After even Sally Yates conceded that she wouldn’t have signed off on his surveillance if she had all the facts, I thought a trip down memory lane was in order.
You’ll recall that, once upon a time, we were told that Carter Page was actively colluding with the Russians because the FISA court and the FBI told us so.
All of those assertions have fallen to pieces, so I’m assuming we can get a follow up from @SpeakerPelosi?
Maybe @RepAdamSchiff, the chief architect of the Russian collusion fable, can provide us with an update?
Do you still believe that “the FBI acted lawfully and appropriately” even after the head of DOJ at the time said the opposite today under oath?
Any follow up about that memo, Congressman? Are you sure that the “FBI didn’t lie” and that it is a “false claim” to say that the “FISA process was abused”? Because former director Yates certainly doesn’t.
Really waiting with baited breath on @tedlieu because he was a clerk, you see.
@RepSwalwell is hot on the trail of stupid yet again.
And it wasn’t just the lower House. I have a feeling @SenJeffMerkley would like this one back.
And we’ve got bipartisan bullshit! Here’s @marcorubio who may wish he had this take back.
And our intellectual and moral betters in the media weighed in. Here’s @CillizzaCNN and @CNN, who may want to update what the “most important takeaway from the FISA release” is.
@MSNBC brought on myriad experts to explain why everything that has happened in the last two years related to FISA and Carter Page wouldn’t happen.
And it wouldn’t be a left-wing conspiracy theory if @JoyAnnReid wasn’t onboard.
And it wouldn’t be a Russian related conspiracy if @DavidCornDC weren’t involved.
I am as surprised as you are that @jonathanchait, who alleged that Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987, wanted in on this one, too.
Of course, the usual galaxy brain twitter power users weighed in, including Twitter’s most consistently wrong foulmouth @therickwilson.
He’s got me blocked so I hope someone can share this with him.
You’ve got to be almost impressed with @therickwilson’s propensity for predictive failure.
It wouldn’t be a thread if @JRubinBlogger didn’t find her way onto it.
Ditto for @SethAbramson, who also manages to shoehorn in the fabled Steele Dossier, which bears the distinction of having been even more fabricated than the FISA application against Page.
Speaking of, I would like to nominate this tweet by @funder for the Louvre.
I remain mistified at the testimony of my elders that, once upon a time, @tribelaw was taken seriously.
From the “the walls are closing in!” school of thought comes these tweets by @Amy_Siskind, who no longer seems so enamored with or interested in the story of Carter Page.
Curious.
Any follow up to the assertion that “there is still no reason to believe the FISA application for Carter Page was improper” @EvanMcMullin?
The people are wondering.
@JuddLegum, care to follow up on the notion that “there is no evidence anything was misused in the FISA court” related to Page?
Or, @NicolleDWallace, perhaps the reason @realDonaldTrump was at war with the FISA courts was that - stay with me here - they deserved the war?
The lesson here (as ever, with the Russian collusion narrative) is that maybe, just maybe, it’s worth a touch of caution, incredulity or reflection before jumping to the worst of conclusions, or taking a secretive, ill-intentioned process at face value.
Maybe next time.
I’ve done a few threads & I’ve got a few more coming but one thing is clear:
The ability of elected officials/those on the left & in the media to push a radical conspiracy theory, then have that conspiracy implode without any consequences or apologies, should terrify you.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.
Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.
Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.
You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.
Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate.
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
It should go without saying, but the media cultivating this type of baseless hysteria about an admin for partisan reasons is much more of a threat to the underpinnings of our democracy than anything Trump has actually done.
Quick 🧵⤵️
A couple quotes:
“If you think that there’s this thing out there called America, and it’s exceptional, that means you don’t have to do anything” to stop fascism.
What? What does that even mean??
That if you, like millions of Americans!, believe in American exceptionalism…you’re a fascist?
Really?
“The powers that be can do whatever they want to you”
Trump can’t even deport people who have deportation orders against them without a federal judge stepping in.
Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.
That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.
Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.
Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.
That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.”