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Stop saying Classified Documents and start saying Nuclear Secrets [1]

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Date: 2023-06-12  

Watching Trump and his Republican groupies twist themselves into knots trying to find a way to wave their magic wands and make Donald Trump great again is making me nauseous, and it’s not just from my head spinning. He knows—they know—that literally half of the country will listen to anything they say, buy whatever they have to sell, and excuse literally any crime that TFG commits. Less than half of Americans out there even agree that he should have been indicted! Are you freaking kidding me? What disturbing universe do we find ourselves in?

Anyway, when you’re dealing with irrational people, you sometimes have to fight fire with fire. Use arguments that have both a rational and an emotional effect. My recommendation is that both Democrats and right-thinking journalists start replacing the phrase, “Classified documents” with “Nuclear Secrets” when they are discussing the latest Trump indictments. This strategy has many advantages:

1) It immediately calls to mind the gravity of the situation. Can you imagine if more journalists started asking the Lindsey Grahams and Jim Jordans of the world to go on the record answering the question, “Is it ok for Donal Trump or any other person to own nuclear secrets?”

2) It makes it a LOT harder for the denialists to deny. Imagine the contortionist act they’ll have to pull to deny that TFG actually DID take such documents with him, and left them lying around Mar-a-Lago for all passing spies to see. Instead of arguing about whether it’s important, it’s suddenly about provable facts: did he take them, and what were they.

3) Perhaps most important of all, it undercuts the whole false equivalency case they are putting out there. Right now they are winning the “They do it too!” argument. “Equal treatment for everyone!” they howl. But most people, even rabid Republicans, while they might think that Hillary/Biden/Pence might have taken classified documents, they do not think that they intentionally purloined nuclear secrets.

Need I add, it is demonstrably TRUE? The indictment alleges that proof exists that at least some of the documents Trump walked out with dealt with “details about U.S. nuclear weapons, the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country and the military activities or capabilities of other countries.”

Do I think the cult members on the other side will suddenly change their tune? Hardly. There are WAY too many people out there that are beyond help. But with any luck we can start putting a wedge between the crazies and the people that might actually care a wee bit about national security.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/12/2174984/-Stop-saying-Classified-Documents-and-start-saying-Nuclear-Secrets

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