That's that me, a Hardcore

Rightwing ragebaiters ignore Tubby's Ear-Nick, swoon for Vance

We’ve talked about how purveyors of Hardcore — our term of art for ragebait emails that lure your senile relatives to rightwing garbage sites — typically do not focus on current events; but they have gotten a little newsier (in the broadest sense of the term) as the Presidential campaign heats up. When Joe Biden had a bad debate, for example, they all loaded onto that bandwagon right quick. (It was easy enough, since they’d been peddling Senile Biden stories for years.)

But, strangely, while the boys are writing a bit about the Republican National Convention going on now, they haven’t said much about the quasi-assassination of Tubby. This comes at first as a shock because rage, violence, and conspiracy thinking are these guys’ bread and butter, and Lord knows the shooting has riled up a bunch of that.

But if you sit with it, it makes sense; for one thing, the guy who shot him was a Republican, which doesn’t leave them a lot to work with. And, despite the repulsive fawning of the Prestige Press, among normal people the incident is not such a big deal and is in fact already fading from civilized discourse. Hardcore follows the grift and there just ain’t much there.

Here’s the lede from a related Hardcore bit that probably reflects their best shot, so to speak, from Fully Loaded magazine:

Americans are outraged at alleged security failures that clearly almost cost Donald Trump his life.

But Supreme Court Justices couldn’t believe this.

And Supreme Court Justices’ jaws dropped when confronted with this revelation about their security.

Fully Loaded presents no evidence of this popular outrage at Trump’s security details (though a few run headlines like DC Watchdog’s “Secret Service Director’s BIZARRE Excuse,” but that sort of thing is strictly for the most brain-poisoned true believers), but I love the idea (notwithstanding it doesn’t play out in the story) of the nine Supreme Court Justices standing around in their robes and dropping their jaws.

The Fully Loaded story is pretty lengthy, as befits a publication accustomed to lavish attention on descriptions of the armaments with which its readers dream of murdering liberals. They describe an attempted carjacking in D.C. (where, Fully Loaded fantasizes, the perp “likely thought, ‘Hey this is Washington, D.C., good guys aren’t allowed to have guns, these guys will be perfect victims’”) only to find he was outside Sonia Sotomayor’s home and so readily detected and apprehended by her Supreme Court Police Department detail.

“A first-hand lesson about the wisdom of the nation’s Founding Fathers and why the Second Amendment matters,” crows Fully Loaded (notwithstanding Sotomayor was not at home at the time, so it’s second-hand at best), but she’s a lib so she “doesn’t see the irony in her fortune of having a real-life needcase for the Second Amendment show up on her front doorstep.” Fully Loaded could go on all day about how libs r stupid and the Founders wanted every man, woman, and child packing a semi, but they have more current fish to fry:

The Gun Control Lobby and their political allies will soon ramp up their Gun Control machine again, and they will try to capitalize on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump to make the case. They may even be banking on his help or that of some of his supporters. Freedom-loving Americans should resist.

Yeah, those gun grabbers always squawk when a disturbed person interrupts a fun time with deadly force — and, who knows, maybe Trump will pull a James Brady!  But this is my favorite part:

Unlike Sotomayor, Trump is not currently in office. Had he been, the Secret Service would have shot first.

Not sure where they got that from — couldn’t they have invented a Drinking Buddy Who’s in the Secret Service for a source? Anyway the thing dribbles into, you guessed it, conspiracism:

For whatever reason (and we all have our suspicions), the Biden administration figures in charge of managing Trump’s Secret Service detail withheld the full complement of tools needed to protect him, just like they wish to do to every other private citizen in America. 

Another great big fat ”citation needed” there, but the point is the Tubby Ear-Nick is mainly good for jacking paranoia and only worth it if your audience — such as the Second Amendment enthusiasts who read Fully Loaded — may respond with cash purchases.

As mentioned, I’ve seen way more stuff about the convention, and the Hardcore crew’s favorite convention topic is J.D. Vance, the fash faux hillbilly pumped up with Peter Thiel money and hot air. It’s easy to see why they’d like him: He’s a scumbag who hates independent women and wants to turn them into broodslaves, wants to trade EV credits for gas-powered-car credits and give Ukraine to Putin, and said Britain was “Islamist” because Labour won an election. They probably relate to his pillowy, shit-bearded aspect, too.

But they can’t really say that’s what they like about him because it sounds crazy — and in election season, as the fuss over Project 2025 shows, concealing one’s lunacy is important.

One of my favorite Hardcore examples is from a tongue-bath at Swamp Digest: “Vance’s specific political positions haven’t been well-established, as he has not been in elected office for very long.” Buddy, we’ve been writing about this blow-dried fraud for eight years.

So it stands to reason many of the Hardcore Vance stories are butt-hurt nuh-uhs about the avalanche of embarrassing details that have been publicized since Trump picked him. For example, in response to all the citations of Vance calling Trump Hitler and bad for the country back before his suck-upitude, Liberty Airwaves snarls:

These comments from Vance were very extreme. Of course, they came at a time when Trump was new on the scene and many people simply did not know what to make of his candidacy.

Yeah, this guy Trump came out of nowhere! “It’s true that Trump’s style was something a lot of people had to adjust to,” Liberty Airwaves goes on, “as it was very different from what most people are used to out of a president.” I’ll say!

Better still is this bit from 2024 Battleground entitled “J.D. Vance Targeted by the Media After His V.P. Selection for One Quote” – referring in this instance to his Islamist U.K. thing:

What the media just did to J.D. Vance was simply horrible.

He’d hardly been the nominee for a few hours before they tried to take him down.

And it’s unfortunate that J.D. Vance and his family had to go through this.

They’ve been using his own words against him, like a bunch of media!

Vance has only been a U.S. Senator for a year and a half, so there isn’t much out there to target him with, but the media made sure to leave no stone unturned in their quest to smear him.

Once it got around that the underside of every stone had a lulu, there was no holding them. “Now Politico and other publications are trying to make Vance seem like a radical,” weeps 2024 Battleground, but the jokes on you, libs, because they’re about to show you the context:

Here is the full context of what Vance said: “I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about [how] one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though the Biden administration doesn’t care about it.”

“And I was talking about what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.”

Blink. Blink. [Krusty the Klown voice] What the hell was that? 2024 Battleground clarifies:

There’s no question that things are going to change a lot in the UK with Labour in power now, and that they’ve been far more friendly to unchecked immigration than other parties have.

Vance was simply pointing out that there is more of a risk of Islamists gaining power in the UK now that Labour runs the government.

You know, like when a black guy comes into the room and you check to make sure your wallet’s secure.

But the media is trying to use this quote to smear him and make him toxic to voters.

I bet they’re all hoping Tubby starts slurring Mexicans against so they can get back to talking about that. Him they don’t have to feel embarrassed for!