Wow. Tom Nichols unloads on his "former tribe" - GOP - as immoral, stupid, cowardly

[highplainsdem]

in a scathing reaction to Trump's insane tweet praising the North Korean dictator while attacking Biden.

Thread starts here, with full text below (and a link to Trump's tweet below that):

Link to tweet

It is time, yet again, to imagine how utterly insensate with rage Republicans would be if a Dem president were gleeful at an enemy dictator attacking one of his opponents. They would be calling not just for impeachment, but for invoking the 25th amendment. /1

These are the same Republicans - my former tribe - who pointed to every slip of the tongue by Hillary Clinton as evidence of fatal illness. Who took a dumb hot mic aside from Obama to Medvedev as treason. Who parsed every word from every Democrat for signs of betrayal. /2

Now, the President shows us horrifying evidence of, as @Peter_Wehner once put it, a "disordered personality," and the GOP and their voter base applaud because it's evidence to them that Trump is just a Regular Guy Who Talks Like Them. This is not only immoral, but stupid. /3

It's stupid because, on a fundamental level, it's false. No one "talks like Trump." Trump-cultists in the heartland claim he's just like them, when in fact if someone spoke to them - or their loved ones - as Trump speaks to others, they'd punch them right in the face. /4

And no one really "talks like Trump" about things like war, or about what a swell guy Kim Jong Un is. With the exception of some morons sitting around diners in red hats, no one really talks this way. No one says "I'm glad the dictator of North Korea is insulting Joe Biden." /5

But because we fear resentment and status envy and intellectual insecurity, we all have to pretend that it's not a massive failure of character that an entire political party is too cowardly and un-patriotic to stand up to this man even when he's applauding Kim Jong Un. /6

If you can't bring yourself to criticize Trump for what he just said - and for how he's been conducting himself for two years - you are either an idiot or a morally deficient coward. And either way, you're harming your country. /7

Happy Memorial Day and thank you for coming to my TED talk. /8x

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1132425770230530053.html


____



Editing to add a link to the Trump tweet Nichols was reacting to -- or, rather, to the second posting of it, since Trump or one of his flunkies deleted and reposted it to correct the original's misspelling of Biden's name as "Bidan":

Link to tweet

[cilla4progress]

2. trumpf said

???

[highplainsdem]

3. I've edited the OP to add a link to Trump's tweet. There are a number of threads about it here,

so I was assuming people had seen it already. Sorry.

[malaise]

4. Didn't the original tweet have Joe Bidan? n/t

[highplainsdem]

5. Yep. I mentioned in the line above the link to Trump's tweet that it was a reposting to correct the

misspelling in the original.

[PatrickforO]

6. Holy cow! What a great post.

Tom Nichols no less.

You know, Trump's walls may well be crumbling. I am mindful now, in the face of Nichols' message, of that Republican who was speaking at a fundraiser and said, in effect, that this might all be over soon.

Let's hope so, because this has been a nightmare two years.

[JHB]

7. His "former tribe" is the same thing it has been for his entire career

While it's always nice to see conservatives attack Trump, I'm a little tired of them never taking responsibility for him. For demonizing liberals and democrats, and turning the Republicans into the Party of Ahab in order to get votes. Without that, there is no "President Trump."

[highplainsdem]

8. kick