WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump’s lies and his insistence that the November election was rigged against him may have turned out to be a bridge too far for the attorneys who were slated to defend him in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial in a little more than a week.
But his party has stuck with him. After a brief flirtation with reason and sound judgement in the weeks following the January 6 siege at the Capitol, the Republican Party has decided to honour their deep and often blind allegiance to Trump, choosing to overlook his role in inciting the deadly insurrection rather than pay the price of crossing him and his base next year at the ballot box.
The collapse of Trump’s legal team amid a disagreement over legal strategy, which CNN first reported over the weekend, stood in stark contrast to the slow crawl of Republican elected leaders back into the former President’s corner as the anger lawmakers feel about the insurrection fades and his potential power to help or destroy them in the 2022 elections becomes paramount.
While the Republican Party continues to bend to Trump’s whims, forgive his dangerous behaviour, and quiver in the face of his election threats, the judiciary and the legal profession are adhering to a higher ethical standard - and have largely refused to tolerate his efforts to ramrod the nation’s democratic institutions and founding principles throughout his baseless election charade - making the GOP’s loyalty to Trump even more appalling.
A person familiar with the departures of the five attorneys - Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris - told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to centre his defence on the notion that there was mass election fraud in November and that the election was stolen from him, instead of questioning the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed, according to CNN’s Gloria Borger, Kaitlan Collins, Jeff Zeleny and Ashley Semler.
And yet, the GOP has been very much here for the former President, demonstrating how much it has been irrevocably changed by Trump’s corrosive influence last week when members of the party stood by mostly silently and refused to reprimand Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who should have ended the week in disgrace after CNN’s KFile exposed that she previously indicated support for executing prominent Democrats.
Instead, like Trump, the freshman Republican has doubled down and escaped largely unscathed, avoiding any punishment from GOP leaders as she falsely claims to be the victim of a “blood thirsty media.” On Saturday, she emerged defiant on Twitter after claiming to have had a “great call” with Trump, continuing to spout falsehoods about the presidential election and failing to show a shred of remorse for her endorsement of violent threats against lawmakers or offensive and baseless theories about the Parkland shooting. While her conduct gets a pass from GOP leaders, some Republican state parties and local leaders are rushing to condemn the GOP lawmakers who dared to vote for the impeachment of the former President.
The case of both Trump - who is expected to be acquitted in the Senate - and Greene is the latest example of how the party of Lincoln has become the party of no consequences, untethered from its moorings by Trump’s embrace of baseless conspiracy theories and his coddling of the most dangerous fringe elements of the party.
In phrases that could have been ripped from Trump’s own permanently suspended Twitter account, Greene asserted that she’ll “never apologise” or “back down” despite CNN’s revelations about her shocking, conspiracy-laden social media feeds, including the fact that she liked a comment suggesting that “a bullet to the head would be quicker” as a way to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She also expressed support for comments about executing FBI agents.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who should be the person responsible for enforcing discipline within his ranks and setting the guardrails of decorum, indicated that he intends to talk to Greene this week about the posts threatening to kill lawmakers. But he too spent last week trying to cosy up to Trump at Mar-a-Lago and make amends for his fleeting reprimand of the former President after the insurrection that endangered the lives of his members, paying homage to the standard bearer in a party that’s already gearing up for a divisive primary cycle.
At least 50 House Democrats have called for Greene to be removed from the House, with others calling for censure or stripping her of her committee assignments, but there is no indication yet that she will be upbraided by GOP leadership.
Before she was elected to the solidly red district last fall, Republican strategists expressed concern about Greene’s ties to Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tropes, and her past support for QAnon - whose followers believe the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump was engaged in a battle against celebrities and Democrats who abuse children. But she won and has been among Trump’s strongest supporters, backing his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. She has worn a mask to the Capitol that reads “Trump won.”
“I had a GREAT call with my all-time favourite POTUS, President Trump!” Greene tweeted. “I’m so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100% loyal to him because he is 100% loyal to the people and America First.” Trump’s office has not responded to requests for comment about the call.
Meanwhile, it is the Republicans who defied Trump with their votes on impeachment earlier this month who now appear to be in the most political peril. On Saturday, the South Carolina Republican Party voted to formally censure Rep. Tom Rice for voting to impeach Trump, with South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick claiming that the vote amounted to “nothing more than a political kick on the way out the door,” and one that “played right into the Democrats’ game.”
A number of the other nine House Republicans who joined Rice in that impeachment vote are facing a backlash at home, with the Trump-aligned flank of their party promising primary challenges, rebukes from local leaders and an onslaught of spending against them.
