🧵I can't believe this election is even close, but we have less than two weeks left to save democracy. As well as everything else we're doing to help Kamala Harris defeat Trump, we need to change the conversation around us. Here is my thread on how. 🧵I think there are at least two possible categories of persuadable voters:

1) the low-info types who just haven't been paying attention, and might not even vote.
2) Lifetime Republicans who don't care for MAGA or Trump

🧵This is a thread about all the reasons that anyone voting based on the economy should absolutely be voting for Kamala Harris. Anyone who thinks Trump is better for their finances isn't thinking it through. 🧵Trump took over a booming economy that Obama had rebuilt after Dubya's disaster, and then bragged about it for 3 years claiming credit. There were troubling economic signs in 2019, but then on 20 February 2020, stock markets across the world crashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump was the president.

Just for fun, (and also because I'm hoping someone who can show this to her will see it) here are my debate tips for Madam @VP @KamalaHarris.

She's smart and has great advisors so I'm skipping the obvious stuff, but I have a couple of potential mic drop moments for her. A 🧵: 🧵Potential mic drop moment #1:

Wait until Trump gives one of his total nonsense word salad answers. (Wait for a good one, he'll be on his best behavior at first.)

Then say, "Can we please get a transcrip of that last answer? I'm not sure what that was, but there are two things I'm pretty sure I didn't hear: one was a complete sentence and the other is an answer to the question."

👀

"My Bobby Kennedy story involves pharmaceuticals—not the legal, lifesaving kind, such as the vaccines he’s made a career of lying about, but the recreational kind. 1/🧵
theatlantic.com/politics/archi… He poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother—the moment of glamour seemed worth it. 2/

I will continue to repeat, in hopes of being heard, that I strongly recommend that Madam @VP @KamalaHarris mostly forgo "interviews" with "journalists" and "debates, and do townhalls with voters asking the questions, on any and all the networks. She will shine in this format. 1/ And by all means invite Trump to participate, either with her, or in his own townhalls in the same format, because he will show his true self. If voters ask genuine questions, he will brag and lie and give mostly incoherent non-answers, and people will see right through him. 2/

Hey, MAGA:

"Graphic details about Donald Trump’s alleged “sexual proclivities” have emerged in the latest round of court documents containing details of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s associates."

independent.co.uk/news/world/ame… The new documents contain “incendiary claims” about the former president, including accusations that he had sexual relations with “many girls”, made by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Sarah Ransome.

independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…

“I spent half my career being criticized being the youngest person in politics. I was the second-youngest person ever elected to the United States Senate. And now I’m the oldest. This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent. I think that just look at the record. Look what I’ve done. Look how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me.”
thehill.com/opinion/campai… On Trump’s place in history: Historians rate Trump the worst president in our 230-year history.

On NATO: Trump wants to get out of NATO. “You’re going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO?” “Our strength lies in our alliances.”

On the Big Lie: “You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time, you continued to appeal and appeal to courts all across the country. Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit, state or local, none … if you lose again, you can’t stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost the last time.”

Listen up, you guys, we've got a democracy to save! And neither the courts nor the media is going to help us. Buckle up for a long thread.🧵 1) Right now we've got a third of the country who believe Trump's lies, a third who see what's happening and will vote for Biden, even if they're not fond of him, and a third who are completely clueless. The third group are the people we need to reach.

Sadly, I can't go out in the world and be around people, so I won't have the opportunity to talk to folks and tell them what they don't know, but I've got talking points for y'all.

'Frightening': N.Y. Times suggests Trump 'intimidated' movie execs into not showing biopic

“Distributors have bought the rights to 'The Apprentice' in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Japan and many other countries. But the filmmakers have yet to secure a deal to release it here, either theatrically or on streaming services." "Negotiations are ongoing, and domestic distribution could still come together. Yet the possibility that American audiences won't be able to see 'The Apprentice' isn't just frustrating. It's frightening, because it suggests that Trump and his supporters have already intimidated some media companies, which seem to be pre-emptively capitulating to him."

IDK who needs to hear this, but it's not the president's fault that Hamas brutally massacred a bunch of Jews, or that Bibi went nuts about it and decided that stopping them from doing it again required leveling Gaza, or that a lot of students are protesting this. It's just not. And while we're at it, it's not the president's fault that a global pandemic caused global inflation, and he deserves a lot more credit for taking the economic mess he inherited and turning it into the most successful economic recovery in the world.

