4 dirty tricks Republicans learned from Trump
Stephen H. Provost
Pundits have focused a lot of attention on how much Republicans have done to protect Donald Trump, regardless of how outrageous or destructive his behavior has been. But less has been said about the things Republicans have learned from Trump about how to engage in that behavior themselves.
Here are four ways they’ve done just that.
Never apologize
Admitting you were wrong shows weakness. It opens you up to lawsuits, to criticism as a hypocrite, and gives your enemies an excuse to boast and hold it over your head.
“You never make those concessions. You never apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Why look weak?” — Donald Trump to Bob Woodward
“I won't back down. I'll never apologize. And I'll always keep fighting for the people.” — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia representative, QAnon acolyte, and Trump sycophant
Amazingly, the media continued to report on Trump’s lack of remorse about the Jan. 6 attacks, even a month later, as though it were actually news. It would only be news if he actually did show remorse. Sociopaths don’t do that.
Put power over principle
Trump has done this throughout his career, leveraging his wealth and influence to get what he wants, whether it’s ethical or not.
Trump showed Republicans that it was more important to be in power than what you do with that power. He persuaded them to abandon their positions on protectionism, the national debt, holding Russia accountable, etc., so they could ride his coattails.
Trump claimed that encouraging more people to vote, legally, would mean “they’d have levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham parroted this position a few months later: “If Republicans don't challenge and change the US election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again.”
Note the emphasis. The consequence isn’t that you’ll never have low taxes again, or you’ll never be able to overturn Roe v. Wade, or you’ll never have a healthy economy again. It’s just about getting elected. It’s purely about power. Nothing else.
Undermine the system
It’s not just that Trump believes in cheating if he can’t win legitimately, it’s that he prefers to cheat, because gaming the system proves you’re smarter than the system — that you’re above it.
To Trump, not paying taxes didn’t expose a lack of patriotism or citizenship. It proved he was smart.
Here is perhaps the most damning conclusion that can be drawn from his attempt to undermine the election by claiming it was “rigged” months before it was even held: He didn’t want to win fair and square. Cheating wasn’t his backup plan; it was his preferred outcome. He wanted to show he was better than the system.
It’s no wonder that Trump was attracted to a party that has long sought to protect its power through voter suppression. But Republicans always did so by trying to change the system; Trump tried to undermine it, and got Republicans in Congress to go along with him.
Pretend you don’t know
Answer the question, “What did you know, and when did you know it?” by claiming you know nothing. Interestingly, the Know Nothings were members of a fringe political party in the 1850s that started out as a secret society peddling conspiracy theories and bigotry. When asked about specifics of their movement, they routinely answered, “I know nothing.”
Trump responded the same way when asked about QAnon, and his crony, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, later parroted that response, even purposely mispronouncing “QAnon” to make it appear he was entirely oblivious.
Trump: “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much.”
McCarthy: “denouncing ‘Q-on.’ I don’t know if I say it right. I don’t even know what it is.”
McCarthy made that statement Feb. 3. Unfortunately, in previous statements, he’d suggested otherwise: “I do not agree with their beliefs at all.” (He’d have to know what those beliefs were in order to disagree with them.) And, similarly, “Let me be very clear: There is no place for QAnon in the Republican Party. I do not support it.”
Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and author of three books about the Trump presidency, available on Amazon at www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RC7L8X1.