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Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes said the GOP will only continue to plunge only one way while it remains in thrall to Donald Trump, and that’s downwards.
Sykes, appearing Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” acknowledged it was “easy to dismiss” Trump as a “narcissistic clown” but said it is “hard to understate the impact that he’s had on our political standards.”
“You are seeing a full-out attack, not just on the culture of facts, which we had back in 2016, but now on all of the institutions of our constitutional republic,” he continued, noting how Trump’s rival 2024 Republican candidates are also now sowing distrust.
“It is rock-solid certain that Donald Trump will continue to make the threats, will continue to make the insults,” said Sykes, the founder of The Bulwark news network. “Everything that’s happening now will get worse, and the Republican Party and the evangelical church will go along with it.”
“This has long-term importance. Things like this, when they’re broken, they are hard to put back together,” he added.
“Morning Joe” cohost Joe Scarborough agreed.
“If Republicans keep this line of thinking, continue their support for Donald Trump, they need not fool themselves,” he said. “A second Trump administration would destroy the Department of Justice, would destroy the FBI, would destroy the federal government’s rule of law, would destroy judicial independence. It would destroy the third branch of America’s government, it would rip to shreds Madisonian democracy.”
“They need to understand what they’re doing, and perhaps they do,” Scarborough added. “I’m just trying to figure out what is so important about this former reality TV host that they’re willing to literally throw away Madisonian democracy to defend him.”
