Quotes and Links

A week in review

CNN’s Van Jones delivered the line of the week during the network’s Wednesday night coverage of the Republican National Convention.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “In the latest New York Times/Siena poll Biden is behind Trump by an astonishing 23 points among likely working-class voters.” — The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira

• “After the shooting, there was an interview with an ER doctor and, honestly, I was fairly horrified to realize that there are ER doctors who are also Trump supporters… Would they render care to an undocumented person? A child who’s been raped? A gay person? A trans person?” — Jess Piper, Executive Director for Blue Missouri

• “I know what a black job is: it’s Vice President of the United States.” — Joe Biden, in his speech at the annual NAACP Convention

• “I just think the construction of, of this notion reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity, and it’s couched in a sort of halcyon, you know, revisitation of his roots, but it is actually really revealing about what he thinks matters and who America is, and that America is a place for people with his shared Western background. And that is the idea of America, that is the nation of America that he wants to resurrect.” — MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, who said that JD Vance mentioning his hope to be buried in his family’s plot in Kentucky was one of several “Easter eggs of white nationalism” in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

• “Lester Holt very smoothly interprets [Joe Biden’s] guttural sounds as if they were coherent, kind of like Han Solo responding to Chewbacca.” — New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait

• “Donald Trump and the people around him perceive themselves to be under threat, and that’s all that matters. That is not legitimate.” — CNN’s Juliette Kayyem, just moments after the assassination attempt on Trump.

• “GUNMAN DIES IN ATTACK” — Denver Post headline

• “The last 6-12 months I’ve believed I was going to abstain from voting in the upcoming election because the options are equally terrible. But watching Trump survive an assassination attempt and act like a total fucking savage just shifted me into some strange, patriotic gear that my fancy-feminism-white-men-bad infected brain never showed me. Like, the dude took a bullet and stood up with blood dripping down his face, and rallied a fucking crowd while fist pumping, yelling ‘FIGHT!’ Sorry, but I’m voting for that. And saying it out loud feels so freeing.” — Stepfanie Tyler, founder of Summerland AI, who says she majored in Women’s Studies and cried when Trump was elected in 2016.

• “The problem is that it has to be Joe Biden’s choice to leave, which is kind of like letting a drunk decide if he’s okay to drive.” — Bill Maher

• “Lord of the Rings is sort of a favorite cosmos for naming things, and cultural references, for a lot of far right figures and alt-right figures both in Europe and the United States. Mr. Vance when he founded his own venture capital firm, named after a Lord of the Rings thing, named Naria, which you can remember because it’s Aryan, but you put the N to the front.” — MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow

• “A bullet couldn’t stop Trump. A virus just stopped Biden.” — CNN’s Van Jones

• “One drug addict dies in police custody and every corporation, university, and NGO feels compelled to make a statement. Presidential candidate narrowly avoids death and we get crickets.” — The Blaze’s Auron MacIntyre

• “Trump Indicted For Inciting Assassination Attempt” — Babylon Bee headline

• “These two men are both elderly. Donald Trump is an elderly man who for whatever reason was given nine seconds to take an iconic photo-op during an active shooter situation. Weird situation, we’ll figure that out some day. But his survival of that and bouncing right back and going right to his convention is being conveyed in the media world as a sign of strength. This current president of the United States is 81 years old and has Covid. Should he be fine in a couple of days, doesn’t that convey exactly the same thing?” — MSNBC’s Joy Reid

• “America cannot afford for more years of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.” — Ron DeSantis, speaking at the Republican National Convention

• “Next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs. The news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.” — Joe Scarborough, regarding MSNBC’s decision to pull Morning Joe from the air on Monday “to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment” about assassination attempt on Trump. I can’t help but interpret this as a kind of admission by network executives that MSNBC’s most prominent pundits and their carousel of lunatic guests peddle insanity.

• “Dems are in a real conundrum. If Trump is really an evil super villain dictator who wants to destroy our system of government or whatever then assassinating him would be morally justified. But they don’t want to justify this, which means they’re confessing that everything they said about him for ten years was nonsense. They either have to openly defend this assassination attempt or admit that they’re full of shit. There is no good option. They’re screwed.” — Matt Walsh

• “I hope that JD Vance today challenges Kamala Harris to six debates, ‘cause she would wipe the floor with him.” — MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace

• “We’re just freshening up the space. Making it a bit more current. There’s a lot of Chicago icons who would be deserving of statues as well.” — Ronnie Reese, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s communications director, on the decision to remove a statue of George Washington from the hallway outside the mayor’s office on the fifth floor of City Hall.

• “What happens next could be very dangerous. After Trump ducked to avoid the bullets, he was immediately surrounded by Secret Service agents, who closely surrounded him as a human shield. But he rose from the stage, apparently in defiance of their wishes, to raise a fist in the air and yell ‘Fight!” Trump was defiant, and calling for revenge.” — The Guardian’s Moira Donegan

• “The party that can’t muster the wherewithal to remove a walking corpse at its head will now have to muster the wherewithal to remove both a walking corpse at its head and an incompetent successor who exposes the dangers of making important selections on the basis of the identitarian concerns that have swallowed the party whole — a fact that everyone knows but cannot admit. It faces a choice between survival as a party and protection of the sacred shibboleths that have already come fully unraveled before the whole world. I predict they will choose the latter.” — Wesley Yang

• “This is the final straw. Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.” — Elon Musk, who says that he will also being moving X headquarters to Texas. Musk was referring to a new law signed by Gavin Newsom on Monday that aims to prevent schools from informing families if their children identify as gay or transgender.

• “Isolated Taliban tackles climate crisis on its own” — Washington Post headline

• “I'm not gonna bullshit y’all, I was drunk last night. I’m checking myself into a facility today to get the help I need.” — Country music star Ingrid Andress, who gave one of the worst National Anthem performances of all time at the MLB Home Run Derby.

• “Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump’s Next Appeal To Black Voters?” — Forbes headline (article was later deleted)

• “Mike Tyson Takes One Last Swing at Immortality,” from Esquire.

• New York Times Magazine: “When a wealthy businessman set out to divorce his wife, their fortune vanished. The quest to find it would reveal the depths of an offshore financial system bigger than the U.S. economy.”

• A BuzzFeed News piece on how “limb-lengthening surgery” has become popular for men looking to permanently increase their height.

• “Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: Inside the Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes,” from Vice.

• A GQ story about a 26-year-old American missionary who set out to convert the world’s most isolated hunter-gatherer tribe, and the tragedy that befell him.

• The New York Times: “How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes”

• “The Case of the Vanishing Blonde,” from Vanity Fair.