BC POLITICS
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(THREAD) To understand the second impeachment of Donald Trump, we must understand the words that preceded and augmented his January 6 incitement of insurrection. This thread unpacks four key speeches—Don Jr., Giuliani, Mo Brooks, and Eric Trump. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.

 1/ If you haven't yet seen my analysis of Trump's January 6 "incitement to insurrection" speech, you can find it at the link below. This thread will look at four shorter—but deeply consequential—speeches just before Trump's, all by Trump allies or family. https://t.co/qdRpGXjFB4
2/ DONALD TRUMP JR.

Trump Jr.'s speech on January 6—which ended less than an hour before his father incited an insurrection—is one of the most inscrutable of the day, because its beginning includes some promisingly responsible rhetoric. Then it descends into madness and chaos.
3/ "I'm looking at the crowd here, and you did it all [congregate here] without burning down buildings! You did it without ripping down churches! Without looting! I didn't know that that was possible!" Within 2 hours of his speech, Don Jr.'s audience would be looting the Capitol.
4/ So obviously Don Jr.'s opening is ironic to a historic degree, but this isn't the first time we've heard this rhetoric from him. He habitually ignores right-wing violence because he knows that his chief rhetorical canard—which marries progressivism and violences—gets applause.
5/ For this reason, I don't know that we can take his next words as *specific to the occasion* so much as merely his standard, long-standing rhetorical sleight-of-hand: calling anything his father produces peaceful, and anything left-wing activists produce dangerous and unhinged.
6/ The latter part of his next riff is facially semi-responsible: "According to the media, when you have a large gathering of peaceful protestors, they're supposed to burn it all down! See, guys, *we* can do it right." He lies about media—but does say "peaceful" and"do it right."
7/ But he then says the "peaceful" gathering is a "message" to "Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight!" So which is it? Just as his father will use the word "peaceful" once but then ignore it, Don Jr. says "peaceful" once and then says "peace" equals "fighting."
8/ Don Jr. infamously wrote about the George Orwell novel 1984 after his dad was banned from Twitter; he didn't seem to know anything about the book. But his mantra—that being "peaceful" means "fighting" in extraordinary ways—would have made the villains of 1984 nod approvingly.
9/ He implies that this crowd—which he estimates at 100,000—will, unlike Republicans at the Capitol—do "something" to "fight" for Trump by "stop[ping] the steal" of the election. Milling about in "peaceful" fashion would be incongruous with the intent Trump attaches to the crowd.
10/ One could argue that Don Jr. is talking about peaceful protest, but how would that constitute "fighting" the "steal" in a way that "stops" it? It makes no sense unless something more than milling about blocks from the Capitol is what the Trumps anticipate happening right now.
11/ "This gathering should send a message to [Capitol Republicans]! This isn't their Republican Party anymore! This is *Donald Trump's* Republican Party!"

A few notes. First, understand that Donald Trump Jr. is *shouting* his entire speech—something very few other speakers did.
12/ Second is the obvious—there are fascist overtones here, as Trump Jr. is speaking of his father's ownership over a political party in acquisitive, possessive terms, not just metaphoric ones. Third is how much Don is setting the table for his father to issue *orders* later on.
13/ Remember that Donald Trump Sr. is just an hour away from inciting an insurrection, and here's his son *shouting* that his father owns the party now—the implication being that he is the Dear Leader whose least whims move the vast, chaotic network of the Republican Party cause.
14/ But fourth we must note what Jr. is really getting at here: the *way of doing things* the Republicans up at the Capitol have chosen (a peaceful transfer of power) is *over*.

And it has been replaced, Don Jr. thunders, by... well, whatever my father is about to ask you to do.
15/ Remember, nearly all the House/Senate Republicans Trump Jr. is attacking (1) supported his father's re-election, (2) supported his father's post-election lawsuits, and (3) supported his father's past and present political rhetoric and agenda. So what's the radical break here?
16/ In other words, the only way Trump Jr.'s words make sense is if the mob he's shouting at is going to make a *radical break* with the decisions being made by House and Senate Republicans—none of whom support Biden politically—on that very day of insurrection, January 6, 2021.
17/ No one could possibly think a "radical break" would be achieved by... milling about DC a few blocks from the Capitol waving flags. That wouldn't "stop the steal" and it wouldn't be fundamentally different from the passive objection to Biden's ascension the GOP already offers.
18/ But don't worry, Don is about to make things explicit.

"This is the Republican Party that will fight....this is the Republican Party that's not just going to roll over and die because the Democrats would like you to!"

He's asking for the mob to do the *bold and unexpected*.
19/ Don Jr. gives the recent Georgia elections—November (Trump lost) and January (two GOP senate candidates lost)—as an example of what the mob *cannot* do.

You have to really follow Trump Jr. closely here to see what he does with his rhetoric about Georgia. Here's what he says:
20/ {mimicking—via a "dumb-sounding" voice—the weak Republicans the mob must be unlike}:

"Well, I don't like the way the game is played, so let's take our ball and go home."

The idea is that the *new* GOP—Trump's—(a) shows up [at the Capitol] and thereby (b) *changes the game*.
21/ Trump Jr. is telling a mob of 100,000 people that a "game" is being played a certain way up at the Capitol they're about to march to, and that they must go there (instead of "going home") and *not play the game the way it is being played*. What would that look like, exactly?
22/ Well, we know one thing: it's something that must upset Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi profoundly, as Don Jr. tells the mob that playing the game legally—via certification of Biden's win—is "music to Chuck Schumer's ears" and "music to Nancy Pelosi's ears." But there's more.
23/ Just as we can draw a straight line between the president's later speech and insurrectionists chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and literally *hunting* Pence in the Capitol, remember that the other person the seditionists *hunted* when they got to the Capitol was the House Speaker.
24/ So Don is telling a mob—one he knows is about to march to a building Nancy Pelosi is inside—that it must change the game in a dramatic way that "fights," "stops" what's happening at the Capitol, and profoundly *upsets* Nancy Pelosi.

And so they do. With a clear focus on her.

More from Seth Abramson

Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
MSNBC medical experts are underscoring that the course of treatment Trump is on is one you would *not* apply to someone who's doing well—but to someone who is struggling. Indeed, the experts say, it would be a *dangerous* treatment to give to a COVID-19 patient who is doing well.


NOTE/ The specific cause for concern here is the steroids; they're given to "severe and critical" hospitalized patients, and could harm patients who are not having breathing or immune-response issues. Keep in mind Trump's doctors claim they're discussing discharging him tomorrow.

NOTE2/ Tomorrow Trump's doctors will come up with a reason why he can't be discharged. Or they'll recall what was always the case—Trump can get basically the same treatment at the White House. I maintain the most likely scenario is that he demanded Walter Reed, then regretted it.

NOTE3/ Another possibility: Trump's White House doctors are basically jokes who just do whatever he tells them, and he wanted the real doctors at Walter Reed. Now that *real* doctors have set the course of treatment, Trump can go to the White House unless/until it becomes acute.
TRUMP
Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
I don't care one way or another about the Elizabeth Warren DNA kerfuffle; it's silliness bred of Trump's lunacy, not a serious political matter.

But—*but*—the blowback on Warren is useful as a reminder that facts, science, and really truth of any kind is now anathema to the GOP.

2/ If you're online trying to convince a Trumpist of *anything*—I mean *anything*—stop right now.

The Trumpists' reaction to Warren's DNA test—a cacophony of fact-free insanity about race and DNA and even just *the bare facts of what happened*—tells you you're wasting your time.

3/ I don't see the point in baiting Trumpists, or insulting them, or calling attention to their madness on a daily basis. These people are fundamentally unserious about truth, discourse, and anything resembling a community of ideas. So:

1) Ignore them—completely.
2) Vote—always.

4/ I don't always live up to that standard, but I'm *trying*. I'm *trying* to ignore as beneath dialogic significance those who say "most people" have Native American ancestry, or who can't read basic studies to understand Warren's DNA test, or who say Trump never made a bet, &c.

5/ Trump wants to call Warren "Pocahontas" because he's a racist, wants to appeal to racists, and his cult-like following so ignores *everything bad he does* that they think that, had she lied—she didn't—*this* (this!) would be worse than anything Trump has done.

*Process that*.
ALL
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(1) Kushner is worth $324 million.
(2) Since 2016, Kushner has connived, with Saudi help, to force the Qataris (literally at a ship's gunpoint) to "loan" him $900 million.
(3) This is consistent with the Steele dossier.
(4) Kushner is unlikely to ever have to pay the "loan" back.


2/ So as you read about his tax practices, you should take from it that it's practices of this sort that ensure that he's able to extort money from foreign governments while Trump is POTUS without ever having to pay the money back. It also explains why he's in the Saudis' pocket.

3/ It's why the Saudis *say* he's in their pocket. It's why emoluments and federal bribery statutes matter. It's why Kushner was talking to the Saudi Crown Prince the day before the murdered Washington Post journalist was taken. It's why the Trump administration now does nothing.
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(EXCERPT) PROOF OF COLLUSION drops in 3 weeks. Here's the second set of excerpts from this 450-page, 1,650-endnote book. 4 more excerpts will be released each Monday until the book's November 13 release. I hope you'll RETWEET and consider preordering here: https://t.co/z0ep5wUW9h


2/ For those who missed the first set of excerpts from PROOF OF COLLUSION, they can be seen in the tweet below—click on the link to see the tweet. For the link to preorder PROOF OF COLLUSION, see my currently pinned tweet or the link in my Twitter profile.


PS/ To see a larger, more readily readable version of any of these excerpts, right-click and download the picture to your desktop. Then open the file and it will be much larger and easier to read.

BONUS FACT/ In the last excerpt, I refer to "any aide with whom Trump shared the classified intelligence he received in the [August 17, 2016] briefing." Well you might wonder—who did he share it with? Answer: we don't know.

But we DO know who was WITH HIM at the briefing: FLYNN.

BONUS FACT 2/ According to Mother Jones and Washington Post reporting, then, we know Flynn attended the August 17, 2016 briefing at which Trump was informed of Russian aggression, and THEREAFTER—but BEFORE the election—engaged in clandestine contacts with the Russian ambassador.
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Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(THREAD) The Whitaker scandal is deepening, as it becomes clear that Sessions' Russia recusal was a coordinated sham and his firing an act of obstruction—and that his replacement is a White House plant inside the Mueller probe. I hope you'll retweet and read on for more details.


1/ From 2014-17 Whitaker worked for World Patent Marketing—which during his tenure defrauded consumers out of $26 million and was successfully prosecuted by the feds. His involvement in the scam confirmed he had loose morals and that the feds would never want to employ him again.

2/ Despite the seeming impossibility of a man with Whitaker's background getting a job at Justice ever again—he'd been found to have used his former title as a US attorney to fraudulently threaten consumers with valid complaints with criminal penalties—Whitaker found an opening.

3/ Within 60 days of parachuting out of World Patent Marketing as it was being fined $26 million by the feds, Whitaker was working for CNN and telling a fellow attorney panelist that his purpose in working for CNN was to get noticed by one man—Donald Trump—and thereby get a job.

4/ Whitaker spent his time at CNN making ludicrous statements about the Mueller probe: there was no obstruction or collusion, he said; Mueller had no authority to look into any aspect of Trump's finances or to subpoena him, he said. All the while, he hoped Trump was watching him.
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Christina Warren
Christina Warren
@film_girl
A brief thread on Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, the crazy con man who is now claiming to have hacked into the Georgia voting machines in Fulton County. 90s kids and tech aficionados might remember Jovan as the inventor of the CueCat, the dumbest gadget of all time.

Also, for anyone who wants to claim that Jovan Hutton Pulitzer (not his given name, but one he changed legally after the CueCat debacle) invented QR Codes: he did not. Like that other right-wing crazy man who claimed to have invented email, Jovan didn’t invent QR Codes.

He did invent the CueCat, a product that somehow raised $185 million dollars for a tethered barcode scanner for magazines and newspapers, so you could get ads from your ads. As I said, the dumbest product of all time. Good backup barcode scanners after they were hacked, however

Oh, that’s another thing. When CueCat was a thing, its systems were hacked. I guess that’s what makes Jovan a security expert. His bankrupt company from 20 years ago was hacked and widely mocked. He’s a genius.

In recent years, Jovan pivoted to being a treasure hunter who was featured on and widely mocked on Curse of Oak Island, because the man is insane.
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Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson
@adamdavidson
Dear Media, here is the clear truth:

Donald Trump is explicitly seeking to turn America into a white Ethnostate.

He is following an openly racist plan, crafted by open racists.

If you report this story any other way you are not reporting the facts or being objective.

1/

If you think this is an extreme position or an opinion, you haven't read enough about the white nationalist movement, Stephen Miller, Bannon, Sessions, etc.

Eliminating birthright citizenship is a central plank in a well-articulated, coherent movement to make America whiter.
2/

Blaming Soros is a central tool. It is part of a (crazy, wrong, but internally coherent) theory of the case:
- By nature, people can only form society with their closer kin.
- Yadda Yadda (the arguments are terrible) White people have certain values that non-whites don't.

3/

(continuing the white power explanation)

- All whites, by nature, would know they only want a white society.

- An outside group--hint, it's the Jews!--is tricking them into going against their nature (white nationalists think they know a lot about core human nature).

4/

(continuing views I hate to explain them)

- There is an existential race to save America. By 2046, it will become majority minority and then (in this fevered nonsensical view) there will be a civil war because unlike people can't form stable societies.

5/
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Mike Dunford
Mike Dunford
@questauthority
THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)
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Tim - Efficacious vs the Mutants\U0001f489 NO trampVE\U0001f3db\U0001f985
Tim - Efficacious vs t...
@tmstrickl_tim
"these people are not going to take it any longer..
do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats.
We will never concede.. when there's theft involved...had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about."
1/

"We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen.

Not going to let it happen.

CROWD: Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump.
TRUMP: Thank you."
2/

"those tens of thousands of people ..
..the military, the Secret Service and we want to thank you and law enforcement ..you're doing a great job..
..but I would love it if they could be allowed to come up with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them, please?"
3/

"if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.
..he has the absolute right to do it..States want to revote, the states got defrauded..they want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president"
4/

"I actually I just spoke to Mike. I said, Mike, that doesn't take courage, what takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage, and then we are stuck .. and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen. "
5/
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Charlie the Fox
Charlie the Fox
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For my followers who aren't experts on middle eastern politics, here's a summary and explanation of all that stuff I've been tweeting about for the last few days - Turkey, Gare, all that stuff.

Gare is a mountain in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq (also known as Başur, or South Kurdistan). It's held by the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a formerly Maoist group who share an ideology with the YPG. They're pretty great.

Last week the Turkish Army launched an operation in the area, bombarding it with planes and dropping troops from helicopters. They're a long way from home here, and had to rely on the bases of local collaborators to launch the attack.

The initial assault appears to have gone badly, with Turkish troops forced to retreat some way down the mountain. A second front, seemingly aimed at preventing PKK reinforcements from arriving, may have been more successful.

The full aim of the operation isn't clear. They may have hoped to cut Gare from other nearby mountains, and they may have been trying to destroy specific facilities. The only thing we're sure of is that an attempt was made to free a group of high value POWs.
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