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Matt Bevan 🎙

31 Oct, 19 tweets, 6 min read

@RNBreakfast

5 years ago I started doing a segment at 6:45am on the Australian current affairs radio show @RNBreakfast about global news.

The point was to cover stuff that was breaking during the night. It was sometimes serious but often light, weird news. In mid-2016 it started changing.

Donald Trump started to dominate it, as he was doing a shocking thing each night.

To make sure I could cover him and what he was doing to America each day at short notice I started a research project that I thought would take a few weeks. It’s now been going for 4 years.

@RNBreakfast

The result, apart from around 400 Trump-related segments on @RNBreakfast, is 44 episodes of the Russia/America, If You’re Listening podcast.

So, with 4 days until the US Election, here’s my list of 15 moments of the Trump era, (so far) which everyone should understand.

The first few are from before his election.

1. The Russian hack and dump operation. In hindsight, it is pure luck that it worked as well as it did. Had the Democratic candidate been anyone other than Hillary Clinton it would’ve been much less effective. abclisten.page.link/bzWSd6oHzaAC1C…

@MichaelCohen212

2. The Hush Money payment. In 2016 it seemed impossible that @MichaelCohen212 would ever turn on Trump. His prosecution for paying off women who said they’d had affairs with Trump would change that. abclisten.page.link/diXoiGas2bDULy…

This one straddles his election - and contributed to it.

3. The helping hand from, and firing, of James Comey. abclisten.page.link/QjXiv62tWBBdjh…

The rest are decisions he made as president.

4. Hurricane Maria. The devastation of Puerto Rico taught Trump that if your management of a disaster begins to reflect badly on you, you need to lie about it. abclisten.page.link/YxjX8TsMqjSaaC…

5. Trump’s response to the rally at Charlottesville and the subsequent rise in the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement. abclisten.page.link/F8V4AC2jjNNpt1…

6. Trump’s nuclear diplomacy with North Korea and Iran, which despite a lack of results, has not led the US into war. abclisten.page.link/UbqrwoNUtPJrky…

7. Trump’s attempts to impede and shut down the Mueller Investigation. abclisten.page.link/1ojHAJNTKwV5y8…

8. Jamal Khashoggi. How Trump showed America was willing to overlook a horrific crime, for the right price. abclisten.page.link/f3eb8AXzu3U7ya…

9. The Child Separation Policy, which left 545 children in America unable to find their parents. abclisten.page.link/zrDMTZUNv98Vij…

10. The moment Trump almost did something about mass shootings during the implosion of the NRA. abclisten.page.link/4ZZzFFWpgVCMtv…

11. How Trump tried to use the power of the presidency to squeeze money into his loss-making golf empire. abclisten.page.link/Jnh3kw4qArdkoA…

12. The years-long attempt to use corruption in the Ukrainian gas industry to destroy Joe Biden abclisten.page.link/f3RmGSWbwtjUUA…

13. How Trump got himself impeached by (in addition to the Biden thing) demanding Ukraine help him prove a theory which exonerated Putin for 2016 election interference. abclisten.page.link/4VJ1pKEX2JHfZb…

14. The Trade War. How a lovely dinner and chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago turned Trump from a China-basher to Xi Jinping’s best friend. abclisten.page.link/TbPe38gQnJWVrN…

The 15th story is about how Trump’s attacks on the US government left them vulnerable to many threats, including a global pandemic. That story will be released tomorrow. I’ll add it here then.

15. The virus, the testing failure, then the lies. abclisten.page.link/ekzNEPr8ojKtuH…

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More from @MatthewBevan

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

2 Nov

Ok the number one question people are asking me (and everyone who follows this) is when on Wednesday are things happening... so here you go - all times are Canberra/Melbourne/Sydney time.

10am - First states close. Indiana and Kentucky. Don’t even look up from your laptop.

11am - Most of Florida (everything but the bits of the panhandle in the central time zone) closes. Georgia closes.

Exit polls will be published. Ignore them, except if they indicate Biden is well ahead in Georgia. In that case, Trump is in DEEP trouble.

If Biden wins Georgia, he will almost certainly win the election, but Georgia will take ages (days probably) to count.

However, Florida learned in 2000 that they have to get it together when it comes to vote counting, so they’re going to do it much faster.

Read 17 tweets

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

30 Oct

Resurrecting my great-grandfather Evan Bevan via hologram and writing up a script for him which is all just slams on Kanye West.

Before you ask, yes, that was really his name.

“How’s your campaign going Kane?” he says, in the accent of a Welsh coal miner who has lived for many years in Kurri Kurri.

Read 4 tweets

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

30 Oct

Oh so they go after the top advisor to the White House coronavirus taskforce because he’s “not an expert” and “pushing a theory that would kill millions of people” but CNN is allowed to employ someone as a commentator? Talk about a double standard!

I mean obviously referring to 1000 deaths a day as “almost nothing” is the worst thing he says here but everything else he says is also very bad.

“If you want the latest data on the COVID pandemic go to my Instagram” said one of the main surrogates for the President of the United States.

Read 5 tweets

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

21 Jul

#RUSSIAREPORT THREAD
Okey dokey, let's take a lookie-loo at the Russia Report from the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament. For reference, see all of Season 3 of Russia, If You're Listening, but episode 5 in particular: abc.net.au/radio/programs…

This report is very easy to read, and only 47 pages long, if you'd like to take a look. docs.google.com/a/independent.…

"It appears that Russia considers the UK one of its top Western intelligence targets ... witnesses have suggested that we would sit just behind the US and NATO in any priority list"
Hm. Seems like a big threat. Hope Downing St and MI5 are taking it seriously!

Read 22 tweets

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

22 Mar

So... here's my rundown of the most chaotic 18 hour period in Australian public messaging in living memory... please correct me if I'm wrong. <<THREAD>>

Yesterday afternoon, NSW and Victoria announced they were shutting down "non-essential activity" over the next 48 hours, excluding supermarkets, banks, pharmacies and other "essential stores" like petrol stations and convenience stores. The ACT follows suit.

So in the nation's capital and two largest states, everyone RIGHTFULLY assumes that it means most business activity will cease. Who would define Myer, David Jones, Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, Bunnings, clothing stores, car dealerships, etc as "essential"?

Read 14 tweets

Matt Bevan 🎙

@MatthewBevan

12 Mar

People still seem not to be getting the point of acting now on coronavirus, saying it's not that bad, it's just a flu, maybe it'd be better if we all just got it now, etc, so here's a little story about a flood that might help. <THREAD>

In early March 2012 there was a major flooding event in NSW. 188mm of rain fell in the city of Wagga Wagga, the Murrumbidgee River broke its banks and inundated part of the town. It was the 4th of March. 526km downstream, the town of Hay knew that they had two weeks to get ready.

There are floods pretty regularly on the Murrumbidgee, and towns downstream of Wagga can reliably predict how much water will arrive and when, depending on how big the flood is was in Wagga. Based on the data, they expected the river would peak at 9m. The levees are 8.1m high.

Read 7 tweets

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