The casual political observer might think that the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago yesterday would provide a welcome opportunity for a Trump-weary Republican Party. It’s an entirely post-presidential scandal for Donald Trump. Unlike his two impeachments, this time all legal jeopardy is purely a personal Trump problem. Big donors and Fox News management have been trying for months to nudge the party away from Trump. All they had to do was just say “No comment” and let justice take its course.
But that is not to be.
Trump has discovered a new test of power: using his own criminal misconduct to compel party leaders to rally to his support. One by one, they have executed the ritual of submission: Kevin McCarthy, Marco Rubio, even Ron DeSantis. Inwardly, they’re probably hoping the FBI will do for them what they are too weak and frightened to do for themselves. But outwardly, they are all indignation and threats of retribution. Storm and fury, signifying nothing.
Republicans have never understood irony, since they lack self-awareness. And now they are screaming that the FBI must be destroyed. In another desperate attempt to remain relevant, professional Trailer Park Trash and Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has gone so far as to suggest federal agents planted evidence in Trump’s Florida palace.
So much for the GOP as the party of “law and order.”
Senator Skeletor, er, I mean Scott (R-FL) compared the FBI raid to the Nazis, saying “You never hear of anyone fired. You never hear of anyone demoted, anything happening to any of these people who do the wrong thing. This should scare the living daylights out of American citizens and say we have got to change our federal government. The way our federal government has gone it’s like what we thought about the Gestapo and people like that.”
There is one deeply unexpected wrinkle in the political universe.
When the national spotlight finally turned on law enforcement killing unarmed Black civilians, Republicans saw the call to “defund the police” as offensively unpatriotic. When the F.B.I. came after a former president who obstructed justice, flushed public records down the toilet, and did all kinds of other things that, let’s just say, weren’t extremely friendly with the law, it was suddenly time to get serious about defunding law enforcement. Funny how that works.
Two years after Republicans tied even the most moderate Democrats to their more progressive colleagues who called to “defund the police,” attempting to sink them in the 2020 elections, Republicans took to social media last night to loudly call for defunding, well, federal law enforcement.
Marjorie Taylor Greene led the charge by declaring, simply, “DEFUND THE F.B.I.!”
Erick Erickson, who went from Never Trump to Always Trump, tweeted that, even as he struggles to form an opinion about what happened, he can already say that the F.B.I. should “be in line for defunding right behind the I.R.S.”
White nationalist House Republican Paul Gosar went so far as to call the F.B.I. “brown shirts” and to demand their “dismantling and elimination.”
Anthony Sabatini, a Republican state representative from Florida running for Congress, said local Florida law enforcement should arrest F.B.I. agents on sight and that “it’s time to completely gut the F.B.I. and D.O.J.”
Russ Vought, organizer of the conservative think tank working to create Trump’s “government in waiting” for 2025 went on Fox News, to preach the same gospel: defund the F.B.I.
In a matter of hours, the idea had spread like wildfire. Irony was last seen swigging from the bottle of MacAllen 25 she snagged from the hotel bar.
Republicans have been trying very hard to keep Trump out of the midterms. They don’t want an election that is a choice between Biden and Democrats vs Trump and Trumpism. They want a referendum about Biden and the general sense that everything kinda sucks. “Hey! Gas is $5/gallon!”
Until this summer that was working. Putting Trump at the center of things in the home stretch isn’t a plus for the GOP and they know it.
They just have no choice.
The other would-be presidential Republicans would love to clear Trump from the 2024 field, but they recognize they must join in the uproar to court the Trump base, now newly energized by fresh allegations of "deep state" misconduct. In supporting Trump on an issue - criminal scandal - that has in many ways defined his political trajectory, his party rivals are empowering him to run.
FBI warrants aside, the Republican message in 2022 primary contests in battleground states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania has been false accusations against the 2020 election.
The Democratic message is $35 insulin. The Republican response is “Ask not what your member of Congress can do for you. Ask what your member of Congress can do to salve Donald Trump’s hurt feelings.”
