Trump has left the White House.

God what a lovely sentence to type. I might do it again.

Trump has left the White House.

Lovely. I didn't know fingers on keys could feel that good.

Is there a more beautiful sentence? I suspect not.

The clearest lens through which I view the 1776 Report, Trump's apologia in response to the 1619 Project, is the same lens for viewing our overall political divisions: one of competing theories of American Exceptionalism:

Is America exceptional? How? Why? 1/x

The 1776 Report postulates that America is _inherently_ exceptional. We don't have to do anything in particular to be exceptional, and we remain exceptional no matter what we've done. It's deeply interwoven with white Christianity: a faith in inevitability of God's plan. 2/x

This religious inevitability of exceptionalism sharpens a lot about the Trump phenomenon, probably often confused for white supremacy, when it's really religious conviction. America simply can't lose, and they're defending America against critics, naysayers, and threats. 3/x

Trump's loss has caused complete disorientation. They view their faith as being challenged. They rise up in fulfillment of prophecy. They exegete the Constitution as sacred text for God's plan to keep Trump in office. They become apocalyptic at the end times. 4/x

But if the Constitution is their Old Testament, the 1776 Report is their gospel. It's important to distill the kernel of their faith: America is, always has been, and always will be inherently exceptional. That's what underlies the right's patriotic correctness. 5/x

24 January 20210 #MAGAanalysisisMini

"In the month leading up to the riot, Mr. Trump was devising his own plan: He and a Justice Department official plotted to oust the acting attorney general to try to advance baseless election claims, interviews showed...

16 January 2021 #MAGAanalysis #Overturn

The Man Who Met Himself

First, I have to again thank @BernadetteMay for the delightful and foretelling new banner photo I stole from her. It is truly profound and hopefully prophetic.

The Great American Forgetting Project starts today. They're going to simultaneously try to tell us the last four years were an aberration that is over, and that it never happened.

And it's natural to want to forget these awful years.

It's our moral duty not to.

Those who benefit from our country's malicious priorities will do everything they can now to get us to forget how incontrovertibly Trump exposed those priorities.

Many of us thought we were something better than we were, but now we know.

We've seen our nation's face.

And many among us knew the truth all along. Many of us always saw our nation unmasked, because they were the ones who suffered it.

They told us all along, and the rest of us didn't listen.

Now that they've been proven correct, we're going to be asked to not listen again.

We can't deny anymore, that there are people among us, everywhere, for whom no lie is so obvious they won't believe it, as long as they think it serves their ends.

They don't care about truth, and never did.

We should care about truth, and speak it plain.

This is us.

We've seen our national tolerance for open racism, for cruelty, for corruption, for false equivocation.

Not just the tolerance, but the enthusiasm.

Trump didn't create it. It was there. He exploited it.

We'll never become what we want to be if we don't admit what we are.

15 January 2020 #MAGAanalysis #Overturn

The Burden Of Command, Or If I Were Trump Right Now

I'll get a few more hours sleep after posting this early morning's thread. It's just after 3:30 AM, EST. The dream for America that I dreamed awakened me, and so here I am.

❗️[POTUS] UPDATE 🏰👑💥👀🌎🦅🌫

Hold the line for 30 days.

Several new entries below.

Donald Trump appears to be continuing to use military aircraft suggesting he is still de facto Commander in Chief.

Clarity emerges in two weeks.

Patriots are urged to stay off the streets and away from State Capitols — False Flag events intended to discredit patriots are known to be planned. NON-VIOLENCE is VITAL. Obey the law, allow events to play out.

Monkey Werx BitChute pending, we refuse to post YouTubes.

Monkey Werx tracks where he thinks Trump is and why he thinks it. Trump still keeping military travel, wouldn’t if he weren’t still president.

4:37 “temporary air restriction is lifted” meaning “Trump is on this aircraft. From FLA up to DC, parks for an hour, back to Charleston. Time on ground, 56 min, 6 seconds = 5+6+6 = 17.

At 8:30 PM last night, “Pentagon requested another 26,000 troops to come into DC.” Some have left, number not defined. Sean: I don’t think it’s large because yesterday Monkey Werx said he wasn’t seeing ships that would take NG back to their home state.

Thread 4: Donald Trump Did Not Invent Trumpism

It was Fox. Fox created a Maga Nation (without that name) and promised their maga god Messiah would come some day. In 2015 when Trump came down that escallator, FOX proclaimed Trump as their dude

Trump didn't even know the lyrics

Fox News was born after Reagan ended the Fairness Doctrine in TV news broadcasts.

Fox was set up from the start to be a PROPAGANDA channel. To give PARTIAL and BIASED news. Not the full picture. They brainwashed 1/3 of American electorate over 3 decades

#FixFox

Long before Trump decided to run, Fox had been building a voter base for an ultra-conservative (and racist) candidate. Who would 'defend America in a war against Christmas' and who would 'build a wall' to keep brown people away etc. A cult of white men who feared a changing world

Trump was FLIRTING with this, what we know recognize as the Maga cult (#Cult45). He started his courtship with the Birtherism lies about Obama being born in Kenya - & Trump the fake Billionaire supposedly sent investigators to search Obama's birth certificate - remember all that?

