"I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence."

I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence pic.twitter.com/INL4dWe7Hb

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 2, 2026

"I just had a chance to meet with the ambassador from the EU. We talked about the fact that you’re seeing the continued rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world. And we have our own, right here, in the state of Texas."

Said Beto O'Rourke, quoted in "O’Rourke calls Abbott a 'thug' and an 'authoritarian' who’s 'got his own oligarch here in the state of Texas'/The Democratic nominee for governor slammed the Republican incumbent in harsh terms, presaging a bitter lead-up to an election nearly eight months away" (The Texas Tribune).

Now, I think O'Rourke is utterly unqualified to hold serious power, because he seems to have had the delusion that he could aggressively assert that Abbott is part of the "rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world" without needing to back up his statement with any fact or argument. And this was not a casual, unguarded remark. He was sitting — "in a crowded hall at the South by Southwest festival" — doing an interview with Evan Smith, the CEO and co-founder of The Texas Tribune.

Of course, Smith pushed for more: "Greg Abbott is a thug in your mind?"

O’Rourke repeated the charge — "He’s a thug, he’s an authoritarian" — even as he knew he had no argument to make. He proceeded — as he put it — to "make the case." He went on about Abbott's failure to "keep the lights on in the energy capital of the planet last February." That may be a basis for criticizing Abbott, but it doesn't make him a thug and an authoritarian.

O'Rourke then switched to the subject of voting: “You think this stuff only exists in Russia or in other parts of the world? It’s happening right here.... You think they rig elections in other parts of the planet? It is the toughest state in the nation in which to vote, right here.” It's tough to vote, so the election is "rigged," and that — what? — makes Abbot like Putin? 

The most thuggish thing here is Beto's own asserting that the election is rigged. It's Trumpian.

 

Trump in Tupelo last night: Beto "quit like a dog."

I didn't like that. In the category of dog rhetoric, I prefer the talk of the hero dog.

"Good. Beto O'Rourke was abysmal in the debates. It seemed like he wasn't thinking through what he was saying about issues like gun bans and tax exemptions for churches."

"Once the consequences of his statements were pointed out to him, he seemed weak and confused. Beto will join Scott Walker, the Republican former governor of Wisconsin, in showing that a politician who makes a big splash in their own state can't necessarily transplant their local star power onto the national stage."

My son John reacts to Beto O'Rourke's dropping out of the presidential race.

Did Beto make a big splash in his home state? He never held statewide office. The most you can say is he lost a Senate race by a narrower margin than in other recent Texas Senate races. Scott Walker was a 2-term governor who made huge changes and set off an immense protest (and a recall election). And Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race — I think! — because Jeb Bush dominated the fundraising. Walker started out making a big impression, and if he'd had access to money, he might have had a chance. Also, Walker had to outshine Trump to look like a star on that stage. Who did Beto have to outshine? The Democratic candidates are all pretty dull compared to Trump.

Cory Booker misused the term "red badge of courage."

At last night's debate (transcript), Booker said:

[W]e know Donald Trump's a racist, but there is no red badge of courage for calling him that. Racism exists. The question isn't who isn't a racist. It's who is and isn't doing something about racism.

In the classic American novel "The Red Badge of Courage," the term appears exactly once and is easily understood:

The mob of men was bleeding.... At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

The "red badge of courage" is a war wound. That's why it's red. It's not a medal you get in recognition of courage. It is physical damage to your fleshly body that may be taken — rightly or wrongly — as evidence that you were courageous in battle.

Booker was right that you don't deserve a courage medal for calling Donald Trump a racist. It's an easy — even pusillanimous — move. ("Pusillanimous" is the opposite of "courageous.") But even if it were courageous and we were inclined to give you a medal for courage, we shouldn't be giving you a red badge of courage! That would mean we should shoot you!

A basic American education should include reading "The Red Badge of Courage." I was forced to read it in high school, and though I found it hard to understand at the time and a half century has passed since I read it, I have not forgotten what "red badge of courage" means. It makes me sad to hear Cory Booker get that wrong. He is one of the best-educated individuals in American politics today. He went to one of the finest high schools, received a BA and an MA from Stanford University, studied at  Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and then went to the most illustrious law school in the country, Yale. Yet he doesn't know "The Red Badge of Courage." What does that say about American education? This makes me sad.

