U.S. Army (Ret.). Poor, white, rural appalachian foster care kid who enlisted. Formative years spent with other white folk. No supremacy observed.
Sep 19 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"The law firms that capitulated to Trump are finally having to make good on their deal with the devil.
It's worth pausing here to contextualize just how extraordinary this all is—big Law firms have never before done free work for a sitting president, let alone pro bono work." 1/
"Back in March, when Trump first began to issue executive orders punishing law firms for associating with his personal enemies, it is likely that some of the firms yet to be targeted thought that they could avoid a similar fate."
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Sep 3 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Trump’s entire political career, and particularly the last six months, has been characterized by an often desperate effort to change the topic with ever more dangerous authoritarian gambits.
These gambits are distractions, but they are also catastrophes." 1/
"In 1783, Grigory Potemkin, a general and lover of Russian Empress Catherine II, prepared a special treat for Catherine’s tour of the territories Russia had taken by force from the Ottoman Empire and renamed New Russia, including Crimea and other parts of what is now Ukraine."
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Aug 25 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Last Friday, FBI agents raided the home of former national security advisor and current Trump critic John Bolton, ostensibly to gather evidence about Bolton’s handling of classified information.
"Everyone understands that Trump has been using federal law enforcement to harass and bully those he perceives as enemies — former FBI boss James Comey, for instance, is under investigation for posting a picture of seashells on the beach."
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Aug 12 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
"Congratulations, men of America: The crisis of manhood is over.
You have been liberated from the shackles of political correctness, free to be as sexist and crude as you like. The government in Washington is committed to ensuring that men will wield the power they deserve." 1/
"DEI has been banished from public and private institutions alike. The 'manosphere' dominates online culture. Before you know it, men, you’ll have the professional prospects & romantic success you’ve been longing for—this was one of the core promises of the Trump restoration."
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Aug 11 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"The White House has seized on two unrelated incidents of street crime as a pretext for a federal government power grab at a time when violent crime has in fact dropped across the country." 1/
"The attempted carjacking of Edward 'Big Balls' Coristine in Washington DC and a street brawl in Cincinnati are the latest cause célebrè on the American right, which has long supported Trump’s plans for military and law enforcement crackdowns in largely Democratic cities."
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Aug 6 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Donald Trump’s clumsy attempt to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein has driven a wedge through his base. But his flailing is a symptom of a deeper problem: the cult leader has begun to lose control of the flock." 1/
"America’s would-be dictator won’t fall because he’s acting like the mastermind of the 'deep state' conspiracy he’s coached his fervid followers to believe. But the cracks in the Trump regime — which have been growing — are all but certain to widen into dangerous crevasses."
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Aug 6 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"One of Donald Trump’s tells is his talk of the 'Russia hoax.' When that phrase passes his lips, it’s a sign that the president is agitated about something." 1/
"In the past two weeks, for example, as questions about the administration’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have dominated headlines, Trump has been talking often about 'the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and many other hoaxes too,' as he put it."
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Aug 5 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"When he signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act in 2012, Barack Obama insisted that 'the powerful shouldn’t get to create one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for everybody else.'" 1/
"Members of Congress were buying and selling stocks in sometimes alarming amounts, and it was at least suspected that many were doing so based on the information they learned in their jobs."
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Jul 30 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Ghislaine Maxwell has one card to play, and she’s playing it well. The convicted sex trafficker knows that there is just one way out of a cell in Tallahassee, and she is dancing hard for that golden key." 1/
"Maxwell needs a presidential pardon if she wants to see the outside of a prison before she’s 75, and so she’s hawking her wares all over DC, promising the White House and Congress that what she’s got will blow their minds."
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Jul 25 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Can you believe it has been over a year since the conservatives on the Supreme Court invented a very special immunity for a very special president?...
And it isn’t a reach to say that if there had been no immunity decision, there likely would be no Donald Trump second term." 1/
"Without the immunity decision, Trump would probably still be dragging out his appeals in his multitude of criminal cases, and the rest of us would be living in a world where the federal government remains functional."
