Philip Bump Profile picture
Washington Post national columnist. How To Read This Chart newsletter. Author of "The Aftermath," NYT editor's pick. You are not entitled to my attention.
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Aug 28, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
So Jonathan Turley wrote over the weekend that "Bump has repeatedly spread false stories and then refused to accept the falsity of his own earlier claims, even after most of the media have admitted the errors."

His examples? 1/ 1. My original assessment of Bill Barr's attempt to deny blame for clearing Lafayette Square (a) which remains very dubious (b).
a.
b.
2/washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/…
washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
Aug 3, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
The just-released transcript of the Devon Archer testimony just completely eviscerates what Comer and Jordan were saying on TV. Totally embarrassing. Here's how it works. In the headline, Fox suggests that Hunter used Joe Biden. In the copy, they accurately indicate that he used "the name," which was Archer's point. But people don't read the copy.
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Jun 14, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
A particularly shoddy effort to undermine fact-checkers — a thread

So you remember Stephen Miller. Out of the White House, he is now the president of something called America First Legal. This afternoon, he hyped some of its work. 1/ Image The group obtained a list of fact-checkers with whom the State Department was apparently consulting. These people are scare-quoted as "journalists." 2/ Image
Jun 9, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
yike Image another example of sharing a document Image
Apr 22, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
They thought the checkmark was the cachet, not the celebrity status that warranted the checkmark. Then Musk obliterated the connection between celebrity and cachet.

Now they want celebrities back because they realize the cachet is gone. But to make it stupider, they think celebrities won’t come back out of spite, because they don’t want to share their cachet — a recognition that the cachet was never inherent to the checkmark!
Apr 21, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Settle a debate: is this a kitten, a puppy dog or a coyote pup? (There are coyotes in the area.) Image From the car it looked like a cat. But, yeah: consensus seems to be coyote. Glad we didn’t try to rescue it!
Apr 13, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Not quite as embarrassing as her unalloyed Trump sycophancy, but close. Image Written repeatedly about the remarkable, important work Bellingcat does — and, critically, how they do it. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… washingtonpost.com/news/politics/…
Apr 12, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Tucker Carlson let Trump ramble for up to five minutes at a time, pushing back not at all. If he or Fox News were ever truly skeptical about elevating Trump, that idea is dead, buried and fully decomposed. washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… What Trump said is unimportant, really, since it's all a rehash.

What's more important is that Carlson presented the interview as proving Trump's capabilities — just as he did with Kanye in October before we learned the worst stuff was trimmed out. washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
Apr 5, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
“read the prompter read the prompter read the prompter read the prompter read the prompter read the prompter” - Trump’s attorneys Basically everything he’s said so far is false.
Apr 4, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Unless I’m mistaken, the doors now being shown on TV are these, still transparent when I took this photo on the 15th floor in 2009. Curious if the black coloration is a function of Trump. Back then, there were no women's restrooms on the floor.
Apr 2, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
This is *such* a tell. The beauty of Twitter (and of blogging for that matter) was that random interesting things might be elevated, might *become* popular.

It is not a how-cool-am-I popularity contest. Image Not to mention how stupid it is about newspapers! It’s like saying “the Times would get more engagement if it mirrored the New York Post” or saying “the Times should only write stories about things people already care about.”

Totally bizarre.
Mar 15, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
That viral clip of a right-wing writer unable to define "woke" is a good depiction of how the term is used: as an intenationally vague, pejorative catch-all for "things the right dislikes." washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… In the clip, Mandel claims that she's just fumbling in the moment, since a chapter of her book defines "woke." So I got the book and, guess what! It defines woke in exactly the same vague, nebulous way.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
Jan 24, 2023 12 tweets 7 min read
My book is being published today. It's called:
THE AFTERMATH: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America.

Here's a quick thread of information and appreciation — but, first, the all-important link to obtain a copy, should you wish.
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/t… The book has two parts.

The first explores the baby boom itself, its hard-to-fathom scale and how it reshaped America as its members got older. This part also looks at how the boom differs from younger generations — and where that powers existing political tension.
Dec 15, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Love when fans email. Image This is fking amazing. Image
Dec 15, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Losing the plot. You guys, the video promoting this is one of the tackiest things I've ever seen. 11vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1671124798…
Dec 13, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Starting to think some of this crypto stuff may not be on the up-and-up. I do appreciate defenses that boil down to “BUT it is useful for doing crime.”
Dec 3, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
If you have a boring script, you gotta hire an experienced voice actor to add the desired intonations and emphases in order to convey the intended emotion. If you’re trying to start a seance business, you hire those ghosthunters from TV to prove your house is haunted, not a scientist.
Nov 28, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Twitter polls are unscientific junk, even when you own the platform that offers them. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… I assume that Musk knows his polls don’t reflect anything meaningful; this is the guy who kept whining about bots! It’s a fig leaf letting him blame others for decisions.

But then he also keeps saying things that suggest maybe he thinks they’re legit.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
Nov 26, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
A last plug for Buy Presents Weekend™:

I wrote a book called The Aftermath that comes out in January. It's about the effects of the geneartional shift from the baby boom to young Americans on culture politics and the economy.

People I think are smart said nice things about it! ImageImageImage But if you buy it as a gift (which you should) the recipient won't have anything to open this month, right?

Wrong! Buy it, go to pbump.com and fill out the form there and I'll send a personalized bookplate and a note for them to open. Image
Nov 8, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
A reminder coming into tonight that actually Fox News made a bad call on Arizona in 2020. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… An election call isn't simply about eventually getting the result right. It's about using available information to project an outcome.

The team that made the call that night went on the air and showed that their assumptions about the race that led to the call were wrong.
Nov 3, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Yeah, conspiracy theorists insisting that the conspiracy is still viable in the absence of whatever thing they're demanding does reinforce that they are conspiracy theorists.

Mr. Posobiec, a prominent member of that group, should have read the article. Image Nearly every response to this article has involved some assertion that we need the video in order to know what happened which is 100% entirely the point.

And almost no responses acknowledge that, in the article, I say the footage should be made public.