This is how Trumplandia is governed. Shelton Bumgarner
by Shelton Bumgarner @bumgarls
I had a minor tempest-in-a-teapot run-in on Twitter with The New York Time’s Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman. She sniffed – in so many words — that I was a hayseed rube in a flyover state who did not know how REAL journalism was practiced. It says a lot about my personal relationship to power I have a lingering resentment over this little minor event. It’s not like I have any recourse. She’s got fame, ACCESS, power and the respect of her peers.
All I got is a novel I’m trying to write.
Anyway, the whole point of that was to bring up something I feel Haberman gets so very, very, very wrong about Trump. Trump is a doofus. He’s a moron. Something is mentally wrong with him and he lacks any sense of empathy. As Benjamin Wittes of the Lawfare blog quipped once, Trump’s “ambivalence is only mitigated by his incompetence.” Trump won the political lottery of a lifetime. Someone like him was probably going to pop up between 2016 and 2024 do to macro socio-economic trends in the United States. Trump just happened to the would-be president of Sharknato who happened to jump in at just the moment.
You could, of course, make the case that Trump got a little help from his Russian friends along the way. But in real terms, just won because of dumb fucking luck.
The Dear Leader
Haberman and her fellow access journalists simply can not process that Trump is simply a doofus — nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner. They probably feel that if they accept that Trump is just a very lucky Right Wing celebrity Twitter troll then their own investment in their person ascent to power is somehow invalidated. They have a vested interest in making me believe that Trump’s latest clusterfuck is really him subtly messing white women ages 24-35 in the exurbs of Phillie.
There’s no there there when it comes to Trump’s acumen. Yeah, he’s an adept marking and branding guy. And he has a celebrity’s knack for knowing an intended audience. But to suggest he has some sort of native political acumen is an insult to my intelligence.
One need go no further than what’s going on at this very moment. Trump is such a fucking moron that he not only waited 24 hours to do the exact same thing that Mueller’s poor “optics” in front of Congress pardoned him for, he bragged about it on the very phone call! Then was so clueless that instead of slow walking the release of the damaging information until sometime early next year, he releases it so House Democrats had time to find their backbones and start the impeachment process with time to spare before the ever-critical 2020 primaries.
Trump is so stupid on a political level that instead of taking the L with impeachment and laughing all the way to acquittal in the Senate, he is actively doing everything in his power to produce the conditions for his fate being decided by extra-political means. By this I mean anti-impeachment violence. Of course, that problem goes hand in hand with the real likelihood he’s going to snap on a mental level at some point during the impeachment process.
So, Maggie Haberman, spare me the ever-so-serious tweets about Trump’s fucking political genius. He’s a doofus and your willingness to trade access for any semblance of journalistic independence is enough to make me smirk whenever I hear one of your peers tout your journalistic abilities.
Bill Barr continues to be very, very quiet. I can only assume he’s going to wait until just the right moment to hand down a slew of criminal referrals that “prove” Trump’s fucking batshit insane Ukraine-Democrat conspiracy theory as the “real” origin of the Mueller investigation.
Trump’s obsession with this fucking bonkers conspiracy theory is yet another reason why we have to begin to accept that while Trump may not be an actual Russian agent, he sure is damn close to one. All I got is his needs and the needs of the Russian government overlap so well — and he’s a very dumb and greedy fucktard — that he really, really wants an excuse to pardon both Manafort and Flynn. What he would get out of this, I don’t know.
The real issue is — how successful would Barr doing this be? Probably initially, it would do exactly House Trump wants it to do — change the media narrative. But after about 24 hours of Maggie Haberman cooing about the political genius of House Trump, it would begin to sink in what an astonishing abuse of power this is.
I say this only because I’m slowly beginning to believe the impeachment train has left the station. I say this in the sense that this isn’t going down like the Mueller Report. We have Trump dead-t0-rights on impeachable behavior. So all the road blocks Trump threw in the path of the impeachment process would not likely work as well as House Trump might believe.
Growing numbers of people are so angry at Trump that the momentum is there to at least impeach him. I still think strictly on a political level, he’s going to be acquitted. But we’ve just started this process. Things are likely to grow extremely surreal on any number of levels before we finally find out Trump’s fate.
