There was a time when @RichLowry writing something this nakedly despicable would have been unthinkable. Accusing a man of helping provoke a crime via something he wrote FOUR YEARS BEFOREHAND is the kind of ethics you want Buckley's life's work to be associated with, Rich? Really?

... continue part two

(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.

A central tension in our politics is this we have 1 political party that cares about upholding democracy, whereas the other party's aims can only be achieved thru undermining democracy. This is coupled w/ the fact that 1 party cares about people's well-being & the other does not

These 2 facts lead to a situation in which, in order to both uphold democracy & advance well-being, 1 party is dedicated to a functional gov't & the other party is well-served by a dysfunctional government. Such dysfunction is both instrumental & ideological (anti-government)

And then, of course, we have gerrymandering + a cap on the House of reps, 2 Senators per state, & the electoral college. A set of circumstances that gives massively disproportionate power to the anti-democracy & anti-well-being party.

Taken together, the structural issues in our electoral system, deep ideological divides about government/democracy, & the differential investment in advancing citizens' well-being does leave Democrats at a perpetual disadvantage.

A firefighter who is looking at a burning house & trying to decide whether to concentrate on stopping the fire from spreading or to save a child at the expense of a grandmother is facing a fundamentally different set of choices than the person who lit the fire in the first place

In the days after Ravi Zacharias died, I started collecting screenshots of those praising his life and ministry. It consumed hours of my time. I knew that the time of this great reveal on his corruption and abuse was coming. I wanted to make sure that the receipts were there.

I tried to give them away to a couple other people, but it wasn’t the time. I’m going to try to make a long thread of them since those who supported RZ should be held accountable and not just quietly get to delete their supportive tweets without acknowledging the abuse of RZ.

I don’t relish this task, because the harm that RZ caused and the shielding he received from people in high places of the Evangelical world chills me to the bone. It triggers me to no end. But I’m going to go slowly and add as I have the bandwidth to do so.

Here with Mike Pence

#HoldRaviZachariasAccountable

Kayleigh McEnany

#HoldRaviZachariasAccountable