Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas.
In amongst all the headline grabbing silliness generated by the GOP…Big Bird bashing, House Rep killing another House rep via avatar, intense squealing about most everything constructive attempted by the Dems…there are moments of true revelation and frightening glimpses of the world your party continues to support in the form of Donald Trump.
Another behind-the-scenes look of hidden/not hidden machinations to turn the White House occupant into the authoritarian he dreamed of becoming. Turns out he had any number of people who were happy to help him destroy democracy.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping example in reporter Jonathan Karl’s forthcoming book ‘Betrayal’ was Mr. Trump’s elevation of his body man, John McEntee, to director of presidential personnel. 29 years old. The guy who carried his bags. Who had never hired anyone for anything. Who was now in charge of vetting everybody, including ambassadors, Cabinet secretaries, and top intelligence officials.
But his true qualification was undying loyalty to Mr. Trump. A loyalty that required he seek out and destroy anyone deemed disloyal. Which he did with great effectiveness. Joseph McCarthy would have been proud.
The only thing that saved us from a complete loyalist takeover and supremely paranoiac chaos was the election.
And we know how Mr. Trump took that loss.
Book excerpts tell us Mr. Trump was so mad that the party did not fight harder to keep him in office that on January 20, just after he boarded Air Force One to leave Washington, he took a phone call from Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and told her that he was quitting the Republicans to start his own political party.
McDaniel told him that if he did that, the Republicans “would lose forever.” Trump responded: “Exactly.” A witness said he wanted to punish the officials for their refusal to fight harder to overturn the election.
Four days later, Trump relented after the RNC made it clear it would stop paying his legal bills and would stop letting him rent out the email list of his 40 million supporters, a list officials believed was worth about $100 million.
And therein lies the GOP deal with the devil. The fatal alliance with your party was solidified. He didn’t leave. And y’all propped him up.
I’m pretty sure y’all got the short end of the stick in that deal.
