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.

  • April 20, 2020

    ........................Fox's Sean Hannity on Maggie Haberman: "Both you and the New York Times are corrupt and abusively biased."....Trump on Fox News' Chris Wallace: "He is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of 'Meet the Press' (please!), or the people over at 'Deface the Nation.' What the hell is happening to Fox News?"....Trump on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "A weak person...A sick puppy...A weak and pathetic puppet...An incompetent, third-rate politician."....Lawrence O'Donnell: "The president of the United States is a sociopath."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Trump: "Thinks only of himself. He has no empathy for other human beings."....Sen. Chris Murphy on Trump support for shutdown protesters: "The President of the United States is encouraging citizens to engage in armed rebellion."....Gov. Jay Inslee on Trump: "Fomenting domestic rebellion."....MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner: "Trump's conduct easily satisfies all three elements of involuntary manslaughter."....Trump on Sen. Chuck Schumer: "A total lightweight...He's a disgrace."....Gretchen Carlson on Trump: "A misogynistic jerk to female reporters asking legitimate questions."....Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly on Capt. Brett Crozier, former commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt: "Too naive or too stupid to be commanding officer of a ship like this."....Trump on WHO: "So much death has been caused by their mistakes."....Dana Milbank: "Trump has decided that reelection requires him to attack the World Health Organization at the height of a pandemic. Multitudes could die for his lie."....NBC's Katy Tur on Trump: "He'll put his name on everything, except the delayed response."....Rep. Adam Schiff on Trump's daily pressers: "Filled with misinformation and propaganda."....Steve Schmidt: "The self pity, dishonesty and finger pointing represent a profound failure of leadership capacity in a moment of deep crisis. His unfitness is extraordinary and deadly."....Joe Scarborough on Trump: "One of the worst liars since Eddie Haskell."....Prett Bharara: "'My authority is total but my responsibility is zero.' What leadership."....Laurence Tribe: "A toddler threw a self-pitying tantrum on live television on Monday night. Unfortunately he was 73 years old, wearing a long red tie, and running the world's most powerful country."....MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Trump: "He's making all his decisions based on press coverage."....Trump to White House press corps: "I'll ask some questions because you're so guilty."....Trump: "I wish we had a fair media in this country. And we really don't."....Trump on NYT: "It's a fake newspaper...If you had libel laws they would have been out of business even before they'll end up going out of business."....Trump on ABC's Jon Karl: "You're a third-rate reporter, and what you just said is a disgrace. You will never make it."....Trump to WH reporters: "There are people in your profession that write fake news. You do. (Pointing.) She does."....Frank Bruni on Trump: "He continues to bash the media, as if the virus were cooked up in the bowels of CNN."....Laura Ingraham on WaPo: "Is rooting for the shut down to continue indefinitely."....Denver Post editorial board on Trump: "Treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It's the worst imaginable form of corruption."....Kenneth Scearce: "When Trump's test came, he was unprepared, incapable, and he choked."....Pelosi: "I think it would be important for the president to tell the truth."....Trump on Pelosi: "An absolutely 'dumb' person...She will be overthrown."....Daily News' S.E. Cupp on Trump's coronavirus leadership: "The carnival ride from hell."....Dana Milbank on US having reduced epidemic prep funding: "When you drown the government in the bathtub, people die."....Rush Limbaugh: "Models are not science, folks. You may as well be using tarot cards, the way they revise these things."....Bill O'Reilly on Bernie Sanders: "A dangerous idiot."....Rep. Bobby Rush on Kellyanne Conway: "It's telling that you perceive the truth as an insult."....Maureen Dowd: "As commander in chief, Cadet Bone Spurs is bringing up the rear."....Terry McAuliffe on Trump: "Emotionally and mentally incapable of dealing with a crisis of this magnitude...I seriously wonder what's going on upstairs. Honestly."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "An incompetent administration is like its own natural disaster."....George Conway on Trump: "Narcissistic sociopaths gonna narcissistic sociopath."....Margaret Carlson on Trump: "Has shrunk the office to the size of a pea."....Fran Leibowitz on Trump: "Whenever he uses the word 'love,' which he does occasionally, I think of the word 'algebra,' because I don't know what algebra is."....Michael Gerson on Trump's spirit: "A vast, trackless wasteland."....Seth Meyers on Trump: "We're one press conference away from him calling it the Obama Virus."........................

