Friday, January 8, 2021

Time: What Trump wrought

By Molly Ball

    In a last-ditch effort to twist election results, President Trump incited a mob of his supporters on January 6th, causing them to break into the US Capitol as a joint session of Congress certified Joe Biden's victory.
    For 4 years, the Republican party has endured Trump because of his massive support base, either working themselves into his inner circle or finding some way to justify his actions.
"In the final weeks of his term, Trump ran amok. He vowed to ruin the careers of GOP officials who would not go along with his baseless election claims. He vetoed the annual military budget. He sided with Democrats by demanding $2,000 stimulus checks the GOP would not support. He painted the Georgia Senate races as rigged, prompting supporters to urge a ballot boycott. He urged 'patriots' to descend on D.C. for a final showdown at the Capitol."

    Trump has slowly been tearing the GOP apart. People who opposed him were eliminated, and the rest just went along with it. In his final test, he forced lawmakers to choose sides again by pressuring them into challenging electoral vote counts (most refused to do so after the chaos on Capitol Hill). In Georgia's Senate runoffs, he attacked the Republican establishment, ultimately leading to the victories of Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, effectively giving Democrats control of the Senate.

"Few conservatives had illusions about who they were dealing with. 'The Republican Party was a means to an end, the easiest patsy lying around,' says Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. 'I tried to warn people: You’ve invited someone in the house who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else, much less than the house itself.'"

    This isn't to say that Republicans can't win - they can, as they showed in the House elections. But when lies can defeat truth, that's when it becomes dangerous.

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