Michael Olsen

Communications and media, markets, government, good policy/bad, human economics, technology, politics, triathlon, cycling. My own views, natch

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@murphymike It’s an extraordinary piece

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@McFaul I suspect, just suspect, that Trump doesn't know what it is, but when his staff tells him, he will say "almost no one knows what Thucydides Trap is but me, but most don't..."

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@JonahDispatch Looking good handsome.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@MaysaDiye 04

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

No deal is better than a bad deal. America out negotiated again. #Iran

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@MercuriusFilius Yes, had a 1/3 chance, now have a 1/2 chance.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

Nothing. Nothing at all.

[Dan McLaughlin @baseballcrank]

Imagine how many billable hours went into this one, to end up 9-0. I bet Sony wishes it could have settled the case when it had a billion-dollar verdict in hand, and now gets nothing.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@Microinteracti1 There were no discussions.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

If reports are accurate that pro Trump activists are circulating a draft executive order declaring Chinese interference in 2020 and proposing a national emergency to expand presidential control over voting, including banning mail ballots and voting machines, then Europe is not shocked. Europe has seen this movie before. Many times. In multiple languages. With different uniforms.

Across the continent there is a long institutional memory of how democracies erode. It rarely begins with tanks. It begins with narratives about stolen elections. It begins with emergency powers framed as temporary. It begins with claims that only one leader can restore legitimacy. Europeans recognize the choreography because their own history forced them to study it in painful detail. When someone proposes expanding executive authority over the electoral system itself, alarm bells are not subtle. They are deafening.

What is surprising to many Europeans is not the proposal. It is that large parts of the United States still experience this as unthinkable. For years, media ecosystems closely aligned with Trump have rehearsed the language of fraud, foreign interference, and illegitimacy. The groundwork has been laid methodically. Claims repeated. Institutions questioned. Courts framed as partisan. Election officials portrayed as enemies. From the outside, the escalation feels incremental rather than sudden.

Europe has warned about democratic backsliding for years. The pattern is familiar: delegitimize the vote, centralize authority, frame opposition as existential threat, invoke emergency powers. It is procedural before it is dramatic. Legal before it is violent. By the time the violence appears, the narrative architecture is already built.

And January 6 remains the hinge point. Many Americans still treat it as an aberration, a chaotic day that spiraled. Europeans tend to see it as a stress test that revealed how far rhetoric had already moved the boundary of acceptable behavior. It was shocking. It was chaotic. But it did not emerge from nowhere. Political ecosystems do not spontaneously combust without oxygen.

Speculation about foreign forces fighting to “get back” the United States may sound theatrical. In reality, democracies do not rescue each other with armies. They influence through pressure, alliances, trade, and legitimacy. If the United States drifts toward emergency rule over elections, the confrontation will be political, economic, and institutional long before it is military. NATO is built to defend territory, not adjudicate internal constitutional crises.

The real question is not whether this is shocking. The question is whether Americans now see the pattern as clearly as outsiders do. Democracies rarely collapse in a single dramatic act. They change incrementally, justified step by justified step, each one defended as necessary.

Europe recognizes the pattern because it paid for the lesson in the past. The uncertainty now is whether the United States believes it is exempt from history.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

consider this column to be something like a fire drill. "It’s an alarm, one of thousands that should be ringing across the country. MAGA’s acts of aggression are already intimidating. Trump isn’t just trying to 'stop the steal' again; another kind of theft might already be underway." https://t.co/4s14QUV7NS

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@zerohedge So you think jack smith is credible about Hutchison?

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@DannyDeraney I definitely did this, with an eye squinted too of course.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@SarahLongwell25 Well done Sarah

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@BernieSanders A tractor is a robot.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@jasonfurman This is very good and right. So many examples of companies thinking ahead and antitrust enforcers thinking just today.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@Noahpinion This was great Noah. Fascinating write up of your thoughts.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@rainstormblue 185 and 15?

[The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial]

Blessing your evening with the greatest joke of all time.

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@RepJackKimble @grok is that real?

[Michael Olsen @meolsen]

@NoahCRothman Oh that's good stuff, all the iberico, fantastic from Campo Grande. Big fan.