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public discourse

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

1988 Presidential election It was clear for example in 1988 that the politifcal process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent. It was also clear in 1988 that the decision of the two major parties to obscure any possible perceived distinction between themselves, and by so doing to narrow the contested ground to a handful of selected “target” voters, had already imposed considerable strain on the basic principle of the democratic exercise, that of assuring the nation's citizens a voice in its affairs. Joan Didion, Political Fictions © 2017 Kwiple.com
1992 Presidential election What seemed novel about the use of focus groups in the 1992 campaign was the increasingly narrow part of the population to which either party was interested in listening, and the extent to which this extreme selectivity had transformed the governing of the country, for most of its citizens, into a series of signals meant for someone else. Joan Didion, “Eyes on the Prize” © 2017 Kwiple.com
2020 Presidential election The [January 6th] committee did a masterful job of laying out the case [against Trump], but we live in partisan America now, so it's a little like doing standup when half the crowd only speaks Mandarin. No matter how good the material is, it's not going to go over. After all the hearings, the percentage of Americans who thought Trump did nothing wrong went up  three points. That's America now.  Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, November 4, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
2022 modterm election Plausible theories about why Republicans fared so badly in 2022 abound. … The economy? … Abortion? … Attacks on democracy? … All of these factors clearly played a role. But don't under-weight the impact of the performative obnoxiousness that now pervades Republican messaging. Conservatives have built career paths for young people that start on extremist message boards and lead to jobs on Republican campaigns, then jobs in state and federal offices, and then jobs in conservative media. Dsvid Frum, The Atlantic, March 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
2022 midterm elections There is an entire species of political ads on the Right where the candidate just shoots something they don't like. A lot of these ads make no mention of policy at all. It's just: Truck. Gun. Me like these things you like. VOTE ME! Bill Maher. Real Time with Bill Maher, June 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
2024 Endorsement Useful idiots say Vote for Trump — he's our kind of guy  ★ ★ ★ Kwiplers say I really don't care what they say, do U  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Alt-righters say All enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews. The Daily Stormer style guide © 2018 Kwiple.com
Anti-science I don't believe it. Donald Trump, explaining why the 2018 National Climate Assessment report, which was prepared by 300 scientists in 13 federal agencies and predicts dire economic consequences of global warming, was released on Black Friday, when few people would hear about it © 2018 Kwiple.com
Biden administration The message that needs to be heard is not about what his administration would like to do for Americans, but about what it must achieve  because the alternative is self-destruction. Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, March 25, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
The Big Lie The “Big Lie,” a term that originates with Hitler, became central to American political discourse after I applied it to Trump's claim to have won an election he had lost. The concept of the “Big Lie,” which I reintroduced into discussion in 2019 and 2020, helped millions of people see how mendacity of a certian scale affects politics over time, making democracy ever more difficult. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, © 2022 Kwiple.com
The Big Lie Hitler says if you tell a lie that's of a certain scale that's big enough, people won't believe that you could deceive them on that scale. And since they believe it and take it in at first, they don't want to disbelieve it later on. It becomes part of their life; it becomes what we now call an alternative reality. It begins to shape politics. It begins to instantiate itself not only in memory, but in policy. You act as if it's true and you move on to do things as though it were true. So, in our example, if we pretend that Trump won the election in 2020, then we have an argument for suppressing votes because we can say, well there was fraud, therefore we should suppress votes. Timothy Snyder, April 29, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters Who are the people who rule our country, the people most often invited on talk shows? The people on Mount Bullshit. Rutger Bregman [“Mount Bullshit” is Bregman's term for where people are when they think they know everything there is to know about a subject] © 2020 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of questions readers of a Norwegian news site must answer correctly about an article before commenting: 3 Harper's Index, November 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers  Perentage change in the length of time someone can withstand pain if they use profanity: +34 Harper's Index, November 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The stakes are high. Sacrifices will have to be made. But war mataphors have their own dangers. They can create an atmosphere where dissent and criticism of government policy are discouraged, possibly even branded as a kind of betrayal. They emphasize treatment, not prevention. Turning the stragegy to tackle a disease into a battle- field could worsen the mental health of those caught in the ‘war zone’. And the idea of war also implies victory or defeat — where neither may be the likely outcome with a virus that is here to stay. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say “@backupwraith: i firmly believe that @realDonaldTrump is the most superior troll on the whole of twitter, that is all.” A great compliment!  Donald Trump, 1:05 AM – 24 Apr 2013 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say I just don't think you can conect it to acts or threats of violence. Mike Pence, denying there's any connection between Trump's violent rhetoric and mail bombs sent to Democrats who he regularly demeans at his rallies or to his supporter who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue © 2018 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Someone's going to leak this whole damn speech to the media. Donald Trump, in a speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee that was broadcast live by C-SPAN © 2019 Kwiple.com
Democracy [T]he history of modern democracy, in the United States and many other parts of the world, including much of Europe and Latin America, has been riven with a constant tension between the rule of expert truth, on the one hand, and the rule of majority instincts on the other. But too much of either in isolation — elite knowledge or popular consensus, without the corrective of the other — constitutes a danger to the whole edifice. Sophia Rosenfeld, Democracy and Truth © 2021 Kwiple.com