     

  • April 5, 2020

    ........................Trump on the US: "Everything I took over was a mess. It was a broken country in so many ways...I'm not only talking about Obama, but everyone before him. They did nothing."....Trump on WaPo: "They write inaccurately about me every single day and every single hour...It's so insulting when they write phony stories."....Trump: "Vanity Fair magazine, which will soon be out of business, and their third rate Fake reporters, who make up sources which don't exist, wrote yet another phony and boring hit piece."....John Dean on Trump: "Please put someone who knows what to do in charge and get off TV!"....Jennifer Senior: "It's time to call the president's news conferences for what they are: propaganda. We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo."....Rachel Maddow: "If he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should, all of us, stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it's going to cost lives."....Daily Beast's Matt Lewis on Trump: "Is willing to sacrifice lives to try and save the economy and his chances for re-election."....Fox Business host Trish Regan on criticism of Trump response to coronavirus: "This is impeachment all over again."....former national security adviser Susan Rice on Trump having mic taken from PBS Newshour's Yamiche Alcindor at presser: "Pathetic when insecure men can't stomach strong black women."....CNN's Jim Acosta: "You would think the president would be humbled by being wrong so many times."....radio host Mark Levin on Acosta: "He should wear a mask and a dunce cap."....Kara Swisher: "It sometimes feels like Fox News is eating my mother's brain."....adviser to FL Gov. Ron DeSantis on the state's unemployment system: "It's a s*** sandwich."....Donald Trump Jr. on coronavirus aid plan including museums: "Republicans want to save your job. Democrats want to save the Picassos."....NY hospital exec on Navy hospital ship in NYC harbor having only 20 patients: "It's a joke."....Trump on NY Gov. Cuomo: "He shouldn't be talking about us. He should be buying his own ventilators."....Howard Stern on Trump: "Thinks he's the best president there ever was. I can honestly tell you that Donald doesn't give one s*** about public service."....Sen. Marco Rubio: "Some in our media can't contain their glee and delight in reporting that the US has more coronavirus cases than China."....Tom Brokaw on Trump: "This is not junior high. History honors big men."....Fox News' Greg Gutfeld on HRC: "I would say she should rot in hell, but I think she's already there."....Christian Broadcast Network's David Brody on Trump: "Sloppy and dangerous...Being a great leader has many attributes. Confusing people is not among them."....Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: "PINO."....Trevor Noah on Trump: "Just does not seem to have his s*** together."....Seth Meyers on Jared Kushner: "The guy Slender Man has nightmares about."........................

