"Given that both Russian and Chinese actors now blend in so easily with the MAGA messaging operation, it is hardly surprising that the American government has difficulty responding to the newly interlinked autocratic propaganda network." theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… "A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them.
"Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying."

new ⁦@jonathanchait⁩:

"The (GOP) project was based on a delusion that Obamacare was a 'train wreck' and some conservative alternative could supply a better system without horrific costs. when you set out to brainwash others, you brainwash yourself." nymag.com/intelligencer/… "Conservatives spent years attacking Obamacare for a series of mostly imagined design flaws - death panels, higher costs, failure to reduce the number of uninsured.

"None of these predictions came true.

"The cost of health care has come in significantly lower than forecast."

no one has explained the mindless (and pointless) irresponsibility of current press coverage as well as this from ⁦@Dahlialithwick⁩,
so it requires a 🧵 slate.com/news-and-polit… "ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history.

"the reason: he has for the most part surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, effective governmental actors and advisers."

.⁦@davidfrum⁩:

"if no deal results, what'll we learn?

"First, Republicans don’t much care about the border. A real 'existential threat' can't wait.

"People who perceive one don’t delay. Many Republicans are happy to let laborers cross the border." theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… "A 2nd truth concerns what Republican priorities really are.

"Speaker Johnson told Biden Dec 5 that Ukraine aid depended on 'transformative border security laws.'

"When Senate negotiators produced them, Johnson reversed his demands.

"No aid to Ukraine is the true priority."

important point below:

the overwhelming majority of dysfunction in Congress - the extremism, the childish immaturity, the detachment from reality, the lack of interest in basic governance much less active problem-solving - comes from Republicans in Congress

https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1724836818091135165

and this, as @NormOrnstein and Tom Mann detailed a decade ago before the American political community was ready to deal with it, has been true for a long time

"What Trump did was select (AG Sessions) on the basis of loyalty, fired him failing to pay obeisance, replaced him w/the more pliant Barr, drove Barr away w/demands to help overturn election results, and sought to replace him w/(an active participant)." nymag.com/intelligencer/… "What Biden did was to appoint an attorney general, Merrick Garland, who had a legal rather than a political background and was widely respected by both parties, and proceed to studiously refrain from influencing his decisions.

"It is the literal opposite of Trump’s behavior."

"The July 25 story relied on an account from GOP Rep. Cory Mills, who stated that the family of Sgt. Nicole Gee had shouldered 'a heavy financial burden' of $60,000 to retrieve her body from Afghanistan."

/1 FoxNews.com
washingtonpost.com/media/2023/08/… "The story’s reporter, Michael Lee, quoted Mills calling the family’s supposed expenditures an 'egregious injustice.'

"Neither Pentagon officials nor Gee’s family were quoted in the original story."

"Biden has a similar morning cadence as Barack Obama. Neither had many public events before 10 am, just 4% in Obama’s last year and 5% in Biden’s first 2.5 years. The difference came in the evening. Obama was twice as likely to do public events after 6 pm" nytimes.com/2023/06/04/us/… "At the same time, he is trim and fit, exercises five days a week and does not drink. He has at times exhibited striking stamina.

"he has traveled slightly more in the first few months of his third year in office than Obama did in his."

incisive ⁦@monacharen⁩:
"Here is the complicated reality. It's not Biden’s fault that so many people want to come to the United States. There was a big jump in border encounters under Trump as well, from 310K in 2017 to 859K in 2019"
/1 thebulwark.com/greg-abbott-sc… "People want to come here because:

"1) so many nations around the globe are hellish, a numberwithin walking distance

"2) this is a place where people with a good work ethic can get ahead and enjoy the blessings of liberty

"3) our immigration laws and rules are confusing."

/2

"why the Trumpian populist right is consumed w/hatred for Ukraine—a hatred clearly beyond concerns about the US spending a very small portion of our military budget, or about the nonexistent involvement of American troops—doesn’t have a simple answer."
/1 thebulwark.com/putins-useful-… "Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better.

"And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it."
/2

on-target ⁦@monacharen⁩:

"The right has a deep psychological need for the Hunter Biden story. They desperately want Joe Biden to be corrupt and for the whole family to be, in Stefanik’s words, 'a crime family' because..."

