All posts tagged "Cult"

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) doubled down on Tuesday after saying the America First movement would eradicate people who do not support former President Donald Trump.

"Any Republican that doesn't completely endorse these policies, we are completely eradicating from the party," Greene told MSNBC on Monday.

On Tuesday, the lawmaker was asked about her plan to cleanse the party. ...

Former President Donald Trump is effectively presiding over a cult, said minister and longtime civil rights activist Al Sharpton on MSNBC Friday. And that is the key reason his influence is so hard to unseat among his supporters.

However, Sharpton said, this also points to a way that his hold on the GOP could ultimately become undone.

"I have always been obsessed and almost fixated with the asymmetry," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "So Trump's bond with his supporters is cult-like. And that's bad and toxic in all the ways that a cult is bad and toxic. And it has the consequence of having them go out and do things for him that in a political and electoral context regardless of ... a conviction. The other candidates raised their hand and said they, too, will support him if he was convicted. How do you contest, in the political arena, someone who goes into the political arena as a cult leader?"...

A former federal law enforcement official on Wednesday suggested the fight against global terror offers a road map for deradicalizing extremist elements of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

But former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace” acknowledged there is a limited role for law enforcement in such efforts.

“So why would they break with him, or condemn him,” Wallace said, noting Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he’d vote for Trump even after the former president smeared his wife, Elaine Chao....

A former aide to Donald Trump on Wednesday urged fellow Republicans to take a more aggressive stance against his former boss.

Anthony Scaramucci, who served briefly as White House Communications Director in the Trump administration, during an appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” expressed outrage that with some notable exceptions, Republican presidential candidates have largely remained mum over the former president’s ongoing legal troubles.

Scaramucci’s comments followed Tuesday’s indictment against Trump, who is facing four charges in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s arraignment is scheduled to be held Thursday in a D.C. courtroom....

Donald Trump has been slapped with a superseding indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and is expecting to be indicted with another round of charges in the federal January 6 case. Between all of that, the Georgia elections case, and the Manhattan indictment for falsifying business records, the former president could be defending against four criminal cases during the election cycle, all of which carry prison time. But Trump vowed this week to stay in the race, no matter what his legal situation is.

That's not a surprise, argued Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor and the author of multiple books on fascism and autocrats, on MSNBC Friday.

"Your reaction to Trump saying, I'm running no matter what, indictments and convictions be damned?" asked anchor Katie Phang....

Don't count on Trump's sprawling federal indictment for removing and compromising highly classified information to turn the tide on Republican support, warned reporter James Risen for The Intercept on Friday — as he is essentially a "cult leader" and his followers are in a "fever dream" of loyalty and grievance.

"The Republican Party has devolved into a cult of personality, where every new piece of evidence of their leader’s criminality becomes another reason for his followers to defend him," wrote Risen. "Donald Trump has now been indicted twice in just over two months, in separate cases involving accusations of unrelated crimes. Both times, Republicans have rallied around him. The group of whiners and weaklings who are running against Trump for next year’s Republican presidential nomination are so intimidated by his hold on the party’s base that they are afraid to publicly tell the truth, which is that Trump is a thug who should be in prison instead of the White House."

The problem for Republicans, continued Risen, is that this isn't even where it is likely to end — more indictments could be coming....