Port: As Trump embraces the Qanon movement, when are North Dakota’s Republicans going to turn away?
President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wheeling, W.Va., Sept. 29, 2018. (Al Drago/The New York Times)
MINOT, N.D. — “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?”
Those were the words of a Republican official, speaking about disgraced former President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss but before the Jan. 6 riots, as quoted by the Washington Post .
“It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan 20,” this person continued. “He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”
Needless to say, given all we know now about how Trump would handle his exit from the White House, these comments have aged like milk.
Still, I think there are a lot of Republicans who are still making this calculation. The Republican base, for the most part, still likes Trump, so what’s the harm in humoring him, they wonder.