Democracy It is impossible to excel at disinformation and democracy at the same time. Thomas Rid, Active Measures © 2022 Kwiple.com
Democracy Key to the smooth running of democracy is the indifference of much of the population, much of the time. Voters are crucial as an eye on things, as a righter of the ship of state when it lists. That requires a measure of knowledge. Round-the-clock absorption is something else. It causes politics to take place in too loud a setting, laws to be made in too hot a smithy. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, November 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Fact  In the cockney accent, Michael Caine is pronounced “my cocaine” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Facts Our recent research … examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs. Of course, sometimes people just dispute the validity of specific facts. But we find that sometimes they go one step further and, as in the opening example [in which people transformed debate about safety of immunization into debate about parental rights], reframe an issue in untestable ways. This makes potential important facts and science ultimately irrelevant to the issue. Troy Campbell and Justin Friesen, Why People “Fly from Facts,” Scientific American, March 3, 2016 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Fascism It is a core tenet of fascist politics that the goal of oratory should not be to convince the intellect, but to sway the will. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works © 2023 Kwiple.com
Fascists Fascists today don't wear armbands in public © 2017 Kwiple.com
Filibusters The less sophisticated members of the southern caucus did not seem to understand that the first rule of filibustering on behalf of white supremacy was that there was no filibuster on behalf of white supremacy — only principled stands to protect “minority rights” and “unlimited debate.” Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch © 2021 Kwiple.com
Foreign relations Jaw, jaw, is better than war, war. Harold Macmillan © 2020 Kwiple.com
Freedom of speech If we ask not who is ashamed to speak but who is stigmatized for speech, it is easier to diagnose what is a crisis and what is fearmongering. Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times, April 12, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Global warming The liar denies that climate change is really happening. The hypocrite accepts that it is real but behaves as if the words don't mean anything. David runciman © 2017 Kwiple.com
Healthcare It has become something of a convenience to refer to the whole endeavor as the "Health Industry." This provides the illusion that it is in a general way all one thing, and that it turns out, on demand, a single, unambiguous product, which is health. Thus, health care has become  the new name for medicine. Health-care delivery is what doctors now do, along with hospitals and other professionals who work with doctors, now known collectively as the health providers. The patients have become health consumers. …  the government has officially invented new insti-  tutions called Health Maintenance Organizations … spreading across the country like post offices, ready to distribute in neat packages, as though from a huge newly stocked inventory, health. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell © 2022 Kwiple.com
Information [I]nformation wants to be free, but so does misinformation. Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, September 30, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary not now (not nou), adverbial phrase. According to leaders of the NRA, it's the only time to talk about gun control. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Can you be more pacific? © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “Authorities say the gunman had obtained the weapons legally” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Lies In all democracies, politicians occasionally lie to cover up scandals or exaggerate their legislative accomplishments. In the United States, the rise of the right-wing news media in recent decades has tempted politicians to play to their own supporters without worrying whether their rhetoric is inflammatory or fair. But the construction of an alternate reality that obviates the very possibility of conducting politics on the basis of truth is a novelty in this country. And it is increasingly becoming obcious that it will serve a clear purpose: to prepare the ground for egregious violations of basic democratic norms. Yascha Mounk, New York Times, December 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Making money the old-fashioned way Being an editorial cartoonist © 2017 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Inciting conspiracy theories © 2017 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Raising fake news stories on a meme farm © 2016 Kwiple.com
Males Do males with bigger testicles have deeper voices? The jury is still out on humans, but if you're a howler monkey, forget about it  A new study finds that the animals can make a lot of noise or a lot of sperm — but trying to do both just takes too much energy. The findings shed important new light on the kind of evolutionary tradeoffs animals must engage in to ensure the survival of their species. … In other words, species with deeper calls had smaller balls. Science, October 2, 2015 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Performative fundraising is a prism through which to understand not only the GOP activity during the impeachment hearings but also the Republicans' Benghazi hearings and the end- less posturing around repealing Obamacare. It's not about achieving policy goals as much as energizing the base and separating them from their cash. Performative fundraising favors simplistic narratives, melodramatic rhetoric, an implacable enemy, and rote phrases to crowd out reasoned debate. Snippets of the act become fundraising pitches. Facebook microtargeting and e-mail lists ensure that pitches reach conservative retirees, especially in sunbelt states like Florida, California and Texas. Jake Bernstein, New York Review of Books, April 23, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Nukes By taking nuclear blackmail seriously, we have actually increased the overall chances of nuclear war.  If nuclear blackmail enables a Russian victory, the consequences will be incalculably awful. If any country with nuclear weapons can do whatever it likes, then law means nothing, no international order is possible, and catastrophe beckons at every turn. Countries without nuclear weapons will have to build them, on the logic that they will need nuclear deterrence in the future.  Nuclear proliferation would make nuclear war much more likely in the future. Timothy Snyder, New York Times, May 6, 2022, on Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons to guarantee a win in its war with Ukraine © 2023 Kwiple.com
