Is Trump’s GOP Getting Even Crazier?

By David Corn  June 21, 2022

Kimberly Guilfoyle addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2021. Paul Hennessy/AP

“Nothing succeeds like excess.” So wrote Oscar Wilde. This seems to have become the motto of the Republican Party when it comes to craziness. Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election and the subsequent insurrectionist attack on US Capitol have done nothing to curb the extremism within the GOP. In fact, fanaticism and madness in its ranks have only grown in the 17 months since Trump’s effort to overturn a free and fair election failed and he departed the White House.

Look at this ad released this past weekend by Eric Greitens, a previously disgraced Missouri Republican who is now running in the GOP primary for the US Senate. It shows Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, with a gun and a tactical military unit, breaking into the house of an unnamed political rival.

This spot celebrating political violence immediately prompted outrage. Perhaps you’ve already expressed your indignation at Greitens’ dangerous and cavalier reference to “hunting” non-MAGA RINO (Republicans In Name Only) GOPers and noted that this message is particularly troubling coming from a man forced to resign as governor in 2018 after being accused of various wrongdoing, including sexual assault. With gun violence plaguing the nation, here was a Trumpster exploiting gun porn for votes.

It gets worse. The same day that horrendous ad was released, the Greitens campaign sent out a fundraising email blasting GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell. The note was signed by Kimberly Guilfoyle, a Trump adviser and the gal-pal of Donald Trump Jr., who chairs Greitens’ Senate bid. The Greitens camp is ticked off at McConnell for supposedly working behind the scenes to derail Greitens’ campaign—especially after Greitens was accused in March by his ex-wife of domestic abuse. (Greitens called the allegations “fabricated” and “baseless.”) In Guilfoyle’s email, she slams McConnell as a RINO, and that could lead one to ask whether Greitens with the ad/email combo is suggesting that McConnell ought to be hunted down by gun-toting MAGA loyalists. As the House select committee investigating January 6 explores the threat posed to Vice President Mike Pence that day—in one hearing Rep. Peter Aguilar (D-Calif.) noted that a Proud Boy informant had said that his group would have killed Pence if given the chance—this signal (or request) from Greitens is rather disturbing.

And it gets crazier. Guilfoyle’s email includes a note from Greitens that suggests that McConnell’s scheming against him is part of grander plot being mounted by none other than billionaire George Soros, the paranoid far-right’s favorite bogeyman. Greitens writes, “I don’t know about you, but to me, it’s looking an awful lot like these RINOS are bought and paid for by George Soros himself.” And, of course, he asks for money: “Please make a contribution to help a Pro-Trump Navy SEAL FIGHT BACK against Soros’ favorite RINO—Mitch McConnell—and their latest wave of vile attacks.” There’s a graphic showing Soros, McConnell, and Karl Rove—all grim-faced—juxtaposed against Greitens and Trump, each looking steely and heroic.

This is bonkers—Soros in league with Rove and McConnell? Guilfoyle and Greitens are promoting a conspiracy theory even more unhinged than the usual trash that comes out of Trumpland. And let’s recall that Soros, often the target of right-wing fantasies, was sent a pipe-bomb in 2018 by a Trump superfan. (I would bet other assassination attempts aimed at Soros have not been publicly disclosed.)

There appears to be no limit to Republican nuttery these days. Consider the platform the Texas Republican Party passed this weekend. As Heather Cox Richardson notes, it includes planks

rejecting “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and [holding] that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States”; requiring students “to learn about the dignity of the preborn human,” including that life begins at fertilization; treating homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice”; locking the number of Supreme Court justices at 9; getting rid of the constitutional power to levy income taxes; abolishing the Federal Reserve; rejecting the Equal Rights Amendment; returning Christianity to schools and government; ending all gun safety measures; abolishing the Department of Education; arming teachers; requiring colleges to teach “free-market liberty principles”; defending capital punishment; dictating the ways in which the events at the Alamo are remembered; protecting Confederate monuments; ending gay marriage; withdrawing from the United Nations and the World Health Organization; and calling for a vote “for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”

Election denialism, secession, labeling homosexuality “abnormal,” no more income tax, injecting Christianity into government and schools, withdrawing from international organizations, defending the Confederacy, and all the rest—this is far-right mania on steroids. Meanwhile, Indiana Republicans, at their state convention, replaced the word “democracy” in their platform with “republic”—a favorite move of ultraconservatives who want to deny voters their full say in elections.

