Justin Amash was one such person. Things had come full circle: Once considered annoying and eccentric for his principle-driven votes against the GOP leadership, the Michigan libertarian was one of the only lawmakers in the Republican Party remaining true to those principles—and one of the few willing to diagnose what was happening to conservatism in the era of Trump.
“THEY BELIEVE IN A COSMIC BATTLE BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE left, good and evil, and they think any criticism of Trump is helping the other side,” Amash said. “So, they’re willing to do whatever they need to. If that means going on Fox News and lying through their teeth about Trump, so be it.”
The Michigan congressman was sitting in his office, the lights dimmed, C-SPAN flickering on a muted television. A few days had passed since the Helsinki summit, and Amash was still grappling with the subsequent defense mounted by his colleagues. The Freedom Caucus had shown signs of internal strain in Trump’s first two years at the wheel, but this felt like a breaking point.
Amash had watched for the past eighteen months as his fellow House conservatives used their seats on key committees (Judiciary, Oversight) to wage a partisan war on Trump’s behalf, neglecting the nonpartisan duties of checking and balancing assigned to the legislative branch and assuming a protective posture on behalf of the executive. Amash understood the anxieties about Democratic overreach and unchecked bureaucrats in the “deep state” going rogue out of political opposition to the president. He also shared the belief, held by many of Trump’s defenders on Capitol Hill, that surveillance powers had been abused in proximity to the government’s handling of the Trump-Russia case. But it was painful to watch his friends, his Freedom Caucus comrades, sacrifice their integrity in the service of shielding the White House from scrutiny it plainly deserved.
“Have you watched these committee hearings? They’re all theater. Then they go on Fox News and continue their performance. And then they go home and say privately, ‘Trump’s such an idiot,’ but the Fox News hit is all that matters,” Amash said. “We’ve all fallen into tribes, and when they praise the president, they get instant gratification from their tribe.”
He continues: “I think they’re hurting themselves and they’re hurting the country when they do this stuff. It’s fine to say good things about Trump when you agree with him. I think Gorsuch could prove to be one of the best Supreme Court justices we’ve ever had. I agree with Trump on a number of regulatory issues. I agree with him when he’s cut taxes—just not when he raised taxes by imposing tariffs. . . . But a lot of them have just fallen in line. And it’s upsetting. It affects personal relationships. They are so obsessed with defending Trump, and the Russia stuff—I mean, they complain about the left being obsessed with Russia, but they’re even worse. And it gets in the way of discussions on anything else. It makes it hard to relate. I can’t understand it.”
In a way, it was easy to understand. Politicians act out of self-preservation. For congressional Republicans—most of whom face no general election threat in their districts and all of whom fear Trump’s fervent following in the party’s base—the surest way to keep their power and enhance their influence was to stand by the Dear Leader.
Far easier than remaining intellectually consistent, applying critical thinking to the president’s words and deeds regardless of party affiliation, was to enlist as one of his surrogates. The trappings of Trump’s propaganda ministry were substantial: regular Fox News appearances, rides on Air Force One, invitations to the White House, phone calls with the leader of the free world. Many a GOP lawmaker fell prey to these perks. But none more odiously than Matt Gaetz.
Elected to Congress in 2016, Gaetz quickly distinguished himself as the Trumpiest lawmaker on Capitol Hill. He tried to hit a populist, anti-politician note out of the gate, announcing repeatedly at a press conference in 2017, “I don’t speak Washington.” (Gaetz’s father, the former president of the Florida Senate, was instrumental in procuring the congressional seat for his son.) The rookie Republican quickly realized that his path to prominence wound through the good graces of Trump, and he set about becoming the president’s most pugilistic supporter in Congress: railing against the “deep state” on Fox News, calling for Mueller’s firing, even likening the special counsel’s investigation to a “coup d’état.” Before long, Gaetz was riding on Air Force One to Florida with the president and giving introductory remarks at an event.
In January 2018, Gaetz brought as his guest to the State of the Union address an alt-right troll and Holocaust denier, Charles Johnson, who, among his other claims to fame, helped raise crowdsourced money for the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer. This resulted in a brief hiatus from Fox News, but Gaetz was back before long, more frequently and more artificially bronzed than ever before, alternating between calling Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt” and questioning the lack of investigations into the corruption of the Obama administration.
By the summer of 2018, Gaetz was on the president’s speed-dialing list, talking with him regularly by phone and receiving constant feedback after his Fox News hits. This was not enough. The Florida congressman grew upset during one meeting with staff from the White House’s Office for Legislative Affairs, dressing them down for not recognizing his “special relationship” with Trump. Gaetz argued that he should be getting more one-on-one time with the president. Not long after, he was aboard Air Force One for Trump’s latest trip to Florida.
Gaetz had discovered a new path to power and influence for a freshman member of Congress. It was good for him but terrible for the institution of Congress—and for the Republican Party. “Matt Gaetz is not a legislator,” Ryan says, shaking his head. “He’s an entertainer.”
Not everyone was so flamboyant as the Florida lawmaker. But then again, they didn’t need to be. To remain relevant in Trump’s GOP was to stick within his orbit. And to do so required little more than unyielding allegiance to the president. This meant never daring to oppose his policies, much less criticize him personally, all while defending him as a matter of instinct.
In lieu of any serious, substantive checking of the administration by its coequal branch of government on Capitol Hill, a class of professional Trump critics emerged on the right. Some, such as attorney David French at National Review and longtime talk radio host Charlie Sykes at the Weekly Standard, were thoughtful and measured. But most of the professionals were virtue-signaling reactionaries whose hysteria was surpassed only by their social media followings. Whether done by Ana Navarro on CNN (a “Republican strategist” who had strategized on behalf of no campaign that anyone could recall) or Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post (a once-interesting blogger whose censures had become predictable to the point of self-parody), slamming the president’s every syllable became a cottage industry with generous remuneration for those involved.
Indeed, throughout the fratricidal post-Bush era, few things got more clicks or better ratings than Republican-on-Republican violence. This trend exploded in the age of Trump. Newspapers competed to run columns by conservative detractors of the administration; cable news programs hustled to book guests whose broadsides against the president from the right would validate their own from the left. The scent of such intraparty treachery was so alluring that late in the summer of 2018, the New York Times ran an anonymous op-ed, which claimed to be authored by a “senior official in the Trump administration,” that detailed how the president’s own aides were “trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t,” and said there had been secret discussions of involving the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove him from office.