Tag: Basket of Deplorables

It’s the Stupid, Stupid

Buck Banks

“Yes, Trump and his accomplices are malicious. Yes, they’re corrupt. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also profoundly stupid, and their stupidity is hurting or worrying a lot of people who voted for Trump. … So here’s my pitch: To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence.”

— Will Saletan

Gaetz Nomination Shocks Justice Department Officials

Buck Banks

“I’m struggling to find words. And look, he is uniquely qualified. How many other prospective attorneys general had previous experience as the subject of a criminal investigation?”

— An anonymous Justice Department official reacting to “President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Matt Gaetz — a Florida congressman who was recently the target of an FBI investigation — to be the next attorney general of the United States,” reports NBC News.

The Presidency Brought Trump ‘Rich Friends’

Buck Banks

“The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had to do it again, would you have done it?’ The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”

— Donald Trump, saying the “rich friends” he acquired from his presidency made it all worth it to him, according to Maggie Haberman’s upcoming book, the HuffPost reports.

Texts Show Hannity Acted as Advisor to Trump

Buck Banks

80

“Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Fox’s Sean Hannity exchanged more than 80 text messages between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration, communications that show Hannity’s evolution from staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump’s election lies to being ‘fed up’ with the ‘lunatics’ hurting Trump’s cause in the days before January 6,” CNN reports. “Throughout the logs, Hannity both gives advice and asks for direction, blurring the lines between his Fox show, his radio show and the Trump White House.”

The Human Wreckage of the Trump Years

Buck Banks

“Every presidential administration chews up and spits out one or two people. There are always guys who enter an administration looking like normal, upstanding citizens and exit having been revealed as hucksters, frauds, or criminals. G. Gordon Liddy. Pat Buchanan. Cap Weinberger. John Poindexter. Sometimes the people who get rendered by a president are good guys who catch a bad break, like Mike Espy. … But the sheer number of people who had their lives and/or careers destroyed over four years of swimming in Donald Trump’s slipstream is kind of staggering.”

— Jonathan Last