Michael Koncewicz
@MikeKoncewicz
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Associate Director at @nyu_ipk, Historian & Author of They Said No to Nixon @ucpress. Authorized biographer of @TomEHayden
NYC/Hudson Valley
Joined April 2009
I'm thrilled to announce that I have officially signed on to write the authorized biography of @TomEHayden. Thank you to @barbarawilliam_ & @TROYGARITY for trusting me with this project, and to @mdieden1 for recruiting me. 1/3. (Photo- Hayden looking at his FBI file, 1979)
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Rahm Emanuel on Tim Walz in 2006. "No, he has no money, no nothing."
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Simple and to the point. Midwestern Democratic governors are showing everyone how to effectively co-opt left populism.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) explains why he rejected Republican lawmakers' attempts to means-test school meals for K-12 students:. "The haves and the have-nots in the school lunchroom is not a necessary thing. Just feed our children."
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Gotta give credit to these activists for putting together the perfect image.
Sometimes you have to paddle to get your meeting with @Sen_JoeManchin . Way to go @CPDAction and brave WV constituents. #HoldTheLine
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University Presidents are picking a side that doesn’t want them.
.@SpeakerJohnson at Columbia University: "I am here today joining my colleagues and calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos."
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Tom Hayden helping Frances Fox Piven and her daughter into the Math Building during the 1968 Columbia Uprising.
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RIP to Trump's Antiwar Foreign Policy (2016-2016, 2024-2024).
Brian Hook, a top State Department official during the first Trump admin, is expected to lead the transition team at the State Dept for President-elect Donald Trump, sources tell me + @jmhansler.
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Found out about Kissinger while watching a webinar on antiwar GIs. Jane Fonda broke the news :).
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If Sheriff Joe Arpaio or Sarah Palin were still alive, they would be disgusted by the modern GOP. Ted Cruz must be spinning in his grave. .
Every day I am struck by how radically the GOP has changed from 2015 to today. The party is essentially unrecognizable from what it was when the 2016 GOP primary began.
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"To recap here, the drug didn't get any better. The cancer patients didn't get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging."- @katieporteroc. I wish she was my congresswoman when I lived in Irvine.
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I’d love to tell someone in 2002 that Bernie would end up being 10-20 times more influential on US politics than George Allen.
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The next time a relative tells you that "both parties are just too extreme.".
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What’s the plan for the tens of millions of people who don’t have insurance in this country and might have COVID-19?.
"Democratic skeptics of Medicare for All should remember what the alternative looks like. A 17-year-old in an outbreak tried to go to the doctor. He didn’t have insurance. They didn’t treat him. He died."
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The modern conservative movement.
Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!.
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My high school English class in suburban CT debated which countries we should nuke on 9/12.
Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly. Notably, there wasn't a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which could all too easily have happened. And while GW Bush was a terrible president, to his credit he tried to calm prejudice, not feed it 2/.
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The debate over who’s winning impeachment is dumb. The numbers tell a simple story. Dems have enough of the people on their side where impeachment won’t hurt them in 2020, and it could help a bit. It’s not a failure just because Trump’s approval rating is still in the low 40s.
Fox News Poll: 50% support impeachment and removal, 41% oppose.
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From 1970-1973, Nixon was determined to find a way to punish universities that tolerated antiwar protests. Much like @realDonalTriump, he wanted to use the distribution of fed funds to schools as a political weapon. Fortunately, several civil servants blocked this plan. #CPAC2019.
“I will be signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars” @realDonaldTrump #CPAC2019 #WhatMakesAmericaGreat
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I’ve said this before, but Nixon loyalists must be jealous of stuff like this.
Corey Lewandowski to @RepMattGaetz: "I think they hate this president more than they love their country."
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She's right to be cautious when it comes to impeachment. Look at what happened to Republicans after the Clinton impeachment. They lost the 98 midterms and then. won the presidency. and then continued to set the terms of most of our mainstream pol debates over the last 20 yrs.
Nancy Pelosi: "We do believe that it's important to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States. And we believe the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up."
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He demands a treat every time he goes outside in the rain.
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One of the benefits of living in the northeast used to be not having to worry about apocalyptic weather….
Logan Wilson captured this video of a tornado outside his home in Sewell, New Jersey tonight
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It really doesn’t take that much for these guys to start sounding like Nixon,.
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Very brave. They’re already planning to leak twice as any stories in 2020 that let NYT readers know about their regrets.
Maggie Haberman: 'Disgusted' Republicans Now Privately Admitting They Regret Supporting Trump
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I think this is the 600th example of a Trump "joke" turning into policy. It reminds me of scholars who have dismissed Nixon's private rants as just moments when the President was letting off some steam.
