It’s time to drop the posture that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into accepting what has been unearthed, or that they can be shamed into arguing from a baseline of shared democratic values, or into arguing over how to interpret a comprehensive set of shared facts.
Instead, let’s rhetorically treat Trump’s defenders as his criminal accomplices. Not just as “enablers” of Trump’s corruption but as active participants in it.
Once this is accepted, it becomes obvious why they can’t be “won over,” because they are actively engaged in keeping the corruption in question from getting fully uncovered, in the belief that they, too, benefit from it, and that they, too, lose out if it’s exposed.
The notion that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into facing up to what has happened here is all-pervasive. It includes the have-you-no-shame lectures delivered to Republicans who smeared Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for supposed dual loyalties.
It includes the oft-expressed idea that Republicans downplaying the evidence are doing so because they fear Trump’s base, as if they would embrace evidence if only they could, as if the problem is missing “courage” and not a more corrupt form of calculated self-interest…
Trump’s defenders are not “gettable” because they are accomplices in the whole scheme – and [we must] forthrightly describe what’s happening in kind.