Originally published at: Without Online Trolls, There Would Be No Donald Trump - TPM – Talking Points Memo
On July 8, something happened to Donald Trump that I’ve not seen happen in the entire decade he has dominated presidential politics. As his base clamored for more disclosures about sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his superpower — his ability to grab and redirect attention — briefly failed him. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”…
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A depressing but important article.
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Internet trolls disseminating false information? Inconceivable!! Everything about that man and his “Administration“ is phony. I pity the fools who have been taken in by him.
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America.
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mastered mobbing in the GamerGate scandal
Several legit journalists warned of this at the time; techniques proven & honed. But most of the MSM ignored it.
weev
Is this where demented Cheeto picked up (and garbled) “the Weave?”
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If Putin’s cock-holster* so desperately wants to divert attention I hardly think constructing a massive Jefferey Epstein Memorial Bawl Room is going to help.
* h/t Stephen Colbert
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OT but any comment Marcy???
Acting on a mix of principle and caution, Justice Department officials under former President Joe Biden made a series of decisions that significantly delayed and ultimately may have hampered the federal criminal investigations into President Donald Trump, according to a new book.
The slow decision-making at the top of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department affected two major probes into Trump after he lost the White House in 2020: whether he illegally possessed and obstructed the retrieval of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence, and whether he conspired illegally to overturn the 2020 election.
More egg meets face here:
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I don’t. Stupid hurts. Eventually it hurts the stupid most.
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Yeah emptywheel brooked no criticism of the feckless Garland. Now she’s beginning to get a clue? Maybe she ain’t as sharp as she wants to believe. That, or she turned a blind eye to it. Perhaps because Mr Meek was a source?
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Good thing Putin has plenty trolls available to assist his friend.
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The longer this goes on and the more desperate Donnie’s attempts to bury this story get, the more I believe that there is something so damning about Donnie and perhaps Melanoma as well. After all, Trump met her through Epstein, she must have been one of the creatures in his stable of prostitutes that he kept to entertain his perverted friends. Obviously an adult one and presumably willing to perform whatever sexual activities the little limpdicks needed done. She may know quite a lot about the rape and abuse of the minor girls that Epstein and Maxwell were keeping around.
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I have been saying this same thing for some time now. There is no “MAGA Movement”–it’s all an internet concoction. Even the astroturfed Tea Party, instigated by the Kochs, had live bodies out protesting and spitting at great men like John Lewis.
These trolls and podcasters, clearly bankrolled by billionaires who want to rule us, have no actual base, just a media audience, a passive one…
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This is a very important article and I am surprised it hasn’t gotten more attention. I too, in a more haphazard way, have become aware of the trolling armies. Occasionally, in the last few months, I have begun responding to absurd comments by MAGAs on Facebook, particularly on local news sites. A former Chicagoan, I’ve been taking a particular interest in stories about Governor JB Pritzker’s efforts at resisting the ICE depravities now being visited upon that city and state. The comments section on every such page is immediately inundated by idiotic attacks on Pritzker’s weight. No doubt there are MAGAs in Illinois who genuinely don’t like Pritzker, but the volume, consistency, and intensity of these comments indicates an organized effort beyond that. When I respond and receive a reply, maybe 10% of the time it is from some Fox-addled fool who genuinely believes their propaganda and makes an attempt to comment back at me. The other 90% respond with a HaHa icon implying that my argument isn’t worth a moment’s consideration. These, I’ve decided, are the professional trolls.
Our side needs to develop tactics for combatting the trolls.
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Silly. Trump II is fourth wave conservative reestablishment (Reagan, Bush W, Trump I), the revanche of pre-New Deal, pre-Civil Rights movement American capital (note how thoroughly big financial/industrial capital has rallied to Trump). He plays to the misplaced hopes of those who’ve suffered through the last 50 years of American capitalists turning the U.S. into a service economy. In that substantial sense, Trump is not the victory of trolls, but the (false) embodiment of both American capital preparing for international conflict, if not war to overturn the Chinese Revolution, and domestically working class disaffection, i.e., in effect a mass electoral movement (however brittle).
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The trolls are not in charge but they are a weapon, and an effective weapon at that. We need to be able to combat them somehow. Somehow I don’t think your intellectual analysis of late monopoly capitalism is our weapon of counterattack.
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I think we all have. The truth is still out there.
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With much of American talking-head political commentary little more than whinging or bloviation, and Petey War Minister’s macho-posing, the Democrats have a perfect rebrand option. Sisu, or “grit”, is the cultural characteristic of the Finns that has made them tough, resilient and happy. Americans are not just miserable these days, but actually being immiserated by their own government. Imagine watching Fox News from a sisu perspective, or listening to anything Trump or John Thune says?
It’s kind of weird, because American film leading men, especially Gary Cooper, a very much Eisenhower conservative Republican, built his career on quiet inner strength. His favorite thing was a walk in the woods or the desert.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/10/30/the-finnish-lifestyle-philosophy-that-could-save-europe
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It is weird what different countries talk about. With winter approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, Finnish discussions turn to heat storage, either in caverns or sand batteries.
https://www.vantaanenergia.fi/en/about-us/projects/varanto-the-cavern-thermal-energy-storage/
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Wasn’t the sand battery first developed by students at MIT (presumably, with input from a prof or profs)? I remember reading about that several years ago.
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