Charlie Sykes has always held Trump in contempt, so much so that he and his fellow neoconservative Bill Kristol started a website and movement, “The Bulwark,” in an attempt to retain the Right’s sanity. Obviously, it hasn’t worked and Sykes has been railing at Trump and his followers in DC ever since. This column, both Sykes‘ and ours, is about the Republican willingness to tolerate increasingly insane behavior.

This week we’ve read report after report about those close to Trump (aides, family, etc.) expressing concern about his increasingly delusional thinking, Sykes seems to take it as a given and is now lashing out at the Trump followers on Capitol Hill, the ones that know Trump’s dangerously delusional and yet are actually preserving a legacy for the most dangerous of the MAGAs. Sykes doesn’t say it, but we will. They are preserving it because it’s the straightest road to their dream location, fascism.

In Syke’s scathing Friday column, he reviews the utter absurdity the pols in Washington seem to accept as normal, indeed anything – apparently – can be normalized when it comes to Trump:

As James Madison might say, Oh FFS. We’re still at the let’s laugh at the silly man who was still a pretty good president stage of things? 

Here’s a reality check: (Quotes Former FBI Agent: Asha Rangappa)

Trump’s claim that he will be “reinstalled” this summer is a repeat of the same playbook that led to January 6. Give your followers false hope in a completely unattainable outcome, so that when it inevitably doesn’t happen, you can channel their disappointment into rage.

In other words, a clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower.

Sykes then quoted his own words in a post-election prediction about the conspiracy theories:

Hello, darkness, our old friend. As usual, one of the reasons that Trump thinks he can get away with his firehose of falsehoods is that he knows that most Republicans will cravenly remain in a fetal crouch.

The vast, vast majority of elected Republicans know that Joe Biden was elected. They know that there was no systematic fraud or massive mysterious dumps. They know all this, and could affirm the integrity of our democratic process, but they don’t want to make the Truthers mad.

The election truthers.

That’s where we now stand. It is as bad as 9-11, which threatened the security state. This truther movement threatens the state itself. He then quotes Aaron Blake who makes a brilliant observation. One of the most overlooked and pernicious aspects of the MAGA movement is that Trump elevated people who would never have been within a mile of presidential influence, people like Mike Flynn and Mike Lindell. Now, these people are some of Trump’s most trusted aides and they creep right along, getting ever further out there, drifting ever more into the insanity.

Sykes then asks a critical question: How long will it be before the Trump reinstatement becomes the new litmus test of Republican loyalty? It is one of the most scathing articles written about Republicans that we’ve read. We might add, while considering the importance, remember that when we say “Republicans,” we’re now saying “the fascists.” Should they ever achieve power again, the result is preordained.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak