The number 2 Republican in the Senate couldn’t even manage to condemn President Trump for defending Nazis and white supremacists who killed a woman, so low has the Republican Party fallen.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said in an exclusive Chronicle interview that Trump’s Charlottesville response was lacking, but “I don’t think it’s useful to criticize the president.â€
Republicans thought it was “useful” to criticize President Obama for wearing Mom jeans, but it’s not useful to criticize a Republican President who sides with Nazis. Cornyn himself has a long list of criticisms of Obama, including, wait for it…
From The Hill:
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“He himself has displayed an astounding lack of leadership,” Cornyn said of the president.
“Frankly he should be embarrassed but, unfortunately, the threshold for embarrassment here in Washington seems to be much higher here … than in the rest of the country,†Cornyn said.
“It rankles many of us to have the president engage in such blatant demagoguery and blame-shifting when he himself has failed to take responsibility for his duties,” he added.”
What awful thing had Obama done? Had he sided with Nazis? Defended a murderer and said both sides do it? Um, no. He asked Republicans to do their jobs and raise the debt ceiling. This was Cornyn’s reaction to Obama’s irritation at GOP obstruction to what used to be normal business.
Cornyn criticized Obama over “data-transer-concessessions.”
He “ripped” into Obama over the Clinton email probe.
Cornyn “jabbed” Obama over the former President trying to save the country from the Bush recession and for — yes, wait for it — “achieving little in his first months in office”, and made fun of his sagging poll numbers (which were nowhere near the toilet territory of Trump’s):
“I think there will be a significant number of voters who, leading up to 2010, will wonder if they voted for someone they didn’t get.â€
Cornyn didn’t hesitate to jab Obama, saying that the president had achieved little in his first months in office. And the Texas Republican called Obama’s economic stimulus package “ill fated.â€
There’s plenty more where that came from. The point is, Cornyn thought there was something to be gained by criticizing Obama for doing things like the stimulus package. But now he can’t muster the courage to see the point in criticizing Donald Trump, even a little, for defending a Nazi sympathizer who murdered an innocent women.
Now that a few other Republicans managed to find the courage to stand up to their own President after he defended Nazi and white supremacist ideologists after one of them killed a woman, Cornyn doesn’t see anything to gain by criticizing Trump.
“We’ve all been shocked that the unhealed wounds of the nation’s racial divide flared up in such a surprising and disturbing way,” Cornyn said, as if there had been no clues that Trump was going to divide the nation with racist hate during the campaign when he, oh I don’t know, repeatedly engaged in racist hate, including offering to pay for the legal fees of his supporters who beat up a minority protester.
“I think the president had an opportunity to send a message that would unite America behind our common resolve to heal those wounds and unite our country, and unfortunately I don’t think he did that.” That was Cornyn’s big criticism.
Cornyn seems to see Trump’s biggest fault in defending Nazis is trying to have it both ways and not satisfying anyone, “Sometimes, when you try to have it both ways, you satisfy people on neither side, and I think that’s what he did.”
It’s not about sides or satisfying anyone, and even children know this. There is no other side against Nazi beliefs. Or, rather, there should NOT be a “side” other than “against.”
Republicans can’t even manage to call out Trump for defending Nazis. They have found a way to make even this something that is only mildly disappointing, as if Trump littered once by accident and was apologetic.
The stunning lack of Republican expectation for even a modicum of pretense at moral leadership from Donald Trump says a lot about the modern GOP.
This, as anyone with a cell left in their brain can see, is not going to end well. Republicans will pretend to be shocked. So shocked. After all, how were they to know that the man who sided with Nazi ideology would not be a good leader for a free country.
If only someone had told them that defending Nazis didn’t end well. If only there were a thing called history that could predict where gutless behavior like this went in the face of evil.
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