It’s really no surprise that some teenage boys love Trump. From what I can recall, they are burdened with all the baggage that comes from being taught that normal human feelings are wrong and bad along while being offered limited outlets for expressing any emotion that isn’t rage. So with all the performative masculinity bullshit they’re wading through, it’s not exactly a shocker that boys have fallen for one of the worst performances of masculinity of all time—that of charlatan-in-chief Donald Trump.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the teenage boys in a working-class Pennsylvania town are using Trump memes to bully (primarily female) classmates, a practice that would surely delight the president:
“The girls mostly roll their eyes, but sometimes the jabs cross a line. Last year, when Alabama passed an anti-abortion bill, some of the boys shared a series of Instagram posts from women outraged by the ban, with the song “Hoes Mad” playing in the background. ‘The boys mostly like Trump. There’s an attention side of it,’ [one student] said. ‘It’s just like a way to get people upset, to rile up the girls, the whole masculine group loves Trump.’”
Asked about their support for Trump, one male student attributed the Trump presidency to the success of his parents’ construction business, while another student, who is coincidentally student body president, put his support down to gender: “Just historically, when you think Republican, you think males, and when you think liberals, you think more female.”
Really makes one miss the old days when all we had to worry about were young people engaging in blood orgies to a soundtrack of rock n’ roll. [The Philadelphia Enquirer]
The New York Times remains oddly obsessed with attempting to force Democratic candidates to blame undocumented immigrants for stagnant American wages. First, they tried it with Bernie. Now, they’re trying it with Warren.
In a convoluted question for the Times TV show The Weekly, an interviewer very obviously tried to get Warren to say undocumented people were stealing jobs from union workers, a question Warren pivoted back to unsafe, illegal working conditions. But the interviewer pressed on, demanding to know if she had “any specific evidence that immigrants drive down wages?” To which Warren replied “No. I thought you were talking about undocumented workers.”
Her answer got right to the root of the question the Times was really trying to ask. Maybe they’ll have better luck getting the racist answer they so clearly want out of Biden. [New York Times]
Let’s prepare for the debate with a few laryngeal spasms:
- Warren’s gonna make the Department of Education forgive those loans nobody was planning on paying off anyway. [Bloomberg]
- Last Thursday, Trump told people Soleimani was “looking to blow up our embassy.” By Friday, the number was “four embassies.” Would somebody good at exponents tell me how many we’re up to today? 100? 1,000? [Washington Post]
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo can’t remember who said those embassy attacks were “imminent,” the military or the Trump administration and can’t for the life of him understand why that would matter. [Twitter, TPM Livewire]
- Russian hackers attempted to hack the Ukranian gas company at the heart of the Trump impeachment hearings, which makes sense, as they often hack to Trump’s advantage. [Politico]
- As you’re preparing your 2019 taxes, please keeping in mind that a further $7.2 billion dollars of your money will be used to not build the wall that’s never happening. [Washington Post]
- Nevada teachers for Bernie. [Buzzfeed]
- Look for the House to send the impeachment articles tomorrow. [New York Times]
- Stephen Miller doesn’t like children of immigrants, does like doodling little notes to Breitbart. [Southern Poverty Law Center]
- Meanwhile Pete’s pinky-swearing staffers to secrecy. [The American Prospect]