Here are the headlines in a reader's inbox on April 25, 2024:
Republicans have no morals, no brains, no shame.
RAWSTORY+4/22/24
Excerpts
- The Washington Post has done a deep analysis of former President Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social and has found that he has become increasingly "isolated, vitriolic and vengeful."
- The empirical evidence that the former president has grown more extreme and angry in recent years, is shown by the fact he has produced more than 750 posts written entirely in capital letters in just the last year-and-a-half.
- What's more, Trump seems to be now getting his information exclusively from right-wing media websites that have become infamous for pushing bogus 2020 election conspiracy theories.
- "On Truth Social, he has largely walled himself off from mainstream political discussions," the Post writes. "
FULL STORY
(Redacted Excerpts)
“Eight years of bitter experience have taught us that supporting Trump degrades the character of his core supporters…the most enduring legacy of a second Trump term could well be the conviction on the part of millions of Americans that Trumpism isn’t just a temporary political expediency, but the model for Republican political success and — still worse — the way that God wants Christian believers to practice politics.”
- Polling data increasingly backs up the reality that the right is abandoning common human decency, in the most alarming of ways. Evangelicals are prime examples. During Trump’s run for president in 2016, white evangelicals went from least likely to most likely to excuse the immoral behavior of politicians.
- An increasing percentage of Republicans are now tempted to embrace political violence.
Trump has escalated his use of indefensible and repugnant language, calling his political opponents “vermin” and declaring that immigrants entering America illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The result is a religious movement steeped in fanaticism but stripped of virtue. The Christian virtues touted in the New Testament — “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” — have been replaced in MAGA Christianity by the very vileness the same passage warned against, including “hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions” and “factions.”
As the mainstream media are increasingly recognizing, Donald Trump has not single-handedly turned American politics into a racist, xenophobic, conspiracy-mongering cesspool. It isn’t even Trump plus his famous know-nothing extremist base that accomplished the deed.
It is the Republican Party that has thrown overboard the basic moral, democratic, and religious values that have guided the country for 240 years. It’s the Republican Party that has adopted lies and extremism as a normal way of life and transformed itself into a replica of the fascist parties that spread so much evil in the 1930s and 40s.
It’s millions of Republicans who, as the 2024 election season heated up in recent weeks, stepped up their all-out, multi-dimensional campaign to impose Trump’s vision of an authoritarian, lawless regime on the United States. Here are some of the prime examples of their deeds. The details under the headlines are the exact or slightly redacted quotes from the articles.
Trump’s promotion of debunked election report reveals divisions in his circle
- Trump took to his social media website one day this past week to post a report ridden with falsehoods about fraud in the 2020 election. And his legal team cited Trump’s post in a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he faces charges of obstructing the election.
- Trump has been eager to use the election interference case to hash out fraud allegations and conspiracy theories, including by demanding documents about unsubstantiated right-wing media suspicions about government agents infiltrating the mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
“In interviews, academic and legal experts debunked the content of the report Trump promoted.”
Trump tries reappropriating ‘insurrection’ on Jan. 6 anniversary
In campaign speeches surrounding the third anniversary of the attack, the former president defended people charged in the riot and repeated baseless claims that left-wing or government interlopers caused the breach
Three years later, beware dangerous revisionism of Jan. 6
- The third anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob comes amid troubling indicators about public opinion on that event.
- A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published this week shows a sizable share of Americans accept lies about the 2020 election and the insurrection that followed on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump skips Illinois loyalty oath promising not to overthrow government
Trump “did not sign a loyalty oath requested of candidates for election in Illinois that asks, among other things, to swear that they won’t support overthrowing the government, according to an analysis of candidate petitions by the local news outlets WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times.”
Trump reprises dehumanizing language on undocumented immigrants, warns of ‘invasion’
Former president Donald Trump on Sunday accused undocumented immigrants of waging an “invasion” of the United States, in a speech that highlighted his frequent use of dehumanizing language and exaggerated terms to describe many foreigners seeking to enter the country.
Trump leaning into his criminality because Republicans love his crimes
Donald Trump has been leaning into the crimes that he's been charged with committing, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough concluded that his supporters actually approve of him breaking the law.
- The twice-impeached former president has been indicted four times on 91 counts, found liable for fraud and sexual assault, and disqualified from two states' ballots for violating the Constitution's insurrectionist clause
- But his lawyers insist Trump should be immune from prosecution and called for special counsel Jack Smith to be held in contempt for working on the case before that appeal is decided.
- Trump has indicated he intends to be present at the trials where his lawyers will make this argument.
Scarborough’s conclusion: Trump’s attendance is his best campaign move. “Republicans love that he commits fraud, Republicans love that he steals nuclear secrets, and I have no direct evidence of that other than looking at his poll numbers when it comes out that he's actually committed fraud, and when they find out he's stolen nuclear secrets, his numbers go up."
