Matthew Thompson 🏳️‍🌈

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

We are sorry for the people who continue to suffer from California Derangement Syndrome.

Meanwhile, the Golden State is home to:
• the 4th-largest economy
• more Fortune 500s than any other state
• the largest company in world history
• more scientists, engineers & Nobel laureates
• the world’s best higher-ed system
• the most manufacturing & agriculture jobs
• a growing population

[Willie Ross Jr. Knee Deep @RossKneeDeep]

Seriously, how many of you believe that Trump is a sexual predator? ✋🏾

[Matthew Thompson 🏳️‍🌈 @Matthew_1of2]

@RossKneeDeep 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♂️🙋‍♂️🙋‍♂️ Ooo, Ooo, Ooo, I do.

[Christopher Webb @cwebbonline]

I’m not buying the “trans roommate” nonsense. Early reporting said he lived at home and his dad turned him in—multiple sources.

Now suddenly he has a trans roommate? So he and his “roommate” both live at his conservative Mormon parents’ house? Come on.

Here’s his parents’ neighbor literally saying Tyler Robinson lives three doors down.

[𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 @politicsusa46]

If there was one video I would want you to watch it would be this one from @IAmPoliticsGirl

She did the right thing by waiting until facts were available on which to create a clip that provides the truth. Because the truth really does matter.

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/gNaztBhsDz

[Juliette Kayyem @juliettekayyem]

Who or what agency would recommend NOT releasing the images to the public? Crowd sourcing in a manhunt investigation is standard operating procedure now. Utah public officials were very supportive of engaging the public. This statement can't possibly be true.

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

“Calling people a fascist is dangerous, violent rhetoric.”

Ok.

Here is a compilation of Trump doing precisely that:

[David Hogg 🟧 @davidhogg111]

Just a reminder of the violent rhetoric of the right when I was 18 only 2 months after the shooting at my high school a Trump supporter posted a video in a MAGA hat shooting a cardboard cut out of my face saying “Dear David Hogg. You want to push society to a civil war? I’m going to show you what a civil war is going to look like, David.” Unfortunately this story is not unique and stories like it are quite common with liberal activists.

https://t.co/LOlKmyFowJ

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

So… fascism?

[Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 @LucasSa56947288]

According to CNN, Donald Trump is dropping plan to send The National Guard to Chicago over legal concerns.

RETWEET to thank Gov. JB Pritzker for standing up to Trump!

[Jaime Harrison @harrisonjaime]

What do we have to lose?

DOE Cancels HBCU Grants: Education Department Pulls $350M from Minority-Serving Programs

https://t.co/bmkJUn2KqD

[Staff Sergeant Johnson @Colonel_Myway]

It would be a shame if #86BrianKilmeade started trending and he got fired for saying on live TV that the solution to homeless people is "Just Kill Them."

[🇨🇦CoffeyTimeNews🇨🇦 @CoffeyTimeNews]

Charlie Kirk was the 18,533rd American shot and killed in 2025.

Why is he the only one people are talking about?

What about the 18,532 before him?

What about the roughly 400 hundred who were shot and killed since then?

Does anyone know any of their names?

[Susan For San Jacinto City Council @ifudontlike2bad]

Hitler didn’t just target Jews. He murdered homeless, mentally ill, & disabled under the T4 “euthanasia” program, calling them "life unworthy of life." Doctors signed off. Families weren’t told.

It's starting again, & Trump has media programs normalizing it. So we become numb.

[Decoding Fox News @DecodingFoxNews]

A lot of people have posted this clip of Brian Kilmeade calling for the extermination of homeless people. I've added some context about the crime they were talking about before they went on a tear about homeless people and the ties to Nazi ideology in Kilmeade's statement.

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

Great message ‼️

[Rod (Izzy) 🇺🇸🦅 @1zzyzyx1]

It’s well worth listening to this. The regime assigned blame before knowing any facts about the crime. Well, it turned out that he again shot his wad too early, as everything he said was wrong. #DemsUnited

[𝗕𝗼𝗯 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸𝘀 🇺🇸🗽🇺🇦🙀☕️ 🐾🥬🥡 @bob_weeks]

This statement by Megyn Kelly makes several rhetorical and historical claims that deserve careful evaluation:

1. Characterization of Obama as “slick snake” and “divisive”
The phrase “slick snake” is not an argument but an ad hominem insult, designed to evoke distrust and disdain without presenting evidence. Calling Obama “divisive” similarly asserts a conclusion without demonstrating how his actions divided the country. Obama did address race explicitly (e.g., the 2008 “A More Perfect Union” speech, commentary on Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, etc.), but whether this constituted “injecting race when no one had been doing it” is highly debatable. Issues of race, policing, and inequality were present in American politics long before Obama—such as the debates around Hurricane Katrina (2005), racial profiling, and immigration. Kelly’s framing erases this longer history.

2. Claim that “Obama is the reason Trump came about”
This is a partial truth reframed simplistically. Scholars and journalists often note that Trump’s rise was, in part, a backlash to Obama’s presidency, particularly among voters resentful of demographic and cultural change (Klein, 2020; Tesler, 2016). However, attributing Trump’s emergence solely to Obama overlooks other critical factors: the Republican Party’s internal realignment, economic dislocation, right-wing media ecosystems, populist resentment of elites, and Trump’s own opportunistic charisma. Obama may have been a symbolic catalyst, but not the sole cause.

3. “Trump is the antidote…the answer to the divisiveness of Obama”
This is a rhetorical inversion. Trump’s style of politics—marked by direct personal attacks, frequent use of derogatory nicknames, and racially charged rhetoric—has been widely identified by both supporters and critics as more divisive than Obama’s (Sargent, 2019). To frame Trump as an “antidote” suggests that escalated division cures division, which is logically contradictory. It turns causality upside down: rather than healing division, Trump amplified it as part of his strategy.

4. Broader rhetorical strategy
Kelly’s framing relies on scapegoating (Obama as the sole origin of division), false causation (ignoring structural forces that contributed to Trump), and reversal (portraying Trump as healer rather than intensifier of divides). It appeals strongly to partisan confirmation bias—listeners already predisposed to view Obama negatively may find the argument persuasive without scrutinizing its logic.

Conclusion
Megyn Kelly’s statement is rhetorically effective for a conservative audience but analytically weak. It simplifies complex political dynamics into a morality play where Obama is the villain and Trump the corrective hero. The weaknesses lie in historical oversimplification, selective memory about race in American politics, and logical inconsistency in describing Trump as an “antidote” to division.

⸻

References
Klein, E. (2020). Why We’re Polarized. Avid Reader Press.
Sargent, G. (2019). An Uncivil President: Donald Trump and the Politics of Incivility. Washington Post.
Tesler, M. (2016). Post-Racial or Most-Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era. University of Chicago Press.

[Matthew Thompson 🏳️‍🌈 @Matthew_1of2]

@the_matt @mileslangston_ @factpostnews Additionally, Obama wasn't floating the idea, neither was his administration, nor was the DOJ nor WH Counsel looking into a third term run. All of which have been reported currently.

[Matthew Thompson 🏳️‍🌈 @Matthew_1of2]

@the_matt @mileslangston_ @factpostnews It was as idiotic then, as I'm sure you noticed there were zero cosponsors and it went nowhere, as it is now.

Or are you arguing that because someone in the recent past did an idiotic bill submission, someone now should be taken seriously for submitting the same type of bill?