Audio: Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA05) Demonstrates the Depths to Which Republicans Have Sunk in Defense of Trump’s Indefensible

In yesterday’s New York Times, a conservative, lifelong Republican and “Christian ethics” expert who served in the Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Bush administrations, asked the important and timely question, “What’s the Matter With Republicans?” Specifically, Wehner wondered why Republicans won’t take take this opportunity to “break away” from Trump once and for all. As Wehner writes:

In a sane world, the reaction of Republicans to the “memorandum of telephone conversation” between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, combined with the whistle-blower complaint filed by an intelligence officer describing a White House cover-up, would be similar to the response of Republicans after the release, on Aug. 5, 1974, of the “smoking gun” tape that finally broke the Nixon presidency. Republicans would begin to abandon Mr. Trump, with senior figures urging him in private and in public to resign.

So yeah, we don’t really live in a sane world at this point – I mean, any world that would have Donald Trump (!!) as president has to be more of an alternate, evil universe where Spock has a beard and the Federation destroys entire civilizations if they don’t obey – but still…how on earth can anyone with a conscience, moral bearings, etc. not condemn Trump’s corrupt, thuggish, treasonous behavior? And even if you’re too cowardly to condemn Trump, you certainly don’t have to defend him, right? The question, again, is “Why has Mr. Trump, an ethical wreck of a man both before and after he reached the White House, earned such fealty from Republicans?”

The answers? According to Wehner: 1) Fear that “Any negative comment by a Republican in Congress about the president would invite trouble in the next election either in the form of opposition in the next primary or lack of support in the general…Until Republicans feel their existence is threatened by Trump’s mendacity and corruption, most will be blind to it”; 2) on a related not, “It’s easier to stay with the team.” Even when the leader of the team is thoroughly corrupt”; 3) “Cognitive accommodation” has occurred, which means “compromising one’s sense of integrity” and “devolv[ing] into primitive tribalism, absolute adherence to the leader over adherence to a code of ethics”; 4) “At this stage it’s less about defending Trump; they are defending their own defense of Trump”; and 5) Many Republicans at this point have “embraced [Trump’s] ‘will to power’ worldview.” The end result: The GOP is now “the party of Donald Trump, through and through….morally disfigured…deep in a dark alleyway,” and likely to “pay a fearsome price generationally, demographically and, above all, morally.”

So that’s where Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA05) is at this point, as you can hear in the following interview. Among other things, Riggleman claims that:

• [Laughs] “When I saw that it was a second-hand report…if it was so darned awful, why didn’t the primary source report it as a whistleblower, and why did it take them three weeks to get it out?” (Note how Riggleman gins up the conspiracy theories)
• “It had multiple authors, it was a secondhand source, it utilized unclassified reporting – which you can’t really trust the Washington Post on anything, or any of these media sources.” (More conspiracy theories by Riggleman, also media bashing of course)
• “You get the feeling that this really isn’t about impeachment, this is about power.” (Psychological projection much by Rep. Riggleman?)
• “This is a smokescreen…you have all these things that would have got [sic] done…they just don’t want the president to have a win.” (More conspiracy theorizing)
• “It goes back to corruption, power and extremism. If you don’t meet some sort of ideological purity test, you’re evil. And now, we’re in the fight of our lives against socialism, against the far left and the Justice Democrats…[People] had better get serious about this.” (Fearmongering, demagoguery ,etc., also more psychological projection)
• Did Trump do anything wrong? Riggleman said, point blank, “no.” “Based on the transcript alone…Why is it taking [these people] so long to come out to testify? They’re trying to get their story straight. I know how this works, I’ve been in the intelligence business.” (And here it is, complete moral bankruptcy)
• One thing Riggleman said that’s true, although he meant it in the opposite way, is that “Now it’s shirts and skins, it doesn’t matter about facts, it doesn’t matter about truth…” (Yep, that’s totally true – about Republicans!)
• Also, on another note, Riggleman predicted that Virginia Republicans – who he said are “in a tailspin with pay-to-play, corruption in our committee process, those who would rather get paid than try to protect the 2019 candidates in Virginia…Absolutely eating our own.” According to Riggleman, “Here’s what’s going to happen, we’re going to lose the State House and the State Senate at this rate.” (Let’s hope that Riggleman’s right about at least one thing, because he’s wildly wrong – and morally bankrupt – about Trump, impeachment, etc.)