Dem Rep Blasts ‘Republican Enablers’ for Remaining Silent While Trump Cries ‘TREASON’
On MSNBC’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) blasted his Republican colleagues in Congress as “Republican enablers” who remain “silent or give him a little pat on the back” when President Donald Trump throws around terms like “treason” and “enemy of the people.”
Doggett’s comments were in reference to a back-and-forth on Twitter earlier on Friday, which began when Trump made the incendiary charge that the 2016 FBI investigation into Russian campaign interference and his campaign’s ties to it amounted to “TREASON.”
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019
Former FBI Director James Comey, whose abrupt termination by Trump triggered the Special Counsel investigation, fired back on Friday evening, analogizing Trump’s outrageous claim to an infamous, apocryphal quote by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin (or, alternatively, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels):
The president claiming the FBI’s investigation was “TREASON“ reminds me that a Russian once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” That shouldn’t happen in America. Who will stand up?
— James Comey (@Comey) May 18, 2019
Doggett reminded MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell that this is far from the first time Trump has deployed extreme, demagogic rhetoric in his defense—and far from the first time members of Trump’s own party have quietly stood by as it happened.
“One of the first times that Trump threw out that term [treason] was when is he didn’t believe some of us clapped long enough for his State of the Union,” Doggett said, before adding “I don’t remember clapping at all.”
Not long after the 2018 State of the Union address, Trump said he publicly agreed with the claim — which he conveniently did not attribute to anyone — that Democratic Members of Congress who failed to clap for him during the bicameral speech were ‘treasonous.”
“He throws the term around just like he uses ‘enemy of the people’ against the press,” Doggett warned. “He doesn’t believe in our institutions. And the really appalling thing is no matter what power grab he has, no matter how outrageous, like calling a patriot a traitor, his Republican enablers can’t find their voice. They’re either silent or give him a little pat on the back, so he’s encouraged to grab a little more power.”
Watch above, via MSBNC.
