Over the past week, Donald Trump has been on a fascist romp. At rallies in Colorado and California, he amped up his usual rants, and added a rancid grace note by suggesting that a woman heckler should “get the hell knocked out of her” by her mother after she gets back home. But on Sunday morning, he outdid himself in an interview on Fox News, by saying that “the enemy within”—Americans he described as “radical left lunatics,” including California representative Adam Schiff, whom he mentioned by name—are more dangerous than Russia or China, and could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard or the U.S. military.
This wasn’t the first time Trump suggested using America’s armed forces against its own people: As president, he thought of the military as his personal guard and regularly fantasized about commanding “his generals” to crush dissent, which is one reason why former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley reportedly told Bob Woodward that he sees Trump as “fascist to his core.”
The term “fascism” has been so overused as a denunciation that many people have understandably tuned it out. But every American should be shocked to hear a presidential nominee say that other Americans (including a sitting member of Congress) are more dangerous than two nations pointing hundreds of nuclear warheads at America’s cities. During the Cold War, conservative members of the GOP would likely have labeled anyone saying such things as a “comsymp,” a fellow traveler, or even a traitor. Indeed, one might expect that other Republicans would be horrified to hear such hatred directed at their fellow citizens and such comfort given to the nation’s enemies.
Pretty to think so. But today’s Republican leaders are cowards, and some are even worse: They are complicit, as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin proved on Monday in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. At least cowards run away. The GOP elected officials who cross the street against the light just to get away from the reporters are at least showing a tiny, molecular awareness of shame. Youngkin, however, smiled and dissembled and excused Trump’s hideousness with a kind of folksy shamelessness that made cowardice seem noble by comparison.
Tapper read Trump’s remarks verbatim, and then asked: “Is that something that you support?” Youngkin replied that Tapper misunderstood Trump, who he said was referring to undocumented immigrants. No, Tapper responded, Trump clearly meant American citizens. Tapper added that Trump had singled out Schiff. Youngkin aw-shucksed his way through stories about Venezuelan criminals and Virginians dying from fentanyl. “Obviously there is a border crisis,” Tapper said. “Obviously there are too many criminals who should not be in this country and they should be jailed and deported completely, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” And then, to his credit, Tapper wouldn’t let go: What about Trump’s threat to use the military against Americans?
Well, Youngkin shrugged, he “can’t speak” for Trump, but he was certain that Tapper was “misrepresenting [Trump’s] thoughts.”
Some of the people who watched Youngkin’s appalling dishonesty immediately thought of one of the most famous passages from George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told him to reject the evidence of his eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
But this interpretation gives Youngkin too much credit. Orwell’s dictators were able to terrify people with torture and deprivation into accepting the government’s lies. Youngkin, however, is not a terrified subject of an authoritarian regime: He’s just an opportunist. Like J.D. Vance, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Youngkin is demanding that everyone else play along and pretend that Trump is just a misunderstood immigration hawk, and then move on – all so that people like Youngkin can later say that he was a loyal Republican when he contends for the leadership of the GOP after Trump is either defeated, retired, or long gone.
In this, Youngkin joins a long list of utterly dishonorable people, including Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump with energy and honesty and then bowed and scraped after she was defeated. As The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has noted, 10 Republican senators could have changed the course of history by supporting Trump’s impeachment. Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a supposed GOP moderate, is a particularly galling example. Portman twice voted against convicting Trump. He announced his retirement just weeks after the January 6 insurrection, and he had no electoral chances to protect (not that protecting one’s electoral chances is an honorable excuse). Still, he let Trump slide, perhaps out of fear of reproach from his neighbors back in Ohio.
It’s not exactly a revelation that the Republican Party’s elected ranks have become a haven for cranks and opportunists, and sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference: When Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, talks about how “they” can control the weather, it’s hard to tell if she is just a kook, if she herself is an anti-semite, or if she is employing yet another anti-semitic trope because she knows that some of the MAGA base feasts on such garbage.
For someone like Greene, the difference doesn’t matter. She is ignorant. And she traffics in ignorance. Her constituents have rewarded her with a safe seat in Congress. But in the Trump era, the conceit all along has been that more responsible Republicans such as Youngkin are lurking in the background, keeping their heads down while quietly and competently doing the people’s business.
Americans should therefore watch Youngkin’s exchange with Tapper for themselves. They should see that supposedly competent Republicans have already abandoned the party. To believe otherwise—especially after watching someone like Youngkin—is to truly obey the commandment to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.