Even sadder is the low standard for what courage means. Of course, Booker is right that there's no courage in calling Donald Trump a racist. But what did he think was courageous? He said:

We have to come at this issue attacking systemic racism, having the courage to call it out, and having a plan to do something about it. If I am president of the United States, we will create an office in the White House to deal with the problem of white supremacy and hate crimes.

It's not courageous to express belief in "systemic racism." It's the basic ideology of the left. It would be more courageous to critique the dogma than to repeat the usual incantations.

Elsewhere in the debate transcript, we see the impoverishment of the concept of courage: Kamala Harris said: "Beto, God love you for standing so courageously in the midst of that tragedy." Beto was not on site during the El Paso shooting. He visited the city afterwards. What was courageous? Opposition to murder and shooting people?!

Booker said Beto showed "such courage" for supporting supporting gun licensing. Warren talked about "courage" to fight Trump on immigration. Buttigieg talked about the "courage" it would take for Congress to vote on military interventions. Harris credited Barack Obama with "courage" for his work on Obamacare. There is no serious effort to engage with the idea of courage.

It's an empty, blather word.

***

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks, an existence of soft and eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

And yet if I put it in the post title, Google will demonetize this page. And you're (half) censoring it in your tweet! And The Atlantic censors it in its headline.

Beto saying "fucked up" isn't profane because f--- is no longer profane in any sense an anthropologist would recognize. It's just salty -- and honest, and sometimes le mot juste. Slurs are our modern profanity, not sex and body words. https://t.co/c0PUjCF1Jf

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) September 6, 2019

From "The F-Word Is Going the Way of Hell/In today’s world, slurs are the real profanity, not the use of an 'F-bomb' to describe a mass shooting":

Why, then, would clean-scrubbed former Representative Beto O’Rourke pop off with the likes of “What the fuck?” in response to an annoying question from a reporter after the shooting in El Paso? Or, after the shooting in Odessa, “We don’t yet know what the motivation is … but we do know this is fucked up."

It strikes me as particularly shallow to use the word in that context. But the correct answer to McWhorter's question is that Beto is desperate at this point. He's got to do something. That is emphatically not what McWhorter says:

O’Rourke’s “F-bomb,” then, was less a matter of swearing than his seeking a note of sincerity. The F-word these days may not be truly profane to many of us, but it remains potent, a way of indicating genuine feeling. That is a common note from O’Rourke, paralleled by his display of his Spanish-speaking skills during the first Democratic debate in June. Related to this sincerity is that his F-bomb was downright articulate: “We don’t yet know what the motivation is … but we do know this is fucked up.” The word untenable would have sounded too formal; problematic too weak; troubling too uncommitted; egregious too Mr. Mooney. “Fucked up,” combining pungency with a streak of impatient dismissiveness, conveys exactly the sentiment O’Rourke intended, as well as precisely the one his supporters share.

Sincerity! I'd've never thought of that.

ADDED: This made me wonder if Trump uses "fuck" in his public speech. I found "The Profanity President: Trump’s Four-Letter Vocabulary" from last May in the NYT.

In a single speech on Friday alone, he managed to throw out a “hell,” an “ass” and a couple of “bullshits” for good measure. In the course of just one rally in Panama City Beach, Fla., earlier this month, he tossed out 10 “hells,” three “damns” and a “crap.” The audiences did not seem to mind. They cheered and whooped and applauded....

“No one has debased the civil discourse in this country more than President Trump, and the president really does set the tone in the country,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California. “We see it reflected in our offices by the hateful, belligerent, obscene and violent calls that we get now that we didn’t used to get.”...

Schiff has a personal beef: Trump called him "little Adam Schitt."

[Trump] has either coarsened the public discourse or reflected it, or perhaps both, depending on your view of him, but he is not alone....

During a campaign event in 2000, George W. Bush was heard over a live microphone talking with his running mate, Dick Cheney, calling a Times reporter he did not particularly like a “major-league asshole.” In 2004, as vice president, Mr. Cheney told a senator on the Senate floor to “go fuck yourself.” His successor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was overheard in 2010 using a variation of that profanity to tell Barack Obama what a big deal passage of health care legislation was.

