| Donald Trump has completely broken Republicans’ supposed commitment to law and order. Arthur Delaney – HUFFPOST 13.8.22
It was obvious while he was in the White House that Republicans would excuse anything Trump did, whether he was extorting Ukraine or trying to steal an election.
But the devotion to Trump reached higher heights this week with the immediate, reflexive outrage over the FBI searching his home.
“We must destroy the FBI,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter.
Gosar’s comment was the most extreme, but it merely conveyed the gist of what everyone else was saying: that any sort of consequence for Trump is unthinkable, that any effort to enforce laws against Trump is inherently corrupt.
Rep Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking Republican in the House, said during a Friday press conference that Republicans would investigate “Joe Biden and his administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI against Joe Biden’s political opponent.”
According to Stefanik and her colleagues, there is no possibility that the FBI might have a good reason to search Trump’s home — even though the case reportedly pertains to classified documents that the National Archives has publicly said Trump failed to turn over at the end of his term. Documents that might be top secret, that reportedly have something to do with nuclear weapons.
“The FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of [FBI] authority,” Stefanik said.
That’s the message from Republicans — you can’t trust the FBI — one day after a fanatical Trump supporter tried to breach an FBI building and exchanged gunfire with police in Ohio.
The attack happened not long after a senior House Republican delivered this anonymous quote to Politico: “The base has lost its mind. If Trump decides to call them to arms, then I think he could get another Jan. 6.”
At the press conference Friday, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) briefly condemned the shooting and also violent rhetoric when a reporter asked about Gosar’s “destroy the FBI” comment. Other Republicans said they loved the FBI. But the overwhelming message was that the American people have rightfully lost trust in federal law enforcement.
Turner, in fact, spent far longer criticizing the FBI for its response to a 2017 shooting of a GOP lawmaker at a congressional baseball game than he did discussing the incident at the FBI building that took place a day earlier, in his own state.
Even knowing that most of the party has excused Trump for Jan. 6, 2021, I am surprised. We are fast approaching the kind of moment Trump once envisioned, where he literally commits murder in broad daylight and doesn’t lose a single vote.
In addition to defending Trump, Republicans today offered some distractions, such as space aliens. Don’t believe me? See our story below. |