EricaGrieder Profile picture
Jul 16, 2018 10 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Yes, we can. Whether we will is a different question, of course, but I don't think #HelsinkiSummit made that less likely, tbh. 1/
The thing is, what happened today was *entirely predictable.* Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote, in December 2015. texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/a-l…
At the time, everyone thought I was being melodramatic or hyperbolic--and neurotic, in any case; it was still six weeks before the Iowa caucus.
But I wasn't being melodramatic, or hyperbolic, or neurotic. For all we know Trump might have told Putin he could have Alaska back, during their two-hour-long private meeting today.
So really, what happened in Helsinki today was that Trump made it much harder for his apologists to accuse someone like me of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or ideologically motivated reasoning.
Trump also made it harder for his apologists to browbeat Republicans like @tedcruz into uniting behind Trump as the party leader. (Whether Republicans will defect, of course, remains to be seen, and most of them won't, probably. But they could, more easily.)
In 2015, Trump wasn't the president, and had never held elected office, so I could *posit* how he might conduct himself if elected, but couldn't falsify the theory that he was just putting on a show for the campaign season.

Now I can.
Trump's apologists, conversely, can argue that it's all worth it bc #SCOTUS or whatever but it's harder to leverage tribalism on behalf of a president who is avowedly a pawn of the Kremlin, I would think.
I mean, we literally just heard Vladimir Putin claim that the president of the United States had at least gently chided him for the annexation of Crimea, which Trump himself refused to confirm or deny. lol. #MAGA!
So, all in all, I don’t think this Trump debacle got worse today, but our ability to respond to it did and am therefore feeling more sanguine than I did yesterday.

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More from @EricaGrieder

Sep 9, 2018
My Sunday column in @HoustonChron—with an addendum for those of you who want to #StopKavanaugh: houstonchronicle.com/news/columnist… 1/
2/ You’ve heard of the @BetoORourke v @tedcruz race, right?

The thing is, Texas has a number of competitive statewide races this cycle, one of which is for attorney general.

The incumbent, @KenPaxtonTX, is under indictment, an ideologue, and even less likable than Cruz.
3/ By contrast the Democrat, @NelsonforTexas, is a highly qualified centrist who has clerked for two Reagan appointees and was provoked into running because Paxton is legitimately a threat to the rule of law.

Also, Nelson is not under indictment. Strikes me as quite lawful.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 26, 2018
And, it's hard to quantify the impact of uncertainty, of course. But Texas has *less* uncertainty than most states, in a sense, because the "Texas model" is in the constitution, which establishes a limited and lean STATE government. 1/
2/ That's essentially why Texas has historically been pro-business. We can't afford to NOT be pro-business. Which is, in turn, one of the reasons *business* has historically been pro-Texas. It's not just the model itself, it's the fact that you can plan around it.
3/ But in a trade war, that doesn't work to our advantage. Texas is differentially exposed to the impact AND differentially ill-equipped to weather it.
Read 7 tweets
Jul 14, 2018
Ok so, a few things about this, because as @baseballcrank says both sides are demanding that everyone pick a team and it's extremely inane and annoying 1/
This article, by @JoshuaMZeitz, is not particularly obnoxious by the standards of the genre, but I doubt Rs will find it persuasive. Let me highlight this passage:
Dem friends, if you genuinely see Trump or "Trumpism" as an existential threat to the republic--as some conservatives do!--you should just say that. People who share that premise (like me) will consider voting Dem in 2018 *solely on that basis*
Read 10 tweets

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