Republicans' Idiotic Defense of Trump and the Stolen Records

Personally, I always have viewed Donald Trump as a national security threat - a view shared by many in the national intelligence community.  With him thankfully out of office, there was no legitimate reason for him to take top secret government materials to his Florida residense, records that some experts say had to have been specifically selected and copied/printed thus eliminating any claim that taking them was an inadvertant error. One can only speculate why Trump wanted them: to shae with Vladimir Putin or sell to the highest bidder?  I cannot believe it was for any good purpose that would aid America's interests.  Given the apparent seriousness of what Trump unlawfully took to Florida, the Republicans who immediately sprang to Trump's defense and ranted and bloviated about the misdeeds of the "deep state"and "Nazi like FBI" look increasingly ridiculous and idiotic.  Among those now looking very foolish are a number of Virginia Republicans including Glen Youngkin who went off half cocked without knowing any of the facts just so he could pander to the MAGA base in Virginia (he and other Virginia political whores were rightly critized here).  Others, including talking heads on Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, rather than admit they were yet again made to look like fools by Trump, are now widly claiming the stolen documents were planted by the FBI.  Anything rather than admit their own idiocy.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at the GOP idiocy.  Here are excerpts (the image above is from the Wall Street Journal):

The more we learn about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, the sillier — and more sinister — the overcaffeinated Republican defenses of former president Donald Trump look.

A genius-level spinmeister, Trump set the tone with a Monday evening statement announcing: “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”

That description allowed his followers to imagine a scene straight out of a Hollywood action picture, with agents in FBI jackets busting down the doors and holding the former president and first lady at gunpoint while they ransacked the premises. Although Trump’s team had a copy of the search warrant, he gave no hint of why the FBI might have been there . . . .

His followers — which means pretty much the whole of the Republican Party — took up the cry based on no more information than that. Fox News host Mark Levin called the search “the worst attack on this republic in modern history, period.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called it “corrupt & an abuse of power.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) compared the FBI to “the Gestapo.” Not to be outdone, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Whackadoodle) said the FBI was the “American Stasi,” and compared its agents to wolves “who want to eat you.”

Only now, as Paul Harvey used to say, are we hearing the rest of the story — and what has been reported so far bears no relation to the persecution fantasies of Trump and his cult followers. On Thursday evening, The Post reported that FBI agents were searching for highly classified documents relating to nuclear weapons and signals intelligence — two of the most sensitive areas in the entire U.S. government. Months ago, Trump received a subpoena for documents, and the Justice Department was not convinced that he had complied with it.

Trump at first claimed “Nuclear weapons is a hoax, just like Russia,” even though his 2016 campaign’s collusion with Russia was well-documented, and then all but admitted he had done it by alleging (falsely) that “President Barack Hussein Obama” took nuclear documents. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret.

The club was closed, and Trump was not there. He was in New York, where he would plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination more than 400 times during a deposition with the New York attorney general. But according to Trump’s lawyer, Trump and his family were able to watch the entire search on Mar-a-Lago’s closed-circuit security cameras. So much for the crackpot claim that the FBI could have planted evidence!

This new information turns the Trump narrative — that he is being treated worse than anyone ever in all of U.S. history — on its head. Imagine what would have happened to a lower-level government employee who was suspected of taking highly classified documents without authorization. I very much doubt that the FBI would have dealt with such a person as gently as they dealt with Trump. Anyone else caught with top-secret documents — and suspected of obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act — would probably be in federal custody by now.

The right now appears to be in disarray. The ex-president’s old story has been rendered “inoperative,” as Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler used to say, and they need a new one.

But the damage has been done. The right’s hysterical, hyperbolic reaction has weaponized their unhinged followers. On Thursday, an armed man died in a standoff with police after trying to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office. The gunman was evidently a prolific contributor on Trump’s Truth Social site. After the FBI search, a user with his name wrote that this was a “call to arms” and “we must respond with force.”

This should be a gut check moment for responsible Republicans — if any are left — to step back and take a deep breath before more violence erupts. But sadly, most Republicans don’t seem to care what furies they have unleashed in their devotion to the principle that their supreme leader must remain above the law.