Donald Trump's emergence as a presidential candidate in 2015 unleashed his populist Make America Great Again credo upon the American electorate. One of the earliest features of the MAGA brand was grievance politics, notably Trump's assertion that immigrants from Central and South America were rapists and criminals. During and after his presidency, Trump and his followers became even more extreme, targeting underserved and vulnerable communities as scapegoats for what they view as society's woes.
Consequently, numerous authors and journalists would write that "the cruelty is the point," meaning that Trump's stage rage was the very thing drawing crowds to him.
On Monday, ex-United States Congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois — a founding member of the Tea Party who abandoned the GOP in 2020 after failing to mount a formidable presidential primary challenge to Trump — agreed with that conclusion.
"Republicans are constantly emphasizing the need for a secure border, but these stories coming out of Texas depriving children of water, a woman having a miscarriage stuck in wire, that can't be appealing to voters," MSNBC host Symone Sanders opined.
"Well, but Symone, here's the thing, and by the way, I second everything [Voto Latino Chief Executive Officer] Maria [Teresa Kumar] said. This is all about, I come from this world," replied Walsh.
I left the Republican Party almost exactly one year ago. Someone asked me that day why I left. I said, 'Because the GOP no longer supports democracy. It embraces fascism. It believes in conspiracies. And it's a cult. I don't want to belong to a cult.' That answer still holds.'
Walsh reaffirmed his assessment.
"This is all about appealing to the hardest core Republican base, the Republican primary voters. And they want, they want nothing more than for this country to be really tough on the border. But the other thing, Symone, that you just brought up, is it's the cruelty," Walsh said.
"I mean — I say this as a former lifelong Republican — cruelty right now. Being mean, being a bully, being a jerk — that plays big time in my former political party. I think we just have to acknowledge that cruelty right now sells in that party," Walsh added. "That's why [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott's doing, that's why [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis, right, has done almost everything he's done over the course of the past year."
Sanders responded, "Cruelty has consequences, and I think folks might see that at the ballot box."
