Trump’s criminal rebrand of the Republican Party is complete

Today’s Republican Party is a de facto political crime organization. Donald Trump continues to be the Big Boss. With his win in the Iowa Republican caucus, Trump further cemented his control over the Republican Party. His “rivals” are all fading away as they try to win back his favor and hope to be hired in the new regime if he takes power in 2025.

In all, the Republican presidential primaries are like a form of political kabuki theater or professional wrestling, as the outcome was very much preordained, even though the commentariat, news media, and others fixated on the “horse race” and “contest” convinced themselves it could somehow turn out any other way than Trump being his party’s candidate for president in 2024.

The Guardian’s Alice Herman details Trump’s domination last Tuesday:

Before the caucuses, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, repeatedly reminded voters and the press that he had toured all of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump won 98 of them. With the exception of college graduates and voters under 30, who for the most part caucused for DeSantis or the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, most other demographic groups reported strong support for Trump this year.

Even young Republican voters favored Trump slightly more strongly this year than in the 2016 Iowa caucuses: CNN entrance polls showed a modest 3% jump in caucus-goers under 30 who support Trump, while his share of supporters over the age of 30 nearly doubled across the board.

Since 2016, Trump has consolidated support among evangelical Christian voters, a key block in Iowa. Just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters in 2016 self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians; evangelicals made up 53% of his supporters in 2024 Iowa polling….

The next stop to test the strength and growth of Trump’s base is New Hampshire, which is also demographically less diverse than most of the country and thus not representative of what the US election as a whole will look like.

Even so, Trump is predicted to win the state, further cement his monopoly of the party, and box out those who threaten it.

Trump the Big Boss is now facing five trials and 91 felony charges that could result in him being sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. Trump is responding to this pressure by attacking like the de facto crime boss and aspiring dictator and apparent sociopath that he has repeatedly shown himself to be. Early Thursday morning, Trump raged on his Truth Social platform that he is above the law because “ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY…” There is a word for such a leader: dictator. He is continuing to incite violence and death against the judges and other members of law enforcement as well as the witnesses in his trials. Trump’s MAGA followers – who serve as his enforcers and foot soldiers – are following his directives as shown by the increasing incidents of violence, intimidation, and other thuggery targeting their “enemies” across the country.

In Florida, where Trump is on trial for allegedly stealing highly classified documents, Judge Aileen Cannon is acting more like his personal attorney and advocate than a neutral party who is enforcing the law. Trump selected Cannon for the bench while he was president; she appears to be paying off the favor to the Big Boss.

In New York, Trump is attending the second trial in the defamation case brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, who the ex-president has been determined by a court of civil law to have sexually assaulted in 1996. On Tuesday, Trump attacked Carrol online on his Truth Social platform while sitting in the same federal courtroom across from her. Trump has also been disruptive and combative in court. Trump is enraged at Carrol for daring to hold him accountable for his evil behavior. Trump is likely attending the trial to intimidate her and by extension the dozens of other women who have credibly accused him of sexual misconduct.

In his role as the Big Boss of the de facto Republican Party political crime organization, Trump has made himself even more wealthy. Documents recently released by House Democrats show that during the first two years of his presidency, Trump’s businesses received almost 8 million dollars from foreign governments, with the majority of the money coming from China. Reporting and other investigations have shown that Trump and his inner circle turned the presidency into a type of personal ATM and influence peddling operation potentially involving tens of millions of dollars. For example, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner received 2 billion dollars from the Saudi government for his new equity firm.

Donald Trump has promised to be America’s first dictator when/if takes power in 2025. But Trump the Dictator will not be a common political thug: he is now claiming to be the Chosen One, picked by “Jesus Christ” and “God,” a type of messiah and holy man (for fascism and authoritarianism) as he leads his MAGA flock to the paradise on Earth that will be his second regime.

