CITATIONS FOR COUP TIMELINE

Barr authorizes investigations into election fraud: https://t.co/h7MSjSYblJ

Pilger resigns: https://t.co/lR9iS1Z7g2

Esper’s firing: https://t.co/ADh5PxZ4t4, https://t.co/EgKUX05qYq

Pentagon firings:

TRUMP'S COUP TIMELINE

* This thread will use military time and EST time zone for any times provided.

November 7, 2020 - The press calls the 2020 presidential election for now President-elect Joe Biden, 4 days after the election.

November 9, 2020

After meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and in violation of standing Department of Justice policy not to interfere in elections, US Attorney General Bill Barr authorizes federal prosecutors to investigate claims of electoral fraud.

Richard Pilger, the head of the DoJ’s Election Crimes Branch, resigns in response to Barr’s memo.

Trump fires Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. In response, Esper says, “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

Trump immediately names Christopher Miller Acting Secretary of Defense.

Trump follows Esper’s firing with firing the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, constituting a “near total decapitation of civilian leadership” at the Pentagon.

"Lofgren asked whether Capitol police had enough officers to handle the capacity, and if they had the National Guard on standby and available to quickly help if needed.

"Sund insisted, yes, they had both bases covered, Lofgren said."

I have

Sund told Tim Ryan the same thing, BUT:

"In fact, three days earlier, Capitol police had told the Pentagon that it was not requesting National Guard support for the event, according to defense officials."

So either Sund was lying about requesting support or DoD is lying.

Both are plausible given everything that happened the day of. But either the Capitol Police Chief or the Department of Defense lied about whether Capitol Police had requested National Guard back-up.

We do know DoD hamstrung Guard units' ability to respond to rioting.

So there was a designated protest zone on the Capitol grounds, but when folks left the rally and marched toward the Capitol, no one was directing them toward the designated protest zone? There was nothing ensuring they went there and not...wherever they wanted?

"A seeming fortress from a distance, the Capitol contains more than 400 separate doors, entryways and ground-level windows."

I hope limiting entry points is one of the first major steps they take to preventing something like this again.

"Multiple European security officials told Insider that President Donald Trump appeared to have tacit support among US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex in Wednesday's coup

"Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle." - NATO Intelligence official

Yikes on bikes.

"The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex...

"...the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility."

We know that:

1) Sund told Representatives that he had requested additional National Guard back-up. That did not happen.
2) National Guard was deployed for "traffic control" at...

...the Capitol perimeter. Though this was a fairly small number of Guard troops, none were deployed to help inside the perimeter.
3) Additional Guard support was delayed by Sec. of Army Ryan McCarthy, Sec. Def. Christopher Collins, and allegedly by Trump himself for 90 minutes.

Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.

(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.

Thread. 1) Thirty or forty years ago, supporting free speech was understood to be a non-negotiable core value of the liberal left.

2) Pop culture endlessly celebrated liberalism’s uncompromising support of speech rights — from The People Vs. Larry Flynt to Field of Dreams to The American President.

3) Think of “President Shepard’s” speech in “The American President” about how “America isn’t easy” and citizenship requires we “acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil.”

4) That started to change long before Trump. As “The American President” came out, Bill Clinton was pushing the first Internet censorship laws.

When the PATRIOT Act passed, every Democrat but one in both houses voted yes. Russ Feingold, Independent Bernie Sanders, and three Republicans voted no.

Andy Ngo thinks Antifa are on a level with the Nazis in terms of wanton violence. Furthermore, he says that 'even the Nazis knew to cover their tracks' and that we didn't know about the Holocaust until afterwards.

Wrong, and offensive on almost every level.

Violence had been building for years prior to the Nazis assuming power, and much of it was instigated by the SA.

In 1932 for example, 105 people died in clashes between SA and opposing groups in Prussia alone - that's one region.

SA activity - marching through 'red' neighbourhoods and fighting those who opposed them was a deliberate strategy. The spectacle of violence and the implied 'restoral of order' was the point.

Just think of how Horst Wessel was remembered following his death in 1930. He was turned into a martyr who fell 'bravely in battle' against the Bolsheviks. Violence was inherent to the message - a clash between forces for the future of Germany.

During his time as SA leader in Berlin, Goebbels worked on a strategy of provocation that almost always ended in violence, a form of trolling that would always provide the opportunity for a brawl and the implication that a menace had been dealt with.