Thread by @ZhiZhuWeb

"Over the course of Trump’s presidency, one of the running debates about the man boiled down to: menace or clown? ...

Many observers rejected the dichotomy... described the former president as “both farcical and deeply dangerous.”"

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"In nearly every battle space of the war to control the count of the next election—statehouses, state election authorities, courthouses, Congress, and the Republican Party apparatus—Trump’s position has improved since a year ago."

#DemocracyInDanger
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"The more we learn about January 6, the clearer the conclusion becomes that it was the last gambit in a soundly conceived campaign—one that provides a blueprint for 2024."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"The strategic objective of nearly every move by the Trump team after the networks called the election for Joe Biden ... was to induce Republican legislatures in states that Biden won to seize control of the results and appoint Trump electors instead."

[see Bush v Gore ]

"Trump was too late, barely, to strong-arm Republican county authorities into rejecting Detroit’s election tally (they tried and failed to rescind their “yes” votes after the fact)"

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"Delegitimating Biden’s victory was a strategic win for Trump—then and now—because the Big Lie became the driving passion of the voters who controlled the fate of Republican legislators, and Trump’s fate was in the legislators’ hands."

#BigLie
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[As an aside: Here's a thread about how GOP operatives are taking over local election offices across the USA so that they can manipulate elections and/or change election results if their favored candidate doesn’t win the most votes.]

https://twitter.com/iarnsdorf/status/1433405386044973063

"Despite enormous pressure, none of the 6 contested states put forward an alternate slate of electors for Trump. Only later, as Congress prepared to count electoral votes, did legislators in some of those states begin talking unofficially about “decertifying” the Biden electors."

"The clock was ticking. Several of Trump’s advisers, Rudy Giuliani among them, told allies that friendly legislatures were on the brink of convening special sessions to replace their Biden electors."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"The Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania Senate, who had resisted pressure from Trump to nullify Biden’s victory, had just signed their names to a letter averring that the commonwealth’s election results “should not have been certified by our Secretary of State.”"

"If Pence or the Republican-controlled Senate had fully backed Trump’s maneuver, there is a chance that they might in fact have produced a legal stalemate that the incumbent could have exploited to stay in power."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"Above all else, Bannon knew that Trump had to stop the count, which was set to begin at 1 p.m. the next day [#Jan6].

If Pence would not stop it and Alito did not come through, another way would have to be found."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"Congressional investigators have been deploying subpoenas and the threat of criminal sanctions—Bannon has been indicted for contempt of Congress—to discover whether they were in direct contact with the “Stop the Steal” rally organizers and, if so, what they planned together."

"at 1:10 pm, Trump had finished speaking and directed the crowd toward the Capitol. The first rioters breached the building at 2:11 pm through a window they shattered with a length of lumber and a stolen police shield."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"Pause for a moment to consider the choreography. Hundreds of angry men and women are swarming through the halls of the Capitol...

Nothing short of stunning good luck, with an allowance for determined police and sound evacuation plans, prevented a direct encounter."

"Had the rioters arrived half a minute earlier, they could not have failed to spot the vice president and his escorts speed-walking out of the Senate chamber."

#Jan6th
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"“We just went ahead and stormed the Capitol. It’s about to get ugly,” he said...

pressing against outnumbered police in the Crypt... “You fucking traitors!” he screamed in their faces.

...in an ominous singsong voice, Garcia called out, “Nancy, come out and play!”"

"He “wasn’t there to stop the certification of Biden becoming president,” he said, but to delay it. “I was there to support Ted Cruz. Senator Ted Cruz was asking for a 10-day investigation.”

Delay. Buy time. Garcia knew what the mission was."

#Jan6th
#TrumpCoupAttempt

"Sidney Powell must have watched reports of the insurgency with anxious eyes on the clock. If Congress stayed out of session, there was a chance that Justice Alito might come through.

He did not. The Supreme Court denied Powell’s application the next day"
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"For a few short weeks, Republicans recoiled at the insurrection and distanced themselves from Trump.

That would not last."

#Jan6Insurrection
#TrumpCoupAttempt
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"Ali Alexander, one of the principal organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally, said, “I was the person who came up with the #Jan6th idea with Congressman Gosar” & two other Republican House members. “We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

"In the final days of the Trump administration, CNN reported that Gosar (among other members of Congress) had asked Trump for a preemptive pardon for his part in the events of January 6.

He did not get one."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"as Trump and his legal advisers squeezed Pence to stop the electoral count, they told the VP that state legislatures around the country were on the cusp of replacing electors who’d voted for Biden with those who would vote for Trump... they were trying mightily to make it true."

"Trump’s demand—that statehouses fire their voters and hand him the votes—was so far beyond the bounds of normal politics that politicians found it difficult to conceive."

#TrumpCoupAttempt
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

“I think it did depend on the personalities,” he told me.

“I think you replace those officials, those judges, with ones who are more willing to follow the party line, and you get a different set of outcomes.”

#TrumpCoupAttempt
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"Today that reads like a coup plotter’s to-do list.

Since the 2020 election, Trump’s acolytes have set about methodically identifying patches of resistance and pulling them out by the roots."

#DemocracyInDanger
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

[As an aside: Here's a thread about how GOP operatives are taking over local election offices across the USA so that they can manipulate elections and/or change election results if their favored candidate doesn’t win the most votes.]

https://twitter.com/iarnsdorf/status/1433405386044973063

"There was no such thing under law as a method to “decertify” electors when Trump demanded it in 2020, but state Republicans think they have invented one for 2024."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

[Another aside: Here is a really good article from @Reuters that looks at how Trump supporters are threatening election officials,

and how little (practically NOTHING) law enforcement, including the @FBI, is doing about it.]

https://twitter.com/ZhiZhuWeb/status/1458836641351708681

"Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, excommunicated and primaried at Trump’s behest for certifying Biden’s victory, nonetheless signed a new law in March that undercuts the power of the county authorities who normally manage elections."

#DemocracyInDanger
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"The Justice Department has filed suit to overturn some provisions of the new Georgia law—but not to challenge the hostile takeover of election authorities."

#DemocracyInDanger
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[Another aside:
It's not JUST #VoterSuppression in GOP-led states.

It's also gerrymandering & the GOP making it easier for states to OVERTURN ELECTIONS.]

https://twitter.com/ZhiZhuWeb/status/1421907058564206594

"Taken to its logical conclusion, it could provide a legal basis for any state legislature to throw out an election result it dislikes and appoint its preferred electors instead."

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

“One of the minimal requirements for a democracy is that popular elections will determine political leadership,” Nate Persily, a Stanford Law School expert on election law, told me.

“If a legislature can effectively overrule the popular vote, it turns democracy on its head.”

"Our two-party system has only one party left that is willing to lose an election.

The other is willing to win at the cost of breaking things that a democracy cannot live without."

#DemocracyInDanger
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"Democracies have fallen before under stresses like these, when the people who might have defended them were transfixed by disbelief.

If ours is to stand, its defenders have to rouse themselves."
~@bartongellman

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

"The Justice Department and the FBI are chasing down the foot soldiers of January 6, but there is no public sign that they are building cases against the men and women who sent them. Absent consequences, they will certainly try again. An unpunished plot is practice for the next."

"Republican acolytes have identified the weak points in our electoral apparatus and are methodically exploiting them...

Trump supporters ... are armed and single-minded and will know what to do the next time Trump calls upon them to act."

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