'Trump First' Republicans are pushing voters to a breaking point: NYT columnist

The GOP is becoming increasingly hijacked not by "America First" Republicans, as President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement would claim, but instead by "Trump First" Republicans, and according to a new piece from the New York Times, their actions are pushing voters and the system to a breaking point.

On Wednesday, Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman published a new piece, laying out the distinction between America First and Trump First Republicans. The former were willing to stick by the president and sign on to most of his political agenda, but stopped short of supporting his worst, most self-serving ideas, whereas the latter, as the name suggests, are increasingly willing to stand by anything and everything he says.

Some of the examples Friedman gave of America First Republicans were the likes of Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Thomas Massie, each of whom have now been refused reelection by Trump-backed primary challengers. As Friedman summed up, "The most alarming thing happening in America today is that the Trump First Republicans, on Trump’s orders, are purging the few America First Republicans." The Trump First Republicans, meanwhile, include boosters like Sen. Lindsey Graham.

"So should the G.O.P. hold the House and the Senate in the midterms, there will be no brakes whatsoever on this party and this president," he explained. "I would not at all rule out their pushing for a third Trump term. We are going to a very bad place... The America First Republicans were ready to sign on to many Trump ideas — lowering taxes or limiting immigration or deflating the woke left — but when it came down to a choice between advancing those ideas and undermining democracy, this faction drew a red line. They put America first, not Trump first."

He added later: "Senator Lindsey Graham, who seems willing to abandon any principle he ever held to stay on Trump’s good side and remain his golfing buddy, expressed the essence of the Trump First Republicans after Cassidy lost: 'You can disagree with President Trump,' Graham said, 'but if you try to destroy him, you’re going to lose, because this is the party of Donald Trump.'”

Friedman noted that Trump's massive gerrymandering push to try to rig the midterms and keep the GOP House majority has been a red line for some America First Republicans, including Massie, who once described himself as a "rabid partisan," but who "drew the line at cheating."

"Democrats may still turn out enough votes in the midterms to overcome this in-your-face cheating and stealing," Freidman wrote. "But if that doesn’t happen — if it is precisely this dirty dealing that keeps the Democrats from taking the House even if they overwhelmingly win the popular vote nationally — people are not going to take it sitting down. And they shouldn’t."

He concluded: "I worry for the future of the Republic if that happens. You push, you push, you push — and you never know when you’ve crossed the last red line and wiped out the last norm and our whole governing system just starts to fall apart. That is exactly where Trump and the Trump First Republicans are driving us."