Reporters Spotted Wining and Dining with Trump’s Campaign Before GOP Debate

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 03:00 pm

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Team Trump is out wining and dining with reporters, passing out a mocking Ron DeSantis bingo card.

The Trump team is wining and dining a number of top reporters at a steakhouse while passing out debate bingo cards “to troll the Florida governor. Squares included: “dismisses polls,†“wipes snot,†“red ears,†“Dee-Santis,†“Duh-Santis,†“flip flops on Social Security… again,†“woke†and “pudding mention,”” according to Politico Playbook.

The Republican Party is nothing if not completely serious about governing.

It seems pretty dirty, eh? Trump is of course refusing to debate, but also demanding all of the oxygen in the room.

Who was there? “Dana Bash, Shane Goldmacher, Kristen Welker, Bob Costa, Fin Gomez, Dasha Burns, Rachel Scott, Rick Klein, Josh Dawsey, Rob Crilly, Mario Parker and David Chalian along with Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Steven Cheung.”

So… CNN, Politico, NBC, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, and Bloomberg were all there being wined and dined by team Trump.

Kinda reminds one of 2016.

I don’t understand this kind of fraternizing with political campaign members for journalists. This isn’t appropriate. Perhaps this is yet another gift of a late stage capitalism in which TikTok movie reviews are bought by studios and nothing is what it appears. But more likely, the fault for this is partially on Fox for banning team Trump from the spin room, causing reporters to think they have to hang out to get quotes. Who knows. As usual, Trump is destroying norms and eroding trust in institutions.

Here’s an idea: Trump refused to debate, so he doesn’t get media quotes tonight. I mean. That might suggest we’ve learned something since 2016, so I don’t want to be pushy about it. It’s just our democracy, after all.

Team Trump is being aided in trolling the Florida Governor by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is generally not known for her good ideas. She is mostly known for her bonkers conspiracy theories and for only backing now Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he caved in to her demands for her vote. Greene now seems to serve as the spirit animal of the House Republican caucus, which doesn’t say much for them since she blamed “the Internet” for her allegedly prior Q-Anon beliefs.

But the Georgia Republican is really good at trolling. You might even say she’s an expert troll. She shared the DeSantis bingo card on Twitter/X:

Here it is in case you want to use it at home tonight:

The fight between ‘slavery was beneficial’ Ron DeSantis‘ fans and criminal defendant Donald Trump’s fans is heated, so the Republican Representative’s bingo card didn’t go unaddressed.

The Trump is “Too scared to debate” bingo card is rather repetitive, but since he’s not actually debating (when you’re an authoritarian, they let you do it), there’s not a lot one could add:

Still, it’s worth noting that Marjorie Taylor Greene might have finally found her lane. Rabid Trump cheerleader is her job in Congress. That is what the people pay her to do, and if that means investigating President Biden’s dog for being a communist spy because the Internet told her so, then so be it.

In a healthy democracy with at least two healthy political parties, refusing to debate would be the end of a candidate and the media would ignore the candidate. But we are in post-Trump, 4x-indicted Trump political circus world in which Donald Trump’s influence over the still-mesmerized media cannot be overstated.



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