2) This decision needs to be understood as official misconduct of the very highest order. It isn't merely Trump using the military to “play politics,” which frames the issue too euphemistically.
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1) An important point is getting lost in all the discussion of Trump’s decision to send troops to the border to “protect us” from the migrant caravan. And we need to recapture it. A thread follows.
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3) Trump is using the military as a prop to sustain the monstrous and reprehensible campaign fiction that destitute migrants hundreds of miles away pose a national emergency.
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4) It is *precisely because* this is such an absurd and monumental falsehood that he is sending in troops. Trump *needs* to do this, in order to create imagery on voters’ televisions that makes that fiction *appear* real.
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5) Former military officers are now on record with
@washingtonpost calling this out for what it is. One says the depiction of the migrants as an “invasion” is fantasy. Another bluntly asks whether the military is being used for “political purposes”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-election-eve-border-mission-puts-the-military-in-partisan-crosshairs/2018/11/02/880dd048-deb5-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html?utm_term=.29199929030e …pic.twitter.com/dD5YNl25cY
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6) A military report debunks Trump’s biggest lies. It concludes only 20% of migrants will arrive at border. As for Trump's claims about “middle Easterners” and “tough fighters," The Post concludes: “The assessment does not support any of those claims.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-assessment-of-migrant-caravans-undermines-trumps-rhetoric/2018/11/02/78b9d82a-dec0-11e8-b3f0-62607289efee_story.html?utm_term=.4202b187fbeb …
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7) This isn’t just Trump. Many Republican incumbents and candidates are all in with this agitprop effort to whip up xenophobic panic for the express purpose of energizing the GOP base. Ask yourself: How many of them have objected to sending in the military to feed that panic?
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8) Some argue that the caravan presents serious issues that must be addressed. True, but there are answers to these problems (though the problems are difficult ones). The point is, what Trump is doing makes solutions *harder* to achieve, not easier: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/26/president-trump-has-found-his-reichstag-fire/ …pic.twitter.com/P7uyT793vX
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9) Because of all of these things, Trump’s decision is absolutely ripe for serious Congressional scrutiny. As I’ve reported, if Democrats take back the House, that’s exactly what it will get:https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1058107461750702081 …
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10) We have still not found language adequate to capturing the deep saturation of lies, hate, racism, xenophobia, and corrosive bad faith that we’re seeing from the Trump presidency, which in all kinds of ways are being enabled by his party: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/11/02/trump-floats-a-new-absurdity-to-support-his-latest-hate-narrative/ …pic.twitter.com/OZQKCHJpwc
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11) This is not the conduct of an actor in a democracy. And we need to call it out as such. No more euphemisms. No more dancing around the lies, racism, hate, demagoguery, and nonstop agitprop deception flooding out of official channels. No more. FIN
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End of conversation
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