Learn from the Way Republicans Became Trump’s Puppets

The Republicans’ appeasement of Trump also acts as a warning outside the U.S. They probably do not even know themselves how it happened.

Leading up to the meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Donald Trump believed that Finland was a part of Russia, former security advisor John Bolton writes in his book released on Tuesday.

On a separate occasion, Trump requested Chinese President Xi Jinping help him get reelected by increasing imports of American goods. On a third occasion, he promised to stop an investigation into Erdogan, the president of Turkey.

The book is typical of our time in that it includes historic revelations, but really does not add a lot of value in terms of real news. Trump being ignorant, misguided and without a moral compass has been known for a long time. That he is being played by Putin is something all thinking people realize.

Sure, the last three and a half years are beyond comparison. The U.S. president has repeatedly expressed a wish to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He has pushed other countries to investigate political opponents and has repeatedly fired members of his cabinet. Many people warned of exactly this four years ago.

The loudest warnings came from the Republicans. During the 2016 primaries, Trump was described as a fraudster, demagogue, racist, and cancer of conservatism. Big names openly distanced themselves from him far into November. Almost all others did so privately. Trump took over a hostile party.

What happened after that is the real lesson of the Trump years. The Republicans folded eventually, utterly. The more democratic guidelines the president broke, the more the Republicans folded. What happened?

The pressure of opinion is the simple answer. The support for Trump is strong, but narrow, and small, devoted groups are better at mobilizing than the lukewarm feelings of the masses. Rebels are punished hard, and quickly.

Another explanation is that Republicans know exactly how dangerous Trump is, but judge that the best way of minimizing the damage is to handle him internally, ideally through flattery. Judging by Bolton’s book, this strategy has only been partially successful.

More than anything else, they have chosen to just accept the situation, bury their heads in the sand and focus on their own jobs. With regard to the issues, Donald Trump is very adaptable. He lowers taxes for those with high incomes, is generous to polluters and appoints conservative judges.

That has proven to be enough for an old and proud party to overlook the president repeatedly breaking boundaries until recently viewed as holy. This has not necessarily happened consciously, but the trespasses have occurred with such intensity that they have lost perspective.

”I cannot comment on every statement,” Republican senators mumble as the president in practice is accusing a journalist of murder on social media, or when he claims to trust the president of Russia more than the United States’ security services.

It is surreal and has happened very quickly. Most likely they do not even know themselves what has happened. Learn from their collapse.