Two reasons why Trump's message about Taylor Swift isn't funny. 🧵 1. Swift had to cancel August tour dates in Vienna over a real, planned terrorist attack. She said this concrete threat filled her with "a new sense of fear."

Check out this timeline regarding Russian influence and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah 🧵

July 2022: Senator Lee launches a Twitter account with encouragement from Benny Johnson

Summer 2023: Johnson starts taking Kremlin money, unwittingly or not

This is a short thread about how the media covers for Donald Trump, deliberately making him and his campaign look more normal and less stupid than it actually is.

Today's example involves the Trump campaign's written statement about the Arlington National Cemetery incident. Here's what happened: In the statement, campaign manager Chris LaCivita incorrectly used the word "hollowed" instead of "hallowed." Axios and The Daily Beast rightly added "[sic]" to note the misuse of the word.

In case anyone still cares, here's a short thread on how an online rumor takes off:

Amid rumors that Taylor Swift or Beyonce would perform at the DNC, this blue check account with 600,000 followers tweeted at 12:28 PM CT that a "big surprise" was on the way. The tweet took off. Twenty minutes later, this other random blue check account with more than 100,000 followers described a "gap in tonight's DNC schedule" for a "special guest." It also got thousands of shares.

On the night Tim Walz delivers his big speech, I want to give a shout to @votevets. In 2006, when Walz was a high school teacher, football coach and veteran no one had heard of, he ran for a House seat against a six-term incumbent Republican. Almost no one gave him a chance. 🧵 The House district was Republican-leaning and the incumbent, Gil Gutknecht, was outraising Walz by a 2:1 margin. Gutknecht was largely expected to win. Almost no one gave Walz a chance except VoteVets.

Democrats are acting guilty and behaving apologetically over an assassination attempt they neither caused, nor had anything to do with. It is, at best, paralysis and poor strategy, at worst, cowardice. Instead, they should press their political attacks on Trump relentlessly. 🧵 Republicans have spent years pushing conspiracy theorists and racists as their primary influencers, fomenting violence and making guns readily available for 18-year-olds.

The reason House and Senate Dems are calling for Biden to step aside may not be clear to the average voter, but it's clear in polling. Biden is *severely* underperforming against down-ballot races in every swing state.

Let's take a look at his race compared to Senate races. 🧵 Let's start with the worst: Nevada. In Nevada, Democratic @SenJackyRosen is way up in her race and Biden is way down.

Nevada
Biden: -5.2
Rosen: +8.3

That's a difference of 13+ points, friends. I don't have to explain how shockingly bad this is.

The U.S. government's repeated approval and excusal of Israeli attacks on civilians is a deeply disheartening policy shift. Here's why. 🧵 Progress is rarely a straight line. There are leaps forward and setbacks. During World War II, countries fought savagely, inflicting historic destruction, culminating in U.S.-initiated nuclear war.

Recent successful U.S. and Israeli hostage rescues 🧵

Maersk Alabama (2009)
Rescuers: U.S. Navy
Hostages rescued: 1
Hostage takers killed: 3
Civilians killed: 0

Adado, Somalia kidnapping (2012)
Rescuers: U.S. Navy
Hostages rescued: 2
Hostage takers killed: 9
Civilians killed: 0 Nigeria kidnapping (2020)
Rescuers: U.S. Navy
Hostages rescued: 1
Hostage takers killed: 7
Civilians killed: 0

Rescue of Ori Megidish (2023)
Rescuers: IDF/Shin Bet
Hostages rescued: 1
Hostage takers killed: 2
Civilians killed: Unknown

This is an important piece written by an Israeli for an Israeli publication. But every American should read it, as it demonstrates clearly: The American body politic is far behind on Israel. 🧵 haaretz.com/opinion/2024-0… Led by Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer, many Americans still see Israel as a plucky nation of Jews, rebuilding after the horrors of the Holocaust, bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Whenever I tweet this, it triggers certain people. This time, this historically illiterate/bad-faith group has added a community note, even though I never mentioned the GWOT, Iraq or anything besides 1) the 9/11 attacks and 2) the U.S. effort to hold its organizers accountable.

https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1795133875686924517

If you don't know the history of this period, that's not my fault. If you think the Iraq invasion had anything to do with al Qaeda and Afghanistan, congratulations, you're a former appointee or supporter of George W. Bush. Also not my fault.

After 9/11, the U.S. dismantled al Qaeda, killed most of its foot soldiers, imprisoned its leaders in a Cuban dungeon and had its founder thrown into the sea. No similar attacks followed. All done without destroying a single city.

https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1794741317882253335

All of al Qaeda's senior leaders were killed or captured in heavily populated urban areas, not caves. For example:

Osama bin Laden: Abbottabad, Pakistan (pop. 246,000)

Khalid Sheikh Mohamed: Rawalpindi, Pakistan (pop. 2.1 million)

This tweet — this exact tweet — is why protesters won't talk to the NYT. You're not entitled to answers from anyone, whether it's the President of the United States or an 18-year-old protester. When you get mad, it says more about you, as a journalist, than the potential subject.

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1786771884496830733

If @peterbakernyt and @Peggynoonannyc want the story so bad, then maybe they should just write a few beat sweeteners about the protesters, just like they would do for powerful people.

Need to be very clear about what happened here: NYPD went on Morning Joe and lied to Americans about Columbia University students in order to make it appear those students were working with organized, transnational terrorist organizations

https://twitter.com/EricHartMN/status/1785648100838703565

Here's the clip. Morning Joe should delete this and apologize for having this NYPD guy on.

https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1785636351330713667

I'll let others dismantle the sanctions suggestion here, but I continue to take issue with Israelis comparing IDF war crimes to the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, U.S. troops committed war crimes. No, the frequency and magnitude were not anywhere close to the IDF.

https://twitter.com/SaraHirschhorn1/status/1781757341471215931

To the casual observer, I understand combat looks like combat and "both sides" are guilty of war crimes. But we are talking about orders of magnitude when it comes to the difference between these two fighting forces.

It's like the New York Times bothsidesing Trump and Biden.

This is accurate. The IDF operates on the battlefield in a fundamentally different way than NATO militaries. It is a reckless, purposefully destructive approach to fighting that mirrors Russia's, and it's hard to explain to the armchair "war is war" crowd why this is important.

https://twitter.com/Charlie533080/status/1775423870343786922

What do I mean by that? Let’s dive in. Long thread follows.

First, modern professional militaries understand the need to fight in urban environments. They also know that in such situations, less is often more.

Short thread. Because this gutted me.

Kids are scared a lot. They're scared of bullies. Of needles. Of someone breaking into the house at night. But as an American parent, you can always reassure them: You'll be fine. It won't be that bad. I'll protect you.

https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1774866120748753335

It is, therefore, unimaginable to me what it must feel like to have told your child, over and over, as the bombs fell, for months on end, that it would be all right and that you'd protect them, knowing full well that it was out of your control.

If you told me 10 years ago I would one day be quoted by @FT as a player in a situation involving China's entry into the brewing Himalayan tea wars between Nepal and India, I would not have believed it.
ft.com/content/2b06b2… It's paywalled, but my take is that what's ultimately stressing the market — and leading to tea wars — is that tea is too expensive to produce. It used to not be for two reasons: First, workers were brutally exploited. Second, consumers were happy with low-grade, low-quality tea.

Underdog Grand Canyon University is competing against Alabama today for a trip to the Sweet 16. Never heard of it, so just googled and learned a lot! For starters, GCU is the first predatory, for-profit school to compete in NCAA sports. GCU is owned by publicly-traded Grand Canyon Education, Inc., formerly Significant Education, LLC.

In 2008, it had fewer than 1,000 students enrolled. By 2017, it had 17,500 students. Today, it has more than 100,000.

This is a threat

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1756737504164913642

People may see this as Trump being a simple idiot while trying to take credit for someone else's success. But that's not what this is. Trump thinks like a mobster. He's trying to head off a potential Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden by raising her opportunity cost of doing so.

I don't think this story articulates the threat clearly. To clarify: Biden can afford to lose Michigan. Even if 150,000 Arab and Muslim Americans (the 2020 margin) vote Trump or don't show up at all, and it swings the election, Biden still wins 290-248. 🧵 politico.com/news/magazine/… However. This isn't his only problem on the left. Biden won Michigan by 2.8%. What's more important is to know that he won FOUR states by even tighter margins. These he cannot afford to lose.

So how close were they?