Trump Calls for Unity as His Minions Keep Dividing Republicans

Democrats are no longer the only ones who don't even pretend to believe the words coming out of their mouths.

Perhaps the most nauseating moment of the dumpster fire that was the Iowa caucus night came when the victor Donald Trump pretended to give a damn about unity:

I really think this is time now for our country to come together. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, it would be so nice if we could come together.

He repeated the message Wednesday in New Hampshire:

It’s time for the Republican Party, frankly, to come together and to unify, we have to unify, and focus all of our resources and energy and effort on defeating Crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of our country, and the radical left Democrats this November.

“Unity” is of course code for “sit down, shut up, and surrender,” a demand to give up on the pretense of a primary in which the opinions of Republicans in the remaining 49 states matters and stop questioning whether the failed cretin is the right man to go up against the man he already lost to once, and change the subject to how awful we all agree those Democrats are.

It’s grotesque enough to hear this coming from the most sadistically divisive major candidate in the history of the Republican Party—a man who has celebrate the general-election losses of insufficiently-slobbering Republicans in key races, wasted millions on ineffectual spite campaigns against popular GOP incumbents in primaries, launched frothing unprovoked attacks on Republicans who supported and defended him for years, trashed more of his own top officials than he liked, demonstrably, viciously lied about political opponents, favorably compared heinous Democrats to sterling conservatives on one of the most important issues of the decade, belittled and scapegoated the Right’s most dutiful constituency over its gravest moral cause, and employed, promoted, and rewarded the most horrific assortment of thugs and character assassins ever seen on what now can only be loosely describe as the American Right.

But it’s doubly galling to see Trump give lip service to unity while demonstrating he doesn’t mean it. Amid his celebrating, Trump was photographed hugging his biggest fan, lunatic misanthrope Laura Loomer, who went on to direct four-letter rejections of ex-DeSantis supporters who decided to “unite” with her idol and accusing Ron DeSantis of not only “colluding” with Biden Special Counsel Jack Smith, but “salivating over the thought of President Trump going to jail or getting assassinated before the 2024 Presidential election.”

Also channeling Saint Donald’s spirit of magnanimity (MAGAnimity?), this week Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita threatened that incumbent Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), House Freedom Caucus chair, “won’t be electable when we get done with him” for the crime of having endorsed DeSantis.

“I’ve supported President Trump 2016 and in 2020, and I would enthusiastically support President Trump if he was the nominee again,” Good said. “But I endorsed Gov. DeSantis back in May because I believed, as I do now, that we need eight years of conservative leadership, and I believe that Gov. DeSantis gives us the best chance to win a general election. And I believe that the job that he did in Florida is the model for the country.”

Tough luck, Bob! Wanting a conservative president is now a thoughtcrime in the new Republican Party. Time to feel the wrath of unity!

It gets better. “The Trump campaign has put out the word to major G.O.P. donors that if they’re not on the Trump train by next month, it will be noted on their permanent record—and that forgiveness will get harder thereafter,” reports Puck’s Theodore Schleifer. The MAGAfied GOP will be unified like a family, all right—a mafia family.

The Trump campaign is essentially reenacting the scene in Mars Attacks where the aliens are announcing “Don’t run! We are your friends!” while opening fire on everything and everyone in sight. The worst part, though? That you have to pretend not to notice any of this if you want a seat at the table.

Case in point: Republican voter-registration activist Scott Pressler, by all accounts a nice guy and hard worker who’s mostly stayed out of the fray and tried to focus on the GOP’s structural problems—in the process previously questioning the Trump campaign’s voter-registration and early voting chops and calling out Trump’s hand-picked Republican National Committee chair Ronna [Romney] McDaniel for her negligence—endorsed Trump before the Iowa results came in, and the next day said his “intent is nothing other than to be a uniter, which I understand will not be possible for everyone.”

That’s right, Scott, it won’t. Has it occurred to you to ask why? Maybe bring it up the next time you’re in the room with your candidate?

If Team Trump and its GOP establishment partners really want to “unify” the conservative coalition, and draw back into the fold former supporters who they’ve provoked into leaving the presidential circle blank on their ballots for the first time in their adult lives, there is only one path—Trump needs to confess every act of dishonesty, betrayal, and malice he has committed against members of “his” party.

He needs to make unconditional, face-to-face apologies to every decent conservative he has wronged, starting with Ron DeSantis.

He needs to fire, disavow, and/or disassociate with every smear merchant he has employed or encouraged, including but not limited to Steven Cheung, Jason Miller, Roger Stone, Brendan Dilley, Laura Loomer, Jack Posobiec, and Raheem Kassam.

He needs to commit to changing his ways, accompanied by a wholesale replacement of his current top personnel with decent human beings who would push back against his vindictive impulses.

That’s what he should do. But the reason nothing less would suffice is also the reason he will never do any of this—because the remorse, humility, and selflessness needed to take these steps are utterly alien to his fundamental makeup as a human being.

There’s one more reason Trump won’t deliver an approximation of any of those steps: because the external pressures from other corners of the Right that used to be able to at least somewhat steer Trump are now completely gone. And DeSantis’s failure to put a dent in his armor this week makes it exponentially less likely that we can restore them.