All very good points, and a very solid analysis. But the thing that matters, the thing that’s pointed out in a reply to this tweetstorm is that it’s actually really simple:
This is treason. What the Trump Campaign did with Russia’s help using Wikileaks, what Mitch McConnell tried to suppress, what James Comey did eleven days before the election, is treason.
This transcends political parties. This is bigger than Trump and Clinton and any single politician at any level of government. What is happening, right now, is a state-sponsored coup.
Look at all the connections that the Trump campaign has to Russia:
Putin wants Russia to be a global superpower again, and wants to reconstitute the former Soviet Union. That isn’t whacko conspiracy stuff, that’s widely-known fact, published and researched and well documented.
Right now, at this moment, the integrity of the United States as a nation is under threat. Right now, the only people who can stop this are the electors, and this is exactly why the electoral college exists, according to Alexander Hamilton, who some of you may know as one of the founders of this nation.
If this is allowed to go unchallenged, if this is swept up by some bogus Republican “investigation” that does nothing, because Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the chairs of the House committees that would be tasked with doing something about this put partisan politics ahead of the fucking sovereignty of the nation they are sworn to serve, they should all be tried for treason.
This can’t be said loudly and often enough: Russia manipulated our election and at the moment appear poised to install their puppet into the presidency of our nation. Are our elected officials in Washington DC with us, or against us?
I can’t stay silent on here anymore. My family and work keeps me away as many of you on here.
The truth is I just cannot stand this disgusting excuse for a human and I never have. But that is well known in my family and community as most of us Californians have loudly voiced.
How anyone can lower their standards or dismiss all he has said and done is beyond me. I have tried to sympathize and understand the many good people who are not racist and truly hurting that voted for him. But I always want to say this to each one.
“You made a terrible mistake and you will regret it, but so will those that did not choose this. He fooled you and you should stand up and call him out on that. Your silence is admission to regret. And regret is a terrible thing.”
I will never be able to support him because anything remotely good he does only benefits him and that BIG ego of his. And because he is a braggart and a liar things are never as they appear.
A President does not have a victory tour. Athletes do.
And we are paying for it.
He is charging us for use of his plane, room and board for him, his secret service, and all these events. He is not staying at the secure facility we are paying for, but in luxurious accommodations at his hotels at our expense.
Democracy depends on a free and
independent press, which is why all tyrants try to squelch it. They use seven techniques
that, worryingly, President-elect Donald Trump already employs.
1. Berate the media. Last week, Trump summoned two-dozen TV news anchors and executives to
the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower to berate them for their reporting about
him during the election. For twenty minutes he railed at what he called their “outrageous” and “dishonest” coverage. According
to an attendee, “Trump kept saying, ‘we’re in a
room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong,’” and he called
CNN a “network of liars.” He accused NBC of using unflattering pictures of him,
demanding to know why they didn’t use “nicer” pictures.
Another person who attended the
meeting said Trump “truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment. He
thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”
2. Blacklist critical media. During the campaign, Trump blacklisted news outlets whose coverage
he didn’t approve of. In June he pulled The Washington Post’s credentials. “Based
on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump
campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and
dishonest Washington Post,” read a post on Trump’s Facebook page.
After the election Trump agreed to meet with the New York Times and then suddenly
cancelled the meeting when he didn’t like the terms, tweeting “Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the
meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!” (He then reversed
himself again and met with the Times.)
3. Turn the public against the media. Trump refers to journalists as “lying,” “dishonest,”
“disgusting” and “scum.” Referring to the journalists at his rallies, Trump
said, “I hate some of these people,” adding (presumably in
response to allegations of Vladimir Putin’s treatment of dissident journalists)
“but I’d never kill ‘em.“
He questions the press’s motives,
claiming, for example, that The Washington
Post wrote negative things about him because its publisher, Jeffrey Bezos, a
founder of Amazon, “thinks I would go after him for antitrust.” When the New York Times
wrote that his transition team was in disarray, Trump tweeted that the
newspaper was "just upset that they
looked like fools in their coverage of me” during the presidential
campaign.
4. Condemn satirical or critical comments. Trump continues to condemn the coverage he’s received from NBC’s
“Saturday Night Live.” In response to Alex Baldwin’s recent portrayal of him as
overwhelmed by the prospect of being president, Trump tweeted that it was a
“totally one-sided, biased show – nothing funny at all. Equal time for
us?”
When Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor who plays
Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” read from the stage a
message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in the audience –
expressing fears about the pending Trump administration for the “diverse group
of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations” on the cast –
Trump responded angrily. He tweeted that Pence had been “harassed,” and insisted that the cast and
producers of the show, “which I hear is highly overrated,” apologize.
5. Threaten the media directly. Trump
said he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an
easier time suing news organizations. “One of the things I’m going to do if I win
… I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and
horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
During the campaign, Trump
specifically threatened to sue the Times for libel in response to an
article that featured two women accusing him of touching them inappropriately
years ago. Trump claimed the allegations were false, and his lawyer demanded
that the newspaper retract the story and issue an apology. Trump also threatened
legal action after the Times
published and wrote about part of his 1995 tax return.
6. Limit media access. Trump
hasn’t had a news conference since July. He has blocked the media from
traveling with him, or even knowing whom he’s meeting with. His phone call with
Vladimir Putin, which occurred shortly after the election, was first reported
by the Kremlin.
This is highly unusual. In 2000, President-elect
George W. Bush called a press conference three days after the Supreme Court
determined the outcome of the election. In 2008, President-elect Obama also meet with the press three days after being elected.