But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I still can’t get a handle on the endgame in any meaningful manner. It’s anybody’s ballgame at this point.
Can’t impeach Trump if you’re talking about the whistleblower, now can you? Shelton Bumgarner
by Shelton Bumgarner @bumgarls
When last we saw the rabid racist misogynist mob that is MAGA, they were teeheeing about learning the identity of the Trump whistle blower. As is my nature, I assumed the absolute worst-case scenario. And, as is also often the case, that worst-case scenario did not happen.
For the moment, outside of bullshit echo-chamber of the extreme Far Right, the Whistleblower continues to enjoy a measure of “practical obscurity.” This likely to change at any moment, however. I suspect what may be happening is two things. One, for the moment cooler heads have prevailed given that it’s like, a Federal crime and stuff, to out someone like the so-called Orange Crush. But I suspect I’m giving the shit head Republican leadership way, way, way too much credit. They’re probably doing extensive oppo on the guy was we speak.
They already have a few days worth of talking points built-in. Apparently the guy has some job-related connection to both Joe Biden and….gasp…Susan Rice. Republicans just babbling about that at the top of their lungs at every opportunity would cause Maggie Haberman of The New York Times to ever-so-seriously tell hayseed rubes like me in fly overstates that OBVIOUSLY Republicans are winning the impeachment messaging battle and Trump’s political genius shines through yet the fuck again. And, besides, you didn’t even read the link, did you, dipshit.
And that, in itself, may be true to a certain extent. But the issue of how, exactly, the poor guy’s name will be pushed into the mainstream is, in itself, a significant issue. I still think Trump, who has the willpower of a 2-year-old will blurt the name on Twitter one morning and “joke” that MAGA should teach the guy a lesson about crossing House Trump. (Or some sort of bullshit dog whistle nonsense.)
There’s a good chance the guy will be murdered in cold blood by a over zealous MAGA asshole with an AR-15 and then Republicans will have to, at long last, defend Trump murdering someone (indirectly.) They will say that Trump was joking and that he can’t be held responsible for the actions of someone who is obviously mentally unstable. But they will also babble on about how OBVIOUSLY we can’t continue the impeachment proceedings because people are getting hurt.
I would like to think this messaging won’t work but for maybe about 24 hours. As it sinks in what has just happened, you might see that only base-concentric political strategy come back to bite Trump and his sycophantic Republicans in the ass. What good is a cult base if the entire non-cult electorate hates you on an visceral level. I guess Republican Senators will believe that as long as they can get past the primary they still have a good shot in the general. And, of course, they must at least have some hope that a politically pardoned Trump will AGAIN directly meddle in the 2020 election and save their ass that way.
Remember, the moment Trump is acquitted, he’s going to become extremely brazen. He will bribe Electors. He will pardon anyone he wants to pardon. He will indict Joe Biden (or whomever). He will at last be free of any semblance of political restraint. The ICE Camps will be weaponized and he will began to rant about the need for a new Constitutional Convention to “balance the budget.”
I guess the point is, the stakes could not be higher when it comes to impeachment. The Republicans are so craven that they simply will not be able to control themselves now that they now the Whistleblower’s name. It’s just a matter of how and when at this point. They crave the opportunity to “kavanaugh” him to such an extent that Maggie Haberman is writing story after story about the poor guy’s character flaws since birth. The risk is, of course, that things will get out of control because, well, Donald Fucking Trump is a ranting lunatic.
The clock is ticking.
I welcome feedback. If you ain’t got haters, you ain’t poppin.
I love running scenarios in my mind. In fact, I’m kind of obsessed with it. When it comes to impeachment, however, as of right now it’s impossible for me to come up with an endgame. Both possible outcomes have such factual reasons for one to believe they will happen that I’m not going to try to pin down one. Here are both scenarios. You can figure out for yourself which one is more likely at this point.
The Thousand Year Trump
Jan. 20, 2025
Though it was an unusually warm January day, Donald Trump was, as usual, grumpy. Kim Jung Un had walked with him down Pennsylvania Ave in a spirit of world peace. Press Secretary Hugh Hewitt gushed on Fox News that Trump’s friendship with Kim assured “a thousand years” of peace and prosperity across the globe. Trump had finally bested all his opponents — even the Constitution — and was now about to begin his third term. Much of his the mid-part of this second administration had been consumed with a snap Constitutional Convention he had managed to force the convening of under the pretext of a Balanced Budget Amendment.