Conspiracism and extremism is running rampant among Republicans At a Christian right conference, disgraced (or should be disgraced) former House speaker Newt Gingrich called Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) “the lead Stalinist” of the House January 6 committee. Was he trying to outdo Liz Harrington, Trump’s chief spokesperson, who called this panel a “communist committee”—whatever the hell that means. The GOP attack on the J6 investigation is occurring, as the party tightens its embrace of Trump’s Big Lie. And, of course, Trump has been ranting about the January 6 committee and pushing Dinesh D’Souza’s fully debunked film 2000 Mules, which claims cell phone data shows that at least two thousand unidentified operatives—and perhaps many more—were paid to stuff ballots for Biden in 2020. (Narrator: They weren’t. They don’t exist.)

I know. You say the party has been off the rails since 2016 and even before that. (Indeed, I’m working on a book about that. More to come.) But the lunacy does seem to be intensifying. Republicans are nominating and even electing to office a growing number of QAnoners. It wouldn’t be too worrisome if the GOP was cracking up in a corner by itself. But polls show that despite this increase in battiness, the party is poised to win the House in the coming midterm elections and maybe the Senate and Trump leads Biden in a hypothetical 2024 match-up. In one recent poll, Trump outscored Biden in favorability rating 43 to 40 percent. This poll was taken after the January 6 committee had started holding hearings highlighting Trump’s attempts to subvert American democracy.

It sounds hyperbolic, but there is a sickness within the GOP. After the last six years, that’s not a surprise. But what makes this especially distressing is that the Republican Party has not become widely reviled for its continuing descent into derangement and extremism. That’s a poor reflection on the nation. With his ad, Greitens shows that within the GOP there is a race to a bottom that doesn’t seem to exist. And with months to go to the midterms, there’s plenty of time for this to get even worse.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

George Carlin’s American Dream. One fun element of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s was that the subversion of popular culture was immersive. Wherever you looked or listened—music, TV, film, books—someone was blowing up convention. The challenges to the Establishment seemed never-ending, as societal turmoil—the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, and the rest of it—seemed a permanent feature of American life. There was always a new assault on the existing order, and one that I remember fondly from my adolescence was George Carlin. He turned comedy into an attack on the power structure. Yeah, long-haired, turned-on rock-and-rollers had conquered the music scene with their loud chords and drugs-inspired lyrics. But Carlin, man, he was something else. He was a one-man wrecking ball who demolished the powers-that-be squares with only his sly wit, love of language, and hatred of hypocrisy. When I was 13 and first heard “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” on his Class Clown album, I said, sign me up. This was a revolution I could dig. Carlin was cerebral and rebellious. And he mattered. He was arrested performing this bit in Milwaukee, and when WBAI, a lefty radio station in New York City, played a subsequent version of this routine, the FCC declared the broadcast violated its decency rule. That led to a historic Supreme Court decision that supported the FCC’s decision but raised questions about the agency’s definition of indecency. All that aside, Carlin was damn funny and reminded us constantly that words—and jokes—had consequences.

Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfligio chronicle Carlin’s impact on comedy and the larger world in their exquisite new HBO documentary, George Carlin’s American Dream. It’s a love letter to Carlin, who died of heart failure in 2008, that doesn’t flinch at his warts. Carlin’s tale is a parable of the sixties. He began his career in comedy forming a two-man team with a fellow disc jockey named Jack Burns. They had success in clubs, and Carlin then ventured out on his own. More success followed: TV bookings, bigger clubs, Carson. He wore suits, did shows in Vegas. He was part of the system. But he wasn’t of the times. He didn’t feel relevant. Then he dropped acid—and everything changed. His hair got longer, he ditched the suits for jeans and a t-shirt, and he traded his funny suitable-for-Ed Sullivan material for countercultural sharp jabs and uppercuts. He turned his back on the $250,000-a-year he was raking in and hit the college circuit. That was a gutsy move, but, as we know, it all worked out. He became the Lenny Bruce of the hippie set; money and fame followed. As did cocaine abuse for him and near-fatal alcoholism for his wife Brenda, whose support, as the documentary makes clear, was essential for Carlin’s success.