(In IndieDems view, Scarborough has nailed the pathetic state of the Republican Party in 2024).
Led by Trump, GOP candidates take polarizing stances on race and history
The party’s three leading candidates are speaking about history and race in polarizing and provocative ways that sometimes diverge from or distort the facts, some political strategists, experts and civil rights leaders said
- Former president Donald Trump uses dehumanizing rhetoric to describe undocumented immigrants before largely White audiences. The runaway GOP polling leader says they are “poisoning the blood of our country” — comments some experts have compared to Adolf Hitler’s writings on blood purity.
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended part of his state’s African American history curriculum standards that claimed some enslaved people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
- And Nikki Haley omitted any mention of slavery when she was asked to explain the cause of the Civil War at a town hall event this past week. It wasn’t until the next day that Haley acknowledged the war was “about slavery."
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States were cooperating on election integrity. Then GOP officials quit
Since 2022, nine states where Republican officials administer elections have quit a nonprofit, nonpartisan consortium that helps keep voter rolls up to date through interstate data exchange.
- They did so amid pressure from former president Donald Trump, who claimed in March that the consortium “pumps the rolls” for Democrats. Consequently, voter rolls in those states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — are less accurate, and it’s becoming harder to detect the small number of people who improperly vote in multiple states.
- Indeed, as 2024 begins, these same election officials find themselves spending taxpayer dollars to re-create the very tools that the system they abandoned had provided.
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3 years after Jan. 6 attack, GOP loyalty to Trump and rioters climbs, poll finds
- Three years after the 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
- They are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were “mostly violent,” less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack, and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate.
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These politicians denied democracy on Jan. 6. Now, they want your vote.
While the violent mob swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, aiming to subvert democracy and keep President Donald Trump in power, another group was already working on the same project inside.
In an unsuccessful bid to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, 147 Republicans formally supported objection to counting Joe Biden’s electoral votes.
(The article provides cartoon caricature portraits of the Republicans, by region.)
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Extremist MAGA Republican Web Site Still Pushing Michigan Election Fraud Lie
Three years after the 2020 elections, right-wing website Gateway Pundit published a lurid story about burner phones, semiautomatic weapons, silencers and bags of prepaid cash cards. “NOW WE HAVE PROOF!” blared the headline.
Of course, they had not a shred of evidence, but the story “provided weeks of headlines that radiated across right-wing media and were repeatedly amplified by pro-Trump influencers.”
“The outlet’s emphasis on long-debunked fraud claims helps explain why election denial has proved so durable.”
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Donald Trump's Own Expert Debunks His Election Claims
“The elections technology expert who former President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign hired to find voter fraud debunked Trump's claims again in a scathing op-ed in USA Today. Ken Block, founder of the analytics company that Trump contracted in the wake of the last presidential election, said on January 2 that the extensive research his company did no evidence that election fraud contributed to President Joe Biden's win. He blasted Trump's "steady diet of lies and innuendo."
The Republican Screed 2024
Words Republicans Live By in 2024, As Proclaimed by Donald Trump and Approved by 85% of Republicans
(IndieDems Note: This is not to be taken as an exhaustive list of Trump's insults, ignorance, & craziness.)
- Make over 30,000 false or misleading statements (lies) as President
- Spend weeks downplaying the coronavirus threat and stating it would soon “just disappear,” leaving the nation unprepared for the full force of the pandemic
- In later interviews with Bob Woodward, admit that you lied in giving your optimistic view
- Recommend that Americans ingest bleach to cure Covid-19
- During the 2020 Presidential campaign, refuse to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and disparage mail-in voting in a transparent effort to set the stage for an extra-legal or illegal challenge of the vote
- Create out of whole cloth the Big Lie that massive fraud prevented you and other Republicans from winning in 2020
- Have your followers launch numerous frivolous legal challenges to the lawful election results, all of which are thrown out of court.
- Pressure state election officials to illegally alter the official election results, including a flagrant appeal to the Georgia Secretary of State that results in your being indicted on 31 criminal charges
- Use the Big Lie about voter fraud to mobilize a rally in Washington on January 6 and incite the participants to stage a violent invasion of the Capitol
- After the rioters spend over an hour viciously beating Capitol policemen and vandalizing and looting the Capitol, appear in public to refer to the mob as “my kind of people.”
- After your presidential term ends, mobilize the Republican Party to launch an attack on democracy itself, with the aim of stealing the 2022 and 2024 elections by passing laws to allow extreme voter suppression and to place partisan hacks in charge of state electoral processes.
