A new poll shows that a majority of Republicans believe Donald Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln, and one AM Joy guest said on Saturday that it’s just more proof that the GOP “is a cult.”
“Is there a brick wall I can bang my head against a few times?” Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts said. “I hadn’t heard of that poll, but it sort of speaks further to the delusionary aspect of the Republican Party right now.”
“This is not a party. This is a cult, and it has been a cult for a long time,” he added.
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“This is not a party. This is a cult,” says Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts in response to a new poll that shows most Republicans believe Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln. #ctl #p2 #amjoy pic.twitter.com/SjOvBfcpqq
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) November 30, 2019
Transcript:
REID: Only Republicans said Trump is a better president than Lincoln. What do you make of that?
PITTS: Is there a brick wall I can bang my head against a few times? I think I need a brick wall before I answer that. I hadn’t heard of that poll, but it sort of speaks further to the delusionary aspect of the Republican Party right now. This is not a party. This is a cult. And it has been a cult for a long time. And it wasn’t just this Abraham Lincoln quote. I mean, a week or so ago, Rick Perry said Trump was the chosen one, and he wasn’t even the first person to say that. So it’s amazing.
REID: And there’s a lot of ways – if you look at the Public Religion Research Institute numbers, you know, it isn’t just a pejorative to say that it’s a cult. There’s a lot of evidence that it is a racial and religious cult of personality in which his base is solidly among the white evangelicals that almost worship him and say that he’s the chosen one of God.
PITTS: When I say that, I mean — I’m not being rhetorical. I mean that literally, that there is a very cult-like aspect to what we’re seeing going on with Trump, particularly in the aspect of Trump is he who must not be questioned. And all of his idiocies, all of his incompetencies, all of his mendacities must be explained in the framework of him being infallible. So, in other words, if you see him being wrong, it’s not he’s being wrong, it’s he’s being so right that it’s beyond your puny ability to understand. We’ll understand it by and by.
REID: When he tweeted himself out with Rocky’s body, I feel like for a lot of his base, they’re like, that’s how they really see him when they see him. That’s what they see.
PITTS: I think it is. I know somewhere Sylvester Stallone is just somewhere shaking his head.
The frightening state of the Republican Party
The latest poll showing that a majority of Republicans believe Trump is better than Lincoln speaks to the frightening state of today’s GOP.
While the survey shows that most Republican voters are full-fledged members of the Trump cult, we have increasingly seen that the God-like worship of Trump doesn’t just happen inside of the arenas where the president holds his MAGA rallies.
In Congress, Republican lawmakers have shown that they, too, have bought into the frightening idea that Trump should be treated as some sort of higher being, not a regular president who deserves the checks and balances that every other chief executive in both parties has received.
Throughout American political history, supporters have aways used political spin to paint their party’s president in a more positive light. But the cult-like worship of Donald Trump by the MAGA base is terrifying new development.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
