Trump apologists discover their inner conviction

The change of tune is welcome, but the President’s supporters held remarkably strong until the last.

Senator Lindsey Graham held a press conference where he condemned the pro-Trump mob’s storming of the Capitol the day before. Picture: Getty Images

Donald Trump hasn’t exactly had the best week of his political career. First he tries to strongarm a Republican secretary of state in Georgia into rigging election results and overturning a democratic decision. Then, because of his two-month-long dummy spit at having lost the US presidential election on November 3, he watches his party lose not one but two run-off elections, costing the Republicans control of the Senate.

Then, after publicly attempting to shame Vice-President Mike Pence into acting unconstitutionally, Trump incites a mob to storm the Capitol building in a capricious act of sedition aimed at overturning the presidential election result.

Just as rats always desert a sinking ship, in recent days a conga line of Republicans and conservative commentators has walked away from years of support for Trump. While their collective last-minute finding of a conscience when it comes to this despicable president is welcomed, there is no papering over the fact they have held remarkably strong up until this point.

According to the internet, a lemming is a small rodent that “behaves aggressively towards human observers”. And like lemmings approaching a democratic cliff on January 20, so it has been with the collective of Trump apologists who have cheered on this megalomaniac for years, in the full knowledge of what he is really like.

Put plainly, I have watched these dangerous fools bang out column inches year after year, and spruik their collective stupidity on television time after time, displaying callous indifference to the risks attached to what and who Trump is: a modern-day demagogue, a leader who seeks to appeal to the prejudices of ordinary citizens rather than to their rational selves.

This week we saw where this could lead: a Capitol building lockdown as staff and politicians sought refuge behind locked doors or pieces of furniture. Authorities with guns drawn attempted to defend the premises. Rioters pillaged historic memorabilia and lounged in the offices of democratically elected leaders. Deaths followed, although not nearly as many as there would have been had these wreckers of democracy been black, not white.

Year after year I’ve watched conservatives lecture their societies about moral standards, yet where was their morality leading up to this week’s events? Instead, they stoked the flames of ill-founded discontent among Trump supporters, for some in a bid to lay claim to becoming the next Trump.

Two Republican senators stood out from the crowd for very different reasons: Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney. The former, who represents Texas, went all in arguing against the democratic wishes of American voters, defending the actions of a president in disrepute despite Trump previously having attacked Cruz’s father and Cruz’s wife in the most despicable ways. Yet Cruz has become an unflinching Trump advocate and defender. What a pathetic human being.

Romney, in contrast, was the only Republican senator prepared to support the President’s impeachment last February. And this week his words condemning Trump have served only to elevate the one-time presidential candidate.

The callow collective of reactionary Australian commentators who regularly attempt to out-do one another in their support for Trump should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, enablers of dangerous political intolerance one and all. To be sure, they won’t show a shred of contrition, courtesy of a mixture of stubbornness and ignorance.

Some have finally begun to condemn the President, albeit with caveats. Most, however, have spent the past two months whinging about the result, some even echoing Trump’s claim the election was rigged.

Many current and former politicians also should be included, mouthing off about Trump’s virtues while ignoring his vices.

For anyone who tries to argue now that they simply couldn’t have seen coming what has transpired this week, that merely shows their lack of research.

Here are a bunch of quotes from leading Republicans about Trump before he took power, figures who have walked alongside him during his presidency despite knowing exactly what he was.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham: “I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy, I think he’s unfit for office. He’s a race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot.” Cruz: “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies (with) practically every word that comes out of his mouth. He combines it with being a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.” Senator Rand Paul: “My concern is that he would grab up that power and really treat the country as sort of his little bully fiefdom.” Rick Perry, who served in Trump’s cabinet up until 2019 described Trump as “a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean spiritedness and nonsense”. Nikki Haley, touted as a future Republican presidential candidate: “Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten.” Former Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio: “Donald Trump is a con artist. He’s been exploiting working Americans for 40 years.”

All of the above have been some of Trump’s strongest supporters, despite their reservations about their man.

And this week we saw every living former defence secretary sign an open letter expressing concerns that Trump just might try to use the military to seize power, a truly extraordinary collective that included former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Democracy is fragile, which is one of the reasons conservatives historically have defended traditional institutions so strongly. Doing so is at the heart of what it means to be conservative.

Yet during the past four years supposed conservatives have rallied around the populist Trump despite his predilection for tearing down institutions and cultural markers of conservatism. Trump has attacked the courts, the legislature, the media and indeed anyone and everyone who gets in his way. This week it culminated in a cry to “patriots” to storm the Capitol, and an ongoing unwillingness to accept his electoral defeat. Rather, Trump continues to make false claims that voter fraud cost him the election.

Reactionaries like to claim some sort of superiority when it comes to reading the mood of the mainstream, just one reason they were so quick to claim victory on the night Trump went on to lose the election.

Last year, the mainstream delivered reactionaries and Trump a crushing defeat according to the popular vote and the electoral college.

For all the chaos fuelled by a sore loser this week, the good news is most Americans turned their back on Trump. And after what has transpired in recent days, you can bet more will join that worthy protest.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.