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.

  • May 17, 2017

    David Brooks on Trump: "His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself...Too incompetent to understand his own incompetence...The dangerousness of a hollow man."....Jeff Greenfield: "All the grownups in the world cannot protect us from the man-child in the White House."....Ross Douthout: "A child cannot be president."....Trump on WH spokespeople Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "They don't know me."....Senior Trump Administration official re recent revelations: "I don't see how Trump isn't completely f***ed."....Wall Street Journal on Trump White House: "Weeks of pointless melodrama...Loose lips sink presidencies."....Title of Michael Moore Trump doc: "Fahrenheit 11/9."....Ann Coulter on GOP Congress: "They are swine."....Sen. Rand Paul on Russia investigation: "The whole thing has been propagated by people who are upset they lost the election...They think they'll eventually find something. But everything is built upon a huge myth."....Michelle Goldberg on Trump presidency: "Corrupt and degenerate."....Amy Davidson on Trump: "A selfish liar, and a vain one."....Televangelist Jim Bakker: "These people mocking the president, the words they use, the speech they use, that's the spirit of Antichrist. That's the spirit of hatred."....Jack Welch on Trump: "On the right agenda, with crappy management practices."....David Axelrod on Trump as a boss: "You wind up looking like a liar or a fool."....Sen. Bob Corker on Trump White House: "Obviously, they're in a downward spiral right now."....Trump on Washingtonians: "A small group of failed voices who think they know everything and understand everyone and want to tell everyone else how to live and what to do and how to think."....Andrew Sullivan: "There is evidence that the president knows close to nothing about the world."....Mika Brzezinski on Kellyanne Conway interviews: "Politics porn."....Fox News' Tammy Bruce mocking autistic child who asked Mike Pence to apologize for banging into him: "I guess we're giving birth to snowflakes now."....Sean Spicer on Town Hall protesters: "The Tea Party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid, Astroturf-type movement."....Rush Limbaugh on Trump Resistance: "We work and don't have time to protest, but that is their job...They've got donors like George Soros that will pay people a pretty good living wage with health care to become professional protesters."....Spurs coach and former intelligence officer Gregg Popovich on Trump: "There's a cloud, a pall, over the whole country in a paranoid, surreal sort of way...It's got to do with the way one individual conducts himself. And that's embarrassing...It's dangerous."....Trump on Comey: "He is a showboat."....Randy Rainbow: "Showboat? Those are harsh words coming from the Titanic."....
  • May 12, 2017

    Trump on Comey: "A showboat. He's a grand-stander."....Jeffrey Toobin on Comey firing: "This is not normal. And it's not American...This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies."....Joe Scarborough on Trump: "The fish rots from the head."....Trump on media: "Fake media is working overtime...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses."....Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Trump: "Takes us for chumps...He's attempting a coup. No joke."....Trump on Trump-Russia investigation: "A made-up story."....William Saletan: "The White House is lying."....Michael Tomasky on Trump: "The only people in the world he's truly praised are dictators."....Trump biographer Gwenda Blair on Comey firing: "The shamelessness of it is stunning, and stunningly consistent. He's thinking 24-7 how to move the chess pieces around to benefit himself."....Former Trump publicist Alan Marcus: "His whole pattern of conduct is exactly what he did here -- ready, fire, aim. He just doesn't stop and think."....Deputy WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Comey: "Basic atrocities."....Trump on Stephen Colbert: "A no-talent guy...There's nothing funny about what he says."....Samantha Bee on Trump White House: "A slow-motion clusterf**k of impulsiveness and ineptitude."....John Cassidy on Trump: "Has acted like one of the authoritarian leaders he so admires -- a Putin, an Erdogan, or an El-Sisi."....Trump construction boss Artie Nusbam: "This is who he is. No morals, no nothing. He does what he does."....Trump on CNN's Don Lemon: "Perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting."....Rosie O'Donnell on Trump: "You are a sadistic man."....
  • May 9, 2017

