Ball of Thread

Donald Trump's relentless attack on The Deep State arose from manufactured claims he was wiretapped in 2016.

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The polarization around the Russian investigation all arose from the Steele dossier. This episode explains how it was likely injected, full of stories designed to be inflammatory, and how Republicans -- probably advised to do so by Russia -- used it to distract attention from the real Russian investigation.

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In honor of Don Jr's oligarch-funded wedding party, we're reissuing the Ball of Thread Series from a few years back.

Episode 1 covers how I understand the 2016 Russian attack to include not just several attempts to recruit Americans and stoke polarization, but also laid the groundwork for three devastating attacks on the US intelligence community.

Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/Shul5PbzBO0?si=fB3rdWnSBdf6flkL

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In a perfect phone call in July 2019 orchestrated for months by mobbed up corrupt Ukrainians -- some backed by Russia -- Trump attempted to corrupt the newly elected president of Ukraine, who had been elected on an anti-corruption platform. That attempted failed, but the aftermath corrupted virtually the entire Republican Party.

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Why Andrew Boutros' invocation of Trump v. US in an attempt to dodge sanctions in the Broadview 6 case is terrifying. Support these episodes by backing LOLGOP Studios on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/LOLGOPStudios

DOJ rolled out a conspiracy indictment against 15 people in Minnesota that risks criminalizing opposition to Trump more generally. Watch: https://youtu.be/tviFq9EkpvY?si=gqkgx5IUA6qrHHEG

Read more: https://emptywheel.net/2026/06/26/the-stories-todd-blanche-spins-about-antifa/ Produced by LOLGOP Studios. / lolgopstudios

Donald Trump has rolled out a Fraud Task Force, under JD Vance and Scott Brady (the guy who set up a way to criminally frame Joe and Hunter Biden). It itself is pretty fraudulent: an effort to shift attention and investigative focus away from the kind of fraud Trump commits to demonize brown people and defund Blue states.

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To find a resolution with Iran, Trump will need to budge on one or another of his most fundamental psychological rules: He can't oppose Vladimir Putin and he cannot admit that Obama was a better President than Trump.

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You can't separate Trump's disastrous war in Iran from the opportunities it gives Russia and China to wreak havoc in Europe and elsewhere. WATCH: https://youtu.be/nqNVpudA6_A?si=1G2dbnGp3eRZyS_t Read more:

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By sending an invoice for the damages Trump's tariffs did to the American consumer, JB Pritzker will make it obvious that Trump is trying to hoard the money he stole from American consumers. Produced by LOLGOP Studios. Read more: https://emptywheel.net/trumps-tantrum-tariffs/

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Marco Rubio went to Europe and invited them to remain allies of the US, but only if they adhere to a vision of Western culture and history that excises the contributions of Latinos like him, to say nothing of Black Americans.

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Behind the masks that Stephen Miller's goons are wearing lies a truth about America that destroys his claims of white supremacy. He cannot carry out his deeply racist project without relying on the labor of brown people.

Read more: https://emptywheel.net/stephen-miller-paid-latino-thugs-to-murder-alex-pretti/

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Republicans have made a choice: to dump billions of money that previously went into healthcare, including VA care, to pay goons who are shooting people dead in Minneapolis and elsewhere. They've literally taken money used to fund VA care to pay goons who shot VA nurse Alex Pretti in the back.

Read more: https://emptywheel.net/marco-rubio-will-let-2-5-million-children-die-so-sarah-rogers-can-fund-far-right-extremists-in-europe/

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Two weeks ago we argued that Stephen Miller thinks of his invasions of Venezuela and Minneapolis the same. This week, after Alex Pretti's murder, Donald Trump confirmed that.

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It may be easier to separate MAGAt from Trump by stoking their conspiracism than by explaining, factually, all the problems with Trump.

Read the post: https://www.emptywheel.net/portfolio-item/where-we-go-from-here/

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Stephen Miller's plan to murderbomb boats in the Caribbean and invade Venezuela and Greenland has direct ties to the latest invasion of Minneapolis.

Watch this: https://youtu.be/dIi6tA-DV_k?si=cLWePZcwI6gSZSzR

Read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2026/01/07/stephen-miller-has-similar-plans-for-colombia-and-columbia/

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Donald Trump will never accept losing anything – whether an election or a bet. But that wouldn't matter if he didn't convince millions of Americans to make his grievances their own.

This Ball of Thread unwinds what made the pincer attack that overran the Capitol on January 6th possible. Donald Trump's grievance narratives gave disaffected Americans meaning, and in that meaning, he convinced thousands of people to throw their lives away in his name. The thing is, it's all the same con. That con defeated the Russia investigation and weaponized the Department of Justice against his opponent. And when he lost in 2020, he unleashed it to unite fringe right-wing groups and mainstream Republicans in a shared revenge fantasy. Thus, he was able to raise a ragtag army to sack the nation's Capitol briefly, and in the process, savagely battered hundreds of police officers and ended America's tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

Though the attack ultimately failed by only delaying the certification of Joe Biden's victory, the bets Trump and many of his biggest fans made on January 6, 2021 are now paying off in ways that were inconceivable on January 6, 2025.

Stephen Miller has had two notable failures in 2025. His initial success at deporting 200 mostly innocent men to a concentration camp has been backfiring ever since. And his demand that DHS attempt to snatch 3,000 people a day has led to backlash without making the US safe from dangerous immigrants. These failures must become part of making Stephen Miller the villain of Trump's failures in 2026.

Read the post: https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/12/27/we-dont-know-how-when-stephen-miller-fails/

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Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair she didn't really know how bad the Epstein scandal would be, and so relied on her resident conspiracy theorists -- Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, and JD Vance -- instead. But she's still misjudging who cares about this.

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Donald Trump's second term National Security Strategy was an attack on Europe. While boasting of its own competence, it lists a bunch of ways Donald Trump has made the US less safe -- starting with the way he sells out American sovereignty whenever anyone offers him a pile of cryptocurrency. Watch this: https://youtu.be/n-E-BU6OOfw?si=QLLy_AYSBU19_AzK Support emptywheel: https://www.emptywheel.net/about/support/ Support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LOLGOPStudios