Non-fiction horror writer. PhD. Author of bestsellers HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, THE VIEW FROM FLYOVER COUNTRY, THEY KNEW. Forthcoming: THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP.
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As they say, LINK IN BIO
I don't care that Trump had consensual sex with a porn star.
I care that he's been accused by at least 16 women of sexual assault, by his ex-wife of rape, and by a 13-year-old girl of rape -- and that many of these accusers were threatened for speaking out.
The same people who said "It can't happen here" and then "No one could have seen it coming" will now say "It wasn't really that bad." It was. Do not let anyone rewrite the history of the Trump admin years. History must be remembered to ensure it does not repeat.
If reporters feel the impeachment hearings aren't "exciting" enough, they can go report on Trump's decades of mafia ties, sexual assaults, financial crimes, and all the other horrifying activity they failed to cover
I trust Warren. That trust does not come easy for me, especially when it comes to politicians.
But I believe in Elizabeth Warren. She is the right candidate to take on this dark moment in history. I'm grateful that she's running and that she's got our backs.
I'm not endorsing a candidate yet because it's too early. But Elizabeth Warren keeps impressing me with her moral clarity, practical plans, and willingness to tackle corruption head on. Pay attention to Elizabeth Warren -- not just for 2020 but for today.
People who say "Don't impeach because it won't work" blow my mind. The government is shut down by a nuke-bearing sociopath who serves hostile states with a cabal of criminals whose policies include locking up kids in Texas border camps where they die.
How's that working out?
The US did a very unusual thing when it voted out an aspiring autocrat despite huge obstacles (voter suppression, threats to officials, attempted coup, etc). But if the Dems do not abolish the filibuster and protect voting rights, the next US election will vote autocracy back in.
Everyone who spent the past two years dismissing the Trump team's ties to Russia as "a hysterical conspiracy theory" -- and attacking us who covered it anyway -- should never be hired to write about politics again
Kavanaugh's unhinged, entitled rage is making it easy to imagine him grabbing a teenage girl, throwing her on a bed, and forcing himself on her while muffling her screams
It is extremely common for authoritarian states to broadly expand the definition of an activist group so that anyone they oppose can be accused of being a member, and thus be arrested and surveiled according to their invented pretext. That is what they will try to do with antifa.
Trying to imagine the reaction if a previous president had a record of beating and raping his first wife, emotionally abusing his second wife, sexually assaulting multiple women...and then his third wife is abruptly hospitalized and not seen for 17 days and counting
That Kamala, Beto, and Inslee dropped out early while Bloomberg paid his way into an indefinite stay is disgusting. Whatever you do, don't vote for a billionaire, and be wary of those whom they favor.
I'm sick of the rapists and liars and traitors and kleptocrats and warmongers and white supremacists and the fact that all the descriptors in this tweet can apply to one person and he runs the USA
Oh FFS. 1) Trump's a racist 2) Trump's a major criminal 3) He's protected by a racist system controlled by corrupt rich white men 4) The victims of his policies are disproportionately non-white
Stop debating what we already know. Indict, impeach and end elite criminal impunity.
Disgusted by every politician and pundit who played down the always severe threat of Trump and uttered platitudes about patience.
People are dead because of you. More will die because of you. Your smug "patience" was nothing but a euphemism for your cowardice.
You should be less shocked by the smoking gun than by the fact that the gun is still in POTUS's hand.
It's smoking because he's shooting our country to death.
It's smoking because no one will take the gun.
It's smoking because the people tasked with protecting you reload it.
Wrong move. Most of Biden's "negative ads" are simply factual descriptions of horrific things Trump did. Some are merely montages of Trump saying terrible things. They are not "negative" due to spin, but due to truth. Keep them. The public deserves the truth.
They won’t say which article because what they did is so abhorrent.
They posted a photo of a grieving man holding the corpse of a Palestinian baby murdered by the Israeli military, and claimed that it wasn’t a real baby but a doll.
Over the weekend, we shared an article based on faulty sourcing. The article in question did not meet our editorial standards and was thus removed.
