Republican attacks on liberals hailed as 'epic-level gaslighting'

President Donald Trump and his supporters describe liberals as “radical” and “extreme,” an accusation that one comedy writer describes as “epic-level gaslighting.”

“Republicans have made it abundantly clear, from behind the presidential seal and in the halls of Congress and on all manner of news networks, that the extremists in America are liberals like me,” wrote humor columnist Rex Huppke for USA Today on Sunday. “We are, in the oft-repeated words of President Donald Trump, ‘radical left lunatics.’ We are agitators. Insurrectionists. Thugs. Our ideas are extreme, always. ‘Radical left climate extremism.’ ‘Extreme gender ideology.’”

Yet Huppke pointed out that Trump supporters “all kneel at the altar of a narcissistic conman who eviscerates every democratic norm he comes across and slaps his name on things like a dollar-store Mussolini,” making it ludicrous for them to accuse people who merely want a clean planet and equal rights for all gender identities of being extremist or dangerous.

“As the Republican Party has morphed into an averse-to-democracy cult of personality – 63% of Republicans now identify as part of Trump’s MAGA movement – their labeling of the left as radicals has had to keep pace,” Huppke wrote. “It’s the ‘No I’m Not, YOU ARE!’ approach honed throughout history by bullies and abusers.”

Huppke went on to point out that Trump has failed to solve the myriad problems his administration blamed on the supposed radicalism of President Joe Biden (rising prices, a ballooning national debt, lawfare against political opponents). Additionally, one of Trump’s first acts as president was to pardon the insurrectionists who attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021 so that Trump could steal the 2020 presidential election.

“Promoting mass deportation, Trump and his party have proudly dispatched squads of masked and warrantless federal immigration agents across the country, resulting in the killing of U.S. citizens and repeated acts of transparent inhumanity,” Huppke added. “Without any form of approval, Trump had the historic East Wing of the White House demolished to make way for a ballroom funded by corporate and private donors, opening a door for shameless influence peddling.”

He then pointed out, “War, cruelty and racism. Isn't that all a bit extreme?”

Huppke also described as “extreme” Trump waging war against Iran without congressional approval, allowing a Christian nationalist pastor to lead a Pentagon worship service and creating a party in which Young Republican leaders in Arizona, Kansas, New York and Vermont “were found to be swimming in racist and antisemitic chats, saying things like ‘I love Hitler’ and casually using slurs for Black people.” He also mentioned the party’s Islamophobia, proposed $1 Trump coin in circulation and use of a neo-Nazi anthem (By God We’ll Have Our Home Again’) to recruit for the Department of Homeland Security.

“Frankly, I don’t ever want to hear the term ‘radical leftist’ again,” Huppke said. “At least not as long as Republicans are okey doke with a man whose every utterance is radical, a man who has subjugated an entire party and brainwashed them to obey his every whim.”

Huppke, despite being best known as a humorist, is also frequently scathingly critical of Trump. In December he claimed Trump had reached a “new low” after a “decade of Trumpian loathsomeness” because Trump applauded the murder of director/actor Rob Reiner, another frequent Trump critic. In November Huppke urged Americans to confront their Trump-supporting relatives at Thanksgiving, arguing that “at this moment in history, I wholly reject avoiding a subject that, thanks to Trump’s extremism and unquenchable thirst for attention, envelops virtually every aspect of our lives.”

Further into the article he added “not talking politics with your MAGA relatives is letting them off the hook. When a president is routinely bombing boats in international waters, ordering masked federal agents to round up hardworking immigrant families and sidestepping Congress while slapping tariffs on countries willy-nilly, those who disagree with such things have a responsibility to speak up.”

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