Nukes Russia's nuclear talk is itself the weapon. … Russian propagandists want us to think that nuclear powers can never lose wars, on the logic that they could always deploy nuclear weapons to win. This is an ahistoric fantasy. Nuclear weapons did not bring the French victory in Algeria, nor did they preserve the British Empire. The Soviet Union lost its war in Afghanistan. America lost in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Israel failed to win in Lebanon.  Nuclear powers lose wars with some regularity. Timothy Snyder, New York Times, May 6, 2022, on Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons to guarantee a win in its war with Ukraine © 2023 Kwiple.com
Patriotism No wonder socundrels find refuge in patriotism: it offers them immunity from criticism. Bill Moyers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Politicians A politician is a person who approaches ever subject with an open mouth. Adlai Stevenson © 2023 Kwiple.com
Politics From politics, it was an easy step to silence. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Politics A genuinely political society, in which discusssion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks. It is inevitable that, from time to time, the debate will move from tactics to fundamentals, that there will be a challenge not merely to the immediate policies of those who hold governmental power but to the underlying principles, that there will be a radical challenge. That is not only inevitable, it is desirable. It is also inevitable that those interest- groups who prefer the status quo will resist the challenge, among other means by appealing to traditional, deeply rooted beliefs, myths, values, by playing on (and summoning up) fears. M. I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Politics Politics as a spectator sport has rarely been more popular. Its mixture of entertainment value with real consequences produces massive audience engagement. Yet at the same time, we're living in an era in which politicians, parliaments and whole political systems are being vilifed in ways they haven't been in decades. … The result is that the most prominent actors on the political stage today are those who cast themselves as non-politican politicians. The era we're living through isn't charact- erized simply by post-truth and populism. It's also, increasingly, an era of anti-politics. Or, at least, the rhetoric of anti-politics. Philip Seargeant, The Art of Political Storytelling © 2022 Kwiple.com
Politics When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about “the democratic process,” or the general mech- anism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mech- anism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the col- umnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and those who attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life. Joan Didion, “Insider Baseball” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Populism Populist politics exploits the double-ness of comedy — the way that  “only a joke” can easily become “no joke” —  to create a relationship of active connivance between the leader and his followers in which everything is permissible because nothing is serious. Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, March 21, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidential debates If we want to more realistically show what a candidate might be like as president, there should be ten people on the stage, but only two candidates. And each candidate should have five advisors on all the different policy arenas sitting right behind them … And these advisors should be able to pass notes to the candidate … And, we should give the candidates the questions in ad- vance so that we can get their best, most thoughtful answers – answers that they arrive at with the help of their advisors, exactly the way the would responsibly do their job. Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Presidential debates Presidents Don't Debate Title of the Last Word segment on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Presidential debates We're going to continue to have TV debates that serve the purposes of TV, especially commercial TV, rather than the interests of the voters. … The debates are not designed for you. The debates are not designed to enlighten us about who can do the job of the presidency because the debates have absolutely nothing to do with the job of President of the United States. Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Profiles in courage Paul Ryan, chief advocate of the hated-by-the-public 2017 Tax Bill, fearing a potential defeat that would most likely kill his presidential chances, says he won't run for reelection in 2018, and will, without saying so, spend years collecting generous speakers fees from large corporations gifted by the bill  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Profiles in courage Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, the world's most lucrative sports league, – fearing losing revenue because yokels bought Trump's and Russian imposter account BoycottNFL's malarkey that players' protests against racial injustice were protests against the flag – sent a memo to owners saying players – 70% of whom are black – should stop protesting in public © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse ‘Agony’ is now a word used to describe the emotions of football fans whose team has lost a cup final in extra time, or the physical discomfort associated with certain types of dental treatment. It used to mean the final stages of a difficult or painful death. Seamus O'Mahony, The Way We Die Now © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse America's least-trusted institutions — Congress, television news and big business, says Gallup — are remorselessly heard-from. The most trusted are the military (a closed box to most citizens) and small business (too poor to advertise at scale). … The feeling of your pain, the stakeholder-flattery: ingratiation has been the way of public and private elites during the exact era that trust in them has dropped. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse And the greatest phrase, I think, in the history of politics is on all of those red and white hats that I see out there: “Make America Great Again.” Donald Trump © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Are you just pissing and moaning, or can you verify what you're saying with data? Patron to guy next to him at the bar, in a September 6, 1999, New Yorker cartoon by Edward Koren © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Bing Bing Bong Bong Bing Bing Bing Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Blink twice if your not ok @marvinlee4887's advice to Katie Britt while watching her deliver the Republican's response to Biden's 2024 SOTU speech © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Bob Mueller brought a book to a Twitter fight. Ari Melber, May 30, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Comment is free but facts are on expenses. Tom Stoppard, Night and Day  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Cowing people is not the same as converting them. Michelle Goldberg, New York Time, July 17, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Criticism seeks to engage in conversations and identify error; canceling seeks to stigmatize conversations and punish the errant. Criticism cares whether statements are true; canceling cares about their social effects. Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Crudity is appropriate in criticizing the crude. Aaron Poochigian,  introduction to Aristophanes: Four Plays, his translations of plays by Aristophones © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Demagogues need no longer stand erect for hours orating into a radio microphone. Tweet lies from a smartphone instead. David Frum, The Atlantic, March 2017 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.  Donald Trump, describing a missile launch © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The effectiveness of citizens’ assemblies  isn't surprising. Have you ever noticed how politicians grow a spine the moment they decide not to run for reelection? Well, a citizens' assembly is a bit like a legislature whose members make a pact barring them from seeking another term in office. The randomly selected members are not beholden to party machinations or outside interests; they are free to speak their mind and vote their conscience. What’s more, unlike elected bodies, these assemblies are chosen to mirror the population, a property that political theorists refer to as descriptive representation. For example, a typical citizens’ assembly has a roughly equal number of men and women … Ariel Procaccia, Scientific American, Nov. 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Even when a comment is so extreme that it does break into the mainstream, what happens next is predictable. The first time Trump says something, people react with shock and compare him to Hitler. The second time, people say Trump is at it again. By the third time, it becomes background noise — an appalling but familiar part of the Trump shtick. David A. Graham, The Atlantic, January/February 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Fear, cynicism, nihilism, and apathy coupled with disgust and disdain for democracy. This is the formula that modern autocrats, with some variations, sell to their citizens and to foreigners, all with the aim of destroying what they call “American hegemony.” Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, June 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Following Trump's victory, an ancient Greek term suddenly suddenly re-entered English usage: demophobia – literally fear of the mob. What if conveys is cold feet about democracy. … The Trump era's changing vocabulary also includes a word of more recent coinage: oikophobia, literally an aversion to home surroundings. In reality, it means fear of your own people – the opposite of xenophobia. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Ford's “people efficiency actions” joins a long list of pusillanimous terminology intended to make you forget for just a moment, that these are working people whose lives will be upended. The list includes: • Downsizing • Eliminating • Rightsizing   redundancies • Smartsizing • Delayering • Reduction in • Workforce   force (RIF)   optimization • Headcount • Rebalancing   reduction   the level of • Adjusting to   human capital   shifts in demand • Offboarding • Force shaping withoutbullshit.com, May 17, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Four score and seven years ago – that's a long time ago, very long – our fathers, who spoke about this at great length, did what perhaps has virtually never been done before: brought forth on this continent, a new nation, a very great new nation – there's no question about that – conceived in liberty – and that is so important! – and dedicated to the amazing proposition – and they felt very strongly about this, I can tell you – that all men are created equal. Number one for me. Donald Trump's Gettysburg Address, imagined by Dana Milbank © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse God Emperor What American neo-Nazis call Donald Trump © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The higher the oratory, the riskier the magic. Edward Luce, Financial Times, January 4, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Humor … may be a way of telling us not to feel sorry for ourselves. But it is more often a way of telling us not to feel sorry for others. It creates an economy of compassion, limiting it to those who are laughing and excluding those who are being laughed at. It makes the polarization of humanity fun. … Trump is America's biggest comedian.  His badinage is hardly Wildean, but his put-  downs, honed to the sharpness of stilettos, are many people's idea of fun. For them, he makes anger, fear and resentment entertaining. Fintan O'Toole, NY Rev. of Books, Mar. 21, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I could tell you, If I wanted to, What makes me What I am. But I don't Really want to — And you don't Give a damn. “Impasse” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't debate. There are too many debates. Too much Word, not enough Excel. Hans Rosling © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't really care much for hearing “both sides” or “opposing points of viiew,” so much as I care about understanding the literary tools deployed to advance those views — the discipline of voice, the use of verbs, the length and brevity of sentences, and the curiosity of the mind behind those sentences. It is this last that I find so often lacking. Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't want to give somebody my input and get their feedback. I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. William Zinsser, On Writing Well © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I lived through the shift in Britain from cold politicians to please-like-me merchants with a studied knack for the demotic. Tell me, has it disarmed the public or increased their mistrust? Have attitudes to business softened or hardened since corporate PR became so vast in scale and simpering in style? In both realms, the best that can be ventured is that things would have been worse without the charm (how telling a word) offensive. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I thought it was demeaning to have to answer questions on serious issues in thirty seconds. Now I know you have to do it in a tweet. Adam Schiff © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse If you're explaining, you're losing. saying among politicians  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse If you're not in the Washington Post  every day, you might as well not exist. Newt Gingrich, who realized breaking norms outrageously gets you there  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Images of small men usually arise and persist widely only because big men find good use for them. C. Wright Mills, White Collar © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Impossible to rewrite. Rachel, do not try to rewrite art, okay? Do not. Lawrence O'Donnell to Rachel Maddow, The Last Word, September 21, 2021, commenting on a statement on the first page of Donald Trump's lawsuit against Mary Trump, the New York Times and three of its reporters for reporting on his history of tax abuse, which says: “the brazenness of the defendants' actions cannot be understated” © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In my own sector, punditry, the man from a high-status country — above all, until now, the US or UK — is invited to explain the world. The man from a low-status country gets to explain his country. The woman from a low-status country is at best invited to explain the situation of women in her country.  