Louder And Funnier

I've seen photos a few reporters have taken at the vance events. they're not kidding about 200 people. Hardly anyone is showing up and the events look a bit like support groups for recently divorced dads or maybe a tailgate before seeing a Van Halen cover band. Very rough stuff. https://t.co/dGUWeWGbD4

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 8, 2024

Crowd size only means something comparatively.

Three hours until Harris and Walz are set to appear in Eau Claire and this is the line of cars to get to the rally…

1.5 miles away. pic.twitter.com/kwyqikAqNV

— Sabrina Rodríguez (@sabrod123) August 7, 2024

Fundraising is perhaps a better metric.

Some news pic.twitter.com/qrViHuEybI

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 7, 2024

Yes, that’s self-reported, and we should confirm it with the FEC filings. But whither Trump’s braggadocio about fundraising records? There’s a lot of loose bullshit on Twitter about this (probably from bots 🤖)

Meanwhile, swift boating is all they’ve got:

Times and the post went so heavy for a bogus story pushed by two hardcore MAGAs and picked up by the head of the swift boat org who now runs the Trump campaign. I want to say they were punked. Unfortunately, not sure that's true. Big embarrassment. https://t.co/kmtk9lT2hI

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 8, 2024

One thing the military does is keep records. Do the clowns who spoke to the Post appear in them? There’s a lot of loose bullshit on Twitter about this (probably from bots 🤖). But there are verifiable records, v. bogus NYPost reports and Twitter bots.

 

He’s lacivita, head of the swift boat smear group and now Trump co-campaign manager launching the lie about Walz before handing it off to Sergeant Scribbles https://t.co/i8zw9eZE5Y

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 8, 2024

You always have to consider the source. And La Civita and the SBVT? Fact check, true.

Speaking of sources:

“Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has described himself as "a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom," the official name of the U.S. government’s war in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Walz never deployed to the Middle East.” https://t.co/ukOqqGETC4

— Katherine Doyle (@katiadoyl) August 7, 2024

Katherine Doyle is an NBC reporter. Her tweet is quoting the Free Beacon article, whose author doesn’t seem to know Afghanistan is not in the Middle East. Or that military operations don’t occur in just one country or involve only combat troops. There is a public record on what Walz said he was doing during EF. (Walz retired in order to run for Congress. He gave a lot of interviews about his military experience.) Walz was deployed to Italy for EF, to prepare troops for combat.

Military operations ain’t like they do it in the movies.

We’ve seen this particular movie. It wasn’t good enough to earn a sequel.