A former Republican congressman blasted President Donald Trump’s supporters on Thursday, claiming they act like members of a cult by flip-flopping on issues of war and peace because Trump did so.
“This is what America looks like when one of our two major political parties has become an authoritarian-embracing cult,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) wrote on his Substack. “And I’ll throw in for good measure — hey, MAGA, MAGA — this is what America looks like when the people who voted for Donald Trump don’t get what Donald Trump said he would give them, but they still praise him to the high heavens.”
Trump repeatedly said he would be anti-war during the 2024 presidential election, yet Walsh pointed out that he is reportedly planning on declaring war against Iran. This is on top of Trump’s unprovoked invasion of Venezuela and similarly-unprovoked threatened violence against Denmark, which he used to unsuccessfully try to wrest Greenland from the Scandinavian democracy. (Unlike with Venezuela, Trump ultimately had to back off on Greenland.)
“Only Congress has the Constitutional authority to declare war,” Walsh said, referring to Trump’s plans against Iran. “But as I’ve been saying once or twice a week from the moment that Trump got sworn in, this is what America looks like without a Congress. Because every single day for the past year and four weeks, Donald Trump has done a whole bunch of lawless, corrupt, un-American, unconstitutional things.”
Walsh summed up his critique of the Republican-controlled Congress by saying “And that body, that other branch of government, essentially doesn’t exist, because there’s been no oversight.” Reiterating that this demonstrates America is becoming “a straight-up authoritarian-embracing cult, letting this President do whatever he wants, enabling this President to do whatever he wants,” Walsh said that it no longer matters if Trump is violating the Constitution, breaking the law or using his office to enrich himself and his family “to the tune of about $4 billion,” Congress will not do anything.
For this, Walsh places blame squarely at the feet of Trump supporters.
“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh wrote. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Then, despite Trump’s actions against Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, they still support him.
“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh said. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”
He concluded, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”
This is not the first time Walsh has criticized Trump supporters for what he perceives are hypocrisies in their conservative positions. Blasting ICE as “thugs” for arresting immigrants without cause and attacking nonviolent protesters, Walsh sarcastically ridiculed those who defend ICE and Border Patrol agents wearing masks because they are afraid of accountability.
“Can you believe it?” Walsh said, facetiously impersonating a person refusing an unreasonable order. “They want judicial warrants! The American people are demanding that ICE have and use judicial warrants if they want to enter a home or a private business, you know, those pesky judicial warrants! That pesky Constitution!”
He also pointed out how Trump is taking a wrecking ball to institutions that helped millions of people, like USAID, while simultaneously destroying public property like the White House at his own personal whims.
"We talk about the damage Trump has done. OK, he decimated USAID. Well, a lot of this stuff we can fight maybe to try to get back," Walsh said. "But there's the White House, those walls that have come down, the East Wing that has been demolished, it's kind of like, that can't come back."
He added, "This jack—— in the f—— White House is destroying a permanent structure that can't come back. He can't do this on his own! There's a rigorous, rigorous process to mess with the restructuring, structural changes of the White House, and he just blows right through all of that!"
Trump’s belligerent foreign policies are doing more than upsetting fellow American conservatives like Walsh. European right-wing parties are distancing themselves from Trump due to the unpopularity of his failed attempt to conquer Greenland, and European governments are quitting America’s financial and tech institutions to decouple themselves from Trump’s grasp.
“We have the Steve Bannon strategy of making the rest of us, the rest of the world, you know, sink into a black hole of uncertainty, while he’s getting on with the business of enriching himself, a ruling class of tech lords around him, and solidifying his power and keeping his divided MAGA movement somehow pacified,” economist Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, recently told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman.
