GOP senator slams ‘radical leftist’ Tim Walz for ‘getting married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square’

Joe Sommerlad

Mon 19 August 2024 at 12:15 pm GMT-4

Republican Senator Ron Johnson attacked Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz over his ties to China, claiming it’s a red flag that the “radical leftist” got married “on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.”

Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, the Wisconsin lawmaker and member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee said of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate: “She’s a radical leftist. She chose another radical leftist. They’re just assuming the mainstream media is not going to cover his background.

“The House is going to investigate it now — it’s very strange. He got married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. He’s gone to China. He’s taught in China. He’s got deep connections to China.”

At the National Review, he wrote things like this:

I’m confused. When arguments over gay marriage raged, there were theologians who assured us that Jesus was gay. Now he’s transgender? And all this coming from a movement that also seems committed to arguing that a divine Jesus is no more real than the mythical Flying Spaghetti Monster?

And yet, this past Sunday, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. He says it’s not because he agrees with her on most issues, but because he’s hoping Donald Trump’s Republican Party crashes and burns, creating the opportunity for something new to emerge.

In his op-ed for The New York Times, French justifies his endorsement this way:

The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.

Let’s not quibble about his idea of a conservative political party being a “force for genuine good.”

But I have also been deeply considering what a post-Trump Republican Party might look like. 

Here’s what we know: MAGA is a world of grifters, and they celebrate each other’s grifting. Remember, for instance, that then-President Donald Trump pardoned former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was indicted for swindling Trump’s own fans out of millions of dollars that had been raised to supposedly build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

MAGA grifters include gun-rights extremist Kyle Rittenhouse, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (who is now helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote program), consultant Roger Stone, Republican National Committeeman David Bossie, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, influencer Jordan Peterson, election-denying attorney Kurt Olsen, pillow salesman Mike Lindell, Senate candidate Kari Lake, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former Trump body man John McEntee, self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, Donald Trump Jr., former prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as everyone in this article about a recent right-wing effort to stoke panic and raise cash around a mythical “Disease X,” among other grifters. Add Donald Trump to that list, even if his current grift is less to amass money and more to amass power.

Here’s my prediction of what happens to the Republican Party after Trump loses this year: Everyone on that long list of MAGA diehards has seen Trump use the power of grift to amass cash and power, and they want in on the action. We know that already. Thing is, though, these are all horrible people, and horrible people don’t play nice with each other. Trump is a unique force, mostly able to keep that hornet’s nest from turning on itself. But take him out of the equation? It’ll be a free-for-all. Every one of those names above and more (can’t forget former Fox News host Tucker Carlson) think of themselves as movement leaders, especially when such leadership translates to dollars. And yet none of them—not even Don Jr.—have the heft to inherit Trump’s kingdom. It will splinter. 

David French dreams of that collapse and of the resurgence of a conservatism “that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion, and defends our foundational constitutional principles.” Will he get that reborn Republican Party, one that readmits the disaffected conservatives at The Bulwark, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, and the growing list of Never Trumpers?

Perhaps.

But it’s just as likely that something even worse emerges. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the modern conservative movement, it’s that they always manage to find a new bottom to hit.

While the youthful and buoyant energy brought to the campaign by Harris and Walz is palpable, there’s something else at play here. A veil has been lifted, and that veil was Joe Biden. More specifically, it was the intense focus in the media on the 81-year-old president’s age and mental acuity, which diverted the public’s attention from the awfulness of Trump’s vile and narcissistic character, not to mention the insurrectionist-in-chief’s own increasingly apparent cognitive decline.

Biden has passed the torch to Harris, and the presidential race no longer is about the incumbent’s frailties and flaws. Instead, it has become a referendum on Trump’s rage- and ego-fueled psychopathic impulses and on Republican plans to impose Project 2025’s extremist agenda on Americans. Thankfully, more people seem to either be waking up to the reality of Trump’s demented psyche or just tired of the shitshow. The polls and “vibe” don’t lie.

Americans have been held hostage by Trump for nearly a decade, even during the four years he’s been out of office. Trump hovers over us, a sadistic and unavoidable presence, droning on darkly about our nation’s ruin and vowing to his MAGA cult that he will be “their retribution.”

Trump, of course, has no interest in seeking retribution on behalf of the idiots and marks who worship him and buy his overpriced merch. It’s his own retribution — against those who seek to hold him accountable for his numerous crimes and those who stand in the way of his grimly obsessive quest to regain the Oval Office — that consumes his every waking moment and informs his most insidious thoughts.

Now the hostages see a way out of the gloom and nastiness of the Trump Era. It’s occurring to a growing number of voters that this isn’t normal. And that, yes, Trump and his MAGA sycophants are inescapably weird. (Thank you, Tim Walz.) I don’t know what took regular folks so long to come to this glaringly obvious conclusion.

Most importantly, more Americans realize it’s within their power to help the country move past Trump’s malignant insanity, childish tantrums, and emotional instability. With the exception of the MAGA dead-enders wearing their little ear bandages and big-boy diapers, it’s starting to feel as if Americans finally are ready to change the channel.

There is a long way to go before the election, and nothing is in the bag. But after months of despair, Americans who recognize the threat Trump poses to our democracy finally have something to feel hopeful about. We have a chance to build on this momentum starting Monday in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. I’m looking forward to it.