'Cracks are showing': Epstein just the 'prelude' to historic GOP split
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a dinner with the leaders of the C5+1Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C
Atlantic writer Idrees Kahloon said the recent Republican intra-party rift over the Jeffrey Epstein files could be just the beginning of a historic fracture.
“The reality that Donald Trump’s presidency will end in January 2029 is already making Republicans restless,” Kahloon said. Just recently Republicans bucked Trump and forced the release of the Epstein files, but “plenty of other cracks are showing.”
“Staunch allies of the president are mouthing critiques that would have been unfathomable a year ago,” Kahloon said. “These disputes are the prelude to an ugly battle over the post-Trump Republican Party.”
A mere year ago Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was comparing Trump to Jesus Christ, saying Christ was also “a convicted felon.” Now she’s one of the prime agitators for the release of the Epstein files, leading to a spat where Trump labeled her Marjorie “Traitor” Greene. Kahloon said she’s also criticized him on the Argentina bailout and on health-care subsidies.
But factional divides are showing in other corners of MAGA-dom, said Kahloon, including a nasty fight over whether to police the Republican Party’s anti-Semitic enclave.
Last month, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson posted a friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has previously said “I love Hitler,” among other things. Then Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts defended Carlson’s decision, prompting resignations from the Heritage Foundation board and outcry among GOP facets.
“Roberts’s intervention shows a shift in the Republican Party’s once-steadfast Zionism,” said Kahloon, adding that conservatives are also divided in their views of protectionism, immigration restriction and industrial policy.
Trump can’t run for a third term, which Kahloon said explains why Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is already breaking with Trump over the Carlson/Fuentes interview and Trump’s attempt to kick late night comedians off the air. He’s also called Trump’s tariffs harmful.
“If Cruz runs for president again, he will do so as an Israel-supporting, tariff-skeptical constitutional conservative — a triangulation between the pre-Trump and post-Trump Republican Party,” said Kahloon, but Republicans are deluding themselves if they think the person after Trump will hold the rowdy MAGA community together with ease.
JD Vance “lacks Trump’s charismatic hold over the Republican base,” said Kahloon, and there’s no guarantee Trump will let go of the role of party kingmaker.
Trump could take on the role of Lyndon Johnson, who Kahloon said was another president “used to domination, who, after he halted his 1968 reelection campaign, still overshadowed his party’s eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and saddled him with the administration’s unpopular Vietnam policy.”
“Republicans are one year from a midterm election that, by the usual patterns of American politics, is likely to go poorly for them,” said Kahloon, which could be a unpleasant prelude to a Lyndon-style party crack-up that “was both ugly and self-destructive.”
“Humphrey lost to Nixon. The Republican crack-up of 2028 might be just as bad,” Kahloon warned.
Read the Atlantic report at this link.
