The adorableness😍😍😍🤗🤗
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸#DemConvention pic.twitter.com/WY5NmDgfR1
— 2024 Democratic National Convention (@DemConvention) August 21, 2020
Well, the Democratic Convention is over.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the team that we need to be in the White House come January 2021.
Now, it’s time for us to do the work.
We must vote.
I don’t care how you vote.
Mail Voting.
Early Voting.
Election Day Voting.
DO what you think is best for you.
But, VOTE.
MAKE YOUR VOTING PLAN NOW.
And, ask all your family and friends if they have their own Voting Plan.
The ticket #BidenHarris2020 pic.twitter.com/qyarQJs0kl
— Michael LaRosa (@MichaelLaRosaDC) August 21, 2020
Who we are as a nation, what we stand for, and who we want to be — that's on the ballot this November.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 21, 2020
Make no mistake – the entire criminal enterprise that composes the Republican Party is going all out with voter suppression.
Our president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation.
He failed to protect us.
He failed to protect America.
And that is unforgivable.— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 21, 2020
Their silence as Dolt45 and his crony try and destroy the United States Post Office – speaks volumes.
The Post Office doesn’t just handle ballots.
It handles medicines for MILLIONS.
SOMEONE HAS DIED BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T GET THEIR MEDICINE ON TIME.
It handles packages for millions of SMALL BUSINESSNES.
During a pandemic, while many small businesses are barely hanging on by a thread, the Post Office is sabotaging them.
It handles important documents – checks for livelihoods. Checks for bills. The personal correspondence of millions of Americans.
The Post Office has been a stepping stone to the middle class for many.
The Post Office has a large segment of veterans in its employ.
The Post Office for many in rural America is the LIFELINE for the community to the outside world.
And, the SILENCE of the GOP while the USPS is under attack speaks volumes.
It’s not just Dolt45 who must be defeated; it’s everyone with an R next to their name – up and down the line.
VOTE THEM ALL OUT.
They did that perfectly. No one tried to correct that young man. They didn't edit the clip. They just let him speak. So well done.
— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) August 21, 2020
Joe goes right into the middle, “I’ll be an American president”. A proud Democrat but a president for all. Takes the middle ground trump long who ceded to his extreme base
— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) August 21, 2020
👏👏👏
Brayden Harrington showed the nation incredible courage and strength tonight. Go, Brayden! https://t.co/eBiebJ69mn
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 21, 2020
"Just remember. Joe Biden goes to church so regularly that he doesn't even need tear gas and a bunch of federalized troops to help him get there." …. this is the BEST convention ever
— Jennifer Truth Over Phony Balance Rubin 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@JRubinBlogger) August 21, 2020
R turned their party over to Trump w/no qualms reversing positions cause they don't believe in anything other than getting rich and keeping power. It's a smash-and-grab operation — smash democratic norms and institutions, and grab the limelight and cash https://t.co/IB9ewXHVNl
— Jennifer Truth Over Phony Balance Rubin 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@JRubinBlogger) August 20, 2020
This is a helluva speech.
Also, "Sleepy" this ain't.
It's on, motherf**cker.
It's.
On.#DemocraticConvention— Kevin D. Grüssing (@ Momocon May 26th-30th) (@KevDGrussing) August 21, 2020
Instead of clapping, a lot of honking. Cars honked loudly in honor of Beau Biden, who served as attorney general representing many people gathered here today before he passed in 2015. pic.twitter.com/Yzkd8Jw4TZ
— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaReports) August 21, 2020
The Wilmington drive-in moments after @JoeBiden says the words he’s wanted to say at several points of his almost 50 year political career: I accept the Democratic nomination for president pic.twitter.com/xwSWR0T5CI
— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaReports) August 21, 2020
Clyburn in a rocking chair sipping a lemonade and saying that's why I Am what I Am.
Biden is speaking on racism as clearly and as decisively as I've ever heard a White politician and without doubt one running for President.#DemConvention
— Baba NostraAdeptus (@brill_inst) August 21, 2020
Best convention I’ve ever seen.
1st time I’ve ever been able to listen to every speaker.
Please don’t ever fill up another convention hall.
Please don’t waste $millions on plane tickets & hotels.
Please don’t burn all that jet fuel.
Make this the new normal.
