The kindest interpretation for Mississippi’s Republican leadership getting in lockstep behind Donald Trump’s bid to retake the White House is that they have all concluded that his nomination is a foregone conclusion and they want to be on the right side of the clear front-runner.
Still, it is terribly troubling that not a single Republican in higher office in this state has the courage to say let’s see how the former president’s civil and criminal trials play out before jumping on his bandwagon.
All three GOP congressmen, both U.S. senators and seven of eight statewide elected officials have endorsed Trump, according to an article published this week by Politico. The lone holdout is Secretary of State Michael Watson, who said he needed to stay neutral since he will help administer the state’s general election in 2024, when the president is chosen.
Have those other 12 forgotten so soon the serious crimes of which Trump is credibly accused?
- Knowingly absconding from the White House with hundreds of classified documents, including top-secret records, then trying to obstruct their recovery by federal agents.
- Orchestrating with aides and supporters a scheme to overturn his defeat in Georgia, one of a handful of battleground states that gave the narrow victory in 2020 to Joe Biden.
- And most damningly, inciting a riot that resulting in the storming of the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to keep Biden’s election from being officially certified.
These are not small crimes that his supporters are trying to whitewash. What Trump is accused of no president has ever attempted before: to thwart the will of the voters and violently defy the peaceful transfer of power, and to do it all based on a lie he still peddles to this day that he didn’t lose the election. Four who have endorsed Trump from Mississippi’s congressional delegation — Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith and Reps. Trent Kelly and Michael Guest — had a first-hand view of this assault on the Capitol. They saw how this country flirted with a quasi-dictatorship. They want to give that another shot?
Wicker, who occasionally shows some backbone, didn’t do it in this case. He explained his endorsement of Trump by saying that the senator supports a “return to the strong and effective economic, national security, and border security policies our nation enjoyed under President Trump.”
What about the chaos the nation endured during those four years, the two impeachments, the courting of foreign despots, the erratic guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic, the attempts by Trump and his family to enrich themselves personally through the connections and power of the White House?
All of that doesn’t give Wicker or any of these other 11 Republican leaders pause to wonder whether when Trump jokes about being a dictator for a day, he might actually mean it? And that it might not just be a 24-hour gambit if he is reelected?
Do they not think there is another GOP contender who could pursue some of those same policies to which they give Trump credit without his personal nastiness, his legal baggage or his demonstrated disdain for democracy?
When it comes to the former president, there does not appear to be an independent thinker among the dozen of them. How disappointing.
