(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.”
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
“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
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.
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
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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.
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3 years after Jan. 6 attack, GOP loyalty to Trump and rioters climbs, poll finds
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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."
(AP) Summary: A federal judge ruled Thursday (October 26, 2023) that some of Georgia's congressional, state Senate and state House districts were drawn in a racially discriminatory manner, ordering the state to draw an additional Black-majority congressional district.
The New York Times on October 22 discussed the death of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the role of both sides in its demise.
The prospects for peace "began to unravel in 1995 with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli fanatic, just two years after Mr. Rabin and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat shook hands over peace on the White House lawn. After his death, the rapid, government-backed growth of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank, the division and corruption of the Palestinian leadership, and the spread of absolutist religious fanaticism on both sides all contributed to undoing the handshake."
Netanyahu did his part:
The Times expert, however, sees signs that the escalation of armed conflict and the likelihood of worse to come has caused some Israelis to fan the flames of a dying ember.
"The bridge builders between Israelis and Palestinians sense opportunity in the aftermath of the Hamas attack," which has shattered Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict. "That state of drift, in which peace had become a forgotten or even risible word, now feels untenable." FULL STORY