298 - Rick Wilson: Trump Killed the Republican Party | On MAGA, Tucker Carlson, and 2028

Rick Wilson (0:00)

There is no Republican Party, it has fractured. My Republican Party is a dead religion, it's over. Donald Trump is gonna get these guys in a room and say, I want you all to cool off on the campaigning because I'm gonna try to stay. He knows it's not legal, he knows it's not constitutional. That won't matter. Our leadership is mercurial, military is run by clowns, and the things that made American power hard and soft have all been abandoned.

Robinson Erhardt (0:33)

Before we jump back into some context, because I'd love to better understand how you've come to adopt the political positions you hold today, I wanted to start with a more difficult question, which is, I think it's difficult, but as a never Trump conservative, what are the best reasons, if any? But someone could have for continuing to support Trump today, or candidates connected to him in the upcoming election.

Rick Wilson (1:00)

I look, I could do the sort of, you know, softest approach to it and give you a sort of a facile answer, but there really are no, in my mind, legitimate reasons at this point. If you're involved in some of the financial shenanigans around Trump, maybe that makes sense for some people. If you believe he's the only way to implement certain politically unpalatable ends, maybe that's a reason, but I don't really think there's a real catalog of morally acceptable reasons now to be with Trump at this point.

And it's important, I think, to also understand that the enabler class around him, the political class around him, those people no longer are part of a party or an ideology. They are part of a criminal enterprise. They are part of a kleptocracy with authoritarian leanings rather than having some sort of coherent political philosophy.

Robinson Erhardt (2:09)

As I was just thinking about the questions I wanted to ask you, and this was the first one that came to mind to me, I thought one possible reason that someone might have for continuing to support Trump is the belief that if they don't support his candidates, then the Republican Party will just fracture in a way that is no longer tenable in the next few cycles. Would you not think that that's the case?

Rick Wilson (2:36)

You know, I have bad news for them.

There is no Republican Party. It has fractured. It's over. They're the if you want to define it into the three sort of remaining factions that that you were recognizable as traditional parts of it, the you have the sort of very small traditional Republican conservatives who've had to make all these compromises to stick with Trump, right? They they they think, oh, I need low tax rates and low regulation, and that's the only way I'm going to get them is with Trump.

Those people though have had to make all the other compromises that that if you want those low tax rates from Trump, you also have to accept authoritarianism. You have to accept corruption. You have to accept racial animus. You have to accept all those other things that that were once forbidden fruit inside the Republican Party. But the, it's really important, I do emphasize this a lot. You can't look at it as a party anymore. They took the branding of the elephant logo and they kept the building on C Street in Washington.

But there's nothing recognizable about what the Republican Party has ever stood for before now. It is, it is not about free markets. We don't have a free market presidency or administration. It is not about strength in the world. We have been weakened by this administration around the world in ways that would take us three hours to talk through. It is not about personal integrity or personal responsibility, QED Donald Trump. And it's not about limiting the size of government, because now the government is more powerful, more expansive, more intrusive than it's ever been. All the things they talk when they screech about communism, what they're really doing is confessing and projecting, not attacking. They are, in fact, an unrecognizable political force in this country. And as somebody who has lived through various iterations of the Republican Party over the years, you know, you could draw very clear lines of continuity from Abraham Lincoln to George W.

Robinson Erhardt (5:02)

Bush.

Rick Wilson (5:04)

You cannot draw those lines today. They do not exist in the way that a superficial analysis that just thinks the branding is the same. Yeah, sure. The branding is the same.

But Coca-Cola, you know, 100 years ago had cocaine in it. Now it doesn't. It's a very different brand than it was 100 years ago.