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Greg Sargent Profile picture
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7 Dec, 5 tweets, 3 min read
Just awful: Steve Bannon is now ripping into David Perdue, who is *Trump's* candidate for Georgia governor, as too much of a squish to wage the war on democracy Bannon wants. This shows that the right is headed toward full-blown insurgency. My new piece:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I had a fascinating conversation with Nicole Hemmer, a historian of conservative media, about Bannon.

Bannon is similar to Oliver North. Both parlayed their willingness to operate outside the law into a media following built around explicit insurgency:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
David Perdue supported the lawsuit seeking to invalidate millions of Biden votes. He called for the firing of the Sec of State who rebuffed Trump's pressure to steal the election.

Yet Bannon still sees him as a squish. Only full blown insurgency will do:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Bannon's podcast has become a command center for an explicitly anti-democratic politics, an openly declared far-right insurgency.

*Nonstop lies about 2020

*Valorizes 1/6 insurrectionists as "political prisoners"

*Attacks legitimacy of Biden "regime":

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Also see this key related insight from @shikhadalmia:

The real reason to be worried about right wing media is that it's "determined to tear down the journalistic marketplace of ideas and replace it with a lapdog media that serves its interests."

theunpopulist.substack.com/p/can-the-us-p…

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More from @ThePlumLineGS

Greg Sargent Profile picture
9 Dec
1) Mark Meadows is suing the 1/6 committee, claiming it has no "legitimate legislative purpose" in subpoenaing him for documents about Trump's coup.

I'm having some dark thoughts about this. In a hidden way, this has very ominous implications.

*THREAD*

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
2) The 1/6 committee has lots of valid legislative purposes. To name just two:

* Reforming the ECA to prevent another coup

* Tightening oversight on WH-DOJ communications.

These are both serious soft spots in our system that Trump corruptly exploited.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
3) But Trump and Meadows say none of these constitute a valid legislative purpose.

In response to this effort to overthrow our political system, we should do nothing meaningful to safeguard against another coup attempt.

Nothing.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 7 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
8 Dec
How can Biden lead at the democracy summit without telling the truth about the authoritarian threat at home -- that it comes from the right and GOP? Will he really paper over his own party's utter failure to safeguard against that threat? My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Biden advisers are struggling with how to address our own democracy problems at the summit. SecState Blinken says he will use it to rally our "better angels" at home.

But this casts the problem as a failure of persuasion, when it's a failure of inaction:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Manchin and Sinema are obviously the problem. But Dems could forcefully commit to a future agenda if more Dems are elected:

*Reform filibuster
*Defend voting rights
*Fix Electoral Count Act
*Protect against manipulation of law enforcement
*SCOTUS reform

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
6 Dec
Important: Ben Ginsberg, a top GOP lawyer, just called on his party to reform the Electoral Count Act to avert a stolen 2024.

If and when Republicans say no, it will show that they're perfectly happy to see a rerun of Trump's coup attempt in the future:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Some hope to persuade Republicans to support ECA reform by claiming VP Harris could help steal a future election.

But this misses the antidemocratic currents in today's GOP. Many Rs appear to *want* to be able to execute such a future scheme themselves:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Dems must end the filibuster to reform the ECA.

It's unthinkable that Ds would let the filibuster scuttle reforms to avert a future coup, when we *already saw* Trump attempt exactly this scheme, and antidemocratic currents in the GOP are getting worse:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Image
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
3 Dec
Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene aren't fringe. They're leading indicators of an increasingly violent, paranoid style of right wing politics. They claim to speak for the base. Given that GOP leaders won't censure them, are they wrong?

My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Marjorie Taylor Greene and her friends have launched a creative new defense of their anti-Muslim bigotry:

The GOP base agrees with us!

Perhaps that's why GOP leaders are *not* forcefully criticizing that bigotry:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
There's real overlap between the ravings of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon, and some of the stuff from the "intellectual" Claremont Institute.

The thread: A leftist enemy so fiendishly monolithic and totalitarian that anything goes in response:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
2 Dec
Three days after Trump tested positive for covid, Melania, Don Jr and others in his inner circle sat in the debate hall without masks, in direct violation of protocols. They rebuffed demands to mask up.

I took a close look at the chronology. It's damning:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
A crucial detail:

Meadows told everyone around Trump to treat him as "positive" on covid, while concealing this publicly.

That makes it even more damning that his family sat in the debate hall maskless.

Reporters witnessed this at the time. Receipts:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
At the time, the Commission on Presidential Debates complained that the Trump family had violated protocol.

But nothing was done, even as they flaunted those rules before a national audience of millions.

We now know Trump had already tested positive:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
29 Nov
Now that it looks like Trump might run in 2024, is the media prepared to cover a fundamentally anti-democracy candidate who employs rampant disinformation as a deliberate strategy? Some media insiders are sounding the alarm. I offered a few ideas here:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
My suggestions:

First, let's stop saying that Trump and/or his supporters" actually believe" the 2020 election was stolen.

This has the effect of whitewashing away the seriousness of the ongoing threat to democracy:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Image
Second, no more platitudes about "partisan divisions" and "two different realities."

This obscures the degree to which these breakdowns are the result of one side's bad acting:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Image
Read 5 tweets

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