This Weak in Politics Vol. XXXIV
July 28, 2016
If John Le Carre wrote a script based on this week, it could not be made into a movie — first, because it would be impossible to find an actor with sufficiently small hands to portray Donald Trump, but second, and more importantly, it would be too fantastical to be credible.
In case you have been living under a rock, or get your news from Fox News (motto: we haven’t sexually harassed anyone in days!) you are aware that it is an almost certainty that Russian government hackers are responsible for the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, and that the timing of their release was meant to throw the democratic nominee’s general election campaign into a tailspin. The source of the leaks is almost certainly foreign, as every American knows that historically, the Democratic nominee’s general election campaign always throws itself into a tailspin. There are even some, we won’t say who, (but their emails were recently hacked and they are currently gathered in Philly) who are feeding a narrative that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s ties to Russia give him access and
connections to powerful people who could help orchestrate such a hack and release. Notably, Paul Manafort, whose client list is a virtual who’s who of tyrants, (outlined in this brilliant piece) having worked for Putin allies, tyrants and Donald Trump, though we’ve repeated ourselves.
Trump, who has not dominated the news for nearly 5 days, was desperate to get back in to the news cycle and decided the best way to do that and to get Democrats off message was to casually suggest to Russia that they should hack Hillary Clinton’s potentially classified emails. The response of experts in the field was swift and uniform:
Even Governor Mike Whatshisface, Trump’s running mate (at least for now) sought to distance himself. In his defense, we are certain the Governor was caught off guard. How on earth could he know that the man who thinks Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK would be prone to occasionally going off message?
When questioned about whether he had any qualms about asking a foreign government to hack into an American’s communication system, Trump told the reporter to “be quiet.” This could easily be written off as Trump being Trump…however, in this case, the reporter was the esteemed and highly regarded @KatyTurNBC!
As an outlet that holds high journalistic standards,* we at TWITPOL are profoundly offended and would like very much to personally apologize to @KatyTurNBC on behalf of Trump, America, Russia and just about anyone else who may ever have offended or ever will offend her. Because we care. The animosity toward Tur (as in @KatyTurNBC) was so great that there are unconfirmed reports that Trump supporters were chanting “Lock Tur up! Lock Tur up!”
*Technically speaking we at TWITPOL do not have “high journalistic standards,” as we are not really journalists and we do not have standards. We have, however been high…though that was long ago.
We will not get into extended convention coverage here, for reasons explained below. That being said, we do need to address the huge, existential crisis Democrats have been faced with at this year’s convention: how can they ever fill the void left when Susan Sarandon tweeted “I’m out,” from the convention floor? Especially considering Scott Baio is already spoken for.
Democrats, eager to take advantage of the youth vote that was so ginned up by 74-year-old Bernie Sanders, did their utter best to appeal to millennials throughout the convention and most notably on Wednesday night. They did so by having Joe Biden, elected to the Senate in 1972, Jerry Brown, first elected governor in 1974, Leon Panetta, first elected in 1976, and Mike Bloomberg, who invented the printing press in 1440, bought Manhattan with $72 in trinkets in 1626, and played Dietrich on the TV series Barney Miller from 1974–1982, address the convention. (You really do learn a lot here at TWITPOL, don’t you?). Bloomberg, an Independent delivered the line of the night, a resounding endorsement of Hillary when he said “vote for the sane, competent” candidate. The contrast could not be clearer.
Following Bloomberg’s speech, Lenny Kravitz took the stage to bring the energy level in the hall back up. This is a task that comes naturally to Kravitz — as he generally goes balls out in his performances.
Newly minted Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine (D-NJ)* addressed the convention next and didn’t even have the decency to speak American for the entirety of the speech — so much for trying to appeal to Republicans. And for diehard liberals, the fact that Kaine didn’t actually perform an abortion or a same sex marriage on the stage is proof positive that he is insufficiently progressive for their (and Susan Sarandon’s) tastes.
*We are told that, despite what Donald Trump says, Kaine was not the Governor of New Jersey, and as such did not do a terrible job as Governor of New Jersey — that was Chris Christie. It remains unclear at this time if Trump mistook Tim Kaine for former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, mistook Virginia for New Jersey, or read that Tim Kaine once had a new jersey.
Outside of the convention, there was some less than good news for Democrats —for instance, the battle for the title of skeeviest person in American politics, a heavily contested category with a field dominated by Rudy Giuiliani, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the Democrats now have an ass in the race. Alan Grayson. How skeevy is he? Chuck Schumer urged him to drop out of his US Senate bid. When Chuck Schumer asks a wealthy Democratic senate candidate to drop out of a race, well…look out Rudy Giuliani.
To be fair, Grayson has been an able contender for the title for over a decade, but he has now upped his game to rivaling a-nominee-urging-Putin-to-hack-political-opponents-communications levels.
And that is the news this week from Philadelphia, Moscow and wherever Alan Grayson comes from.
Note: If you were looking for more extensive convention coverage, be quiet. And stop being so f@#$ing greedy. We already did one edition on the convention and we will do another tomorrow.
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