- Demean the military service of John McCain and insult his memory by raising the White House flag back to full mast while his memorial services were underway
- Mock a handicapped person
- Kidnap children and lock them in wire cages
- Tell lies about the extent of criminality among Hispanic migrants
- Call Hispanic migrants “animals” who were “infesting” America
- Brag about sexually assaulting women
- Call various women bimbo, dog, ugly, of low intellect, & Miss Piggy
- Refer to a United States female Senator by the racist-tinged term “Pocahontas”
- Support a known sex offender for the Senate from Alabama
- Publicly boast that you take the word of Putin over U.S. intelligence services about Russian interference in U.S. elections
- Come across as an obsequious lapdog of Putin in a 2018 joint press conference
- Refuse to take serious steps to counter Russian cyber warfare aimed at the U.S.
- Spread the proven Russian Big Lie about Ukraine interfering in U.S. elections
- State that the United States was no better than Russia in its moral values
- Insult and demean the United States’ democratic allies
- Call for the dissolution of NATO
- Press for Russia to be invited to the annual meeting of the G-7, despite our allies’ opposition
- Order the removal of 11,000 troops from Germany without prior consultation with our NATO allies
- Praise the leadership of the murderous thugs Putin and Kim Jong Un
- Proclaim that you are in love with Kim Jung Un
- Remain unstinting in your praise of Putin and Kim Jung Un after they are revealed as ordering the assassination of their political opponents abroad
- Allow your Postmaster General to gravely weaken Post Office operations three months before the presidential election, placing at risk the proper handling of the tidal wave of anticipated mail-in ballots
- Urge Americans to vote twice, a criminal as well as moral offense
- Establish a long track record of incendiary and disparaging remarks about veterans and military service. Include in the disparagement veterans who were wounded, captured, or missing in action, and call those killed in combat “losers.”
- In a meeting with top U.S. generals, call them “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies,”
- Support torture
- Accuse a former President of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to hide his real birthplace
- Call Hispanic migrants “animals” who are “infesting” America
- Engage in the character assassination of a respected U.S. Ambassador
- Treat as trivial the brutal murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi on orders of the Saudi Crown Prince
- Praise neo-Nazi demonstrators chanting "Jews will not replace us"
- Be willing to accept damaging information on political rivals from a foreign government
- Run political campaigns overtly supporting racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism
- Use fear-mongering and race-baiting to support that campaign
- Clasp to your bosom the extremist crackpot organization QAnon, which believes a cabal of pedophiles and cannibals is waging a Satanic conspiracy against Trump, by effusively praising QAnon’s chief Georgia advocate for winning a Congressional primary
- Talk about Hispanic immigrants the way Hitler talked about the Jews
- Impugn the integrity of a respected judge based on his ethnic origin.
- Tell U.S. Congresswomen of color to “go back where you came from.”
- Call African countries "s---holes"
- Incite followers to violence
- Have police authorities assault peaceful protestors to clear a path for you to walk across the street and pose in front of a church holding a Bible
- In a transparently racist appeal, warn “suburban housewives” that Democratic housing policies would “destroy” the suburbs
- Imply that the Second Amendment could be invoked to justify assassinating Hillary Clinton
- Tell law enforcement officers that they should feel free to rough up detainees and break the law, and be guaranteed a pardon
- Call a Republican U.S. Congressman who body-slammed a newsman “my kind of guy”
- Say it is OK to get information on political opponents from foreigners
- Approve Howard Stern's calling your daughter "a piece of a--"
- Overrule U.S. security services and grant Jared Kushner a security clearance
- Belittle a Gold Star American mother
- Create a sham “university” to defraud average citizens of their money
- Have a court order the closing of your foundation because of financial impropriety
- Play up being called “the chosen one,” an appellation usually reserved for Jesus Christ
- Subvert the military’s due process by pardoning three officers duly convicted of atrocities against civilians in separate instances
- Do the same to civilian courts by pardoning Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who housed Latino prisoners outdoors in inhumane conditions and was convicted on federal contempt-of-court charges
- Accuse TV personality Joe Scarborough of being a murderer
- Falsely accuse a senior citizen protestor assaulted by police of being an anti-government conspirator
- Violate the Constitution’s emolument clause and enrich yourself and your family by welcoming foreign delegations to your hotels and resorts
- Have good words to say about:
- The “very good people” (armed protesters) who showed up in the Michigan Capitol to intimidate lawmakers
- The person who allegedly shot and killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin
- The “Great Patriots” who drove into Portland, Ore., hurling paintballs and pepper spray at demonstrators
- Officers who kill unarmed African Americans. Claim they simply “choke” under pressure.
