What Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Marjorie Taylor Greene Gained From Their Service To A Mad King
Absolutely nothing, say it again.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina has boldly criticized Donald Trump’s mad scheme to seize Greenland against its will, but when it comes to acknowledging that Trump’s mad scheme is his alone, Tillis’s courage is decidedly lacking.
During an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Tillis said, “To be clear — I'm not critical of the president. I’m critical of the bad advice he’s getting on Greenland.”
Tillis has repeatedly claimed that Trump has received “bad advice” about Greenland. He’s gone on the Senate floor and blamed unnamed advisers for Trump’s imperialistic ambitions. He’s called it a dumb idea that “some deputy chief of staff thinks was cute to say on TV,” in a circuitous reference to Stephen Miller. Tillis has angrily declared that “the amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.”
Yet Trump himself remains blameless. No, Tillis argues that a good adviser would let Trump know that NATO is “the most important alliance in the history of the United States” and seizing Greenland would “destabilize” that alliance. Someone “needs to tell the president” these basic facts. What Tillis is demanding isn’t a presidential adviser but a remedial history teacher and “a team of psychiatrists working around the clock, thinking about (him), having conferences, observing (him) like the way they did with the Elephant Man.” (Watch below.)
Thom Tillis isn’t a stupid man, but he’s making himself look ridiculous. This isn’t without a reason, though. He isn’t running for re-election, so he’s not worried about surviving a Republican primary, but as others have observed, he might actually worry more about surviving Trump’s MAGA mob. When former MAGA loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke out against Trump directly, he shrugged off the resulting death threats she received. Trump tacitly endorsed intimidation campaigns against Republican state senators in Indiana who stood in his way. Tillis doesn’t have Mitt Romney money for a private security detail.
There’s a scene in the classic Dark Shadows series where the villain Aristede (Michael Stroka) has Quentin Collins (David Selby) tied to a table with a classic “pendulum of death” swinging above him. Quentin tries to convince Aristede to free him, but the villain explains that “this machine, you know, can be used more than once and I have too much respect for my body to even think about lying on that table.”
Tillis, as well as most supposed “sane” Republicans, know that Trump’s goons, including ICE, can be turned against them as easily as any brown-skinned immigrant or civilian protester, and they have too much “respect” for their bodies to even think about ending up on the wrong end of an ICE raid.
Instead, Tillis rhetorically wails on Trump’s “advisers.” He knows Trump is surrounded by either weak-willed “yes” men or drooling psychopaths who share his delusions. Either way, this is Trump’s show. But Tillis is treating Trump like a mad king, and criticizing the monarch for any reason is treason punishable by death. It’s like when devout Catholics insisted that it was King Henry’s corrupt advisers who were steering him from the church. They were the ones who wanted the king to ditch his older wife for a younger woman.
Thomas More was a trusted adviser and close companion to King Henry. However, he was a devoted papist who didn’t support the king’s break with Rome and the annulment of his first marriage on transparent “I wanna sex up Anne Boleyn” grounds. He assumed that his years of loyal service to the king, along with his deliberate silence, would spare him. He was wrong. Silence was considered resistance.
King Henry demanded total, absolute obedience. The problem was that the king’s needs and whims changed often, and anyone who couldn’t adapt to the moral and ideological whiplash — who believed in anything other than the king’s will soon found themselves cast out of his court and into the Tower. Yes, this should sound familiar.
More was eventually convicted of treason and sentenced to death by hanging, drawing, and quartering, but King Henry commuted the sentence to beheading. That’s probably more merciful than Trump is capable. Before the axe fell, More declared, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” This last bit of defiance earned him burial in an unmarked grave, while his severed head was publicly displayed as a warning. Now, that’s more like Trump.
Trump doesn’t forgive and he doesn’t accept neutrality, only complete submission. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy thought he could straddle the line and remain in the mad king’s favor, as if Trump would ever forget that Cassidy voted for his conviction in his second impeachment trial. The Trump White House toyed with Cassidy, perhaps making deals and promises they knew Trump would never keep in exchange for Cassidy’s vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. Cassidy is a medical doctor, so his support for that unfit crackpot was in open defiance of everything he knew and believed. Now, Kennedy Jr. has wrecked the nation’s health infrastructure, endangering millions of vulnerable people, including children, and Cassidy is reduced to whining about it on social media.
Cassidy has outlived his usefulness, so Trump is free to cast him aside. He’s not just endorsed a primary challenge against the senator, he actively encouraged Republican Rep. Julia Letlow to run against him with his full support. Unlike More, Cassidy betrayed his principles, but while More lost his head, Cassidy surrendered his soul.
I must add that if Thom Tillis and other Republican cowards are going to treat Trump like a mad king, they could at least openly plot against the supposed “corrupt advisers” who are giving Trump such “bad advice.” Make Stephen Miller their Thomas Cromwell, the schemer who advanced the mad king’s agenda until the king started blaming him for his own failures. Then, his many enemies smelled blood. “Traitors don’t sit among gentlemen,” Cromwell was told before he was arrested and dragged away.
On the highly fictionalized Showtime drama The Tudors, the Duke of Suffolk (Henry Cavill) visits a fallen Cromwell (James Frain) in prison and taunts him in his misery: “The fact is, Mr. Cromwell, only two hours after your arrest, the king dispatched his treasurer [to your home] to take away your goods. The rabble came out to cheer them on. It was a pretty sight … I hear.” I confess I’d love to see Stephen Miller meet a similar fate, as I suspect that this is the closest he’ll come to true justice on this earth.
After all, in the end it wasn’t Democrats or the “radical left” who ended the careers of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bill Cassidy, and Thom Tillis. The knife in the back came from their own party, from their own mad king whose pleasure they foolishly chose to serve.
"the moral and ideological whiplash"
This is a wonderful turn of phrase to describe the position that Republicans like Cassidy have allowed themselves to suffer. It explains why they all three look miserable every time the camera is turned their way. I suppose that the compromises in principles that one has to make to get elected to Congress in the first place, set the stage for the ongoing public humiliations at the whims of the "neon god they made". Their spines are already so pliable that all resistance is long gone.
The final irony is that they each have ceded any personal power to the endless neediness of their dear leader. They worked very hard to reach a position of power and immediately ceased to exercise any of it out of cowardice.
Acting on bad advice is, well, bad. Sure, criticize those giving the bad advice, but your criticism is toothless if you don't criticize the person acting on it. Jesus lamented those who traded their souls for the world (power). He didn't bother to lament those who traded their souls and got nothing, as these three did.
ETA: Franklin joked that "either we all hang together or hang separately" as they debated signing The Declaration of Independence. All the men present knew that they risked hanging, or worse, by signing it, yet they all did. Imperfect as they were, they didn't lack courage, or spines, like too many Americans these days.