Similar dynamics have played out over Ukraine. Traditionally, it was Russians or high-status westerners who got to interpret the country to the world. Even now, Ukrainian views risk being dismissed as partial or emotional. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, July 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the early 1990s, [Newt] Gingrich [then House Minority Whip] and his team distributed memos to Republican candidates instructing them to use certain negative words to describe Democrats, including pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, antifamily, and traitor . It was the beginning of a seismic shift in American politics. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse In the febrile, divisive state of our politics, it's not what you say, it's what you say about yourself by saying it that counts. David Runciman © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, “launder” became a dirty word. William Zinsser, On Writing Well © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse It's a good maxim that if you have a good dog you don't bark yourself. attributed to Clement Attlee © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse “It sounds like something I would say. That's how President Trump and I communicate, a lot of four-letter words, in this case three letters,” Mr Sondland quipped, adding that the phrase “loves your ass” was his way of conveying the situation in ”Trump-speak.“ Financial Times, November 22, 2019, on Sondland's response when asked if he had told Trump that Ukrainian President “Zelensky loves your ass,” as others had testified during the impeachment inquiry © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Lo and behold, the entity that becomes most persistent in alleging that American elections are fraudulent, faked, rigged and everything else, turns out to be the president of the United States [Donald Trump]. Renée DiResta, a leader of the Election Integrity Partnership, a team of scientists from various universities, think tanks and companies, that analyzes foreign and domestic anti-democratic disinformation campaigns © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The most effective form of persuasion is when you are not aware of being persuaded. Joseph Goebbels © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one's countrymen say. “I can't believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do” James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms – he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discoure Political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind otherwise objectionable ends. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse PR people, if you have something unpleasant to say, just say it. Hiding it behind euphemisms doesn't fool anyone. Today's case study: Ford's plan lay off 10% of its staff, which it calls a “people efficiency action.” withoutbullshit.com, May 17, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The pronouns “we” and “they” are the most important of all political words. They demarcate who's within the sphere of moral responsibiity, and who's not. Someone within that sphere who's needy is one of “us” – an extension of our family, friends, community, tribe – and deserving of help. But people outside that sphere are “them,” presumed undeserving unless proved otherwise. The central political question for any na- tion or group is where the borders of this sphere of mutual responsibility are drawn. Robert Reich, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2014 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley, “Words and Behaviour”  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The receptive ability of the masses is  very limited, and their understanding small; on the other hand, they have a great power of forgetting. This being so, all effectve propaganda must be confined to very few points which must be brought in the form of slogans. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Republicans? They're all claws, sharp teeth and fangs when they fight. The Democrats? Their weapon of choice  is adaptive coloration. “I'm a leaf. Don't eat me.” “Vote for me – I'm the same pattern as the couch.” Bill Maher, Real Time With Bill Maher, March 16, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Right or wrong, or even if I changed my mind about it or thought about it more, which I'm not saying I did, just place the thought out there that everyone's not thinking sometimes. Galileo, they wanted to chop his head off for saying that the earth was – what did he say? That the sun revolved around the earth, and vice versa. Kanye West, commenting on his claim that slavery was a choice  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse A series of lawsuits alleging that that the U.S. government sought to suppress conservative speech, including one launched by Missouri and Louisiana that has now reached the Supreme Court,  has effectively tried to silence organizations that investigate both domestic and foreign  disinformation campaigns, overt and covert. To state baldly what is happening:  the Republican Party's right wing is actively harassing legitimate, good-faith efforts to track the production and distribution of autocratic disinformation here in the United States. Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, June 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Seventy percent of Democratic partisans and leaners said was never acceptable for elected officials to call their opponents stupid, while only 51 percent of Republicans same the same. Fifty-three percent of Democrats said it was never acceptable to call opponents “anti-American”; only 25 percent of Republicans same the same. And 42 percent of Democrats said is was never acceptable to call an opponent's policy positions “evil” — a minority this time, but, here again, a larger proportion than the 26 percent of Republicans who said the same. Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, Oct. 2021, reporting on the findings of a 2019 poll by Pew Research Center © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Several excuses are always less convincing than one. Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no —I shouldn't talk about this but that’s OK. I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it's the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, “What do you think you lost?” I said, “Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.” They say, “You think you’d do it again?” And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know.  Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of  all, that he was treated worse than any other presi-. ident. I said, “Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.” I even got shot!  And who the hell knows where that came from, right? Donald Trump, Potterville MI, August 29, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument. Edward St Aubyn, Bad News  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse That was some weird shit. George W. Bush, commenting on Donald Trump's “carnage in America” inaugural address © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse There is a thin line between convincing people of the merits of a case and suggesting they are moral outcasts if they fail to see it. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, “M-Fer, I want more iced tea.” You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all. Bill O'Reilly, recounting his visit to Sylvia's, a famous restaurant in Harlem  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Public discourse They say, “I'm going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood.” We say, “We're for clean air, better schools, more health care.” James Carville, Democratic political consultant, comparing Republicans to Democrats © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse A thing is funny when – in some way that is not actually offensive or frightening – it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.  George Orwell, “Funny, but not Vulgar” © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  This is what the sociologist Howard Becker calls the “hierarchy of credibility”: Those at the top of the social hierarchy don't have to prove their claims; they're just taken for granted. But claims made by those on the bottom are burdened by skepticism and demands for proof. Eleni Schirmer and Louise Seamster, New York Times, May 26, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse To summarize, we need a modern-day kleroterion that can select a citizens' assembly that is representative in terms of multiple criteria — and can do so starting from an unrepresentative pool of volunteers. Thankfully, we've progressed from stone slabs to computers, so this problem boils down to the design of the right algorithm. … The problem of finding the fairest lottery of the potential assemblies … can be conquered by the right combination of optimization tools. Ariel Procaccia, Scientific American, November 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  Tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? Michael Cohen, to a reporter  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Troll culture became a way for fascism to hide in plain sight. Jason Wilson, The Guardian, May 23, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Trump reminded them [Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, who had suggested softening remarks about immigrants], the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country – as they did when he high- lighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies … Miller and Kushner laughed. Washington Post, May 24, 2018, on an Oval Office meeting © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Trump told one ally this week that he wanted “to brand” the informant [the FBI used in the early stages of its investigation of possible collusion with Russia by Trump's associates] a “spy,” believing the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public. NBC Miami, May 23, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse “Undercover,” “informant,” “confidential informant” – those are words I'm familiar with. I've never heard the term “spy” used. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, commenting on Trump calling the informant used by the FBI in its investigation of reported connections between members of his campaign and Russian intelligence agents a “spy” they implanted in his campaign © 2018 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Use slides or videos to give people a break from looking at your face. But don’t fill the slides with large slabs of text. Your mouth is for words, and slides are for pictures. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, April 28, 2022, some advice to presenters at conferences © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse  We’re also going to place strong protections  to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from you — you know, your political beliefs what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank — think of this. They want to take away your rights, they want to take away your country, the things you’re doing. Donald Trump, at a New Hampshire rally in January, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse When it comes to critical race theory, think of it like Rihanna's pregnancy. Even if you think it has nothing to do with you, believe me, you're going to be hearing a lot about it this year. John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, February 20, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Wokeness is a problem and everybody knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today —  and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn't say this. But they don't want to say it out loud. James Carville, April 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The words of a president matter. Even a lousy president. Joe Biden © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You always learn more from conversation than Gotcha!. Errol Morris © 2023 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. Mario Cuomo © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say. Mitch “The Taciturn” McConnell © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don't know anyone who speaks like that. I don't know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and black and brown people and they all live in … neighborhoods. There's nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you're talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it's not. James Carville, April 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You have a great day, you're a piece of trash.  Jahan Wilcox, EPA spokesman, dismissing Elaina Plott, a reporter for The Atlantic, who asked about a top assistant to Scott Pruitt who resigned after being asked to do such things as looking into buying a used mattress for Pruitt from the Trump hotel in Washington, DC © 2018 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say If the US president will only talk about things he has thoughts on, we will be hearing much less from him. Henry Mance responding to Donald Trump's statement about the Tory election campaign while in London for the 2019 NATO meeting: “It's going to be a very important election for this great country, but I have no thoughts on it.” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Wow, Mr. President, that's a good one. Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller's questions, or did you write this one yourself? Adam Schiff, 10:36 AM – 18 Nov 2018, responding to Donald Trump, who called him, in his role as 72-year-old kindergartner, “little Adam Schitt” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Yes, I agree. Except to use your metaphor, I don't think it's the last inning. I think it's the last pitch. David Rothkopf responding to Lawrence O'Donnell, who, while interviewing him on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on January 24, 2022, said: “There is another problem with Washington news media coverage, which is, if they were baseball reporters, the way they would cover the game is the winner is whoever won the last inning. So everything Joe Biden did in the first, second, third, fourth innings of year one is forgotten when Build Back Better runs into the roadblock in the Senate and then voting rights runs into the filibuster roadblock in the Senate.” