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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.

  • 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."........................

  • February 11, 2020

    ........................Trump on those who favored impeachment: "The crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I've ever known...low-lifes...stone cold crazy...evil...sick...corrupt...scum...bad...horrible...vicious...leakers."....Sen. Bernie Sanders: "The president we are running against is a pathological liar, a racist, a xenophobe, a sexist, a bully and a religious bigot."....Trump on impeachment: "It was all bulls***."....Trump on Sanders: "I think he's a communist...Didn't he get married in Moscow?"....Trump on Rep. Adam Schiff: "A vicious, horrible person."....Trump on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The most overrated person in politics."....Trump on Sen. Joe Manchin: "A puppet for Schumer and Pelosi."....Lucian K. Truscott IV: "Donald Trump is like a kid who gets on an elevator full of people and pushes the button for every floor."....Dana Milbank: "As our children see our feckless leaders tolerate a [man] without a fiber of virtue, I fear we will all become who he is."....Trump on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman: "Very insubordinate."....Rep. Paul Gosar on Vindman and his twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman: "The White House is running a two-for-one special today on deep state leakers."....Laurence Tribe: "The Trump Theorem: The breadth of the post-acquittal purge is directly proportional to the shallowness of the acquittal."....former Congressman Joe Walsh: "My Republican Party isn't a party. It's a cult."....John Iadarola on Donald Trump Jr.: "Of all the books Jr. hasn't read, the Bible is the one he hasn't read the most."....Fox News' Andrew Napolitano on Trump: "Clearly guilty...Somewhere, Richard Nixon is smiling."....Sen. Sherrod Brown: "In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out."....Sen. Mitt Romney on Trump: "Corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution -- and one's oath -- that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do."....Laura Ingraham on Romney: "You committed a fraud on the people of Utah, on the Repbulican Party, on the Constitution, and have thoroughly embarrassed yourself."....Trump on Romney: "Used religion as a crutch."....Lawrence O'Donnell: "Each day for the rest of his life Lindsey Graham will live in enraged jealousy of Mitt Romney's courage."....Sen. Chuck Schumer on Trump: "We've never had a president who's as vindictive and nasty as this one, and he strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of people."....Steve Schmidt on Trump: "Has a fetish for autocrats, and it's frightening."....Michael Tomasky on Trump impeachment trial: "This is straight out of East Germany."....David Smith: "To future historians, the impeachment 'trial' offers a glimpse of what an imploding empire might look like."....Rep. Tim Ryan on SOTUS: "I just walked out...I've had enough. It's like watching professional wrestling. It's all fake."....Rick Wilson on SOTUS: "A Bataan Death March of bulls***."....Mika Brzezinski on SOTUS: "A pile of lies."....Pelosi on SOTUS: "A manifesto of mistruth."....Trump on Pelosi: "A horrible person...I doubt she prays at all...I think she's a very confused, nervous woman."....Trump on Sen. Elizabeth Warren: "This woman can't tell the truth."....Trump on Michael Bloomberg: "Mini-Mike...Part of the Fake News."....Trump on Dems: "I see the hatred. They don't care about fairness, they don't care about lying...I think they just want to win, and it doesn't matter how they win."....Schiff on Trump: "Truth matters little to him. What's right matters even less, and decency matters not at all."....Bloomberg campaign adviser Timothy L. O'Brien on Trump: "A corrupt and obscene predator."....Tucker Carlson on Dems: "Now that impeachment is over, maybe we can have our country back...They yammered on for months about some meaningless phone call with a Ukrainian. Nobody outside of Twitter ever cared, not for one minute. The country was always bored by this."....Garrison Keillor: "Mr. Trump wouldn't have been a capable water commissioner in a midsize city, but here he is, running foreign policy based on phone conversations with Tucker Carlson."....Brian L. Ott: "In the end, it will have been Fox News, not Donald Trump, that destroyed democracy."....Ann Coulter: "In two years, Trump will be fawning over Nancy Pelosi while crapping on Reps. Jordan, Meadows, Gaetz, and Nunes."....Bette Midler on Trump's ambition: "If he wins again, he will rule you until he dies, you die, or both. Then...you'll get Ivanka."....Stephen Colbert on Trump and GOP senators: "It's hard to tell where his ass ends and their lips begin."........................

  • February 1, 2020

    ........................Trump on his impeachment: "The most unfair trial in the history of the U.S. Congress."....Sen. Chuck Schumer: "A trial without evidence is not a trial. It's a cover-up."....Rep. Jerrold Nadler on Trump: "A dictator."....Rep. Adam Schiff on Trump: "A president who identifies the state as being himself."....Trump on Schiff: "Mentally deranged."....Sean Hannity on Schiff: "Nobody likes this guy...Like a real-life sociopath in the middle of a meltdown...He can't even open his mouth without vomiting a Russian conspiracy theory."....Tucker Carlson on Schiff: "A wild-eyed conspiracy nut."....Donald Trump Jr.: "There's a reason for his nickname, Full Of Schiff."....Rush Limbaugh: "Schiff is so full of it, folks, the guy could probably float."....Rep. Lee Zeldin to media: "You're doing a great job as Schiff's shills."....Fox News contributor Dan Bongino: "Adam Schiff is like the modern-day Teddy Ruxpin. You put a quarter in his back and he tells you a story."....Trump: "Shifty Adam Schiff is a corrupt politician, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our country."....Schiff on Trump: "A wrathful and vindictive president."....GOP strategist Rick Wilson on Trump: "Couldn't find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter 'U' and a picture of an actual crane on a map."....Ivanka Trump: "Arrogance...and smug ridicule."....Trump on AOC: "Dumb as a rock."....Trump on Sen. Mitt Romney: "A pompous ass."....Sen. David Perdue on Romney: "Jeff Flake on steroids."....Sen. Kelly Loeffler on Romney: "Wants to appease the left by calling witnesses who will slander President Trump during their 15 minutes of fame."....Mike Huckabee on the Ukraine whistleblower: "That is dishonorable, it's dishonest, it's disgusting, and people like that shouldn't be listened to."....Trump on former national security adviser John Bolton: "If I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now."....The View co-host Joy Behar: "It feels like the administration is loaded with bullies...Barr is a bully...Pompeo is a bully. Trump himself is a bully. It's like an organized-crime organization."....NYT columnist Wajahat Ali on Trump: "A cruel vulgarian who debases everyone."....Romney on Trump: "He has made a career out of trashing people by tweet."....Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas on D.C. Trump Hotel lobby: "Like one big cesspool."....Joe Scarborough on Ken Starr: "He literally dragged the corpse of irony out of the grave. He meticulously tied the corpse's neck bone to the back of a tractor, and he ran that tractor throughout the graveyard of stupidity and ran over every headstone before once again kicking dirt on the corpse of irony, again."........................

  • January 23, 2020

    ........................Laurence Tribe: "I had assumed the president's legal team would be reluctant to tell outright lies in front of the Chief Justice. I was wrong...Doofuses."....Trump: "Do you think that Adam Schiff even believes his BullSchiff after lying to the American public for three years?"....Rep. Schiff on Sen. McConnell: "This is not a process for a fair trial. This is the process for a rigged trial."....Laura Ingraham: "The media's covering the 'walking of the articles of impeachment' is the Congressional version of O.J.'s white Bronco chase."....John Dean: "The president's lawyers persistently lied and used false information."....Ann Coulter: "To save money, let's forget about prisons and instead force convicted felons to watch hour after hour of Adam Schiff on TV."....George Conway on impeachment trial: "It's like the New York Yankees versus the Bad News Bears."....Meghan McCain on NYT endorsement of Warren and Klobuchar: "A huge act of cowardice...but at this point, I should expect absolutely nothing less from this garbage publication."....Ralph Nader on Trump: "A miserable person with miserable policies."....Donald Trump Jr. on Hunter Biden: "I did 30 hours of testimony in front of Congress for an unsolicited 20-minute meeting, but he can do that s*** for years and nothing? GTFO."....Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini: "The villainous U.S. government repeatedly says that they are standing by the Iranian people. They lie. If you are standing by the Iranian people, it is only to stab them in the heart with your venomous daggers."....Sen. Chuck Schumer on Trump foreign policy: "Erratic, impulsive, and egotistical."....AZ Sen. Martha McSally in response to CNN's Manu Raju's question about impeachment trial: "You're a liberal hack. I'm not talking to you."....Lev Parnas on lobby of Trump Hotel in D.C.: "Like one big cesspool."....Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway on Parnas interview on The Rachel Maddow Show: "That was a TV show, not a court of law."....radio host Mark Levin on AOC: "Such an embarrassing, barely literate moron."....HRC on Bernie Sanders: "Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him."....Trump on HRC: "Nobody likes her."....Fox News' Tucker Carlson: "I want to live in a world where impressive people rise to the top and unimpressive people should be parking my car. [CNN host] Brian Stelter should be parking my car."....Sean Hannity producer Lynda McLaughlin on Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle: "She is very uppity. She is one of those liberal elitists, you know...She's one of those liberals who doesn't work...My heart does not bleed for you, sweetheart. It just doesn't."........................