.@benjaminwittes' tiny cannons were bigger than Trump's pitiful 21 gun salute. Meanwhile the (lack of) crowd at Andrews is completely the #TrumpCrimeFamily and assorted griters. Trump looks defeated and I've never seen Melania look so animated. #ByeFelicia #GTFO 🖕🖕🖕

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

Mega Thread:

I am so fed up with right wing hardliners on impeachment. I need to go on a rant. The more I interact with these people on here the more I'm pushed away from their position. On 1/6 I was adamant about Trump being at fault. He did not handle that day well IMO 1/

by that weekend, however, I'd started to reflect upon what he'd said and the events and begun to move away from the absolute position that it was all his fault. There were many reasons for this. One was that his rally happened while the break-ins were occurring, 2/

another was that so few people relative to his total followers showed up. Another was the fact that most of his followers I know were similarly outraged and disapproving. Another was that he explicitly said peaceful in all his remarks. And another was that 3/

upon reflection, I realized nothing he said was an escalation in his normal rhetoric, which had never caused any violence beforehand. But now, weeks later, I'm being radicalized in my aforementioned position by the right-wing hardliners who cannot discuss 1/6 4/

without resorting to the most melodramatic hyperbole imaginable. You simply will not gaslight me into viewing a small riot at the Capital as somehow orders of magnitude more grave and dangerous than months of left-wing rioting, or a left-wing insurrection 5/

2022 is shaping up to be a bloodbath. The Trump census cooked the numbers to advantage Republicans, and GOP statehouses are poised to redistrict in ways that will hand potentially permanent minority rule to the GOP in Congress.

1/

There's a potential way out: #HR1, an omnibus bill of electoral reforms that would create durable, structural protections for voting rights and a level playing field for campaigning.

2/

To get a sense of how urgent the looming crisis is - and of how important HR1 is - listen to @ryangrim interviewing @schwarz and Rep @JohnSarbanes [D-MD] on this week's

In theory, HR1 could be blasted through - Dems control the Senate, Congress, and the White House, and the future of the party depends on it, but I'm far from confident that they'll find the discipline and political will to make it happen.

4/

The Democrats keep squandering their majorities and wasting opportunities to make real change - changes that are must-haves, not nice-to-haves; changes needed to head off existential threats to the nation itself.

5/