🧩 BND Motif Index · M1535
Not the wife and kids
An attack on a politician's spouse or children, who are not public figures, is condemned as crossing a line even rough politics respects, and is said to turn the rivalry personal.
- 1claim filed under it
- 1center show it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 1 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- center
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “going after a senator's wife.” “if you go after somebody's wife or kids and they're not also a public figure” “They don't even come after wife and kids, right?”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-10-23 “Abdul El-Sayed's personal attacks on Usha Vance have gotten under J.D. Vance's skin.” 2
M1535 · first seen 2026-11-03 · what this is · how the index works