GOP loyalists slammed for belatedly manufacturing excuses to dump Trump

On Wednesday, writing for The Bulwark, political writer Bill Lueders scorched Republican pundits who spent years supporting former President Donald Trump, only to abandon him now that he looks like a liability for the GOP — and citing misbehavior and problems that had always been true of him.

One key example, Lueders noted, is Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute, who broke with Trump in a recent Washington Postcolumn.

"'It’s time for Trump supporters to acknowledge a sad but undeniable truth: Trump is spinning out of control,' Thiessen wrote, no doubt salting his keyboard with tears," wrote Lueders. "Really? What has Trump done to deserve this stern rebuke?" Thiessen explained that Trump had sullied his judicial nominations legacy by attacking the Supreme Court in a tweet — but, Lueders wrote, "Consider, for example, what he said as a candidate in 2016: that federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial when hearing a case against Trump University because the Indiana-born judge was 'a Mexican.' Or when — again, still a candidate — he called Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg an 'incompetent judge' who should resign because she mildly dissed him as 'a faker.'" This wasn't an issue for Thiessen then.

Similarly, Lueders pointed out, Republicans are disavowing Trump's dinner with neo-Nazi livestreamer Nick Fuentes and Kanye "Ye" West — but what exactly made this the line?

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"The same people who stood by Trump after he was shown boasting about how he could get away with grabbing women 'by the pussy'; who encouraged violence at his rallies; who praised a congressman for body-slamming a reporter; who cozied up to dictators including Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; who approvingly quoted Benito Mussolini; who shared that he and murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un 'fell in love'; who insisted there were 'very fine people on both sides' of a neo-Nazi rally; who refused to condemn former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke; who advised the extremist Proud Boys to 'stand back and stand by'; who instigated a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the result of an election he lost?" wrote Lueders. "All of this was tolerable. But, somehow, breaking bread with these two nitwits was a bridge too far?"

"There is only one reason among all of the many cited by Thiessen that Republicans are turning away from Donald Trump now: because he cannot win. Everything else they were perfectly willing to put up with, and they would put up with it again — if only they believed that he stood a chance of helping keep them in power," concluded Lueders. "Really."