At the beginning of this hearing, I thought that most of this was going to be about “he said this, how can you prove this, you’re a liar yourself.” But this moment actually brings Cohen into some clarity. Sure, most of his testimony is in exchange for leniency in his sentence. But in this statement he has correctly brought the GOP into the light of being de facto members of the Trump Organization-- doing his dirty work, smearing enemies, name-calling, threatening those who testify. I will have to take a lot of other things with some caution, but in this instance he did hit the nail on the head.
Everybody’s job at the Trump Organization is to protect Mr. Trump. Every day most of us knew we were coming in and we were going to lie for him on something, and that became the norm
Trump made it worse through his crudeness and narcissistic personality disorder, but the truth is that the GOP was so desperate in 2016 for any unifying figure that they couldn’t afford to not bear-hug Trump and his wave of populist xenophobia. Things are even worse for the GOP now, and he’s the leader of their party.
But it’s giving Trump too much credit to lay the blame at his feet. The Republican Party has been intellectually bankrupt since at least the '80s, and it has been obvious since the verdict came in that “trickle-down” doesn’t work. Their ideological alignment with the rapacious self-interest of corporations and the wealthy led them down a path where they became easily exploited and later replaced with paid agents for organized money. Those agents are sophists and obstructionists by trade, and their playbook is limited to screaming about deficits and taxes, shutting down any attempt to study or solve problems, round-the-clock campaigning, and aligning themselves with any popular opinion wingnut (e.g. Limbaugh, Hannity).
It’s the moral rot that led the GOP to Trump, not the other way around.