[View here as a Twitter thread]
2/ What the Founding Fathers would have wanted: If Congress suspected a foreign power installed the president, everything stops until Congress learns the facts. Instead, Nunes strategized for how to push the GOP agenda through as quickly as possible.3/ In Tape #3 Nunes says that getting stolen emails from a foreign government and releasing them is criminal. (From what we know, Trump didn’t release them; he was an accessory after the fact, which is a also crime. twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield… ) Note the words: “that’s criminal.”
4/ The phrases together, “that’s criminal” and “if Mueller won’t clear the president” sort of suggests Nunes knows Trump committed crimes and is protecting him anyway. WaPo notes that protecting Trump at all costs is Nunes’ standard operating procedure:
5/ Nunes has normalized the not-normal. OK so if Nunes protected a president from a criminal investigation even though he knew the president committed crimes Nunes is committing a few crimes himself: obstruction of justice, conspiracy, maybe false statements, some form of fraud.
6/ But do we really need any more evidence that Trump and pals are committing crimes? The problem isn’t lack of evidence of crimes: russia-investigation-summary.com/crimes/ The problem is Trump has 41% approval (as per 538 polling aggregate) despite evidence of crimes:
7/ Because Nunes was part of the Trump transition team, his desperation in protecting Trump could be fear of his own criminal liability. But it seems to me something more is happening: people are numb to an abnormal situation. The WaPo’s take: “There Nunes goes again.” Shrug.
8/ Normal politics would be: “If Democrats are elected, they’ll enact laws we don’t like.” Abnormal: If Democrats are elected “all of this goes away.” Abnormal: “We must protect Trump from criminal investigation and stop Democrats from being elected at all costs.”
9/ Harvard Profs Levitsky and Ziblatt explain one reason the radicalized Fox-GOP sees Democrats as an existential threat. Not long ago, America was ruled by white male Christians and “ethnic majorities rarely give up their majority status without a fight.”
10/ The Democratic coalition (POC, urban & educated whites, immigrant communities) threatens what Palin referred to as the “real America.” Laura Ingraham gets right to the point:
11/ I was struck by this photo from 1929 during the stock market crash. They look pretty much the same. Same suit and hat. Same gender. Same color. From How Democracies Die: When people feel their political opponents are an existential threat, they resort to extreme measures:
