Dems are investigating whether the suppression of DHS intelligence about violent white supremacy and right wing extremism -- done to bolster Trump's campaign agitprop -- may have helped exacerbate the insurrection at the Capitol, @RepAdamSchiff tells me: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@RepAdamSchiff The post-Trump fumigation will have to be epic.
We need a full reckoning with Trump's use of large swaths of the government to manufacture a left-wing terror threat and downplay violent right wing extremism, and the ways all this led to the insurrection:
The manufactured Trumpist narrative of organized left-wing terrorism furnished the ideological justification for the descent into violent authoritarian politics that we’ve seen from the movements that converged on Jan 6:
There is a clear link between the GOP dilemmas over Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump's impeachment. In both, Republicans largely still have not unambiguously declared that political violence is wholly intolerable and has no place in their ranks. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Republicans who criticize MTG keep focusing on her conspiracy theories. They use phrases like "nutty" and "loony lies."
I call BS. Greene has also *endorsed the execution of Democrats.*
Rs should say more about that, too. But that's dicey for them:
Republicans are now openly boasting of their plot to win the House through extreme gerrymanders. This alone should dissuade Biden and Dems from negotiating down the stimulus to secure bipartisanship. Dems may have only 2 years. Make them count. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Media is getting snowed by the GOP proposal. It's a double-whammy of bad faith. It's meant to create the impression that Rs are willing to do *something* amid two major crises while also creating a bogus way to claim Biden is reneging on "unity" promise:
Marjorie Taylor Greene approved of executing Dems, yet she'll get little to no punishment. But the story here is much bigger: GOP failure to police extremists goes back half a century.
“The dictum now is ‘No enemies to the right,'" @RuleandRuin tells me:
@RuleandRuin There's a great paper called "The Long New Right" that tells the story of the GOP/conservative movement's failure to police extremists for the last 50 years.
It's highly relevant to the insurrection and Marjorie Greene's lunacy.
@SenSchumer@maddow 2) Schumer vowed that this time, Dems won't get snookered by GOP bad faith.
But Schumer also framed the stakes in a good way. He said Dems are united behind the idea that *delivering in a big way* is key to restoring faith in government and democracy:
@SenSchumer@maddow 3) Schumer also said a failure to go big will risk disillusionment and another Trumpist demagogue.
If so, restoring faith in government/democracy isn't about achieving bipartisanship for its own sake. It's about the scale of the program Dems deliver on:
Mitch McConnell is trying to extort Dems into unilateral disarmament. He claims the filibuster facilitates bipartisan cooperation. The reality is the opposite: He cynically weaponizes it to *deny* bipartisan cooperation. The history is clear. New piece: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
McConnell is exploiting a twisted journalistic convention.
Media will place the onus of achieving bipartisan cooperation on Biden, while allowing Republicans to cast their own withholding of bipartisan cooperation as proof of his failure to achieve it:
McConnell doesn't use filibuster to facilitate bipartisanship. He uses it to deny cooperation for the express purpose of casting Dem presidents as failed conciliators.
Media gets snookered by this, even though he explained this scam in his own words:
While Republicans are running their "unity" scam in the media, Biden just rolled out new policies that would channel large amounts of resources into rural America -- into Trump country. I looked at how these policies constitute *actual* unifying efforts: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Biden's Covid blueprint beefs up protections for workers, many in meatpacking plants in rural areas.
His use of Defense Production Act will employ industrial policy to channel resources to non-metro areas in a way conservative populists want.
Trump used coronavirus to relentlessly stoke civil and regional conflict.
Biden is offering a national Covid strategy that channels resources into helping all Americans, including or especially in rural areas, i.e., Trump country.