God Help Us All
The self-serving, shameless pandering by Republicans angling to be Trump’s VP/punching bag in a second Trump administration is truly astonishing. Scores of them have paraded across the various political talk shows in a parade of slavish debasement.
The latest schmuck is Senator Marco Rubio, who yesterday refused to say he would accept the 2024 election results, despite previously having said, “Democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election and their willingness to abide by its results.” This is the same Marco Rubio who once called Donald Trump a “con artist” who is “dangerous for the country.”
It’s also the same Marco Rubio who once got tripped up trying to drink a glass of water.
Senator Tim Scott has been aw-shucksing himself into Trump’s good graces with similar pronouncements about the upcoming election, calling the question “an issue that is not an issue.”
Huh?
The issue is very much an issue, Senator. Ask the man who previously held the job for which you are auditioning whether or not it is an issue. The one for whom a gallows was erected in front of the Capitoal, and whose name rhymes with the chant. “Bang Ike Hence.”
Lest you think too poorly of Senator Scott, at the end of the interview, he did say that at the end of the day, Donald Trump would be the 47th President of the United States, an election result which, it seems, he would accept.
Rep. Elise Stefanik has committed to accepting the election results “if they’re constitutional.” I can live with that – after all, who would want an “unconstitutional election”? Stefanik believes the 2016 election was one such election. The remedy? Lawsuits. 60 such lawsuits were filed by the Trump campaign. They lost them all. He lost every single lawsuit alleging election fraud. Because such fraud didn’t happen.
Senator JD Vance is probably the grossest VP aspirant, saying, according to the New York Times that, “He would have helped Mr. Trump overturn the results by accepting Trump electors that had not been elected by voters.” So the whole thing that got Rudy served at this 80th birthday part a couple nights ago? JD Vance is saying he would do more of that.
These are all, allegedly, “serious” people who have thrown in their lot with Trump’s cabaret of liars and cranks. For what? To wind up humiliated and insulted? Or is their secret hope that Trump will choke to death on a Big Mac and they’ll get to sit in the Big Chair?
What’s the point of getting the top job if you’ve already proven to the American people that you have no moral compass with which to navigate the ship of state? Would we trust anybody to be President who also wanted to serve as Trump’s VP?
Maybe I’m just lacking whatever gene causes people to be willing to say or do anything for power. I definitely do not possess the Republican VP candidate’s ability to lie, prevaricate, backtrack, gaslight, and beg for money. Is there something wrong with me - or with them? I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s them. Further I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that most of them don’t even like Trump. They see what we see: a vainglorious emperor desperately trying to arrange his new clothes.
They see him for what he is, but like all the fools who have supplicated themselves before Trump in the previous administration, they believe, to borrow one of Trump’s phrases that they alone can fix him. No they can’t. No they won’t. What we’re going to see in the second round of a Trump presidency is more chaos, more anger, more malevolence. Hilariously, much of that will be directed at the same people begging him for a job now.
Why do they think so much of Trump’s first administration refuses to support him in the current election? Generals, diplomats, political appointees, successful businesspeople… all of them say he’s unfit to serve. Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows says, “I think Trump is the gravest threat to our democracy we will face in our lifetime, and potentially American history.”
(Mark Meadows, by the way, was just indicted along with Rudy Giuliani for their involvement in assembling a fake set of electors, the very thing JD Vance is advocating for were he to be VP.)
Another Chief of Staff, General John Kelly recently described Trump as, “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about… A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton says, “Trump is not fit to be president.”
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has called Trump “a threat to democracy” and says he will not be voting for him.
Former White House counsel Ty Cobb wrote in an email to the Washington Post: ““He has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself,” Cobb wrote in an email to the Post last year. “In fact, as history well shows from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation.”
This is the guy these stupid, bland empty suits are propping up as he awaits the verdict in his first criminal trial. This is the guy that owes $400 million dollars in a sexual assault case; Trump is a sexual assailant in the eyes of the law. That’s who they’re lining up behind? The guy who defrauded a cancer charity? THAT guy?
I mean, I certainly didn’t agree with John Kelly much when he was in the administration but I have to say I concur with his final sentiment when contemplating a second Trump presidency, but it equally applies to whoever fills out such an administration: “God help us all.”
The truly fascinating thing is that the overwhelming majority of election fraud incident in the last quarter century or so have been committed by Republicans
It is all absolutely maddening to me. What are they benefiting from by propping him up? My best guess is that they see roughly half the country as being Team Trump and think that if they are in the graces of Trump, they'll have instant support from that cult.