Former Republican strategist and Lincoln Project activist Stuart Stevens slammed the Republican Party as an "autocratic movement" that no longer has any faith in the democratic process on MSNBC's "All In" Tuesday night.
His remarks came during a discussion with anchor Chris Hayes about Jeb Bush coming out with a video on Fox News praising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a moment many have characterized as an "endorsement" but that he has subsequently tried to walk back — and the ongoing legal troubles Fox is facing for pushing election lies.
"I would like to know about whether Donald Trump paid Jeb Bush to go out and endorse Ron DeSantis?" joked Stevens — a reference to how Bush is seen as an irrelevant insider figure by many rank-and-file Republican voters.
"Seriously, I had the same thought like, this is a nightmare!" laughed Hayes.
"It was like, read the room, dude," said Stevens. "Look, Donald Trump is going to win the nomination. Donald Trump is what the Republican Party wants, and people need to accept that. Fox did not create Republican Party, the Republican Party created Fox. It's just a market response to what the Republican Party had become. I think that the party took a really different turn after Barack Obama was elected president. It used to be a conservative party. Fox was conservative, but in some framework of left and right in American politics."
"What it's become now is, the party has lost faith with democracy," Stevens continued. "They feel that democracy itself is failed because their candidates failed. If you really think back, they did not think Barack Obama was legally elected, they don't think Joe Biden was legally elected. The last legally elected president was George Bush. This is why I say the Republican Party has become an autocratic movement. Because when you lose faith in democracy, you start looking for an alternative, and the only hope that they have, because they have been overwhelmingly been Donald Trump's base, is to change how we vote, and that's what they're working on."
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