1/ The most destructive, vile, corrupt man ever to darken America’s presidency has left the White House for the last time.

He has disgraced himself, the office, his oath, and the nation in ways more profound and lasting than we can account.
2/ His incompetence, malfeasance, and evil shouldn’t be laughed off as narcissism or ignorance. He was surrounded by corrupt, wicked, cruel counselors and reveled in it.

Emerson once said of Lincoln’s presidency “an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.”

He was right.
3/ Trump’s cruelty, division, insurrection, treason and corruption are unrivaled in history. He is the nadir of presidential leadership.

He was enabled by the weak, the venal, the desperate, and the compromised. It was empowered by voices normalizing and rationalizing his evils.
4/ His abuse of power should come as no surprise. There are no better angels in Donald Trump’s nature.

There was never a bottom. There was never any maturation, self-reflection, or a “day he became president.”

It would always end this way.
5/ A life free of consequence, accountability, justice, or moral reckonings put a man in charge of this nation with no guiderails, no boundaries, no ethical compass.

The American carnage from his inaugural address was real, and he embodied every iota of it.
6/ The claque of his sycophants will haunt us for a generation.

They will try to clean up his philosophy and embody his authoritarianism while wearing better suits and waving credentials from an Ivy.

His cult will await the second coming and his spawn will run for office.
7/ For all that, he is defeated. A pariah, a failure, and a traitor the the Constitution and the country.

Good won over evil. It’s that simple. Decency won over indecency.

America checked a hard slide into the darkness, blessed by providence or luck.
8/ Enjoy this moment. There’s much work ahead.

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More from @TheRickWilson

20 Jan
1/ Today was a moment about America. About our future. About recapturing hope from hate. About a better, brighter path.

It's not exaggeration to say this was the most consequential election since the Civil War.

So many people fought so hard for so long to defeat Trump.
2/ My timeline is filled with people thanking me for standing up and for the work of @ProjectLincoln.

I cannot sufficiently express my profound, eternal gratitude for your kind words and support. The hard fights are the fights to be in, and you all deserve the credit for this.
3/ The work of a grassroots volunteer making calls and (virtually) knocking doors was just as important and deserves just as much credit and praise. It took a national movement to reach this day.
Read 4 tweets
6 Oct 20
1/ Trump cut off stimulus talks. It's almost as if he has a political death wish and will take down Republicans with him.

His campaign people are staring mutely at the screens of their phones, stunned and depressed.

Stepien was just on with the pollsters. Ooops. Blindsided.
2/ The desperation is growing in the campaign. They've watched the tracker. They see how badly they've bled out since the debate and his manic behavior since diagnosed.

The stunts aren't moving the numbers. Even the base is fading. Seniors fading. Noncollege whites fading.
3/ What happens next? Well, a lot of places are about to end rent and mortgage forebearance. The COVID bounce is coming.

There is no vaccine. There is no scalable therapy. (What Trump got at Walter Reed was bespoke and expensive.)

More pain is coming because he has failed.
Read 6 tweets
4 Oct 20
1/ A former friend who has joined the Washington "just following orders" crowd is horrified that we're hitting Jason Miller.

I asked him which of Jason's admitted actions -- the prostitutes, the strippers, skipping child support, etc -- he'd like to defend in public.
2/ "Well, I can't. You know I have to work in this town. Besides, he has a family."

Me: "He has at least two families, one to whom he's refusing to pay child support."
3/ The broader conversation was telling. A guy in the business who bent the knee to Trump feels the campaign is out of control (and I have better visibility into their ops and it's even worse than he thinks) and losing.
Read 5 tweets
3 Jun 20
1/ It begins:

A guy who went *full* Trump for lobbying business purposes -- and I mean, slavishly, insanely so -- is in Phase III of Good German syndrome.

Phase I - "Hey man, things have been crazy! How are you?"

Phase II - "Yeah, you know I had a mortgage and the company..."
2/ Phase III - "You know I never liked Trump. I was a Jeb guy! We just had so much business that needed the WH. But you and I are friends, man. We need to keep in touch. Do you know any Biden people? I want to have our clients give."

Me: "That's nice."
3/Phase IV will be when their firm leaks a client memo outlining how they were a firm that led their clients away from the damage of Trump.

Lobbyists smell danger like herd animals on the African plain., and they're scared now, their nostrils wide to the scent of predators.
Read 6 tweets
29 May 20
1/ Since y'all are all too young to remember this, and since I was only 5 at the time, there's some ancient history here to be considered.

In the 1968 race, Roger Ailes told Nixon -- I'd have to look it up as to the exact date -- to pivot from Vietnam to the post-King riots.
2/ Nixon went full-on "law and order" not only as a signifier about African Americans but also about the hippy proto-Bernie Bros in Chicago.

Ailes knew a secret; "law and order" was a code for race *and* for culture anxiety in 1968. The Ailes campaign DNA is wired...
3/ ...deeply into Trump's brain. (And don't fool yourself; Bill Clinton leveraged it also) The language, the "Silent Majority" crap, the aggrieved culture war whining is 1968 with a modern beat.

He *wants* the coverage of burning buildings. He *wants* the cops v protesters.
Read 6 tweets
28 May 20
1/ We don't know what the WH Counsel's office is going to vomit out when it comes to this social media executive order, but the idea by many Trump "conservatives" that this is a Good Thing, is I think, ludicrously wrong.

Nothing says "limited government" like putting the...
2/ ...FTC and Commerce Department in the role of policing online speech.

What could EVER go wrong with that? Let me give my Trump fluffer audience a couple mild, not too far-fetched scenarios to contemplate.
3/ In 2028, President Cortez (D-Progville, WA) decides that online anti-abortion speech is unacceptable and deceptive.

Or that no online platform should allow discussion of those terrible guns.

Or that free market capitalism has done enough damage...
Read 4 tweets

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