of crap."....VP Mike Pence on SC Chief Justice Roberts: "Has been a disappointment to conservatives."....Trump adviser Steve Cortes on Politico: "A fake publication...'Nattering nabobs of negativity.'"....Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway's daughter Claudia: "You know what WE are sick and tired of? Our racist, homophobic, tyrannical, golfing idiot of a president."....Pelosi on Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx: "The worst...I don't have confidence in anyone who stands there while the president says, 'Swallow Lysol, it's going to cure your virus.'"....Trump on Pelosi: "Said horrible things about Dr. Birx because she was too positive on the good job we are doing on combating the China Virus.".... Trump on Birx: "Pathetic."....WH trade adviser Peter Navarro on coronavirus testing czar Brett Giroir: "Doctors' opinions are a dime a dozen."....Tucker Carlson on Biden-Harris: "The first entirely hollow presidential ticket in American history."....Paul Krugman on Republicans: "They've sacralized selfishness, hurting their own political prospects by insisting on the right to act selfishly even when it hurts others."....Wade Davis: "Those who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying, as one commentator has noted, the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it."....Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on Biden: "What is the point of the mask?...To basically kind of dehumanize, it's to frighten people...He's always in that black mask."....Ann Coulter on Nevada sheriff who told BLM-supporting library not to call 911 for help: "Good for him! I hope the library is inundated with masturbating homeless people and pants-wetting psychotics."....Jess Zweck on Trump: "Not impotant but why does he sit on every chair like it's a toilet?"....CA GOP congressional candidate James P. Bradley on "WAP": "Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion are what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure...Made me want to pour holy water in my ears."........