Founder & reigning monarch at TPM. Lapsed historian. Hand tool woodworker. ✡️ (Sign up for The Backchannel https://t.co/GpsQ8cC6vk)
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Oct 28 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Obviously this is who Trump is and this is what Trumpism is. But there's part of this that isn't widely enough known, tho it's well-known to a lot of reporters. And that is among GOP operatives and staffers under 30 or so the majority, maybe the great majority had their ...
2/ political awakenings on sites like 4chan, 8chan, various far-right, incel and incel adjacent online communities. It crops up in various ways if you know where to look. It's why DeSantis had those weird frankly homoerotic campaign vids during the primaries.
Oct 26 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I think a lot of people are actually canceling their wapo subs. It’s not like the usual round of claims. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater than people realize and go beyond the near term hit on subs. A big slice of America is living in a climate of ….
2/ bewilderment. It’s basically Blue America or the more politicized part of Blue America and it’s tied to the role of billionaires in public life, Trumps role in our public life. The recent revelations about Elon Musk have confirmed the way that he now exists way outside …
Oct 14 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This is something I’ve written about from a few vantage points over recent years. Going to try to put a longer piece together on it. This trend is real. And it’s not surprising. Some of it of course is the experience of seeing Trump twice over perform his polls. But the …
2/ reality going back a couple decades now is that Dems always think they’re going to lose and Republicans always think they’re going to win. That’s the consistent through line in all races even though of course the actual outcomes vary. It’s the flip side of partisan …
Oct 12 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Completely fascinated by this technology. Partly because I work with wood a lot. But the real thing is the potential climate implications. The short version is that it transforms wood into a substance substantially stronger than steel … inventwood.com/mettlewood2/ and dramatically lighter than steel. Its inventors believe it could replace about 80% of steel and concrete used in construction. That’s a big deal because construction materials and especially concrete make up about something like 11% of all carbon emissions.
Oct 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Everybody who is maybe kinda possibly thinking Donald Trump is doing a rally in Madison Sq Garden is an electoral play: It's not. Donald Trump may win in a landslide. He still won't come close to winning New York State. A small part of this is a bluff. The real driver is that ..
2/ Donald Trump wants to hold a rally at MSG. That's the whole thing. To him, that's making it. That's real. MSG is real. I don't think the exurban and rural venues he hits in swing and red states are way out in the middle of bumfuck. But I guarantee you Donald Trump does.
Oct 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I’ve been doing some ad hoc research on this. It’s growing very quickly. It picks up on the marginal use of cloud seeding which has been around for decades as well as theoretical and still fairly controversail study of geo engineering as a way to combat climate change …
2/ In other words, these are the fact smidgens which are adduced to make the conspiracy theories sound plausible to deeply stupid people. The more interesting part of this to me is that the last two or 3-5 years plus the back to back hurricanes of recent days has clearly …
Sep 29 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Becoming the norm. Primanti Bros asks JD not to film political event in their restaurant. Johnny Donuts goes outside to give a speech inciting supporters agsinst them. Now restaurant is getting various bomb threats and other threats of violence from pro-Trump extremists.
Big story of course is the mobs of violent pro-Trump extremists who go after anyone who offends Trump or Johnny Donuts. That seems normal now. But the specifics seem to be that JD just showed up outside the restaurant without any advance work and they said we can't have you ...
Sep 23 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I mean, it’s the Post but what on earth is the point of this article? Is this some kind of weird oppo from the Kennedy team? nypost.com/2024/09/23/ent…2/ Since some people weren't clear on this. Here's what's weird abt this article. Clearly it's the Trump/Kennedy folks dumping oppo agst Olivia. That's gross but utterly unsurprising. What's weird about the article is that they start with the hit on Olivia and then somehow ...
Sep 11 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One of the small wrinkles of the debate and campaign story is that Trump supporters had leaned into the idea that Trump had delivered a knock out blow that drove Biden from the race. For Trump that was dangerous nonsense. Trump was largely a bystander to what happened in ...
2/ that first and genuinely epochal June debate. Everything that happened was Biden himself. Trump was ragged but largely himself. What we saw last night was in large measure Harris's tour de force. But people were not only reminded who Trump is and has always been. They ...
Sep 6 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The "pro gun movement" is the great movement of social degeneracy of our time. We see this again in JD Vance's claim that school shootings are just a "fact of life" we now have to deal with ... apnews.com/article/jd-van…2/ by continuing the endless increases to school security which makes our schools into war zones. The pro-gun movement created the problem and they now announce that we have to live with it. Saying that regulating the availability of guns isn't at least part of the ...
