According to Robert Reich, republican pols support Trump because they’re afraid of his violent supporters. He’s their mob boss:
Friends,
Shortly after the 2016 election, I spoke with a Republican friend who had retired from the Senate years before. I asked him why so many Republican lawmakers remained silent in the face of Trump’s vile lies and bigotry.
After a pause, he said, “Some of his supporters are nuts, and they have guns.”
I laughed, thinking he was joking. He was dead serious. “They’re a dangerous mob, and Trump’s the mob boss,” he added.
I remember thinking he should call them out and denounce their threats of violence, as well as Trump. But I didn’t feel I had a right to ask him to put himself and his family in harm’s way.
Yet in retrospect, perhaps I was wrong. If all Republican lawmakers had denounced Trump and his supporters’ tactics right from the start, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today.
A failure to condemn political violence when it begins invites more of it.
On January 6, 2021, Trump’s armed mob stormed the Capitol. Trump waited more than three hours before calling them off.
Trump’s threats continue to this day.
CNN recently aired audio of the kind of threats faced by Republican lawmakers who opposed Jim Jordan, Trump’s original pick for House speaker before Mike Johnson. In the audio, the caller can be heard threatening to harass an unnamed lawmaker’s wife.
Some Republican lawmakers voted against Jordan nonetheless, but we will never know how many others caved in to intimidation. Nor will we know how many ultimately voted for Mike Johnson because they were afraid not to.
Retiring Sen. Mitt Romney recounted (in McKay Coppins’s new Romney biography) that during Trump’s January 23, 2021, impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit.
Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” She cited how “members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”
When announcing his retirement, former Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez cited threats to him and his family after his vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. In September 2021, Gonzalez announced he would not seek another term.
Former Republican congressman Peter Meijer, another of the 10, stated the day after the vote that he had purchased body armor and made changes to his daily schedule due to threats against his life.
Meijer also noted that his colleagues who voted not to certify the 2020 election “knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.”
The Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania state Senate explained why he signed a letter backing Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in that state: “If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight.”
Trump has been analogized to the leader of a cult. A better analogy would be a mob boss.
The lackeys of mob bosses commit crimes on their behalf so the bosses aren’t held responsible.
Last week, on his first day of testimony in the case underway in Manhattan accusing Trump of civil fraud, Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, recounted committing crimes on the former president’s behalf.
Three of Trump’s lawyers in the Georgia criminal case against him have already pleaded guilty to racketeering charges — that is, committing the crimes on Trump’s behalf.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to hurl invective against judges, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses in his pending criminal trials — gag orders notwithstanding.
In seeking such gag orders, prosecutors have shown a pattern of death threats following Trump’s outbursts.
For example, on August 4, Trump posted, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The following day, a Texas woman left a voicemail for Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the election conspiracy case against Trump, threatening that “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”
The next day, a man left a voicemail threatening the lives of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Sheriff Patrick Labat for their roles in the Georgia criminal election interference case against Trump.
Threats and intimidation are hallmarks of mob bosses.
Mob rule is incompatible with democracy.
Rep. Liz Cheney warned a few weeks ago that if Trump is reelected, “all of the things he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him … he will do. There will be no guardrails … . He will unravel the institutions of our democracy.”
There’s not a lot of difference.
JEFFERSON: Yes. And here is some choice advice if you are in a subordinate position on how to deal with the top dog:
He doesn’t have to know all the bad news and if he’s a power really, he won’t ask all the time, “What are all those dead bodies doing at the door?” And if you are clever, you never let it be thought HE killed them — that weakens you and also hurts the power source. “Well, boss, about all those dead bodies, nobody at all will suppose you did it. She over there, those pink legs sticking out, didn’t like me.”
“Pink legs” became a meme in the Sea Org. You got the stats up any way you could, and any questions about how the stats were raised were answered with “pink legs,” meaning “you don’t want to know.” You complied with Miscavige’s orders any way you could, and the methods you used were “pink legs.”
Some real zingers…
Adam Kinzinger represented a reliably Republican district in the US House for six terms. He voted to impeach Donald Trump over the insurrection and with Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee. Like the former Wyoming congresswoman, he earned the ire of Trump and the GOP base.
A lieutenant colonel and air force pilot, Kinzinger read the terrain and declined to run again. In his memoir, he looks back at his life, family and time in the US military. He also examines the transformation of the Republican party into a Trumpian vessel. With the assistance of Michael D’Antonio, biographer of Mike Pence, he delivers a steady and well-crafted read.
Kinzinger finds the Republicans sliding toward authoritarianism, alienating him from a world he once knew. On 8 January 2021, two days after the Trump-inspired coup attempt, he received a letter signed by 11 members of his family, excoriating him for calling for the president to be removed.
“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!’ the letter began. “We were once proud of your accomplishments! Instead, you go against your Christian principles and join ‘the Devil’s army’ (Democrats and the fake news media).”
The word “disappointment was underlined three times”, Kinzinger counts. “God once.”
…
Kevin McCarthy, deposed as speaker last month, earns Kinzinger’s scorn – and rightly.
“I was not surprised he was ousted,” Kinzinger told NPR. “And frankly, I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
On the page, Kinzinger paints McCarthy as weak, limitlessly self-abasing and a bully. He put himself at the mercy of Matt Gaetz, the Florida extremist, prostrated himself before Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia extremist, and endured 15 rounds of balloting on the House floor to be allowed the speaker’s gavel – an illusion of a win.
McCarthy behaved like “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”, Kinzinger writes. The California congressman even tried, if feebly, to physically intimidate his fellow Republican.
“Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber,” Kinzinger remembers. “As [McCarthy] passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.”
…
Kin-zingers?
i’m trying to imagine these people on a zoom call with the big g, chatting about the divine plan. good thing god has them to consult with or where would we all be. 
The media is sounding alarm bells. The problem is that a sizable percentage of the population genuinely seems to want this.
27% give or take would back Il Douche regardless. If he targetted them, specifically, for elimination, i suspect they would cheer him on still. I do not understand this mindset, but in a cult, you follow the cult leader, i guess, having surrendered any individual judgement.
Completely sucks they got fired, but I hope their intent to fight the law gets it ruled unconstitutional, since it clearly is.
Got a touch of schadenfreude going on with the hate.
“Although a Jewish facility was not targeted, solely due to ironic misidentification,…”
That statement must have been somewhat fun to write.
Couldn’t one argue that all art is an ad for the artist? 
