Republicans Reluctant to Leave the Trump Cult
It was at a post-election Trump protest in Morris County when I overheard a woman say the president really got 70 percent of the popular vote and about 400 electoral votes. At another such event in Bedminster, a gentleman suggested Trump would win when the Electoral College voted. He also said only an idiot would believe Joe Biden got 80 million or so votes.
A trip to the more extreme quarters of Trump World brings you to a Twilight Zone-place; a locale where reality is rejected, or better yet, ridiculed.
Hence, the cries about the “lamestream media” and “fake news,” which these days seems to include Fox News.
An obvious question is, from where do Trump supporters get their news?
The simple answer seems to be from the president himself through statements and tweets and from his now-dwindling band of acolytes.
Relying basically on one elected official – and one elected official only – for your political news is a sure sign of cult-like behavior. Only the leader knows what’s going on.
Which brings us to a dilemma.
What happens when the cult leader’s proclamations and predictions fail to materialize? After all, for a cult leader – any cult leader – to maintain control over his followers, some of what he says has to really happen.
But in this case, nothing has happened related to the great election “fraud.”
All significant lawsuits have been dismissed.
The Supreme Court refused to even consider some of them.
All this talk of thousands of people filing affidavits in support of voter fraud amounted to nothing.
Even states run by Republicans (Arizona and Georgia) rejected the president’s claims of fraud.
And every day gets closer to January 20 and the end of Trump’s presidency.
It was the president himself who zeroed in on January 6 as the time for his followers to take a stand one final time.
If a cult leader’s words don’t come true, cult members can go one of two ways – they can turn on the leader, or in desperation and anger, they can strike out against the dark, sinister forces of the outside world.
We know now what the Trump devotees in Washington opted to do.
As scenes of hoodlums running amok flashed across TV screens, some may have said to themselves, “And this is the party of law and order?” After all, just a few months ago, many Republicans running for Congress did so on a “law and order” platform.
That observation may be a bit unfair, given the fact the rioters yesterday were Trump-sters and not necessarily true Republicans.
That distinction is important – at least here in New Jersey.
A few days after the election, I wrote a column suggesting Trump’s defeat was great news for New Jersey Republicans. Free from Trump’s craziness, they could now concentrate on reasonable and traditional Republican positions as opposed to having to explain the latest presidential tweet.
Hopefully, more Republicans believe that today than they did on November 7.
Still, you never know.
Doug Steinhardt, one of the GOP’s gubernatorial candidates, put together a video attacking opponent Jack Ciattarelli for being an anti-Trump Republican. Steinhardt, for his part, says he strongly supports the president.
Steinhardt’s video appeared yesterday. It went up online before the Trump-inspired riots. but was still up there this morning.
It makes you wonder. Just what will it take for some state Republicans to break away from the Trump cult?
One thing is certain. If Republicans keep on paying homage to Trump, New Jersey Democrats are going to be very happy.
What is known about the events around Washington on Wednesday is that contrary to all other campaign events and even the beginning of the Wednesday event, is that they were peaceful and very enthusiastic in engaging in the political process. Unlike those other events was that among the crowd were a number of people who when the rally was to move toward the Capitol, brought out of backpacks the helmets, body armor, scaling ropes, and people who began using bullhorns to start directing and egging people on. Contrary to prior large events, there was a curiously small number of Capitol police who were not even equipped with the normal gear for an event right at the edge of the Capitol Building. At the first small crush of people from the rally, it can be seen on video that the crowd protection gates were allowed to be opened, and consequently the crowds proceeded without any consequence up the steps and towards the doors. This was all occurring precisely at the point where inside the beginnings of the evidence to back up the objections to the Electoral Votes was being debated, which because of the melee that resulted, never was given the airing that was so desperately being sought by the Trump Campaign. So one has to ask, was it in the President’s interest that such an event would transpire as it did, or was the lack of security, the pictures of known agitators, a scene of scaling ropes and other photo opportunities that could not have better placement had it been done by Hollywood and their stuntmen, and an easily manipulated politically agitated crowd, used to fulfill a four year assault on the Trump Administration, from the day he took the oath of office, and included even to today of the phony “Russia Hacked the DNC”, Putin owns Trump, Impeachment, and all other means to disrupt any meaningful results for that administration. I think President Trump should immediately pardon Assange and Snowden so they can fulfill their work in exposing the most vile, secret operations the bureacratic and intelligence operations that they have been engaged in, and especially to exonerate Lyndon LaRouche in what was the first of the major assaults against a leading political figure and Presidential Candidate, that former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark described as the “most widespread and extensive use of government effort to disrupt a political figure and his campaign”. Welcome to that club, President Trump.