Author | Lightnews

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 9h

Now we get to see how good the PR Department at United Airlines actually is. Imagine in this hyper-polarized environment being comfortable enough as a CEO to show your whole ass to the country?

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

If the framing shifts from "Trump is a strategic genius" to "Trump is a mentally unstable nut" then I am certain he would move on to something else.

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

Instead, if they wish to continue to report on it, then why not frame it as lunacy? "Trump continues to push an unhinged theory about a possible 3d. term. Is it time we start worrying about his mental health?"

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

If the media wishes to continue to report on a 3d term, the least they could do is to change the framing of it. Right now their frame is that it is a ripe topic for debate--they bring on Democrats, Republicans, and academics to weigh in on the possibilities.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

6. Trump either believes he can get the 28th Amendment passed nullifying the 22nd Amendment (not likely) or at some point in the next couple of years he plans on suspending the Constitution.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

5. Trump keeps bringing it up because it is all part of the grift--how many "Trump 2028" hats has he sold? Shirts? At what point do we see fundraising emails disguised as a poll asking his supporters whether they want a 3d term? This 3d term talk is just one more way he can fleece his supporters.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

4. Third term talk sucks up the media oxygen for any other story, keeping Trump front and center on an issue he can control. NPR's Tamara Keith was on air this AM bragging about her question to try and get Trump to commit to whether he believes in a third term or not.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

3. He is freezing the field so that one of his chosen successors (Vance or Rubio, as he says) will have the best chance of winning the nomination. The more he talks about a third term--fanciful as it is--the money people are not going to be seen pumping money into someone else's campaign.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

2. Trump is bringing up a third term run to forestall his lame duck status. He is quickly reaching the point where his power takes a nose dive, so he is trying to scare his Party to continue to do his bidding. I think this is a realistic explanation.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

1. They are snickering that it will be Eric or Don Jr who will be POTUS in 2029, making the "Trump 2028" hat technically correct. Owning the libs for fixating on the wrong Trump.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 4d

I hope this is all I say about Trump's #ThirdTerm since it is an astoundingly idiotic conversation that our political press indulges. As I see it, Trump and his confederates keep bringing it up for a number* of reasons:

*The list is not exhaustive

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 5d

The End of History and the Last Man:

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 5d

She came to my university in the spring to debate Marc Short, where her defense of Biden and Harris was vigorous, only to announce a couple of days that she was throwing all of them under the bus. I cannot listen to her now and take anything she says as what she seriously believes.

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 5d

KJP's current problem with her disastrous book tour is she is just not being honest, either with herself or her audience. She is trying to spin a reality where she can eat her cake and have it too. Right now her book just reads as naked opportunism.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 5d

Trump was probably impressed when his team showed him the nearly 100 pages they wrote in his defense: "Wow, when a judge sees this many pages, he or she is bound to side with me." Because reading the brief is just embarrassing.

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 5d

Looking at Trump's legal filing asking his hush money conviction to be overturned, I have the distinct feeling that they tossed out the attempt at making a qualitative case in favor of quantity in terms of the number of pages filed.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 6d

Oof

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 7d

...

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 12d

At some point, when Halligan is kicked to the curb by this administration and starts shopping her sad memoir of how she tried to fight the good fight, I hope that at every event she attends to shop that book she gets asked about why she zeroed in on Anna Bower. Just bizarre.

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 12d

This is really a doozy of a story. Not only a government official not understanding the rules of attribution when speaking to a journalist--who the source identifies as a journalist--but the weird fixation on the "off-the-beaten-path" publication Lawfare.
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

“Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.”

My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.

www.lawfaremedia.org

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

Johnson, in doing Trump's bidding by refusing to seat the 218th signature to the Epstein files, is completely ignoring (perhaps sincerely ignoring out of basic historical illiteracy) this lesson and what it cost Democrats and the country.

Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

The use of such hardball tactics helped propel Newt Gingrich's drive towards the speakership, and directly contributed both to the loss of the House by Democrats in 1994 and the baked in polar divide between the two parties.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

The election, and the decision by the secretary of state, did not take into account a number of irregularities in the election. The House convened their own fact finding committee made up of 2 Democrats and 1 Republican, and in the end, certified McCloskey the winner.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

...beat incumbent Dem Frank McCloskey by 34 votes. His election, like Grijalvac, was certified by the secretary of state. When he came to Washington for the swearing in of the opening session of Congress, his election was challenged by the Democrats, and Speaker O'Neill refused to swear him in.

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

Mike Johnson's refusal to seat Rep. Grijalvac for purely partisan reasons shows a total lack of understanding of recent history to how these hardball tactics backfire. In the 1984 midterm election, in Indiana's 8th District (thereafter referred to the "Bloody 8th"), GOP candidate Rick McIntyre...

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Chris Kelley @kelusman.bsky.social · 14d

In the abstract, it would be an opportunity for an executive branch to join a social media platform filled with the opposition to engage and learn, and possibly change minds. Instead, this White House is the drunk uncle who ruins every Thanksgiving dinner.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/u...

White House and Government Agencies Join Bluesky, Then Attack Democrats

www.nytimes.com