112 Comments
User's avatar
billyquaide's avatar

This photo shows that even with a full side view Rachael Maddow's entire mouth can be seen facing the camera.

She's been talking out of the side of her mouth for so many years now it just decided to stay that way.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I have it on good authority that Hulk Hogan put JD Vance in a sleeper hold last night and is now the holder of the VP Championship belt. As long as Ric Flair isn't in the crowd tonight waiting to slap on the Figure 4, Hogan will carry the belt to November.

TRUMP/HOGAN 2024

MAKE THE EIGHTIES GREAT AGAIN!

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

MAKE THE EIGHTIES GREAT AGAIN!

Classie Freddie Blassie for the win:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkB_CFi9row

Expand full comment
Pinebeetle's avatar

That describes rachel madcow exactly!

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

She's a pencil neck, alright.

Expand full comment
Pinebeetle's avatar

I'm trying to unsee how they're looking at each other but I can't.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I can't let fred blassie go by without including one of the weirdest docs ever filmed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWCJM8wvcg8&t=1391s

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

I recall watching that back when. Also this companion piece on Letterman (which was an entertaining show in the 1980s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jUbX2wSR4

Expand full comment
druzus's avatar

JD Vance wears more eyeliner than The Undertaker.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

He likely has the gene that gives people twice as many lashes as average people.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

Genetics aside, a guy like Vance ought to be given three times as many lashes as average people. And shirtless, of course.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

I like my politicians to keep their clothes on, personally.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

Obviously you're not a Republican.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

i noticed that too.

he very goth

Expand full comment
Nowhere Man's avatar

Putting on my copy of "The Wrestling Album" now to get hyped.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Fun fact: Hillbilly Jim wrote the foreword to "Hillbilly Elegy".

Expand full comment
Nowhere Man's avatar

A little on the nose but I'll allow it.

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

dont go messin w a country boy!

Expand full comment
Coco McShevitz's avatar

And all these years I thought it was Uncle Cletus!

Expand full comment
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

lolol

Expand full comment
ERIN REESE's avatar

The live chat community is great on Rumble! (Surely on YouTube as well.) Good, smart folk - and funny as all get out! 🤣

Expand full comment
Ann Batiza's avatar

The disconnect between the "aren't you afraid of what Trump will do?" uniform comment of my very partisan liberal friends and the analysis Matt and Walter have provided throughout this convention could not be more different. It shows the power of information delivered with integrity and nuance versus the rote repetition of talking points. Thank you, Matt and Walter. As usual, I learned something and enjoyed the experience immensely while listening to you.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

"...It shows the power of information delivered with integrity and nuance versus the rote repetition of talking points."

Uh-huh.

Expand full comment
William Taylor's avatar

Yet, here you are.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

Here I am.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

Well, that happened. Donald Trump just did American voters--at least the ones not under a hypnotic spell--a huge favor, by publicly demonstrating beyond all doubt what an empty suit blowhard con man he really is.

Trump could have quit the stage after 20 minutes, and gone out on a roll. But no-o. He had to give the vast viewing audience one of his unabridged stump speeches.

As with the Biden-Trump debate, I want a transcript of every last word of that stem-winder. Every false claim, every disingenuous factoid, every kitchen-sink digression, every mind-numbing rote appeal to patriotism, every expression of phony piety, every 8th grade flunkout history lesson, every fantasyland promise, every self-evident policy contradiction. If that speech had been a drinking game where the audience had to do a shot every time Trump resorted to some sort of superlative- inflation under Biden, the "worst ever"; immigration across the southern border, "the worst in world history"- I'd be needing to write this tomorrow with a hangover. Maybe from a hospital bed, after a stomach pump.