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Racism You start out in 1954 by saying “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, “forced busing,” “states' rights,” and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by- product of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … “We want to cut this” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” Lee Atwater, 1981 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Republican Party One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics. Newt Gingrich, June 14, 1978, who set out the change all that © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Call them “bureaucrats,” not “civil servants” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Civility signals servility © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Criminalizing political speech is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Monologue trumps dialogue © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say People with the deepest pockets deserve the loudest voices © 2015 Kwiple.com
Rule of law Mr Linick is the fifth inspector general to be sacked in the past two months. “Someone was walking my dog to sell arms to my dry cleaner,” was how Mr Pompeo mocked the uproar. That is the language of impunity. Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 21, 2020 [Linick was investigating Pompeo for using State Department employees as his and his wife's gofers and for bypassing Congress to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Pompeo asked Trump to fire Linick. Trump said he never heard of Linick but fired him anyway.] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie I really didn’t say everything I said. Yogi Berra © 2021 Kwiple.com
Selfie It must not be thought that I have spent the last ten years of my life pafnutying. (I should like to be remembered as the man who introduced this verb into the language. I think it has great possibilities, like Oscar Wilde's “bunburying.” In the future editions of Webster's, I would like to see: pafnuty, v.i., to pursue tangential matters with a hobby-like zeal.) Philip J. Davis, The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie I have a cat named Cowboy who hasn't talked to me in two years, but we're cool. Courtney Love © 2023 Kwiple.com
Selfie When I was promoting Green Hornet, Sony asked me not to tell so many weed stories. And I said, I don't think I'm capable of doing that. It's kind of the only thing I can talk about. Seth Rogen © 2023 Kwiple.com
Selfie I don't stand by anything. Donald Trump © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I’m a counterpuncher. I can't hit people who don’t hit me. Maybe that’s my weakness. Donald Trump © 2023 Kwiple.com
Selfie I want to be associated with interesting quotes. Donald Trump,  explaining why he retweeted a quotation from Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator © 2018 Kwiple.com
Selfie A lot of people don’t want that. They don’t want to hear negativity toward me. Donald Trump © 2022 Kwiple.com
Selfie I never read Mein Kampf. Donald Trump  [He listened to the audio book or he channels Adolf Hitler] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Selfie To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. Donald Trump © 2024 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Talking back means your voice will be heard © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say There's a certain story that's dominating and winning now: We're a divided country. I don't know that that's necessarily true. As human beings, we have more in common with Trump voters, even with Nazis in Charlottesville, than what divides us. America Ferrera © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Take the word “choice”. You hear it all the time these days. School “choice”. Betsy DeVos uses it in practically every sentence. You could show her, as I did, an award-winning robotics programme, and she'd say, “What about choice?” which she actually said. You could probably say “Good morning, Betsy,” and she'd say, “That's my choice.” She must love restaurant buffets. Betsy DeVos portrayed by David Richard Smith in The Guardian, July 26, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs are libertarian, low-tax deregulation buddies of the Koch brothers when it comes to talking to Republicans, and dope-smoking, gay rights activist hipsters when they mix with the Democrats. Silicon Valley honchos portrayed by Robert McChesney © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot When he can, he tells the truth. When he can't, he talks. Donald Trump portrayed by Stephen Colbert © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot It is easy to mock those who think he “tells it like it is.” What they mean is that he speaks plainly. Even when he lies, Mr Trump's meaning is easy to grasp. Donald Trump portrayed by Edward Luce Financial Times, March 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot A president who'd all but call a senator a whore is unfit to clean toilets in Obama's presidential library or to shine George W. Bush's shoes: Our view Donald Trump portrayed by USA Today, December 12, 2017, editorial about Trump's tweet that Kirsten Gillibrand “would do anyting for contributions” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Social media  As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. Godwin's law © 2017 Kwiple.com
Social media On social media, we have all become hammers searching for nails. Roxanne Gay, New York Times, July 18, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media We built Reddit around the principle of “No editors. The people are the editors.” Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit © 2019 Kwiple.com
Southern border wall If my speeches ever get a little off, I just go: “We'll build a wall!” You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of maybe thinking about leaving – I can sort of tell the audience – I just say, “We will build the wall,” and they go nuts. “And Mexico will pay for the wall!” But – ah, but I mean it. But I mean it. Donald Trump © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union  The bigget political divide in America today  is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they're being shafted. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Everything here is great. By “here”, I mean America. By “great”, I mean crackers. “Great” is America's favourite adjective. Her outdoors is not merely the outdoors – it is the Great outdoors. Her depression not merely a depression – it was Great. And so on. Great Lakes. Great Escape. Great Balls of Fire. Not to mention the Great White Hope and his MAGA franchise. Jenny Lee, Financial Times, October 12, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Imbecilic analogies to Hitler and the Nazis abound © 2015 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Apple calls its stores – which are private spaces – “town squares,” where you can shop 'til you drop but you can't hold political rallies except to support lowering taxes on profits earned abroad © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest After someone wrote “Trump 2016” in chalk on a campus sidewalk at Emory University, students erupted in protest, calling it hate speech that makes them feel unsafe © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Calling odor from workout wear “rebloom” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Calling secondhand clothes “pre-loved” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Complaining the impeachment hearings lack “pizzazz” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Funeral directors calling themselves “celebration event coordinators” --> © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest The Soil Health Division of the US Department of Agriculture National Resources Conservation Service forbids employees from using the term “climate change,” in the belief, apparently, that what you can't say can't hurt you © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say Wrap users in filter bubbles --> © 2017 Kwiple.com
