If anyone wanted to understand the true priorities of the Republican Party, last week was one like no other. It was a week that would leave any decent American flabbergasted at the extent of Republican willingness to endorse betrayal and treachery against the American public. It clarified the willingness of Republicans to abandon all pretense of law and order to satisfy their aims. Frankly, it was a week that should, by all rights, forever erase any doubts about just how un-American and toxic to this country Republicans actually are.
And for all the hype that surrounded it, the criminal indictment and formal arrest of Donald Trump played only a small part.
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At the exact time that Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was being arraigned in Miami and charged with felony violations of the Espionage Act in connection with his alleged mishandling of our nation’s classified documents, several of his Republican congressional supporters gathered in the U.S. Capitol for a fake “hearing.” This hearing honored the people who attacked the same Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, lauding, encouraging, and soothing them for their failed attempt to violently overturn the 2020 election.
Earlier that week, a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Clay Higgins telegraphed a message on Twitter providing coded, helpful tactical advice to extremist white supremacist militia groups in the event they perpetrated a violent assault on the federal courthouse where Trump was being arraigned.
Later in the same week, 196 Republicans—nearly the entire GOP House caucus—voted in favor of a resolution to censure and heavily fine Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for investigating and revealing the rank complicity between the Trump administration and the Russian Federation in influencing the outcome of the 2016 election.
RELATED STORY: Republican attempt to censure Adam Schiff fails
These acts aren’t simply “un-American.” They’re clear evidence of a political organization that has collectively resolved to make a clean break with democracy.
Of all these actions, the phony “field hearing” staged at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, “chaired” by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and attended by far-right Republicans including Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, Texas Rep. Troy Nehls, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was probably the most grotesque. It went virtually unreported in the mainstream press, transfixed as they were with the spectacle of a former president surrendering in federal court to felony criminal charges. But in its own twisted way, the hearing revealed more about the institutional rot of the Republican Party than even Trump’s second criminal indictment could conjure up.
As reported by The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, the Capitol “hearing” should not have occurred at all, since Gaetz, who oversaw the “proceedings,” is not a committee chair. Nevertheless, it was permitted by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and (as a consequence of that phony imprimatur of legitimacy) Gaetz played it to the hilt, formally calling witnesses, “yielding” and “allowing” time, and displaying the congressional seal on the backdrop of a large video screen. Tables were arranged to make it appear as if these six Republican congressmen were “taking testimony,” which Gaetz declared would be part of the “official record.” As Milbank notes, C-SPAN dutifully carried the faux “hearings” as if they were something other than a total self-serving farce.
As Milbank reports, the “witnesses” included actual participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including those convicted of urging assaults on police at the Capitol, relatives of those currently awaiting trial for physically assaulting Capitol Police on that day, and organizers of the insurrection itself. The one thing all of the witnesses had in common was that they or their relatives were in some way being held to account for their behavior on and leading up to the Jan. 6 assault.
As Milbank records, the Republican lawmakers heaped praise on all of them.
Preening before an audience of Trump supporters (some wearing T-shirts accusing the Capitol police of murder), these same lawmakers whose halls were assaulted and trashed on Jan. 6 continued to bestow pity on the insurrectionists. They repeatedly blamed law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, and the FBI for their “mistreatment,” even as Capitol Police guarded the doors in the halls outside the hearing. Milbank, of course, notes the unintended irony in that.
But we’re well past the ironic stage. In a single week we have seen elected Republican officials leap to support a former president criminally indicted (with damning evidence) for espionage, a Republican Congress voting almost en masse to punish an investigation into that same president’s treacherous complicity with Russian intelligence, and members of Congress publicly treating politically inspired violence as some perverse act of heroism.
In 2018, conservative David Frum, writing for The Atlantic, predicted how the corruption of the Republican Party would play out under Donald Trump. He wrote the following:
It’s hard to imagine anything more isolating for Trump than being criminally indicted. Judging from the nearly monolithic Republican reaction to his indictment he is, in fact, “devouring” the entire party as a consequence. The party has abandoned the pretense of any fealty to the “law” at all, praised and encouraged political violence, and attacked those who’ve revealed his perfidious actions. These are all the hallmarks of a party that has collectively decided that maintaining political power is far more important than any pesky and inconvenient notions of “democracy.”
Frum’s 2018 prediction is exactly what is happening, and this past week it was there for all to see, in real time. As Jamelle Bouie, writing for The New York Times, put it on June 13:
Republicans have made their choice, and democracy lost. The only real question is what they’ll endorse next.
