The ascension of Donald Trump has heralded a new era of political absurdities. His unpredictable rise in the Republican Party came with unusually hostile pronouncements directed at GOP regulars. The objects of his contempt included John McCain, George W. Bush, and Mitch McConnell, to name a few. As an example of the schizophrenic nature of his fractured loyalties, Trump argued publicly with the Republican National Committee during the campaign, then named it’s chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff (briefly).
However, Trump’s true allegiance was always to his own self-interest. And the best gauge of where he stood at any moment was the cast of characters at Fox News. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, his personal pals, and fellow sexual predators, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, and the premiere suck-up of the century, Sean Hannity, were (and are) his closest advisers. The relationship between Trump and his shadow cabinet of Foxies is excruciatingly tight.
So it may not come as a surprise to hear Hannity lash out at the party for which he has been a devoted toady for the last twenty years. With his infatuation for Trump growing by the day, Hannity has completely abandoned his long-held political commitments in favor of a new faithfulness to the emerging Trump Cult. And in the spirit of that betrayal, Hannity prostrated himself to the Pope of Trumpism, Steve Bannon, to declare and affirm that the Republican Party is dead:
“Here’s my view on the Republican Party. It is a dead party. They are morally corrupt, they are weak. They are ineffective, they’re vision-less, and they have no identity.”
Who can argue with that? Hannity went on to lament that he was “heartbroken” by what he said was the failure of trust by the GOP turning on Trump. It was behavior that he called “total and complete bullshit.” What precisely he is talking about is a mystery, considering the GOP’s blind obedience to Trump’s every delusional whim. They are a party that has stood by him despite his “pussy-grabbing” confession of sexual assaults, his denouncement of fellow party icons, his embrace of racist white nationalists, his admiration for brutal and oppressive tyrants like Vladimir Putin, and his infantile taunting of nuclear-powered foreign adversaries.
For a well known Republican bootlicker like Hannity to publicly renounce his party in favor of a reality TV game show host turned wannabe dictator should be profoundly disturbing to Republican politicians and voters. They are being thrown over for a faker who has manged to sell a shitload of snake oil to a pitifully ignorant minority of gullible Americans. But the Trump Cult movement is about as thick as a hair’s breadth. As soon as he wanders off to his golf resort retirement, or is paraded into a prison cell, the true believers will disperse and deny they ever supported him.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
It isn’t certain that after Trump’s downfall his former disciples will re-embrace the GOP. Consequently, Trumpitis may be a fatal disease that ushers the party to its inevitable demise. And if the rest of us live through these difficult days until Trump shuffles off the stage, the damage he does to the right-wing may turn out to be blessing. If only the wait wasn’t so painful and dangerous.