The Trump admin. plans to end federal funding and support for coronavirus testing sites at the end of this month, @NBCNews has learned.
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Reminds me of the bitter Nixon-aides that I met who brought up the fact that Watergate ruined their careers. The thing is that they all ended up doing just fine. They just never got the careers that they wanted.
So many WH and admin aides incensed at Trump. “He made a mockery of our hard work. Furious.”. Some seeing job leads/offers evaporate because they waited a week too long. “We believed in the work. He only believes in himself.”. “I have to wear a scarlet T now.” . @GettyImages
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Ronald Reagan and Roger Stone (1980)
"Let me add, in the party of Lincoln, there is no room for intolerance and, not even a small corner for anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind. Many people are welcome in our house, but not the bigots.". -- Ronald Reagan, accepting the 1984 Republican presidential nomination.
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I always laugh when people say that Richard Nixon wouldn’t be able to fit within today’s GOP. It would have taken him a few weeks to adapt.
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Guys like Mattis are not going to save us from Trump. Institutionalists had real power during Watergate. That moment is gone.
James Mattis, in his first interview since leaving office: "There is a period in which I owe my silence. It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”.
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Try explaining an “expired PhD” to someone outside of academia.
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McConnell’s decision to leak his concerns about Trump to the NYT a few days after 1/6 was a purely political exercise.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says calls for a January 6 commission are a “purely political exercise.”. He says: “At the heart of this recommendation by the Democrats, is that they would like to continue to debate things that occurred in the past.”
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People who don't obsessively follow politics will come out of this pandemic remembering that Trump gave them $1200 and Biden gave them $600. Most won't care that the stimulus deal is under a trillion dollars.
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They learned nothing from Obamacare.
Sources tell me that White House and Democrats considering attaching means test to a number of key agenda items - from EV rebates and free community college - as a way to shrink reconciliation bill and pacify spending hawks.
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This was considered a radical position in DC just a few weeks ago.
secy defense austin warns israel—america’s closest ally in the middle east—is heading to “strategic defeat” as palestinian civilians are devastated
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I'm happy to see that this story is getting a lot of attention (it's on Drudge). Aside from Nixon and Reagan's racism, the piece should also be seen as an argument the importance of the Nixon tapes. Too many scholars assume that there's nothing else to learn from the tapes.
A racist conversation between Nixon and Reagan has been released.
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The fact that this isn't a landslide for the Dems should be seen as a defeat for the party. I'm still hoping that we can analyze why tonight wasn't an overwhelming victory with Biden in office.
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They’re already strong. That’s the problem.
BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi calls for a strong Republican Party. Pelosi says America "needs a strong Republican Party. They've made great contributions to our country.".
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"I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes." He's making it too easy. It's almost like a group of historians got together and came up with a comic book villain.
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The 2000 election/September 11/the Iraq War should all be mentioned more when we examine the current state of American democracy.
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This is the biggest challenge for Dems. There’s not going to be a dramatic smoking gun. The corruption is out in the open.
When he returned to New York on Sat, the president called him as his plane was still taxiing down the runway, Trump asked Giuliani “‘What did you get?’” and Giuliani told him, “More than you can imagine.” . I hope these idiots have to share a cell.
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I encourage everyone to watch clips that show the media's coverage of the beginning of the Iraq War. You can easily find them online. Here are 5 hours of CNN's coverage of the invasion.
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Say hi to Lucie Mae Koncewicz. Mom is doing great!
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Footage of @Janefonda informing a panel on Antiwar GI films that Henry Kissinger had just died. "Those of us who learned about Vietnam, about the country and its people, we couldn't help but not like Henry Kissinger, who felt they could be bought off."
Found out about Kissinger while watching a webinar on antiwar GIs. Jane Fonda broke the news :).
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Bush had 60-70 percent of the country on his side in early-2003. This doesn’t mean that it’s inevitable that Trump will back down, but it gives me some hope.
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Senate Republicans are breaking kayfabe.
An interesting scene on the Senate floor when several GOP senators congratulated Kamala Harris (most Rs still siding with Trump in his fight over election.). Sens. Tim Scott, Mike Rounds, James Lankford all congratulated her, as did Ben Sasse. Lindsey Graham gave her a fist bump.
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I’m not a fan of these interviews. We were just making fun of Trump taking a question from Sean Spicer last week. Just let Anderson Cooper interview the Gov of NY.
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When you’re to the right of Andrew Cuomo….
Mr. President, my friend, I love you but the exclusion of paid family leave is a mistake. We enacted it in NY 5 years ago, it works!. Sacrificing our priorities will result in nothing but a hallow victory. All democrats in charge: there are no excuses.
