Quotes and Links

A week in review

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow once again demonstrated that the left-wing opinion elites who so often sound the alarm about Trump’s alleged authoritarianism rarely hesitate to display their own rank illiberalism, Tuesday, November 5, 2024. | MSNBC

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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• “Everything of substance Harris has said during this whole campaign could fit inside a single subordinate clause of one of JD Vance’s sentences.” — Walter Kirn

• “Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.” — NYT’s Peter Baker

• “The thing I think is most important to remember is the people who said that he was a ‘Hitler lover’ weren’t Democrats, they were Republicans.” — CNN’s Van Jones

• “Can’t believe I actually had faith in other white women to choose our collective reproductive rights over their own whiteness. Naive and dumb.” — Majority Report’s Emma Vigeland

• “Michigan’s top elections official fought for democracy. Then Trump won.” — Washington Post headline

• “We always talk about how voters are too stupid to even, like, exist in the world. We talk about bubble wrapping them all the time, that they would just fall into pits with spikes and sharks with lasers on their heads because they’re just morons who can’t understand anything.” — The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last

• “De-registered as a Republican today.” — David Frum

• “‘Liz Cheney is a warmonger’ is code for ‘I will betray Ukraine and Taiwan.’” — Also David Frum

• “Black Americans vote like they vote not because they align with every single Democratic policy but because they understand this country with a clarity that can be challenging for people who have not had to live under apartheid in the U.S., who’ve never known what it’s like NOT to be able to cast a ballot, not to have rights of citizenship, not to be protected by this nation’s laws. Black Americans know American fascism because they lived under it — and that understanding overcomes any other policy choices that they might otherwise vote on. Black people uniquely understand this nation, and how awful it can get.” — 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones

• “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists.” — Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American

• “The relative stability on domestic and international affairs during the last four years is about to be gone, replaced by a volatile president who often operates without regard to national precedent.” — NYT’s Reid J. Epstein

• “I think it’s important to say that, you know, anyone who has experienced, or been in the United States for any period of time and experienced this country’s history and knows it, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of color. Let’s just be clear. And nothing that was true yesterday about how flawlessly this campaign was run is not true now. I mean, this really was an historic, flawlessly run campaign. Queen Latifah never endorses anyone, she came out and endorsed her.” — MSNBC’s Joy Reid

• “We also have to remember that the Supreme Court has essentially said that anything the president does, you know, while they are in office is, you know, gets granted presidential immunity. You know, people have been saying for a while that Joe Biden should take advantage of that. He has not. Now is the time to take advantage of that.” — Political historian Leah Wright Rigueur, during a CNN panel

• “Apologies for the late notice, but we will not have class today. TBH, I’m trying to wrap my head around how such a fear-based/hate-based/white-supremacy-based political campaign seems to have resonated with so many people yesterday. As an American, it’s embarrassing.” — University of Oregon professor Dean Mundy, in a message sent to his students

• “And I remember my father telling me many, many years ago that I was the first person in his family to enjoy full civil rights, and now I have less civil rights than I had when he told me that.” — The View’s Sunny Hostin

• “Mr. Trump offered a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright. That this appealed in particular to white men was not a coincidence — it intersects with other types of entitlement, including the idea that white people are superior to other races and more qualified to hold positions of power, and that any success that women and minorities have has been unfairly conferred to them by D.E.I. programs, affirmative action and government set-asides.” — NYT’s Elizabeth Spiers

• “This is a very oddly specific question that I ask guys on first dates. I always ask them if they think that they would want to go to space. And if they say yes, I don’t date them. I just think if you wanna go to space, you’re a little too full of yourself. I think it’s just weird.” — Pop star Olivia Rodrigo

• “Even if Trump doesn’t win, the Defense Department and NASA are going to need a new arrangement for all their rockets, and for all the multi-billion dollar contracts Elon Musk’s companies have with the U.S. government. The U.S. government is either going to have to unwind from all of those contracts or Elon Musk’s companies are going to have to unwind from him. This is an untenable reality in national security terms now that we know what we know about Elon Musk.” — Rachel Maddow

• “Imagine being an 18 year old young male voter. When you were 11, the MeToo movement launched and men across the board like you were deemed oppressors. When you were starting high school, liberal politicians closed your school and forced you to take classes online. The women around you don’t seem like victims — they are going to college at way higher rates, earning far more than men in many professional white-collar jobs, and are way less likely to be addicted to drugs and as lonely as most of the guys you know. Your peer group of other young men play video games and enjoy memes mocking the dominant, suffocating, woke culture across all the major entertainment and academic institutions. How is voting for the establishment Democrat who avoided any voting process or scrutiny for her nomination in any way appealing?” — Lee Fang

• “Russia has committed an act of war against this nation. We were attacked last night, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.” — Keith Olbermann

• “If you read leftist publications, and listen to left commentators, you will have a far better grasp on political reality.” — Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson

• “Just so glad we’ll no longer have to pretend that either Tim Walz or Doug Emhoff are men.” — Jeffrey Blehar

• “This election was about one thing: hate vs. the understanding we’re all in this together. Americans prefer the former. That’s the only conclusion to draw.” — The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert

• “Are any of the analyses of the Latin vote examining the reach and impact of Russian propaganda in Spanish?” — Asha Rangappa, ABC News contributor and former FBI agent

• “It is 1933. Hitler is in power. No time for a fucking seminar on Democrats messaging errors.” — Jen Rubin

• “The MAGA squirrel deserved to die” — Also Jen Rubin

• “Let it be noticed that once he decided that this race was existential, Elon basically just set up camp in PA and sat there until it flipped. This is how he does everything. Find the one lever that moves the world and then just go jump up and down on it, relentlessly.” — Isaiah Taylor, founder of Valar Atomics

• “I need NFL RedZone, but for garbage lib journos crying on live cable television.” — The Federalist’s Sean Davis

• “There’s something far more long-lasting than just Donald Trump the candidate. There is a sort of Russian embrace of disinformation, a radical devaluing of truth over the last nine to ten years, and a complete ignorance on civics.” — MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough

• “As a man, I’m just not scared like Trump. I’m not scared of telling the truth. I’m not scared of humility. I’m not scared of people who don’t look like me. I’m not scared of immigrants, of powerful women, of working people, of trans people, of Muslims. I’m not scared of love. I’m not scared of radical change. I’m not scared of Putin. I’m not scared of fair fights. I’m not scared of admitting when I lose.” — Ibram X. Kendi

• “A woman gave birth to each and every one of us. Tomorrow a woman will give birth to a renewal of our Democracy.” — Rob Reiner, on the eve of the election

If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today or 12ft.io.

• The Wall Street Journal: “Archie Karas, a Gambling Legend Who Made—and Lost—a Fortune, Dies at 73”

• The Wall Street Journal: “The Miscalculations That Sent Kamala Harris to a Devastating Loss”

• McSweeney’s: “A Robbery of Three Liberal Arts Graduates: The Police Report”

• The New Yorker: “Rodrigo Rosenberg, a highly respected corporate attorney in Guatemala, began, in the spring of 2009, to prophesy his own murder. The unraveling of a political conspiracy.”

• Quillette: “In a scathing Title IX Complaint obtained by Quillette, a San José State University women’s volleyball coach explains how her school’s aggressively enforced transgender-inclusion policy created a toxic environment for female athletes.”

• The New York Times: “How Wagner’s Ruthless Image Crumbled in Mali”

• The Atlantic: “Of Course Black Men Are Drifting Toward Trump”

• The Atlantic: “Point Nemo, the Most Remote Place on Earth”