Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

‘RESOVLVED’: The Zoom Kool-Aid Convention

“I mean say what you want about the tenets of national socialism dude, at least it’s an ethos.” – Walter Sobchak 

The Republican Party is a cult in service of Donald Trump’s whims and its only stated principle is that the media is mean to them and whatever the Democrats are for is bad. May it be Resovlved.

This simple summation of the state of the GOP is pretty obvious to those of us who are on the outs with the Trumpian establishment. But it is rather jarring to see the national committee itself just..tweet it out..and make it the new official platform of the party.

Generally, when one’s organization is bereft of ideas or values or solutions, they call in the PR pros to paper it over with some high-falutin rhetoric or newfangled buzzwords to at least present the illusion that there is something more behind the curtain. Continue reading.

The Grand Old Meltdown

What happens when a party gives up on ideas?

Earlier this month, while speaking via Zoom to a promising group of politically inclined high school students, I was met with an abrupt line of inquiry. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand,” said one young man, his pitch a blend of curiosity and exasperation. “What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?”

You could forgive a 17-year-old, who has come of age during Donald Trump’s reign, for failing to recognize a cohesive doctrine that guides the president’s party. The supposed canons of GOP orthodoxy—limited government, free enterprise, institutional conservation, moral rectitude, fiscal restraint, global leadership—have in recent years gone from elastic to expendable. Identifying this intellectual vacuum is easy enough. Far more difficult is answering the question of what, quite specifically, has filled it.

Bumbling through a homily about the “culture wars,” a horribly overused cliché, I felt exposed. Despite spending more than a decade studying the Republican Party, embedding myself both with its generals and its foot soldiers, reporting on the right as closely as anyone, I did not have a good answer to the student’s question. Vexed, I began to wonder who might. Not an elected official; that would result in a rhetorical exercise devoid of introspection. Not a Never Trumper; they would have as much reason to answer disingenuously as the most fervent MAGA follower. Continue reading.

From ‘visionary’ to ‘guardian of America’ — the Republican convention is all about Trump

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A symphony of superlatives played loudly Monday on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, as speaker after speaker lavished praise on President Trump and spoke of him in messianic, almost otherworldly terms.

“A builder.” “A visionary.” “The richest man in the world.” “The guardian of America.” “The bodyguard of Western civilization.”

Political parties typically adopt platforms at their conventions every four years articulating their policy priorities and core beliefs, but not the Republicans in 2020.

Instead, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution over the weekend stating simply that it “enthusiastically supports President Trump” and that the party “has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda.” In other words, the party’s platform is Donald Trump. Continue reading.

The absurd claim that Trump is the ‘most pro-gay president in American history’

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“President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history. I can prove it.”

— Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence, in a video released by the Log Cabin Republicans, Aug. 19, 2020

Grenell is a longtime spinmeister who under President Trump became a controversial ambassador to Germany. (The influential Der Spiegel magazine described him as “politically isolated” after he was accused of interfering in domestic politics.) He was briefly the acting director of national intelligence and now advises the Republican National Committee.

He makes the provocative claim that Trump — whose administration is often criticized by gay rights advocates as anti-gay — is actually the most pro-gay president in U.S. history. But the core of the video is actually a lengthy attack on Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, as anti-gay.

The video is a stew of misleading timelines, out-of-context quotes and claims easily debunked. Let’s take a tour through it. Continue reading.

Fact Checking Trump’s Convention: His Neglect Let Tens Of Thousands Die

The first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention highlighted Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, with a video montage listing the various ways the administration purportedly intervened to save lives and several frontline workers, some of whom contracted COVID-19, praising Trump directly (notably while standing close together without masks).

Trump has praised himself repeatedly for his coronavirus response, saying he took actions that prevented millions of deaths.

However, public health experts disagree, saying Trump wasted the entire months of January of February during which he could have taken action to slow the spread of the coronavirus, choosing instead to publicly downplay the virus and claim without any evidence that it would just “miraculously” disappear.

A Washington Post report from April said the administration wasted 70 days from Jan. 3, when it was first warned that the coronavirus posed a threat to the United States, before it finally decided to take action. Continue reading.

Nominating Trump, Republicans Rewrite His Record

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President Trump and his party engaged in sweeping revisionism about his management of the coronavirus, his record on race relations and much else. And they painted a dystopian picture of what the nation would look like if Joseph R. Biden Jr. were president.

President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness.

Hours after Republican delegates formally nominated Mr. Trump for a second term, the president and his party made plain that they intended to engage in sweeping revisionism about Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, his record on race relations and much else. And they laid out a dystopian picture of what the United States would look like under a Biden administration, warning of a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones.

At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality: one in which the nation was not nearing 180,000 deaths from the coronavirus; in which Mr. Trump had not consistently ignored serious warnings about the disease; in which the president had not spent much of his term appealing openly to xenophobia and racial animus; and in which someone other than Mr. Trump had presided over an economy that began crumbling in the spring. Continue reading.

Pompeo says protesters and mainstream media are attacking American way of life

Washington Post logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the American way of life and its founding principles are “under attack,” focusing his criticism on voices in the mainstream news media and protesters who have torn down statues of historical figures.

Speaking as he unveiled the first report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, Pompeo said the events roiling the United States are antithetical to the nation’s ideals. Both Pompeo and the 60-page report, made public by the commission after a year of work, said property rights and religious freedom are the foremost unalienable rights.

“And yet today, the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack. Instead of seeking to improve America, leading voices promulgate hatred of our founding principles,” he said in his speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans defend Trump’s response on Russian bounties

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are defending President Trump’s handling of intelligence claiming that Russia’s military intelligence units offered bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops, arguing the evidence of bounties has not received sufficient verification.

Trump has come under sharp criticism since Saturday for not issuing a forceful response to the allegations or vowing to get to the bottom of the claims. Instead, the president has waved off media reports as “fake news” and suggested the story is meant to make Republicans “look bad.”

Trump claimed in a tweet Sunday night, “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks.” Continue reading.

GOP lawmakers stick to Trump amid new criticism

The Hill logoRepublicans are largely standing by — or at least not openly defying — President Trump as the country faces crises that have led to new criticisms of him from old allies.

Trump’s response to the police killing of George Floyd, and days of protests, sparked high-profile criticism from GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and former officials like Defense Secretary James Mattis, underscoring the unease in certain parts of the party to the president’s actions.

But there are no signs, yet, that Republicans are ready to tilt into full open rebellion against Trump, who remains popular with the same base of voters they will need in only months. Instead, most GOP senators are finding a way to praise, or at least not directly criticize, Trump.  Continue reading.

Trump asserts his power over Republicans

The Hill logoPresident Trump is strengthening his grip on the Republican Party as they head into the heat of an election season that Democrats want to make a referendum on Trump and his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Trump flexed his muscle on Capitol Hill last week by scuttling bipartisan legislation to extend the intelligence surveillance powers that had passed the Senate easily and was expected to pass the House.

Once Trump threatened on Wednesday to veto the measure, Republican support in the lower chamber fell away quickly, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D-Calif.) to pull the bill from the schedule. Continue reading.