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One of the funniest Sunday morning traditions is watching Republicans go on talk shows and try to defend whatever crazy thing Donald Trump said in the previous week.
Just yesterday, we pointed out that, this time around, the former president said something so stunningly bizarre that even the mainstream media couldn’t ignore it.
Specifically, he told a group of religious supporters that this is the last time they will have to vote.
This wasn’t a slip of the tongue.
If you watch the clip, Trump is quite adamant about this and actually repeats it multiple times.
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” the former president said at a Turning Point Action event in Florida on Friday night. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
Should Americans be concerned about a guy who wants to be president saying that his core group of supporters won’t need to vote again in four years?
Not according to the Republicans who were confronted with Trump’s words Sunday morning.
“I think he is obviously making a joke about how bad things have been under Joe Biden,” said GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) before pivoting to claiming that everything was great under Trump and has now “gone to hell” under the current administration.
Forget the gaslighting for a moment. Both sides can point to economic figures that show their policies were a success while the other guy’s were a major failure.
But saying that Trump was “obviously making a joke” is just outrageous.
The former president isn’t really known for making jokes (or even laughing, for that matter), so what would lead anybody to believe that he is kidding here about something as important as holding elections… especially because Trump doesn’t have any kind of track record when it comes to defending US democracy?
Granted, Cotton is one of those super-conservatives who will do anything to kowtow before Trump, so he should be expected to make some excuse for the former president essentially saying that he will abolish elections. That’s really the only reasonable interpretation of his words (unless he specifically wants to strip Christians of the right to vote, and we know it’s not that).
What’s more troubling than a staunch ally defending Trump is that even “moderate” Republicans are doing this.
Also on Sunday morning, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who supported Nikki Haley in the primary and tried to stop the former president from becoming the GOP nominee for a third time, offered another excuse.
“I think that was a classic Trumpism, if you will,” Sununu said after faking some hearty laughter (well, it was either faked or he believes canceling US elections is a laughing matter).
Of course, “classic Trump” really just means that the former president says crazy stuff and should not be taken seriously.
Sadly, in both interviews (the one with Cotton on CNN and the one with Sununu on ABC), the hosts did not push back and just allowed Trump’s surrogates to gloss over what he said.
Therefore, we are sad to say that our praise of the media for actually paying attention to something insane Trump said will be short-lived; like many other bizarre statements, this will soon be dismissed as just Trump being Trump.
