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.
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January 4, 2023
Rep. Matt Gaetz on Rep. Kevin McCarthy: "If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Freedom Caucus: "They're proving to the country that they don't care about doing the right thing for America...They're just destructionists."....Rep. Lauren Boebert on MTG: "I don't believe in [McCarthy as Speaker], just as I don't believe in Jewish space lasers..."....James Carville on House Republicans: "We're watching them pass around live hand grenades."....Rick Wilson on House: "It's a week-long MAGA Fyre Festival at the pyramid of burning dumpsters in the radioactive waste dump on the peak of Rabid Clown Mountain."....Rep. Lauren Boebert on metal detectors: "When I arrived in Congress two years ago Nancy Pelosi put this hunk of garbage outside of the House chambers for Members of Congress to go through."....Trump lawyer Christina Bobb to Jan. 6 committee: "I'm really, really saddened by what's happening with our country right now. I think Democrats have completely destroyed it."....Trump on Jan. 6 "unselect committee": "There was no insurrection and there wasn't going to be an insurrection. It was made up by these sick people."....Trump: "The Failing New York Times is Fake and Corrupt News. Their motto should be ALL THE FAKE NEWS THAT'S UNFIT TO PRINT. They are the Enemy of the People!"....Trump on the US: "Now we have airports were people can't fly...It's sad when people can't come from New York to Florida. Airports are like -- we're like a third world country."....NY Post editorial on Trump: "Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us 1,438 times, and it may finally be too much."....Rob Reiner: "All you need to know about Trump's tax returns is he f***ed a porn star and wrote it off as a business expense."....Meghan McCain on Trump: "Good luck with the campaign, Cheeto Jesus."....Jimmy Fallon on Trump: "You know your campaign isn't going well when your reelection strategy is, 'Maybe people will like me as a Pokemon.'"....
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December 12, 2022
GOP operative Dan McLagan on Herschel Walker candidacy: "Was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Then an animal shelter."....Fox host Tucker Carlson: "Zelensky is far closer to Lenin that to George Washington. He is a dictator."....Nick Fuentes on the USA: "This is an evil country...We need a dictatorship. We need to take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe."....Sen. Josh Hawley: "The Biden people have tried to turn our government into a left-wing censorship machine."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "In order to bring accountability, we must gut the DOJ."....Laurence Tribe on MTG: "Thank heaven she's dumb as a rock. If she had a brain she'd be even scarier."....Elon Musk: "My pronouns are: Prosecute / Fauci."....Sen. Amy Klobuchar in response: "Could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?"....former CIA director John O. Brennan: "You will be remembered most for fueling public hate and divisions. You may have money, but you have no class."....David Corn: "Paying $44 billion to own the libs is a world record. Congrats."....Fox News' Tomi Lahren on release of Brittney Griner: "I guess it pays to be a whiny celebrity who plays sports (even if no one watches)."....John Bolton: "A huge victory for Moscow over Washington."....Sen. Roger Marshall: "I hope she'll stand for the national anthem."....Rep. Eric Swalwell on Trump: "A legal terrorist."....former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi: "Trump's slippery slope is becoming a luge."....
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November 22, 2022
Eric Trump on appointment of special counsel: "This is communism."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "IMPEACH MERRICK GARLAND!"....Mike Huckabee on Garland: "Partisan tool."....evangelical leader Mike Evans: "Trump can't save America. He can't even save himself. He used us to win the White House."....James Robison of Life Outreach on Trump: "Sir, you act like a little elementary school child..."....commentator Everett Piper on Trump: "If he's our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed."....Michael Wolff: "Mr. Trump's main goal isn't victory. It's holding the spotlight."....Michael Beschloss on Trump announcement: "I've heard funeral orations more cheerful and energetic than that speech."....Lawrence O'Donnell: "The triple-grand-jury candidacy."....radio host Mark Levin: "Joe 'Gotti' Biden of the Biden Crime Family."....Paul Krugman: "DeSantis's major achievement as governor; the unnecessary death of around 20,000 Floridians."....Trump on Ron DeSantis: "If he runs he could hurt himself very badly. I will tell you things about him that won't be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife."....Rick Wilson: "Donald Trump would rather Joe Biden be president for a thousand years than Ron DeSantis be president for five minutes...He is a political suicide bomber."....Kari Lake on the media: "The right hand of the devil, the scourge of the Earth."....Donald Trump Jr. on John Fetterman: "That guy's brain dead. A United States senator should not have mush for brains."....Tim Young: "Fetterman just shattered the glass ceiling for vegetables."....Charlie Sykes: "Turns out the Red Wave is just ketchup on the walls at Mar-a-Lago."....GOP strategist Stephen Lawson: "Trump just keeps throwing boomerangs."....Ann Coulter on Trump: "You had your chance, with a Republican House and Senate...You handed foreign policy to your son-in-law and a country that gave your son-in-law #2 billion. Shut the f*** up, forever."....former Trump WH communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin: "We've got to just finally speak out and say, 'This man is a loser.' He lost 2020..."....Rep. Ronny Jackson: "Masks are just a BIG lie. They don't work. NEVER have...Covid is OVER."....Donald Trump Jr.: "The left has indoctrinated our children for decades now, by having some seven-hair-colored multiple-weirdo freak that doesn't even want to ever have kids become the head of the school board and the PTA."....Kari Lake to reporters: "I'm going to not only be governor for four years, I'm going to do two terms and I'm going to be your worst fricking nightmare for eight years...We're going to make you guys into journalists again."....Senate Republicans tweet: "In Biden's first two years...he divided the nation."....Proud Boys founder Stewart Rhodes in recording shortly after Jan. 6 attack: "If [Pence] is not going to do the right thing, and he's just going to let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I'd hang f***ing Pelosi from the lamppost."....Mike Pence on Trump: "His words endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building."....Jonathan Alter on Republicans: "After January 6th, their position on the Capitol Police was: Back the blue -- unless it's a coup."....Trump: "Nothing good is happening in our country."....Tom Nichols: "Elon Musk's skin is thinner than filo dough."....James Carville on Herschel Walker: "He needs to have a brain scan. He's not right."....
