Trump's 'poisonous' allies need to be smacked down: analysis

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro before attending a working dinner at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., March 7, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

During the first half of September, President Donald Trump has continued to suffer low approval ratings — including 42 percent (Reuters/Ipsos) and 43 percent (The Economist/YouGov). But the Democratic Party has weak approval ratings as well even though some Democratic governors, including Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro and Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, continued to poll favorably in their states.

In an article originally published by Power Mad and republished by The New Republic on September 13, journalist Jason Linkins argues that anti-Trump Democrats need to not only focus on Trump himself, but also, on "the company he keeps."

"It may be that the same forces that are enabling Trumpism could enable the opposition to Trumpism, provided that Democrats lose their risk-averse ways and demonize the elites that are now at Trump's beck and call," Linkins explains. "And while it's true that some have bent the knee more readily than others, we must have the stomach to castigate Trump's allies no matter how willingly they came to his side. For my part, it's OK with me if Democratic messaging included the line, 'While Trump's Harvard cronies were cutting deals, the cost of your groceries has doubled.'"

Linkins adds, "There are no allies for Democrats to be found in Trump's teeming hive of enablers. Anyone who might serve the ends of democracy and the rule of law has, by now, explicitly announced themselves as having taken that side. As (The Bulwark's) Jonathan V. Last notes, 'Any institution not explicitly anti-Trump will eventually become useful to Trump.'"

Some conservatives and libertarians are scathing, consistently outspoken critics of Trump. But many prominent figures on the right who call out Trump and the MAGA movement — MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace, the Washington Post's George Will, The Bulwark's Tim Miller, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, attorney George Conway — have long since left the Republican Party.

Linkins stresses that Republicans who continue to enable Trump need to be forcefully condemned.

"For now, brave Democrats can and should implicate and vilify those who have abetted Trumpian misrule and have, by extension, reaped the fruits of its poisonous economic tree," Linkins writes. "It may be that one of the keys to denying Trump long-term power is to foment the public's ire at the company he keeps, paint the whole lot as crooks and brigands who are looting the proceeds of the public trust. The burgeoning anti-Trump movement in the streets will be cheered to hear from some political allies who are promising to name the villains of the Trump era and to crush them in whatever era comes next."

Read Jason Linkins' full article at this New Republic link.

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