While they smear ‘No Kings’, Trump and the GOP can’t escape their own ‘Nazi’ problem

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Republicans suffered a key defeat as one in every of Donald Trump’s nominees went down in flames on Tuesday.

An embarrassing spectacle performed out over the course of a number of days on the Hill because the president’s nominee to guide the Workplace of Particular Counsel noticed members of the GOP come out one after the other to oppose his nomination. Paul Ingrassia withdrew his bid Tuesday night after it turned clear he was not going to obtain sufficient votes for even a easy majority in a chamber the place Republicans maintain 53 votes out of 100 seats.

The rationale for Ingrassia’s unpopularity was apparent: reviews revealed that Ingrassia allegedly claimed to have “a Nazi streak” in texts despatched to different Republicans. He’s additionally accused of utilizing racist slurs and allegedly referred to Martin Luther King Jr., the American civil rights champion, as “the Sixties George Floyd,” including that “his ‘vacation’ needs to be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell the place it belongs.”

The headlines got here as Trump and his allied MAGA Republicans in Washington have eagerly leaned into depictions of the American left as a bunch of violent thugs and avowed antisemites, aided at occasions by Democrats who line the celebration’s conservative wing. However Ingrassia’s downfall was solely the newest crack within the foundations of that argument, not hardly the primary.

As Republicans had been pressed about Ingrassia’s alleged “Nazi” admission into Tuesday, their celebration remains to be coping with the fallout from a totally separate scandal involving the authoritarian German regime from World Warfare II: a leaked groupchat whereby outstanding leaders of Younger Republicans chapters across the nation brazenly expressed help for racist beliefs, used racist and homophobic slurs tons of of occasions, and joked about sending their enemies to gasoline chambers. A Vermont state senator was pressured to resign in shame after the texts leaked.

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Nonetheless one other anti-Semitism scandal is brewing in New Jersey, residence to a key election for governor in a couple of weeks. The Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli, was launched onstage at an occasion Saturday by an unpaid adviser to his marketing campaign who opened for the would-be governor by insisting that he (the adviser) was not “taking cash from Jews”. The adviser, Ibrar Nadeem, additionally referred to as for a ban on same-sex marriage in the identical remarks.

What’s actually in peril isn’t Donald Trump’s capacity to get a nominee by the Senate, which stays (for probably the most half) rock regular. It’s the broader capacity of the GOP to information the depictions of its enemies, even at a second when the Democratic Social gathering is functionally leaderless and the celebration’s base appears at warfare with its remaining management in Washington.

Republicans entered 2025 with a transparent capacity to divide an already splintering left political coalition that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did not piece again collectively final yr. First on the Laken Riley Act and in a while a authorities shutdown menace in March, the GOP was profitable in dominating the narrative and forcing their foes into politicized defeats.

That capacity seems to have pale, with Democrats seemingly discovering their unity in Congress and Republicans repeatedly hamstrung by components which have undermined the president’s makes an attempt to color the left as violent radicals. Republicans proceed to rage towards the surging marketing campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York; Rep. Elise Stefanik, previously a member of Home Republican management, referred to him with an Islamophobic slur (“jihadist”) on X, whereas on Fox Information, a bunch falsely claimed on Tuesday that Mamdani wished to “get rid of” New York Metropolis’s total Jewish neighborhood.

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The smears have largely did not land, and Mamdani stays above 50 p.c in most polling. In the meantime, congressional Republicans are dealing with questions on so many points associated to anti-Semitism inside their celebration that it’s now the fitting struggling to take care of message self-discipline, proper as a federal authorities shutdown enters its fourth week.

Tens of millions of Individuals poured into the streets this previous Saturday for “No Kings” rallies in all 50 states, a transparent present of the left’s power that got here regardless of blistering denunciations of the demonstrations and the Democratic Social gathering from each the White Home and congressional Republicans, who referred to as the supporters of America’s foremost opposition celebration “terrorists” who hated their very own nation.

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Lots of these protesters turned as much as occasions in wild and wacky costumes, together with in D.C., the place demonstrators at a dance celebration on the outskirts of a 200,000-strong crowd instructed The Unbiased that they aimed to counter the narrative of “violent” protesters on the left. Regardless of occasions happening in each state, no important incidents of violence befell on the protests on Saturday.

Even the momentum the fitting appeared to reclaim over September within the wake of the homicide of Charlie Kirk throughout a talking engagement at Utah Valley College appears to have fizzled. Whereas Republicans appeared poised to make use of the difficulty to create a one-sided view of political violence within the U.S., on Tuesday Speaker Mike Johnson discovered himself dodging a query a couple of pardoned January 6 rioter who’s now charged with plotting to assassinate Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Home minority chief.

Polls can solely present a lot by way of how efficient both celebration is at profitable the Washington messaging warfare, which is simply mildly efficient up to now out from the midterm elections subsequent yr. However actual electoral checks are coming as much as measure the power of every celebration’s model, together with most imminently the races in Virginia and New Jersey. Republicans might discover themselves shifting technique as this shutdown drags on and if it turns into clear that their foes are popping out of the post-2024 funk.