“Never Trump” former Republican Rick Wilson is warning Americans about Donald Trump. The Lincoln Project co-founder, responding to an Axios report on Friday that claims “Trump’s iron grip over the GOP has been institutionalized,” agrees, saying: “His word is law.”
“Those of you thinking Trump will go away if you call him ‘the former guy’ miss the point; you cannot wish him away. It’s politically naïve and borders on juvenile,” tweeted the brash political strategist who is the author of Everything Trump Touches Dies.
“Many of the ‘call him the former guy’ advocates live in a Beltway dreamworld,” Wilson warned. “Trump can break any of them with a word.”
He mocked those who say: “I’ll call this cancer a bad cold because then the algorithms won’t give it as much attention.”
That “isn’t a strategy. It’s — at best — a prank. In 2015 and 2016 the entire American political class – myself included – had a massive failure of imagination. It can always be worse.”
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For those who have been giving some Republicans the benefit of the doubt, saying they are just going along with Trump to protect themselves, they don’t really buy into his extremism, guess again.
“Trump’s minions — both in Mar a Lago and beyond — now entirely control the political and fundraising apparatus of the Republican Party,” Wilson says. “His word is law. No one is coming to save the GOP from him; they’re accomplices, not hostages.”
And for those who think Trump and Trumpism will just fade away, die off, or disappear, and everyone can just relax, Wilson says: “the GOP is planning, working, grinding.”
Image by Gilbert Mercier via Flickr and a CC license