San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Egged on by president, MAGA firing in a circle
Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia election official and longtime Republican, held a news conference last week in which, with barely contained rage, he excoriated Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud and the threats of violence those lies inspired.
He railed against Trump’s campaign lawyer, Joseph diGenova, who called for the shooting of Christopher Krebs, a federal cybersecurity official fired by Trump for saying the election wasn’t rigged. (DiGenova later claimed he was joking.) Sterling described a “20-something tech” involved in the vote tabulation who was getting death threats.
“It has to stop!” he said, seething. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions.
This has to stop.”
The next day, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, expressed support for Sterling. “It’s about time that more people were out there speaking with truth,” he said. His office asked Trump to “try and quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continuing claims of winning the states where he obviously lost” to no avail.
Along with many other state-level Republican election officials, Sterling and Raffensperger have shown admirable commitment to the rule of law. Their refusal to participate in Trump’s attempted autogolpe helped avert a constitutional crisis. Yet it’s hard not to notice their outrage is a bit selective.
There is nothing new about Trump inciting harassment against private citizens or his lackeys calling for violence against the president’s opponents. In 2015, after a college student asked Trump a question he didn’t like at a political forum, he targeted her on Twitter, and she was deluged with graphic, sexualized threats. Ahead of the
2018 midterms, a man named Cesar Sayoc sent pipe bombs to Trump critics; he’s been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In September, Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign aide put in charge of communications at Health and Human Services, said in a Facebook video, “When Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin.”
Yet Raffensperger voted for Trump. Thursday, he told CNN he supports the president still. The fact that Trump has openly sought to undermine the 2020 election and delights in siccing his followers on his perceived enemies was not a deal-breaker.
Since Trump’s defeat, the MAGA revolution has begun devouring its own. As it does, some conservatives are discovering the downsides of having a president who spreads conspiracy theories, subverts faith in democracy and turns the denial of reality into a loyalty test.
Historically the American left, more than the right, was known for circular firing squads. By turning the Republican Party into a cult of personality, Trump changed that. As
Jeff Sessions learned, even a lifetime of ideological service is no defense when you’ve displeased Dear Leader.
The president is reportedly thinking of firing Attorney General Bill Barr because, for all Barr’s toadying, he has declined to repeat Trump’s fantasies about electoral cheating. Much of the MAGA-verse has turned on Fox News, because its news programs aren’t saying Trump won.
Both Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona have been slavishly faithful to Trump, but stopped short of breaking the law by refusing to certify the vote in their states. For that, they’ve been cast out of Trump’s movement. “What is going on with @dougducey? Republicans will long remember!” Trump tweeted. At a Georgia rally Wednesday, pro-Trump lawyer LinWood led the crowd in a “lock him up” chant against Kemp.
In concert with the recently ousted Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Wood called on Georgians to boycott the Jan. 5 Senate election runoff unless state officials do more to help Trump cling to power.
Naturally, Republicans who understand that Trump lost and are worried about Senate control aren’t happy about these antics. But what disconcerts these Republicans isn’t, by and large, that Trumpist lawyers are spewing demented misinformation. It’s that this misinformation might, for once, work against Republican power.
“At best, Wood-Powell are distracting from the GOP’s message in the races, and at worst, they are convincing persuadable Georgians that it is the Republican Party that needs to be checked, not Joe Biden,” wrote Rich Lowry. At worst! Republicans would almost certainly be fine with Wood and Powell eroding confidence in American democracy if it didn’t threaten members of their party.
“The Republican establishment, and also the conservative establishment, has always made this bet that it could open Pandora’s box and close it on command,” Rick Perlstein, a historian of American conservatism, told me.
Republicans helped Trump unleash countless civic evils. They shouldn’t be surprised when those evils don’t spare them.
At worst! Republicans would almost certainly be fine with Wood and Powell eroding confidence in American democracy
if it didn’t threaten members of their party.