The Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt, Thursday on MSNBC, called some supporters of President Donald Trump “Hawaiian shirt-clad Civil War fetishists” who wanted to see a “second Civil War.”
Schmidt said, “It’s an ideology now, and it’s taken root. It’s important to understand what it is so we can do something about it. And what it is is an illiberal, autocratic ideology that bout 30 percent of the country, roughly, are enamored with. They are full-on 100 percent committed to the cult of personality that is at the core of Trumpism. A cult of personality built around Donald Trump. When you look at the convention, what you saw was breathtaking lying, utter lawlessness, and the seizure of symbols in the American republic to become partisan totems for Donald Trump’s tribe to make them symbols of authority over the rest of the country.”
He continued, “So, in essence, what Trump is saying is, ‘I am the truth, I am the law, I am the state. And we’re required to oppose this as Americans because that ideology is fundamentally un-American. It’s not what the country is about. It’s contrary to the American idea and ideal, contrary to the concepts of democracy and the great progress the country has made over the last 50 years. So it has to be opposed. It has to be confronted.”
On Attorney General William Barr, Schmidt said, “Barr, in essence, is like America’s first interior minister. He is like the interior minister from Poland in the early 1980s. He does not represent any attorney general that has come before him. He is an accomplice in Donald Trump’s lawlessness, and you saw the cleverness of his answers as you saw him spin his way through to try to delegitimize the election and cause chaos and confusion. And remember, at the heart of the lying and dishonesty is conspiracy, and the Republican Party is now festooned with conspiracy theorists.”
He added, “One of the things we know, also, is these movements all around the world, that they team with menace and violence. No mistake that the Hawaiian shirt-clad Civil-War fetishists want to see a second Civil War in this country. They are all supporting Trump, and Trump has encouraged all of them.”
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