Thread by @ZaleskiLuke

The 2016 election was interfered with on a massive scale through social media from an aggressive combination of Putin’s GRU attack and rightwing-media manipulators like Bannon/Manafort (why one ever mentions Cambridge Analytica anymore—which disbanded quickly after 2016 maybe?)/1

The 2020 election happened after Mueller/US and other intelligence agencies and the press documented the 2016 campaign against America and democracy—which trump publicly solicited/accepted and then lied about—that helped him take power AND after his attempt to enlist Ukraine in/2

another broader, even more ambitious attempt to subvert democracy by getting the Zelenskyy government to participate in a bogus “investigation” and propaganda campaign against Joe Biden (trump’s likely opponent) in exchange for military aide to defend against Putin (extortion)/3

At the same time trump and his Russian supporters are doing all this he’s pretending democrats are just out to get him, It’s a witch hunt, and denying things that are obviously happening and not partisan (eg mueller’s a lifelong republican) and things he’s never been accused of/4

An aside—the whole fake victimHOOD act from trump is such a huge tell. He’s never for a moment acted like an American president and instead has embraced Putin’s goals throughout this cause they’re aligned in what they want/how to get it—a Trump presidency and divide and conquer/5

Anyway—2020—Everyone in the world knew trump/Russians would be doing everything they could to continue to manipulate social media and make the contest about division and racism and that’s what they did. Albeit this time with voters and folks at twitter etc and intel aware of it/6

This is why trump leaned into the “they’re gonna cheat/rigged” narrative/prop campaign he’s still pumping and which lead to 1/6 attack (same language he’s using today to invert patriotism with insurrection—you’re not attacking the Capitol you’re defending it inside trump’s lie)/7

Now musk’s twitter files campaign has added increased bandwidth to stretch the lie across a broader spectrum/conflate the medium/message to make Twitter Trumplandia—cause TRUTH wasn’t working (elon already reinstated trump) but they need it to cross-pollinate it with real news/8

However there is no there there if you remember the context of how we got here and the 2016 trump/Russian campaign to abuse social media (Jr/Conway all shared Russian BS on Twitter) and the coordinated hack-and-dump media op (pardons!). So don’t forget. Cause it’s all one story/9

And the ending is still being written everyday. It goes one of two ways—freedom and a world based on the truth. Or Trumplandia and the MAGAverse—where the Big Lie usurps the truth and no one is free and nothing happens unless they tell you it did cause they want you to believe it