Let’s make something very, very clear: the Republican Party is not the party of patriots. They aren’t the constitutional purists or the federalists or the party enamored of the ideology upon which this country was based. They’re political opportunists who have spouted those lines for years only to have it all proven fake by an impeached, one-term president who lost the popular vote twice and took the Republican Party down with him. They didn’t go unwillingly.
On Saturday, the morning after meeting with Michigan officials including State Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the Michigan State House Lee Chetfield, both Republicans, Donald Trump insisted that new voter fraud information would be coming out in the Michigan election, which is over and which Joe Biden won. The meeting was painted by those two Michigan officials as one in which they discussed funding for the state in light of COVID-19, while Trump paints a picture of a meeting in which potentially overturning the election results are still a possibility.
What the entire meeting is beginning to look like when both accounts are considered is one in which a president with the power to give or withhold federal aid to a state battling a pandemic is demanding that fellow party members help him overturn a democratic election in exchange.
It isn’t as if Trump has never put his own needs ahead of the safety and security of the American people, but Trump’s actions since November 3 have shown the depths to which he’ll go to hold onto power. What’s been more surprising, but shouldn’t be, is the Republican Party’s willingness to back those efforts. Democracy, checks and balances, and limits on presidential power be damned, Republicans want power and they’re willing to follow Trump off the edge of authoritarianism to get it, no matter how much noise they’ve made about being patriots who love our Constitution.
Twitter was quick to point out that Trump has lost the election and that the GOP is complicit in trying to steal it. Read some of their comments below:
