Are We Witnessing a Schism?
Charlamagne tha God thinks so. I'm taking a wait and see stance.
Over the weekend, Charlemagne tha God went on Fox News (on Lara Trump’s program, no less!) and stated that he believes Republicans are going through a split, with traditional conservatives breaking away from MAGA. At even the suggestion that there might be rumblings among the Republican ranks, Trump got his knickers in a twist. (This is just another indicator of how frightened he is about the midterms and how much he is depending on the coalition to remain strong so he can remain in power and avoid another impeachment.)
Charlemagne’s initial comments were mostly benign. He didn’t mention Trump by name, but rather merely noted that there might be a split in the party because of the MAGA crowd’s desire for full disclosure of the Epstein files.
What’s troubling to me about this is that we’ve seen potential breaks in the fever so many times before that I’m more than a little gun shy. I’ve had my hopes elevated and dashed so many times that I’m cautious before letting my mind wander toward a saner time in the future.
The primary reason I’m so skeptical is that there have been countless opportunities for Republicans to stop all of Trump’s irrationality, criminality, and lust for raw power — but they’ve never taken advantage of those opportunities. The term "Republican conscience" has become an oxymoron.
It’s fairly evident that the Epstein matter isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. This was one of Trump’s primary campaign promises. He was going to get to the bottom of this and reveal Epstein’s international ring of wealthy pedophiles. Over and over, he swore to his MAGA base that no Democrat would dare address this, but he vowed that was the one person who could and would.
But the MAGA movement now seems to have outlived its usefulness to Trump. The MAGA crowd did what he wanted them to do — they gave him their money, they wore his hats and waved his flags, they parroted his lies, they attended his rallies, and they voted for him. Trump no longer needs them because he’s in his second term, headed toward complete autocracy. Oh, he’ll toss them a bone every now and then, tipping his red hat or tossing out a MAGA catch phrase here and there in his speeches, half-heartedly attempting to reel them back in.
He’s traded the run-of-the-mill MAGA crowd for the nextgen Proud Boys (also known as ICE). They’re the ones who will do his bidding. The allure of a $50,000 signing bonus for a job in which they can wear masks and sunglasses and indulge in their worst, most racist, violent yearnings is more temptation than many can resist. These are his dream paramilitary forces, committed to playing out his own most primitive impulses — and their own.
Those folks have always lived beneath the surface in the U.S. — in militias, under KKK hoods, hiding behind Confederate flags and iconography, sometimes working side by side with us, sometimes sitting in the next pew at church. Their rise in prominence in the current environment should not be all that surprising to anyone who has been paying attention.
What is still surprising (or at least shocking) is the number of elected Republicans who have merely gone along with all of the worst impulses.
But this will be a test for those Republicans. They’re now faced with a fundamental question: Are the Epstein files the straw that will finally break the camel’s back? Or will they continue their toadyism all the way to the bitter end?
So far, Trump has been like Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity,” when she made sure that Fred MacMurray couldn’t extract himself from the murder plot she had lured him into:
“Nobody’s pulling out. We went into this together and we’re coming out at the end together. It’s straight down the line for both of us. Remember?”
None of Trump’s actions so far in this term have been focused on fulfilling his promises to the MAGA crowd or to his fellow Republican politicians.
He promised to rid the nation of the worst undocumented immigrant criminals. Instead, at his direction, ICE is rounding up day laborers at Home Depot, snatching lawn care people from the yards where they’re working, pulling farm workers away from the fields and into makeshift concentration camps, all without due process and often in violation of judges orders.
He replaced the Republican mantra of “drill, baby, drill” with Teslas on the White House lawn, conveniently forgetting his ongoing denigration of electric cars in the interest of being chums with the world’s wealthiest man.
He has spit in the faces of the farmers who supported him by imposing tariffs on the equipment they need and by eliminating their markets internationally both with his tariffs and with kneecapping foreign aid programs.
He promised to lower grocery prices on day one, but has only taken actions that will raise grocery prices even higher.
He has supplanted the Republicans’ repetitive “repeal and replace” talking point on healthcare with “undermine and destroy,” disproportionately affecting red states that already have worse overall health outcomes than blue states.
He has eliminated critical jobs in the federal government, resulting in higher unemployment and lower job growth numbers, including among his supporters who worked in federal jobs. We’re already hearing some of the backlash from federal workers who “never thought it would happen to me.”
He has empowered and encouraged the people around him to play with the third rail of politics — people who have been working to dismantle Social Security or at least privatize it.
Trump has redirected his efforts away from the MAGA agenda (if, indeed, the MAGA agenda was ever truly part of his plan) and directed them instead towards self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement.
Most inexplicably, he’s even done a 180° turn on the motivating promise for his MAGA base — releasing the Epstein files. Not only is he far from transparent, but his administration is also simultaneously giving a sweetheart prison deal to Ghislaine Maxwell while consistently ignoring the voices of the victims of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s horrendous decades-long sex crime spree.
So a couple of pivotal questions remain:
First, is Charlemagne tha God right? Or is his prediction more wishful thinking than reality? Trump himself must be unnerved by someone calling attention to this possible fracture, because he immediately disparaged Charlemagne on Truth Social, using all the usual toxic slurs, which only prompted a more pointed response from Charlemagne than his previous statements.
Second, and more importantly than yet another Trump squabble in the media, will elected Republicans find themselves in a situation in which they can no longer preserve their own jobs and remain loyal to Trump at the same time?
Having been whisked away from the roiling Epstein controversy by their sycophantic Speaker, House Republicans have five weeks to think about it. Five weeks to face their angry constituents — Republicans and Democrats alike — in town halls and office visits and street protests outside their offices and homes. Five weeks to withstand a wave of blistering criticism on their home turf from Democratic Congress members who are beginning to take the gloves off. Five weeks to coordinate and strategize with each other to achieve safety in numbers should they decide to stand up to Trump.
Those are the optimistic possibilities for the five week recess. The more cynical outlook would be that they strategize to formulate a cohesive response (although it’s hard to imagine a response that would address the seriousness both of the backlash from MAGA and of the Epstein crimes themselves). But Republicans have an established reputation for circling the wagons when the going gets rough.
No matter what Trump and his cronies have done so far, their efforts haven’t made the issue of Trump’s ties to Epstein go away. If anything, the more Trump deflects, detracts, and covers up, the more others make their commitment to seek the truth. More than any other of Trump’s numerous scandals, this one seems to have most staying power and, so far, all of Trump’s usual distraction techniques have not worked.
There will be a lot of people watching to see if Trump can come up with a shiny object that will push this horrific scandal out of the public consciousness. I’m betting that one of those people will be Charlemagne tha God.