They Must Not Be Forgiven

As Trump and Vance ramp up the racism, there are no excuses for those who stand with them.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

The Republicans who enabled Donald Trump’s rise, supported him as president, and either cheered or went along willingly when he became their nominee for a third time have always had ready excuses to explain their complicity at the moments when his depravity became impossible to ignore. “I haven’t read those remarks you’re referring to,” they’d say, or “I wish he’d tweet less,” or “What matters to me is the policies.” 

They’re still saying it, even as Trump and JD Vance descend into the moral sewer their campaign has become, devoted now to no greater goal than stirring up the most poisonous hate imaginable at Haitian immigrants in Ohio (and by extension all non-white immigrants everywhere), an effort in which they have joined forces with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. 

As he has so many times before, Trump is presenting his party with a test, and as they did so many times before, they are failing. With just a few exceptions here and there, the membership of the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement have seen Trump’s rancid bigotry and said “Sign me up!” 

With so much at stake in this election, it’s tempting to confine one’s attention to the practical exigencies of the moment. How is this going to play in swing states? Will it move undecided voters? Are there other issues we should be talking about instead? But we cannot turn away from this, and we must declare right now: These people should never be forgiven.  

It isn’t just that Trump and Vance are enthusiastically spreading lies about immigrants eating people’s pets. It isn’t just that when confronted about the fact that he is lying Vance explained that “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” It isn’t even just that the technique of portraying out-groups as subhuman barbarians has long been a prelude to pogroms and genocide. It’s also the support they’re getting from their party. 

Some of it is explicit; Fox News has eagerly promoted the idea that an “invasion” of Haitians has “ravaged” Springfield, Ohio, and the Heritage Foundation, the right’s most influential think tank, is sending out fundraising emails penned by Tucker Carlson (fresh from hosting a Nazi apologist “historian” on his show) in which he says that by donating to Heritage you can stop immigrants from bringing about “the end of the United States, the country you grew up in. Forever. Irreparable.” Websites you may never have heard of, like this one from the Family Research Council, are working to convince people that immigrants have turned Springfield into a hellscape. And the New York Post, another Murdoch property, is now reporting fender-benders involving Haitian immigrant motorists as national news:

There are Republicans, including the mayor of Springfield and the governor of Ohio, who have condemned Trump and Vance’s toxic lies. But they are isolated voices. The rest of the party’s elected officials are either boosting Trump and Vance in this campaign of hate, or retreating to the old dodge that they’d rather just focus on the issues. Nikki Haley — a daughter of immigrants who understands perfectly well who Trump is — said a week ago in response to criticism that she had abandoned her principles by supporting Trump, “We can either vote based on style or we can vote on substance. I’m voting based on substance.” 

But Trump’s racism and hatefulness is not just his “style.” It is the essence of the man and his movement, the substance of which they are made. So please, don’t tell us you’re working to get Trump elected because of his “policies.” Tax cuts, deregulation, the occasional attempt to take health coverage away from millions — these are incidental. They are not the core of what Trump is. 

If you stand with Trump, you own all that is worst about him. His moral stench is upon you, and always will be. If you say “I was only in it for the tax cuts!” well, you were still in it. You made a choice. 

If only this were a world of accountability

Unfortunately, I have little confidence that our political system as a whole will treat Trump’s helpers with the opprobrium they deserve. In a better world, those who stood beside him would be scorned by their neighbors, unable to find work in politics ever again, cast out of polite society. Any association with Trump would bring shame for the rest of their lives. 

That is what happened, to at least some degree, after Watergate. For years the very fact of having worked for Richard Nixon was a black mark on your resume and your name, something that could be used to discredit you and keep you from a position or a role in an important debate. I say “could” because a number of Nixonites managed to stick around and get themselves back into supposedly respectable Republican politics, but the stain was always there. Every respectable person understood that the man they served was not only a crook himself but led an administration and a political operation riddled with corruption both ambitious and petty. The scandal familiarized the country with a gallery of disreputable miscreants, most of whom were little heard from again. 

But that only happens when both parties agree that a person or group has placed themselves outside the bounds of respectability. In this case, since almost the entire GOP has been complicit with Trump from the beginning, there is still a place for everyone, even those who have committed crimes. If Watergate happened today, after they finished their prison sentences, H.R. Haldeman would become a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and John Ehrlichman would have a regular gig as a Fox News contributor to go along with his popular and lucrative podcast. 

Nevertheless, we should not accept that Trump’s aides and allies deserve even a modicum of respect. Many of these people will be around for years or decades, and they should be shamed and stigmatized and mocked at every opportunity. When this is all over we ought to undertake an effort to detrumpify our political system, difficult though it may be. Anyone who stood with Trump should be made to answer as long as they live for the poison he injected into our national life. When they try to claim, as many will, that they never really agreed with all the racism and incitement, we should say: No. You had your chance to disavow him and what he stood for when it mattered. We will not forget.