Interesting that the Times saw fit to print Cheney's "go fuck yourself" and not Joe Biden's "This is a big fucking deal."

Neither Cheney nor Biden were making a public remark. Here's Biden:

The Times article doesn't have any examples of Trump publicly using the word "fuck."

"Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement - & be quiet!"

Tweeted Trump late last night.

He was reacting to something Beto O'Rourke said, that Trump should not visit El Paso: "He helped to create what we saw in El Paso on Saturday. He's helped to produce the suffering that we are experiencing right now. This community needs to heal."

And here's Beto's Instagrammed proof that "Beto" is not a phony name (found via WaPo, at "‘Be quiet!’: Trump claims Beto O’Rourke uses a ‘phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage’"):

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beto O'Rourke (@betoorourke) on Feb 1, 2018 at 12:23pm PST

It's about to begin: The big debate.

1. Are you interested? If so, why? Is it mainly to read Trump's tweets? I know I've been skipping all the articles on how to watch the debates and what might happen at the debates. I'm afraid it's just going to be tedious sequences of similar answers to predictable issues — we really must take climate change seriously and so forth. There will be preloaded zingers to zing. Maybe somebody will interrupt someone in a half-spontaneous way or show some unexpected charisma. But I don't expect anything interesting to happen.

2. The pulsating background is making the candidates look jittery. Maybe they are jittery, but I've got to look away because it's searing my eyeballs.

3. Beto speaks Spanish for many sentences. ADDED:

Cory Booker's facial expression when Beto starts speaking in Spanish#DemDebate pic.twitter.com/VrZiOh5Rzu

— Cate Martel (@CateMartel) June 27, 2019

4. What was the question to Tulsi Gabbard? Please recite your bio?

5. I don't get the sideburns on Bill de Blasio... all the way to the bottom of the earlobe. Who does that? Speaking of how they look, why doesn't Beto wear the right size collar? It looks ridiculous for a man to wear a gaping collar.

6. My son John is live-blogging. Check it out. It's sure to be more substantive than anything I'm willing to do.

7. Hand-raising time. Only Warren and de Blasio raise their hand for who wants to abolish all private health insurance.

8. Whoa! The moderators lost control. De Blasio takes over and badgers Beto about private health insurance. Why would Beto defend something that's not working?, de Blasio asks, smirking.

9. Beto needs a new toupee. The natural hair has gone grayer, making the real/fake line obvious.

10. First time anyone ever said "piss" in an American presidential debate. Julian Castro declared himself "pissed off" (about our treatment of immigrants).

11. Booker is copying Beto, speaking whole sentences in Spanish.

10. Booker called Julian Castro "Jose"!

11. Trump weighs in with one word:

BORING!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2019

12. They switch over to new moderators — Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd — but then they have a major microphone snafu. They had to go to another break, and I turned it off. I've got it on the DVR, but I don't know. There's already some sleeping going on here.

Look! Everybody (except Warren) beats Trump — especially O'Rourke.

According to a new CNN poll (click to enlarge and clarify):



Can that be right?

IN THE COMMENTS: Dave Begley said:

Meaningless and wrong. It is a state by state election. Not a national election.

Didn't we learn from the last election?

This is the terrible problem with poll-gazing. It's missing what you most need to know. Which of these Democratic candidates will be most able to get the people who could go either way in the states that can go either way. I'm one of those people, you know — in Wisconsin and capable of voting for either party's candidate.

Trained a bot...

I trained a bot with all of JFK's speeches and this is what it wrote: https://t.co/mQCryTKllP

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) March 31, 2019

People seem to be experiencing Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke as occupying the same niche.

Try to explain the psychological structure of these emotions.

You might question the proposition. I'm getting it from articles like "Buttigieg is leaving Beto in the dust/The ninth installment of the Post Pundit 2020 Power Ranking" (WaPo). From the comments there: "Buttigieg's better than Beto's kennedy-look-alike charm!" "[Buttigieg is] Kind of like Beto but with substance," "And maturity," "Buttiegiege definitely surpasses Beto. As someone said, when Beto speaks, it's like there is dance music in his head. Mayor Pete talks substance."