Such claims to god-like status and power are also common traits of autocrats, dictators, and other political criminals. In her newsletter Lucid, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains:

That’s why political enablers with connections to faith communities have long been tasked with proclaiming his sanctity, especially when his corruption is in the news. Indeed, the more his crimes come to light, and justice moves to hold him accountable, the more he must be elevated as a being who is in some fashion not bound by the laws of ordinary men….

For those familiar with authoritarian history, it is no wonder that the talking point of Trump’s holiness has become prominent as more of his malfeasance and illegal behavior has been made public. Nor is it surprising that Trump would share a depiction of himself as Jesus-adjacent during his Oct. 2023 civil fraud trial. The image implies that Jesus is with him on his righteous path and that, even in court, Trump thinks holy thoughts….

The notion of the strongman as both savior and victim —the leader as a man of the people and a man above all other men— surrounds depraved and corrupt individuals with an aura of holiness. …Appearing as a figure tinged with the divine assists the reception of strongman propaganda campaigns, since any legal troubles must have been manufactured by godless Communist prosecutors, judges, and journalists.

During a recent online interview and “prayer session,” Trump’s attorney Alina Habba, his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara claimed that the ex-president has special divine powers and is being guided by God. Trump’s attorney also made absurd claims that Trump was a “victim” of “demonic forces,” as Right Wing Watch reports:

“I think that there is a plan,” Habba said. “There’s God’s plan, and then there’s a demonic plan. And the demonic plan is very easily confused with real life. There’s an orchestrated thing going on here. Don’t get it twisted. We have cases lined up intentionally during election time, intentionally trying to get negative attention right before an election.”

“He’s being pulled from the campaign time and time again to be deposed, to be subpoenaed, to go to trial, to fight the fight to clear his name,” she continued. “But the people that know him and the people that have faith and are reading—the people that are educating themselves, the people that are not listening to the fake news—they will understand and they do understand and they stand with him. And honestly, we’re flipping the ones that don’t know, because their demonic plan is so obvious.”

“Pray for people to open their eyes,” Habba concluded. “They like to call MAGA Republicans a cult mentality. We’re not a cult mentality; we love America. If that’s a cult, I’m happy to love America. I’m happy to be part of that.”

Too many people — including the news media and other professional politics watchers — have convinced themselves that once Trump was on trial, his support would inevitably dissipate, and he would be vanquished from public life as some type of pariah. The opposite has happened, however: Trump and MAGA movement are enduring if not even more ascendant as the ex-president is tied with President Biden. [Trump is also leading Biden in key swing states that Biden won in 2020]. This is more evidence of how Trumpism (like other forms of fascism) is a political and moral sickness throughout American society, a type of collective mass pathology and state of malignant normality, which is a deep cultural problem that is bigger than any one leader or party.

To that point, MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki made the following observation on X/Twitter about Trump’s dominant victory in Iowa and how he believes it was propelled by the ex-president’s criminal indictments.

“The shift came abruptly,” Kornacki notes. “A clear rally-around-Trump effect among GOP voters when news of the first indictment (Manhattan DA) broke in March ’23. Look how the polling averaged diverged at that moment and never looked back.” 

It is true that there is polling and other data suggesting that Trump’s support could weaken among “traditional” Republican voters and independents if he is convicted in court. For example, a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll shows that approximately 25 percent of Trump’s own voters could potentially deem him disqualified from the presidency if he is convicted of a crime. However, the New York Times/Sienna College polling also has contradictory findings that show the enduring power of Trump, the Big Boss:

Mr. Trump’s primary lead has swelled since the summer, even though the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believe he engaged in criminality rose to 27 percent from 17 percent in July. Mr. Trump is leading not only because he dominates among the large share of Republicans who see him as innocent, but also because he is winning one in three Republican voters who think he engaged in serious criminality.

Support for Mr. Trump in the Times/Siena poll is so thorough that 62 percent of Republicans think that if the former president wins the primary he should remain the Republican Party’s nominee — even if he is subsequently convicted of a federal crime.

