niche drama

This Week in Drama: Hillary Clinton, Lenny Dykstra, and the Poo Date

Photo: Getty Images

Every week brings such an overwhelming onslaught of news, that sometimes the most entertaining bits can fall through the cracks. Here, we’ll recap the pettiest squabbles, juiciest feuds, and other niche drama you didn’t know you were living for.

Kurt Eichenwald at it Again

Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair who honestly seems to spend most of his time creating drama on Twitter, is at it again: the 56-year-old former Times journalist has kicked off a new online feud, this time with … all meteorologists.

It started with a tweet in which Eichenwald claimed he, as an amateur, had correctly predicted the growth of Hurricane Irma using available data — a tweet that basically came off as “anybody can be a meteorologist.” Then an actual meteorologist chimed in to say: sorry buddy, not how that works.

Eichenwald doubled down a few times, before eventually deleting his original tweet.

Weathermen: 0, Eichenwald: 1.

The Poo Date

It may seem like forever ago, but this week was indeed the week of the Poo Date. If you never got around to reading about this viral phenomenon, this tweet pretty much sums it up:

The guy ended up raising close to $3,000 on GoFundMe to fix the broken window. Here’s hoping he uses the remaining funds to take the girl out on a second date.

Another Trump Team Email Leak

Another week, another guy from Trump’s inner circle being embarrassed by having his emails printed. This week, D.C. restauranteur Jeff Jetton got Trump’s private lawyer Ty Cobb riled up enough to admit the one thing we all basically knew: that General Kelly is the only one who knows what he’s doing in the White House. “I can say assertively [that] more adults in the room will be better,” Cobb said. “Me and Kelly among others.”

To be fair, Cobb does look quite adultlike:

Hillary Clinton’s Book vs. Bernie Sanders

Proving once again that the 2016 Democratic primary will never really end, a section from Hillary Clinton’s upcoming book, What Happened?, has reignited the Hillary vs. Bernie debate. In it, she likens the seasoned Vermont senator to someone in an ab exercise program anecdote from There’s Something About Mary and points to a Facebook post involving ponies as a metaphor for services like, uh, free universal health care and a $15 minimum wage.

When Sanders was on All in With Chris Hayes this week, Hayes broached the subject. “I.e. Bernie Sanders just stole all of Hillary Clinton’s ideas?” Sanders responded. “Does anyone really believe that?”

“The truth is, and real story is, that the ideas that we brought forth during that campaign, which was so crazy and so radical, have increasingly become mainstream,” he added, which is likely the closest we’ll get to hearing him say “Bernie would’ve won” publicly.

Lena Dunham Meets Lenny Dykstra

Lena Dunham and Lenny Dykstra: two phonetically similar first names, two wildly different people from wildly different worlds. They collided — where else? — on Twitter this week, when Dunham tweeted out that she was “horny for baseball players” on Thursday night and Dykstra replied “DM me.” The dirtbag former Mets and Phillies player (and terrible financier) then proceeded to spend the rest of the evening tweeting incessantly skeezy stuff at Dunham. Can safely say that truly nobody saw this coming.

Peter Daou vs. Anyone Insulting Verrit

Over the weekend, #HillaryMan Peter Daou launched Verrit (tagline: media for the 65.8 million). For starters, Daou overestimated the desire 65.8 million people have to read a website made up entirely of what appears to be flash cards with “verified facts.” And although he spent much of the presidential campaign getting dunked on on Twitter, he perhaps underestimated how poor the reaction to Verrit would be. So, in the face of constant negativity about his new site, he went on the defensive. He claimed that only men were insulting him (untrue). He bragged about having more followers than the podcast Chapo Trap House and laughed that they were “triggered.” But the most beautiful exchange of all came when he called out New York Times culture writer Sopan Deb, who pointed out that he hadn’t tweeted about Verrit at all. But nevertheless, Daou persisted:

Gotta let some things go, my man.

Catch up on previous drama here.

This Week in Drama: Clinton, Dykstra, and the Poo Date