Thread by @TheViewFromLL2

With an exception or four, every senator knows (1) Trump is guilty of what he's been accused of, and (2) evidence of this is sprinkled across so many gov't agencies and disaffected WH officials with book deals that the bulk of it will inevitably be public within a few years.

But that's not sufficient to change the position of a single Republican senator.

It's not because they're oblivious to what's going on. Sure, partisan rationalization helps a lot with with padding the scales and downplaying the significance of events they wish hadn't occured,

so maybe they believe what Trump did is more gauche than a threat to the Republic from which we have no guarantees of recovery.

But they mostly know Trump did this because he's incompetent and corrupt. And they don't care.

The concerning part isn't this particular set of 53 Senators. Again, these are politicians and rational actors.

The part that scares me is that they feel zero electoral pressure to make even a token pushback against this President's claims to immunity from Congressional process.

I will endlessly mock Matt Gaetz, with no apologies. But while I give him no personal credit for standing up to the Trump administration exactly one time, I was still heartened to see him do it. Not because of what it says about Gaetz – because it doesn't say much at all –

but because it suggests that even a politician who has made a brand of going ~all in~ on Trump is still feeling pressure from back home to make a token stand, at least once in a while, to Executive Branch policies that are unpopular.

I guess what I'm saying is: we're at the stage of democracy where Matt Gaetz has shown more bravery than every single Republican Senator.