Former Republican has a plan to combat conspiracy-soaked Trumpism
"It would be a shit show. It would certainly be a lot of committee investigations, whether it's [Dr. Anthony] Fauci, whether it's into the Jan. 6 committee itself or Hunter Biden, you're going to see a massive number of investigations just to stymie whatever could be done by the Biden administration," Riggleman lamented in an interview with Raw Story. "That's where we're at with tribal politics."
While in Congress, Riggleman was a member of the Freedom Caucus, founded as a libertarian-leaning group of fiscal conservatives before it transformed into Trump's loudest cheerleading corps in Congress. After officiating the same-sex marriage of two former campaign volunteers, he was primaried out of office in 2020. And the political party he once cherished, in part, for promoting religious liberty, became one he could no longer associate with.
"What you have right now is, you have a party that's willing to stall the country going forward for fantastical belief systems and investigations," Riggleman said.
Before stepping down this spring, the former congressman served as a senior advisor on the special Jan. 6 committee. He recently released "The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into Jan. 6," in which he critiques Washington as an unprincipled, soulless and purely poll-driven town.
While he's not tempted to sign up for the Democrats – a party he sees as out of touch with many of his neighbors – Riggleman is repulsed by today's GOP. He says his once beloved Republican Party is now devoid of all principles and that it's become bloated with BS.
"It's polling over truth. It's winning over facts," Riggleman said. "If you're really about winning at all times, a great way is to poll and raise money on hyperbole and outrage and conspiracy theories. It's a great way to go if you want to win right now in certain Republican districts."
During the Jan. 6 insurrection and in the ensuing days, a myth took root on the right that President Trump's own rallygoers were actually antifa. After poring over the thousands of text messages former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows turned over to the Jan. 6 committee, Riggleman was struck by the lies not just contained in the correspondence – but the lies spread far and wide that started in the upper echelons of the Republican Party.
"You saw in the Meadows text messages the start of the antifa false flag conspiracy theories, from Jason Miller to Marjorie Taylor Greene. That's just made-up shit," Riggleman said. "Then they couch it in religious terms, and that's why you see people self-identifying as Christian Nationalists and saying that this is a war between good and evil. Those who believe they're in a war against good and evil have a lot more energy against those people who don't believe it's a war against good and evil."
While many Democrats laugh off the QAnon conspiracies that are now orthodoxy to many on the right, Riggleman says they're nothing to giggle at. He says the "Trump as Messiah" myth is heartbreaking because it reveals the hypnotizing power social media can have on average Americans when in the hands of power-hungry politicians.
"If he's ordained to be there, then for people who believe him, it's not dangerous at all. It's salvation. It's what America needs," Riggleman said. "If you're going to engage in this, know that you're engaging with people who really believe they're doing the right thing. They're not evil, but they've completely been taken in by conspiracies or these sort of radicalizing principles of apocalyptic conspiracies."
Many religious voters have bought into the conspiracies purely because they're cloaked in the cross, which is painful for Riggleman to watch.
"They have just been taken by maybe the biggest conspiratorial grift in the history of the United States and by an individual that actually has no moral boundaries whatsoever," Riggleman said.
So how do you combat conspiracy-soaked Trumpism? Riggleman says it's through targeting the sliver of sanity left in his former party.
"I think you combat it in the seams. You fight in the three to five percent on the center-right that you think that you can identify to get them to see in a more fact-based way," Riggleman said. "Three to five percent is really all you need. If you can get there, I think you're in good shape where you can sort of hold off many more outlandish theories and belief systems."
The sad thing, according to Riggleman, is that Trumpism is now larger than even the persona Trump has sold for decades.
"This is well beyond Trump. Disinformation through domestic and foreign pushers is going to continue, and a lot of this is baked in," Riggleman said. "Trump got the ball rolling in a very incredible way for disinformation – a very sad way, a very disastrous way is the best word, a dangerous way for disinformation – but now a lot of that's just baked in. So if Trump were not to run tomorrow or something were to happen, somebody else would just take his place because that's what they're going to do."
The other half of the problem, according to Riggleman, is that the Democratic Party continues to pound its politically correct and increasingly 'righteous' chest, even as that alienates the very voters they need to capture.
"Democrats don't understand what's happening," Riggleman said. "The middle is getting crushed. The people that don't like to scream are getting crushed."
Riggleman says Trump's loudest and harshest critics have yet to adapt to today's new media era.
"But if you're not unwilling to engage in that middle space, in the seams, we're going to have a really tough time," Riggleman said. "And the issue is that you have to engage with data, and you have to engage with technology in a very robust and aggressive way, and we're not there yet."
While Riggleman currently has no home in America's political system, he thinks a third party could be successful here. But it's got to be well financed in order to even get on the ballots in most states.
"I think a viable party that had money behind it could start chipping away at this two-party disaster we have in the United States right now," Riggleman said. "You've got two corporations that are making huge amounts of money by perpetuating the two-party system. That's it. It's about money."
On second thought, Riggleman brushed aside the notion of a third party, saying it needs to be a wave.
"I do think if you have a party – hell, not even a party, but a movement that looks at this and is just sort of a facts-based movement, I think it could be effective, but it's really hard to beat hate and discontent," Riggleman said. "Love and light, trying to look at facts and just plain policy with a servant's heart, it's not really what politics is right now. Politics is a cutthroat polling game where messaging comes from where the base is and what they want to vote for, regardless of facts."
That's not just political theory. Riggleman wrestles with himself these days because the incentives of today's political system reward vitriol and anger. After he officiated the same-sex marriage, as he recounts in his new book, someone messed with his truck's wheels, which put one of his daughter's life in danger. Politics is one thing; attacking family members is different.
"It's hard when my family gets death threats because I want to go to war. I want to get violent, and that's what they want. People have got to realize that violence happens in a reciprocal way," Riggleman said. "I even catch myself getting angry or being flippant or calling people names who are ignorant, because I just can't take it much anymore. On the other hand, I think I have to be more empathetic myself, and it's very difficult because of death threats."
One thing Riggleman's purposefully done to try and stay connected to reality – his family, neighbors and community – is to unplug.
"I've started to withdraw from Twitter and things like that because Twitter does not matter. Instagram does not matter," Riggleman said. "You have to go house to house. You've got to talk to people one on one. You've got to really engage that way."
This is the final piece of a 3-part series based on our exclusive interview with former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who served as an advisor to the Jan. 6 committee. You can read the first installment here and the second installment here.
