Rick Wilson's Warnings to Slow Learning Republican Senators
Rick Wilson is a Republican political strategist. His first book, "Everything Trump Touches Dies," was published in 2018; a second, "Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump," was published in January 2020. He has also written numerous opinion and analysis columns for various political publications including The Daily Beast, The New York Daily News, and The Federalist.
On January 21, in a series of tweets that were also covered in an article on Crooks & Liars, he cautioned Republicans about the consequences of ignoring evidence and silencing witnesses to protect Trump. His Twitter posts are shown below verbatim but formatted and consolidated for easier reading. His Twitter ID is @TheRickWilson:
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I'll summarize this for the slow learners in the Senate one last time.
Your protestations of independence, integrity, and honor will mean nothing to the voters this Fall. Nothing. You're going to moo and walk into the chute like cattle, terrified of Trump and Mitch. So when you're underwater in the polls, drowning in public anger at becoming accessories to Trump's coverup, here's a handy list of what went wrong. Clip-and-save, because you'll need it later.
WHAT WENT WRONG, A PARTIAL LIST:
- The facts of Ukraine will never, ever get better for Trump. You know this.
- Truth outs. Bolton's book hits. Documents leak. More people come forth.
- *TRUMP* admits it. You know he will.
- The polls are not going your way. Two-thirds of the American people want to see evidence and witnesses. Support for impeachment is steady.
- The McConnell strategy looks great in the short term as a DC-clever-process story in a few months looks like a massive coverup.
- The locked-room, one-camera, dead-of-night game YOU voted for looks more and more like the work of co-conspirators, not judges.
- Trump won't help you later. His loyalty is to himself. If you're in trouble *even for helping him* you're dead meat.
- Even if he *does* help you, does it *help* you? Trump rally fever plays only to the reddest red audiences. You know, like Maine and AZ...oh. Wait.
- Mitch only has so much money to spread around. Sure, in January he's saying, "I got you" but does he have *enough*?
- Even *Mitch* will flip if the majority is in danger, and how are you gonna walk that back? You won't get a second chance to be strong and do the right thing. You won't get another moment to show you give a damn about something bigger than Trump's rage.
- Voters hate corruption (cf, 1974, 1980, 1994, 2006) as just a few examples in recent memory) and they hate its enablers more. It reinforces their existing feelings about politics and politicians.
- Trump gets passes you never, ever will.
- "I voted against witnesses and evidence and covered up Trump's crimes of obstruction, lying, and abuse of power so he wouldn't tweet mean things about me." is a shit political obituary. So is, "I didn't want a primary."
- Everything Trump Touches Dies.
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His warnings are prescient as Trump has admitted withholding evidence during a news conference in Davos when asked if he was watching the proceedings of his impeachment trial. He said, “I got to watch enough. I thought our team did a very good job, But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”
After being "cleared" by the GOP cover-up trial, Trump will be empowered. However, there is noting stopping the Democratic majority House from impeaching him again and again on evidence that keeps coming out. And there is nothing stopping the Republican majority Senate from covering up his crimes -- again and again. It seems clear that the next election will determine not only the fate of democracy in our country but also the fate of the world.
As for Republicans, vote the bastards out, and keep them out.
John L. Ferri
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