Is Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the way, or the exception that proves the rule?
By the shocking light of today’s glaring headlines, it’s time to ask a larger question that no one in the media appears to be willing to say out loud: at what point does the accumulation of misconduct by Donald J. Trump become so brazen, so corrosive, so frankly immoral and even criminal, that Republican elected officials and voters finally say, “Enough is enough?”
So far:
- Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking ring are demanding Congress release all the files, and Trump was attacking Republicans for even considering going along with them (now he’s opened his own “investigation,” which will prevent their public release regardless of Congress as he pretends to call for them to be made public). A coalition of Epstein survivors has urged Congress to declassify every remaining record tied to his global network of child sexual abuse. They argue that decades of secrecy protected rich and powerful men while silencing victims. House Democrats dropped a political bombshell this week, releasing emails from Epstein’s estate that appear to show Trump wasn’t just aware of the abuse taking place in Epstein’s orbit but “spent hours at my house” with at least one of the presumably underage girls.
- The January 6 insurrection, the Big Lie, and the GOP’s shrugging at treason. Trump incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol after insisting, against all evidence and over 60 court losses, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. That wasn’t protest: it was a violent assault on American democracy itself that led to the death of three police officers and the hospitalization of over 140 others. Yet the GOP continues to use Trump’s lie as a political weapon.
- He’s incited hate against those least able to defend themselves, promoting a culture of violence and intolerance. From people fleeing murder and rape in their own countries to those merely seeking a better life to American communities of queer people and religious and racial minorities, Trump has licensed the most base and disgusting elements in our society.
- His trade wars gutted American credibility, paved the way for bribes to himself and his boys, all while punishing the very supporters he claimed to champion. Trump’s tariffs on China, Europe, and beyond slapped billions in hidden taxes on U.S. consumers and farmers. They crippled small manufacturers, triggered retaliatory tariffs abroad, and exposed how “America First” became America isolated. In response, corporate and foreign leaders showered Trump and his boys with gifts, investments, gold, crypto, a jet, and overseas Trump hotel projects. The GOP, once the party of free markets, turned away as this con man and his family accepted bribes, committed economic vandalism, and “earned” a reported $5+ billion during his first ten months in office.
- His praise for Vladimir Putin and contempt for Ukraine revealed a chilling abandonment of America’s historic role in defending democracy. Even after Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, his kidnapping Ukrainian women and children, and his ongoing nightly missile and drone attacks horrified the world, Trump boasted of “good talks” with Putin and mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His words told the world that U.S. loyalty could be traded for personal favors and ego-fluffing — or blackmail. When strength is redefined as submission to autocrats, freedom everywhere grows weaker.
- The most horrific symbolic act of corruption yet: demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build a Trump-style billionaires’ ballroom. In October 2025, the East Wing, a historic cornerstone of American democracy (Thomas Jefferson himself designed the East Portico), was razed for a 90,000-square-foot “Presidential Ballroom,” financed by companies and billionaires buying Trump’s favors and conducted with virtually no oversight. Some preservationists called it the most reckless desecration of the People’s House in American history. This isn’t a renovation, it’s a Marie Antoinette-style attempt at monarchy.
- He is now the first U.S. president convicted of 34 counts of felony election fraud, and whose company was nailed for falsifying business records to rip off insurance companies and the taxpayers of New York. A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of orchestrating a criminal cover-up to hide hush-money payments from voters during the 2016 election. It’s the first time in history an American president has been convicted of a felony, and yet the GOP still kneels at his feet. When “law and order” applies to everyone except the powerful, justice collapses.
- In a civil trial, a jury of average people found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, with evidence showing he’d committed what the judge in the case called the common-sense “definition of rape.” Writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store, and the jury believed her. Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the verdict meant what Trump had done to her met the ordinary understanding of rape. The GOP’s continued embrace of a man found legally liable for sexual violence — after bragging on tape that he had regularly sexually assaulted other women — shows moral bankruptcy in its purest form.
- Twice impeached, and twice rescued by the party that pretends it swore an oath to the Constitution. Trump was impeached in 2019 for abusing power by trying to blackmail Ukraine into creating phony dirt on his political opponent, and again in 2021 for inciting the January 6th insurrection. Both times, Republicans in the Senate saved him. When loyalty to one man outweighs loyalty to country, impeachment stops being a safeguard and becomes a ritual of surrender.
- He’s fired senior officials and watchdogs across government agencies, installed incompetent toadies in critical positions, and gutted the guardrails against presidential corruption. From food safety to pollution controls to safeguarding public lands to stopping climate change, Trump has elevated the interests of his donors and morbidly rich friends above those of average Americans and our nation itself. He’s cut taxes on billionaires while hitting working-class Americans with billions in tariff taxes to pay for those same tax cuts. He prodded Texas to gerrymander/rig the 2026 election while demanding his Attorney General prosecute California for their attempt to rebalance the playing field. And now he’s going after his political enemies — many of them Republicans who could no longer stomach his criminality and corruption — with trumped-up charges designed to wipe out their retirement savings or even leave them homeless.
This is a crisis that’s tearing apart the soul of democracy itself.
How much corruption, how much deceit, how many assaults on truth can a republic endure before its citizens stop believing that justice still matters?
When the weight of wrongdoing piles high enough, it isn’t just the Republican Party that breaks and submits; it’s the faith of the people in the very idea of democratic self-government that dies.
And yet the GOP continues to worship him, to kiss his a--, to pretend he’s a great and brilliant man, a modern-day Wizard of Oz. They still rally behind the man. They still defend him, excuse him, and elevate him.
Why? Because corruption is addictive. Once a party decides that power is more important than truth, every lie becomes easier to rationalize, every abuse becomes normalized, every crime becomes “politics as usual.” Power is a drug that numbs the conscience, and the GOP has become a party of addicts.
Democracy can’t survive this level of violence against the rule of law. It must have accountability to survive. It requires honesty. It depends on the courage to face truth even when that truth is painful. The longer a party or a people look away from corruption and criminality, the deeper that corruption and criminality spread, until the whole system collapses from the rot within.
The only cure for that rot is trust, brought about by the evenhanded application of justice and the enforcement of laws and democratic norms. And the only path back to that trust is truth and accountability.
The GOP must decide whether it still believes in the words and examples of Republican presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower or whether it’ll continue to worship at a cheap, gold-painted altar atop which stands one man.
For the sake of democracy, for the sake of the next generation of Americans, these abuses can’t continue. There must be an accounting, and it must come before Trump’s damage is irreparable.
If the Republican Party continues to accept a leader who shatters every norm, effortlessly breaks laws, and ridicules every moral boundary, then the experiment called America will fail.
Because if Republicans continue let a man who once bragged he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it” prove himself right, they haven’t saved our country: they’ve destroyed it.