Ex-GOP insider claims party rotting from the inside out: ‘We rewarded compliance!’
The Republican Party's takeover by the MAGA movement was decades in the making, former GOP strategist Stuart Stephens told MS NOW on Thursday, and the decisions that led to it have left the party with elected leaders who are incapable of taking a stand for themselves or the country as a whole.
This comes as the president made repeated threats to wipe Iran off the face of the earth — and though he hasn't followed through on it for the time being, only a small smattering of Republicans went out of their way to condemn his genocidal rhetoric.
"Stuart, I'll start with you," said anchor Antonia Hylton. "Republicans have repeatedly made this claim since the start of this administration that they have a mandate. I want to know how they can continue to make that case right now, as the president just keeps doubling down on the very things his voters said they did not want."
"Yeah. You know, that's a really great question," said Stevens. "I don't think we had a mandate to have gas prices go through the roof, or mandate to threaten to destroy an entire country, civilization, the Persian Empire. I don't think we had a mandate to keep hiding Epstein files."
"Look, I think what's happened here is something that we did inside the Republican Party, and we didn't realize it. At least I didn't realize it was happening when I was working in the party," said Stevens. "And that as we evolved a system that rewarded compliance, that you got ahead by going along and we punish those that were more individual, who spoke out, who were willing to break with the party. And if you do that decade after decade, I think it's like a genetic experiment. You end up with this extraordinary, highly compliant, weak group of senators and congressmen."
Years ago, he said, "had you said to them that Donald Trump is going to threaten to annihilate another civilization, they would have laughed and said, of course that's never going to happen. But now it's happening or us, the way that we're supporting Russia in this war. We have the vice president over there supporting Putin's candidate in Hungary, and 90 percent of Republicans are against this, but they won't say anything. And I think it's just a collapse of a party unlike anything that we've seen in modern political history."
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Trump and Hegseth assault allegations featured prominently in pro-Iran ‘trolling’ campaign
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been featured recently in a series of videos that have “flooded the internet” since the United States attacked Iran in late February, videos from pro-Iran groups that prominently feature the sexual assault allegations leveled against the current president and his top Defense official.
“Trump is globally known for sex crimes and, like Hegseth, charges of sex crimes – and the Iranian videos depict the two men explicitly as rapists,” reads a report published Wednesday in The New Republic.
“In one video, [a] Lego Trump has doll-like girl figures on his bed and lap, and Hegseth is shown in military garb, repeatedly committing rape. Assaults on girls are the modus vivendi of these videos’ versions of Trump and Hegseth.”
Trump has faced sexual misconduct allegations from at least two dozen women dating back to the 1970s, and was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury in civil court in 2023. Hegseth has also faced an allegation of sexual assault, though both Trump and Hegseth have denied any wrongdoing.
While not produced by the Iranian government, the video campaign – described by The New Republic as "not idle trolling" – has been heavily promoted by Tehran.
Pro-Iran groups, particularly the anonymous student activist group Explosive News, have seized on the allegations against Trump and Hegseth, depicting Trump as a sexual abuser in a series of Lego-inspired videos generated with generative artificial intelligence, videos that have gone on to be watched by millions on social media. Hegseth has also been featured prominently in the video campaign.
As to the campaign’s core message as it relates to Trump – that the president had “the ideology of the rapist” – The New Republic’s Virginia Heffernan argued it was hard to disagree.
“In Trump, the ideology of the rapist was unmistakable a decade ago, when he crowed about the joy he takes in humiliating human beings by mauling their crotches,” Heffernan wrote. “With this war, he’s trying, as usual, for highly aestheticized spectacles of humiliation, and he’s getting them – but not for Iran. For himself, and for the United States.”