Dangerous Hyper-Partisanship and Ginni Thomas’ Texts
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post dropped a bomb on the political world this past week. If you have not been keeping up, that bomb is that Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was texting the Trump White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in the days after the 2020 election. Her texts show that Ginni had not just bought into absolutely deranged conspiracies about how Trump had won the election; Ginni Thomas encouraged Meadows to take these ideas seriously.
So far, only 29 messages between Ginni and Meadows have been revealed, as Meadows is no longer cooperating with Congress' investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. However, those 29 messages show how Ginni Thomas was advocating for the ludicrous and unfounded theories of Sidney Powell. Several of the texts referenced by the Post show Ginni encouraging Meadows to give Powell more leverage and control over the Trump legal team.
And if that were not enough, Ginni Thomas was also trafficking outlandish theories, with origins in the QAnon circles, that Trump had water-marked election ballots to catch mail-in voter fraud. WaPo also reports that Ginni Thomas was present at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. However, she was not involved in the insurrection that broke into the Capitol building and ransacked the offices of sitting Senators and Congresspersons.
Much has been said about this report days after it was published. People more intelligent than myself have argued that Justice Thomas should resign. Others have said that this shocking and alarming development should not be held against Justice Thomas. Notably, Justice Thomas' lone dissent in the Supreme Court's January order rejecting Trump's bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel would not have stopped these texts from coming out.
It is hard to read Ginni's texts and not recognize a sense of entitlement. It is almost as if it is easier for Ginni to believe that there is a grand conspiracy against Donald Trump than to accept the simple truth that more people voted for Joe Biden.
The actions of Ginni Thomas, and those like her, are like a child who, when told they have lost a game, decides to take their ball home. Or, to paraphrase Andrew Bernard, Ginni Thomas is operating under the assumption that "A Republican does not lose contests. They either win them, or they quit because they are unfair." So long as politicians, in this case, Republicans, are committed to crying, "Foul!" when things do not go their way, we should not be surprised that partisanship remains at dangerously high levels and our government does not function well. After all, how can any group function as they should when one side will only accept an outcome where they always win no matter what happens?
3 More Things
1) Writing in his newsletter for The Atlantic, David French points out another problematic aspect of Ginni Thomas' actions: the religious zeal of the "Stop the Steal!" movement. French notes many of the issues mentioned above and points out how Meadows frames the fight as one of "good versus evil" and refers to Trump as the "King of Kings." Christians, French argues, have become too comfortable with Trump and the proximity to power he affords them to be able to acknowledge bad as bad. The legacy of Trump will undoubtedly include how Christians sacrificed their morals for a chance at the power Trump promised them.
2) A few days before his new show debuts on CNN+, Chris Wallace spoke with The New York Times about how he feels life at Fox News had become unsustainable since the 2020 election. On Fox News Sunday anyway, Wallace has always been a consummate professional. He took both Republicans and Democrats to task when he believed they weren't shooting him straight. But Wallace adds that many decisions made after Trump's loss, especially the promotion and platforming of Tucker Carlson's dangerous Patriot Purge documentary, led to Wallace seeking to end his time at Fox News at the end of his contract.
3) The LA Times reports that Trump endorsed candidates are not fairing well in GOP primaries. In particular, the Times focused on the battle for governor in Idaho where current Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin is struggling against current Gov. Brad Little. McGeachin has received Trump's "Complete and Total Endorsement," features Trump heavily in her ads, and has even adopted Trump's defiant attitude towards her opponent, Brad Little. And yet all of that has done nothing to propel her in the gubernatorial race. McGeachin is not alone as former Georgia Senator David Perdue cannot claim a lead against the current Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Trump's influence appears to be waning everywhere as a January NBC News poll shows that 56% of Republicans are more supportive of the GOP than Trump, with 36% more supportive of Trump than the GOP. Those numbers have essentially flipped from 2020 when 54% of Republicans said they were more supportive of Trump than the GOP, and 38% said they were more supportive of the GOP than Trump.