Of course that was a ruse. The Convention went rouge and radically transformed the Constitution into a Federalist Society wet dream. Among the many “improvements” was his personal ability to run for as many terms as he liked. Trump had weighed not running for a third term because of his age, but his ego, as always, won out. He did decide to name Ivanka his Veep and Don Jr., Sec. of State.
Trump allowed himself a moment of rare introspection. DHS Sec. Stephen Miller was now “disappearing” vocal critics of the House Trump on a regular basis. Miller was building ICE camps so fast it was growing difficult to hide the pictures from the People’s Assembly. The residents of some of the more populous military districts were unhappy, but they were always unhappy. He smirked at the notion of “blue states” and how quaint it seemed now.
Trump had finally crushed The New York Times when Peter Thiel offered Pinch an sum so enormous that he felt forced to sell. Though a lot of the more liberal reporters had left The Times, its new executive editor Maggie Haberman assured that he would get the coverage from the paper that he had so long craved.
The United States was now great. About half the wall had been built to the tune of a $1 trillian. The massive public works had helped ease the nation’s pain during the Second Great Recession. Trump was also pleased that the new Internet PIN was being rolled out. The Kurdish terrorist attacks in LA had helped push that measure through quite nicely.
Trump was at last a man in full. He had absolute power in the United States. He had founded a political dynasty that would last a thousand years. Occasionally Trump would, just to troll FOX News, shoot out a dick pic or tweet the n-word. He needed to do something big soon, Obama’s treason trial was about to be broadcast and he hated the idea of Obama being the center of attention, even it was entertaining to see him in the dock.
Trump was alone at last in the Oval when the door opened. He smiled broadly — Putin would finally get to sit at the Resolute Desk. Trump loved it when a plan came together.
A Dream….Not Delayed
Election Night, 2020
President Nancy Pelosi sighed deeply. She felt she had finally fulfilled her Constitutional duty. She had just finished a brief congratulatory phone call with President-Elect Warren. The two women giggle like school girls as the magnitude of the event sank in.
But the cost had been incredible.
In the end, had not been politics that fell Trump, but Trump himself. Though his mental condition had shown signs of decline before his official impeachment, his problems accelerated after the House passed the measure. Trump, in short, snapped. His tweeting went from objectionable to transational. He began to rant about the size of his genitals. He repeatedly told MAGA to hunt down and murder The Squad.
Republicans had, at first, simply either ignored the situation or said Trump was “joking.” This grew more difficult when members of the Freedom Caucus staged a putsch of sorts by rioting on the House floor and picking off Democrats they did not like with hand guns they had smuggled into the Capitol. The death toll was too large for her to bear to remember.
Though Republicans had attempted to message this tragedy as a sign that the cost of impeachment was too great and it must be stopped immediately, this is not how the nation viewed it.After the National Memorial service for the fallen House Democrats, the pace of impeachment accelerated rapidly.
In the end, it wasn’t even close. Trump was convicted by the Senate. He then held up in the Oval Office for close to three weeks. He was finally physically dragged from the White House under cover of night. Trump’s mental condition had deteratied by that point that he was hospitalized to an effort to stabilize him. Pence was president briefly until the outrage over the attempted Republican putsch in the House grew to powerful even for him.
But that was almost a year ago. President Pelosi had done her best to heal the nation. Her caretaker administration was a who’s who of people who had found themselves in opposition to House Trump. American politics was in total chaos for much of the presidential cycle with both sides struggling with how to deal with the sudden return of liberal democratic norms.
She sighed again.
The Union was again strong. The Republic safe, for now.
I continue to struggle as to what the endgame for this catastrophic clusterfuck is going to be. All things being equal, it would appear that Trump will be impeached and acquitted in the Senate. He will grow even more brazen in his tyranny afterwards with election meddling and Republicans will finally get the Russian-style managed democracy they so desperately crave.
And yet.