The racist and RELIGIOUS nutters of the Maga cult were not naturally drawn to Trump. Many hated and feared Trump or despised him. But Trump was 'taught the lyrics' of how to speak to the Maga cult. The person who taught Trump to speak Maga was Stephen Miller from late 2015

Four years ago, I started saving the best of the incredibly bizarre, stupid and bad vibes photos being rapidly produced by the Trump administration to cathartically post today. Here is my Surreal Trump Photo Dump

Hell Dinner

these are in vaguely chronological order, most are of trump, but some are of other related weirdness. It's been played to death, but this was definitely a tone-setter

Another early banger, a sensible oil of this should be his white house portrait

probably the GOAT, my mind still reels when I think about seeing the ORB for the first time

Thread tweet 1

Imagine for a second this:
1) Trump has Declassified everything, but not released it to the public
2) He or his lawyers or someone has everything
3) They try to impeach Trump but there is no conviction in the Senate

20 January 2021 #MAGAanalysis

The Day After

Here's the link to soon-to-be former President Trump's Farewell Speech. It's not easy watching, I can tell you that. But we boldly do what we must,

Three hours and seventeen minutes.
If you have any doubt Donald Trump INTENDED for violent insurrectionists to attack the Capitol Wednesday, meditate on 3:17 instead.
That’s the time between the beginning of thesiege and the Trump's 4:17 ordering everyone to go home.
/1

Maybe you believe you can argue away Trump's rally words.
Maybe you’re like Mick Mulvaney, and you can still pretend to be “shocked” anybody took Trump literally.
But you can't argue away 3:17.
(I call bullshit “We didn’t know they’d take us literally," btw)
/2

Ask yourself: How did it take a President 3:17 to ask a group of his own followers to stop attacking the Capitol?
What does that say about HIM?
What does that say about his intentions?
/3

The deafening silence of that 3:17 minutes is all the evidence you need that Donald Trump intended to incite insurrection and violence against the United States. It should be an exhibit in the impeachment against him.
/4

The facts are these:
1. 1 pm, first rioters attempt a breech at the Capitol.
2. 1:30 pm, there are reports of lockdowns at many Federal Buildings, due to confirmed pipe bombs. That moment SHOULD HAVE BEEN enough to push the President to say to everyone “please go home.”
/5

When Trump knowingly accepted Russian help and obstructed the doj investigation and lied to the American people about who attacked our elections or extorting Ukraine the republicans didn't provide a valid counter argument

they asked "who unmasked?" or leaked or whistleblew

when Trump gave his acting officials and son-in-law and cabinet members security clearances that they didn't get cleared for Republicans look the other way

When he sided with Putin in Helsinki Republicans were in Moscow in secret meetings they voted not to release the transcript

When handed election security bills the Republicans voted against all but one of them which would strengthen funding for the machines that McConnell uses in his state

They helped Trump rail against the special counsel investigation into interference in our election

When a federal judge said Bill Barr had misrepresented that report they ignored it

When their own senate Intel report came out and said that Trump Associates were actively working to disseminate Russian misinformation into our public discourse during the election

And Ratcliffe said he wouldn't breathe the Intel committee on the interference

GOP ignored it.

Second Thread: The incurable SPD

Looking at the coming split of the GOP, next up is the era right up to Trump announcing his run in 2015. What happened in the decades right up to that moment. We get SPD, Sarah Palin's Disease. Alas, there is no cure

I like to joke that the GOP got infected by SPD Sarah Palin's Disease but many have pointed out that no, the GOP became sick well before Sarah. And the root cause is Newt Gingrich.

The first corruption of GOP as a politically viable party came via Newt

When the GOP came off its immense power era (2 terms of Reagan, record-national support, leading to rare 3rd term by one-term Daddy Bush) - then came suddenly the populist Bill Clinton - who stole the Republican thunder and stole the MIDDLE GROUND of politics

Newt Gingrich poisoned the GOP political minds that instead of contesting for the middle of the nation - the GOP should instead fight for the base. Poison the middle, enrage the base, and win that way.

Since Bill Clinton won in 1992, GOP has only once won 50% of the election

That once exception was 2004 - when W Bush got the benefit of the 9/11 terrorist attack good will. He was NOT a popular President. It was a sympathy vote. Apart from that, GOP has not gotten over 50% of popular vote once, since Newt Gingrich's mad political 'strategy'

NEW: Before he left office, Trump filed his final financial disclosures with @OfficeGovEthics. I’ve had a read through them. The income he is claiming in respect of his Scottish resorts is entirely divorced from the reality set out in black in white in his UK accounts. Thread 👇

Firstly, Trump lists his income from ‘golf related revenue’ at Turnberry as $9.8m. Which is interesting, given the latest UK accounts for Turnberry's parent company registered losses of £2.3m ($3.1m) for the 12 months to 31 Dec 2019.

Even the turnover in the UK accounts - listed as £19.6m ($26.8m) is a country mile off that income figure listed in Trump's OGE filings. Comparing like for like, even accounting for that weird 'golf related revenue' descriptor, it's not even close.

If you drill down in more detail, and subtract the administrative expenses at Turnberry's parent firm from its turnover in order to get closer to whatever that 'income' figure entails, the number is still £12.5m ($17.2m).

And if you go deeper, and account for the gains the company made in foreign exchanges, and deduct depreciation and amortisation costs, the figure is £9.9m ($13.6m). Still a way off the OGE number.

Trump was a very specific kind of disaster: a chaos agent, who lacked the wit, patience and executive function to recruit the powerful institutions of the US military-industrial complex to fight his corner.

1/

The kind of guy who demands the impossible and then fires and publicly humiliates any allies who fail to deliver - or dare to contradict him - is not the kind of guy who can build new, enduring, evil institutions.

2/

The best he can hope for is to get some trumpalike goblins into positions of power (where they will replicate his chaos, but without the broad impunity of the presidential office, resulting in a series of resignations and prosecutions), back by executive orders.

3/

The last months of the Trump admin were an orgy of executive branch rulemakings that dismantled public safety, health, labor, anticorruption and (especially) environmental protections.

4/

Trump is a debt kingpin. His MO is running across a river on the backs of alligators, hoping to move so fast that none of them takes a leg: borrow, refinance, restructure, borrow, blow town, borrow, restructure, bribe, blow town.

5/