7. Bypass the media and communicate with the public directly. The American public learns what Trump thinks through
his tweets. Shortly after the election, Trump released a video message outlining some of the executive actions he plans to
take on his first day in office.
Aids say Trump has also expressed interest in continuing to hold the
large rallies that became a staple of his candidacy. They say he likes the
instant gratification and adulation that the cheering crowds provide.
The word “media” comes from
“intermediate” between newsmakers and the public. Responsible media hold the
powerful accountable by asking them hard questions and reporting on what they
do. Apparently Trump wants to eliminate such intermediaries.
Historically, these seven
techniques have been used by demagogues to erode the freedom and independence of the press. Even
before he’s sworn in, Trump seems intent on doing exactly this.
Trump isn’t alone. The same approach underlies Senator John
McCain’s recent warning that Senate Republicans will unite against any Supreme
Court nominee Hillary Clinton might put up, if she becomes president.
The Republican Party as a whole has embraced this philosophy for
more than two decades. After Newt Gingrich took over as Speaker of the House in
1995, compromise was replaced by brinksmanship, and normal legislative
maneuvering was supplanted by threats to close down the government – which occurred at the end
of that year.
Like Trump, Gingrich did whatever it took to win, regardless
of the consequences. In 1996, during the debates over welfare reform, he racially stereotyped African-Americans. In
2010 he fueled the birther movement by saying President Obama exhibited “Kenyan,
anticolonial behavior.” Two years later, in his unsuccessful bid for the
Republican presidential nomination, he called President Obama the “food stamp
president.“
As political observers Norman Ornstein of the
American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings have noted, “the forces
Mr. Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines.” Gingrich’s
Republican Party became “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved
by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of
the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
In truth, it’s not just Republicans and not just relationships
between the two major parties that have suffered from the prevailing ethos. During
this year’s Democratic primaries, former Democratic
National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her staff showed disdain for the integrity of the political process by discussing ways to derail Bernie
Sanders’s campaign, according to hacked emails.
The same ethos is taking over the private sector. When they
pushed employees to open new accounts, Wells Fargo
CEO John Strumpf and his management team chose to win regardless of
the long-term consequences of their strategy. The scheme seemed to work, at
least in the short term. Strumpf and his colleagues made a bundle.
Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Bresch didn’t worry about the
larger consequences of jacking up the cost of life-saving EpiPens from $100 for
a two-pack to $608, because it made her and her team lots of money.
Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turin Pharmaceuticals, didn’t
worry about the consequences of price-gouging customers. Called before Congress
to explain, he invoked the Fifth Amendment, then tweeted that the lawmakers who
questioned his tactics were “imbeciles.”
A decade ago, Wall Street’s leading bankers didn’t worry about
the consequences of their actions for the integrity of the American financial
system. They encouraged predatory mortgage lending by bundling risky
mortgages with other securities and then selling them to unwary investors because it
made them a boatload of money, and knew they were too big to fail.
Even when some of these trust-destroyers get nailed with fines
or penalties, or public rebuke, they don’t bear the larger costs of undermining
public trust. So they continue racing to the bottom.
Some bankers who presided over the Wall Street debacle, such
as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, remain at
the helm – and are trying to water down regulations designed to
stop them from putting the economy at risk again.
Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Newt Gingrich is positioning
himself to be the politician best able to mobilize Trump supporters going
forward.
“I don’t defend him [Trump] when he wanders off,” Gingrich
recently told ABC News. But “there’s a big Trump and there’s a little Trump,”
he said, explaining that the “big Trump” is the one who has created issues that
make “the establishment” very uncomfortable. “The big Trump,” he said, “is a
historic figure.”
By stretching the boundaries of what’s
acceptable, all the people I’ve mentioned – and too many others just like them – have undermined prevailing norms and weakened the
tacit rules of the game.
The net result has been a vicious
cycle of public distrust. Our economic and political systems appear to
be rigged, because, to an increasing extent, they are. Which makes the public ever
more cynical – and, ironically, more willing to believe half-baked conspiracy
theories such as Trump’s bizarre claim that the upcoming election is rigged.
Leadership of our nation’s major institutions is not just about winning. It’s also about making these
institutions stronger and more trustworthy.
In recent years we have witnessed a massive
failure of such leadership. Donald Trump is only the latest and most extreme example.
The cumulative damage of today’s ethos of doing whatever
it takes to win, even at the cost of undermining the integrity of our system, is incalculable.
Last week, [Cards Against Humanity] went one step further, announcing the creation of
its own super PAC, the type of political organizing committee enabled
by a 2010 Supreme Court decision to spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech. The company dubbed it “The Nuisance Committee,”
named after Cards Against Humanity co-creator Max Temkin’s grandfather
Ira Weinstein’s experience during WWII. While interned in a POW camp in
Germany, Weinstein formed with other prisoners the “Nuisance Committee,”
designed to irritate their captors. A press release announcing the
super PAC’s formation writes, “The comparison here between Trump and
Hitler is intentional.”
“If your opponent is going to be spending tons of money and using all of
these legal tools to outflank you, to say that we’re going to stand on
principle and we’re not going to spend any money, and we’re not going to
fight back, and we’re not going to advocate for our values using all
the tools that the system provides, then how much can you really care
about the cause? I feel so strongly about Trump that I will use whatever
tools are legally available to try to stop him. Unfortunately, where we
are in American democracy right now, that includes all these things
that nobody likes.”
And this is why I will always support Cards Against Humanity. They do good work.
