Who’s Helping Trump to Remain in Office?

Part #2 of a series on the 2020 U.S. election crisis

In the last article, I discussed Trump’s motivations for hanging on to his presidency. Now I’ll talk about who’s rooting for him.

This series of articles was first published on October 2 and updated on October 17.

Who’s helping Trump to maintain power, and why?

Republicans, of course. They didn’t vote to remove him from office during the impeachment in early 2020 when they had the chance. Furthermore, on October 9, Democrats introduced a bill to establish a Congressional process for actually using the 25th Amendment to remove a president from office; if Republicans do not support this bill, they will be turning down another opportunity to remove him from office by legal means.

Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, pointed out in October that the United States is a “constitutional republic” that elects representatives, not a direct democracy where every citizen votes on every issue. Of course. That’s not in question. So what is he talking about? As Michael Austin interprets the senator’s “WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY” tweet, he’s endorsing an agenda of “suppressing votes and limiting democracy”; the senator wants his own party, not the people, to determine policy.

“Careerism” doesn’t entirely explain their loyalty. As Anne Applebaum puts it, “a Republican senator who dares to question whether Trump is acting in…