We take this matter seriously and will be handling it internally in order to prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.
We
I'm crying. For a year now, I've barely cried. Because I knew if I let myself fully feel what's in my heart, I'd get nothing done. I had a lot to do.
So I'm gonna let myself cry and cry, because tonight it finally feels like I can. With joy, relief, and gratitude.
Deutsche Bank was not only the money-laundering venue for Epstein but for Kushner, Trump, and multiple transnational mafia operatives, many tied to the Kremlin. These people work together, aided by a court system that has facilitated elite criminal impunity for decades.
Advice for networks to minimize their utility as propaganda tools:
1) Before the speech, get a panel of experts on autocracy to explain what rhetorical devices autocrats use, so the audience will recognize them
2) Use a time delay. Check facts and correct lies during speech.
My husband is at our St Louis polling site and he says lines are longer than he's ever seen. They're so long, he's in a corridor of the polling site he did not know existed. They rerouted the line to make room 😮
This is good. Get out and vote, Missouri! Polls open til 7:00 pm!
I have concluded that I died in early 2016, went to purgatory, and now must recite the same points about the Kushner threat endlessly until someone finally DOES SOMETHING, at which point I go to heaven. There is no other explanation as to why people are THIS SLOW to catch on.
Some advice:
* Stop interviewing Giuliani, Conway and other serial liars.
* Identify "pundits" who are under federal investigation or who served the Kremlin (Captuo, etc) as such. Or better, don't interview them either.
This isn't censorship. It's making responsible choices.
What's happening to Twitter is not the same as what happened to MySpace, LiveJournal, Tumblr, or other faded sites. People gradually moved from those sites on their own accord to better options. What's happening to Twitter is a controlled demolition.
After years of them begging to see it, I decided to let my kids watch The Ring. We're watching it together. So far I've had to explain:
* VCRs
* Landline phones
* Photo development stores
* Newspapers
What other horrors await in The Ring?!
US officials who have committed felonies -- provable felonies like lying on clearance forms, which should have led to their dismissal long ago -- are imprisoning parents who committed misdemeanors, and abducting and abusing children who did nothing.
Yes my warnings about authoritarianism all came true -- but NONE of this was hard to predict.
You should ask why so many people with power lied about what was right in front of us and why they were willing to sacrifice the lives of the most vulnerable in the service of that lie.
A failed coup is a dress rehearsal.
A political party that stages a coup and blocks investigation ultimately wants that coup to succeed.
A political party that did not stage a coup but does not assertively, quickly investigate and prosecute it *also* wants that coup to succeed.
GOP doesn't care about public disapproval as a result of the shutdown, and aren't concerned about being voted out as a result of disapproval. This means that (yet again) people need to examine election integrity. GOP are acting like a party which believes people have no leverage.
Our institutions failed. Our safeguards failed. Our checks and balances failed. Most of our officials failed.
The American people did NOT fail. We fought. And against overwhelming odds, we derailed an autocrat.
And we will continue to fight for the justice we deserve.
This is pathetic. Fine them and jail them! Otherwise you confirm that there are no consequences for obstructing justice.
The Trump team doesn't care about getting caught -- they like it. They flaunt their criminal impunity. They care about being *punished*. Learn the difference!
NEW: Rep. Adam Schiff says the White House officials who have "defied congressional subpoenas and refused to appear" for depositions will "further add to the body of evidence on a potential obstruction of Congress charge against the president."
Refusal to call white bombers terrorists is part of post-9/11 politics. In the 1990s, no one hesitated to call Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, or Eric Rudolph terrorists.
Trump has since formalized this bias, focusing on Muslims and defunding efforts to stop white terrorists.
Someone should ask the GOP why, given Cohen's long history of criminal ties and behavior -- which was in the public domain before 2016 -- they made him the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2017
#CohenTestimony
The US faces a long and dark road as it deals with the systemic problems that allowed Trump to take power and the brutal measures he will take to stay there.
