Drew Holden Profile picture
Sep 28, 2020 29 tweets 20 min read Read on X
🧵Thread🧵

The biggest news out of NYT’s “bombshell” on Trump’s taxes is that it has flattened a conspiracy theory among Democrats & the media, popular in 2016-17, that Trump was hiding his taxes because of an illicit connection to Russia.

I’ve got some apology candidates👇
You may remember that, back when “Russian collusion“ was the talk of the town, countless pieces and tweets surmised that Trump hadn’t released his taxes because they would be filled with Russian connections.

Well, they weren’t. Wonder if we’ll get any follow up from @ewarren?
Or perhaps @HillaryClinton, who made this conspiracy theory a component of her 2016 campaign, will be interested in following up?
Or perhaps we’ll hear something new from @ChrisMurphyCT, who pushed this line more than perhaps any elected official?

I’m sure that @maddow, @allinwithchris or anyone else at @MSNBC would always be happy to have him back on, Senator.
Or maybe @RonWyden would like to follow up on his letter request, now that we know the dastardly contents of Trump’s taxes?
Et tu, @DickDurbin?
It wasn’t just in the Senate either. Here’s @SpeakerPelosi pushing the same entirely unverified claim.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that @RepMaxineWaters may be the most unhinged member of Congress.
Not an exaggeration to say the Dems were unified in pushing this allegation without evidence. Here’s @TheDemocrats.
But it wasn’t just the Dems. The media put together countless think pieces and investigations and whimsical musings on this subject, too, that went up in smoke.

Come take a bow, @CNN.
@Politico wasn’t all that far behind them.
I’m exactly zero percent surprised to see that chief Russian collusion cheerleader @MSNBC got in on this one. Also featuring @KatyTurNBC and @TimOBrien.
More of the same here from @abcnews, with another special shout out to @HillaryClinton.
Both @thedailybeast and the funny men got involved on this one, too.

Does anyone remember the discourse? I remember the discourse.
And you had @HuffPost being, well, Huff Post.
But the real champions here are the blue check big thinkers.

We’ll start out with the gold standard in bad takes, @JRubinBlogger.
She may have been outdone here by @keithboykin.
No left-wing conspiracy theory would be complete without @SethAbramson.

I read the 30 tweets before this (and plenty after it) so that you didn’t have to.
Where Russian conspiracy theories go, the NeverTrump gang are always quick to follow. Here’s @BillKristol
Here’s @Eugene_Robinson from @washingtonpost, who has always been quick to tout Russian related conspiracies.
And no thread of Russian bullshit could be complete without @juliaioffe.
From behind the block we’ve got a traditional four boxes of bullshit from @deanobeidallah.
And also from behind a block, one of the most vocal conspiracy theorists on Russia, @mollyjongfast.
Short on space and shorter on patience, here we’ve got: @funder, this big swing and a miss from @BrookingsInst, @JasonKander, and @JoyceWhiteVance.
Each passing day seems to bring with it another part of the #RussianCollusion narrative unraveling, which always goes unremarked among those who pushed the original conspiracy theory.

We need a serious reckoning on what happened, and these threads will continue until we get one.
I’ve said it once & I’ll surely have to say it again:

You don’t need to be a partisan to see that the concoction of a bogus conspiracy theory to undermine a duly elected POTUS, pushed by multiple organs of the US govt, is a HUGE problem.

You need to be a partisan to not care.
There have been more bombshells that have come out to refute the Russian collusion narrative in the last six weeks than there was to substantiate it ever.

And we hear whispers, at best, from the same voices who pushed the original hoax.
We need - NEED - to talk about the conspiracy theories that the left pushes.

If the media ever hopes to regain the trust they’ve lost among millions of Americans, they need to take a hard look in the mirror about their role in all this.

I’ve got the screenshots to help.
Folks often ask but I don’t have anything to sell or ask you to subscribe to.

But with winter approaching, this is a really difficult time for a lot of food banks. If you’re in the DC area, I’ve always found Capital Area Food Bank does a great job. capitalareafoodbank.org

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More from @DrewHolden360

May 29
🧵Thread🧵

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 ⤵️ Image
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.

Did they forget what the media reported?
Read 21 tweets
May 20
🧵THREAD🧵

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.Image
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(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
Read 26 tweets
May 15
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 🧵⤵️ Image
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.

This is firmly out of touch with reality.
Read 13 tweets
May 13
Wow what a potentially valuable insight worth sharing with the American people when it mattered rather than saving for your book!
This conversation started in June *2023* so if you believe the media wasn’t aware of it before the election I have a bridge to sell you.
I’m going to write a book about this book.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 29
🧵Thread🧵

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.Image
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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.” Image
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Read 24 tweets
Apr 15
🧵Thread🧵

I’m not sure people realize just how egregious some of NPR’s “journalism” has been. Amid the debate about defunding the network, I wanted to walk down memory lane to revisit some of its worst coverage.

There’s a lot. ⤵️
First, perhaps the most egregious display of activist journalism: their response to the Hunter Biden laptop story of corruption involving a major party candidate on the eve of the election.

Not only did @NPR not cover it, they bragged about refusing to do so. Image
Insofar as @NPR did cover the Hunter Biden scandal, they actively tried to cover it up.

They applauded Facebook & Twitter strangling the story as part of a push against “misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

The story, of course, turned out to be far from invented. Image
Read 23 tweets

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