Trump's social media banishment is allowing Republicans to do his dirty work in secret: columnist

Donald Trump has been silenced on social media since losing the election and stoking the Jan. 6 insurrection, but the Republican Party remains monomaniacally focused on carrying out his dirty work.

Pro-Trump factions are taking over the GOP at all levels and purging the former president's enemies, but MSNBC's Hayes Brown wrote that Trump's control over the party is so thorough that Republicans don't even need to be told how to carry out his grudges.

"Without Trump's constant interjections to sway priorities, Republicans are basically working on autopilot, like a computer in a post-apocalyptic world still running protocols based on the last commands put into its mainframe," Brown wrote. "It's the kind of plodding, relatively long-term strategic thinking — even if it's in the interest of short-term goals like winning elections — that's impossible with Trump looming over you, dropping new tweets into his feed every few hours that upend whatever you've been working on."

Trump's silence also allows Republicans to do their dirty work in the shadows.

"Trump had a way of making every day feel like the end times," Brown wrote. "The relative calm of the Biden administration has had a soothing effect, which has benefited the GOP's efforts. It's not necessarily that Trump is pulling the strings from the shadows. But there's a definite upside to his lack of visibility for the officials laying the groundwork to make the next presidential election easier to throw to the GOP's candidate."