It's essential that no one forget WHY he initiated that directive: To "prove" Trump's claim that "5M illegals voted for Hillary" and that's why she won the popular vote.Trump's base believes "illegal" story.
On the one-year anniversary of the 2016 election, @Newsweek reported that Trump had tweeted 1,000 times since the election & 268 times about @HillaryClinton. "On average, every three or four days."
Trump's obsession with HRC is also paralleled in MSM & among Sanders supporters.
Efforts by Trump & Co to deflect attention from #TrumpRussia have devolved into claims that it was @HillaryClinton who partnered with Putin in the election & #DNC created the #SteeleDossier.
It should be monumentally concerning to all Americans, but esp those in Congress we pay to maintain our democracy/Constitution, that the "witch hunt" against @HillaryClinton is part of Trump's relentless revenge pattern.
You should NOT have to be a @HillaryClinton fan nor even voted for her to be deeply troubled by this authoritarian behavior by Trump.
Had the Democratic leadership fought the election results at the time as they should have, we might not be here, with 2018 & 2020 threatened.
When @JeffreyToobin asserts that the 2020 Dem nominee will be under FBI investigation no matter who it is, he's referencing the codification of Trump's demands on the DOJ and their acceding to those authoritarian whims.
It threatens democracy.
It threatens the Constitution.
Also worrying are the concomitant flood of oppositional bot-ery into the mix and the failure of Sanders and Biden (who are running) to publicly side with the #MuellerInvestigation and decry Trump's assault on @HillaryClinton.
No Democrat can be allowed to side-step these issues.
That Trump is still leading chants of #LockHerUp at his rallies--most recently in Pensacola in mid-December--and the MSM just giggles along rather than calling it out for the major news story it is, entrenches Trump's ownership of the narrative and further disrupts normalcy.
Perhaps because I've written about authoritarian rule and studied it intensively, I question the collective shrug over this "jail your opposition" focus of our own DOJ, especially when it has been orchestrated by the POTUS.
This is NOT Russia, nor is it a banana republic.
I want folks to stop claiming this is a distraction when it is in fact a major story: It's emblematic of how well Trump has trained America to shrug off his worst excesses as somehow not as important as something else he's directed us to observe.
This IS the lede. Don't bury it.
AG Sessions acceding to Trump's demands to investigate @HillaryClinton (with the desired endgame to #LockHerUp) is a Nixonian slippery slope of Putinesque proportions. That @LindseyGrahamSC was the GOP flunky who propelled the narrative within the Senate is troubling.
This is how governments are shifted. Don't sit back and allow it to happen unprotested by buying into the Admin's own excuses. Don't parrot the trope that this isn't the REAL story--this IS the real story. It starts with @HillaryClinton and ends with another subverted election.
Don't @ me that this is a distraction. Those of us who've observed coups know it is not.
Irrespective of your Hillary-hate, show some concern for America.
America's in peril.
That's bad for the whole world. 🌿
Fascism creeps.
Rarely is there an anschluss.
The slow frog boil is upon us.
Be vigilant.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I don't think men really understand how different it is to be a woman out in the world and how quickly things can turn dangerous.
When I was living in New Orleans, I was walking home from work one night. It was fall--dark early & foggy.
A man came out of the fog toward me.
1/
He said hi, I said hi.
As he started to pass me, he asked me if I had the time.
I looked at my watch, looked up, he had a gun pointed at me.
He hit me so fast I wasn't able to steel myself.
I fell to the ground.
He said, "I could rape you right now, but I don't have time."
2/
He wanted my money.
I had the grocery money for the entire house (I lived with 3 other people) in my purse.
He took it and disappeared into the fog.
The whole thing was maybe ten minutes, start to finish.
I was shaking so hard I could hardly get up.
My head was bleeding.
3/
The majority of the working class in America is women and POC.
And white men as a group haven't voted majority Democrat since 1964--they stopped after LBJ signed the the #VRA.
Flip the narrative and start listening to the ACTUAL working class--the rest of us.
Stop centering white men for everything.
Stop claiming only white men can save us from the damage white men did to us.
Women are the working class--my investigation here:
.@matthewstoller is very worried about white men, but it's really women of all races who are facing the worst effects of economic and social stresses.
My investigation here: damemagazine.com/2018/05/10/why…
The relentlessness of passing over superb women with strong credentials & election histories in favor of whatever man is a headline at a moment is exhausting.
Two months ago it was Avenatti. Now it's O'Rourke.
Bypassing the majority of Americans--women--is a national disgrace.
O'Rourke is fine. He is not, Harris, Gillibrand or Klobuchar.
▪Gillibrand is Congress' leader on women's rights & sexual assault victims.
▪Harris set NN2018 on fire with her speeches reclaiming identity politics.
▪ Klobuchar highlighted #Kavanaugh's unfitness for SCOTUS.
Americans MUST stop looking past women to find some man, any man to supplant them.
It took THIRTY YEARS of incredibly hard work for @HillaryClinton to get to run for POTUS. The rules for women are so different. No one sees a woman give a single speech and says "president!"
I lived in NOLA right after college.
I drank most every day, as did everyone I knew.
We were all in the domestic Peace Corps, all in our early 20s, all hardworking activists with stressful work.
We drank too much at Mardi Gras, New Year's.
It's absurd to claim #Kavanaugh didn't.
Those of us who've had alcoholics in our lives--like Klobuchar--tend to be careful about alcohol because we've been damaged by the drunks in our lives. I'm a control freak, so never liked being drunk, but lots of my friends did. What IS true, is most 20somethings drink to excess.
This new tack from the #GOP to dismiss #Kavanaugh's alcoholic drinking--& I am not saying he was/is an alcoholic, but he certainly drank like one--is just wrong. It undermines their own credibility and ignores reality: statistically the vast majority of teens/20s get drunk OFTEN.
Let's talk about sex, #Kavanaugh & Venn diagram overlap of male entitlement.
I've written a lot about sex in various contexts. In the late 80s/early 90s I also gave safe sex workshops back when folks my age were dying 24/7 from #AIDS. My 1st book was on juvenile prostitution.
1/
Most of us know consensual and non-consensual sex differ. The entirety of #Kavanaugh's defense and his defenders' outrage is predicated on the presumption that no teenaged boy knows what consent is.
THEY. KNOW.
Some, like their adult counterparts, don't care.
This is key.
2/
Since #MeToo we've seen egregious serial rapists like #BillCosby and #HarveyWeinstein exposed & attempts made to prosecute them.
But there are "lesser" sexual assaults we've given a lighter hand to: Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Louis CK--too many to list.
3/