On Tuesday, writing for the Never Trump conservative website The Bulwark, conservative commentator Charlie Sykes outlined the devolution of Republican Party values as it enters what he calls "Late Stage Trumpism."
"Think of today as the perfect symbol of Late Stage Trumpism boiled down to its essence: of incompetence, demagoguery, tribalism, and the flirtation with violence. And, of course, the weirdness," wrote Sykes. "Trumpism has long since jettisoned values like truth, character, respect for norms, and the rule of law. Those are for cucks and losers. So now we are seeing Trumpism distilled to its fundamental nature; a feral clinging to power, even if that means abusing the levers of government, stoking a race war, or inciting his followers to engage in vigilantism."
"Over the last few days, you could sense the mood of near-panic among anti-Trumpers as they came to grips with the reality that he might actually pull out another electoral win. And, as we enter September, that remains a very real possibility," continued Sykes. "But this Late Stage Trumpism has a decadent, desperate feel to it as it exposes itself. It strips bare the pretense that what we are seeing is somehow normal. And for Senate Republicans, it is a stark dramatization of what they have wrought by their refusal to hold the president accountable when they had the chance."
A good encapsulation of where Trump's supporters are heading, wrote Sykes, is Trump's newest claim that police who shoot Americans in the back are just like golfers who choked on a swing, or his claim that a "planeload of thugs" and "people that are in the dark shadows" are subverting law and order in American cities.
"As Bill Kristol notes this morning, 'When Laura Ingraham is amazed by something Donald Trump has said, and tries to save him from himself, Donald Trump has jumped the shark,'" wrote Sykes. "Or, perhaps, he has just entered the terminal phase of Late Stage Trumpism."
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