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Brian Beutler Profile picture
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Feb 4 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Despicable as they are, Donald Trump's escalating threats against investigators, political enemies, and democracy make perfect sense if you put yourself in the shoes of a sociopath who's fighting for his freedom, future, and ego. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
In this pure contest of truth vs. lies, he is all passionate intensity, but the forces of truth lack…well, not all conviction. But there’s a gap. eepurl.com/gQH7lz
It reminds me at least a little of when Emily Murphy (remember her?) abused her authority to block the Biden transition, and instead of raining hell down on her, Dems sat back and hoped good sense would prevail. It kinda worked…but it’s a poor, risky model for the bigger fight.
As a general rule, I wish all the people with influence over the Trump accountability question would do less hoping things work out OK, less passing the hot potato, and more imagining how it will feel in that awful future moment when they realize they’ve failed.

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More from @brianbeutler

Brian Beutler Profile picture
Feb 3
This seems way overstated given that Spotify surely already has one-strike-and-your’re-out rules (written or unwritten) that bind their content creators.
Rogan would be out on his ass if he encouraged violence against specific individuals or political figures or became an avowed Nazi. Just add discouraging vaccine uptake to the list of intolerable social harms and call it a day. Grandfather Rogan in, even.
“But then when the pandemic ends, they might try to censor him for some other wacky ideas he has!” Probably not in fact.
Read 4 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
Feb 1
It’s really not hard to understand. If the entire population were vaxxed, some fraction would still get sick, fewer would die. Multiply by > 300 million and (with current tools and variants) it’s easy to imagine a “pandemic of the vaccinated” that still kills 50-100k a year.
Of course all else is not equal. We’re nowhere close to 100 percent uptake, particularly RE boosters. On the other hand, we have more natural immunity than before, next gen vaccines and therapeutics are also nearly here. So it’s a bit of wait and see how deadly the next wave is.
But if we get yearly death on that order (which would make us very lucky) I don’t know what the right course of action is. On one hand, prior to COVID, seasonal flu would occasionally be that deadly, and I never gave it a second thought. On the other…that seems bad in hindsight!
Read 5 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
Jan 21
New newsletter! Since we can’t know what it Means For The Election, let’s instead think through where Democrats’ inability to reform the filibuster and pass democracy reform in a post-Trump, Big Lie world leaves us, in historical context. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
The Freedom to Vote Act wouldn’t have fixed everything—not nearly. But its failure means Dems’ procedural radicalization will have to *accelerate*. That’s why the calls for them to curb their ambitions now are misguided. A timid party can not fix this. crooked.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=88…
And that’s exactly why episodes of timidity these past 5 years have been so excruciating. The only way to tear down the autocratic system Republicans have built for themselves is hard-nosed partisanship, but today’s Dems still cling to narcotizing myths about what the GOP is.
Read 6 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
Jan 19
The Trump brownout post-Jan 6 obscures and shields Republicans from a lot of genuinely newsworthy craziness. E.g., I didn’t know til I got to the 17th paragraph of this piece 5 days later that Trump admitted the point of his election lies is to cheat. rollcall.com/2022/01/19/bac… Image
And it’s 17 paragraphs in because it came in second to some other newsworthy lies.
I get the bind the platforms were in (morally, legally, commercially) after Trump used their services to incite an insurrection. But there’s a lot of space short of “point the camera at Trump and broadcast him live” and I think traditional media may have missed the sweet spot.
Read 8 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
Jan 12
The ‘to be sure’ clauses in this piece, paired with zero prescriptions for mitigating risk, tell a story all their own.
Oh, you don’t say?
It would be trivially easy for conservative elites not named Cheney and Kinzinger to show they truly believed that these possibilities, while unlikely, are real: Just say what should be done to insure against them.
Read 4 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
Jan 11
The old idea is: president gives speech ➡️ public becomes mobilized ➡️ legislators feel pressured. And that’s clearly wrong.

But in a polarized world of occasional trifectas I could see: president gives speech ➡️bill becomes legacy item ➡️same-party legislators feel pressured.
Inversely, the way you would’ve known Obama had given up on the ACA is if he’d withdrawn health care as a topic for public debate. Giving multiple speeches, doing lots of stunty round tables with the GOP, etc is how you knew he was still invested, and may be why it got the votes.
It doesn’t mean it works every time. In a narrow majority it becomes more likely that an eccentric (Sinema) or someone like Manchin (a selfish person who doesn’t fear a primary and has little affinity for the party that made him) will be a pivotal vote.
Read 4 tweets

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