Republicans are defending a criminal whose crimes are well on the way to being fully exposed - in New York where his crime family business may be shut down, in Georgia where his ham-handed attempt to subvert voting is on tape, in Washington where the street gang members he recruited as supporters are receiving multi-year sentences for their attempted overthrow of the gtovernment and his top aides are talking to a grand jury investigating him for seditious conspiracy.
One of Trump’s political assets has been his ability to persuade others to adopt his grievances as their own. Republicans may want to accomplish certain things if they gain a House or Senate majority in 2022 and recover the presidency in 2024. The only thing Trump wants is vindication for his 2020 defeat: revenge on those who defeated him and legal impunity for his schemes to subvert and overturn the defeat.
2016 Trump made a lot of promises. 2020 Trump had a political record. 2024 Trump offers only resentments and criminality exposed.
In the hours since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s freshest resentments have become the election manifesto of his party, whose leaders are one by one lining up to investigate and punish the Department of Justice for enforcing the law against Donald Trump.
Usually, August of an election year is when a party shifts its message from red meat for the true believers to softer themes for the general electorate. Trump is trying to stop that pivot, and after the FBI’s visit, he may succeed.
After all, the execution of a search warrant is very seldom the end of an investigation. More legal action is coming, perhaps indictments, federal or state or both. How much energy do Republicans want to commit to defending Trump at every turn? As things are developing, the demand will be intense.
More and more of Trump’s ugliest secrets are coming to light, culminating in extracts from the tax returns that have finally been obtained by the House of Representatives.
So long as Republicans follow Trump, they can never change the subject. He won’t let them. He can’t let them. Another scandal always lies ahead.
If they enable him one more time, they might as well call the nomination contest over. The GOP is his party for the future as in the past, hopelessly and miserably.
Meanwhile, Senate and House Democrats are about to pass their third big spending bill of the Biden presidency, after COVID relief and infrastructure. They can tout allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, the biggest investment in climate change action ever, an infrastructure program to make recharging stations for the electric cars that will be built as a result of the legislation a common sight in the country, an economy that has seen the greatest job growth and lowest unemployment since records have been kept.
And gas ISN’T $7/gallon.
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The title of TC's piece, THE NEW TRUMP LOYALTY TEST could be aptly extended with, ':INSIDE THE GOP'S INSANE ASSYLM.' If the Republican Party was sane, it would do exactly what the Party wants to do, which is to dump Trump, but they are nowhere without him -- and in hell with him. Have the Republicans not gotten what they deserve? THEY ARE SICK, SICK, SICK.
-And we are part of the citizens' Army, which is going BRING THESE SUCKERS DOWN, DOWN, DOWN.
(Thank you guy and gal Republicans for making it easier to do every damn day.)
“Republicans have never understood irony, since they lack self-awareness. And now they are screaming that the FBI must be destroyed.” Excellent pointing out that insight, TC.
The sheer irony of Repubs beating the drum of “de-fund the police” places the sticks in their hands and this time it’s de-fund federal police. That irony is not lost on those of us teeming with self-awareness. I’m marking that refrain from them now (especially from Rubio, Voldemort, and Desantis) as #1 reason to people to never trust a Republican, don’t vote for a Republican, and note their utter lack of ethics, disregard for rule of law, and deflection using their own past rhetoric.
Mainstream media won’t touch it….yet, but there’s a lot of speculation regarding Ivana’s casket. Which catapulted after the subpoena going after missing boxes of documents at Gordo Largo. I’ve thought about it and I have concluded that if Ivana’s ashes are safe and on a respectful resting place, then I think trump would have loaded up the casket which appeared to be almost too heavy for the beefy pallbearers to bear. Loaded it up with the one thing that has been most important to him yet always elusive because of his compulsive narcissistic gambler’s mentality. Documents? No. He would sell those given the chance. I speculate cold, hard cash. Packed tightly. Saved for a tsunami day of justice raining down upon him.
If there is one thing that has been taught during the past several years of trumpery and trumpetry, it’s consider conspiracy and identify it when it’s targeted to destroy the common good.
🗽