Oh, come on, don't go crazy. If you love "normal," as you say, you'd better observe the "served"/"fed" distinction.

I'm reading "Why are 2020 Democrats so weird?" by Michael Walther (in The Week). There's this:

Meanwhile, there is Beto. I don't particularly care that in 1988 the young Robert Francis O'Rourke posted some erotic verses about cows ("Oh, Milky wonder, sing for us once more, / Live your life, everlusting [sic] joy" is one of the only bits I can quote on this family website) online. I didn't even know until yesterday that there was such a thing as "online" in 1988. Nor am I going to get all worked up about his weird murder spree fantasy story, which is the kind of thing stupid teenagers write every day. But what I do want to know is whether he actually took a handful of green feces, put it in a bowl, and served it to his wife once, telling her that it was avocado. Asked by a journalist recently to confirm the anecdote, which had been reported by a supposed friend of the candidate, he responded that while he didn't remember this happening it "sounds like the kind of thing I would do." Come again? If you fed excrement to the mother of your children, I feel like you would recall. I almost certainly think she would. If there was ever something to lie about as a politician, this is it....

I can't be the only person who sometimes thinks there's something to be said for, you know, normal people in politics. It is certainly difficult to imagine poor Jeb Bush ever inviting his late beloved mother to view a smut film with at the local cinema in Kennebunkport. It is even harder to imagine President Obama feeding the former first lady the contents of one of Sasha or Malia's diapers.

"Served" means he put the bowl of green shit on the table in front of his wife and declared it to be avocado. Very funny. "Fed" means he got it on a spoon and aimed it at her mouth and even got it in. Tricking her. That's horrible. Big difference. I like normal people, and in my book, normal people get the difference between those 2 images and don't smear them together to try to make the world seem weirder than it is. It's weird enough. Let's be precise and honest about just how weird it is, because it could be a LOT weirder, and we need to hang onto the last remaining lumps of normal.

"Beto O’Rourke’s Presidential Platform Is Actually a Restaurant Countertop/Dude, people need to eat food off of those!"

Headline at Eater.

The phenomenon has even spawned its own parody Twitter account, Beto Standing On Counters, with the tagline “Standing on Counters and other assorted furniture til ‘20.”

It's viral. Example:

Beto vs. the dog I took care of this weekend pic.twitter.com/TF3ivBJF63

— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) March 18, 2019

"Beto O'Rourke raised massive $6.1 million his first day in the 2020 race..."

According to his campaign, CNN reports.

That tops the $5.9 million one-day total Sen. Bernie Sanders announced after he launched his campaign. The closest other 2020 Democratic candidate to publicize their first-day fundraising total was California Sen. Kamala Harris at $1.5 million....

[O'Rourke's] refusal to release first-day fundraising totals over the weekend had raised doubts that O'Rourke had met fundraising expectations around his campaign launch. He remained coy about his fundraising for days.

"I can't right now," he said Friday in Washington, Iowa.

A reporter responded that O'Rourke could share his fundraising totals if he wanted to.

"You're right," he responded. "I choose not to."

Ha ha. Brilliant move, withholding the numbers and creating the space within which naysayers would neigh. It makes the good news sparkly bright.

Oh, the anguish this must cause Kamala Harris pushers (like the NYT)! Oh, the pain to those who sought to create a fundamental belief that the Democrat candidate could not be a white man! The Bernie-Beto-Biden triad must be stopped, that was their message. But Bernie got in and raked in the cash, and now Beto's done even better. The non-whitemales are far behind. And the #1 white male isn't even in yet. But we know Biden will show up next, and the only question will be whether he'll out-fund-raise the other components of the triad, the other white males.

By the way: "Biden Accidentally Says He’s Running, Crowd Chants ‘Run, Joe, Run!’" (Rolling Stone).

“I know I get criticized. I’m told I get criticized by the new left,” Biden said told the audience at the First State Democratic Dinner. “I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the — anybody who would run.”

Before Biden even had a chance to walk the statement back, the audience was already on its feet, cheering him on, chanting, “Run, Joe, run!”

“I didn’t mean it!” Biden insisted, laughing, adding, “Of anybody who would run, because, folks, we have to bring this country back together again.”

