The Most Pathetic Men in America (The Atlantic) [View all]

[DickKessler]

It’s been said before, but can never be emphasized enough: Without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would be just a glorified geriatric Fox-watching golfer. I’ve interviewed scores of these collaborators, trying to understand why they did what they did and how they could live with it. These were the McCarthys and the Grahams and all the other busy parasitic suck-ups who made the Trump era work for them, who humored and indulged him all the way down to the last, exhausted strains of American democracy.

My final visit to the hotel, in February, coincided with the exact hour Russia was launching its invasion of Ukraine. It was one of those horrifically riveting news nights—flashes and explosions on TV and the sick mystery of what destruction might be concealed by the smoky darkness. Like Vladimir Putin, Trump will take what people let him take. He will do what he can get away with. The courage and character of Ukraine stands in perverse contrast to America’s cowering Republican Party, whose resistance might as well have been led by the Uvalde police.

I admit that I’ve been inspired by the handful of Trump-administration and state election officials who have testified before the January 6 committee. They have endured threats, smears, and constant intimidation in order to bear simple witness and perform their patriotic duty. In times like these, you learn to find hope where you can, in figures like Cassidy Hutchinson, the 26-year-old aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows whose earnest accounting of what she saw heaped so much shame onto the enablers of that horrific day. God bless her.

In contrast, you have Kevin McCarthy. He hates discussing 2024 on the record. Mostly because it involves talking about Trump. “Why do you keep asking me about Trump?” McCarthy said to me when I accompanied him to Iowa last year. It was as if the former president were sitting on his shoulder, watching for any sign of disloyalty. Whenever Trump’s name came up, McCarthy seemed to be bracing for an orange light fixture to drop on his head.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/kevin-mccarthy-lindsey-graham-trump-devotion-2024-election/661508/

Such pathetic pieces of shit in the Trump-cowed Republican Party.