    VP Mike Pence on the U.S. military: "Hollowed out."....FBI Director James Comey on WikiLeaks: "Intelligence porn."....Trump on John Dickerson's Sunday morning program: "I love your show. I call it 'Deface the Nation.'"....Stephen Colbert on Trump: "The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's c**k holster."....Putin on Russia election hacking: "It's just rumors used in an American domestic political battle."....Trump: "The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign."....Glenn Beck on Colbert: "You have become me, circa 2009. Stop it. Stop it."....Laura Clawson on Trumpcare: "Will again make being a woman a pre-existing condition."....Trump: "The Fake News media is officially out of control. They will say or do anything in order to get attention."....Right Side Broadcasting Network host Nick Fuentes: "Who runs the media? Globalists. Time to kill the globalists...I want the people that run CNN to be arrested and deported or hanged."....David Remnick: "Trump's way of lying is not a joke; it is a strategy, a way of clouding our capacity to think, to live in a realm of truth."....NRA leader Wayne LaPierre on America's greatest domestic threat: "Academic elites, political elites, and media elites...They'll seemingly stop at nothing, including tearing apart our country."....Trump: "Much of the media is fake and almost always negative."....Tomi Lahren: "Americans stand up and fight for faith, family, and freedom. Syrians run away."....Trump on Obamacare: "It's dead!"....Ann Coulter on Trump: "When your main complaint is that the other side is gloating too much, maybe you're not that great a negotiator."....Lewis Black on Steve Bannon: "He looks like I feel when I have a hangover."....
  • May 1, 2017

    Trump on House and Senate: "An archaic system...Slow-moving...Really a bad thing for the country...You're really forced into doing things that you would not normally do."....NRA leader Wayne LaPierre on mainstream media: "Utterly dedicated to destroying not only our country but also Western Civilization."....CIA Director Mike Pompeo on WikiLeaks: "Walks like a hostile intelligence service, and talks like a hostile intelligence service...Their currency is clickbait, their moral compass, nonexistent."....Sen. Elizabeth Warren grading Trump's first 100 days: "F."....Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Trump: "Erraticness and lack of real competence."....Trump on Schumer: "A bad leader...Going around making a fool of himself."....Mark Cuban on Trump: "An idiot...We can change tax law. We can't change stupid."....Chelsea Handler on Trump: "Please don't let some boring hobby like being president get in the way of your golf glory."....Alex Jones on reporters: "You are dehumanizing me and my children. You are dehumanizing yourselves."....Former Harry Reid chief of staff Adam Jentleson on Trump: "Has folded like a lawn chair at the slightest hint of pressure...Getting played like a violin by enemies like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un."....Judge Jeanine Pirro: "We are good people! The people on the left who are demonizing us, they are not."....Trump on Dems: "The party of obstruction. They are only interested in themselves."....David Gergen on Trump PA rally: "The most divisive speech I've ever heard from a sitting American president...Deeply disturbing."....NRA leader Wayne LaPierre on Bernie Sanders: "A political predator of young voters who were lied to by school teachers and college professors."....Christian Bale on Trump: "It's like we're watching somebody reading a 'Dictatorship for Dummies' book."....Steve Bannon on media: "The ultimate symbol of what's wrong with this country. It's just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***ing idea what's going on."....Trump on Canada: "They've outsmarted our politicians for many years."....Mexican politician Armando Rios Piter on Trump: "A bluffer."....Tomi Lahrer on Bill Nye: "A washed-up nutcase."....Ann Coulter on the Sierra Club: "Just another left-wing, hate-America interest group."....
  • April 21, 2017

    CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Wikileaks: "Walks like a hostile intelligence service, and talks like a hostile intelligence service...Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators today."....Trump on HRC: "She was guilty on every charge."....Richard Wolffe on Trump: "Has made the awesome transition from...a man who bluffed and blustered his way in TV debates to a man who bluffs and blusters his way through international crises."....Howard Stern on Sean Spicer: "The guy's just not informed...[He speaks] fluent moron."....Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in response to Andrea Mitchell's shouted question in a meeting room: "Who was bringing you up? Who was giving you your manners?"....Keith Olbermann on Trump: "You are a jackass. You are President Jackass."....GOP strategist Ana Navarro on Trump: "Attracts some of the shadiest, darkest, weirdest people around him."....Donald Trump, Jr. on Duquesne University students opposed to Chick-Fil-A on campus: "Luckily these students won't likely have to tackle issues more stressful than a yummy chicken sandwich in their lives."....Chelsea Handler: "I'm not a doctor, so I can't claim Donald Trump has syphilis, because of laws. But as the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably f***ed some questionable models in the '80s."....Jonah Goldberg: "When people say 'Let Trump be Trump' they mean let Trump's id run free."....Larry King on Trump administration: "One of the most ridiculous presidencies I've ever seen."....