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Brian Beutler Profile picture
Brian Beutler
@brianbeutler
Off Message; cohost: https://t.co/CvwKx1K9rd; Formerly: @crookedmedia @newrepublic. BlueSky: @brianbeutler.bsky.social Trump Employee 5
Unpack the Court! Profile picture AliasFluffy Profile picture Joe Lang Profile picture Scott Phillips Profile picture Aviva Gabriel Profile picture 9 subscribed
Nov 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
New: I don’t know how things will shake out early next year, but I think it was a mistake for Dems to agree to decouple certain domestic appropriations from defense (sorry, the “ladder approach”) as ransom to the GOP to avoid a Thanksgiving shutdown. offmessage.net/p/shoots-and-l… This all happened very fast, and because the Freedom Caucus is mad and Republicans are cosplaying Street Fighter, most of the coverage has taken it as a given that Mike Johnson caved. I’m not so sure. offmessage.net/p/shoots-and-l…
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Sep 22, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
SOME PROFESSIONAL NEWS: Thursday was my last day at Crooked Media, today I launch a new, independent venture. It’s called Off Message and I hope you’ll join me by subscribing. offmessage.net/p/welcome-to-o… If you’ve followed my work in recent years, you know I’ve been consistently concerned that the liberal and Democratic Party tendency to hyper-caution is a bad fit for a zero-sum fight against authoritarianism. offmessage.net
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Aug 11, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
NEWSLETTER! Free idea to all concerned: stop overthinking it and lock him up. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… (I’m referring to Donald Trump.)
Aug 4, 2023 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
Our media in response to a basically good jobs report, my god… Image Ok, I went and looked. In March, 2019, BLS reported that the economy added 196,000 jobs. Here’s how the same media interpreted that finding for news consumers.


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Jul 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think another way to look at the dynamic Greg describes here is that McCarthy, other GOP leaders, Fox, et al have trapped themselves. They could get together, smoke-filled room style, and solve their collective-action problem, but refuse to. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/… The Times, similarly, sees a story about Trump’s strength, but I see a mirror image story of GOP weakness. Image
Jul 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Newsletter! (Yesterday’s.) I looked at the bafflement among It’s The Economy, Stupid liberals over why Joe Biden remains unpopular, despite a very strong economy. https://t.co/rCFqy2WxeKmailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
Image One possible explanation is, I think, pretty obvious… https://t.co/9XgiG6qbFWeepurl.com/gQH7lz
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Jun 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
NEWSLETTER! The first federal Trump indictment comes just as a small but vocal and visible handful of Republicans get comfortable attacking him frontally 🍿. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… Image Democrats have a role to play in the aftermath, exploiting GOP divisions, and reminding the public that even the good ones were willingly complicit in Trump's crimes for years. eepurl.com/gQH7lz Image
Jun 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
To this end, DeSantis, Haley, Youngkin, the House GOP leadership, and several prominent GOP senators have endorsed the crimes Trump committed, sight unseen. Special shoutout to Youngkin whose appeal to “parents in Virginia,” on this issue is a Hall of Fame clunker, and we should never let him live it down.
May 31, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
The failed 2005 social security privatization is a key antecedent here. The lesson it taught Mitch McConnell is that conservative spending goals could only be achieved in a crisis environment that forced Democrats to vote for them, thus providing political cover to the GOP... For a time (even before 2005) I think the hope was to cut taxes and grow deficits enough to create a “fiscal crisis” that would require major retrenchment. At that point the GOP could link arms and say “no tax hikes,” imagining Dems would eventually crack and cut entitlements.
May 5, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
NEWSLETTER! Ahead of Biden’s meeting with McCarthy et al next week, I wanted to look back at the last 12 (!) years of GOP default threats, and emphasize what a huge betrayal it’ll be if Biden budges from his refusal to negotiate. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… ImageImage Liberals were crestfallen when Dems didn’t unilaterally disarm the debt limit in the lame duck session last year, but Dems have been missing opportunities to end this cycle of GOP abuse since Trump became president. eepurl.com/gQH7lz ImageImageImage
May 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Except…Roberts can’t fire Thomas and won’t ask him to resign (because he doesn’t want him to). Passing the buck to him only makes sense if Senate Dems have exhausted their options, which they have not. Most DEMOCRATS haven’t called on Thomas to resign. Neither @SenatorDurbin nor @SenBlumenthal has subpoenaed him for testimony or documents…
Jan 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Notable indication here that DC publications are prepared to refer to this corrupt committee with the deceptive, hysterical name Republicans gave it. If so, it’s a big propaganda coup for the GOP, but it’s important to note this is not standard practice. Parties call their priorities what they want, but it’s pretty common for mainstream news to go out of its way not to unthinkingly embrace those terms. That’s why journalists often referred to “build back better” as “the Democrats’ social spending bill,” or similar.
Jan 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Newsletter! Most efforts to make sense of the rebellion in the House miss the corruption and insurrection angle, but it’s the most politically salient aspect of it. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… .@RepJeffries and the Dems are handling this immediate crisis really well, but they can’t stop Republicans from choosing MAGA over consensus. And that fateful choice has huge implications for Democratic opposition politics over the coming months. eepurl.com/gQH7lz
Jan 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I think they operate on the theory that hurting the incumbent president through chaos and sabotage helps their frontline members more than the antics themselves harm them. And the record from 2009-2022 suggests it’s at least a wash. Abridged history:

2009-10: Total lockstep obstruction, huge landslide

2011-12: Constant hostage taking, near default, keep the House

2013-14: Shut down the government, win huge landslide

2015-16: Nominate Trump, win trifecta…
Dec 9, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk want to control Twitter because they understand how it punches above its weight as a social platform. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… Apart from tweaking what ideas dominate Twitter, Musk clearly wants to use it to try to replicate the zone-flooded-with-shit information environment that brought the hard right to power last time… eepurl.com/gQH7lz
Dec 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
There are some admittedly ambiguous “lessons” about 2022, but one thing that’s crystal clear is voters absolutely hate the MAGA stuff. Enough that Dems like Katie Hobbs don’t actually have to show up at all and still win in Arizona… In other words, Dems don’t need to build “permission structures” in races like that. However, if Republicans can cover themselves in just a whiff of independence from MAGA, they do great. So what Dems *should* want to do is *deny them* any claim to being anti-Trump.
Nov 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If Warnock goes into the runoff with 50 Dem seats locked in, it takes some of the heat off him and the race, but his victory remains crucial, even with a divided Congress, because it’ll give Senate Dem committee chairs subpoena power. Under current rules, there’s only one panel (investigations subcommittee) where the chair has unilateral subpoena power, it’s currently occupied by Jon Ossoff, who has shown little interest in using that authority, let alone for partisan purposes.
Nov 9, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Republicans will seemingly recommit to DeSantis-style militant-asshole semifascism and abusive stunts, rather than his (relative) abortion moderation and/or welfare-ism.

They could look to DeWine or Sununu, but they’d apparently prefer to give crushing democracy one last go. Like, is there a single, influential conservative who will advise Republicans to stop acting like scumbags, to not follow Trump and DeSantis down the path of corruption, Benghazi-style propaganda fixations, economic hostage taking, etc?
Nov 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I would say Trumpism is hurting the GOP, relative to where the GOP would be if Trump had disappeared after losing. But that just leaves us with a jump ball situation where the winner will be determined by what emerges most clearly from the cacophony. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… Street crime/inflation — change would be good!

vs.

Abortion/right-wing political violence/Big Lie — better not let those crazies back into power!
Nov 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Three closing-week developments—Obama’s return to the trail, Joe Biden’s democracy speech, and the violent MAGA assault against Paul Pelosi—shine a light on what Dems do well and where they’re MIA. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… Dems do the textbook stuff very well; and in Obama’s hands, it’s really powerful. But other Dems have tried to take cues from Obama for over a decade, and few of them are as talented as he is. us19.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=8855a2…
Oct 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
The advantage Dems opened this summer narrowed because voters now say crime and inflation are top issues. Did crime and inflation get worse since August? Or are voters responding to media, which in turn allowed itself to be manipulated by propaganda… mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi… You’ll never guess! eepurl.com/gQH7lz