June 30 2020

By Thom Hartmann

Republicans are starting to behave as if they have figured out that Donald Trump is an incompetent, malicious, lying, white supremacist, dictator-loving racist whose stupidity and spite have led to the death of over 100,000 Americans, a number that will hit a quarter million by the time of the election.

Fact is, they’ve known this all along. They were shouting it during the primary back in 2016.

But they are cowards and panderers, and put politics ahead of the public interest, so for three years while Trump was popular with the Republican base, they sucked it up and turned into Trump lovers. The conversion was breathtaking.

Now, as Americans are saying that they would rather not die from Covid, that they’re over it with police violence against Black people, and that they’re not happy that Russia was paying bounties to kill American soldiers, Trump has become toxic.

Mike Pence come out yesterday and said everybody should wear masks. This is the beginning of his separating himself from Trump; Pence has apparently decided now is the time for him to be the Republican nominee in 2020. There’s still enough time between now and the GOP convention for him to pull it off.

Republicans in Congress have similarly dropped any reference to Donald Trump from their advertising and the very, very few public appearances they do.

As Republicans start to reinvent themselves away from the Donald Trump identity, we need to remember and constantly remind our fellow Americans that they spent 3 1/2 years totally embracing a racist, fascist traitor.

They have no morals. They have no principles. They have no loyalty to our nation. Their only loyalty is to power and wealth.

As Republicans begin to separate themselves from Trump, and get lionized by the media for it, let’s not allow a new amnesia about who they really are. They embraced a criminal, they voted to keep him in office, and history must remember their craven cowardice.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.