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Jul 22 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Gabbard’s statement, which explicitly threatened the alleged wrongdoers...with prosecution for 'treasonous conspiracy,' not only vindicates the Trumpian narrative of the 'Russia, Russia, Russia hoax' but represents a disturbing escalation in Trump’s vendetta[s]." 1/
"Yet even a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows...no actual substance. Instead, there is blatant sleight of hand and manipulation of evidence, debunking a theory of Russian election interference that the Obama administration never endorsed."
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Jul 20 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"For Trump and his cronies, the prospect of losing power could prove to be catastrophic because of their reasonable fear of being held accountable for criminality that dwarfs Trump’s first term. Unlike January 2021, [Trump & Friends] will have new tools to carry out a coup." 1/
"Six months into the second Trump administration, two things are becoming clear: First, the president remains a nearly entirely non-strategic actor, motivated only by an abiding desire to accumulate ever greater power, adulation, and wealth."
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Jul 14 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Trump presents himself as strong, indomitable, and always forceful. But when disaster strikes—whether hurricane, flash flood, or pandemic—he’s oddly helpless.... 'Nobody has any idea how and why a thing like this could happen,' he insisted [after the flood in central Texas]." 1/
When a reporter asked what his message is to families who say earlier alerts about the flooding could’ve saved lives, Trump responded that 'only an evil person would ask a question like that.'"
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Jun 27 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
"[T]he Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration and will allow what’s known as third country renditions — snatching immigrants from American streets and sending them to countries where they have no ties...[while granting agents] sweeping immunity from being sued." 1/
"[I]n downtown LA...a street vendor was taken down by several immigration agents.... One agent — who had just put his taser to the man’s head as he lay on the ground underneath two other officers — pointed the weapon at the face of a woman who was recording the scene."
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Aug 9, 2024 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Vance's dark vision for higher ed would...slam the door on any future 'hillbillies' looking to better themselves, and end all efforts at campus diversity - an odd dream for a man who met his Indian American wife at Yale." 1/
"Walz's college story harks back to a now nearly lost moment in America when higher education was affordable, accessible, and a clear path for young people from all backgrounds to do a little better than their parents did."
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May 6, 2024 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"The oligarchs are on the move, and they know who they want leading America." 1/
"[A] group of billionaires got together in Hollywood last week to support Trump's hatred for Joe Biden and Democrats. The crowd included...immigrants Elon Musk (South Africa), David Sacks (South Africa), Peter Thiel (Germany), and Rupert Murdoch (Australia)."
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Apr 12, 2024 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
"Republican Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy spent last week confirming that he's a liar.... Sheehy is a former NAVY Seal and millionaire business owner with no record in politics...and now that the vetting is finally happening, things are getting weird." 1/
"[I]n October 2015, Sheehy was visiting Montana's Glacier National Park when he was injured. He told a Park Ranger at the time that he had discharged a pistol and shot himself in the right arm."
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Mar 14, 2024 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
"A Democratic president had picked up where his conservative predecessors had left off in rolling back some of the safety net and social justice programs in [FDR's] New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society...'trickle-down economics,' but with a fresh name, 'neoliberalism.'" 1/
"From that period came virtually all the economic consequences that have haunted us for more than 20 years - the offshoring of jobs, the hollowing out of domestic manufacturing...the celestial wealth of the .01 percent and according to some thinkers, the rise of Donald Trump."
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Jan 17, 2024 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
"[T]hose who want voters to forget the insurrection are getting help from a mainstream press that's proven increasingly unwilling to call them out." 1/
"The January 6 insurrectionists are not 'hostages' by any definition. They either pleaded guilty or were tried and convicted for crimes committed in broad daylight and broadcast on national TV."
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Dec 2, 2023 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
"Pizzagate shows the resilience of disinformation narratives fueled by conspiracy theories. Pizzagate evolved into a wider QAnon conspiracy theory and now is getting back to its roots." 1/
"Disinformation can become impervious to facts and take on an almost religious framework where common belief in the lie ties the community together."
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Nov 5, 2023 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
"Trump...plans [to use] the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term... [and] to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations." 1/ wapo.st/49mZXWU
"To facilitate Trump's ability to direct DOJ actions his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional."
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