Thread by @SteveSchmidtSES

Sarah Palin once said the following to me. “Steve, I can take the Vice Presidential Campaign plane wherever I want. it’s my plane!”

I responded, “Governor, there is some truth to that. First, though, there is no such thing as a Vice Presidential Campaign. There is a Presidentia

2/ Campaign and you are the Vice Presidential candidate. It is true that you can take that plane wherever you want but you should have a plan after that because it’s my gas card” Nicolle Wallace and I were the two people who said NO.

3/ Whether it was @MeghanMcCain’s insanity or Palin’s. When the campaign ended I refused to let Sarah Palin speak. I placed the phone call to Barack Obama for the concession and did everything I could to make sure a beautiful speech wasn’t disgraced by the nut ball from Alaska.

4/ Palin understood the party of personal responsibility was dead and replaced by a whining victim cult of losers who routinely lied and blamed others for their failings. Palin went on the attack after the campaign. You see, it wasn’t that she was ignorant and unprepared.

5/ It wasn’t that she was a pathological liar who became intoxicated by fame and grievance. She was a victim! Victimized by the betrayal of her advisers. The stories rained down, each more stupid than the next. @EWErickson created a leper list to defend Sarah Palin’s honor and

6/guess who was at the top. Palin and her disgusting team of abusive internet bullies came hard. One of them @RAMansour now heads up the toxic Breitbart sewer. I called John McCain in early December of 2008 and I asked him to intervene. Here is what he said

7/ “No boy, I can’t do it. She’ll come after me”. @MeghanMcCain, your dad was scared shitless of the woman, he, not me, recklessly picked. He was scared shitless of the woman that was vetted by Paul Manaforts partner and a top adviser to Oleg Deripaska and Victor Yanukovych.

8/ John McCain’s last words to Palin on election night were a warning. He said don’t be pulled in “by the extremists like Limbaugh” It was too late and he knew it. He could have confronted it. He did not. @MeghanMcCain

9/ He put on his US Navy hat and went to the border and demagogued an issue he had led on. “Build the Darn Wall” was the tagline and it was gross. He said it and rode the tea party wave. I didn’t. I said she was unfit. I said she would be a catastrophe. I warned about this

10/ rising insanity nonstop through today without a single contradiction ever. I spoke with my own voice and asserted my own convictions and your father was pissed. He was pissed when I went on 60 minutes and told the truth. I did the right thing @MeghanMcCain.

11/ I only saw your Father twice after 2008. The first time was a reciprocally ice cold conversation on an Acela. The second time was on the third floor of @MSNBC when we were mutually scheduled for @Morning_Joe. It’s always a no fuss zone but that morning was different.

12/ Pages and interns and a few junior producers descended on me trying to steer me away from my usual route. It didn’t work. I locked eyes with your father. All the fuss was over his demand that he not see me. It was the action of a petulant child. Remind you of anyone?

13/ @MeghanMcCain I want you to know I stared him down until he broke eye contact. He was a hard man but he looked away because he was fucking ashamed of himself and he had a lot to be ashamed about in our relationship.

14/ I was one of many, many feuds in your fathers life. He had a great capacity for reconciliation and whether it was the restoration of US /Vietnam relations 🇻🇳 with @JohnKerry and @BillClinton or dozens of other people, I reconciled with your father before he died. The last

15/ words I heard from him were “don’t worry about all that stuff, I love you boy.” I said the same thing. When news broke about McCain’s death, a few hours passed, until stories were viciously leaked by @MeghanMcCain about who wasn’t invited to the funeral

16/ She hit the mark. @MeghanMcCain I want you to know that was the greatest act of cruelty I ever experienced. It was for all of us that you targeted. It was humiliating and shaming.

17/ The reason you did that was because I was the guy with the job that your mommy and daddy didn’t want and didn’t care to do. I was the guy who told you to “grow the fuck up” America has been screaming it ever since. You are almost 40 and your behavior has only gotten nastier

18/ and more insane. Last thought, the idea of watching you play victim is ludicrous. Preposterous doesn’t begin to describe it. Veruka Salt @MeghanMcCain