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This is the stat that everyone who is participating in the debate over history jobs needs to acknowledge. 21 jobs and 986 new PhDs.
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No matter what happens tonight, Trumpism is going to be around for a while. Going to have to work hard to defeat guys like Cawthorn.
Cry more, lib.
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The Cheney bear hug hurt Harris.
Liz Cheney campaigned with Kamala Harris in hopes of getting battleground-state Republicans to back the Democrat. The effort failed miserably. Support from Republicans for the Democratic ticket collapsed, especially in towns where Cheney campaigned. 1/4.
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A great piece by @KevinMKruse. IMO- Ford’s pardon might have stopped the bleeding. It was an incredibly unpopular decision, and it contributed to the GOP losing so many seats in 74. But just imagine the impact of putting Nixon on trial in 1975. It’s an interesting counterfactual.
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Certain people just want to pretend that it's always November 1972, even when the Democrats win.
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@KevinMKruse @GoldenGirlsRu @ScottWalker @AOC Everyone knows that you can’t get more left wing than Jimmy Carter!.
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Because those are his presidential records. He received them as the President. He's allowed to have them under the Presidential Records Act. Classified or not. Congress can amend the PRA, if it doesn't want former presidents to have their presidential records.
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I was a college freshman and plenty of people thought the experts were stupid back then. We were a minority of the country, but this wasn’t an obscure take. You just had to look outside of the mainstream media.
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They still think it’s 1996.
continue to think that centrist Democrats are often the worst judges of their own electoral prospects
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@TimNaftali lays out a necessary plan to make sure that the fed government will never participate in any type of project that tries to whitewash Trump's presidency. Congress and the National Archives need to protect presidential records and public history.
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DO YOU THINK IT'D BE ALL RIGHT.IF I COULD JUST CRASH HERE TONIGHT.YOU CAN SEE I'M IN NO SHAPE FOR DRIVING.AND ANYWAY, I'VE GOT NO PLACE TO GO
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It's worth reminding everyone that last year's BLM protests were historically peaceful. Left protest in general has been incredibly peaceful over the last 10-15 years.
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Never forget that both Nikki Haley and Glenn Beck tricked certain parts of the media into thinking they were moderates just because they disagreed with Trump on a few issues.
Nikki Haley says the Confederate flag was about "service, and sacrifice, and heritage" until Dylan Roof "hijacked" it
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This is good. Now the Democrats have to present a clear message that the stimulus is doing more to help those who are struggling. The problem is that they often don’t want to do that.
The new Senate plan does not reduce the anti poverty impact of Biden’s stimulus, Columbia researchers @ZParolin tell me & @byHeatherLong. At either $400 or $300 of UI, official poverty rate drops from 12.3% to 8.3% under Democratic plan.
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So the country isn’t really that divided on these issues.
USA Today-Ipsos poll:. Americans 72%-28% called mask mandates "a matter of health and safety," not an infringement on personal liberty. Americans 61%-39% endorsed requiring vaccinations except for those with a medical or religious exemption.
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From @KevinMKruse - "Worrying about the political costs is not only a dereliction of their duty, but also a misreading of our history.".
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Shortly after Nixon told his family that he was going to resign
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The guy is just passing alley oops to Nixon historians at the point.
The Woodward book is a Joke - just another assault against me, in a barrage of assaults, using now disproven unnamed and anonymous sources. Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction. Dems can’t stand losing. I’ll write the real book!.
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I’ve said this before, but academic Twitter is relatively civil considering the state of the job market. Just wait until 90-95 percent of young scholars have given up.
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Unlike Obama, the Democratic Party is in much better shape than their presidential candidate.
Biden hits 36.9 percent approval, 20 points underwater. All-time low on the first, all-time high on the second.
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I am happy to share that I have accepted a new position at @TamimentLibrary/ NYU Special Collections. I'm now the Michael Nash Research Scholar & Ewen Center Program Coordinator in Special Collections.
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Paul H. O'Neill died today at the age of 84. He left the Bush admin because he opposed WH's tax cuts, but he also stood up to Nixon. One of the chapters of my book focuses on the time he and his colleagues at OMB blocked Nixon's plan to punish universities
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"The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you're a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you're a Tom Hayden Democrat, and you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework." -Barack Obama, 2007
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People often use Jane Fonda’s workout as proof that the New Left sold out. The truth is unsurprisingly more complicated. The workout studios and tapes funded the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an organization that Fonda and Tom Hayden led from 1977-1989.
@nataliapetrzela @NostalgiaTrap Good motivation to exercise when my back strain goes away lol. Your excellent conversation immediately made me think of when Adam Curtis took a shot at Jane Fonda in Hypernormalization. Not a shocker but a very cliche, dare i say undialectical approach from DJ BBC. :\
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Just a reminder that we can probably thank Kissinger for the Nixon tapes. Nixon wanted to have a record that proved that Kissinger was taking too much credit for his accomplishments.
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Today is the 46th anniversay of the Saturday Night Massacre, a turning point in Watergate that led to the end of Richard Nixon's presidency. Here's a thread I posted last year that features some sections from the last chapter of my book: @ucpress.
1. This Saturday is the 45th anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre. My book tells the story of the SNM from the perspective of AG Elliot Richardson and his staff. Richardson's resignation was the culmination of years of behind the scenes battles w the Nixon White House #OTD
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@JoshuaMZeitz Politely pointing out that Warren’s coalition is different from Sanders is scored earth? Also, Sanders already distanced himself from the script. You’re comment is fair when it comes to Biden, but the Warren stuff is an overreaction.
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RIP Casey Hayden (1937-2023), an indispensable figure in the history of SNCC and SDS. You can watch the interview that she did for Eyes on the Prize here:
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Show this clip to a friend who’s nervous about impeachment.
Brian Kilmeade is "stunned" by a Fox News poll showing that 50% of America wants Trump impeached & removed, because he "thought that things were trending away [from impeachment.]"
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Stock buybacks were illegal until 1982. Banning them in 2020 isn’t a radical position.
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This is corny, but at least he’s trying. The Biden WH shouldn’t have to rely on their Transportation Secretary to come up with a simple way to promote their policies.
Pete Buttigieg says on CNN that FDR had the New Deal and Teddy Roosevelt had the Square Deal but that Biden has "The Big Deal".
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This is arguably the most important factor for why Russiagate/Trump's other scandals won't play out the same way as Watergate.
Today, many Americans can remember Presidents Nixon’s downfall and the trauma that it caused. Trust in government, for instance, has never recovered.
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Here's how Democrats should frame impeachment.
These articles of impeachment were earned by @realDonaldTrump. Might be the first thing he’s earned that he didn’t inherit.
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I apologize for stating the obvious, but most of the academic Twitter drama on this site an extension of the job market. The incentive structure has completely collapsed so we’re going to see more awful behavior.
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This reminds me of the time Carole Feraci stood up to Nixon in 1971: “If Jesus Christ were here tonight, you would not dare drop another bomb.”
Wow. A bishop just called out Trump and Vance to their faces at church. “The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. May I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those whose children fear their parents will be taken away.”
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We don’t need another study. This is the state of the profession.
Am I right that there are ZERO tenure-track jobs open in 20th c. US history, ONE job in 20th c. US in the world, and just a few jobs in 20th c. US Black & Latinx history?! While the future demands a historical perspective, it seems there will be fewer historians to offer one.
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@SamSeder Who needs good legislation. Tens of millions of unemployed people want fat jokes!.
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Steve Castor reminds me of the time Richard Nixon called Fred Thompson "Dumb as Hell."
Taylor has no idea how to respond to the conspiracy theories Republican Counsel Steve Castor is alluding to here. Yikes!
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Someone must have finally shown Trump this video of John Bolton on a fit board. .
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The Walz pick is another sign that more Democrats have realized that it’s no longer 1996.
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The majority of House Republicans voted to challenge the election results several hours after a right wing riot that led to 5 deaths.
President-elect Joe Biden: "We need a Republican Party. We need an opposition that's principled and strong."
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"George W. Bush made several calls reassuring Collins about Kavanaugh".
I miss the George W. Bush approach of not getting involved in politics after leaving office.
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For those who followed the National Archives/Women's March story, I wrote a piece for @contingent_mag on my time in the fed pres library system. There are many good civil servants within NARA, but the leadership often fails to support nonpartisan history.
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“If he said that 50 years ago, he shouldn’t have,” Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said in a statement. Has anyone at the Reagan Foundation listened to the tape?
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Today is the 45th anniversary of Richard Nixon's announcement that he would resign as president. Here's CBS's coverage from that night. During the speech, Nixon conceded that he made some mistakes in judgment, but did not admit to any specific wrongdoings.
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A must read piece from @mattduss . “Biden wasn’t hoodwinked by Netanyahu any more than he was by George W. Bush when he chose to back the Iraq War. He chose this path, and stayed on it despite constant warnings of exactly where it was leading.”
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1. Pearl Jam tickets were so hard to get in the 90s that getting them became a running gag/plot point that popped up in several TV shows/movies from around 1993-1998. Here's the Simpsons in 1997.
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