Here’s a thread about a NY Times profile of John Eastman, the loon who tried to get Mike Pence to overthrow the government on January 6th:
So it appears that @maggieNYT & @nytmike wrote a profile of John Eastman, Trump’s coup lawyer, but didn’t recount his long record of extremist activity.
Since they omitted this crucial information, here’s a short thread of what’s missing in this article
Eastman is anything but a “little-known but respected conservative lawyer.”
He has a decades-long history leading hate groups, especially those against LGBT people. He is the chairman of the “National Organization for Marriage,” a highly funded group opposing marriage equality
Eastman has called homosexuality “barbarism” and said on video that he supported a Ugandan law that made homosexual acts a life-sentence offence.
Eastman’s NOM group is intimately affiliated with the “World Congress of Families,” a radical anti-LGBT group funded by Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
Eastman and others have been feted in lavish conferences in Russia that are part of Putin’s destablization efforts
Russia’s efforts with the WCF are part of a long-standing Putin effort to openly fund extremists in the U.S. and many other countries to destabilize their politics.
U.S. journalists have devoted almost no coverage to this subject. It’s very real though
Eastman is also closely affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a far-right “think tank” that has labored for decades to impose Christian supremacism.
As @BulwarkOnline reported earlier, it’s also repeatedly excused right-wing violence
Eastman’s actions urging Mike Pence to impose Trump dictatorship on the U.S. are part of a huge tradition of Christianist thought which obsesses over dying for Jesus and “spiritual warfare” with liberal Christians, atheists, and Muslims
This tradition has received almost zero coverage in American media because to report on it and to disclose that its adherents are in the very highest echelons of Republican power instantly destroys the “access journalism” that has so corrupted our media.
Eastman and his Christianist colleagues are also working with Charlie Kirk to force their viewpoints onto high school & college students through “critical race theory” activism and an elaborate propaganda program as @MatthewBoedy reported
The links above will give you a good introduction to this dangerous political-religious tradition and its tremendous power, but please also see the work of @JeffSharlet, @anelsona, @RightWingWatch, @splcenter, @mmfa, and @EricBoehlert.
PS: This story graf which strongly implied that John Eastman somehow, magically became corrupted and deranged by affiliating with Donald Trump is what spurred this thread.
Eastman’s coup advice was 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 who he’s always been. His behavior was apotheosis, not aberration.
PPS: In December of 2016, I wrote an extensive article for @Salon about Russia openly funding many extremist groups in the U.S.
It got no media pickup because it wasn’t about speculative Trump gossip. All the issues are still present, however:
https://www.salon.com/2016/12/29/russia-calexit-texit-dissent/
Originally tweeted by Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) on October 2, 2021.
These people have been influential in Republican Party politics for decades and have been considered “the adults in the room” by the political press the entire time. In fact, you can see a very disturbing reversion to the mean in the media’s treatment of the current legislative sausage making: Crazy hippies vs The Grownups.
These are the radicals;. The “crazy” left are the normals. It’s long past time for the media to recognize this evolution. I can’t believe after Trump and January 6th that they haven’t groked it yet.