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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August 7, 2025
....Trump on Epstein inquiry: "The whole thing is a hoax...total bullshit."....Trump on windmills: "They're killing us...The whole thing is a con job."....Trump on Democrats: "Country-hating THUGS...THEY ARE EXTORTIONISTS!...The Dems are CRAZED LUNATICS!!!"....Trump on Rupert Murdoch and WSJ: "I'm going to sue his ass off, and that of his third-rate newspaper."....Trump on Josh Hawley: "A second-tier senator."....Scott Galloway: "If Trump brought half the competence, expertise, and elegance to governance as he does to grifting, the country would be in a much better place."....Fox host Megyn Kelly on Stephen Colbert: "He desperately wanted to be Keith Olbermann. And guess what? Keith Olbermann is a failure, and now so are you, Stephen Colbert."....Maureen Callahan on Colbert: "He is such a schoolmarm. He is such a hectoring, humorless lecturer."....Trump on Rep. Jasmine Crockett: "Very low-IQ person."....Laura Ingraham on Crockett: "Having a law degree doesn't mean you're smart."....Trump on Rep. AOC: "She's very low-IQ, and we really don't need low-IQ. Between her and Crockett, we're going to give them both an IQ test and see who comes out best."....Trump on CBS co-host Gayle King: "[Her] career is over...No talent, no ratings, no strength!"....Trump on French President Macron: "What he says doesn't matter."....Memes reposted by Trump: "It's time to indict Obama the traitor!" "Joe Biden's presidency was the biggest scam in U.S. history."....WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on NPR and PBS: "These are not honest news organizations."....Matt Taibbi on NPR: "National Propaganda Radio."....Lev Parnas: "Trump's favorite lie: that he was the victim of a deep state conspiracy."....Pete Buttigieg: "The President sees a bad jobs report, and responds by getting rid of the person in charge of the statistics. This is how America becomes a third-rate country."....Sen. Ron Wyden: "Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books."....Dan Rather on Trump: "Changes course more often than he changes his socks."....Tina Brown on Andrew Cuomo: "Has the air of a man on his way to a colonoscopy."....White House on South Park depiction of Trump in bed with Satan: "No fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak."....Jason Kander: "You know that scene in an action movie when the bad guy runs through the kitchen of a restaurant and pulls down all the pots and pans behind him to slow down his pursuers? We're in that part of the Trump presidency."....
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July 14, 2025
....Trump on Jeffrey Epstein: "Somebody that nobody cares about."....Laura Loomer: "How come we can't talk about what a dumb lying bimbo Pam Blondi is?...How many more times is this woman going to get away with F-ing everything up before she is fired?"....Trump on Rosie O'Donnell: "She is a threat to humanity."....O'Donnell in response: "I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country before you set it ablaze."....Trump on Elon Musk: "50% genius, 50% boy."....Steve Bannon: "Formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the Mook...You're not an American, you're a South African...If we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it's a crime what you did -- among many."....Musk: "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."....Tucker Carlson: "Why are my cities disgusting? I don't even want to go there. It smells like weed and halal food."....CA Gov. Gavin Newsom: "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum' but he's the real scum."....Jonathan V. Last on Trump: "Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power. ICE is more or less a national brute squad."...Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Trump: "Authoritarian leader cult alert...Everybody is folding to his will."....CA Governor's press office on Stephen Miller: "This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution...Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder."....Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: "The death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI."....Dean Blundell on Trump: "An aging, increasingly incoherent, barely upright man."....Maureen Dowd: "Trump, who plays at being king, is not interested in virtue; only in humiliation, conflict, enrichment and revenge."....Tina Brown: "Out of Trump's ass, his ego, and his flawless media intuition, came: Let's bomb the shit out of Fordo."....John Cleese on Trump administration: "This is why dictatorships fail. Dictators always surround themselves with yes-people who are terrified to acquaint the dictator with reality."....Trump on Sen. Rand Paul: "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him."....VP JD Vance: "I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East...The difference is that back then we had dumb presidents."....Andrew Sullivan: "A president who lies about everything all the time is singularly incapable of being a war president. People have to trust your word in a war. But Trump's word is toilet paper."....John Oliver on ICE agents: "These are criminal gangs,...bounty hunters making money for each body they manage to kidnap. They have quotas. You are their income...The USA is sick."....WH Communications Director Steven Cheung: "The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump -- the ultimate peace president -- is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world."....Rep. MTG: "America is the greatest country in the world and I fight the nasty 'America Last' Democrats in Washington to keep it that way."....Trump on Democrats: "I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country."....Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on House passing Trump's BBB: "One big ugly bill...This is a crime scene."....Jonathan Alter: "Might as well tear down the Statue of LIberty and flush Emma Lazarus's poem down the toilet."....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?"....Trump supporter to reporter "We're not stupid. Donald Trump is a genius. That's what the J stands for."....
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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."....