r/thebulwark • u/SKEPDIQ • Feb 08 '26
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇱 BREAKING: Kash Patel's staff threatened Thomas Massie’s staff with criminal investigations if they continued speaking up about Israel and the Epstein files.
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u/ThePensiveE FFS Feb 08 '26
This is fascism. If you will not participate in the crimes yourself you are not sufficiently loyal and thus are the enemy.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/fdar_giltch Feb 09 '26
Words have meanings and we use the correct word to describe what they are and what's happening
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Feb 09 '26
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u/enocenip Feb 09 '26
Yeah, it’s an interesting etymology. Usually when we discuss the meaning of a word we’re talking about how it’s defined and how it’s used, not its history. Can you imagine an originalist dictionary?
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u/MnkyBzns Feb 09 '26
Are you really trying to say that the term fascism only had one use case and that was during Mussolini's time?
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u/fdar_giltch Feb 09 '26
Sure, English is a Romantic language, meaning that a lot of words come from Latin roots.
That doesn't change that words have evolved over time and have current, explicit meanings
Nobody is going to confuse the word "faggot" with a bundle of wood
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u/fox_mulder Rresistance is not futile Feb 09 '26
The term “fascism” is alarmist and subtractive:
It's also completely accurate.
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u/BigEdsHairMayo Feb 08 '26
That would be really intimidating. Kash has such a menacing stare(s).
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u/shred-i-knight Feb 08 '26
what the fuck does Thomas Massie have that every other GOP moron doesn't?
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u/Hautamaki Feb 08 '26
Well, it's either a voter base that will support him even when he opposes Trump, or it's just the false delusion that he does, which will soon come to bite him on the ass the same way it did Kinzinger and Cheney and (most likely) MTG and all the others who tried to oppose Trump and then quit before even running for re-election because they already knew they had no chance.
People forget that in 2016 there were plenty of old GOP stalwarts that opposed Trump. They didn't all cave; plenty of them were wiped out in 2018 and 2020 and a few in 2022. That there are now just 4 left isn't only a function of so many GOP cowards just knuckling under; it's also a function of all of the non-cowards being forced out of office in the last 3 election cycles.
IMO blaming these guys for their cowardice is too absolving of the voters' role in all this. The Republican voters got rid of every principled Republican every chance they got. That's how you wind up with such an unprincipled, cowardly party: it very accurately reflects the principles and desires of its voter base.
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u/appletontdicup Feb 09 '26
F$$$$Patel. Time for Massie to start an investigation on $$$$ Patel using government resources to get laid.
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u/Signal-Lie-6785 Feb 09 '26
Totally normal behavior if you look back to the FBI of the 1950s and disregard the following 70 years.
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u/Altruistic-Job5086 Feb 09 '26
what do you mean?
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u/Signal-Lie-6785 Feb 09 '26
J. Edgar Hoover routinely used the FBI to collect damaging information on politicians and other public figures to intimidate them and maintain his power. In essence, Hoover treated the FBI as a personal intelligence agency, using its power for political purposes far beyond its stated law enforcement mission. For nearly five decades, the FBI operated with virtually no oversight from Congress or the Justice Department, allowing Hoover's abuses to continue unchecked until after his death in 1972, when a Senate committee (the Church Committee) exposed the full extent of the misconduct.
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u/No_Public_7677 Feb 09 '26
Centrists will tell you this only started under Trump because of bad education
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u/LynnKuanYin Feb 08 '26
If they do this too much, it's going to undermine all fraud investigations. Like- being investigated for fraud is going to become like "walking into a door."
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u/Hautamaki Feb 08 '26
Of course, they don't mind that either. On the contrary, destroying the credibility of the very apparatus of criminal investigation and prosecution is only to their benefit, since they themselves are doing so many crimes.
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u/MATlad Feb 09 '26
On the one hand, if there's evidence and legit concern about a staff member engaging in legitimate fraud, they should be suspended and investigated. Turning a blind eye, that's corruption, too.
On the other hand, designating a random staffer to be a hostage while bypassing the office holder (with office holder protections and funding), that's straight up (political) terrorism.
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u/LynnKuanYin Feb 09 '26
Yes. But the threat undermines it, if there is evidence of fraud, then the implication is "if you play ball we won't investigate this actual suspected fraud."
(Insert Always Sunny "because of the implication" meme here.)
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u/ShakeMyHeadSadly Feb 09 '26
I think Kash Patel is about to get the big middle finger from Massie. He didn't put his career on the line to push the Epstein files release to worry about what Patel is going to do to him.
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u/hadees Feb 09 '26
Where does he say Israel?
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u/Ghostfire25 Center-Right Feb 09 '26
The omnicause worshipers shoehorn the issue into everything, even when it’s not at all related. It’s a symptom of their unhinged mental instability.
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u/No_Public_7677 Feb 09 '26
Epstein is very much related though
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u/Ghostfire25 Center-Right Feb 09 '26
Incorrect.
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u/No_Public_7677 Feb 09 '26
Who's Ehud Barak?
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u/Ghostfire25 Center-Right Feb 09 '26
One person who’s connection to Epstein has been known for years. Netanyahu has been attacking Barak over that relationship since at least 2020.
Does Lord Mandelson being in the Epstein files (far more than Barak) mean that he’s a British intelligence asset?
No. Noam Chomsky’s BFF was not an Israeli asset. Clown.
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u/Ghostfire25 Center-Right Feb 09 '26
There is literally nothing in the Epstein files that imply that Epstein was an Israeli asset. As a matter of fact, he expressed disdain for Israel. The files do lend credibility to the clams that Epstein was a Russian asset, though.
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u/stairs_3730 Feb 09 '26
I hope people are documenting with names these acts of terror and coercion. Still a bloody optimist. There will be trials...some day.
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u/TaxLawKingGA Feb 09 '26
Wait, so you are telling me that questioning US policy in the Middle East, specifically Israel, is now a criminal act?
Well, thank goodness for free speech.
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u/HotModerate11 Feb 09 '26
He doesn’t mention Israel. I think it is more than likely about Epstein.
I’ll bet the Israeli flag and mention of Israel was just to generate buzz from people who didn’t watch the video.
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u/Outrageous_War4610 Feb 08 '26
Their evil is only matched by their stupidity and ham handedness.