I asked Gregg Barak, who is a criminologist and author of the book “Criminology on Trump” for his explanation of why Trump’s perfidy and apparent crimes have not yet significantly (if at all) diminished his popularity among the MAGA people and his other followers. Trump supporters, Barak said, “are primarily identifying with the positive master status of the former president as an outlaw or revolutionary rather than with the negative master status as a fraudster or criminal”:

As the former Teflon Don who has now been criminally indicted four times likes to say, “come on, everybody does it,” “everyone is corrupt,” “look at the Biden crime family.” Accordingly, Trump and his supporters want to know, “why is the deep state coming for me other than I am a head in all the 2024 polls”

Americana, in its folklore and historical culture as evidenced in books and films alike, have been celebrating and romanticizing outlaw figures since the 19th century. From Jesse James to Bonnie and Clyde to D.B. Cooper to Donald Trump, regardless of their crimes these iconic outlaws have all been viewed as “thumbing one’s nose” at the system or “flipping off” the elites of society or the rulers of state on behalf of the ordinary people who in their own fantasies can only dream about doing the same kinds of deviant or transgressive things.

While these “outlaws” are on the lam and resisting capture, everyday folks are rooting for them as they try to beat the system. Their fanbase will often identify with them until such time as these outlaws finally meet their ultimate legal demises. In other words, once the former president has been officially stigmatized as a criminal vis-à-vis adjudication and conviction by a jury of his peers, then his supporters — even his MAGA base cult followers — will soften considerably in their emotional enthusiasm for Trump and subsequently the number of supporters will quickly decline, if not, dissolve altogether and relatively quickly.

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I also asked Rich Logis, a former member of the Republican Party and right-wing pundit, for his thoughts on why Trump’s crimes make him so compelling to his followers:

Not to sound self-aggrandizing or clairvoyant, but I was publicly saying many moons ago that the multi-state and federal indictments of Trump would strengthen the unbreakable bond that remains between the former president and most MAGA adherents. I was confident in this, because, as a former devout MAGA grassroots activist, the impugning of Trump was really a collective impugning of we “real Americans,” who were soldiers—led by Trump, our political general—in a good versus evil war against the existential threats of Democrats, centrists, moderates, globalists and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). The indictments affirm a pervasive mythology within MAGA: that federal and state law enforcement, and prosecutors, are a weaponized, Lavrentiy Beria-type Stasi that persecutes Republicans and conservatives, and especially, Trump voters. This is, of course, inaccurate; before I left MAGA, I allowed myself to succumb to this mythology. What is factually accurate, however, is often secondary to what is perceived to be true.

Most MAGA voters are good people, and though I don’t defend the ignorance I once possessed in great amounts, we must recognize that they have been traumatized, victimized and exploited. Because Trump is the bulwark against (imaginary) tyranny, indictments assure MAGA voters that they are on the correct historical side—hence why Trump’s legal problems assist him in his retributive re-election campaign. Next action steps: Trump and MAGA candidates must be electorally defeated—no exceptions; and Trump’s likely convictions will carry sentences of many decades (thus making them life sentences).

Barack and Logis’s insights are very helpful as we try to navigate the Trumpocene and what may happen next with Trump and the Republican political crime organization and their MAGA followers as the ex-president is put on trial and the election approaches.

Speaking at the Stop Trump Summit in New York in October, Mary Trump, who is the ex-president’s niece and a trained psychologist, highlighted a powerful truth about the MAGA cult and its devotion to Trump. “They identify not with Donald’s strength … but they identify with his weakness,” she explained, “They identify with the fact that he gets away with everything.”

As I continue to warn, sick societies produce sick leaders. Trump’s followers are not repelled or disgusted by his obvious criminality, violence, and other antisocial and pathological behavior: they are attracted to and idolize it and him. Trump is much more than a man; he is a type of aspirational symbol and cultural force that grants permission for many Americans (and other people) to be their worst true selves. Too many of the country’s responsible political elites and others who believe in democracy are risking the future of the country on their faith in the collective character and decency of the American people. On Election Day, the world will see if that faith was merited and then be left to deal with the horrible consequences of what could be a very grave error.