Don't get snowed by fake GOP outrage about Biden's criticism of right wing extremism. It's a sucker's game, a bad-faith effort to redefine "unity" as agreeing to absolve Republicans from blame for enabling Trump and his attack on our country. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
It's bizarre. Biden called out racism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism.
Republicans promptly decided that in condemning those things, Biden was actually talking about them.
This may seem like standard bad faith. But there's a deeper ploy here:
Because Biden was 100% correct. The real threat to unity in this country — to civic peace, to democratic coexistence, to mutual acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the opposition — absolutely is right wing extremism:
It's a fitting end to this disaster that Trump is boasting about his corporate tax cut while pardoning the architect of his "economic populism" to protect him from charges that he literally ripped off Trump's own supporters.
Senate Dems will introduce a sweeping pro-democracy bill today as the first bill under their new majority. Includes automatic voter registration, rehabbing Voting Rights Act, and more.
It's the Dem answer to Trump's assault on our democracy:
One quick correction: The bill will be announced today, not introduced. It's the first honorary bill of the new Senate, S1. Dem aide says Schumer will ensure it gets a vote, though unclear when.
Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are playing a slimy game: They're disowning the insurrection without retracting their support for the big lie that incited it. But they have a problem: New video shows unambiguously that the lie did drive the assault. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
As former DHS official @juliettekayyem tells me, the memo shows:
"His own intelligence agencies” have concluded that “the lie that the election was stolen, which Trump continues to nurture, will motivate violence in the future.”
Let's be clear: For the far-right groups that carried out Trump's insurrection, the siege of the Capitol was a huge success, a major propaganda coup. I talked to experts in right-wing extremism about what this event really meant to them. Alarming stuff: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
"By all measurable effects, this was for far right extremists one of the most successful attacks they’ve ever launched. This will be propagandized on for the next decade."
I talked to folks tracking how the insurrection is playing on the far right:
The multiple security failures at the Capitol are already being treated as a propaganda victory by some on the far right, who see this as a sign of corruption and vulnerability: