(THREAD) Independent journalists have already created a comprehensive list of impeachment trial witnesses who can *confirm* Team Trump helped plan the insurrection. Those witnesses can now be called. This thread lists the proof. Please RETWEET this widely.
More from Seth Abramson
Breaking: White House finds no corroboration of sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh after examining reports from FBI's latest probe https://t.co/nnNKmjz8ke pic.twitter.com/HtiQN9C6IK
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 4, 2018
2/ No, I'm serious: the only people the White House is trying to reach here are those who don't use the internet for news—ever—or those radicals who only read fringe publications that lie to them daily. If you've been following the Kavanaugh nomination online, you know the truth.
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.
(EXCERPT) Here are the first excerpts to be published from my forthcoming 450-page, 1,650-endnote book PROOF OF COLLUSION. 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/ZJsnHcVwGi pic.twitter.com/LDu7deiPJU
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 15, 2018
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.
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.
(THREAD) Media has yet to do a deep dive on precisely what Trump *said* in his January 6 speech in DC\u2014a speech now called an "incitement to insurrection," and the basis for an article of impeachment coming Monday. This thread unpacks the speech. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET. pic.twitter.com/ba6eaNScNW
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 9, 2021
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.
More from Trump
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) January 10, 2021
I wrote a book a decade ago that used game theory to explore the ways democracies die and what that tells us about how and why they sometimes survive. 2/n
One implication of the formal model in that book is that normative commitments to democracy may matter less than expectations about the benefits and costs of trying to subvert democracy. 3/n
It's great when all the major players (ruling party, opposition party, and military) believe democracy is good in itself. If they don't, tho, then what matters most are their beliefs about how easily they can seize power and how costly it would be to try and fail. 4/n
I think it's pretty clear that many key players in the GOP don't see democracy as a good in itself ("we're a republic, not a democracy"). So that shifts their attention to their ability to usurp power and the costs of trying and failing. 5/n
Here's Steve Bannon's, for example.
Here's Elliot Broidy, a Trump fund-raiser who admitted to a role in a covert campaign to influence the administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests.
https://t.co/tvpHORLrps
Here's Ken Kurson, a former Giuliani speechwriter and former editor of a newspaper Jared Kushner owned, who had been charged with cyberstalking
https://t.co/HxcexSK4Sc
Here's Aviem Sella, an Israeli who had been a fugitive from 1987 esionage and subversive activities charges related to recruiting a spy against the United States, Jonathan Pollard. (He was never extradited and pardoning him was a favor toNetanyahu.)
https://t.co/neHjN57ok3
Here's Dwayne Michael Carter a/k/a Lil Wayne, who had pleaded guilty to firearm offenses
https://t.co/yixm1fTR2b
You know … Lindsey … I want you to think about something
F$&kin\u2019 dare yah, dare yah (dammit, already thought of one) to find a time in history when the following has been more true. \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.\u201d - Margaret Mead
— Moondeer (@kelleydawg) February 15, 2021
Now if a small group can change the country, what do you want to f$&kin’ bet that ONE MF can change this country?
Oh thank Christ! I was worried you might go the other way and that would totally f$&k up everything I had left to say.
‘Cause Lindsey, I have learned something this week. We are all familiar with the phrase:
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As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".