"Beto O'Rourke was the one to come up with the name 'Cult of the Dead Cow' for the hacker group in April 1985."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Cult of the Dead Cow" because I was blogging about Beto O'Rourke this morning, and in the comments Ron Winkleheimer said, "i'm way more interested in the fact that he was in the Cult of The Dead Cow." I said out loud, "Why did they call it Cult of the Dead Cow? Was it because they were eating hamburgers?"

So I looked it up, and I see: "Beto O'Rourke was the one to come up with the name 'Cult of the Dead Cow' for the hacker group in April 1985." The footnote sent me to "cDc 079: The True Story of Cult of the Dead Cow by Psychedelic Warlord" (Psychedelic Warlord being Beto O'Rourke), and I actually took the trouble to read the whole thing, out loud, within earshot of Meade. Then I was going to blog it by starting with the most interesting quote from the piece, but looking back over it, I had to say, "That wasn't really very interesting, was it?" And Meade confirmed that it was not.

But I must say that it's ridiculous to read "The True Story of Cult of the Dead Cow" and come up with the flat Wikipediaese "Beto O'Rourke was the one to come up with the name 'Cult of the Dead Cow.'" Maybe it depends on whether you've rearranged your brain with hallucinogenic drugs, but to my mind, calling it "The True Story..." is a way to say This is a tall tale. And:

Well, it was about 11:30pm on cold night in April of '85. I had just
finished talking to Franken Gibe. I still kinda remember how it all went
about....

I still kinda remember... That means it's made up (to one degree or another)...

FG "Hey Psyche! I just had the greatest idea for a new organization!"

PW "Really? What are you planning on calling it?"...

FG "Comatose Cow Club.....

PW "Yeah... hey, why don't you call it Cult of the Dead Cow?."..

FG "Ahhhh Psyche... you are such a dreamer! And anyhow, "Cult of the Dead Cow" Ha! Who would want to join a group like that? Oh well... talk to ya later."

PW "Bye... but consider it, ok?"

You may say Psychedelic Warlord is a dreamer, but...

Beto O'Rourke's hacker name was "Psychedelic Warlord," so that must mean he's done hallucinogenic drugs — right? — and is that something that's okay in a presidential candidate?

Scott Adams addresses the question whether Beto has done hallucinogens:



Scott's first pass at the question is another question: "Have you seen Beto?" He giggles while waiting for the question to soak in. He says anyone who's taken hallucinogens (which Scott has) will have an "easier time" with the question.

Eventually he gives his answer: He'd place a "large bet" on "yes."

He's quick to add that it's not a criticism. "In fact, I might even prefer it." This preference interweaves with his reason for believing Beto has used hallucinogenics (reasons other than that nickname, Psychedelic Warlord): Beto doesn't see barriers. People who have done hallucinogenics "think their barriers are artificial.... They see the world around them as somewhat artificial, meaning that they know it's a construct of their own mind."

Scott's use of the word "know" reveals that (by his own standard) he's used hallucinogenics. He knows the world around him is a construct of his own mind.

"Once you realize that your experience is, to a large extent, a construct of your own mind, then you can start removing barriers. So you can say to yourself, yes, it does seem that, in the normal world, it would be impossible to become President of the United States with my résumé, but I've taken hallucinogens...."

Scott ends this segment reaffirming that he believes Beto has taken hallucinogens. He never gets back to the wafted assertion that it's preferable to have a President who has acquired the knowledge/"knowledge" that barriers are artificial. It makes me think of that well known Robert F. Kennedy quote — and a lot of people think Beto O'Rourke looks like Robert F. Kennedy — "Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not?"



That's Teddy Kennedy at RFK's funeral. RFK adopted those words as the theme for the presidential campaign that ended in his death. The words are nearly identical to words that George Bernard Shaw had the serpent say to Eve in the play "Back to Methuselah": "You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'"

And there's your forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — LSD.



I remembered that I'd already written about the RFK quote and Shaw and the serpent, but it blew my mind to search my archive and discover that I wrote about it at the end of a riff that began with a snippet from Scott Adams. Adams had been talking about the weird propaganda video President Trump sent to Kim Jong-Un. I leapt to the RFK quote after I'd riffed my way to: "[M]aybe the target isn't Kim at all but the American media, and they are being lured into mocking and disparaging Trump, which will ultimately help Trump, as the American people will watch the video and be taken by the optimism the elites find appalling."