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) August 21, 2020
.@joyannreid on Biden's speech: "I think we found out tonight why Donald Trump fears him so much." pic.twitter.com/PIHzgaDf3O
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) August 21, 2020
https://twitter.com/Olucaron/status/1296895523543306242
https://twitter.com/baby2baby/status/1296893065433497600
😠😠😠😠
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1296989310684729344
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1296881360355958786
https://twitter.com/ericbradner/status/1296932042454654976
https://twitter.com/AnIllicitWriter/status/1295843897323786240?s=20
Put that muthaphucka 😠 in jail 😠
https://twitter.com/SketchyConcepts/status/1296816899712458753?s=20
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1296923824928305152?s=20
https://twitter.com/mouselion/status/1296815401947615233?s=20
https://twitter.com/nicholasteo14/status/1296821730619449344
https://twitter.com/404Apathy/status/1296833627045601280?s=20
https://twitter.com/AnneHeroine/status/1296792861137088519?s=20
https://twitter.com/ruti313/status/1296954994835562497?s=20
https://twitter.com/imJohnGibson/status/1296964247948124160?s=20
https://twitter.com/RizwanMildred/status/1296925121207296001?s=20
https://twitter.com/Jeromep81422970/status/1296968047543160832?s=20
https://twitter.com/lce1993/status/1296923842783457280?s=20
https://twitter.com/ia_snowflake/status/1296935107241148425?s=20
https://twitter.com/elvislver56/status/1296968150378930176?s=20
https://twitter.com/dialogician/status/1296937880938479617?s=20
https://twitter.com/gigisecrets/status/1296963959002734592?s=20
https://twitter.com/trollBigotry/status/1296964488978149376?s=20
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1296740503279599616?s=20
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1296764761531711488?s=20
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1296498883875438592?s=20
“…Presidential sit-downs were the pinnacles of many news anchors’ careers.
No more. Just as he has bulldozed so many political norms, Donald Trump has turned the presidential TV interview into a joke. Fox News lets him call in for talk radio-style rant sessions, the length of which are a punch line among rank-and-file Fox staffers who secretly despise him despite working for his media machine. “When Trump was booked for 8:10, and we had an assignment for 8:40, we didn’t bother writing it, because we knew he’d talk until the end of the hour,” a producer for Fox & Friends told me.
He called the “Friends” and Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. Every so often he’d consent to an on-camera chat, but he liked the phone. It made him seem busy when he wasn’t. The interviews, if they can really be called that, were subject to his whims, causing no small amount of competition among the Trump bootlickers at Fox. Stars were known to slip ratings reports to the president to make their own shows look more impressive than those of their in-house rivals. Sometimes interviews were suddenly offered to hosts when Trump heard them say something flattering on TV. One personality rushed to the airport for a cross-country flight when a sit-down suddenly materialized. Other times the bookings were simply a product of who had bent Trump’s ear most recently: There were side deals brokered during stopovers at his golf club and pitches made during strategy calls.“Why don’t you call in tomorrow?”
More often than not, he did just that. Trump needed Fox to a degree that almost no one understood. He depended on propagandists like Hannity to keep the walls of his alternative reality intact. …The power imbalance was something to behold: He had the joint chiefs and the cabinet and any number of world leaders at his beck and call. He could talk to any scientist or public health expert he wanted. But when it came to a Fox interview, he was just another caller waiting to be patched into the control room.’
“Mr. President!” Hannity exclaimed. “Thank you…” And they were off. Trump began by flattering Hannity, claiming he’d postponed a critical call with Chinese President Xi Jinping just to get on air.
The day after their televised chat, the president called Hannity with a question: “How’d we do?”
Hannity knew his real meaning was, “How did we rate?” In the midst of a crippling pandemic, on a day when another 400-plus Americans would die, the president wanted to know about his ratings.
Hannity was the most powerful person at Fox in the Trump age. When people asked who was in charge of the channel, he said, “Me.” And most people at the channel agreed with him.
He worked from home most days, long before it was required due to the pandemic, thanks to a state-of-the-art studio in the basement of his $10.5 million mansion, 38 long miles from Manhattan, in a village on the North Shore of Long Island. There was only one way in and one way out of his village, and a police station that kept track of every car that drove by. Billy Joel lived half a mile down the road. Hannity was close to his favorite fishing spots and the airstrip where he kept his private jet. He had no trouble affording all this; he banks an estimated $43 million per year.
Hannity’s Long Island mansion and his oceanfront Naples, Florida, penthouse were two über-expensive symbols of how Roger Ailes changed his life. I viewed Hannity as a living connection to Fox’s past, the only prime-time host who was there on launch day and is still there nearly 25 years later. But he definitely wasn’t one to dwell on the past. Every day was a new war.
Hannity played his part masterfully. But his friends told me he was burnt out for long stretches of the Trump presidency. Being the president’s “shadow chief of staff,” as he was known around the White House, could be a thrill, but it was also a serious burden. Hannity counseled Trump at all hours of the day; Hannity’s producers marveled at his influence and access. “It’s a powerful thing to be someone’s consigliere,” one producer said. “I hear Trump talk at rallies, and I hear Sean,” a family friend commented.