Last night one of the big MAGA accounts (I forget which one) was tweeting about how Trump should make a 15 minute campaign speech from the courthouse steps every day of his trial. At first I laughed and rolled my eyes, but I kept thinking about it, and now I like this idea. 1/2 I think Americans really need to see Trump ramble for 15 minutes every night. Let them hear him going on about how he's the victim, the judge is corrupt, it's all Biden's fault, etc. (With fact checks of course.) Remind folks who he is and they'll get tired of him quickly. 2/2

Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that Musk began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court’s actions, and that Musk continued with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court’s orders to block certain accounts. 1/4 Musk will be investigated for alleged intentional criminal instrumentalization of X as part of an investigation into a network of people known as digital militias who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices. 2/4
pbs.org/newshour/econo…

Mike Johnson's stepmom calls out his 'extremist stance' on religion: 'It's crazy' 🧵

rawstory.com/mike-johnson-r… Patrick Johnson joined a local community environmental group working to fight a federal government plan for an open-air burn of 15 million pounds of toxic munitions, which would have sent massive amounts of known carcinogens into the open air, but his son did nothing to help.

How the GOP muzzled the quiet coalition that fought foreign propaganda

The FBI put a pause on briefings with tech companies due to an ongoing lawsuit, adding to a broader breakdown in a system meant to guard against influence operations and to ensure election integrity. 1/ "A once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks."

2/
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan attempted to block public view of more than 1,400 texts he traded with a Michigan lawyer tied to data breaches in four states.

He blacked out texts, but The Arizona Republic was able to digitally remove his redactions and view the messages. 1/4 The Arizona Senate hired Logan to lead a hand count of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County's 2020 election. Former Senate President Karen Fann in 2021 said the review was non-partisan and had nothing to do with Donald Trump or overturning the election. 2/4

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

1/

abcnews.go.com/US/chief-staff… According to Meadows' book, the election was "stolen" and "rigged" with help from "allies in the liberal media," who ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze."

2/

abcnews.go.com/US/chief-staff…

Damnit, everyone please stop trying to put a time limit on abortion because you think it sounds more reasonable.

Voluntary abortions happen early, as soon as a woman knows she's pregnant. Late term abortions are almost ALWAYS medical emergencies, & banning them means we die. 1/ The only way the right can excuse controlling women's bodies and lives is by making us seem like we have extreme positions on it and want to kill babies.

Believe it or not, the MAGAs think @kwelkernbc was the one lying about no abortions after birth, not Trump. 2/

Expect this to get worse.

The Environmental Protection Agency and US Army on Tuesday released a new rule that slashes federally protected water by more than half, following a Supreme Court decision in May that rolled back protections for US wetlands.

cnn.com/2023/08/29/pol… The rule will invalidate an earlier definition of what constitutes the so-called waters of the United States, after SCOTUS ruled Clean Water Act protections extend only to “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the US in their own rights.”

There seems to be some confusion among even well meaning folks that being "anti-war" means not supporting sending weapons to Ukraine.

Let me explain why the exact opposite is true.

A 🧵

1/x I hate war. I hate it passionately. It makes me feel sick to know of all the truly horrible things human beings have done to other humans. The stories out of Bucha, Mariupol, Syria, and all the other places that have suffered atrocities break my heart.

2/x

Here's a familiar story. You guys heard this one before?

Young idealistic people enthusiastically vote for the party that offers them progress & things they believe in.

A couple of years later, they're outraged & disappointed because they've only gotten part of what they want. They have no concept of how extremely difficult and time consuming it is to make changes in a democracy, or how truly historic recent changes are. And they are oblivious to the inevitable backlash change always brings.

They expected instant change, and now they're mad.

"The plan that Giuliani and Trump put into operation was simple. Giuliani sent me to collect compromising information that the Eastern European oligarchs had on Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine to use against Joe Biden."

time.com/6255090/lev-pa… It was my job to convince the new Ukrainian government to announce an official investigation into Hunter Biden. If they didn’t, the U.S. would not send Trump or Mike Pence to Zelensky’s inauguration, threatening Zelensky’s domestic stature and his ability to stand up to Putin.