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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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12 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
1. The Covid case load is topping more than 50,000 a day in USA and as winter approaches the true second wave is starting. So it's kind of a problem that Trump's final election pitch is quack medicine.
2. The best thing a snake-oil salesman can have is a personal story about recovery. "I almost died and this magic elixir saved me!" Trump now that that story and he's going with it.
3. Trump is now claiming he's "immune" (which twitter rightly flagged as false). He's also blurring distinction between therapeutic medicine & a cure.Eric Trump says his dad got a vaccine. Lies upon lies upon lies.
4. Trump is ending out the election as a salesman of quack remedies. More here: thenation.com/article/politi…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
14 Oct
1. Of course top Republicans want to separate out Trump from Barrett. Trump is widely seen as illegitimate (something that is not likely to ever change) and if Barrett is tainted with connection to him, that will damage the courts.
2. The idea being promoted is that Barrett should be evaluated solely on her merit, as if she's a masterless samurai, a ronin. But in fact she's a lieutenant in an army, the right-wing legal network, which includes Trump and also the sordid way court supermajority was achieved.
3. To even focus on Barrett is a mistake, since the problem isn't just her but the system that made her possible -- McConnell's gaming of rules to maximize GOP judges, which includes the deal with the devil: Trump gets protection from GOP in exchange for judges.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
10 Oct
1. Great moments in the history of footnoting, a series.
2. Great moments in the history of footnoting, con't.
3. Great moments in the history of footnoting, con't.
Read 11 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
6 Oct
1. So. Richard Hofstadter. Where to start?
2. People have asked me why I'm obsessed with the late historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970). The short answer is that he's emblematic of the two paths American liberalism can pick: towards social democracy or towards an alliance with moderate Republicans.
3. During his short life, Hofstadter had two distinct phases: a radical period in 1930s & 1940s followed by a centrist (verging on conservative) period in 1950s & 1960s (with the beginnings of a third, more radical phase cut short by his death)
Read 13 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
2 Oct
1. The decent & proper response to the news is that one should hope for a speedy recovery for Trump, wife, his close personal aide & anyone else who tests positive, followed by Trump being trounced in the election, facing, and face legal punishment for his many crimes.
2. There's a human story, which ideally should call forth empathy, but also, of necessity, a political story. Trump has spent almost the entirety of this year downplaying the pandemic, continued to hold rallies, mocked those who wore masks. That can't be forgotten.
3. Trump's bungling of the pandemic has led to tens of thousands Americans dying who would have survived in the USA had a competent president. His positive test is also an occasion to reflect on that bungling and vast human toll he bears responsibility for.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
29 Sep
1. I think this is astute. There's definitely subset of the population that can't "see" Trump's charisma. It's like color blindness or tone-deafness: they can be told about it but they can't experience it (true to some degree of all charismatic figures but Trump more than most)
2. In terms of not understanding Trump's charisma, I think the missing ingredient is nihilism (as I said back in early 2016). If you don't have a little bit of nihilism in your soul, it's hard to understand Trump's appeal.
3. A lot of people who support Trump don't have the nihilism either, but they don't really love him. They support him for courts or taxes or some other policy reason. The people who really, really love Trump -- let's call them the Q people -- have nihilism.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
28 Sep
1. The "nothing matters" response to scandals is particularly shortsighted because politics is a war of attrition carried on multiple fronts. The tax thing alone is not enough to sink Trump but -- if used used right -- is part of a larger effort to defeat him & his politics.
2. The striking thing about the polls is how consistent they've been, impervious to almost all outside events (the one recent exception is BLM protests, which nudged Biden up 2 points). But does that mean nothing matters or that all scandals have created low ceiling for Trump?
3. So: scandals create a ceiling for Trump. He's lagged Biden all through election & needs to narrow difference in order to win (has a decent shot if he's 3-4% less than Biden). Scandals help keep that ceiling hard. Image
Read 4 tweets

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