It appeared to me that a sizeable part of the GOP convention audience wasn't quite ready for it, either. I might be wrong, but the crowd shots gave me the impression that at least some of them had never heard The Great Man doing his thing raw and unedited- the full banquet, the way Trump takes his act to the stage at his rallies. Not everyone seemed all that impressed, with good reason. You'd have to be a carny mark to be wowed by that performance. The guy literally does not know when to quit, even when he's ahead. He would not get off the stage. He just had to go full Snake Oil Salesman.

As Matt and Walter have already said many times, Trump's biggest political enablers have always been the Democrats, and the knee-jerk anti-Trump news media. If they hadn't diminished their credibility so much with their panic-driven premature attacks and requirement to make him wrong on the slightest pretext, an appearance like this one would be enough to discredit him permanently, without any need for further comment other than elementary fact-checking. Because, wow, I've never heard anyone launch such a cascade of whopping lies and manic hyperbole from a Presidential nomination convention stage.

Amazingly, Donald Trump came off worse tonight--speaking unopposed, at the celebration of his nomination--than he did in the June 27 debate, where he had Joe Biden as a foil for the purpose of comparison and contrast. (And yes, that's how bad Biden is as the prospective Democratic Party nominee.)

If I was J. D. Vance, after having to sit through that performance, I'd hand back the VP nomination and tell Trump to find someone else. I'm not J. D. Vance, and I doubt he's going to do that. But I hope he has some inkling of what he's in for as VP to a Trump Presidency. Whatever halo he might have been granted as miracle survivor of an assassination attempt has vanished. He's the same old Donald Trump, running true to form. A self-convinced ignoramus.

Expand full comment
Danny H's avatar

Because all politicians prior to Trump never exaggerated, never selectively picked their data, and never painted a picture that suited them. No politician ever, other than Trump, has done that.

Except, you know, all of them.

I have never voted for Trump myself, but rants like this are wearing me thin. We'll see the exact thing happen in the acceptance speech with whoever the DNC runs. It's called politics. They (politicians) are all crooked, they all paint false pictures, and they all play on emotions of their base more than reality. It's theatre, always has been, and probably always will be.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

No. That's Whataboutism. Trump's claims were not an ordinary level of mendacity. I've never heard anyone lie like that on a national stage, and that includes the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Expand full comment
Danny H's avatar

Hmmm....so "you've NEVER heard ANYONE lie like that" (emphasis mine)? Think about what you wrote earlier and what you just stated. Exaggerating to make a point is pretty commonplace, as you've just demonstrated.

What I wrote was not "whataboutism", it was more a comment on politics in general. I'm pretty independent, meaning I think the vast majority of politicians, regardless of party, are just pathological liars. I truly don't mind anyone calling out politicians, in fact I find it entertaining and funny. My problem is when people pick and choose who they call out when in reality most of them should get called on the carpet pretty regularly.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

I said I've never heard anyone [the cogent and reasonable inference being "an American politician"] lie like that on a national stage [i.e., in a nationally broadcast live speech.]

I stand by that statement.

I haven't yet found a copy of Trump's convention address that includes all of his unscripted ad libs, but at one point he said that "we have to stop the invasion into our country that’s killing hundreds of thousands of people a year." That isn't excusable as an "exaggeration." It's someone lying with their bare face hanging out.

Trump told some other lies that are nearly as bad.

Americans have to get their heads straight about this fentanyl crisis. Addicts who are using street opioids as their final resort are being victimized by the cartels. But cartel control of the retail markets in opioids emerged over 20 years ago as a long-term consequence of the War on Drugs, and around 40 years of idiotic Drug War policy was required prior to that in order to empower their criminal monopoly in the first place. Fentanyl didn't just show up 3 1/2 years ago because of the Biden administration's immigration policy, which is another thing Trump is lying about (see my comment elsewhere in the thread.) Furthermore, it's dishonest to imply that illicit drug suppliers are murderers who are 100% responsible for the deaths of American opioid addicts when most of that consumer base initially became addicted to diverted US-made pharmaceuticals, either inadvertently or as a result of their own reckless choices, or through a combination of those two factors. 54% of the nearly 49,000 firearms deaths in 2021 were suicides, but even the most rabid anti-gun propaganda doesn't claim that those deaths are murders by gun manufacturers. In any case, there's never been an opioid overdose death toll--or a combined murder and overdose toll--that comes close to "hundreds of thousands" of annual deaths. It isn't as if the overdose death toll just began in 2021, either https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/cj2022-od-deaths.jpg

but, neener neener I can't hear you MAGA

Expand full comment
publius_x's avatar

Waaah!

