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 5, 2020

    ........Meghan McCain on 2020: "An apocalyptic, dystopian hellscape."...Trump in phone call with governors, on George Floyd demonstrations: "It's a movement. If you don't put it down, it will get worse and worse. The only time it's successful is when you're weak, and most of you are weak."....WA Gov. Jay Inslee on Trump remarks: "The rantings of an insecure man trying to look strong, after building his entire career on racism and the lie of birtherism."....Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker: "You can hear in his rhetoric that he is simply trying to make himself sound like a strong man -- almost like a dictator."....Delaware Gov. John Carney: "A rant."....MA Gov. Charlie Baker: "When the country needed compassion and leadership the most, it simply was nowhere to be found. Instead, we got bitterness, combativeness, and self-interest."....Trump on Minnesota: "A laughingstock all over the world."....Houston police chief to Trump: "If you don't have anything constructive to say, keep your mouth shut."....Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot: "I will encode what I really want to say to Donald Trump. It's two words: It begins with 'F' and ends with 'U.'"...Trump to New Yorkers: "Call up the National Guard. Lowlifes and Losers are RIPPING YOU APART!"...GOP operative Caleb Hull: "It would be great if the President of the United States would stop rage tweeting in all caps and actually take decisive action as a leader instead of going MIA as our nation melts down."....George Will on GOP: "A united party, and it is united around someone who is unfit to lead."....Obama: "This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many folks in charge know what they are doing. A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge."....Trump on Obama: "He was an incompetent president, that's all I can say. Grossly incompetent."....Ann Coulter: "Is it possible Trump has resigned and they just haven't gotten around to the press release?"....Charles M. Blow: "We don't have a president. The man who has been pretending to be one is useless right now."....former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: "He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better."....Howard Stern: "It would be extremely patriotic of Donald to say, 'I'm in over my head, and I don't want to be president anymore.'"....Trump on "Republican Voters Against Trump": "These are losers, from day one. Guys like Bill Kristol."....Trump on former FBI director James Comey: "A sick man. He's just a stupid guy. He's dumb as a rock...There's something wrong with him."....former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci: "Everybody goes into the Trump relationship woodchipper. You either come out on the other side with your dignity and your personal story intact, or you're re-formed as Trump compost and you're fertilizer under his shoe. You have to make a decision..."....Rep. Maxine Waters on Trump: "He only wants to open up the economy so he can go back to having his white power pep rallies."...."Art of the Deal" co-author Tony Schwartz on Trump and "opening up" the country: "If it's this decision between saving himself and saving others, it is no contest...The deaths don't matter to him."....Max Boot: "If FDR had taken Trump's approach, this column would be in German...[He] has already gotten bored with a war against coronavirus that isn't going his way."....Stephen Colbert: "For a germaphobe, Trump sure is anxious to get the rest of us out in the hot zone."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump is too much of a fake tough guy to wear a mask and Mike Pence is too much of a sycophant to the fake tough guy to wear a mask."....Trump on group that created "Mourning in America" ad: "They should not call it The Lincoln Project. It's not fair to Abraham Lincoln, a great president. They should call it The Losers Project."....Joy Reid on Bible photo: "Trump's Kim Jong Un moment."....Rev. Gini Gerbasi, teargassed at St. John's, on Trump: "You want to be living your life by the words of that book, not toting it around as a photo opportunity...They turned holy ground into a battleground."....seminarian Julia Joyce Domenick on Trump: "We were gassed for a photo op. Is any life valuable to him? Is it all about ratings?"....Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Elizabeth Eaton: "Not only was this manipulative, it was desecration."....Thomas Friedman on Mike Pompeo: "Has been the worst secretary of state in American history...Taxpayers deserve a refund from him for his education at West Point."....Sen. Claire McCaskill on Flynn case: "Ponder this for a moment. The U.S. Department of Justice has now stated that they don't care if you lie to the FBI."....Bill Kristol: "This is a foretaste of what a second Trump term would be like -- the entire executive branch weaponized to help Trump's friends, punish his enemies, and undermine the rule of law."....Rick Wilson: "So a criminal was released by a criminal working for a criminal."....Walter Shaub: "The Flynn travesty tells us they no longer feel they have to keep up the appearance of not being corrupt."....Trump on Dems: "They must pay a price for what they have done to our country."....Rudy Giuliani on Piers Morgan: "You're a disgrace."....Morgan on Giuliani: "You sound completely barking mad."....Steve Silberman: "If Putin had commanded Trump to destroy our democracy and murder Americans in large numbers under threat of blackmail, what would Trump have done differently?"....Michelle Goldberg on NYT: "The journalism industry is in free-fall, and working here often feels like being on the last boat out of a burning harbor."....Trump: "Fox News is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected in November."....Mark Cuban on Trump: "He is the most powerful man in the world and he always plays the victim card. 'The Dems are out to get me, the media is out to get me.'"....Trump: "So pathetic to watch the Fake News Lamestream Media playing down the gravity and depravity of the Radical Left, looters and thugs, ripping up our Liberal Democrat-run (only) cities. It is almost like they are all working together?"....James Poniewozik on Trump: "Is used to having his every whim indulged, his every thought-doodle praised as a Michelangelo."....Roger Cohen: "The president's mantra owes much to the Cosa Nostra. Threaten, threaten, threaten, and to heck with legality...Barr is Trump's hired gun. He is to justice what a hit man is to due process."....Seth Meyers on Trump Bible photo op: "Couldn't have done more damage to the Constitution last night if he'd pulled a Sinead O'Connor and ripped it up live on television and then ate the pieces."....John Oliver on Coronavirus: "It doesn't give a f*** about democracy. Which is one of the ways in which Covid-19 is the Donald Trump of infectious diseases. It's also weirdly shaped and disproportionately harmful to minorities."........

