Conservative identifies and compartmentalizes '11 types of Donald Trump enablers’

Millions of Americans believe that Donald Trump was the most corrupt, irrational and nakedly authoritarian president in United States history. Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks and veteran journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, famous for their bombshell reporting on Watergate for the Washington Post during the 1970s, have stressed that Trump crossed lines that even President Richard Nixon at his worst wouldn’t have dared to cross.

Yet Trump has gotten away with so much because he has had an army of enablers in the Republican Party whom Never Trump conservative Tim Miller, a former GOP insider, slams and vividly describes in a lengthy op-ed/essay published by Politico on July 1. Miller’s irreverent article relegates Trump’s sycophants into 11 different categories, ranging from “Messiahs and Junior Messiahs,” “Demonizers,” “LOL Nothing Matters Republicans,” “Tribalist Trolls” and “Strivers” to “Little Mixes,” “Peter Principle Disprovers,” “Nerd Revengers,” “the Inert Team Players,” “the Compartmentalizers” and “Cartel Cashers.”

The “Messiahs and Junior Messiahs,” according to Miller, rationalized their alliances with Trump by claiming that they discouraged him — or at least tried to discourage him — from doing even more damage and wanted to have a positive influence on him. But the “Demonizers,” Miller writes, justified enabling Trump by arguing that at least he brought about “liberal tears” and stood up to “woke culture.”

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Miller describes the “LOL Nothing Matters Republicans” as a “cadre” of Trump enablers who “gained steam over the years, especially among my former peers in the campaign set.”

“It is a comforting ethos if you are professionally obligated to defend the indefensible day in and day out,” Miller observes. “Their arguments no longer needed to have merit or be consistent because, LOL, nothing matters. Right?”

The “Tribalist Trolls,” according to Miller, “overlap in their tactics with the Nothing Matters crowd but are different in that they at least have an ethos: Whatever is good for their side is good, and whatever is bad for the other side is good — simple as that.”

The “Strivers” who enabled Trump, Miller notes, “are motivated by a blind ambition,” while the “Little Mixes” are political figures in Washington, D.C. who desperately need to be “in the mix.” Miller denounces Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as one of the “Little Mixes.” And Miller slams the “Peter Principle Disprover” as “hacks and maroons would have been nowhere near the Oval Office in any other administration.”

“For the uninitiated,” Miller explains, “the Peter Principle is the business management concept that people in a hierarchy rise to their maximum level of incompetence. In practice, it means a person will be promoted up and until the point where a new skill is required that they do not have.”

The “Nerd Revengers” who enabled Trump, Miller writes, were the geeks, dorks and dweebs “who aspired to sit at the cool kids’ table in high school” but were “too awkward or unlikable to get the invite.” And the “Team Players,” according to Miller, “kept their day jobs, but unlike the Strivers, their distaste for the president resulted in receding a bit from the social scene.”

Meanwhile, the “Compartmentalizers,” Miller writes, “were the Inerts’ more anxiety-riddled peers.” And the eleventh and final category that he describes are the “Cartel Cashers” — that is, “entrepreneurial Republicans” who managed to “enrich themselves beyond their wildest imaginations during the Trump years.”

“Most people don’t fit neatly into a single category,” Miller observes. “Some had a little from Column A and a little from Column C. There was a jumble of rationalization blended in with their best intentions and their shadow wants. But you know a type when you see it.”