“Hannity would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person,” one of his associates said. Another friend concurred: “Hannity has said to me more than once, ‘he’s crazy.’”
But Hannity’s commitment to GOP priorities and to his own business model meant he could never say any of this publicly. If one of his friends went on the record quoting Hannity questioning Trump’s mental fitness, that would be the end of the friendship.
Early on in the Trump age, Hannity gained weight and vaped incessantly, which some members of his inner circle blamed on Trump-related stress. “If you were hearing what I’m hearing, you’d be vaping too,” Hannity told a colleague. He was sensitive to trolls’ comments about the extra weight, especially from his chest up; that’s all viewers saw of him most nights, when he was live from his palace. He doubled up on his workouts and slimmed back down.
Hannity swore that no one knew the truth about his relationship with Trump. He lashed out at people, like yours truly, who reported on it. And he certainly didn’t disclose his role in Trumpworld the way a media ethicist would recommend. But once in a while the curtain slipped and his own colleagues pointed out the extraordinary position he held. As the coronavirus crisis deepened in March, Geraldo Rivera said to Hannity on the air, “I want you to tell the president, when you talk to him tonight, that Geraldo says..
Needless to say, that’s not how Hannity’s calls with Trump actually went. They were instead a stream of grievance and gossip. Trump was a run-on sentence, so prone to rambling that “I barely get a word in,” Hannity told one of his allies. He sometimes spoke with the president before the show and again afterward, usually in the 10 p.m. hour, when Trump rated his guests and recommended talking points and themes for the following day. Trump was just like the rest of Hannity’s viewers: He wanted more of Gregg Jarrett on the show, more of Dan Bongino, more of Newt Gingrich—the toadiest toads possible.
In the Trump age, left-wing blogs filled up with stories about families torn apart by a loved one’s Hannity addiction. I heard those stories from Fox staffers too: Some of their relatives resented what they did for a living. They made excuses, mumbling that they were simply giving the people what they wanted. “I feel like Fox is being held hostage by its audience,” a veteran staffer said. “The audience has been RADICALIZED,” a longtime commentator texted me..
Hannity deserved a big share of the blame for this state of affairs. But despite that, and despite the fact that he was rarely at headquarters, Hannity was well-liked around Fox. Colleagues described him as a big-hearted family guy. He paid bonuses to his staff out of his own deep pockets. He ordered meals and care packages to the homes of colleagues who lost loved ones. He even offered to hire a private investigator when an acquaintance died in a mysterious crash. When the network descended on New Hampshire for primary election coverage, Hannity footed the bill for the open bar. A member of Sean’s production crew, a Democrat, told me, “I want to fucking hate him so bad. But he’s so nice to me.”
I struggled to square Hannity’s reputation with the man I saw on TV and occasionally in person. ..in December 2019, I ran into Hannity at a holiday party hosted by Mediaite. We were upstairs at the Lambs Club, a stately Manhattan restaurant wrapped with red leather banquettes on 44th Street. Hannity greeted me by putting both his hands on my shoulders and exclaiming: “Humpty!” His nickname for me was Humpty Dumpty. I asked if he ever felt bad about the name-calling. “No,” he said. He took his hands off my shoulders and moved toward the bar.
It was eight o’clock, and Hannity worked the room like a pro, dressed down in a Fox-branded hoodie. He hugged CNN’s Alisyn Camerota and chatted with media reporters and even said hi to Trump antagonist George Conway. This room was the embodiment of the so-called “media mob” he attacked every weeknight—and he looked like he didn’t want to leave it. I wondered what Hannity’s viewers would think. At 8:30 his P.R. person pushed him toward the door, insisting he had to get to the studio for his nine o’clock show. I later realized that the P.R. person had lied—he had pretaped his show before coming to the party.
Ailes made everyone paranoid and punished those he suspected of leaking. That same fear of retribution was still very real in the post-Ailes years. Employees suspected their work phones were tapped and assumed their emails were monitored by management…”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/sean-hannity-fox-news-staffers-feel-trapped-in-trump-cult
I agree.
https://twitter.com/franklinleonard/status/1296874097624809473
Good article. And where’s the lie? Progressives have a right to be ticked off, but I guess we’ll see how much influence Nancy Pelosi has in Massachusetts.
https://twitter.com/commondreams/status/1296564683764314112
https://twitter.com/commondreams/status/1296815424886247424
https://twitter.com/skepticalbrotha/status/1296668941612392449
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1296278170317000704
https://twitter.com/SamuelAAdams/status/1296640499198185472
Good Morning,Everyone 😊😊😊