Leapt, over the barrier.

Is it funny that Trump's dream of things that never were is of a barrier — his wall? Is it evidence of having taken hallucinogens that you see no barrier to... a barrier?

"There’s still a big part of the party that wants to fall in love, and there’s another part of the party that will settle for anything that will beat Trump."

"I think that’s a real, daily tension in the party that’s going to play out in real time.... It just happened that in 2008 and 2012 we fell in love with the most electable candidate.... I would generally make the case that the Democratic Party should always be nominating the next-generation candidate... except I’m not sure any of the old rules apply."

Said Democratic Senator Christopher S. Murphy, quoted in "Beto O’Rourke is 46. Bernie Sanders is 77. Does Age Matter Anymore for Democrats?" (NYT).

I like to say I'm for Boring, but I can see elections are about love... and hate.

Murphy sounds pretty boring, but that's what appealed to me in that quote.

"Beto O'Rourke said Friday night that he had been wrong for joking... that his wife has been raising their three children 'sometimes with my help.'"

CNN reports.

"Not only will I not say that again, but I'll be more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage, and also the way in which I acknowledge the truth of the criticism that I have enjoyed white privilege," he said....

"So yes, I think the criticism is right on. My ham-handed attempt to try to highlight the fact that Amy has the lion's share of the burden in our family -- that she actually works but is the primary parent in our family, especially when I served in Congress, especially when I was on the campaign trail -- should have also been a moment for me to acknowledge that that is far too often the case, not just in politics, but just in life in general. I hope as I have been in some instances part of the problem, I can also be part of the solution," he said....

O'Rourke also apologized for fiction he wrote when he was a teenager. Using the pen-name Psychedelic Warlord, he wrote about murder from the murderer's point of view.

He said he was "mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed... whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn't matter."

No. I want him to apologize to the teenager, the boy he once was. Apologize for saying he doesn't matter. Apologize for being embarrassed for him. Who the hell are you to be embarrassed for him? You are erasing him. You are misappropriating him. What about the teenagers today who hear you and resolve never to write fiction lest it trip up some aggressively ambitious person they may grow into some day?

And as for Amy, your ham-handmaid, did she have any help — any nannies and other servants? Aren't you two rich?

And I can't believe you said "she actually works"! Oh, good lord, you'll have to apologize for that too. You think a woman who devotes all her time to maintaining the household and raising children doesn't work?

My real point here is once you adopt the lifestyle of apologies, you can never do enough. The demands for apologies are endless. Where are you going to draw the line? And how are you going to seem presidential? Everybody's trying to take you down, Beto. Don't be beta.

"I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said: 'Is he crazy or is that just the way he acts?'... Study it. I'm sure you'll agree."

Said Trump, apparently trying to get us to see crazy when we look at Beto O'Rourke.

Here you are:



Study it.

If you studied it, did you agree with Trump?

Yes. Beto seems crazy.

Yes, it looks crazy, but Beto's just acting that way.

There's a lot of hand movement, but it doesn't look crazy, just bad.

Eh. Beto gestures. It's not a problem and it doesn't mean anything.

Trump gestures a lot and to good effect. He's trying to inhibit Beto and trip him up.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Making Beto seem like John Edwards....

Just remembered the last time a Conde Nast publication dressed a young Democratic hopeful in smart-casual workwear and posed them next to a dog and pickup truck in a cover story shot by Annie Leibovitz. pic.twitter.com/qvOzjdaUkw

— Freddie Campion (@FreddieCampion) March 13, 2019

Oh. My. God. pic.twitter.com/SFgITC1dlo

— Freddie Campion (@FreddieCampion) March 13, 2019

ADDED: The Beto photo is much bettah. Humanizing politicians with a dog is so tired. Both men have a truck — are they guys who'd really have trucks? — but the Edwards truck is blocking the entire background. Beto has a long windy dirt road. Is it the road ahead or the road behind? Needs to be the road behind. He came from Texas and he's going on to the White House. Not likely, but we can dream along with our little dreamboat.