RELATED STORY: Donald Trump and the promise of participatory violence
And for all the hype that surrounded it, the criminal indictment and formal arrest of Donald Trump played only a small part.
RELATED STORY: RNC is sticking to its loyalty pledge ... to a potential convict
At the exact time that Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was being arraigned in Miami and charged with felony violations of the Espionage Act in connection with his alleged mishandling of our nation’s classified documents, several of his Republican congressional supporters gathered in the U.S. Capitol for a fake “hearing.” This hearing honored the people who attacked the same Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, lauding, encouraging, and soothing them for their failed attempt to violently overturn the 2020 election.
Earlier that week, a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Clay Higgins telegraphed a message on Twitter providing coded, helpful tactical advice to extremist white supremacist militia groups in the event they perpetrated a violent assault on the federal courthouse where Trump was being arraigned.
Later in the same week, 196 Republicans—nearly the entire GOP House caucus—voted in favor of a resolution to censure and heavily fine Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for investigating and revealing the rank complicity between the Trump administration and the Russian Federation in influencing the outcome of the 2016 election.
RELATED STORY: Republican attempt to censure Adam Schiff fails
These acts aren’t simply “un-American.” They’re clear evidence of a political organization that has collectively resolved to make a clean break with democracy.
Of all these actions, the phony “field hearing” staged at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, “chaired” by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and attended by far-right Republicans including Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, Texas Rep. Troy Nehls, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was probably the most grotesque. It went virtually unreported in the mainstream press, transfixed as they were with the spectacle of a former president surrendering in federal court to felony criminal charges. But in its own twisted way, the hearing revealed more about the institutional rot of the Republican Party than even Trump’s second criminal indictment could conjure up.
As reported by The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, the Capitol “hearing” should not have occurred at all, since Gaetz, who oversaw the “proceedings,” is not a committee chair. Nevertheless, it was permitted by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and (as a consequence of that phony imprimatur of legitimacy) Gaetz played it to the hilt, formally calling witnesses, “yielding” and “allowing” time, and displaying the congressional seal on the backdrop of a large video screen. Tables were arranged to make it appear as if these six Republican congressmen were “taking testimony,” which Gaetz declared would be part of the “official record.” As Milbank notes, C-SPAN dutifully carried the faux “hearings” as if they were something other than a total self-serving farce.
As Milbank reports, the “witnesses” included actual participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including those convicted of urging assaults on police at the Capitol, relatives of those currently awaiting trial for physically assaulting Capitol Police on that day, and organizers of the insurrection itself. The one thing all of the witnesses had in common was that they or their relatives were in some way being held to account for their behavior on and leading up to the Jan. 6 assault.
As Milbank records, the Republican lawmakers heaped praise on all of them.
Preening before an audience of Trump supporters (some wearing T-shirts accusing the Capitol police of murder), these same lawmakers whose halls were assaulted and trashed on Jan. 6 continued to bestow pity on the insurrectionists. They repeatedly blamed law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, and the FBI for their “mistreatment,” even as Capitol Police guarded the doors in the halls outside the hearing. Milbank, of course, notes the unintended irony in that.
But we’re well past the ironic stage. In a single week we have seen elected Republican officials leap to support a former president criminally indicted (with damning evidence) for espionage, a Republican Congress voting almost en masse to punish an investigation into that same president’s treacherous complicity with Russian intelligence, and members of Congress publicly treating politically inspired violence as some perverse act of heroism.
In 2018, conservative David Frum, writing for The Atlantic, predicted how the corruption of the Republican Party would play out under Donald Trump. He wrote the following:
It’s hard to imagine anything more isolating for Trump than being criminally indicted. Judging from the nearly monolithic Republican reaction to his indictment he is, in fact, “devouring” the entire party as a consequence. The party has abandoned the pretense of any fealty to the “law” at all, praised and encouraged political violence, and attacked those who’ve revealed his perfidious actions. These are all the hallmarks of a party that has collectively decided that maintaining political power is far more important than any pesky and inconvenient notions of “democracy.”
Frum’s 2018 prediction is exactly what is happening, and this past week it was there for all to see, in real time. As Jamelle Bouie, writing for The New York Times, put it on June 13:
Republicans have made their choice, and democracy lost. The only real question is what they’ll endorse next.
RELATED STORY: Donald Trump and the promise of participatory violence