Another one (sort of) bites the dust
I begin, brothers and sisters, with a solemn quote from John Kennedy. No, not the one you’re thinking of. I’m talking about Trump cultist Louisiana Senator John Kennedy. Quoth he: “I think Putin thinks that America has taken the bullet train to chump town. I think he thinks we’re afraid of him. He has jacked around president Trump at every turn.”
Such are the changing times we live in. Thirty days ago such a quote from a Trump worshipping yes-man like Kennedy would not have been possible. Thirty days ago daring to say anything at variance with Trump chapter and verse would have been blasphemy. Suggesting that Trump is being “jacked around” by Vladimir Putin is tantamount to sacrilege, heresy.
Kennedy has joined fellow Republican Senator Chuck Grassley in renouncing Trump. I say “renouncing,” because any step outside of Trump holy writ in MAGAland is practically a rebuke. A scant 48 hours earlier Grassley excreted on “X” that Putin is “playing America like a patsy.”
Putin is jacking Trump around? Putin is playing America like a patsy? What’s going on here? It’s too simplistic to suggest that Kennedy and Grassley are trying to rescue their political careers. Kennedy is 73. Grassley is a Methuselah-esque 91. They won’t need to run for re-election for a while, if they ever do again.
I think they just fired the first shots of discord across the Trump bow, and they may have been handpicked to do so. Neither man has much to lose, so it’s appropriate that they have been pushed to the front lines. I think the seeds of discontent with Trump have been sown.
Certain elements in the Senate, and probably Congress as well, recognise that Trump is going to be the death of the Republican Party. They are timidly testing the waters to see what Trump does. They just, metaphorically speaking, poked the moribund body of Trump with a stick to see if it moves, ran away to a safe distance to see what happens.
A man as inadequate and insecure as Trump won’t take such comments well, if he notices them. Remember, despite being elected president twice, Trump can’t go two minutes without praising himself. He is so threatened by the fact that President Joe Biden whipped his ass in 2020 (despite claims the election was rigged) he has disparaged Biden and the Biden administration a whopping 580 times (by actual count) since assuming office nearly a hundred days ago.
Could this be the beginning of cracks that will become fissures that will become chasms in Republican support of Trump? We will have to see. I hope so.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.