Something surreal is going on with Republicans. I can only suspect it has something to do with Trump freaking out at the prospect of getting impeached at all. This is yet another indication that Trump is not, in fact, the political genius that New York Times Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman would have haysee rubes in flyover states like me believe. That he would grow so completely rabid at the idea of even being impeached does not bode well for anyone involved.
So I might suggest that you pause to consider that what may bring down House Trump — and Pence for that matter — may not be impeachment but Trump’s reaction to it. Or, more specifically, it won’t even be Trump’s reaction to it, it will be the violence associated with it. To put it another way, we are racing at an alarming rate towards people dying in a Republican Gotterdammerung strategy. Their thinking is that if they can inflict enough pain on the opposition in guise of people dying that that will cause the whole impeachment process to come to an end. They will make the case that we can’t even impeach Trump because people are dying. This is, of course, a completely fucked up, bonkers line of reasoning that comes more from House Trump believing its own FOX News coverage than anything else.
I find it dubious that if there was some sort of co-ordinated, violent and bloody attack on the part of MAGA truebelivers that average Americans would throw up their hands and give up on impeachment. What’s more likely to happen is the 60% of the population that isn’t MAGA would flip the fuck out. The political ground under the entire House Trump would buckle.
It would not happen right away. Republicans would for about 24 hours tell us all that they can’t be blamed for the actions of “mentally ill” people. The moment, however, that they started to say, “Of course we can’t impeach Trump if people are dying” is the moment they may, for once, face serious political consquences.
Remember there may come a point where the absolute fear of Republican Senators of being primaried from someone on the MAGA Right will equal their absolute fear that they won’t win a general election. It’s that type of high stakes conundrum that leaves me scratching my head. They have no shame and only care about power for power’s sake. So there’s a least a small chance that their high stakes gotterdammerung strategy might not QUITE work out the way they hope.
Who knows. I know I don’t.
The key point is the nation can’t sustain this state of crisis for any long duration of time. The fever is going to break one way or another. Either with people getting hurt or Trump finally be forced out of off, or maybe both. All I know is I hope no one gets hurt. But I’m not going to let insane Republicans cower me into submission either.
I’m a nobody. I’m a failure. A loser. A rube who lives in a flyover state. But I would like to note the obvious — something’s amiss in the House That Ochs Built. The reason why it’s so dangerous to our apparently dying democracy is it’s systemic.
It’s not any one person — even though Maggie Haberman is a notable Trump suck up — but the very institution itself. It’s even more difficult to assess because The New York Times continues to be the premiere news organization in the world. It’s just that consistently since the dawn of Trumplandia the paper has gotten its overall coverage of our mad king wrong.
The reason why this is so dangerous is The Old Gray Lady pretty much sets the daily news agenda for most of the media ecosystem. So when they wilfully engage in the tried-and-true 2016 playbook of acting as though Trump and his minions are acting in good faith — when they clearly are not — that’s a serious, serious problem for the Republic.
If I’m so smart, what would I do differently? Well, I would have a townhall meeting of the entire newsroom and tell them to think of themselves as patriots first and reporters second. If that means burning some bridges so be it. If that means being extra-skeptical of whatever fucked up messaging House Trump is pushing then so be it. One notable example of this recently was when The Times cooed about how much money The Thousand Year Trump was spending on digital buys. That whole thing is political FUD meant to cower House Trump political opponents into thinking all is fucking lost.
Another issue is people like Maggie Haberman idly muse about how it is that Trump does demonstrably stupid things as if there was some other answer than, well, Trump is, in fact, stupid. At this point the only reason why I mention Ms. Haberman is she’s a fun to pick on. Anyone who sucks at the teet of House Trump that much and takes her self so fucking seriously deserves whatever snarky fate she may meet. You know who Maggie Haberman reminds me of? The guy who gave David Letterman the “GE Handshake” when he went to his new bosses with a gift basket.
I don’t know. It’s times like these when I wish Gawker was still around. It would be nice if Nick Denton had his old crew rant against what I’m talking about on a daily basis. It’s all very silly and yet extremely important given the stakes involved.
I love The Times. I just wish they would do better.
I’m not a fan of pretense. I’m also not a fan of people who feel they can be snooty to me because I don’t meet their preconceived metrics. This brings us to Maggie Haberman. The more I about her unnecessary rudeness to me on Twitter the funnier it becomes.
