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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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6 Jul, 7 tweets, 2 min read
1. This stuff is dangerous and I feel people are averting their eyes from it out of Trump-exhaustion and maybe a misplaced belief that ignoring it will help contain it.
2. Trump isn't acting like an ordinary ex-president. The closest parallel might be Theodore Roosevelt after 1909, who remained a political powerhouse & thorn in side of actual president culminating in 3rd party run in 2012. But Trump is even beyond that.
3. Even if Trump doesn't run again in 2024, he's clearly intent on being a powerhouse in GOP & shaping party. Media blackout here isn't working since GOP pols take cues from him & want his blessing (Ohio & Pennsylvania state GOP are good bellwethers here).
4. One way to think about what Trump is doing is he's styling himself as a government-in-exile, the legitimate president usurped by fraud. Deprived (thankfully) of the outlets that gave him voice in past, he's relying on more motley & fringe figures.
5. We don't know whether Trump will run again in 2024, but I have to say if he were planning on running he'd be doing what he does now, stirring up base against putatively fraudulent election & compromising RINOs, making Ashli Babbitt into a Horst Wessel-style martyr etc.
5. If we're thinking about Trump as running a farcical government in exile (the prince across the waters in Mar-A-Lago) then the courtiers of this gov't are the fringe media outlets like" newsmax, OANN, myriad youtube/facebook personalities" etc
6. I explore the idea of a Trumpist government-in-exile in this podcast I did with Doug Bell, focusing on one particularly colorful courtier, Baron Black of Crossharbour, a felon who Trump pardoned. jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-the-…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
7 Jul
1. Elevator Pitch: Press Barons: A Miniseries. In the 1980s, Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black, & Rupert Murdoch were building rival media empires & political power. One is now dead (an alleged suicide), one a former felon & pathetic Trumpist sycophant & one the king of the world.
2. All three were from the hinterland of the old Empire who made their way to metropolitan London, seeing it as the natural seat of a global media empire (Maxwell via the British allied Czechoslovak Army in exile, Black from Canada, Murdoch from Australia).
3. Maxwell's murky death in 1991 (he fell off or jumped from the Lady Ghislaine, named for his latterly infamous daughter) revealed that his press empire was built on fraud and embezzlement. It left lingering questions about his connections to various intelligence agencies.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
3 Jul
1. In 2001 National Review did a cover story on "Rumsfeld the Stud." The following year People magazine included Rumsfeld in their list of "sexiest men" alive. In 2003 Midge Decter published a fawning Rumsfeld biography that opens with a story about a friend with a Rummy pin-up.
2. The Rummy-As-Sex-Symbol moment, a meme that flourished not just in the right-wing media but also the mainstream press from 2001-2004, has been dropped down the memory hole, a collective embarrassment no one wants to talk about. What was going on?
3. Partly, it's a matter of how in a time of crisis the media (again, extending beyond the right) likes to find a Churchillian hero who embodies collective toughness, competence, resilience. We saw this recently in cults of Fauci & Cuomo (or earlier of Mueller).
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
1 Jul
1. Bill Cosby. Donald Rumsfeld. Two very different careers. Very different men. And yet.
2. The coincidence of Cosby's conviction being overturned at the same time as Rumsfeld's death underscores the power of elite impunity.
3. With Cosby, it's important to understand the 2004 non-prosecution agreement (the root reason why his own testimony of guilt can't be used) was only part of a much larger pattern of legal system not willing to hold him to account.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
30 Jun
1. I don't think it's sufficiently understood that the battle over the meaning of January 6 is feeding into the new salience of racism/anti-racism in right wing arguments.
2. On the face of it, going big on anti-anti-racism (as in the CRT moral panic) doesn't make a lot of sense under Biden (who by virtue of being an old white man isn't an easy target). 2020 was a depolarizing election on race. But January 6 has made it central again.
3. Involvement of racist groups like Proud Boys in Jan. 6 & also disproportionate role of former military led Biden administration to give priority to rooting out racist extremism in military. Tucker Carlson has been on forefront of stoking backlash to this.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
25 Jun
1. One of the big differences between Canada & the USA is the relative salience of Indigenous issues. Canada has considerably more Indigenous per capita (especially if you consider only continental USA) & issues of treaty rights are more prominent.
2. In general, Indigenous concerns (history, culture, politics) more prominent in Canada & also just in social life (i.e. city I live in is nearly 10% First Nations or Metis). But I think American situation is changing and will soon change in big way.
3. The uncovering of mass graves & unmarked graves near former residential schools in Canada is spurring on similar research in USA. Deb Haaland being Interior Secretary is a big factor. newrepublic.com/article/162821…
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
25 Jun
1. The American right's turn against the military (as "woke" and beholden to CRT) is a pretty significant development, not without precedent & very specifically focused on officer class, but still something new & pregnant with meaning.
2. To be very specific, the focus of the right's ire is on the military leadership. This is what I'd call the Rambo trope: "the troops are good, they want to win, it's the goddamn pencil neck bureaucrats in the Pentagon that are the problem."
3. The Rambo trope all precedes Rambo of course: you see it in Dixiecrat attacks on desegregation of military and in Joseph McCarthy's attack on George Marshall & (suicidally) his attempt to red bait the Pentagon.
Read 8 tweets

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