Ari Costello
@aricostello.bsky.social
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aricostello.bsky.social
Even MSNBC won’t use the c - - - word

A Reichstag Fire without even a whiff of a 🔥
Reposted by Ari Costello
wyrdsofpower.bsky.social
I’ve seen the pictures of Trump with Epstein’s girls. Here’s what’s in them - @michaelwolffnyc.bsky.social
Reposted by Ari Costello
gregsargent.bsky.social
JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...
Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule
He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.
newrepublic.com
aricostello.bsky.social
100%
gregsargent.bsky.social
Stephen Miller believes that if he supercharges the debate over Trump's abuses of power with enough propaganda, he can polarize it and force low-info voters to embrace authoritarianism. Pritzker/Newsom have accepted that this requires an information war in response.

newrepublic.com/article/2014...
Reposted by Ari Costello
iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social
Portland Cop Confronts ICE GOON
Threatens Arrest After Attempt to Drive Through Protest Crowd. ICE Worker Dismisses Safety Concerns, Says 'Not Many Protesters, It Won't Be Messy’.
aricostello.bsky.social
Started good — then…, 🤦‍♂️
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
yo they hired Mamdani video guys. someone's doing some thinking somewhere
schumer.senate.gov
The government is shut down because Trump and the Republicans are hellbent on taking health care away from you.

And they won’t even come to the table to talk to us about it.

This is not about politics. It's about people.

Let’s break it down:
aricostello.bsky.social
Mills will be the much stronger candidate.

All that counts now is: WIN — power
Reposted by Ari Costello
owillis.bsky.social
Democrats think people give a shit about explaining. Nobody cares. Just make the attack.
aricostello.bsky.social
Blood and soil nationalism
sharonk.bsky.social
man. if Eric Schmitt's speech to NatCon isn't a sign of the times, i don't know what is
"America is not a 'universal nation.' ... [American] principles are not abstractions. They are living, breathing things — rooted in a people and embodied in a way of life."

Senator Eric Schmitt got a standing ovation at Nat Con DC for saying America as a nation is the property of a distinct ethnic people.

Americans are a mix of “the most adventurous, the most courageous, the most curious and innovative” of the English, Scotch-Irish, and continental Europeans, who came as settlers and have spent hundreds of years building, fighting, and dying for "a homeland for themselves and their descendants."

"We’re a nation of settlers, explorers, and pioneers — born on the ocean waters that carried the first ships to our shores and forged in the crucible of a wild frontier. Our people tamed a continent, built a civilization from the wilderness, and wrote our nation’s name in history.

"Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God."

"The Continental Army soldiers dying of frostbite at Valley Forge, Pilgrims struggling to survive in the hard winter soil of Plymouth, pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier, [and] outnumbered Kentucky settlers, repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks from behind their stockade walls, would be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a 'proposition.'

"They believed they were forging a nation — a homeland for themselves and their descendants."

"America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations.

"It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.

"If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all."
aricostello.bsky.social
They cannot distinguish critical analysis of fact from personal smear.

To a really pathological degree, they conflate the two.

A clear sign of extremism if ever there was one.
harrylitman.bsky.social
@glennthrush.bsky.social: Bondi’s calculated bombast punctuated by her partisan and personal attacks on Democrats, reflects a coordinated effort across the administration to flip potentially damaging moments of public accountability to savage political opponents.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...
Update from Glenn Thrush
www.nytimes.com
aricostello.bsky.social
Newsom is being *very* careful in his policy positions to risk democratic ire in exchange for protection against demagogic ads in a General.

This is, I think, deliberate and politically savvy.

Unlike so many Dems, he understands that power is *everything* at this point, that purity is nothing.
aricostello.bsky.social
This guy, too, is a real extremist…. Smh….
volts.wtf
Members of the GOP openly calling for a "cleansing."
atrupar.com
Schmitt: "Let's just call it out. We need a cleansing here. Let's just be truthful about what's happening. This left-wing political violence is not a both sides thing. It's not."
aricostello.bsky.social
Inmates…, something something….asylum… mumble….
aricostello.bsky.social
Boy, is she a piece of work….
aricostello.bsky.social
We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis which the media is treating as an interesting, below-the-fold story.

Where are the five alarms? From the media? From business? From the elites? From academia?

Even, tbh, from much of the Democratic consultant-based leadership?

Hence, public apathy…
rbreich.bsky.social
Journalist Edward R. Murrow used his platform on CBS to criticize the witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

This is what real journalism should do — hold power to account, not capitulate to it.
aricostello.bsky.social
Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia (2016), showed how Putin and the Russsian media were inventing the facts in Ukraine that Putin was then “reacting to” (in Crimea).

Sound familiar?

A very good book, btw
aricostello.bsky.social
Let me know how you like it. I liked Bleeding Edge pretty well.
aricostello.bsky.social
🤦‍♂️
profmarylewis.bsky.social
Danielle Allen has proposed many good things for Harvard, so I’m puzzled by her reading of the word “compact” here, as if this would be an agreement freely entered into. She rightly says that, as written, this shouldn’t be agreed to. Maybe leave it there? therenovator.substack.com/p/why-im-exc...
Why I’m Excited About the White House’s Proposal for a Higher Ed Compact
Now we have a chance for collective action
therenovator.substack.com
aricostello.bsky.social
Anyway, *Shadow Ticket* comes out tomorrow…
aricostello.bsky.social
As my followers know, I’ve long been a pessimist. But even I’ve been surprised at the following:

In a time of Peace & Prosperity (unlike 1933), without even the *reality* of chaos, but simply the brazen manufactured *rhetoric* of chaos — a Nazi coup could overturn a Republic of 250 years.
Reposted by Ari Costello
clbergpowers.bsky.social
This might be the most substantive headline change I've seen since I started following this account. Just...