The party’s three leading candidates are speaking about history and race in polarizing and provocative ways that sometimes diverge from or distort the facts, some political strategists, experts and civil rights leaders said
On November 14, Republican U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, after sparring verbally with an unfriendly witness from the Teamsters Union in a Senate hearing, leapt up out of his seat and challenged the Teamster to a personal fight.
See the FULL STORY
Earlier the same week, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee accused former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys while Burchett was talking to a reporter. Burchett criticized McCarthy for being a “bully,” a sign of the growing animosity within Republican ranks, as well as between the parties. Burchett was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy and has continued to heavily criticize him.
Additional Reporting:
Washington Post opinion writer Jessica Grose labeled incidents like these “toxic immaturity,” and pointed out they are occurring more frequently these days.
Vulgarities, insults, baseless attacks: Trump backers follow his lead
IndieDems Comment:
Ms. Grose has nailed it with her term “toxic immaturity.” The Republicans display of this deep seated character flaw has become so flagrant & surprising, it’s caught us by surprise and left us numb. But we need to counterattack. These GOP numbskulls cannot be allowed to hold public office. The presence in our political institutions of these Republicans with the mentality of 17 year old punks is another democracy-destroying consequence of years of Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression, and intimidation. These reprobates have gained so much undeserved, disproportionate power, they have distorted American democracy beyond belief.
It is these Republican purveyors of toxic immaturity that set the stage for the likely Republican presidential nominee earlier this month to openly declare his intention, if re-elected, is to destroy democracy and establish a proto-fascist regime that will use government’s police power to lock up political opponents and put people in concentration camps.
(IndieDems note: At first, we thought we would incorporate Trump's recent overt us of the language of fascism into our existing feature story, "Trump's Resemblance to Hitler is Increasing, Not Diminishing," since it fleshed out the theme. But on second thought, Trump's words are such a clean-cut watershed, we decided they warranted separate treatment).
In a speech in New Hampshire on Veterans Day (Nov 11), Trump called his political enemies “vermin” and vowed to “root out” his liberal opponents if he returned to office, suggesting that they pose a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China or North Korea. Historians pointed out that his use of the term “vermin” echoed dictators like Hitler and Mussolini. Trump’s caustic rhetoric was viewed in the context that he has repeatedly praised dictatorial thugs like Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, and Hungary’s rightwing strongman Orban.
(His precise words:“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country"....Outside threats are “far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”).
In an interview with rightwing broadcaster Glen Beck on November 7, Trump vowed to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House. Beck had asked, “if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Trump replied, “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.” Trump went on to say Democrats and other opponents were “sick people … evil people.”
Trump's words over the past week simply prove conclusively what he has been demonstrating in one way or other since he announced his presidential bid in 2015: Donald Trump not only has no respect for America's basic democratic and moral values, he would cast them completely aside is he is re-elected president. The "rule of law" and common human decency mean nothing to him. As the public record plainly shows, Trump has nothing but contempt for God's Commandments that forbid lying, committing adultery, and stealing.
Of course, it's not just Trump whose moral universe is revealed as seriously questioned. Millions of Republicans support his immoral, authoritarian agenda. The more evidence of his criminal acts that are revealed in the legal trials he is facing, the stronger his support becomes among Republicans. The reprobate who is waging a war against democracy itself is the Republicans' overwhelming favorite to be their presidential nominee in 2024.
IndieDems note: As regular readers of these pages know well, IndieDems makes frequent use of commentary from other sources as the bases of our own analysis. Articles from newspapers, social media, etc., are posted with links to the original. Sometimes they a left to stand alone, sometimes followed by "IndieDems comment." But, in this instance, no link is provided to the original. Reason: the commentary is from a subscriber-only newsletter. But--the sentences are also a point-by-point recitation of facts. We thought having these facts as a convenient reference justified publishing them,even though it may strain SOP.)
Republicans Threaten the National Security of the United States
- The past few weeks should have convinced you that keeping Republicans in the House majority and putting them back in the White House would endanger national security as much as they would democracy.
- A sizable share of Republicans are ready to throw Ukraine to the Russia bear, which would hand a defeat to the United States more serious than Vietnam.
- Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) persists in holding up military promotions. Republicans appear unwilling to make any rule change to shut him down.
- Republicans are unrelenting in their infatuation with shutdowns, which would have our military men and women work without pay.
- MAGA Republicans and their cult leader mock and threaten the people and institutions responsible for upholding the Constitution and protecting our safety (e.g., disabled veterans, Capitol police, the FBI, court personnel).
- Instead of responsible stewardship and respect for the military, they offer insults (“woke,” “losers”).
- Instead of serious concern for their fellow Americans’ safety, they bait violent extremists with paeans to toxic masculinity.
- Democracy and ordered liberty will be on the ballot in 2024, but so will defense of the homeland, preservation of critical alliances and maintenance of a 21st-century military.