MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann said on Thursday’s broadcast of “Deadline” that the Republican Party would like a presidential candidate who is “another white grievance racist, sexist” like President Donald Trump but “more civilized.”
Heilemann said, “This overtime period, the period in which the Republican Party acquiesced into a profound anti-democratic borderline or maybe more than borderline fascist authoritarian attempt to stage a coup. That is what we called it on this show before. It was a farcically incompetent, but still an attempted coup. The fact it failed makes it no less than an attempted coup. The fact there was so much complicity in that. ”
He continued, “We saw Tommy Tuberville today say he will challenge the Electoral College results. He’s going to be Trump’s stooge on the Senate side. So on January 6, we’ll have another opportunity to see Republicans in the Senate this time in addition to Republicans in the House who will get to vote up or down on whether they’ll ratify the results of the Electoral College. That will be good for history, Nicole. We’ll get to see exactly again as we did with the Texas lawsuit, who is on team democracy and who is on team Trump. You’re 1,000 percent right that they should be rendered mute if they had a soul, conscious, consistency, integrity, any intellectual standards or rigor, they should shut up about almost everything.”
He added, “All they’re looking for now is a slightly more civilized Donald Trump. That’s why they think things are still going fine for the party because they look at the House results, the Senate results and say we’re doing fine. If we can just get a Donald Trump who is not quite such a thug, not quite so unpalatable to so many people, we can find a more— another white grievance racist, sexist, all of those things, we can find another candidate like that but not one who doesn’t have quite the rough edges, we’ll be in shape. That’s what the Republican Party is heading for and what their goal is as they head towards 2024.”
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