Fear might be the driving motivator behind Republican lawmakers’ continual bend to Donald Trump. The GOP caucus is reportedly “scared shitless” of not just Trump’s ire—but the personal vindictiveness and constant threat of political violence from his MAGA base across the country. The final straw that reportedly flipped Senator Thom Tillis’s vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were “credible death threats” against the North Carolina lawmaker, according to sources that spoke with Vanity Fair. Tillis was the final Republican holdout on confirming the former Fox News star to lead the Pentagon. “According to the source, Tillis has said that if people want to understand Trump, they should read the 2006 book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work,” Vanity Fair reported. Trump’s violent rhetoric offers one obvious reason why Republicans are so wary of crossing him. The president has a bizarre relationship with the more reactive sectors of his base. During the first presidential debate of the 2020 cycle, Trump issued a direct missive to the Proud Boys, a militant white supremacist group, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” And the MAGA leader has also encouraged direct violence at his rallies, encouraging his supporters to “knock the crap out of” protesters who exercise their First Amendment rights against Trump’s agenda. The president also made his reciprocal loyalty to his base obvious from the first day of his second administration: after claiming for years that he would free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021—and forced the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election result—Trump overrode internal debate amongst his administration hours after his inauguration to pardon some 1,500 January 6 offenders. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of Trump’s first administration told Vanity Fair.
West Virginia lawmakers want declare Bible "inerrant" and "accurate historical record" Moses would like a word.
Trump could sit there jacking off under his desk in the Oval Office while make by a speech and Tommy, Jim Jordan, MTG, and the other MAGA Republicans would defend it as normal behavior.
How do you ever show your face in public after that, let alone on TV............I am no prude but dam, do that when you're not on a zoom meeting LOL, time and place my brotha
This quote from the article describes Trump and his supporters pretty well.... Of course, the same conspiracy theories that make people reject mainstream experts leave them perfectly primed to trust the grifters who planted those theories in the first place. There's a whole ecosystem of snake oil salesmen ready to profit from these spite-poisoned marks.