Technology Social media’s mutation from Speaker’s Corner to Gin Lane roughly tracks the smartphone’s conquest of BlackBerry. It comes down, I think, to the diffuculty of typing anything of length, and therefore of nuance, on a touch screen. The currency of the internet changed from the paragraph to the sentence, from the blog to the tweet, from the word to the image. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, September 25, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpism The fact that Trump's party and his net- work always look for ways to excuse him has been hugely liberating for Trump. He can actually deny he said things that were recorded – like his trashing of the British prime minister. He can take one side of any issue (like trashing key NATO allies to satisfy his base), and, when he gets blowback, take the other side (claim to love the Atlantic alliance). And he can declare that he really meant to ask why “wouldn't” Russia be the one hacking us instead of why “would” it, as he did say. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, July 18, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say God loves it when I try to talk in my spirit language. He thinks it's so cute that the only person in the world who can understand me is him. When I'm praying in tongues, my brain oftentimes is active. That's just because I've got this high-powered brain that never stops and drives me crazy, and so what I'll often do is I will send it on another assignment. Kelly Tshibaka, Trump-endorsed candidate to become a new Republican Senator from Alaska in 2022 to rerplace Lisa Murkowski, who's too sane © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think “critical race theory.” We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans. Christopher F. Rufo, 3:17 PM – Mar 15, 2021 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say He gets us. He's not a politician, and he's got a backbone. He's not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking. A 59-year-old attendee at the July 16, 2019, Women For Trump rally in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, quoted by The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 22, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I didn't even know there was a history with that phrase. Marjorie Taylor Greene on calling herself a “Christian nationalist” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I don't think we're in a trade war. We're in a situation of trade disputes. Steven Mnuchin © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I personally wish he would choose his words a little more carefully. On the other hand, I kind of find him refreshing, that he doesn't take any guff from anybody. Orrin Hatch © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say It's fun to blow stuff up. It's fun to shoot guns.  And it's fun to say ridiculous offensive shit. And if it offends you, so what? I don't care about your feelings and how you feel about words. Sorry! Barry Croft, wannabe kidnapper of Gretchen Whitmer © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Maybe it is time to change the traditional relationship the press will have with the White House. In this day and age of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, does Trump really need to be granting access to biased journalists that openly oppose him? Sean Hannity © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say No! Crowd's response when Trump asked them if he should tone it down just a little during his rally in Murphysboro, Illinois, on October 27, 2018, following the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh earlier that day © 2018 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day One and be ready to go. You’re going to see a huge, huge outcry because Washington wants to protect its own. Ron DeSantis, July 30, 2023, giving new meaning to “cutting the workforce” at a Rye, New Hampshire, barbecue [Earlier, he said the Defense Secretary needs to “slit some throats”] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The suggestion that there's going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over … it's going to be total war. I do two things, I vote and I buy guns. Joseph diGenova © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say There's a widely held view among our members that, yes, he's going to say things on a daily basis that we're not going to like but that the broad legislative agenda and goals that we have – if we can stay focused on those and try and get that stuff enacted – those would be big wins. John Thune © 2018 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House. Steven Cheung, Trump 2024 campaign spokesman, responding to people who point out that Trump's calling his critics “vermin” and claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” is the exact same rhetoric used by fascist dictators Hitler and Mussolini  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build the Wall. … This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls. Steve Bannon © 2020 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say We have successfully frozen their brand — “critical race theory” — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. Christopher F. Rufo, 3:14 PM – Mar 15, 2021 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Truth If you want to speak truth to power  – I'm going to go out on a limb here and say – you have to include the truth part. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, Oct. 5, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Ukraine A cynic would conclude that the west’s unspoken aim is not just to prevent a Russian victory, but to avoid a decisive Ukrainian success, for fear of escalation by Vladimir Putin's regime. If this is true, it is jarringly at odds with US and European public rhetoric. Adam Tooze, Financial Times, February 24, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Voting So please get your asses out tomorrow and vote. Donald Trump, to a June 26, 2018, South Carolina rally supporting the reelection of Gov. Henry McMaster © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Wannabe autocrats say I do it to discredit you all, and demean you all, so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you. Donald Trump, answering Lesley Stahl, who asked him why he kept attacking the press © 2018 Kwiple.com