It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump

by Stuart Stevens

whenever extremists emerge as serious electoral contenders, mainstream parties must forge a united front to defeat them….[I]n

Yes, a white nationalist who ran on a Muslim ban and calls Mexicans rapists, a man who has no sense of truth and little of right and wrong, a man who wrote hush-money checks for a porn star in the Oval Office is president, but, hey, we cut marginal tax rates for corporations. Republicans have become the alcoholics at the bar who promise themselves they can quit drinking whenever they so desire.

He has used the White House as a corporate branding tool for his personal gain;

praised a congressman for assaulting a reporter;

encourages staffers to break laws both large and small, from refusing to respond to congressional subpoenas to ignoring the Hatch Act.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds are spent at his golf clubs, hotels, and restaurants. His company charges the Secret Service for the golf carts they rent (at exorbitant fees) to follow him in security details. Like no president in U.S. history, Trump

By challenging Barack Obama’s birth certificate, he was challenging the legality of the presidency and accusing the U.S. government of being illegal. Like so many of his actions to come, the Trump attack was meant to undermine democracy itself and to establish himself as the arbiter of what was legal and illegal.

of “secret information” would be a thread throughout the Trump presidency, from assurances he received from Kim Jong Un on nuclear weapons to a trade deal with the Mexican government.

“Trump isn’t inciting violence by mistake, but on purpose. He just told us.”24

because I know these men and women well, that they find Trump repulsive and a degradation of their life’s work and espoused values. And yet they support him, knowing on some level that it is damaging to every civic value they have previously held.

Now they wake up every morning and rush to compete in the embarrassment derby that is their daily fare, striving to find new ways to defend the indefensible.