The Atlantic’s Peter Wehner just last week in a scathing account of Donald Trump described the former president as a “mob boss.”
Wehner is now walking back that remark, but not for the reasons you might think.
“That comparison turns out to have been insulting to mob bosses everywhere,” the conservative columnist wrote in his most recent article that was published Wednesday.
Just in the last week, the embattled ex-president launched attacks against a judge hearing his case and his family members and posted a photo on his Truth Social account of him holding a bat next to a photo showing the head of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
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“Two things are happening at once: Trump, depraved and deranged, is lashing out, more venomous than ever,” explains the author and former George W. Bush speech writer.
One might expect to see Trump’s grip on the Republican party start to loosen given the torrent of incendiary comments, but all indications are the opposite is occurring, Wehner writes, noting polling data showing Trump holding a commanding lead over the rest of the field, and fellow Republicans, apparently fearful of angering his base, unwilling to criticize the former president.
He notes that focus groups conducted by Sarah Longwell with participants who voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections haven’t been monolithic in their support for the former president in recent months, but that now they’re all in for Trump.
Wehner writes that “Republican officials, whether they appreciate and admire Trump or are fearful of and submissive to him, continue to stand by him. They recognize that he is the most dominant and popular figure in the Republican Party. And they are stuck with him.”
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And it’s their own fault, according to Wehner, who notes that Republicans have had every chance to cut ties with Trump, going back to the Access Hollywood tape, the Jan. 6 insurrection and two impeachment trials, just to name a few moments that were supposed to mark the end of Trump’s political career.
“But publicly, they are, almost to a person, on his side. The tribe demands no less of its members. To do otherwise is to suffer the fate of the intrepid Liz Cheney,” Wehner writes.
“The Trump era has been illuminating in this regard. In the past, wondering just how far a party would go in defense of its leader was a matter of speculation. But Trump has moved this question from the realm of speculation to the realm of reality. The GOP has hitched its wagon to Trump, and he is leading them to places even they never imagined. A grotesque man presides over a grotesque party.”