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

put-downs like that are stale. It isn't 2002 any more.

I get that it's the best you can do. Especially given the circumstances.

Expand full comment
publius_x's avatar

Actually, you know nothing about me. Your insipid rant complaining about the performance of a man who was shot at less than a week ago sounds somewhat tone deaf. He’s the odds on favorite to be President again, and his detractors have two choices: accept this fact or continue to tilt at windmills and rend garments.

Your life will not be that affected regardless of who the inhabitant of the White House is, but you feel the need to complain. Oh well.

Then again, the initial point stands: “Waaaah!”

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

I know that you don't know how to detect a parade of obvious lies when you hear them.

"The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country"

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/2048/cpsprodpb/13603/production/_119136397_immigration-image.png

"[they] demolished Title 42"

https://borderoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/wola_migration_charts.016.jpeg

"We have an INFLATION CRISIS that is making life unaffordable, ravaging the incomes of working and low-income families, and crushing our people"

https://www.techopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-27-at-17.53.01.png

https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1310000/1312060-blank-355.png

"I gave the biggest tax cut in history, bigger than the Reagan Tax Cuts, but I am going to lower taxes still further."

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/max_650x650/public/images/user5/imageroot/CRFB%20debt%20chart.jpg?itok=yTUYFfOK

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/11/3/3-15097121978646705_origin.png

etc. Just getting started, there.

You also obviously think that being a Winner leaves someone immune to criticism. Because Winner. Winner.

Expand full comment
publius_x's avatar

How about this cavalcade of lies:

Men can get pregnant.

There is a Genocide in Gaza.

One cannot define what a woman is without being a biologist.

No servicemen or women died under Joe Biden’s watch.

Absentee balloting is as legitimate and secure as in person voting.

Post-pubescent males have no advantage in sports when competing against females.

Islam is a religion of peace.

If you take the COVID vaccine you can’t get the virus or transmit it.

Covid began in a wet market not a lab.

Masks prevent Covid transmission.

There are more

Expand full comment
DarkSkyBest's avatar

Thank you for this list, which of course, doesn't come close to the final copy.

Entities like the subject below are not stupid. They are captured. But they do earnestly believe the non-compliant population are beyond hope. "Deplorable?" "Clingers . . . ?"

And now. Their governance sucks so bad, and the legacy media have been exposed as such liars, well . . . What's left.

Watching the final Racket News RNC wrap-up, you guys are the best.

I was touched by WK's grace toward Trump. Makes sense to me, but then ---- I never did think he was Hitler. Maybe that's MY problem.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

I get that it's all-important for you to shift the debate to topics where you feel like you're on firmer ground. But all of those statements are your narrative framings, not verbatim quotes of claims asserted by Joe Biden as facts.. I'm not taking that bait.

If you can find me some statements by Joe Biden himself in his exact words, then we can discuss each one of them on their merits to make a determination of which ones are disputable, which ones are false, which ones are mistaken, and which ones are obvious lies on their face. But for each quote you bring up by Biden, I get to bring one up by Trump.

Donald Trump relies on boldly asserted lies in regard to the cornerstones of governance- the economy, the debt and deficit, tax policy, crime, immigration, energy policy- to pitch his candidacy. I've caught Democratic Presidential candidates out in lies before. But I refuse to outline specific examples in this reply, because that would redirect the conversation away from Trump's thoroughly unapologetic fake scaremongering demagoguery, which you refuse to acknowledge.

