Episode description

Marcy Wheeler ties it all together.

In this last bonus episode of Ball of Thread, Marcy explains how the confirmation of Ka$h Patel and the Trump administration’s abandonment of Ukraine confirm the big ideas behind Ball of Thread. 

Eight years ago, Kash Patel helped Trump turn a legitimate investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia into a grievance narrative. Over and over, Kash added to the tale: with Ukraine, with January 6, with the stolen documents.

And now, as Kash prepares to turn the FBI into an instrument of Trump’s vengeance while gutting the agency’s ability to counter Russian operations and crime, Trump has all but fully capitulated to Vladimir Putin.

For eight years, Kash and Trump have worked together to turn every effort to hold Trump accountable into a grievance fantasy to sell, to slowly train Republicans to eschew rule of law. Along the way, Trump delivered everything Vladimir Putin might have sought in 2016: a divided America, the end of the Western Order, and a world bartering corruption.

Ball of Thread hoped to help avoid the exact reality we now face. We failed, but we will persist. 

Marcy carries on, as always, at emptywheel.net, where you can follow and support her work.

Thanks to everyone who supported us in creating this document. Hopefully, we’ve shown that some of us were very, very aware of the risks our democracy faced from Donald Trump in real-time. May the lessons in these episodes help us defend our nation as we try to limit the misery of the biggest mistake this country's voters were ever lured into making.