  • March 9, 2020

    ........................Trump on WA Gov. Jay Inslee: "A snake."....former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Trump: "The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America. He is a liar. He is a cheat. He is a bad businessman. He can't spell. He doesn't read. He doesn't listen. He has no principles."....Heather Digby Parton: "It's a full-blown ritual at this point for members of the Trump cabinet and Republicans in Congress to genuflect to the president as if he were a 15th-century pope."....Trump on Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "She had a tremendous lack of talent...People don't like her. She's a very mean person."....Joe Scarborough on Kellyanne Conway: "Arrogant, boastful and lying."....David Plouffe on Fox News: "Media outlets should hold the powerful to account, not account to the powerful."....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "At his core is a frightened boy and pretender."....Trump on NYT: "An embarrassment to journalism. They were a dead paper before I went into politics, and they will be a dead paper after I leave."....Donald Trump Jr. on NYT: "An utter disgrace."....Trump on Biden as president: "They are going to put him in a home and other people are going to be running the country."....Greg Sargent on Trump: "The biggest liar and fabulist ever to occupy the Oval Office."....Marianne Williamson on Super Tuesday: "Russiagate was not a coup. Mueller was not a coup. Impeachment was not a coup. What happened yesterday was a coup."....HRC on Trump: "An authoritarian in training."....Trump on Mike Bloomberg candidacy: "This has been the worst, and most embarrassing, experience of his life...He didn't have what it takes."....Chuck D. on Trump: "King Devil."....Sen. Ted Cruz: "Today the Democrats are the party of the rich...They sip their lattes and look down on working class Americans."....Laura Ingraham on Warren: "Pack it in, Poca."....Thomas L. Friedman on GOP: "A deformed Trump personality cult."....Donald Trump Jr. on Kamala Harris: "Swamp is gonna Swamp."....Trump on Bloomberg: "A pandering phony...A boring mayor who the people couldn't stand."....Max Boot on Trump: "The coronavirus is laying bare the pathologies of the Trump administration -- which includes compulsive lying, pandering to dictators,...inveterate hostility toward experts and expertise, and (in a related development) sheer incompetence."....Robert Reich on AG Barr: "Working hand in hand with Donald Trump to bend federal law enforcement to the president's will."....Nicolle Wallace on Barr: "He seems so Hannitized."....Trump on Tom Steyer: "Spent more dollars for NOTHING than any candidate in history."....Sen. Lindsey Graham on Dem candidates: "Drunks in a bar arguing among themselves are less annoying, more courteous and entertaining, and make more sense."....Bob Geldof on ISIS: "The McDonald's of terror."....Stephen King on Trump: "His brain is like a radio playing at top volume, but between stations."....The Spectator on 2020: "The year of the drunken uncle."........................

  • February 25, 2020

    ........................Donald Trump Jr. on U.S. intelligence agencies: "Their little club."....Ted Cruz on Bernie Sanders: "Likes to pal around with [communists]."....Trump on Schumer: "Incompetent."....Thomas L. Friedman: "The Republican Party is not asleep. It's dead and buried."....former Fox News reporter Carl Cameron on Trump pardons and swamp: "He's not draining it, he's deepening it."....former national security adviser Susan Rice on acting DNI Richard Grenell: "One of the most nasty, dishonest people I've ever encountered."....Trump on Roger Stone jury forewoman: "She should never have been on that jury. Everything about this stinks."....Sen. Chris Murphy on Trump: "It stands to reason that they want Donald Trump reelected because he has been a gift to Russia. He has essentially ceded the Middle East to Russian interests."....MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell: "The president is a Russian operative. That sounds like the description of a bad Hollywood screenplay, but it is real, and it is Vladimir Putin's greatest achievement."....Maureen Dowd: "This was another bad, crazy week trapped in Trump's psychopathology...In 'Gone With the Wind,' Atlanta burned to the ground. In Trump's version, Washington is aflame."....Biden on Trump: "More George Wallace than George Washington."....Bill de Blasio on Buttigieg: "Try not to be so smug when you just got your ass kicked."....Donald Trump Jr. on Sen. Elizabeth Warren in debate: "Pocahontas taking some scalps."....Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on U.S. intel reports that Russia is interfering in 2020 election: "These are more paranoid announcements...They have nothing to do with the truth."....Laurence Tribe: "Russia is waging aggressive cyberwar against the U.S. and our electoral system, and Trump's firing of Intelligence Officers for alerting Congress to that war is, as I said, treason in all but the technical sense. I stand by that."....Trump on Bloomberg debate performance: "Stumbling, bumbling, and grossly incompetent."....Warren on Bloomberg: "Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another."....Bloomberg on Sanders: "The best-known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses."....Rush Limbaugh on the left: "They would love for the coronavirus to be this deadly strain that wipes everybody out, so they could blame Trump for it."....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "Overturning the rule of law and stuffing the agencies with toadies."....Buttigieg on Sanders and Bloomberg: "We shouldn't have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out."....Donald Trump Jr.: "Word on the street is that the new hot billionaire fetish is paying $500 million to get your ass kicked by Pocahontas."....Trump on Brad Pitt: "A little wise guy."....Trump on CNN: "Didn't they apologize for the fact that they said certain things that weren't true?"....CNN's Jim Acosta: "I think our record on delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes..."....Trump: "You probably have the worst record in the history of broadcasting."....Bette Midler: "Trump complained about 'Parasite' winning the Oscar. I'm more upset that a parasite won the White House."....George Conway on Trump: "A psycho and a buffoon."....MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Trump: "Pardonpalooza."....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "A neon grandiosity."....Amy Klobuchar on Trump: "Doesn't have a heart."........................

