'We’re in a post-fact world': Former GOP congressman blasts colleagues for failing to admit Trump reality

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump has now pleaded not guilty to 37 charges ranging from lying to federal investigators and concealing evidence to obstructing justice and willfully retaining national defense information.

Besides being historic, the charges are serious – as a handful of elected Republicans have admitted. But at the Capitol, most GOPers are mirroring the former president’s "witch hunt" rhetoric as they rally to his defense, yet again – and it's appalling to some of their colleagues.

“It was stunning for me to read the indictment, and for anybody to defend him at this point, I think you're stupid and ignorant or you're just part of this cynicism of wanting to win regardless of what's right for the American people,” former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) exclusively told Raw Story.

Before coming to Congress, Riggleman – who was defeated by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) in 2020 – was an officer in the Air Force before becoming a contractor at the National Security Agency. Over his career, he’s held numerous special access clearances. He’s alarmed with the overwhelming reaction from the right, though he’s not surprised by it.

“We have to admit we're in a post-fact world now, he said. "We're post-truth, post-fact – it’s about who wins or loses and it's about magical thinking as policy in the government, and I would say the MAGA movement has perfected magical policy or magical belief systems as something to run a government on,” Riggleman contends.

What would have been considered fringe to far-right in the past is now mainstream, especially in the House of Representatives and conservative media, he said.

“This media, they make their money on Trump's name, and they're making their money off outrage,” Riggleman says.

And the right is not just good at harnessing that, Riggleman contends. They’ve mastered it, and Democrats have utterly failed to combat or keep pace with today’s new right and their media machine.

“When you look at the far-right, they perfected their media channels and messaging in a way that I don't think the Democrats can even imagine,” Riggleman says. “I do think the Democrats have put their head in the sand. I don't think they have the ability to see what the MAGA ecosystem looks like. Either they're incapable, or they're afraid to look under the hood.”

That’s why Riggleman’s eyes are on Trump in 2024, and he warns Democrats – a party he’s never belonged to and opposes, policy-wise – not to spike the proverbial football going into next year’s general election.

“Trump should not be a viable presidential candidate, but more than likely he's going to be the nominee,” Riggleman predicts. “What the Democrats have to figure out is: What does that messaging world look like? How do they combat disinformation and, on the other hand, how do they combat it without their own disinformation?”

Riggleman also served as a senior adviser to the select January 6 committee. He was charged with helping analyze millions and millions of data lines – from emails or phone records to Twitter and 4chan posts – that the intelligence community either missed or bungled ahead of the attack on the Capitol in 2021.

“So the issue that you have with these kinds of information battles, is now you only have two parties that are slugging it out with really no moderator,” Riggleman says. “That's what scares me about what's happening in the United States right now is, how does the two-party system survive social media, especially when one party is in a hold my beer moment?”

That’s why Riggleman’s dubious of all these elected Republicans rushing to Trump’s defense.

“Either they're true believers or they're cynical and winning means more to them than our country. That's it, and listen, I was in Congress, so nobody can tell me anything about Congress,” Riggleman says.

While some on the left are eager to see Trump imprisoned, Riggleman also warns that could backfire spectacularly.

“If he's actually handcuffed and taken away, I think his polling just explodes in a great way for him,” Riggleman says, “because now he's a political prisoner of the deep state and the globalists who are run by the ‘one world government’ and satan has taken over America.”