They came to stand by their man. Outside a Manhattan courthouse. A rotating regiment of Republican politicians dressed in matching uniforms. Navy blue suits. White shirts. Red ties. The ensemble would have been complete with a black armband, insignia and a reflective salute. This wasn’t comical. It was shades of 1930s Germany in 2024 America.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance was there in the requisite attire. So was Ohio billionaire and erstwhile presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Outsized egos who live for the glorification of power. But the New York spectacle they joined was something new. A disturbing phenomenon. It was lockstep conformity by uniformed U.S. Senators, members of Congress and remarkably, the speaker of the U.S. House, against the rule of law.
The entourage in identical outfits came in absolute obedience to one man and absolutely debased the nation’s legal and judicial systems. It was a jarring performance from national politicians. Unthinkable in GOP circles just ten years ago. A cavalcade of high profile Republicans trashing the criminal justice system for holding their presumed presidential nominee accountable.
Their allegiance was to a criminal defendant, not due process. Vance, Vivek, Speaker Johnson and a cast of Trump toadies deliberately undermined the criminal justice system on Donald Trump’s behalf. Like him, they, too, hold the law in contempt. They parrot his propaganda that no judge, prosecuting attorney, jury of one’s peers, verdict, (unless favorable) is legit. Not with the former president. He’s special. Above the law.
Any evidenced-based case that argues otherwise is a sham, partisan witch-hunt, political persecution, etc. “Every single person involved in this prosecution (hush money trial) is practically a Democratic political operative,” declared Vance with his arms folded over his red tie. “What’s going on in that courtroom is a threat to American democracy,” he said with a straight face before attacking a trial witness. “Straight out of a Kafka novel,” intoned the pompadoured Ramaswamy.
The Trump surrogates pointedly mocked the judge’s gag order on the defendant barring his broadsides against witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, court staff or the judge’s family with their verbal bombs tossed at the judge, his daughter, the court, the law. These are incremental steps by MAGA Republicans to denigrate the integrity of the criminal court system. To diminish the rule of law as an essential character of our constitutional democracy. All in the service of Trump, of unconstrained power.
The historic parallels with the German experience are terrifying. The fall of law under the Nazi regime didn’t arrive full-blown. The descent into fascism was gradual. It was facilitated by zealots who swore an oath to a führer not the principle of due process or any semblance of individual rights. The loyalty of Republicans who traveled to a New York courtroom last week likewise lay with an aspiring authoritarian. They even wore what he wears.
It felt like a sickening throwback to the uniformed Brownshirts of yesteryear. Alarmed much? You should be. The stunning transformation of one of our two major political parties into a sycophantic support structure for a criminally indicted demagogue (and adjudicated rapist) is complete. The party of Lincoln is wholly owned by Herr Trump — a disgraced ex-president who once called for suspending parts of the U.S. Constitution to discredit a legitimate election.
Trump is charged with 88 felony counts for plotting a coup against his own government, conspiring to overturn the will of the American people in 2020, hoarding classified documents and obstructing their return, and fraud related to hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. He’s running for re-election to stay out of jail. That’s who morally bankrupt bootlickers lined up to champion during breaks in Trump’s trial for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal damaging information (about the tawdry porn star affair) from voters before the 2016 election.
Capitol Hill Republicans and obsequious Veep contenders stood by their man in cringy costumes that mirrored his signature look. The mini-Trumps, dressed to impress an audience of one, affirmed their total allegiance to him over a nation first and foremost of laws. The disquieting optics recalled the specter of slavish supporters from another era who pledged their total fidelity to another leader over democracy in the early half of the 20th century.
They also dressed alike. Brown shirts. Brown ties. Utter subservience to their man. He, too, was a coup plotter before his rise to dictatorship as the self-declared Fuhrer on Day 1 (Jan. 30, 1933). He, too, rallied followers with rhetoric about making Germany great again. By eradicating Jewish “vermin.” By ditching German democratic freedoms, including the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and, most definitely, due process.
Now, Republican lawmakers in America flock to a dank courtroom in New York to flatter their Dear Leader, parade as his red-tie, post-truth brigade and delegitimize the due process that lies at the heart of the American legal system. Ohio’s Republican senator was there to be seen and heard. Vance desperately wants to be Trump’s running mate.
So he will shamelessly stand by his man and against a crucial democratic institution. The judicial system is a foundational ideal where the rule of law is respected, legal proceedings are resolved fairly and justice is applied equally. Vance’s opportunistic rot is relentless. And alarming. It threatens far more than his tattered reputation.
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