"You know we're building the ark," said Noah.

Trump says his ballroom might cost more than $300 million but adds, "you know we're building the arc. Maybe we use it for the arc. We raised a lot of money for the ballroom, so maybe we'll put -- the arc is going to be incredible for Washington DC, so maybe we use it for the… pic.twitter.com/D9yuyWpC7e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2025

"It’s true that the format did Biden no favors. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash avoided fact-checking..."

"... like it was the plague, which allowed Trump to steamroll an unsteady Biden with his usual stream of lies. Trump served up whoppers about abortion, his bungled covid response, Charlottesville, January 6, and more.... CNN finally ran an on-air fact-check of Trump more than an hour after the debate ended. But considering the relatively minuscule size of the audience at that late hour and the fact Trump was allowed to lie with impunity on the same network at length earlier in the evening, CNN’s belated attempt at basic journalistic accountability was worth very little."

Writes Aaron Rupar, in "Not great, Joe/Biden's debate showing stunk up the joint. But don't give up hope" (PublicNotice).

The format did Biden no favors? The format was engineered to favor Biden! Trump stepped up and did it the way Biden's people wanted. If the format chosen imposed disadvantages on Biden, it's only because his people thought other formats were more disadvantageous... unless the fix was in and the idea was to expose Biden's weaknesses.

Rupar, of course, is ridiculous. The "whopper about... Charlottesville" came from Biden. Who is still bitterly clinging to the notion that Trump said Nazis were fine people? Maybe Biden is so far gone that he actually believes it, but I don't believe Rupar believes it. I'm crediting him with rank cynicism. If the CNN moderators had been fact-checking in real time, they would have had to correct Biden on the "fine people" hoax... and on numerous other things, such as the claim that Trump told people to inject bleach into their arm. But Rupar is free to imagine that the moderators would have fact-checked in a biased way, a la Candy Crowley, and to pine about the debate that might have been.

CORRECTION: When first published, this post had a few stray sentences of Rupar's — at the bottom, after a big space — and I hope no one mistook that as mine! 

I'm reading a Vox article from 4 years ago — December 12, 2019.

The headline is "Gaetz’s effort to make the impeachment hearing about Hunter Biden’s problems backfired spectacularly":

During Thursday’s impeachment hearing, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee repeatedly tried to shift the focus from President Donald Trump’s apparent abuse of power to the Bidens — their goal being to establish that Trump had legitimate reasons to try and cajole the Ukrainian government into investigating one of his domestic political foes.

"The first thing to understand about Trump is that he’s not a normal politician. He doesn’t give a rip about policy."

"What he cares about is saying and doing whatever it takes to fulfill his desires and thirst for power, including destroying democracy if necessary. Treating him as anything other than a depraved authoritarian is not only wrongheaded, but helps his cause by legitimizing him as a reasonable choice for voters. And that’s exactly what Welker did."

I'm reading "How not to interview Trump/Kristen Welker's tenure as 'Meet the Press' moderator got off to an inauspicious start," by Aaron Rupar.

We're supposed to believe that other politicians don't say "whatever it takes to fulfill [their] desires and thirst for power."

I don't like the way the abnormalization of Trump has come at the cost of stifling our capacity to critique other politicians. The others may be more "normal" than Trump, but since when is a "normal politician" a genuine policy wonk who's dedicated to telling the truth and serving the people?

I watched the entire interview with Trump — video, transcript — and it seemed to me that Trump was heavily immersed in policy. His haters act as though it's a matter of principle to refuse to engage on the substance at all. Ironically, they are making it easier for him to win on the merits.

Stop dehumanizing him and answer him! The abnormalization strategy reinforces a suspicion that you don't dare argue substance. 

Watching the interview, I wrote down the time stamp 17:43. I wanted to remember where it was that I said out loud, "He's going to win."

It was right when he said: "It's sweet. It's the finest. We have the best." Context:

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

But I would get inflation down, because drill we must. We will be drilling for oil. We are going to become, again, energy independent. We are going to reduce our debt, because we’re also going to become energy dominant. You know, we were ready to go dominant within a matter of months. We would have been making so much money. We have more oil, I call it liquid gold, under our feet than any other country — Saudi Arabia, Russia. There’s no country with more — and it’s sweet. It’s the finest. We have the best. You know, we’re taking it from Venezuela. You know what it is? Tar.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Are you —

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

It’s the worst.

"Twitter has suspended the account of prominent liberal journalist Aaron Rupar as well as reporters from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post."

"Rupar, who has more than 788,000 followers, had his account suspended the day after Twitter suspended then restored an account that followed the movements of the billionaire’s private jet. 'I never posted anything Elon Jet related or that could violate the policy about disclosing locations. Unless the policy is that you criticize Elon and you get banned,' Rupar told CNN’s Oliver Darcy. And it came on the same day that Twitter suspended the account of social media rival platform Mastodon."

The Independent reports.

"[Pelosi] used a remarkable number of writing implements – more than three trays littered with them – to sign her name on the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump."

"The pens, engraved with her signature, were intended as souvenirs for Pelosi’s allies. She carefully signed the documents, apparently stroke by stroke, using different pens for each portion of her signature. Then she distributed them to impeachment managers and committee members."

From "Pen-t up anger: Republicans pounce on Pelosi over ceremonial writing tools" (in The Guardian), which I'm only reading because I noticed the headline in a sidebar while I was writing a post that was largely about an odd use of a hyphen and I was extra-curious about "Pen-t."

People got angry about pens, and a pun was in reach — "pen"/"pent" — and the headline writer strained for it, deploying that hyphen (putting the pun in punctuation).

It really is a strain, too, because not only was the "t" in "pent" a problem, but the whole idea of "pent-up anger" is wrong. I don't think the pens really made anyone angry. Trump supporters simply jumped at a great opportunity to savage and mock their opponents. And if that counts as anger, it wasn't "pent-up," because Trump supporters have been expressing themselves all along, every chance they get. We're very expressive these days.

Speaking of very expressive, here's Greg Gutfeld:

Here's @greggutfeld losing his mind over Pelosi giving away pens she used to sign impeachment articles, followed by footage of Trump giving away dozens of pens like candy mere hours ago following his China deal signing ceremony pic.twitter.com/91R27O5nim

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 15, 2020

And Rupar has lost his mind if he believes Gutfeld was losing his mind. Gutfeld was performing an excellent comic riff. It was effective and entertaining, and I presume Rupar knows it and is just rather dully using the boring internet approach of characterizing anything colorful as crazy.

ADDED: Trump's signing of the China deal is not like what Pelosi did at all. He quickly signs his name with one pen then hands a whole lot of pens over to be distributed as the ceremonial pens. Pelosi writes her signature in little segments, switching from pen to pen, so that each pen has the special magic of having been used to sign the document: