Journalist, lawyer, NYT-bestselling Trump and Musk biographer, songwriter (Hounds, The Rangers), former CNN & BBC analyst, retired journalism prof. đ¤: sethabramson.net/bio âď¸: sethabramson.substack.com đš: retrostack.substack.com đś: houndsmusic.substack.com
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Those of you who predicted that I'd get sick if I pushed myself too hard on PROOF OF DEVILRY were correct. I am sick. It will cause a slight delay in the release of Book 3âalbeit not a significant one. I really want Book 3 to be excellent, as it's very much a culmination of the 400 pp. before it.
Goodnight, all. Sleep well and wake brave. Here is a song I wrote.
This is the most compelling case Iâve seen yet that America is no longer a democracy but an authoritarian state. Not a *soon-to-be* authoritarian stateâa *current* one.
A great point, and I fear we know why: they don't anticipate there will be elections going forwardâor if there are, their outcome will be structurally predetermined. This administration doesn't appear to have any expectation that it will ever be hamstrung or out of power. Not in 2026, not in 2028.
yes
The best way to honor the ethoi of the pre-Trump era isn't to reimagine them as immune to time and circumstances but to acknowledge that ethoi are dynamic responses to history and the evolving communities that comprise a nation. Times changeâand it's ethical to adapt ethoi to present circumstances.
When I see a journalist complimenting another journalist for being nonsensationalist, I take that as a clear signal that both journalists are deliberately underreporting the nature of the threats America now faces in order to maintain a death-grip on the journalistic cultural capital of another era.
Pre-2015, the categorical journalistic aversion to sensationalism was not just warranted and wise but required by the ethos of the profession. But journalists were also requiredâmore than anyone elseâto register that, beginning in June 2015, America entered a new era that required new sensitivities.
When objectively sensational events are happening daily, all journalists must be sensationalistsâattentive to what's happening, the fact that it's sensational, and the fact that the sensational can't be treated as commonplace. Today's nonsensationalist journalists are categorically *underreporting*.
In a million years you would never see me write the two paragraphs below that Ezra just published
I still think many Americans have no idea how bad this is going to get. I saw President Obama reposting a tepid, mealy-mouthed analysis by Ezra Kleinâwho's never seen a phenomenon he couldn't be 5 years late in incompetently circumscribingâand I felt like we don't have what it takes to survive this.
If you're not a radical by now, nothing could ever make you one. (And to be clear, I mean here "radical" by the standards of mainstream corporate mediaâwhose blithe, cowardly, and capitulating normopathy is stifling, crippling, unyielding, and at this point extremely dangerous to the United States.)
Never said that, don't believe it, happy to have you continue this conversation with yourself by yourself
I have been overusing em-dashes since you were in diapers
All these mod-Dem analysts writing soggy little op-eds from their velvet fainting couches are dreaming of Pulitzer Prizes and trade-press advances. Good for them. Maybe in 2027 those committees and presses can airlift these jerkoffs to a safe country to receive their precious awards and accolades.
This country is going to collapse, from sea to sea, and it'll collapse because Ezra Klein was the best our major media could do. Warm skim milk and a stale sugar cookie. And however angry you are about that, it's not angry enough. We let a monster devour our country like it was nothing. *Nothing*.
I've been in political journalism for 30 years now, and I can tell you that each year it becomes less and less about urgently informing the public and more and more about individual personalities with no particular journalistic ethos or sense of scope, courage or patriotism trying to make their bag.
If people think you're hyperbolic or over your skis or don't have the favor of big institutions or aren't being lauded by top critics and famous pols, you must be someone to ignore. Even if what you say is sourced and predictive. Corporate media has turned political writing into mere gamesmanship.
And you wonderâwhy? Why are all these people in mainstream media who are paid handsomely to know what's going on literally years behind understanding the dangers we're facing? And the answer is simple: in the halls of respectability politics, you can't get ahead without being acceptably milquetoast.
There was no sense from DC Democrats in the 2024 election that America was in mortal danger. More importantly there was no such sense from major mediaâincluding Kleinâwhich did its job so poorly that Americans went to the polls in 2024 more poorly informed than any US electorate in the last century.
I will tell you where he was: the same place the Democratic Party was. It was so fat and happy about having won the 2020 presidential election that it was heedless of all warnings from indie media that we were in the midst of an *ongoing insurrection* that in *no way* had capitulated to rule of law.
Where exactly was Ezra Klein when in January 2021âwhich is now four and a half years agoâindependent journalists were saying that our legal system and Congress had to move as quickly as possible to neutralize Trump as a threat to American democracy because the alternative was a rolling insurrection?
It was clear more than 4 years ago that Trump had lost interest in our Democratic process as designed and would seek to steal every election he could. It was clear more than 4 years ago that he was an insurrectionist willing to use violence to stay in power and looking to accumulate a paramilitary.
It was clear two years ago that Project 2025 and Trump planned to drain all monies from everything but Criminal Justice, Immigration, National Security and the Military, and that those formerly separate pots would in fact be one pot aimed at controlling the American population via government force.
I've no use for him at all. And candidly those in positions of power who do are exactly the people we desperately needed to have a sense of how dire things are but who don't. Trump is making clear he plans to be a dictator and make elections meaningless and Ezra Klein is acting like it's the 1990s.
I'm so *livid* at the fact that Dems who read the news and basically everyone in indie media understands that America is speeding toward a collapse of its culture, economy, rule of law, and international influence but but we must *still* be subjected to utter gobshite from mainstream media everyday.
We're still 5 or 6 years from Klein mentioning even 5% of the info on Trump's criminal activities that shows up with full sourcing in the 7 books of the Proof Series. Which means we're 5 or 6 years from Obama amplifying those truths. But *we're not going to have a fucking country* in 5 or 6 years.
Much of the blame lies at the feet of the media. Not indie mediaâwhich has been getting Trump right for about 10 years nowâbut exactly the sort of mealy-mouthed lukewarm respectability-politics jerkoffs like Klein who've been years behind all of their peers but know how to play major media's games.
A clear majority didn't want the policies Trump was secretly harboring in 2024 and still don't want them. His agenda is wildly unpopularâand it's only a part of his base, which is a tiny fraction of Americans, who use the mantra "I voted for this." And most of *them* don't even know what he's doing.
Klein saysâand Obama amplifies him in thisâthat it's at least possible that Trump is giving America what they said they wanted. But the data shows that voters pre-November had no idea what either candidate stood for or would do but clearly *didn't* support the policies we now see Trump was planning.
Did he promise to raise prices on everything? No. But that's what he did. Did he promise to militarize all major cities? Noâbut that's what he's now doing. Did he promise to conduct insane raids arresting nonviolent immigrants? Noâbut he is. Did he say he'd denaturalize america? No. But he plans to.
He lied about winning in 2020. He lied about the 2024 election being a landslide. He lied about voter fraud and election fraud. He pretended to have been vindicated in cases that merely ran out of time to imprison him. He ran as an open fascist who *still* wasn't honest with voters about his plans.
You can't speak coherently about what has to happen in America now if you even allow for the possibility that Trump did not run the most deceitful campaign about what he planned to do as president that contemporary American politics has ever seen. Any attempt to legitimize his actions is grotesque.
Why is President Obama amplifying an Ezra Klein essay in which Klein eliminates from history the fact that hundreds and hundreds of journalists asked Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign if his agenda was Project 2025 and *he lied to every single one of them, and every single American voter*?
Anyone writing an essay today whose conceit is that if you squint you can see how Trump is doing no more than what he was elected to do is a jerkoff. I would've used a kinder term months agoânow I don't care. You have to be a jerkoff to be a political analyst who cannot describe what just happened.
In just the first few sentences, Klein misstates a fact critical to his analysis. Trump got reelected by promising to deport violent illegal immigrants using our immigration system. That was a lie. It turned out he had no particular interest in violent illegal immigrants *or* our existing system.
I still think many Americans have no idea how bad this is going to get. I saw President Obama reposting a tepid, mealy-mouthed analysis by Ezra Kleinâwho's never seen a phenomenon he couldn't be 5 years late in incompetently circumscribingâand I felt like we don't have what it takes to survive this.
Quite possibly, but that no longer matters because if they were also trans the entire far right is going to be in a frenzy over what a tragedy this was, when they have let thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Innocents die of gun violence without caring at all
The alleged shooter appears to have been trans
The monstrousness of not caring about gun violence until the alleged shooter is from a group you want disgraced is the sort of thing that causes me to wonder if the US deserves to be saved from the ruin it's come to. And *of course* corporate media is fine with it all, because it means more revenue.
We're not a serious country and I don't know if we will be again in my lifetime. Half of America cares not at all how many children are murdered with guns because we don't have basic, commonsense gun safety laws. But if the shooter seems to have been trans suddenly these MAGAs cry, Oh, the children!
I've been working on other things all day, so I only just now was able to read the news about Minnesota. Before I'd gotten the full story, however, I did notice that people on the right seemed to care about this shooting after ignoring the hundreds before itâso I wondered about that. Now I know why.
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News at 11: she had a lemon sorbet
Folks who were worried major media wouldn't cover this book had nothing to fear. CNN saw that a 600-page Trump-Epstein book from a NYT-bestselling series had just been released and they gave the public what it wanted... ..."breaking news" on Ghislaine Maxwell going to a Clinton social event in 2013
Hillary Clinton tripped once on her way to an SUV and it launched 8 years of conspiracy theories about her hiding some eldritch chronic illness that was undoubtedly terminal Donald Trump shows up in public with the most fucked up hand imaginable and no one in media will touch it
(đ¨) BREAKING NEWS: Book Two of the 600-page Trump-Epstein epic Proof of Devilryâitself Book 7 of the NYT-bestselling Proof Seriesâhas just been released at the link below. Hundreds and hundreds of sources establishing the most shocking political scandal in U.S. history. Please share this widely.
They want us focused on street crimes so that we won't be focused on theirs. And the toll of theirs in lives and money and total victims dwarfs anything happening on the street. Street crime is realâbut if you're obsessed with it, they've got you right where they want you, pal.
A weird project for our times. #TrumpSick #TrumpEpsteinMaxwell
This song drops Wednesday for streaming. Itâs first song about the parties Trump threw at the Plaza Hotel throughout the 1990s in which he pimped kids to his pals after first plying them with booze and hard drugs. Heâs a monsterâbut this is a toe-tapper.
The House Oversight Committee has deepened its probe into the federal governmentâs investigation of the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, issuing a subpoena to his estate for an array of documents.
The catchiest Trump-Epstein song ever, play it loud and share it widely
Part II is out Read Download/save Share
It's terrifying that Trump first revealed he doesn't understand how percentages work weeks and weeks ago and it was a significant news story across the country, yet not a single person who works for him had the wherewithal or the courage or the freedom to correct him in a way that he could even hear
Are we ever going to get to a point in this country when we understand that the man below has a whole reality he's created in his head that has no connection to the one we live inâthat no one can dissuade him fromâbut that every fake emergency he declares to expand his powers draws exclusively from?
I did not know it was possible to give fewer than zero shits until I saw this interview
I realize there's a lot going on but I think people should know the best sports interview ever given was just given last night by a Marlins relief pitcher who slapped himself in the face pretty hard 3 times as soon as he emerged from the bullpen, got the save, and then dropped this epic minute on us
The catchiest Trump-Epstein song ever, play it loud and share it widely
. Seth's work is the best out there. I'll be reading this for part of the day. I refused to let it keep me up all night. .
THIS.
Itâs out!
Devilry is defined as "wicked activity"â*not* mere mischief.
If you have been following Seth, or have read his Proof books, you know that America is in trouble.
END/ I mention all this so youâll understand that January 6, the Epstein Scandal, the Trump-Russia Scandal and the coming Big Tech dystopiaâthe topics of the books of the Proof Series thus farâare scandals so interdisciplinary, transnational and multimodal weâre still learning *how* to discuss them.
15/ That isnât a knock on those authors. In conventional terms I deem most of them to be better than me. My asset has always been more in the realm of process and concept than writing style; that was true of my 6 books of published poetry, true of my one reference guide, and true of the Proof books.
14/ I know this muchâthis much Iâm sure ofâthat the Proof Series is *closer* to what the moment requires *structurally* in journalism (as a matter of process and concept) than the shelf of political nonfiction I have in my bedroom full of otherwise decent books that follow a now out-of-date model.
13/ I do not claim to have the formula for being a journalist in the Trump era down pat. I do not. But I am trying. My books are trying. The frustrations they causeâthe ice cream headachesâare a sign of that trying, as are the health problems even trying to *write* books like these have caused me.
12/ The books are also investigative vehiclesâthey ask questions; they analyze scenarios; they map out how one key fact simultaneously touches 5-10 subtopics. Theyâre in a sense trying to mirror the internet rather thanâlike most political books pre-internetâset up the author for a film option deal.
11/ ...sometimes find them repetitive. But what they do is curate a *very* large number of sources on a *large* number of connected topics with a connective tissue thatâs not fake conversations, boring metaphors or weirdly stilted ready-for-TV scenes but contextual analysis showing where pieces fit.
10/ This is why every book of the Proof Series is not like any other political book todayâand I *admit* that that is for better *and* worse. For instance, they really can only be read in small bites. And they are recursive (out of *necessity*) in ways that make people with *really* good memories...
9/ In 2018 I explained this to Simon & Schuster. Itâs part of how my first trade-press book deal happened. I made clear that I wasnât going to do what Woodward did and create scenes, make up fake conversations, sprinkle minor news across way too many pages, publish mostly filler with 3-4 big scoops.
8/ Trump scandals were categorically different because *heâs* a categorically different POTUSâa career criminal running a nation. A sociopath. Pathological liar. Clinical narcissist. Serial sexual predator. A con man. But his scandals were also different because of the internetâit changed politics.
7/ That also means that political books had to change. Forever. Incontrovertibly. No more 300-page books seeking a quick payday that take a topic thatâs not worth a book and spread 3 pieces of sizzle (surprising new facts) over 300 pages...like Bilboâs too much butter spread over too little bread.
6/ My pointâand I write this as a former journalism professorâ is that when Trump was elected, political journalism had to change completely. Forever. Incontrovertibly. And not small changes but systemic ones. But none of that happened. So he was covered poorly orâworseâin a way that aided his lies.
5/ Watergate was the most complex scandal of that timeâthe most moving parts of any 1950-1999 political scandalâbut we realize even *that* scandal could be sufficiently covered by just two dudes writing about it for 2 years. Sure, some others helped but weâve been *told* it was two guys, one source.
4/ ...would that really change the scandal at all? Really? It was what it was: an affair that ended a political career. Probably a more interesting book than a book about that scandal would have been a book on how Puritanism still informs America today, or something like that. But you get the idea.
3/ And sure, someone could write a 300-page book on the Hart scandal that contained (say) three sizzling new pieces of information about itâfor instance (just making all this up) the affair went on longer than we think, Hart planned to run for office as a bachelor, the Party almost backed himâbut...
2/ Scandals used to be different. The news used to be different. In both cases, smaller. What was the Gary Hart Scandal? A single photo. That was it. You could look at the photo and say, well, thereâs Gary Hart of a boat and... ...yep, that is definitely *not* his wife. Okay, I get it. All of it.
1/ Some thoughts, now that we are 400 pages into a 600-page new book release (the last 200 pages will come out on August 31) and people are seeing both how harrowing and how *unusual* a book this is. I wanted to speak a bit about why the book is like it is, indeed why the Proof Series is as it is.
(đ¨) BREAKING NEWS: Book Two of the 600-page Trump-Epstein epic Proof of Devilryâitself Book 7 of the NYT-bestselling Proof Seriesâhas just been released at the link below. Hundreds and hundreds of sources establishing the most shocking political scandal in U.S. history. Please share this widely.
That is the abridged version The story of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein may be the most utterly mind-blowing and borderline fantastical nonfiction political drama of the last century, and it could easily be told over thousands of pages rather than 600
(đ¨) ALERT: Donald Trump's Supposed Partial Release of The Epstein Files Was a Scam; Trump Told America He Was Fine with the Release, But It Turns Out That That's Because It Was Almost All Already-Released Documents and the Real Epstein Files Remain Hidden
Tomorrow. You will not want to miss Book Two of this 600-page, fully sourced epic from the NYT-bestselling Proof Series.
What I would suggest people take from this is that Donald Trump and his lawyers need more time to destroy those elements of the Epstein Files they are determined will never see the light of day. If there's ever a supposed "full" release, be certain that much will have already been destroyed.
(đ¨) ALERT: Donald Trump's Supposed Partial Release of The Epstein Files Was a Scam; Trump Told America He Was Fine with the Release, But It Turns Out That That's Because It Was Almost All Already-Released Documents and the Real Epstein Files Remain Hidden
Frost: On one end, we have the big ugly law. And then on the other, we have the federal government occupying our cities.. It's not two different things. It's the same damn thing. These aren't things that distract from one another. This is the thing to enable the other thing,
Well, good news, it won't
Coming Sunday.
I am reading the Maxwell Transcript and it is the biggest pile of bullshit I have ever encountered in my 25 years as a lawyer
I am reading the Maxwell Transcript and it is the biggest pile of bullshit I have ever encountered in my 25 years as a lawyer
Chicago is not going to sit down for this shit. It is illegal, it is un-American, and it comes very close to declaring war on America.
I understand this.
I assume this happened in part because the people at LEGO realized that this timeline is garbage and that Gen X desperately needs a life preserver
Nighteyes is likely the best animal character in all of fiction (excluding books with almost exclusively nonhuman characters, like Watership Down, Frog and Toad, Charlotte's Web, or Animal Farm). IYKYK.
In saying this, I want to assure the *rest* of the American people that if you ever commit Fraud you'll *never* get away with it, will be assessed the *maximum* penalty and will *never* win on appeal It's critical that the jurisprudential largesse we see here only apply to Trump
Thank God! I worried Trump wouldn't be able to enter his sixth decade of regularly defrauding people with impunity, or worse still might finally, as he approaches the age of 80, be sent a message from our society that Fraud is a bad thing Danger avoided!
Au contraireâI suspect that beneath the masks and gaiters the surge in ICE agents (and needless violence committed by ICE) is very much attributable to the *old* Proud Boys. If there's a Proud Boy in your neighborhood, I'd bet they're not around as much anymore, as ICE work can take one far afield.
Just nowâŚ
Fascism. Fascism is here. We must be perfectly clear about this. The country is being shut down and/or made hostile to any who do not dance to the tune of the Dear Leader, who has absolutely no plans of ever leaving the White House. Not ever. We can pretend he will leave, but we know the truth.