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   From: elonx@protonmail.com   
      
    Trump’s America Becomes One of Those ‘Shithole Countries’   
      
   Republicans made their bargain with the president and the cost is coming   
   due. A large group of pro-Trump protesters overtake police and barriers in   
   order to access the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C.   
      
   A large group of pro-Trump protesters overtake police and barriers in   
   order to access the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. |   
   Jon Cherry/Getty Images   
      
   By John F. Harris   
      
   01/06/2021 09:35 PM EST   
      
   Altitude is a column by POLITICO founding editor John Harris, offering   
   weekly perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.   
      
   The capital was consumed by talk of “insurrection,” a tense standoff with   
   police guns drawn at the doors of the national legislature, a fatality, a   
   curfew enforced by soldiers in the streets. What country are we talking   
   about?   
      
   This one, of course, and if it had happened elsewhere it might well have   
   merited citation from President Donald Trump himself the next time he   
   updates his notorious almanac of “shithole countries.”   
      
   But it didn’t happen elsewhere. It happened in the world’s oldest   
   democracy, and in that sense was powerfully illuminating of what happens   
   when one takes Trump Era politics to its logical destination.   
      
   The evacuation of the Senate chamber when the Capitol’s security was   
   breached was hectic, but not so much that Sen. Mitt Romney didn’t have   
   time for commentary for his fellow Republicans who had joined Trump in   
   challenging his loss to President-elect Joe Biden with bogus assertions of   
   pervasive fraud: “This is what you’ve gotten guys,” Romney scolded. Later,   
   he told The New York Times, “This is what the president caused today, this   
   insurrection.”   
      
   The day, just two weeks before the transfer of power on Jan. 20, was   
   historic in multiple ways. But one milestone was especially noteworthy: It   
   turns out even Trump can find himself rudely splattered by the muck of   
   Trumpism.   
      
   Even he can be burned by the essential bargain of the Republican Party in   
   the Trump Era: Just play along with the spectacle, and enjoy the material   
   and psychic rewards of power.   
      
   “This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these   
   people,” Trump pleaded in a video released as the Capitol was under siege   
   by Trump-backing insurrectionists trying to halt the attempted   
   certification of the presidential election. “So go home. We love you.   
   You’re very special.”   
      
   It was as if Trump himself was taken aback by the revelation that at least   
   some his backers don’t realize his presidency is the political equivalent   
   of pro wrestling — lots of puffing and bluster and body slams designed as   
   entertainment. It’s like those guys took him seriously a few hours earlier   
   at a “Stop the Steal” rally to repeat his claims that “our election   
   victory” was “stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats” and the news   
   media, and taunting everyone in his own party from his vice president on   
   down who does not agree with him.   
      
   It came on the day when Republicans, who lost the House in 2018 in large   
   part because of Trump’s polarizing presidency, also lost the Senate when   
   two Republicans were evicted from their seats in Georgia, in a special   
   election shadowed by Trump’s spurious claims of election fraud. In   
   combination with the mayhem at the Capitol, it underlined the   
   transactionalism at the heart of the Trump years. Lots of people have made   
   bargains, and the light is better than ever to assess how these have paid   
   off.   
      
   At the individual level this bargain — I don’t much like what Trump does   
   or says, but I’ve got good reasons for setting misgivings aside — was what   
   a long parade of people did in going to work as one of his chiefs of staff   
   or national security advisers or cabinet secretaries. It is hard to name   
   any who emerged from the bargain unscathed, with neither public reputation   
   nor personal dignity undiminished.   
      
   At the national level, that is what the Republican Party did once most of   
   its members accurately perceived the question of the age is “What side are   
   you on?” and concluded that the only safe place for someone with ambition   
   is, “On the side of Trump.”   
      
   Trump famously boasted that his supporters would still back him if he shot   
   someone on Fifth Avenue. What happened Wednesday was something different —   
   a damaging wound to him or those sympathetic to his cause delivered in the   
   name of supporting him.   
      
   In that sense, it highlighted the broader predicament of the Republican   
   Party. The GOP is a coalition of people who like Trump, people who don’t   
   like Trump but pretend to for expedient reasons, with a small sliver of   
   people who don’t like him and don’t pretend to and whom are left to wonder   
   about their own future in the party.   
      
   Even before the violence, it was a day when Republican leaders faced   
   recriminations about how the strategy of Trump accommodation paid off. In   
   his reelection bid, Trump proved himself to be the greatest mobilizer of   
   Republican turnout ever, winning the second-highest number of votes in   
   American history. He also turned out to be greatest mobilizer of   
   Democratic turnout ever, helping President-elect Joe Biden win the   
   first-highest number of votes in American history.   
      
   Until this week, one could have made the case that Senate Majority Leader   
   Mitch McConnell was a nearly singular figure: Someone who came out ahead   
   in the bargain to work with Trump and muzzle any negative sentiments he   
   might have harbored about the president’s behavior. After all, McConnell   
   got what he wanted most: four years of conservative judges. After the   
   November elections, it looked like McConnell might keep his power as   
   majority leader and even could lay down terms to a Democratic president   
   whom he’s known longer and probably likes more than Trump.   
      dd   
   McConnell is soon to be minority leader. His speech deploring the attempt   
   at challenging the certification of Biden’s victory — “Our democracy would   
   enter a death spiral” if the attempt was successful — might have been the   
   day’s big news were it not for the confrontation.   
      
   How does McConnell view his bargain now?   
      
   Or how about Vice President Mike Pence? Four years in which he surrendered   
   independent identity to show obsequiousness to Trump in public, and   
   evidently also in private, were repaid with a Trump tweet on Wednesday   
   saying, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been   
   done to protect our Country and our Constitution” by trying to block   
   certification of Biden’s election. Is Pence still supposing that he will   
   be the natural inheritor of the Trump movement in 2024? MOST READ   
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