Ronna McDaniel and the problem of 'Fictitious Republicans'
The Republican party has become an authoritarian cult and mainstream journalism should stop pretending otherwise
This essay is the second of a series called “How This Happened,” which takes a look at the larger historic events that created America’s current political environment. To receive future entries, please subscribe.
Donald Trump is an authoritarian criminal who lies as easily as he breathes. Everyone outside of the Trump cult knows this to be the case, including Ronna McDaniel, the former head of the Republican National Committee whose tenure as a commentator for NBC news lasted less than a week.
The donors, operatives, and politicians who run the Republican Party also know who Trump is and what he wants. Just ask Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who once described Trump as “utterly amoral” and a man who “lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio repeatedly called Trump a “con artist” and a “fraud.” Right-wing radio host Glenn Beck called Trump a “dangerous man” who was reminiscent of Adolph Hitler. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance said something similar.
Stating the obvious about Trump and his dictatorial ambitions was commonplace before he became the Republican nominee in 2016. But ever since the power-mad party operative class fell in line behind him, telling the truth about Trump and the reactionaries he elevated within the party has become essentially verboten in mainstream journalism.
To their credit, news organizations generally refused to hire the congenital liars like Kellyanne Conway who ran Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. But they refused to tell the full truth—that Trump and his cronies were rebuilding the Republican Party into a totalitarian regime run by religious, economic, and racial extremists. Instead, they staffed their commentator and interview spots with fictitious Republicans, beige shills like radio host Hugh Hewitt whose sole purpose in life is to pretend that their party is normal.
Aside from a handful of Wall Street fat cats and the people who keep Mitch McConnell from keeling over, no actual Republicans like Hugh Hewitt. Nikki Haley’s aborted presidential run was powered overwhelmingly by independent and Democratic voters. Actual Republicans hate National Review if they have even heard of it at all. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens probably has less influence on actual Republicans than Vermin Supreme. McDaniel’s uncle Mitt Romney is one of many GOP elected officials who have been forced out by their radicalized voters.
Fictitious Republicans like McDaniel have no grassroots constituency whatsoever, but because they provide the stuff that scoops are made of to mainstream journalists, they are routinely trotted out as spokespeople for a party whose members despise them.
Donald Trump’s campaign of deceit about the 2020 presidential election could not have been perpetrated without the original “Big Lie” of American politics. The Republican party has been dominated by anti-government radicals since the days of Newt Gingrich, but no one in mainstream journalism has been allowed to say this.
While fictitious Republicans have been obsessing over fake controversies about trans people and rude college students via innumerable Atlantic cover essays, actual Republicans have been debating about far more disturbing topics.
In February, the big discussion among actual Republicans was a week-long donnybrook over a video clip of some young white women dancing to a rap song. This month, actual Republicans are concerning themselves over the topic of antisemitism; not how to combat it, but how much room they should make for it within the party nationalist coalition.
As with so many au courant intra-right altercations, the progenitor of the latest dispute is Nick Fuentes, the Christian fascist podcaster and Trump dinner companion whose influence on Republican discourse far outstrips people like Ross Douthat or Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh.
But don’t take my word for it, just ask Walsh’s boss, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing. As first reported by extremism researcher Ben Lorber, Boreing lavished praise on Fuentes in a Monday Twitter Space event hosted by a Turning Point USA commentator who proudly describes herself as a Christian nationalist.
“I listen to your show quite often, I think you’re one of the most talented people out there,” Boreing told Fuentes, also calling him “very funny.”
Lauren Chen, host of the Twitter conversation, is one of several reactionary Christian commentators with lavish media perches who have been working tirelessly to promote Fuentes to “normie” Republicans. Also present was Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry, whose Christian satire website provoked titanic outrage from its fanbase over a simple joke about white nationalists being genetically inbred.
The ostensible topic of discussion Monday night was the phrase “Christ is king,” a slogan which Fuentes and his “groyper” followers have been using in their long-term plans to supplant the anti-government, philosemitic Christian nationalism preached by people like Sean Hannity with the fascist, antisemitic, Christian totalitarianism favored by Fuentes.
The slogan picked up steam last year after Candace Owens, a Daily Wire podcaster and friend of self-described Nazi Kanye “Ye” West, used it to insult the site’s co-founder, Ben Shapiro, after she was criticized for antisemitic language in her commentaries about Israel’s war in Gaza.
The phrase’s popularity on the far right was supercharged when Owens was fired by Boreing after she retweeted a post accusing a right-wing rabbi of being “drunk on Christian blood.” Although he did not mention it, Boering’s appearance on the Chen live discussion was almost certainly prompted by Owens fans canceling their paid subscriptions.
It’s unquestionable that Fuentes’s efforts to shift Republican discourse into open fascism have been successful. Establishment Republicans like Boreing have no real means of countering someone who sounds so similar to them that only highly adept political junkies can tell the difference. Even on the topic of Jewish people’s place in American public life, Fuentes’s antisemitic rants are almost indistinguishable from remarks that Shapiro made on a pro-Nazi podcast in 2014.
“There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood that they have a perverse leftist view of history pushed by the Soviet Union that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity,” he told white nationalist commentator Lana Lokteff, in an episode that was paired with an extended interview with infamous antisemitic academic Kevin MacDonald. “And therefore, the cure to intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.”
The NBC employee revolt against McDaniel’s hiring was the first of its kind against obsolete news executives who refuse to acknowledge the reality that Donald Trump’s Republicans are more like a religious cult than a political party.
It’s unpleasant to have to say this about fellow Americans. But what’s much more unpleasant is the world that the far-right extremists who pull Trump’s strings want to force the rest of us to live in. Journalists do a grave disservice to their audiences when they present people like Ronna McDaniel as representative of a party that is dominated by anti-American reactionaries.
Is everyone who votes Republican like the raging antisemites and racists who dominate right-wing Twitter? Not at all. But until the media start telling the full truth about who runs the Republican Party, America will be unable to extract itself from the mess we’re currently in.
According to one estimate, 90 million eligible voters will not cast a ballot this year, largely because they have no idea what’s at stake for them and our country.
America should be hearing a lot more from anti-Trump Republicans like Mitt Romney than his deceitful niece. Instead of booking powerless figureheads, producers should be booking experts on religious and political extremism.
Although it was made under duress, NBC made the right call to dismiss Ronna McDaniel. The network and its rivals should do the same to any other Republican who refuses to call out Trump’s dangerous lies.
i think the 'cult' you speak of was established quite a while ago by john adams, john jay, alex hamilton, albert pike, pierre soule, and their ilk. why pretend it's a new phenomenon? maybe learn yourselves sometin'?
This article makes perfectly clear that pretty much everyone would be better off knowing more about Christianity (and Judaism and Islam), and that's true of pretty much everyone whether they believe in God or not. Thank you for that!
And I mean this especially for the history of Christianity and the Bible (which obviously includes parts of Jewish holy scriptures). And that's because it's very difficult to understand fine p points of any kind of document and certainly of documents that are close to 2000 years old like the New Testament or even up to 3000 years as the Old Testament.
We should start with being aware that the first Christians were Jews and probably would have vehemently objected if someone had said they were not
Take Luke who in his gospel tried to prove that Jesus was the messiah Jews have been awaiting for centuries and still are awaiting.
Paul, from our modern perspective, is a clear antisemite and misogynist.