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The extraordinary juxtaposition on Tuesday night -- open lawbreaking combined with an invented narrative in which Biden and Dems are the corrupt party -- showed a GOP that has unshakable confidence in its ability to act with utter impunity.

New piece:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Dear media:

If your conclusion is that voters won't care about serial lawbreaking and corruption, then perhaps that's grounds for introspection, not for validating the idea that this is a savvy and realistic calculation on the perpetrators' part.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Trump is using levers of government to illicitly hold power:

* Lawbreaking at convention

* Senate Rs manufacturing fake Hunter/Ukraine probe

* Bill Barr downplaying 2016 Russian sabotage

* Intel officials muting truth about Russian meddling right now

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
In a sense Trump campaigned in 2016 on his own corruption: All politicians are crooked, so elect me; I'll break rules for *you.*

Media treats this as populist grandstanding.

But now we need to be clearer. Trump is trying to hold power via illicit means:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
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Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
What's really striking about the convention is the sheer unchecked messianism on display. The depiction of Trump has been utterly totalizing and comprehensive in its idolatry and hagiography.

I rounded up 7 of the most cultish displays here:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
It was notable that the GOP convention hailed Trump as "the defender of Western civilization."

I went back and checked, and yep: Stephen Miller used this same language to justify Trump's race-baiting attacks on the four nonwhite lawmakers in "the Squad":

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Another weird trope from the convention treated Trump as *the single most empathetic person of all* on coronavirus.

The gulf between that description and Trump's seething contempt for the lived experience of his fellow human beings couldn't be more vast:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
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Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
1) Trump's deranged new conspiracy theory about the FDA and his new plasma announcement reveal his political weakness. They again show voters that nothing he says about coronavirus between now and the election should be given a shred of credibility.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
2) Liberals have a tendency to ascribe magical powers to Trump. He'll pull a last minute magic trick to win once again. A vaccine! A new treatment!

But the starting point here should be that nobody believes a word he says about this topic anymore.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
3) Trump has thoroughly corrupted the government and subverted the national interest to his own unscrupulous ends for years. It's been a defining feature of his tenure.

This will color anything Trump says about coronavirus between now and Election Day:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
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Greg Sargent
@ThePlumLineGS
1) Obama's speech is being widely hailed for its brutal takedown of Trump. Obama depicted a moment of extraordinary peril, in which a second Trump term is an existential threat to our democracy.

But I think something else is noteworthy here as well.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
2) Obama tapped a wellspring of urgency that runs even deeper than Trump, if you think about it.

Obama also warned that one of the most dire threats to self rule is the very act of losing sight of the idea that self rule is something worth preserving.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
3) A hallmark of political oratory during moments of extreme national duress is the idea our polity and way of life should survive.

This goes back to Peracles' funeral oration two and a half millennia ago and surfaced in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
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