Seth Masket | Lightnews

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃

@smotus.bsky.social

42K followers 1.7K following 1.2K posts

"A very accessible, very interesting, non-bombastic political scientist." -Jonah Goldberg
Subscribe to my newsletter "Tusk" about US parties, campaigns, and politics: http://smotus.substack.com

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🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 2h

Has he ever been to a town hall meeting in a Republican district?

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 2h

When is the best time to remove a leader who is prone to conspiracy theories and racial scapegoating and who has toppled one country and is threatening to invade others? If only history were clearer

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 5h

Anyway, back to my point about how the anti-war, anti-interventionist right would close ranks behind Trump

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 12h

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

Matt Walsh tweeted last year: "We've spent the last 25 years bringing "freedom" and "democracy" to countries around the globe while our own country has been systematically invaded and now our largest cities are run by foreigners and communists. If you want to know why I'm so avowedly non-interventionist, this is why."

Then he tweeted today: ""This is a war for oil!!!!!"

First of all, the "war" lasted like 90 minutes. Second, going to war to secure vital resources for your own people is totally legitimate. Why should we allow some third world communist shithole to control trillions of dollars worth of oil?"

Laura Loomer tweeted last year: "I’m America First, I don’t support “Regime Change”. I went on @Bannons_WarRoom to talk about Chinese aggression in Venezuela and why we need to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign Islamic terrorist organization."

Then she tweeted yesterday: "Maduro has arrived at the DEA office in Manhattan. He was transported in an armored motorcade after being transported in a blindfold via helicopter & then by plane to New York after his compound in Caracas was raided by US Special Forces.

Proud to be an American today!

USA 🇺🇸"

Catturd tweeted last year: "Name one U.S. inspired regime change that hasn’t ended in absolute disaster."

Then he tweeted yesterday: "Venezuela is now more free than New York City."

Will Chamberlain tweeted last year: "The Republican Party is no longer the party of regime change and endless wars

If you want to be its standard-bearer that is a non-negotiable position"

Then he tweeted yesterday: "I can think of few better uses of my tax dollars than black-bagging the head of a foreign narco-trafficking organization that enriches itself by addicting and poisoning my fellow Americans"

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Scott A. Imberman, Alfie Kohn , and 1 more Brendan Nyhan, Scott A. Imberman, Alfie Kohn, Nathan P. Kalmoe

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 6h

People informed about the attack beforehand: NYT, WaPo, oil executives
People not informed: Those with the sole power to declare war

Trump Reveals He Gave US Oil Companies a Heads Up ‘Before and After’ Maduro Raid

Trump revealed that American oil companies were informed in advance of the raid on Venezuela that led to the capture of the country’s president.

www.mediaite.com

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 12h

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 17h

Much like Blucifer, the Death Star can't help but kill its builders

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 18h

It's common in many countries, and used to be in the US, for government to provide welfare and not obsess over who is *truly* needy or worry that people might become addicted to not being hungry

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 21h

The thing with all the "Wag The Dog" complaints is that wagging doesn't work. We had an example with Clinton's missile attack on Al Qaeda in 1998, in the middle of his year of Lewinsky coverage. The missile attacks got some attention, but it turns out the media can focus on more than one thing.

Reposted by Seth Masket

Jill Lawrence @jilldlawrence.bsky.social · 22h

@saletan.bsky.social says what so many of us are thinking: "Maduro’s regime isn’t the first government Trump has tried to topple in our hemisphere. It’s the second." www.thebulwark.com/p/which-coun...

Which Countries Will Trump Invade Next? He’s Given Us a Guide.

The reasons he listed for toppling Venezuela’s Maduro apply just as well to many other governments.

www.thebulwark.com

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Who knows how parties make decisions, says scholar of party decision-making

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Apparently tomorrow I have to start providing labor in exchange for my salary again

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is the United States running Venezuela right now?

RUBIO: What we are running is the direction this is going to move moving forward.

Absolute soup

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

web.archive.org/web/20230113...

Why Political Science Doesn't Like Term Limits

The political science literature on term limits is almost uniformly negative, finding that they increase polarization and make legislators weaker relative to governors and lobbyists.

web.archive.org

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Seth Masket, Stuart Shapiro

Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 1d

17 states have legislative term limits, most for 30+ years. We have *mountains* of data on this. It all points in the same direction: term limits bad.

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

But why didn't he say it was a distraction from eggs

Reposted by David R. Miller, Nathan P. Kalmoe

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Waging an illegal and unconstitutional war and replacing a sovereign nation's government with a group of oilmen is actually quite sufficient to be concerned about without labeling it as a distraction.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Schumer: "It makes you think that maybe to Trump he wants to distract the American people, as he always does, from the skyrocketing costs they are facing, from the Epstein files."

Reposted by David R. Miller, Nathan P. Kalmoe

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Schumer is either incredibly naive or wants us to believe he's incredibly naive and I'm not sure which is worse

Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 1d

The Trump regime repeatedly lied to Congress about their intention to pursue regime change in Venezuela. They didn’t get Congressional approval for regime change, but did it anyway.

Demanding a briefing in response is both pathetic and nonsensical. Calling for impeachment is the obvious response.

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

[Idris Elba rushed from WNBA game]

Reposted by Seth Masket

Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 1d

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Key info for any President making instantaneous life-and-death decisions: How's it playing on Twitter?

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 2d

Several of the photos have Twitter up on a screen in the background but I can’t make out what search term appears

Hegseth, Ratcliffe and Rubio near Trump in what appears to be a makeshift war room. A scene is behind them with Twitter up

Reposted by David R. Miller, Seth Masket, Simon Lester

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Schumer: "It makes you think that maybe to Trump he wants to distract the American people, as he always does, from the skyrocketing costs they are facing, from the Epstein files."

Reposted by Nathan P. Kalmoe

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, it's bad that Trump's secure war room is just some curtains at his golf club, but he was going to reveal anything classified at some upcoming podcast interview anyway

Jacob Bogage @jacobbogage.bsky.social · 2d

They’ve got Twitter up on the big screens in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago makeshift “situation room.”

Photos from Trump’s Truth Social account.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 1d

New at Tusk: How Trump’s anti-war, anti-nation-building voters will find a way to support him through this

Don't expect Trump's anti-war supporters to abandon him on Venezuela

Yet another event that will just reinforce our partisan beliefs

open.substack.com

Reposted by Axel Bruns, Will Jennings, Michael Zimmer , and 1 more Axel Bruns, Will Jennings, Michael Zimmer, Seth Masket

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 2d

Several of the photos have Twitter up on a screen in the background but I can’t make out what search term appears

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Efrén O. Pérez, Aaron Sojourner , and 4 more Rosemary A. Joyce, Efrén O. Pérez, Aaron Sojourner, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Scott A. Imberman, Seth Masket, Tim Stephens

Jacob Bogage @jacobbogage.bsky.social · 2d

They’ve got Twitter up on the big screens in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago makeshift “situation room.”

Photos from Trump’s Truth Social account.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Steve Peers , and 8 more Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Steve Peers, Rosemary A. Joyce, Jonathan Hopkin, David R. Miller, Peter Jacobsen, Sarah Roberts, Jelena Subotić, Steven S. Taylor, David R. Shumway

🦃 Seth Masket 🦃 @smotus.bsky.social · 2d

A college sophomore at an Occupy rally could not have generated such a grotesque outsized caricature of US imperialism

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Trump: "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."