{R} arely do we get to see a man’s dignity leave his body in real time, but on Tuesday night, there was South Carolina senator Tim Scott, clapping along as Donald Trump hurled insults at Nikki Haley, whom he had just defeated in the New Hampshire primary.
At one point, Trump turned the microphone over to aspiring Trump best friend and professional irritant Vivek Ramaswamy, who claimed the former president’s win Tuesday was “America First defeating America Last.”
As Ramaswamy, who quit the race before Haley, accused a woman who has spent her adult life in public service of being “America Last,” Scott happily cheered, basking in the moment.
Of course, it was Nikki Haley who in 2012 appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate when Senator Jim DeMint retired. Without Haley’s generosity, Scott might still be in the House of Representatives — he owes his current political career to a woman who he now seems to think is a traitor to our nation.
Scott, who frequently cites scripture to demonstrate his own morality, behaved despicably. The Bible counsels us to turn the other cheek to our enemies — but Scott turned both cheeks to his greatest political friend.
But, of course, Scott’s betrayal is a small episode in the collapse of decency and any sense of shame that Trump’s lordship demands of his acolytes. In order to remain in good standing, one must be willing to humiliate oneself in service of one of the worst people America has ever seen in public office.
In fact, Trump’s now-unstoppable run to the 2024 Republican nomination is an inversion of everything we claim to hold dear in America: namely, the idea that the good guys win and the bad guys lose. For centuries, our social order rested on the basic premise that dignified behavior will always triumph — that justice will always go hand in hand with righteousness.
The ideals of dignity, morality, and honesty are what keep us invested in stories told in popular culture. We need to know the good guy is going to come out ahead. Imagine a version of Die Hard where John McClane gives in to Hans Gruber because he doesn’t want to get stuck with a demeaning nickname. Or a version of The Avengers where Iron Man and Captain America hand over the infinity stones to Thanos because he might tweet something nasty about him.
But with the emergence of Trumpism, that whole incentive structure is being inverted. The bad people are winning, and their success is only creating more bad people.
One part of those incentives is the demand that people publicly embarrass themselves as a sacrifice to Trump. Early in Ron DeSantis’s presidential run, Trump accused DeSantis of being a “groomer” who liked to ply young women with alcohol. He mocked the size of his manhood, calling him vulgar names like “Tiny D.”
Naturally, just a week after criticizing candidates who “kiss the ring,” DeSantis did just that, endorsing Trump as he exited the race.
Ironically, it is this sort of cowardice that spawned Trump’s ascendance in the first place. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, voters turned their backs on ineffective legislators who promised them riches and delivered them nothing. They held Congress in contempt, seeing it as a body full of weaklings who would take any position on any issue if it ensured their reelection.
Then came a strongman who didn’t need politics to be rich or famous — he was already those things. He was ignorant, but he believed he was never wrong. He was a reprobate, but he was entertaining. He claimed he could solve any problem just through the sheer force of his personality. He was the antidote to the gutless invertebrates in Congress. As Homer Simpson said of alcohol, Trump is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.
And since his election, Trump has done nothing but expose just how spineless members of the GOP are. Keeping their political futures alive is more important than, say, treating the people who got them where they are with basic respect.
In order to play in Trump’s party, one must support his daily barrage of lies, pretend he is once again fit to be president even if he is convicted of a felony, and ignore his reprehensible behavior toward women and minorities.
(And if you do bow down and give yourself to Trump, he will inevitably knife you in the back while you are kneeling. After his New Hampshire victory, he took to X to lambaste former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as a “RINO” for offering him some post-election messaging tips.)
The key to all the GOP politicians’ embrace of Trump’s vileness is that they stick together. It’s like driving on the highway: You figure if everyone is speeding, cops won’t pull anyone over. And if members of Congress and governors across America hold tight, there simply isn’t enough time in the day for voters to deliver all the calumnies they richly deserve. This is why when you stray from the pack, the others will turn on you, and why the people whose careers Haley has made turned on her.
The history books can hold only so many words, and years from now, the unforgivable behavior of lesser political figures like Tim Scott will long be forgotten. He’s counting on that.
It isn’t as if America’s Founders didn’t see someone like Trump coming. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison presciently warned that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” and thus a separation of powers was necessary to balance the inflamed passions of any one individual.
But when the primary check on that power — Congress — is similarly infected by Trump’s brand of bullying dishonesty, where else does America go? What happens when the forces that are supposed to stop an insane person begin to ape him? (In Florida, a few legislators actually wanted to use state taxpayer money to fund Trump’s legal bills, both a demonstration of how deep Trump’s rot goes and how far “conservatism” has fallen from its former principles.)
Of course, Trump maintains power only because credulous Republican voters want him to. Nearly 90 percent of Trump voters in New Hampshire believe he actually won the 2020 election. He is proof that if you simply repeat a lie enough times, people will begin to see it as fact. It is frightening to consider what else Trump might get his voters to believe next.
Ultimately, despite challenges from Haley and DeSantis, Republican voters got what only 30 percent of the rest of the nation wanted: A Trump–Biden rematch later this year. The lesson to America’s kids is simple: You can be a bad person, but if you are entertaining enough as you remain consistently awful, at least part of the public will fall in line. We may send our troops to fight the bad guys abroad, but we are more than happy to celebrate one at home if he sufficiently owns the libs.