With Biden having been declared the winner (for now) by major media outlets, I figured it would be a good time to share some of the people who’ve threatened retribution against Trump supporters.
The list is a lot longer than I had anticipated it would be👇
It wouldn’t be right to start with anyone but @RBReich, who I will remind you was **Secretary of Labor** under Bill Clinton and is here calling for the extralegal prosecution of his political opponents as part of a truth and reconciliation commission.
You would think such an idea was roundly refuted, just one blue check going off the reservation.
You would be wrong. Here’s @MSNBC’s @chrislhayes, one of the key voices on one of the largest networks, echoing the same sentiment.
The list goes on. There were plenty of blue checks throwing this idea around. Here we have @jvagle and @treygraham.
I need you all to take a moment and appreciate how utterly batshit this thread from @SteveSchmidtSES is.
At least we’ll know what hats they’ll be wearing when they start rounding folks up, thanks to @jamieleecurtis
They’re doubling down on this perspective today, which is comforting. Here’s @quinncy.
We had A LOT of think pieces on the subject. Here we have @inthesetimesmag.
Thankfully for all of them, there is already one in the works! We had the “Trump Accountability Project” led by @HariSevugan.
Nothing says “healthy democracy” like “now that we’ve won, who has the list of our enemies handy?” right, Hari?
There’s apparently a bunch of blue checks involved in this one. Here’s @mbsimon, replying to @AOC, in very normal, totally not threatening at all, fashion.
At the end of the day, I can’t imagine these folks will be shipping conservatives off to the gulags in a divided government, much as they would like to.
But it fundamentally cuts against the spirit of America to suggest someone should be punished for their political views.
We are not some post-genocide society. The suggestion that we need a Rwandan-styled Truth and Reconciliation Commission is preposterous. And free societies don’t develop political hit lists.
This champagne fascism from the Left needs to stop. Now would be a good time.
Anyway, congrats to @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris for their victory (at least until we hear on appeals). Perhaps, once the champagne has finished flowing, it would behoove of both of you to think about why your victory gives even some people who weren’t wild about Trump real pause.
And if you’ve read this far you probably don’t need to hear it from me, but you don’t need to be excited or celebratory about an electoral victory for someone whose supporters want to punish you for thoughtcrimes.
This is eventually just going to be a thread of @chrislhayes saying that we need to catalogue and punish Republicans.
It was only a matter of time until @joelockhart checked in on this one.
Has since been deleted but zero percent surprising that @donwinslow finds himself on this list.
It was only a matter of time before the grifters at @ProjectLincoln got involved on this one.
Nothing says unity like treating the other party like an “active threat to democracy” to hear @WajahatAli tell it.
Step 1: ID your enemies
Step 2: put them in a handy list; distribute list to allies
Step 3: punish people for crimes real and (more likely) imagined.
This sure feels a little bit like Mao’s China from the students of Harvard.
I wish I was surprised that this thread needs to keep growing but it’s inescapable when you consider that lots of people like @DavidOAtkins think that people who don’t support his preferred candidate need to be “deprogrammed”
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Pelosi vs. the judge in the Chauvin case regarding Rep. Maxine Waters’ comments:
Also your periodic reminder that Waters is, somehow, a committee chair. If she were of the opposite party, seems pretty obvious she would have lost at least that chairmanship by now.
The party that is supposedly desecrating norms and institutions stripped a member of his committees for a dumb, racist remark.
How will the supposed adults in the room respond to a member of leadership undermining justice in a high-profile case?
Today the “Russian bounties” story - where Russia was supposedly paying to have US soldiers killed - quietly imploded.
For the last year, Dems, the media & others have pushed this conspiracy theory endlessly.
If you think that’s exaggerative, have a look⤵️
The worst offender was @nytimes, who broke the original story and went on to convince the families of soldiers who had been KIA that perhaps the Russians were to blame and President Trump didn’t care.
Will we get a follow up? Will the families?
But they were far from alone. @CNN pushed the conspiracy theory just as frequently as anyone did.
You’ll notice that, while some of the stories note the bounties are “alleged”, eventually CNN dropped that, despite the narrative being disputed (and having since fallen apart).
Today, President Biden announced his intention to end the war in Afghanistan, to great media fanfare.
You may remember, way back in 2019 & 2020, President Trump said the same thing.
Let me know if you can spot the difference in coverage then vs. now⤵️
When Trump said we were leaving, @CNN quoted the NATO Sec Gen with a “stark warning” about how “dangerous” the move would be.
But Biden’s decision? Well, on that one, we just get to hear from his people.
One of the things I’ve discussed before is how outlets can frame the narrative they want by focusing on people who support or oppose a certain policy. It’s misleading, but also a calling card of @CNN.
one idea Douthat hits on here is that US meritocrats are usually "deeply committed to a moral vision that regards emancipated, self-directed choice as essential to human freedom and the good life" and I wish we talked about that more.
as well as the reality that "[t]he tension between this worldview and the thou-shalt-not, death-of-self commandments of biblical religion can be bridged only with difficulty"'