Brené Brown vs. Joe Rogan
Pick your poison: Over the weekend, depending on your political flavor, you could have chosen between listening to a comedian hurl insults on stage at Madison Square Garden as part of a campaign rally; watching a sitting U.S. representative and a vice-presidential contender play video games and talk about scrapping the filibuster via Twitch; hearing a presidential candidate’s thoughts on whale psychology; or listening to a vulnerability researcher (?) and a presidential candidate gab about birth order.
Our sharpest political minds these are not.
It’s almost like everyone is avoiding talking about the actual issues—things like how to reduce inflation, how to bring government spending under control, how to make Social Security solvent, how to create an orderly and just immigration process, or how to improve the quality of our schools. The podcasting industry has, between the last election cycle and now, taken a glorious wrecking ball to cable news, creating a whole bunch of scrappy independent upstarts that presidential candidates (and their political consultants) finally understand to be an important way voters are receiving news and commentary. Unfortunately, the candidates themselves appear to have their heads filled with little more than fluff.
First, a predictable scandal: Tony Hinchcliffe, an insult comedian known for his off-color jokes, took to the stage to open for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden yesterday. He made jokes about the Clintons, Diddy, and Latinos “making babies” and how they love to “come inside“—”just like they did to our country!”
He also said, “I don’t know if you guys know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” This became a political scandal, possibly jeopardizing Trump’s ability to win Puerto Rico’s electoral college votes. (Oh, wait…)
“When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage,’ know that that’s what they think about you….It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a response livestream with the Democrsats’ vice-presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. (They’re apparently quite chummy now, or so they want voters to believe.)
“Can’t get over this dude telling someone else to change tampons when he’s the one shitting bricks in his Depends after realizing opening for a Trump rally and feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd does, unironically, make you one of them,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “You don’t ‘love Puerto Rico.’ You like drinking piña coladas. There’s a difference.”
Can’t get over this dude telling someone else to change tampons when he’s the one shitting bricks in his Depends after realizing opening for a Trump rally and feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd does, unironically, make you one of them. https://t.co/kr82avveYs
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 28, 2024
Were Puerto Ricans in attendance at the rally offended by this? Not really, or so it seems. But this whole saga is actually pretty emblematic of how this whole election has gone: We’ve almost entirely neglected to talk about actual issues. The Trump campaign keeps courting controversy, again and again and again, while the Harris/Walz campaign frequently defines itself in opposition to the Trumpists, reactive and apoplectic but rarely proactively defining what
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