Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
The American media needs to call this movement what it is, fascism, and demand accountability and answers from the thousands of Republican politicians nationwide who refuse to repudiate it...
Reporters for TPM obtained text messages between Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (formerly a Tea Party congressman) and 34 Republican members of Congress advocating stragegies to end democracy in America by keeping Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election.
For example, South Carolina's Republican Congressman Ralph Norman texted Meadows:
"Mark, in seeing what's happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!"
His misspelling "martial" "- as in "having the military take over the country" "- notwithstanding, Norman was pushing to end the American experiment in much the same way Robert E. Lee tried to do in 1861.
This is not a coincidence.
Meanwhile, a new poll shows 61 percent of Republicans have abandoned Trump, but not because they object to his brutality or lawlessness; they're just largely concerned that he can't win elections in the future in part because he may end up in prison.
This increasingly includes the 147 members of Congress, 10 of them US Senators, who voted to end American democracy on January 7th, 2021.
So, they're jumping on the DeSantis train, a man largely indistinguishable from Trump when it comes to supporting cruel, racist, white male supremacist policies.
This is happening because Trump launched a modern-day authoritarian fascist movement, with the help and encouragement of Putin and a handful of American and foreign billionaires.
And the authoritarian-follower Americans who first embraced Trump are now looking for the next leader of that movement.
The big mistake so many political observers make is assuming that Trumpism is all about Trump. It's not.
It's all about a 21st century American version of authoritarian fascism.
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