As the country’s divisions deepn over politics and human rights, Trump and other major Republicans aim to be a wedge. The Week reports that at a Kansas Trump rally, the President said, “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob—and that’s what they’ve become,” when talking about Democrats. He’s attempting to discredit everything the opposing party has done and will do.
That’s just the start. On Oct. 7, CNN wrote about six separate occasions in which Republicans publicly called Democrats a “mob.” Senator Mitch McConnell said Republicans “refused to be intimidated by the mob of people” who he thought were attacking Brett Kavanaugh and his party members. Chuck Grassley said, “I hope we can say no to mob rule by voting to confirm Kavanaugh,” despite the fact that the majority of Americans wanted the opposite. That didn’t stop Senator Orrin Hatch either, though. He described the opposition as “a paid mob trying to prevent senators from doing the will of their constituents.”
These Republicans, as well as our president, want to gaslight the entire opposite side of the aisle. They forget their own slogan, it seems like. When Trump was campaigning, he constantly referred to his supporters as the silent majority and insisted that they deserved justice of some kind. Now that the majority is vocal and threatening, though, it’s a mob—a conspiracy.
Take Ted Cruz and Jeff Flake for example, who were recently confronted by protesters in the wake of Kavanaugh’s nomination. Cruz was booed out of a restaurant, while Flake was cornered in an elevator and shouted down by two sexual assault victims. Those few people are what Republicans call the “mob,” the terrifying Democratic majority. Constituents speaking their minds frighten politicians, is what that boils down to.
When Republicans call Democrats the mob, they’re knowingly admitting that the left is in the majority. That’s part of the plan. Trump and co. want to tear down the idea of majority rule because they know they’re in the wrong. So instead of holding themselves accountable, they’ll gaslight anyone who stands in their way.
Makes sense for a President who lost the popular vote.