  • May 8, 2020

    ............Joe Scarborough to Trump: "Let Mike Pence run things for a week. You're not well."....former Australian PM Kevin Rudd on Trump: "Acts not as the leader of the free world but as a quack apothecary...Don't look to the United States for help in a genuine global crisis, because it can't even look after itself."....Trump: "I don't know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad."....WaPo editorial board: "As the house burns, Mr. Trump is standing on the front lawn, boasting of success, denying responsibility, ordering others to grab the garden hose and promising that everything will be back to normal soon."....VP and engineer Tim Bray, on resigning from Amazon: "[Warehouse workers being fired is] evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."....NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio on Trump: "Stabbing his hometown in the back."....Trump: "The Russia Hoax is the biggest political scandal in American history. Treason!!!"....Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Trump: "Our most corrupt president in American history."....Fox host Tucker Carlson on CNN's Brooke Baldwin: "Some airhead."....MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Fox pandemic coverage: "Coronavirus trutherism."....Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren on social distancing: "It is starting to look a lot like willful slavery."....CNN's Peter Berger: "This is the kind of thing we expect in a banana republic: the nepotistic incompetence and the demands from the public to lavish praise on the brilliant ruling family."....Fran Leibowitz on Trump: "Every single thing that could be wrong with a human being is wrong with him...The same way basketball players say 'game recognizes game,' sloth recognizes sloth. This is a lazy guy."....David Corn on Kellyanne Conway: "She has the Trump virus; say anything at any time, even if wildly false, to deflect and distract. She's harming the nation."....Trump: "Cryin' Chuck Schumer...A totally overrated loser."....Robert Redford on Trump administration: "Monarchy in disguise."....Trump on Comcast (NBC) and CNN: "They are Chinese puppets who want to do business there. They use USA airwaves to help China. The Enemy of the People!".....CNN's Peter Berger on Fox News: "The Pravda of the Trump administration."....Donald Trump Jr. on Joe Biden: "Clown."....Trump on Dubya: "Where was he during Impeachment...He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!"....George Conway on Trump: "He lies endlessly, not just in the way sociopaths do, which is to con others, but also to delude himself. He claims to be a 'genius,' even though he apparently can't spell, can't punctuate, can't do math, and lacks geographic literacy."....Jennifer Rubin on Mike Pence's masklessness: "It is difficult to fathom someone so weak in character as to endanger others because of his boss's vanity."....MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Trump coronavirus briefings: "Pathological narcissistic propaganda show."....Windsor Mann: "The only thing worse than a pandemic is having Donald Trump as your president during a pandemic."....Elon Musk on coronavirus lockdown: "Fascist...Give people back their goddamn freedom...Free America Now."....Trump on the U.S. military in 2017: "Broken and depleted."....Rep. Peter King on Mitch McConnell: "To say that it is 'free money' to provide funds for...cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate."....Michael Gerson on Trump: "A failed presidency defended by a cowed party."....Trump adviser Stephen Miller: "[Anyone who calls me a racist is] an ignorant fool, a liar and a reprobate who has no place in civilized society."....Trump on Dems: "They do everything they can do make things as bad as possible."....Frank Bruni on Trump: "He's not rising to the challenge before him, not even a millimeter. He's shriveling into nothingness."....Tucker Carlson on Boston University: "[AOC got a] silly pointless degree from a silly pointless private college."....senior Trump official working with coronavirus task force: "[Jared Kushner] could be in his office just googling 'coronavirus,' show the results to the president, and still get a gold sticker from his dad-in-law."....Patti LuPone on Trump: "He's everything you don't want to be in life...I never expected America to be this broken in my lifetime."...recently appointed HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo in deleted tweet: "Millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters."...strategist James Carville on Trump campaign aides: "A pack of grifters...His campaign manager's got two condos, a Ferrari, a yacht, a Range Rover. They're all just fleecing the campaign...This whole thing is just like a crumbling empire right before your eyes. Everybody is trying to take everything they can get on the way out and they're trying to prop him up so they all can make money."....Stephen Colbert on Trump: "He's gone from being a birther to a deather, and if there was any justice, he'd be a lifer."....Trump on U.S. Postal Service: "A joke."............

  • 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."........................