It's clear to me that you'd rather do anything rather than have to defend any of the blatant lies in Trump's speech.

Expand full comment
BeardTree's avatar

You forgot the whole Russiagate escapade and that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and Biden has been at good functionality until quite recently.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

Why would Vance quit at this stage? He's one Peter Thiel phone call away from the highest office in the land.

Expand full comment
Sevender's avatar

TL/dr

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

why am I not surprised? Is that even a cut any more? Was it ever?

But, let me guess, you made it all the way through Trump's oration.

If you didn't, I don't blame you. Rest assured that my little essay (est. silent reading time 2 minutes, 10 seconds) was nothing, compared to his speech.

I stuck it out all the way to the end, half out of a sense of journalistic duty and half out of a sense of disbelief. Trump sounded like a barfly who had just tried Adderall for the first time.

Expand full comment
Ken Braun's avatar

These have been fantastic. Far better than any TV chatter.

Expand full comment
Raymond Miller's avatar

The worst campaign acceptance speech in US history. Rambling and boring. He started well and crashed. We just experienced worst incumbent POTUS debate, followed by worst press conference, followed by “bullseye not crosshairs” comments, a failed assassination attempt and now the leading candidate tells me our beautiful capital is a killing field. What happened? Is it too much to have a normal candidate? Heck I disagree with his politics the most, but prefer JD Vance the best when included with the two top candidates. Maybe the speech was planned. A last ditch effort to keep Biden in the “whatever this is called” show of 2024. It’s not an election; it’s a Truman show satire sketch of modern politics featuring a reality TV star masquerading as a politician.

Expand full comment
Nowhere Man's avatar

Never thought I'd ever say this in my life ever ever, but, it could have used more Kid Rock.

Expand full comment
publius_x's avatar

Tell me more about Taft’s speech, Mr historian.

Expand full comment
Sevender's avatar

Riveting. We’ve all been starving for this prosy jeremiad lo these past 8 years.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

oh. you noticed, too?

Expand full comment
Spiderbaby's avatar

Sorry, I bailed before An Assassination Tale ended.

After Kitsch Rock's attempt to "attract the kids(?)" by lip-synching(?) a Trump opus of his own creation my cringe bone dislocated & I had to seek medical attention.

Sorry, but "the hope of world" seems to be about 15 minutes behind Cabbage Head Joe on the "old man who can't read the room" scale.

Luckily Kamala "The 3rd Wheel" Harris is such a deep & penetrating thinker.

In other words, the 3 Stooges of 2024 have to be the biggest indicator that it's time to stick a fork in America's fat fucking ass cause she's done.

How the liberal class look at Trump & see Hitler is further beyond me than it ever was in the past.

If Hitler gave Trump style speeches they'd be calling them Nuremberg Naps instead of Rallies.

Expand full comment
David Cashion's avatar

American Badass, blasting to all corners of the country.

Expand full comment
Nowhere Man's avatar

They're Bad, They're Nationwide.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

A blues man in the back and a beautician at the wheel.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

I am catching up with commentary this morning. Fabulous! Here is an observation.

I think it's safe for me to say this, because I'm a woman and I know very competent female reporters.

The MSNBC fun house mirrors of reporting and clueless commentating on events they are not physically witnessing reminds me of out-to-lunch female ESPN commentators.

Major NHL plays and penalties are happening second-by-second and they are reporting on what goalie, Marc Andre Fluery, bought his wife for Valentines Day.

It's that level of ridiculous.

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

Well ... don't leave me hanging. What did he buy her?

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

I have no idea. I was so livid that they missed a penalty call.

I get animated over hockey games.

