Seth Abramson Profile picture
Aug 27, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Trump never built his vanity border wall—though after promising Mexico would pay for it, he tried to steal money from our troops and everyone else to do it (and men linked to him stole money in its name).

But America *will* ultimately have to build the Trump Virus Memorial Wall. Image
PS/ Thanks to @OlphertJustin for the image. I personally measured it to confirm that the lengths are accurate.

I hope people don't think I'm joking. I wouldn't joke about this. I believe America owes it to our pandemic dead to #BuildtheWall—the Trump Virus Memorial Wall—in D.C.
PS2/ This pandemic has been the greatest public health disaster in our history. The death toll alone would put it in the conversation—but what puts it first among America's historic tragedies is that nearly all the deaths were preventable. That's why a Memorial Wall is justified.
PS3/ I know discussion of a Memorial Wall won't begin in earnest until after the pandemic is "over"—keeping in mind that the Trump White House indicated, during the RNC, that it *is* over, so *they* should start talking about a Memorial Wall—but it's useful to note the issue now.
PS4/ I'd like to know why the Trump White House prefers to build a wall *with no statistically significant effect on national security* at *obscene* expense rather than a Memorial Wall to commemorate the lives and deaths of what will be hundreds of thousands of US COVID-19 dead.
PS5/ I'll just end by reiterating that the one #BuildtheWall campaign I *will* support—and the one #BuildtheWall campaign we all *know* Donald Trump will *never* support, as media has established that he is responsible for most of the names on it—is the Trump Virus Memorial Wall.
NOTE/ In response to a query: it's not a matter of death toll. It's that *malfeasance* was a key cause of death. For instance, there was incompetence in our AIDS response—but we've never seen so many Americans die here at home in a public health crisis of our government's making.

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More from @SethAbramson

Mar 16, 2021
Okay as long as we're 100% clear on the fact that New Hampshire is *not* a "GOP-leaning state" and has been pretty reliably blue for a while
(PS) Folks, Kyle was talking about national politics and national elections and as a Granite Stater I correctly pointed out that he was wrong. He, and anyone else, can suddenly switch to talking about state politics and I will probably agree at the state level we lean right here.
(PS2) I suspect many commenting here aren't New Englanders. Vermont has a GOP governor and is a blue state in national elections. Massachusetts has GOP governor and is a blue state in national elections. New Hampshire has a GOP governor and is a blue state in national elections.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 16, 2021
(🎶) This 50-year-old song sounds ~54 years old. I didn't think about its lyrics until today. Now I think it's about a British dandy—*super* high—heckling a street performer who, given organ-grinding's history, may well be an impoverished recent immigrant.
PS/ For those who don't know, I was briefly a radio DJ back in the 90s and played exclusively psychedelic music from the US and UK released between 1966 and 1971. So sometimes I'll get one of those songs stuck in my head—and realize I hear it differently now than I did in my 20s.
PS2/ I also find that posting the sort of music I really truly like here on the feed underscores better than anything else possibly could how little I actually think about trying to accrue followers. My taste in music is... very particular—and doesn't exactly bring the crowds in.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 16, 2021
Just heard Juliette Kayyam say on CNN that so far the Capitol conspiracy cases have been weak, involved 1 to 3 people, and established only that some people conspired to meet "at the Trump rally."

Uh, no.

WSJ reports that 30 to 40 Oath Keepers plotted to murder all of Congress.
I think CNN doesn't understand how many hours of research one has to put into the events of January 6 to speak competently about them on-air. Kayyem is very smart and also very qualified. Those facts have nothing to do with whether she knows much about the January 6 insurrection.
One of the many problems we have with cable news today is that analysts are selected for their credentials and their general expertise rather than their research and their specific expertise.

So we end up with very smart people saying very stupid things on very important topics.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 22, 2021
The Steele dossier remains one of the most lied-about items of the whole Trump presidency. Republicans lie about Steele's background, motivations, knowledge, funders and claims. They lie about the dossier timeline and they lie about its provenance and they lie about its accuracy.
We must also understand that it's no surprise that Republicans lie about the dossier. When the author of a dossier tells you in advance that 30% of it is likely inaccurate, as long as you lie about him telling you that and claim he didn't you can spend years pointing out the 30%.
Steele is an honorable man who had been a valuable FBI partner for years when *Republicans* approached him to try to keep Donald Trump from the presidency. When the GOP folded and accepted Trump as its Lord and Savior, a law firm hired Steele to continue his overseas work.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 18, 2020
Folks, after *two-plus years* of hundreds of you—literally—pleading with Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program to have me on (thank you for tagging me in these kind requests), I want you to know that the staff at the show have finally *heard you* loud and clear and unfollowed this feed
PS/ The above tweet, while 100% true, is intended to be funny—as I don't sweat it one way or another whether MSNBC invites me on again (12 invitations/12 cancellations was enough for me, as I told Macmillan). But I thought folks would like to know you can stop petitioning Rachel.
PS2/ I really do appreciate the effort you all made to get the Proof series noticed by Rachel. She's a metajournalist on TV and I'm a metajournalist in print, so it made sense for there to be a synergy (and her program Twitter feed following mine for years made it seem possible).
Read 7 tweets
Sep 18, 2020
So great to be back on the BBC tonight! Felt like no time had passed at all...though in fact, I'd written a 1,000-page book since I was last on, and as I think more about that I... OK, yeah, time has passed. Writing each of the Proof books was a grueling, disorienting experience.
I remember back in August 2018, when I was working with S&S on how to create a metajournalistic epic, and it was like—I'm serious—a math problem. How do you write a book with 75+ metanarratives, 250+ narratives, 400 characters.... and no scenes, dialogue, or character exposition?
I always hoped I'd have a chance to talk to another journalist about the process of creating the Proof series, because it really did feel like trying to invent a new subgenre of nonfiction. Folks who read the Proof series don't realize how it was constructed: from the inside out.
Read 17 tweets

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