Sep 1 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
People who suffer life altering loss and grief deserve our respect. And know a lot about this from multiple angles I never judge how someone expresses their grief. But not judging doesn’t mean accepting Carter Blanche. What Donald Trump is doing with this small number of …
2/ families is exploiting them. Everyone knows that Donald Trumps concern and care last just as long as there’s something in it for him. He’ll toss these people like an old rag whenever it’s good for him. Indeed, in one interview he did just that, blaming them if there …
Sep 1 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This 'debate' with Patrick is silly. This isn't some after the fact issue of what he or I think makes sense. The DOD & Arlington have clear rules about military cemetery's and political events. They based on federal law. The rules are clear. They're there for a reason.
2/ Trump ignored them. They even had to assault a cemetery employee to get their way. Don't show me a picture of Obama at Arlington when he was president and pretend that means jack shit. It's not complicated. You shldnt hold campaign events at a military cemetery.
Sep 1 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Harris campaign has a memo out tonight addressing the issue of Trumps flip flops we’ve been discussing today. On one level it’s comparing the hyper focus on Harris compared to the general oh that’s just Trump attitude most reporters are taking with a Trump.
2/ But the part that is interesting, other than saying what everyone else is, is this: Trump has a record on abortion, weed, ivf, etc. There’s what he did when he was actually president. Judges he appointed, policies he enacted etc etc. There are the positions he took as …
Aug 31 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It is fascinating how most reporters are treating Trumps almost daily change in position on abortion and repro rights. He’s “searching for a position”? In English we usually call that “not having a position” or actually “trying to fool people into believing whatever he …
2/ thinks on a given day will get him elected.” We’ve developed this whole rhetoric about “flip flopping” when in the real word people actually do change their minds about things. People who’ve never shifted their position on anything don’t have some lock …
Aug 31 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve seen a number of people say well the article itself is better. And it has a different headline. These points are both true. But this gets at something very basic about the current political news ecosystem. The tweet headline is actually more important than the article …
2/ headline or even the article itself. That may sound like an audacious claim. But it’s true in the sense of the impact of evolving news conversations. This isn’t just an impression. This is based on being a political news publisher for almost 25 years and having watched …
Aug 29 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It's really important to note that while the Arlington assault story has gotten some limited pick up in the elite press coverage of the incident in the Times, Post, Journal etc has been limited and servile at best. Assaulting a federal employee in the performance of their ...
2/ duties is a felony (18 USC 111). Who were the two Trump staffers who assaulted this woman? That's a totally knowable detail. What is the justification for two high level Trump campaign officials claiming he is mentally ill and should be fired from her job? Where are the ...
Aug 29 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Let's remember that right out of the gate Trump spokesman Stephen Cheung said the campaign had video of the incident and were prepared to release it. "We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made." Then they went silent about the video.
2/ He also made this bizarre claim. "The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode ...
Aug 24 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
The basic concept is simple. In an extraordinrary crisis the VP is the logical and expected person to take over from the President. That's literally what they're there for. The constitution obvs doesn't speak to the succession of a nomination. But the principle is deeply ...
2/ embedded in American political culture, at least as the default assumption. What happened after the late June debate was just such an extraordinary crisis for the Democratic political coalition, one in which no legitimate recanvassing of the primary process could take...
Aug 23 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The Palestine issue that roiled in the background of the DNC but never broke out on the floor in many ways was centered in Michigan. And this weekend it will go another round because Mich state Democrats are holding their party convention which will reprise the whole ...
2/ topic again. Delegates will decide who to nominate for two slots on the U Michigan board of regents. These are statewide elected offices. And of course the state university system was at the center of the protests earlier this year, specifically on the demand that the ...
Aug 17 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Trump just announced a Tuesday "crime and safety" rally in a Michigan town that has been heavily associated with the KKK for decades (Howell, Michigan). Just last month White Supremacists marched through town chanting ‘We love Hitler. We love Trump.’
2/ announcement of rally freep.com/story/news/pol…
Aug 17 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The Times ran an oped by Matthew Schmitz last week that defended JD Vance and placed him more generally among a group of neo-traditionalist Catholic ideologues. It's an interesting cleansing of certain strains currently in American political culture. Schmitz and often Times ...
2/ columnist Ross Douthat often presents this as simply Catholic social doctrine and in fact a vision of neo-traditionalism which holds a large space for the economic well-being of families, even making room for unions. This was basically Schmitz argument.