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

My wife is an avid NHL fan. We used to go to a lot of Sharks games during the 2000s and 2010s. She used to hate the fighting. Now if I say "fight" she runs over to watch. But, much as she likes the game, the number one thing she likes is how cute the players are, and she judges the wives and girlfriends. I know it's stupid, but she does. We went to several fund raisers where the players and (sometimes) their wives/girlfriends would also attend. My wife lived for that stuff, and she'd probably miss the same call.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

Well, I'm a Minnesotan, so we hang on every call.

I often said, in another life I may have been a sports reporter. More like Audra Martin (sans bucksome blonde) or a Gigi Marvin, I used to skate, but I'm so old, I'd break a hip and die a year later. 😆

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

Those two young ladies are very easy on the eyes.

Well, good luck next year. The Wild should be good enough to make the playoffs and lose in the first round, so you've got that going for you.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

I know, same with the Vikings, but I love them all. I love livin' up Nort. 😉

Expand full comment
Beyond's avatar

That was actually fun

Expand full comment
RAO's avatar

It really was!

Expand full comment
Run Freedom Run's avatar

The sale of war weapons keeps capital flowing. It is what keeps US stuck. Let's see if we can shift the political economy with a new paradigm, a new Party. I doubt it. As for Obama, other than bailing out the banks, Congress blocked his every good intention and when the Dems were in the majority in one of the 2 Houses, God knows what happened. I tuned out, it was too frustrating. Anyway we've heard promises of repentance before. I'm not getting my hopes up. The JFK assassination broke my trust, even as a child. The American people have to become historians instead of religious ideologues and stop asking Alexa to think for them.

Expand full comment
Ollo Gorog's avatar

There are a lot of negative comments in here about Trump. One thing he did say was to stop demonizing disagreement and dissent, so he'd be okay with those comments. Can the same thing be said about democrats and the liberals? There are many years of documented history that say the answer to that question is a big fat NO!! For many years now, the liberal response to disagreement has been censorship.

Expand full comment
Bernadene Zennie's avatar

Kid Rock, flames on stage. Terrifying actually.

Expand full comment
j juniper's avatar

Rock-n-roll baby!!

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

I thought that went over a little bit flat, really. The politicos have to quit trying so hard to pander to Pop Culture Cred.

I get it, both campaigns are too corny and desperate for supporters to give it up entirely. The Appeal to Superficial Spectacle draws eyeballs. But at some point, you have to give it a rest. I thought I was watching a buildup to the final of American Ninja Warrior. I hope I don't have to endure a similar round of over the top shit when watching the Democratic Party Convention.

Expand full comment
Gilgamech's avatar

Hulk Hogan engaging in the "No True American" fallacy.

Expand full comment
George's avatar

Regarding Alex Wagner's comment about Vance's desire to be buried next to generations of his ancestors ... Walter nailed it, 100%. People hear this kind of garbage and it motivates them to vote for Trump, and kiss the Blue Team goodbye for ever. Beyond the sclerotic, at times comatose MSNBC viewers--no wonder they're sticking with Joe!--there is an audience for this kind of stuff. Having spent many years with one foot in academia, I can assure you that one hears this kind of crap on a daily basis. These people are ideologues, in a way Stalin would have instantly recognised. Wagner was appealing to them in a similar way that Malcolm Gladwell did during a debate with Matt about the media. You can't really blame them, though. They ain't got much to sell besides identity politics.

Expand full comment
ELKFLA's avatar

As James Carville said; "A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females … ‘Don’t drink beer, don’t watch football, don’t eat hamburgers, this is not good for you,'” he said. “The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.'”

Or, as my late mother would have said, those folks are so tight assed,, they probably don't poop bigger than a pencil.

Expand full comment
Sevender's avatar

40% of American babies are raised by proud strong women who don’t need no man to raise emasculated cucks, gang bangers, DSM fisherman’s platters and welfare queens.

Expand full comment
feldspar's avatar

DSM fisherman's platters! Get the fuck outta here with that one.

Expand full comment
David Burse's avatar

I never met her, but I like your mom

Expand full comment