She reminds me of this woman I met through Tinder once who told me very earnestly that I should stop writing, full stop. In her ever-so-well articulated view I was wasting my time and she could convey this opinion with authority because she “worked with creatives” and I sucked and had no future in writing. This was the same woman who got triggered because I posted pictures of hot chicks on my Facebook wall.
Haberman seems like she would be the woman everyone would avoid at a party. Or if I was at the same party with her, I would spend my time eyeing her and preparing to wait for my moment to chat her up in a sly way that would expose her for the pompous ass that she is.
The crazy thing about this is that all the other Times people I’ve met or talked to have been very serious, very professional but also fairly human. They seemed at least willing to humor me when I talked to them. I mean, hell, Jennifer 8. Lee went out of her way to talk to me when she swung by Seoul to work on her book on….fortune cookies*.
Anyway. Now that I have closure I just want to laugh about my little run in. People who use metrics that cause them to look down on me evoke a level of derision that keeps me entertained for some time. I get where she’s coming from — she is the Trump Whisperer afterall. She has it all. Fame. Power. Access. You name it. But she also doesn’t have much humility.
In fact, the only thing that prevents me from making fun of her in a gratuitous manner for days to come is she’s so humorless that she is unlikely to get the joke. So, lulz. You win this round, Ms. Haberman. But I am writing a novel and you can rest assured I’m going to make an allusion to you somehow.
*The article about that event I wrote for ROKon Magazine is reproduced below.
ROKing Sinchon with Jenny 8
Jennifer 8. Lee likes food.
A lot.
Recently, I hung out with the New York Times reporter and her friend Tomoko Hosaka of the Wall Street Journal here in Seoul.
The plan was for her to go to a jimjilbang with Annie Shapiro and ms. tiff, but that didn’t work out. Tomoko wanted to go to eat “Korean barbeque” and since Annie and Tiff are veggies, they were left out. This story was supposed to be about Annie and Tiff taking Jenny to a jimjilbang and getting all nekkid – now that would have been funny – but there are no happy endings in Korea so you get this write-up instead. I took a picture of the two ladies at the restaurant, but they wouldn’t let me use it. I generally think taking pictures of yourself with famous people is kind of lame, so you, gentle reader, will just have to settle for a picture of the fortune cookie I was given. If Annie and Tiff had done the story, maybe the situation would be different.
On the way to the subway, Jenny kept stopping to eat stuff from street vendors. I had to DJ that Friday night and we had to go all the way across town, so I was starting to stress out a little bit.
Again and again, she would ask me what this or that food was offered at street vendors as we headed towards the subway station. I had no clue. “I eat because I have to, not because I want to,” I told her finally. What else could I say?
The fact that I met her is a testament not only to this wacky Internet age that we live in, but how being an expatriate in a place like Korea has its quirky advantages.
I met Jenny ’cause I, well, picked on her middle name online. When I first came to Korea I had way too much drunken spare time on my hands, so I often found myself in bouts of soju-fueled writing binges.
“I can not stress enough how odd it is that Jennifer Lee uses an ‘8’ for her middle name. It’s just totally unheard of. It’s like one of the
columns of Western civilization has suddenly become just a little unstable,” I once wrote. “I don’t care that her name really is ‘Jennifer 8. Lee.’ In
years gone by, an editor would have taken one look at it, eyed the flask of Jack Daniels in his desk drawer then said, ‘Look, kid, I don’t care how
lucky the damn number is, you’re going by ‘Jennifer Lee‘ from now on.'”
Her middle name is a lucky number in Chinese culture. How exactly she was able to keep it in her byline eludes me. The fact that she graduated from Harvard University may have something to do with it.
When this actual famous reporter out of the blue contacted me, it both made me very happy and very nervous. She contacted me because she had read some of the shit I had written about her online and she needed some help finding Chinese restaurants in Korea. She’s on sabbatical from the Times to write a book on, like, the best Chinese restaurants in the world or some such. The first time she contacted me, I suddenly felt kinda bad about all the pointless mental masturbation I expended on her.
