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

by Stuart Stevens

But if Trump wins or loses, it is a fantasy to think that the impact of a nation’s major center-right party embracing a racist unprepared to be president with Trump’s deep psychological problems will not be lasting. Perhaps what passes for the establishment in the Republican Party will be able to conjure a cover story to explain why they embraced a man who mocked the disabled, attacked a former POW hero, paid off a porn star from the Oval Office, defended Vladimir Putin’s murder of journalists, bragged about assaulting women, and implored foreign governments to investigate his political opponents. Let’s say our Republican overlords can convince us that these were just personal quirks of a “black swan” leader who kept us from the horror of…a former secretary of state, U.S. senator, and First Lady becoming president. To avoid the nightmare of having a president who had actually spent decades preparing for the job, it was necessary to nominate a reality-TV figure who talked openly of his desire to have sex with his own daughter and lectured Republican members of Congress on Article XII of the Constitution, which exists only in his mind. This positions Donald Trump as the Necessary Monster history demanded to save the Republican Party.