But Biden's win matters enormously. The door to US democracy is open. Everyone who helped achieve this should feel proud.
“It is ridiculous that we are in this deja news cycle where I appear on TV again and again to have the same conversation about Kushner lying on his clearance forms. They need to indict Jared Kushner, indict Ivanka Trump, and get this crime family out of the White House!"
#AMJoy
Every official who blew off the threat of this admin to the world, who had baseless faith in broken institutions, who failed to confront overt sadism and lawlessness head on -- the deaths of Kurdish allies will be on you. Their blood is on you. What shameful cowards you all are.
All these vacuous “but history will judge them!” pundits seem to have missed when a sizable number of Americans learned about the century-old Tulsa Massacre last week
Advice for 2020:
1. Focus on voter suppression. It makes no difference how great your candidate is if people can't vote
2. 2019 will be tumultuous and bring unprecedented crises. Measure candidates by how well they understand the new crises and what plans they have to fix them
Other times there's been a "revelation" that Trump is a Russian agent. When he:
* Asked Russia for HRC emails
* Gave secrets to Russians in Oval after firing Comey
* Prostrated himself in Helsinki
* Used Trump Tower as a Russian mafia dorm
Ask why no one who could stop him did
How is it that they make the campaign season 300 years long but demand the vote be counted so quickly that it requires an app? Count the voters and add up the results on paper, you ding-dongs! The media can wait. Accuracy is more important than speed!
Trump shuns press conferences for Twitter. Twitter is a one-sided medium that gets the press to repeat what are essentially slogans all day.
The slogans are lies. If you're going to quote the slogans, specify immediately that they are lies. Or else you are enabling propaganda.
I have lost track of the times in this attempted coup where I've speculated on what they'll do next or simply described what they're doing now and heard "But they can't do that; it's against the law!"
Yes. That is why it is a coup. A coup is, by definition, against the law.
Stephen Miller designed the plan to snatch migrant children from their parents. The NYT now won't run his on the record statements because it makes him "uncomfortable".
It's more important to NYT to placate white supremacists than to speak the truth about the abuse of children.
I do not want to hear that Paul Ryan is "free" to speak his mind now and act morally.
Putting aside Ryan's utter lack of morals, everyone has the choice to do the right thing. It's not always easy.
But if you're an elected official, it's not merely a choice but an obligation.
Trump is holding these press conferences because he can’t hold rallies. Public health is not the point. He needs praise like he needs oxygen. His sycophants talk more than experts. Nothing about tests. It’s all about what Trump wants to hear, not what we need to know.
Do not report on Kushner in the Middle East without mentioning his family's West Bank settlement investments, his family's long-time ties to Netanyahu, and his many infractions as an amorphous "advisor", ranging from lying on security forms to the probable sale of state secrets
Remember when Spicer talked about 'Holocaust centers' and defended Hitler, saying he didn't use chemical weapons? That should have had actual repercussions. And should now too.
1. Trust your eyes, ears, common sense
2. Don't have baseless faith in institutions
3. Don't look for saviors
4. Look out for those more vulnerable than you
5. Stop caring what people think of you
6. Don't lie to make people feel better -- including yourself!
7. Live your values
Listen to her all the way through. I appreciate that
@AOC
focuses on children. It shows a willingness to protect the most vulnerable, and a refusal to give up on the future. Those are the qualities we need in leaders now.
Rep.
@AOC
(D-NY): "I want to tell children across this country...that no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you, and it belongs to everyone, and today, that notion -- that very notion -- was challenged."
She's got a plan for that. On some issues, she is the *only* one with a plan for that. Her plans are still there -- use them! She's the one who grasps the depth of the crisis. She was -- by far -- the best.
#ThankYouElizabeth
Monday: President Oprah
Tuesday: Fusion GPS
Wednesday: I forgot Wednesday
Thursday: "Shithole countries"
Friday: Porn star
That's it, right? This was all one week?
