Trump keeps tight grip on GOP despite insurrection
As a raging band of his supporters scaled walls, smashed windows, used flagpoles to beat police and breached the United States Capitol in a bid to overturn a free and fair election, Donald Trump’s excommunication from the Republican Party seemed a near certainty, his name tarnished beyond repair.
Some of his closest allies, including Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham, warned that day that Trump was “destroying” his legacy. “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” said his friend and confidant Senator Lindsey Graham. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who worked closely with Trump to dramatically reshape the judiciary, later denounced him as “morally responsible” for the attack.
But one year later, Trump is hardly a leader in exile. Instead, he is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and a leading contender for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Trump is positioning himself as a powerful force in the primary campaigns that will determine who gets the party’s backing heading into the fall midterms, when control of Congress, governor’s offices and state election posts are at stake. At least for now, there’s little stopping him as he makes unbending fealty to his vision of the GOP a litmus test for success in primaries, giving ambitious Republicans little incentive to cross him.
“Let’s just say I’m horrendously disappointed,” said former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, a longtime Republican who now serves on the advisory committee of the Renew America Movement, a group trying to wrest the party away from Trump’s control.
“His ego was never going to let him accept defeat and go quietly into the night. But what I am surprised by is how deferential so many of the Republican elected officials” have been.
Rather than expressing any contrition for the events of January 6, Trump often seems emboldened and has continued to lie about his 2020 election loss. He often — and falsely — says the “real” insurrection was on November 3, when Democrat Joe Biden won the election in a 306-232 Electoral College victory and by a 7 million popular vote margin.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. His claims of fraud were also roundly rejected by
courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
Undaunted, he is preparing for another run for the White House in 2024, and polls suggest that, at the moment, he would easily walk away with the GOP nomination. The extraordinary outcome is the product of sheer will and a misinformation campaign that began long before the election, when Trump insisted the only way he could lose was if the election was “rigged” and wouldn’t commit to accepting defeat. His refusal to accept reality has flourished with the acquiescence of most Republican leaders, who tend to overlook the gravity of the insurrection
for fear of fracturing a party whose base remains tightly aligned with Trump and his effort to minimise the severity of what happened on January 6.
While five people died during the rioting or its immediate aftermath, less than half of Republicans recall the attack as violent or extremely violent, according to a poll released this week by the Associated Press-Norc Centre for Public Affairs. About 3 in 10 Republicans said the attack was not violent.
The situation has stunned and depressed critics in both political parties who were convinced the insurrection would force Republicans to abandon the Trump era once and for all. He became the first President in US history to be impeached twice. The second impeachment centred on his role in sparking the insurrection, but Trump was acquitted in a Senate trial, a clear indication that he would face few consequences for his actions.
“There was this hope when we were in the safe room that we would go back and the Republicans would see how crazy this was,” said Pramila Jayapal (Democrat, Washington). Instead, she said, “there were people defending the insurrectionists and defending Trump and continuing with the challenge and the Big Lie.”
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who, with Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has emerged as one of the few GOP anti-Trump critics in Congress, had predicted Trump’s hold on the party would “be gone” by the summer.
But Kinzinger, who recently announced his decision not to run for reelection, blamed House Republican leader and Trump ally Kevin McCarthy for proving him wrong.
“What I underestimated was the impact that one person would have on that, and that is Kevin McCarthy and his visit to Mar-a-Lago,” Kinzinger said, referring to a trip McCarthy took to Florida in late January 2020 as the party was on the verge of disarray. With their eyes on retaking the House in 2022, Trump and McCarthy agreed to work together..
Aides to McCarthy didn’t respond to a request for comment on Kinzinger’s characterisation. But others point to fractures that suggest Trump’s power is waning.
Banned from Twitter and denied his other social media megaphones, Trump no longer controls the news cycle like he did in office.
During last year’s most prominent elections, Republicans like Virginia gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin strategically kept Trump at arm’s length. Youngkin’s win created a possible model for candidates running in battleground states where suburban voters uncomfortable with the former President are a key bloc.
While Trump’s endorsement remains coveted in many midterm primary races, it has also failed to clear the field in some key races. Trump has similarly struggled to prevent other Republicans from eyeing the 2024 presidential nomination.
Trump is also facing a flurry of investigations, including in New York, where prosecutors are investigating whether his real estate company misled banks and tax officials about the value of his assets..
Voting rights advocates, meanwhile, are increasingly worried as states with Republican legislatures push legislation that would allow them to influence or overrule the vote in future elections.