It’s funny how you can talk shit about a famous person online, but when you actually meet them you treat them like you would anyone else. While she’s no Maureen Dowd, in some media circles, Jennifer 8. Lee is, in fact, “famous” or “notorious.” For people who read Gawker.com, Jenny is shorthand for a reporter who writes seemingly pointless trend stories about things like “man dates.” She had the odd habit of using the phrase, “people of my generation” in a very authoritative tone, like she literally was speaking for everyone her age. “Jenny, you’re younger than I am,” I said teasingly at least once over galbi.
She actually has a rather bubbly, cute personality. My lone meeting with her did leave some1thing of a mystery in my mind — how is it that someone who, in the words of one article “causes $148,000 in damage to her Washington condo” actually be quite nerdy? What the heck does she do? She is obviously an extremely smart woman and from the little mischievous glint in her eye I can see how she probably loves to host a great party. But like all the great reporters I’ve known, she didn’t seem like much of a extrovert. She was quiet and curious about everything.
I picked her up at the Ritz Carlton. When I met her, she handed me a fortune cookie, while I handed her a copy of ROKon. “Fortune cookies are actually originally from Japan, not China,” Jenny said. It was a huge fortune cookie. It looked like a piece of found art. “I’ll either eat it when I’m drunk or crush it when I’m drunk,” I quipped.
I took the women to Sinchon to my favorite Korean restaurant. I go there so much that I’m like a part of the family. Tomoko seemed a bit uneasy hanging out with little old me, while Jenny was a good sport. I wanted to get Tomoko drunk to loosen her up a bit, but she had an early morning date with the DMZ.
At one point, I felt kinda bad for Tomoko. She’s a fairly important journalist in her own right, and all I did was talk to Jenny.
“I know you went to Harvard, Jenny,” I said invoking the “H-bomb” without meaning to, “But where did you go, Tomoko?”
“Northwestern,” she said with just a touch forlornly.
We talked a long time. I talked up ROKon, while the ladies were more interested in the food than anything I had to say. They’re an intense bunch, those two. I told them about knowing another Wall Street Journal reporter, Lina, but neither of them knew her. They were perplexed that they didn’t know her ’cause she has some connection to the Washington Post. Jenny acted like if there was an Asian who worked in any capacity at the Post, she would know her.
I had of vision of taking Jenny to Nori People and being able to see her shake what her momma gave her to my musical selections, but it was not to be. Jenny couldn’t stay. I did take Tomoko and Jenny there just to show it to her. “Oh, this is fun,” she said. You have to give those New York Times reporters credit, they are an observant bunch.
They left a lot sooner than I’d liked. As I said, I had all these grand plans to show them what a fun time we ROKon staffers were. Jenny promised to show me around New York City if I ever happened to end up there. The more I look at that fortune cookie, though, the more it looks like something that rhymes with “Mulva.”
I was going to shut up about this until I saw someone praise Maggie Haberman “habering” me on Twitter. “Bravo, Maggie,” is the exact quote. The issue is you can “huzzah, grrl power” all you want to, access journalism still sucks.
But why?
Apparently, Ms. Haberman’s argument is by definition journalism requires access and so, well, fuck you. But let me be honest — Ms. Haberman is no better than Trump for putting me on blast to make her point. Punching down is never cool, no matter who you are. So, in a sense, my pique is more about her flex on me than it is the facts. I find that Blue Check Nattering Nabobs have started to do this more often. For some reason, they want to do it to me. This is grating because generally — but not always — they put me on blast after having made a snap, inaccurate judgement about what my tweet was about.
Instead of getting information the easy way by coddling Trump — or whomever — maybe Ms. Haberman should be willing to burn her bridges in the bowels of House Trump if it means she’s able to be more critical of the would-be Thousand Year Trump.
She has her argument and I have mine. She’s powerful, I’m not. I’ll let you make up your own mind. I believe we’re in a crisis. It’s time for the press to forgo cozy relations with the criminal fascist Trump Adminstration and be patriots, to think about the best interests of the nation first.
All I can say is I love to write and fairly cogent in my rhetoric. What’s more, I’m not Ben Shapiro. I actually am working in good faith. And, really, it wouldn’t even be an issue if Ms. Haberman was a bit more polite to in her efforts to defend herself.
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