#viciousness

Almost unanimous Republican failure to stand up to Trump despite the fact that they knew he was deranged and a danger to national security led to the terrorist incident at the Capitol on Wednesday. 

Donald Trump has been deformed and deranged for much of his life. It has been the pattern of his life to lie and to cheat, to intimidate and hurt others, to act without conscience, to show no remorse, and to make everything about himself. None of this was a secret when he ran for president, and certainly none of it was a secret once he became president. His viciousness, volatility, and nihilism were on display almost from the moment he took office. As president, he has acted just as one would have expected. He has never deviated from who he is.

But Trump couldn’t have done this by himself. He needed others in his party to defend him and support him, to make excuses for him and to go silent at key moral moments. He needed others to attack his critics, advance his conspiracy theories, and pretend that his lawlessness and impeachable crimes were perfectly fine. He needed evangelical leaders and social conservatives to insist that he was the right man to advance their agenda, that he was the “fighter” they’d never had but were happy to welcome to their side.

Trump has always been narcissistic, anti-democratic, hypocritical, treacherous, and mean-spirited. He didn’t undergo some sort of abrupt transformation; he’s not acting out of character. The Trump we see in January 2021 is the same Trump people saw in 2015 -- or in 1989 for that matter. 

Trump’s egregious faults have always been on full display but Republicans, fundamentalist Christians, corporate magnates, and rightwing media all turned a blind eye to his significant shortcomings.

Republicans can’t seriously claim they weren’t warned about Trump.