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October 28, 2022
Admiral Mike Franken: "If you listen to Tucker Carlson these days, you'll see a show that might as well have been written and produced by Russian state media."....Trump on judge ruling that he knew his voter fraud claims were false when he made them: "Please explain to this partisan hack that the President Election of 2020 was Rigged and Stolen."....former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on Trump and 1/6: "The man does not want to be President of the United States, he wants to be an autocrat, supreme leader, a dictator. And watching these people doing this on his behalf was exciting for him."....AZ gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, before primary: "If we don't win, there's some cheating going on. And we already know that."....Kari Lake on Biden: "He lost the election, and shouldn't be in the White House."....Kari Lake to CNN reporter: "The people don't like what you're peddling. It's just propaganda."....Fox host Tucker Carlson on the Democratic party: "It's a religion. It's a child sacrifice cult."....Sen. Ted Cruz on Dems: "Have been undermining the Constitution and undermining democracy."....Eric Trump on Biden administration: "They haven't accomplished anything in two years and frankly have been a laughingstock."....Rep. Matt Gaetz: "Joe Biden did everything he could to take a hatchet to the booming Trump economy."....Pete Buttigieg on Congressional Republicans: "Can anybody name the top five things they've suggested to fight inflation? Can anyone name three? How about one?"....Trump on Ohio senatorial candidate J.D. Vance: "J.D. is kissing my ass, he wants my support so much."....Vance's opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan: "Ohio needs an ass kicker, not an ass kisser."....Bob Woodward: "50% roughly of the Republicans would walk off the cliff for Donald Trump. Now I think at least 20% want to push him off the cliff."....Tucker Carlson on MSNBC host Tiffany Cross: "Can barely speak a coherent sentence."....Ye: "I'm going death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE."....Howard Stern: "F*** this mental illness defense...Kanye used to be fun crazy. Now he's like Hitler."....Ye on Stern: "Now you're just a sad old man, Howard. This is the first time anyone's said your name in years. Your own family doesn't say your name unless they're calling to get their bills paid."....Arizona congressional candidate Jerone Davison, speaking at Kari Lake rally, on Dems: "Bind up the hands of the wicked ones, the wicked party, and cast it back to the pits of hell."....
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October 10, 2022
George Conway on Trump suing CNN for defamation: "Local lying liar who lies claims reputation was damaged by news report saying he lied."....Trump on the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago: "An assault that could only take place in broken, third-world countries...[The U.S.] has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before."....Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Dems: "They're not soft on crime, they're pro-crime. They want crime."....Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Democrats are communists, okay? And that's what this new United States Supreme Court Justice is -- she's a communist."....former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn on Democrats: "See themselves as 'This is how we can rule the world, this is how we can control societies, this is how we can control humanity.'"....Aaron Rupar: "Satan himself could run as a Republican in a red state and be guaranteed to get at least 45 percent of the vote."....Donald Trump Jr. fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle on NY AG Letitia James: "She has an ' I ' after her name: Incompetent...She should actually prosecute herself, because she's nothing but a stalker of Donald Trump."....Trump on Letitia James: "She should focus on murder and crime in New York, where they walk into stores with axes and start swinging the axes at people."....Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavroc on Ukraine: "Has finally turned into a Nazi-style totalitarian state where standards of international humanitarian law are trampled underfoot with impunity."....exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Putin: "A cowardly sheep cannot command an army of lions."....Donald Trump Jr. on PA senatorial candidate John Fetterman: "Soft on crime and soft in the head."....Dr. Oz on Fetterman's hoodie: "When he dresses like that...he's kicking authority in the balls. He's saying, 'I'm the man. I'll show those guys who's boss.'"....Twitter-poster Exasperated Human: "'Kicking Authority in the Balls' may be the greatest campaign slogan ever."....Fox host Tucker Carlson: "If men want to stay male, they must be fascist, and also gay -- that's what the media tells us."....Maureen Dowd on Trump: "The Wizard of Id."....Trump on Sen. Mitch McConnell: "He has a DEATH WISH."....Derf Backderf: "The basic flaw with social media, one that can never be overcome, is that people in 2022 basically suck."....