A government of dominance
The question isn't whether Republicans care about the consequences of their actions, but why they clearly don't.
Something interesting has happened in recent days. It’s not entirely unexpected and not overly obvious, but watching the president and top Republicans’ response to this past weekend’s No Kings rallies has been incredibly instructive.
At no point in the last 48 hours has a single prominent Republican acknowledged the overwhelming size of the protests that occurred across the nation on Saturday. More importantly, no one — from the president himself and leading figures like Mike Johnson on down — has provided even the remotest admission that Saturday’s No Kings rallies were comprised of everyday Americans, millions of them, who stand in opposition to the authoritarian rumblings coming from Washington.
In more normal times, Saturday’s rallies would be a wake-up call to the party in power — an unavoidable rebuke of their reign and a serious warning for the next year’s elections.
Instead, Republicans have doubled down. President Donald Trump led the charge, naturally, by posting an insane AI video of himself wearing a crown while flying a military jet — and dumping feces on crowds below. At a press conference on Monday, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) noted that Jesus Christ is king — upping the ante from standard Trumpian authoritarianism to theocracy. At the same press conference, Johnson dismissed Saturday’s historic rallies. If Trump we’re actually king, Johnson said, he wouldn’t have allowed the rallies in the first place.
At no point in any of this has a single prominent Republican admitted that everyday Americans took to the streets en masse to protest the president and his party.
Not radicals. Not Marxists. Not Antifa or “domestic terrorists.” Everyday people. Grandmas, college students, business owners, mothers and fathers, military veterans — all took to the streets in hundreds of rallies nationwide. In response, the White House and Republicans in Congress have completely dismissed the events as either small or insignificant (they were neither) or as populated and supported by far-left extremists (also not true).
This is to be expected — it’s politically disastrous for any Republican to acknowledge the importance of a nationwide popular movement against their leader . But the forcefulness of the dismissal alludes to something more troubling: Trump and Republicans have no intention of giving up power.
First, of course not! Every political party wants to remain in power. They spend billions of dollars on advertising during election years toward this end. But this political party is different. It doesn’t seek to remain in power through the normal channels. Instead, it seeks utter dominance.
The response to Saturday’s rallies, while noteworthy, is in line with another strange phenomenon of modern Republican politics: a complete dismissal of concerns over what would otherwise be very bad optics.
As the cost of living remains high for Americans, Trump has been busy outfitting the Oval Office in gold tchotchkes, bizarrely bragging about the shiny trinkets he’s purchased on social media. The president has spent millions on a revamp of the White House Rose Garden, and on Monday began construction on a massive ballroom and event space. After initially saying the project wouldn’t affect the existing structure of the White House, crews began dismantling the facade of the building’s east wing.
These are very bad optics: a luxury-obsessed billionaire president blowing taxpayer dollars on vanity projects while the cost of groceries continues to rise. That is, these are very bad optics if one were to actually care about the electoral consequences of how these developments and many more were perceived by Americans who have the power to vote one out of office.
Very bad, unless what voters think about what you’re doing doesn’t really matter anymore.
We are seeing a preview of what this will look like in the case of Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Johnson has refused to officially seat her for reasons he has made entirely unclear. The people of Arizona elected her to represent them, but because Johnson simply doesn’t feel like it, she’s unable to do so.
What happens next year when Democrats win enough seats to take over the House of Representatives? Do Johnson and Republicans similarly refuse to seat them? Or do they employ some other, more obscure technicality, to avoid losing control of Congress? This is the subject of some of my reporting going forward. Because there are paths. There are always paths. It used to be that even the most craven and cynical politicians didn’t walk down them, but we’re way past that.
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