  • February 19, 2020

    ........................Trump on the Justice Department: "The 'Justice' Department."....Sen. Mazie Hirono on Sen. Ted Cruz's about-face on Trump: "When he turned, he really turned, didn't he? Into a total suck-up -- you can quote me on that."....Trump: "Wow! Bloomberg is a total racist!"....former WH press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Bloomberg: "His record, his language is offensive and atrocious."....Donald Trump Jr." The one thing Bloomberg can't buy is personality."....Joe Biden on Trump: "Has no sense of decency, or understanding of the constitution."....Sean Hannity on CNN's Brian Stelter: "You, and all of Fake News CNN, and your very creepy assistant are all political hacks and hypocrites."....Biden on AG William Barr: "The greatest abuse of power I have ever seen."....Max Boot: "This is how democracies die -- not in darkness but in full view of a public that couldn't care less."....Eugene Robinson: "South America's past has become America's present."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Bloomberg: "An egomaniac billionaire."....Pete Buttigieg on Trump: "My marriage has never involved me sending hush money to a porn star. I'm ready to have a debate with Donald Trump on family values."....Fox's Jeanine Pirro: "The Democrat clown car literally packed with B-list candidates Bernie, Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg bumbles along with clowns tripping over their clown shoes to out-progressive and out-socialize each other."....'The View' co-host Sunny Hostin on Trump: "I don't think it was lost on the black community that he gave [the Presidential Medal of Freedom] to Rush Limbaugh during Black History Month, sitting next to a Tuskegee airman on Rosa Parks Day."....Andrea Mitchell on John Bolton: "His comment last night, 'If you want to know the truth, buy my book and read Chapter 14,' screams of somebody putting profit over country."....Trump: "Have you noticed unhinged Democrats and media attacking AG Barr more and more lately? It's because he's an existential threat to the Swamp Creatures who've run roughshod over our government and our country for far too long."....Sen. Chris Murphy on Trump: "Acquittal has turned out to be a green light for him to take a wrecking ball to democracy."....DOJ official on Trump intervention in Roger Stone case: "A break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "We are watching a descent into authoritarianism. Remember, the attorney general can be impeached."....Trump on Bloomberg: "A 5'4" mass of dead energy."....Sam Donaldson on Trump: "He's mean, he's corrupt...A sick, ignorant man."....Trump on Sen. Joe Manchin: "Joe Munchkin."....George Conway on Trump: "He can't even distinguish between his interests and the nation's -- and doesn't need to, according to his lawyers and now the judgment of the senate...America beware. The state is Trump, and he's very, very angry."....Trump, asked what he learned from his impeachment: "That the Dems are crooked, they're vicious."....Garrison Keillor on Trump: "He opens his mouth and great blatty ignorance comes out and a vulgarity you wouldn't accept from your child's sixth-grade teacher, but here he is, a New York developer pretending to be president."....Amy Klobuchar on Trump: "The heart of America is bigger than the heart of this guy."........................