Uh, here's my most extensive article about how Trump has been a Russian asset for 30 years. It was published in 2017. The materials were all in the public domain 👀
Do not let Trump and defenders try that "political neophyte" shit. He's been involved in US politics AND tied to Russian officials and oligarchs for 30 years. My article from July:
1) This is what dictators do
2) This is what pathological narcissists do
3) This is illegal
4) This continues the lies and suppression of accurate data on climate by this admin, which puts lives at risk every day
The President of the United States altered a National Hurricane Center map with a sharpie to falsely extend the official forecast toward Alabama so he didn't have to admit he was wrong in a tweet.
WH correspondents -- if you want people to respect you, you need to do things worthy of respect.
Expose corruption instead of covering for liars. Work to inform and educate the public instead of protecting the cruel and powerful.
Do your damn jobs. Michelle Wolf did hers.
To Republicans expressing "concern" today: there are things you can actually DO:
1) Pass legislation to protect the Mueller probe
2) Don't let a president implicated in a criminal probe select for SCOTUS
3) Pass legislation to control Trump's ability to use nukes
4) IMPEACH HIM
Trump launched his campaign calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. He deemed a Mexican-American judge illegitimate by ethnicity. He let thousands of Puerto Ricans die. He stole Central American kids from their parents. Now he is trying to strip US-born Latinos of citizenship.
Officials need to bring evidence of Trump administration crimes directly to the people. The best format is impeachment hearings with open debate and no media filter.
Our media is largely sponsored by dictators or dictated by sponsors. Talk to the people directly.
We're living through:
1) Worst pandemic in modern history
2) Worst economy since Great Depression (maybe worse)
3) Worst hack of US govt ever
4) An attempted coup
5) A brewing civil war
6) A brewing foreign war
7) An admin serving organized crime
8) Led by a nuke-loving sociopath
There are snipers on the roof of the school where I got my MA.
There are police beating students at the school where I got my PhD.
At each school, I studied authoritarian regimes and how they brainwash people into believing that state brutality is not only normal, but deserved.
Amazing the way pundits tip-toe around using words like "fascism" or "authoritarianism" even now. Because you know who DIDN'T hesitate to use those terms in 2016? Actual scholars of authoritarianism, who agreed that Trump was an aspiring autocrat and that democracy was in danger.
Certain journalists' jealousy of Michael Avenatti is something to behold. They're more critical of him than they are of the Trump admin, whose reps threaten and even assault reporters.
People should be glad Avenatti exposes Trump team tactics and doesn't back down.
Note that Pence would have received many of the same intel briefs as Trump. Pence is complicit, has been consistently lying, and should also be removed from power.
Here’s the NYT story exposing Trump as someone who tried, from 2 weeks before taking the oath of office, to deceive the entire country about how Putin personally helped him win by criminal hacking into our election infrastructure. This is huge.
Pundits were like "Don't worry, Bill Barr would never violate the integrity of his office!" I'm like, "Holy shit, people, why do you think they hired him?!"
I'm glad people listened to Fiona Hill. I wish you'd listen when she says we're running out of time. We *never* had time. A central tactic of autocrats is to simply run out the clock. That's what Trump's been doing while people take their sweet time catching up to the obvious.
In addition to "joking" about raping children, Trump was accused in court of raping a 13-year-old and is tied to multiple pedophiles (Epstein, Arif, Casablancas, Nader, etc), some of whom were also sex traffickers. Those are the plain facts which people ignored for decades.
I live in St Louis MO. In 2018, my governor, Eric Greitens, was indicted and resigned. In 2019, my county executive, Steve Stenger, was indicted and resigned.
My senator is Josh Hawley; let's make it three for three.
#HawleyResign
This is the first time my children will be able to watch a live speech by a POTUS that's not full of lies, racist insults, or incitement of violence against fellow Americans
Better yet, do something besides tweeting. Hold him in contempt and jail him. The Trump criminal camp will do this over and over if you don't back up words with action.
"They are sitting there screaming and crying, 'Please don't take me away'...There are 700 little kids sitting there by themselves without their parents. They are traumatized."
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