/1 thebulwark.com/why-the-right-… "...they have provided succor and support to someone who has encouraged political violence since 2015, has stoked hatred of minorities through lies, has flagrantly used his office for personal gain, has surrounded himself with criminals and con men..."

/2

"I met her
on the strip
three years ago
in a Camaro
with this dude
from L.A.
I blew that Camaro
off my back
and drove
that little girl away..." "but now
there's wrinkles
around my baby's eyes
and she cries herself
to sleep at night
when I come home
the house is dark
she sighs, 'baby did you make it all right'..."

"the weirdest thing about this is it assumes the more credible party to this dispute is serial lawbreaker and pathological liar Donald Trump rather than the lifelong Republican he appointed to lead the agency."
nymag.com/intelligencer/… "the more twisted belief system is that the FBI has engaged in political bias against their party since Clinton.

"the opposite is true: The FBI has bent over backward to placate Republicans only to be met w/distrust when it fails to conform to their most paranoid fantasies"

Johns Hopkins' ⁦@LilyMasonPhD⁩:

"Trump basically worked as a lightning rod to finalize that process of creating the Republican Party as a single entity for defending the high status of white, Christian, rural Americans."

nytimes.com/interactive/20… more @LilyMasonPhD:

"It’s not a huge percentage of Americans that holds these beliefs, and it’s not even the entire Republican Party; it’s just about half of it.

"But the party itself is controlled by this intolerant, very strongly pro-Trump faction."

on @OutFrontCNN, former CIA Moscow station chief @StevenLHall1 notes that one reason Russia feels emboldened now is the success of its efforts to divide/weaken the United States

much of that success results from its efforts to boost Donald Trump and co-opt U.S. conservatives this recalls last year's warning from Trump's ex-Pentagon chief Jim Mattis:

"James Madison wrote in Federalist 41 that 'America united without a single soldier exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited."
/1

it most definitely was not a hoax.

thread

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1463870814663622659

"Dating back to 2006, Trump and his companies did $10s of millions of business w/Russians and other buyers whose profiles raised the possibility of money laundering. More than 1/5 of all condominiums sold by Trump were purchased in all-cash transactions by shell companies."

/1

"don't take
too long
to find
true love
transcends
all time
that non-reacting
everlasting love..." "give me
your unconditional love
the kind of love
I deserve
the kind
I want to
return..."

failure to anticipate speed of Afghan collapse is the largest and most obvious Biden error

apart from that, i asked D and R foreign policy vets on opposite sides of underlying withdrawal issue to specify errors in execution

what they said: ex-GWB aide @RichardHaass:

-Biden should have renegotiated Trump deal w/Taliban
-if unsuccessful, negotiated parallel deal w/Afghan govt specifying long term econ/intel/mil/diplo support
-put withdrawal on slower, less unilateral track, reduced staffing and visa backlog faster

news about the chairman of Donald Trump's inaugural commitee from my CNN colleagues @evanperez and @eorden:

 "Tom Barrack is under arrest on charges stemming from an investigation by prosecutors in New York, to two sources briefed on the matter." "Barrack was charged Tuesday with acting as an agent of the UAE in an effort to influence policy of the Trump campaign and government.

"Barrack also charged with obstruction for making false statements, according to the Department of Justice."

ex-GWB adviser Mike Gerson:

"America is in a contest of nightmares

"conservatives troubled by wokeness/critical race theory

"there's a grain of truth

"progressive nightmare is growth of right-wing authoritarianism/
fascism

"more than a grain of truth" washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… "Only one of these nightmares has taken over a major political party

"Only one of these delusions is the governing vision of a former president who just might be president again

"Only one of these developments has turned the backbones of Republican leaders into gelatinous goo"

from Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, about LBJ:

"there took place therefore so many 'extended discussions' of measures to keep them from coming to a vote that the device got a name, 'filibuster,' from the Dutch word vrijbuiter, which means 'freebooter' or 'pirate'..."

/1 "...and which passed into the Spanish as filibustero, because the sleek, swift ship used by Caribbean pirates was called a filibote, and into legislative parlance because the device was, after all, a pirating, or hijacking of the very heart of the legislative process..."

/2