Carlin’s transition, as chronicled by Apatow and Bonfligio in their two-part documentary, is fascinating to witness, as are Carlin’s subsequent efforts to reinvent himself every few years to stay relevant and keep up with each new wave of young-buck comics. The film captures how his zaniness was the product of a driving work ethic that produced many classic bits. This ninth-grade dropout toiled hard for the laughs. (I’ve always enjoyed his take on “Stuff.”) In his last phase, Carlin’s comedy moved further in the direction of social criticism, as he pummeled authority with a libertarian perspective and a Noam Chomsky-intensity. I had mixed feelings—which I believe was the directors’ intent—as the documentary covers Carlin’s last chapter when his performances were fueled by a deep nihilism. He professed to not give a whit about the fate of our species and claimed he enjoyed watching humankind’s self-destruction. (His bit blasting environmentalists for wanting to “save” the planet, noting the planet will be just fine but humans will be “fucked,” is tough.) Of course, he got laughs with all this—he got laughs with everything—but the question hovers: Was he being dark because he actually did care or because he didn’t? Was his American dream just one big freckin’ nightmare? Was his last laugh really a big cry? We’ll never know.

Navalny. The recent news about Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption activist and opposition leader, has been alarming. Last week he was transferred to a remote maximum-security prison, without notification of this move provided to his legal team. It took days for his lawyers and family to confirm what had happened. His daughter Dasha Navalnaya told CNN that he was relocated to “one of the most dangerous and high-security prisons known for torturing and murdering the inmates” and locked up in a separate barrack, “a prison within the prison,” where he is not allowed to communicate with anyone. This is “psychological torture,” she said. An obvious question prompted by this latest demonstration of Vladimir Putin’s totalitarianism is, what, if anything, can be done to assist this brave man fighting for democracy in Russia? With Putin’s regime already extensively sanctioned for his illegal and horrific war on Ukraine, the options for applying global pressure on Moscow regarding Navalny are limited. While Putin is committing atrocious war crimes in Ukraine, is there reason for him to care about international criticism for his treatment of one person?

Now is an appropriate time to watch Navalny, a CNN-produced documentary streaming on HBO Max. The film focuses on the Kremlin’s failed attempt to assassinate Navalny in 2020 (by poisoning his underwear); the effort by Navalny and Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism outfit, to obtain proof that Russian security operatives were behind the murderous scheme; and Navalny’s return to Russia in January 2021, when he was immediately arrested on bogus charges and imprisoned. Navalny is one-part biopic that highlights his personal fortitude and one-part thriller that reveals how Bellingcat and its lead investigator Christo Grozev located and exposed the Russia ops who tried to kill Navalny. An amazing scene occurs when Navalny, using an alias, calls one of the Russian scientists who was part of the assassination squad and tricks him into confirming the operation.

Throughout the film, Navalny’s sharp wit, mischievous side, and sense of showmanship is on display. (He records a TikTok video to promote the Bellingcat exposé.) His wife Yulia comes across as a fierce partner. When he is brought into a Moscow courtroom and placed in a glass booth—before being carted off to a prison—Navalny makes the symbol of a heart with his two hands for Yulia, while defiantly smiling and looking worried. In video shot in prison, this strong and vibrant man appears gaunt and perhaps sad. You can’t help but wonder if you could muster the courage he demonstrated when he voluntarily returned to his homeland, realizing he would probably end up locked up or dead. How many of us would make such a sacrifice to fight for American democracy?

At the end of Navalny, director Daniel Roher asks Navalny to leave behind a message for the Russian people in the event he is imprisoned or killed. In English, he replies, “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: not give up.” Roher then requests he answer this question in Russian, and Navalny provides a more elaborate response: “Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.” I wish more could be done to help him. At the very least, watch this film and keep him in mind. Perhaps the best tribute we can pay Navalny is to be inspired by him.

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