Do Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio Look Comfortable in Their Seats on the Trump Train?

From Esquire

Our president held another festival of resentment in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday night, in which he attempted to convince his attendant supporters that, "our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage. They want to destroy you. And they want to destroy our country as we know it." Truly, a president for all Americans. Donald Trump also successfully convinced the attendant media-from cable news to The New York Times-that this was his 2020 campaign "launch," despite the fact that he actually launched his campaign on Inauguration Day in 2017 and has held these campaign rallies fairly constantly since. No matter: everybody just accepted his characterization. What a great sign for the future.

But an even better sign came from the other prominent Republicans in attendance. Our president brought along his veep, Mike Pence, whose participation in the 2020 election is not assured. (The Trump folks have made noises about defenestrating Pence in favor of someone like Nikki Haley.) Mr. Pence has always been a hardliner on social issues-he has consistently opposed equal rights for LGBT citizens and signed a number of anti-abortion bills into law as governor of Indiana-but he seems to have embraced a new level of vitriol in service to Trump. It's a familiar story: if you stick around the guy long enough, you're going to end up saying and defending some intergalactic shit. Exhibit Z:

Nobody-literally no one-in American national politics backs "infanticide." What is wrong with you? This is something you'd hear from a guy on a street corner yelling at passing cars. But it's the vice president. And as eager as Pence is to return the American social order to approximately 1956, he does not actually believe Democrats support murdering newborn babies because of some sort of secular social decay. It's just rhetoric. It's an insane thing to say, but in today's Republican Party, it's become boilerplate. Nobody bats an eye. The president's opponents don't favor a humane immigration process that follows domestic and international law-they want open borders! Everything I don't like is socialism! Just say anything.

Still, as thoroughly as the Republican Party has given itself over to a president whose brain is rapidly atrophying due to a debilitating level of cable news consumption, there are signs the bootlickers who should know better now realize what they've gotten themselves into. Take Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, for instance. Once upon a time, these two United States Senators were relatively normal conservative Republicans: hardliners, especially on foreign policy, but with a human adult's grasp on reality. For instance, Graham used to say Trump was a "kook" who's "crazy" and "unfit for office." Rubio used to call Trump a "con artist" and slammed him for refusing to repudiate David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.

But then Trump won, and now they can both be found at the rally in Orlando, offering their public support for the same guy. Maybe they think Trump has been reformed-although, when the C-SPAN camera panned to the senators unbeknownst to them, it seems they might be a bit concerned about which train they jumped on.

Gee whiz! These guys seem to be aware that a movement featuring a leader who talks like this and supporters who cheer for it might be a bit dangerous to a constitutional republic. It's almost like depicting anyone who refuses to join the movement as an Enemy of the State hell-bent on destroying society as we know it is not a traditional brand of democratic politics! Or maybe Rubio and Graham saw these guys on the way in.

Here are the "Proud Boys," a white nationalist group whose members attacked leftist protesters on the streets of a major American city in October, marching outside the Trump rally in Orlando wearing the Red Hats and flashing white-power signs. According to The New York Times' Trip Gabriel, a disillusioned Republican operative told him that, "The Trump campaign is well aware of the organized participation of Proud Boys rallies merging into Trump events. They don't care. Staff are to treat it like a coalition they can’t talk about."

Well, isn't that nice. Someday, Rubio and Graham ought to explain why they thought it was a good idea to throw such full-throated support behind a guy they very well know is a danger to the republic every minute he holds onto the job. The proof they know is the look on their faces when they think no one can see them. That's probably the look they give family and friends when they're off the clock. No matter: you've got to get re-elected, even if the very fabric of the nation is torn asunder by those who believe only certain people are truly Americans. If shame weren't dead, they'd be ashamed of themselves.

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