“For years now, some Republicans — and, to a large extent, the mainstream media — have harbored the notion that the GOP eventually would come to its senses. Surely, it would eventually dump the unhinged, disloyal, undemocratic and unfit Donald Trump, right?
But if Republicans did not wake from their slumber after the first impeachment or the second, after a jury decided he had lied about sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, after an indictment accusing him of obstruction and violating the Espionage Act (set out in shocking detail), and after replete evidence of his alleged role in an attempted coup, it is hard to imagine what would bring them to their senses. There is scant evidence that Trump would flee the race to focus on his legal defense; to the contrary, the worse his legal position, the more desperate he becomes to regain power.
Elected Republicans and right-wing media figures have contributed to the predicament as they have minimized, rationalized and denied jaw-dropping allegations against Trump. They have made it easy for Republicans to cling to Trump. Listen, stealing and bandying about top-secret documents isn’t so bad, is it? And, after all, he didn’t do all that much on Jan. 6, 2021, did he?
This is what results when a party, its pundit class and millions of followers cut themselves off from reality, fall into a world of paranoid conspiracies and refuse to simply acknowledge they were very, very wrong to side with him.”
Republicans not only rationalize their support for Trump claiming that his crimes are ‘not so bad,’ Republicans claim that Trump didn’t commit any crimes at all – that the appropriate, warranted, and lawful investigations and indictments of Trump are part of a nefarious conspiracy by Trump’s enemies to ‘get Trump.’
Indeed, this wrongheaded perception of Trump by the right has been codified with the lie that there’s a ‘war on Trump,’ another variation of Trump the ‘victim.’
But if Republicans did not wake from their slumber after the first impeachment or the second, after a jury decided he had lied about sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, after an indictment accusing him of obstruction and violating the Espionage Act (set out in shocking detail), and after replete evidence of his alleged role in an attempted coup, it is hard to imagine what would bring them to their senses. There is scant evidence that Trump would flee the race to focus on his legal defense; to the contrary, the worse his legal position, the more desperate he becomes to regain power.
Elected Republicans and right-wing media figures have contributed to the predicament as they have minimized, rationalized and denied jaw-dropping allegations against Trump. They have made it easy for Republicans to cling to Trump. Listen, stealing and bandying about top-secret documents isn’t so bad, is it? And, after all, he didn’t do all that much on Jan. 6, 2021, did he?
This is what results when a party, its pundit class and millions of followers cut themselves off from reality, fall into a world of paranoid conspiracies and refuse to simply acknowledge they were very, very wrong to side with him.”
Republicans not only rationalize their support for Trump claiming that his crimes are ‘not so bad,’ Republicans claim that Trump didn’t commit any crimes at all – that the appropriate, warranted, and lawful investigations and indictments of Trump are part of a nefarious conspiracy by Trump’s enemies to ‘get Trump.’
Indeed, this wrongheaded perception of Trump by the right has been codified with the lie that there’s a ‘war on Trump,’ another variation of Trump the ‘victim.’
