GOP blasted for describing America as a 'hellish dystopia' headed for 'apocalypse'

Former President Donald Trump has converted the whole Republican Party into doomsayers who believe America is heading for an "apocalypse" in what can only be described as a "recipe for carnage," wrote Eugene Robinson for The Washington Post on Friday.

All of this was put clearly on display Wednesday, wrote Robinson, as Republicans gathered for their first primary debate — and as Trump, who skipped the debate, tried to counterprogram it with a lengthy interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Republicans on that stage, wrote Robinson, "outdid one another in trying to describe the wealthiest, most powerful country on Earth as some kind of hellish dystopia," noting that businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, contrasting with the famous line of Ronald Reagan, proclaimed "It is not morning in America." Meanwhile, "Anyone who went online to watch the Republican front-runner’s counterprogramming ... saw Trump being egged on by Tucker Carlson to agree with the premise that we are on the verge of a second civil war."

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Trump declined to give a straight answer to Carlson's question — but didn't have to, said Robinson, because that "civil war" mentality is now thoroughly embedded in the GOP.

Among the rank and file of the Republican base, wrote Robinson, "Trump has already changed the truth, in the sense that he has changed the way they perceive reality" — with these voters believing that Trump singlehandedly saved the nation from a collapse of social order, dwindling global power, and immigrant fueled crime; that 2020, far from being a pandemic-fueled economic collapse, was the peak of American prosperity; and that Trump's departure — driven out by a "rigged" election — has returned the country to the darkness. And this is leading Trump's GOP rivals to push extreme views of their own — perhaps best exemplified by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposal to invade Mexico.

In order to have any chance of snapping Republicans out of this radicalization, concluded Robinson, "voters need to destroy" the Republican Party "with a crushing defeat in 2024."