When people stop being polite, and start being lumberjacks.
Hello! And welcome to the world we live in now, in which reality television stars become politicians and it's not weird to go around publicly admitting belief in bizarre conspiracy theories! And where those things are often combined!
What is it now? Are we electing a Bachelor contestant who thinks lizard people control the universe to the Senate? No, it is just Wisconsin Congressman/Real World alum Sean Duffy going on TV and getting into some weirdness with CNN anchor Brianna Keilar about the weird ass Clinton conspiracies he believes in!
You see, Duffy didn't actually want to talk about that shit. The way this is supposed to work, according to him, I guess, is that he is supposed to be allowed to throw this nonsense out to his constituency totally unchallenged, and then be taken seriously when it is CNN time. Keilar, however, was not down for that, and called him out on his embrace of the whole "HILLARY CLINTON IS PROBS DYING BECAUSE SHE COUGHED!" conspiracy. And, naturally, he doubled down.
Via TPM :
"You can Google and watch all kinds of video where she is having coughing attacks," Duffy said. "Donald Trump doesn't have that. Video where she stumbles off of the stage and she has to be grabbed and put back up."
Keilar goes on to dismiss his riff.
"Have you see the coughing attacks? You haven't seen those?" Duffy pressed.
"I have been there for those," Keilar said.
"Have you seen those with Trump?" Duffy asked.
"Who doesn't occasionally cough?" Keilar replied, clearly trying to move on.
"Well a cough is one thing," Duffy said. "A coughing fit is something else where it is a cough on end. Nothing on the Trump side leads you to believe he is not healthy."
For what it is worth, I am totally not dying of consumption or anything, and sometimes have coughing fits because allergies! Crazy, I know.
Duffy tried to make it seem like he was only being brought on CNN to be made a fool of (which, sure, is probably true but it's not hard to do), and mentioned that he'd been brought on to talk about Trump not disavowing David Duke fast enough before. He then claimed that CNN glossed over the fact that the Orlando shooter's dad showed up to Clinton's rally, which is weird because they definitely did not.
He then went on some weird tangent about how Clinton aide Huma Abedin was almost definitely in cahoots with the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. "The information is out there!" he insisted, sounding rather like a certain fictional FBI agent we could think of. "No—I don't know what else to tell you," Keilar responded. But hey, probably she is in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood AND the Cigarette Smoking Man and also the Illuminati, so there's that.
He has previously claimed that Michelle Obama used her psychic powers to steal her 2008 Democratic convention speech from Melania Trump.
Anyway, another thing that happened yesterday is that Alex Jones, a man who Trump says has an "amazing reputation," went on a weird tangent about how Obama is probably the antichrist because there was a fly near his head or something. Because, again, this is the world we live in now.
Yes, we are. That's the sad and funny part. "No hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves." If humanity figures a way out, yay. I'm not holding my breath for it. Individual humans can be great. Humanity as a whole is a wrong turn, and the planet will be very lucky if we manage to get rid of ourselves without fucking the entire place up in the process. Then maybe it can get back to the business of being a healthy planet again, without a cancerous virus crawling all over its surface, eating and excreting everything it comes across.
Well, most trolls aren't actually looking for a discussion so much as trying for an emotional reaction or a particular response. The classic troll example (from USENET days) is going to a Star Trek (the original series) fan group/site and asking:
What's Captain Kirk's middle initial?
You'll get 3 possible responses: "T", "R", or (and this is best as far as a troll is concerned) a fight between fans over which initial is correct.