Trump's Trolls' Turn
Ball of Thread
Marcy Wheeler digs deeper into the Catturd Deficit that allows white supremacists to use Xitter to rig the news. Then she looks at how Trump's illegal war on Iran has created unprecedented fractures in his base, from Russian useful idiots like Marjorie Taylor Greene to anti-Semitic voices like Candace Owens, and even convicted January 6th participants like Joe Biggs. She explores how to exploit these cracks using the same tactics that got Trump elected, turning his own troll army's playbook against them.
info_outline
The Catturd Deficit
Ball of Thread
Marcy discusses how Twitter became Elon's Machine for Fascism and how we can use it against the fascists.
info_outline
AGENT MUSK: The Best Legal Hope to Take Down DOGE
Ball of Thread
A quick update from Marcy. Get the whole story at
info_outline
Ball of Ka$h — A Conclusion
Ball of Thread
Marcy Wheeler ties it all together. In this last bonus episode of Ball of Thread, Marcy explains how the confirmation of Ka$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...
info_outline
13| The Grievance Myth
Ball of Thread
The final Ball of Thread answers how Donald Trump won and defeated the rule of law, for now. His grievance myth. That’s how he got here. That’s why we must expect retribution next. The series will conclude with a final bonus episode, "So Let's Talk About Merrick Garland."
info_outline
12 | The Meaning of January 6th
Ball of Thread
Donald Trump will never accept losing anything – whether an election or a bet. But that wouldn’t matter if he didn’t convince millions of Americans to make his grievances their own. This Ball of Thread unwinds what made the pincer attack that overran the Capitol on January 6th possible. Donald Trump’s grievance narratives gave disaffected Americans meaning, and in that meaning, he convinced thousands of people to throw their lives away in his name. The thing is, it’s all the same con. That con defeated the Russia investigation and weaponized the Department of Justice...
info_outline
What You Miss About Hunter's Pardon If You Sniff Dick Pics
Ball of Thread
In this bonus episode, Marcy saves reporters a lot of work by explaining more than a half dozen direct political interventions into Hunter’s prosecutions. The reporting on Hunter Biden’s pardon shows just how badly Ball of Thread is needed—especially the last two episodes on the and the . While the pardon story has died down and the former FBI informant who tried to frame the Bidens has now pled guilty, the Republicans in the House who kept this targeted abuse of power alive for the last two years have vowed to continue hounding the soon-to-be-former president’s family. One thing Ball...
info_outline
11 | The Packaging of Hunter
Ball of Thread
After Bill Barr buried the Mueller Report and went to work suffocating the remaining prosecutions in the Russia investigation, Donald Trump and his “lawyer,“ Rudy Giuliani, shifted their main narrative focus from Hillary Clinton to Hunter Biden—also with the help of Bill Barr. The first flailing attempts to smear Joe Biden with his son’s connections to a corrupt Ukrainian business resulted in Donald Trump’s impeachment and the arrests of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. But MAGA hit paydirt with the “discovery” of Hunter Biden’s “laptop,” which first appeared mysteriously right...
info_outline
10 | Selling Justice
Ball of Thread
What if the President of the United States was framed with the help of the Attorney General of the president he defeated, and nobody cared? In this Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler reveals how Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Guiliani, spent more than a year trying to trade access to or leniency from the Department of Justice for dirt on Hunter Biden. And while that disgraceful abuse of power eventually erupted into Trump’s first impeachment, it essentially continued for another four years, only fading away after a key player in the conspiracy was indicted for feeding the FBI lies from...
info_outline
9 | Durham Descends
Ball of Thread
John Durham was given an impossible job. Even before the Mueller Report was ready, Bill Barr hired the once-respected US Attorney to investigate how the investigation into the Trump Campaign’s ties to Russia started. After the Inspector General failed to find a conspiracy against Trump inside the FBI against Trump, Barr and Durham tried their best to invent one. They followed every available George Papadaopulus conspiracy, hoping to turn Hillary Clinton, a victim of the Russian attack on the 2016 elections, into the villain. And that fumbling effort continued long after Trump was...
info_outlinePaul Manafort was in Spain in January 2017 when the “Trump dossier” was published. He was there to “re-establish” his relationship with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch to whom he owed millions. When the former chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign returned to the United States, he presented Republicans with a plan to discredit the entire Trump/Russia investigation.
In the second episode of Ball of Thread, Marcy Wheeler unwinds how the dossier collected by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele came together and blew up. She also reveals the untold story of Steele’s relationship with Deripaska and Deripaska’s absolutely brutal double-game.
Find out how Russian disinformation helped shape the stories about the dossier, blurring the Trump campaign’s relationship with the Kremlin and strategically polarizing the United States.
Want to know more? Join the Ball of Thread Patreon for bonus episodes on breaking news and to ask your questions, which could be answered in a bonus Q&A episode coming soon. For as little as $1 a month, you can support us and help spread the word.