It’s onerous sufficient to just accept that we had somebody who, I might argue, is a mob-boss-like madman as president of the US. And it’s onerous to swallow that just about 75 million Individuals voted for the man in 2020. However what I discover most stunning and beautiful of all is the variety of “leaders” within the Republican Occasion who, of their bare pursuit of energy, have been keen to desert their rules and bend the knee to him.
Donald Trump’s rogues gallery of Klingons is stuffed with characters like South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who as soon as mentioned Trump was “unfit” to be president however is now amongst his chief lapdogs. It additionally takes a particular breed of groveler–comparable to Texas senator Ted Cruz–to endorse a person who beforehand slandered your father (implying he may need been some sort of confederate in JFK’s assassination) and steered that your spouse was unattractive.
However in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu vaulted forward of the pack to enter the Shameless Bootlickers Corridor of Fame–on the primary poll.
It’s one factor to desert your honor and embrace “the massive lie” (as you could as a way to stay in good standing in Trumpworld) that the 2020 election was stolen. However it takes an entire new degree of sycophancy, one Sununu reached on digital camera, to acknowledge the reality that Joe Biden gained in a good election; that Trump was complicit within the January 6 revolt; and that Trump nonetheless faces a number of indictments–and but nonetheless endorse the ex-president.
Sununu apparently thinks he’ll be given an moral cross by saying the quiet half out loud: It’s politics. “That’s what individuals are judging this on…. And the final word determination will likely be in November to see the place individuals stand,” he mentioned. His rationale, as he tried to elucidate it, just isn’t that it’s the precise factor to do, however that he’s comfy backing Trump since 51% of Individuals don’t see election denialism or the revolt as disqualifying.
Okay. I do know we’ve turn out to be resistant to the insanity of such magical pondering. However simply parse that thought for a second. What Sununu’s admitting is that he is aware of the “stolen election” hoo-ha is a lie. And but, as a result of sufficient individuals need to imagine the lie, he’s keen to simply roll over. In my ebook, this is absolutely the inverse of what management is meant to seem like. If sufficient individuals imagine one thing, even when it’s a lie (a lie perpetuated by the chief of the celebration, no much less), observe them? Don’t lead, simply observe and get out of the best way? That’s how lemmings behave. That’s how they roll within the Democratic Individuals’s Republic of (North) Korea.
Certainly it’s an indication that Sununu, like so lots of his friends, could also be petrified of the facility and the purse strings that Staff Trump, if granted a second time period, may wield towards non-loyalists within the celebration. It’s additionally an indication that every one method of Republican officeholders rightly worry the wrath of the MAGA trolls who, in a Trump II universe, could really feel unbridled in settling scores with individuals (and politicians) whom they themselves worry, hate, and resent–or whose values don’t align with theirs.
In my ebook, Sununu is a good man–a great man who has now gone smooth. For some time, he himself had toyed with operating for the GOP nomination. I interviewed him then for the Showtime program The Circus, and he was clear as day, saying: “[Trump] couldn’t win in November of ’24. Biden would beat him.” What’s extra, he was sunny, affable, and my sort of Republican: a compassionate conservative who’s pro-choice, helps LGBTQ+ rights, and thinks vaccines are a good suggestion.
His message couldn’t have been extra simple: If Republicans had been to appoint Trump, they’d possible lose in November 2024. Which is, partially, presumably why he gave his full-throated endorsement to none apart from Nikki Haley. Simply 4 months in the past.
And now he’s been snagged by Trump, like so lots of his cohorts.
It’s simply so deflating to see Sununu, one of many only a few elected Republicans keen to acknowledge the plain (that Trump is the worst potential nominee for the celebration), wave the white flag and settle for that if the worst is what we’ve obtained, he’s all in for…the worst.
It makes one surprise: Is Liz Cheney one of many solely Republican figures with a backbone? (She misplaced her reelection main–and Home seat–after serving as vice chair of the January 6 committee.)
Sununu as soon as noticed–admittedly, on the Gridiron Membership’s annual dinner, the place the jokes and jibes move freely–that Trump was “f–king loopy.” He went on to make clear, “I don’t suppose he’s so loopy that you can put him in a psychological establishment. However I feel if he had been in a single, he ain’t getting out.”
Nicely, it seems the lunatics now run the GOP asylum. And it’s not so humorous now that the as soon as cheap, clear-eyed grownup within the room, Chris Sununu, is in there with him.
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