Thread by @SteveSchmidtSES

I had no interest whatsoever in running a Presidential Campaign in 2008. One of my closest friends was running John McCain’s campaign and John Weaver was the chief strategist. There were two factions in the campaign. There was a pro-democracy faction and there was

2/ a pro Russia faction. The pro democracy faction was led by Weaver and the pro Russia faction was led by a Washington lobbyist who was in business with Paul Manafort. Like Manafort, he had a Trump Tower residence. He was in charge of the campaigns finances and bankrupted the

3/ campaign through a series of unethical transactions and markups with Manafort and a company called 3 EDC. The campaign was destroyed over a massive fight over John McCain’s greatest blind spot, willful or otherwise. @MeghanMcCain this is the story of the man you call Uncle

4/Rick and it explains how we met. I’ll attach a story from @thenation that I only read recently, though it is from 2008. It is spot on @MeghanMcCain. Your Father tolerated his campaign chairman being in business and working for Putin through his association with Yanukovych.

5/ SAME AS TRUMP

5/ Yanukovych, as you probably have no idea, was Putin’s puppet in Ukraine. The story of American corruption in Ukraine starts here. It starts in John McCain’s operation, not Trumps. @MeghanMcCain,did you know that your dad was taken on Oleg Deripaskas yacht in Montenegro for his

6/ 70th Birthday by his top aide? It was a McCain guy who represented the interests of the Russian Government in the Montenegro Independence referendum. Weaver was aghast. This is why the campaign went KABOOM in July of 2008 and your father went from front runner to middle seat

7/ on a SouthWest Flight with the National Press Corps gathered in NH waiting for him to drop out. That is when John McCain called me and asked me for help. It is the opening scene of Game Change. I helped him and his corresponding comeback made him the GOP a nominee for POTUS.

8/ In return, 14 non stop years of abuse from @MeghanMcCain, the singularly most rotten person I have ever met. The McCain Institute is supposed to fight for freedom and liberty but it has Putin and Yanukovych alumni on the Board. It is gross and we live in an era that requires

9/the exposure of corruption and hypocrisy not its accommodation. Do you have any idea how disappointed the brave people in Ukraine would be learning that one of Victor Yanukovych right hands is on the Board of the McCain Institute. Let’s ask. @visegrad24 @KyivIndependent

10/ @olex_scherba was outrageous then and it is outrageous now. Here is the serious part. The person I’m talking about, is the one who was in charge of VETTING the VP candidate. True. Putin’s guy, the one who was Victor Yanukovich’s henchman was in charge of ALL of the DUE

11/ DILIGENCE around Palin. I wasn’t. This was reported at the time and is detailed in Game Change. I was focused on dealing with a different catastrophe. Get back to me @MeghanMcCain if you want to hear more. Here’s a preview

12/ Quick but true story. The first time I went to see a therapist was in 2011 to deal with the personal fallout from the chaos, disgustingness and insanity of the McCain campaign. I didn’t really know where to start, I had arranged a 2 hour session and I just blurted out that

13/ the therapist would probably think they should be paying me by the end of the session. I talked stream of consciousness for 1:50, non stop. Ten minutes out the Therapist stopped me and explained that when a person goes through a trauma and talks about it for the first time

14/ they do what I did which is talk non stop. The second thing she noted was that during her 30 years of practice that many clients had said she should be paying them for their story. She said that always made for an easy Narcissist Personality diagnosis. However, she

15/ added, I was the exception. She said she absolutely would have paid for it and it was one of the most amazing and shocking stories she ever heard. Not a fucking word about it appears in Game Change because no person has protected @MeghanMcCain John McCain’s legacy with less

16. Reason to do so than me. Let’s just leave it there for the night.