Throughout his Presidency, Republicans have continued to support Donald Trump despite a series of actions that would have normally resulted in impeachment.     

Forgiven Crime #19: After being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, Trump fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks. Among these:

• Michael K. Atkinson – The IG of the Intelligence Community. The reason: Atkinson had forwarded the whistleblower complaint which led to Trump’s impeachment.
• Glenn Fine – Appointed to oversee funds voted by Congress to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the United States. His dismissal ensured that Trump–who had admitted to defrauding students at his notorious “Trump University”–could spend the $2 trillion in relief monies any way he wished. 

Glenn Fine

• Christi Grimm – As IG at the Department of Health and Human Services, she outraged Trump by contradicting him by agreeing—accurately—that the nation’s hospitals were suffering from severe shortages of personal protective equipment and testing supplies for COVID-19.

Forgiven Crime #20: After losing the Presidential election on November 3, 2020, Trump became the first American President to refuse to accept the verdict.

Forgiven Crime #21: From November 3 to December 14, 2020, Trump and his allies challenged the election results, filing—and losing—59 cases in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges. 

Forgiven Crime #22: On December 5, 2021, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win. 

Brian Kemp

Forgiven Crime 23:  On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered his assembled followers to attack the Capitol Building where House and Senate members were counting Electoral Votes—that were certain to certify Joseph R. Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential election.

Their goal: To stop the counting of those votes—and enable Trump to serve as “President-for-Life.”

Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and 114 others were injured.

This was, in effect, a treasonous coup attempt.  

On February 13, 2021, the Republican-dominated Senate once again acquitted Trump—of “incitement of insurrection” against the United States government. 

Forgiven Crime 24: In 2022, Trump became the first ex-President to be indicted for crimes committed during his four-year administration: 2017-2021. He faces 91 criminal charges across four jurisdictions: Georgia, Florida, New York and the District of Columbia. 

Yet even as he viciously attacks his rivals for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination, all but one—former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—refuse to condemn him as an indicted criminal.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley have promised to pardon Trump if he is convicted and either one of them is elected President.

Forgiven Crime 25: Trump has echoed Adolf Hitler in attacking immigrants: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world.” 

Republicans have refused to condemn those remarks—or the original source—Mein Kampf-–of those remarks.

* * * * *

Why have Republicans almost unanimously stood by Donald Trump despite the wreckage he  made of American foreign and domestic policy?  

Fear—that they will lose their privileged positions in Congress if they don’t.

This could happen by:

• Their being voted out of Congress by Trump’s fanatical base; or
• Their being voted out of Congress by anti-Trump voters fed up with Trump’s appalling behavior.

House and Senate Republicans’ support for Trump hinges on one question: “Can I hold onto my power and all the privileges that accompany it by sticking—or breaking—with him?” 

In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:

“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”

Like Hitler, Trump offered his Republican voters and Congressional allies intoxicating dreams: “I will enrich all of you. And I will humiliate and destroy those Americans you most hate.”

For his white, Fascistic, largely elderly audience, those enemies included blacks, atheists, Hispanics, non-Christians, Muslims, liberals, “uppity” women, Asians.

For most of the first three years of his Presidency, he faced little opposition. What cost Trump the White House wasn’t Democratic or Republican courage but a deadly disease—COVID-19—which Trump refused to take seriously.

Democrats cowered before Trump’s slanders—thereby ensuring more assaults.

Most of the press quailed before Trump. Only a few media outlets—notably the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post-–dared investigate his crimes and blunders. 

In 1960, the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko, published “Conversation With an American Writer”—a stinging indictment of the cowardly opportunists who had supported the brutal tyranny of Joseph Stalin: 

“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.

Too many Republicans know all-too-well how it feels to stoop to the cowardice of their colleagues for a transitory hold on power and privilege.