When Will a Republican Who's Staying in the Game Speak Out Against Trump?
Trump has rendered the Republican party unrecognizable to many Americans, and with each scandal for which he does not face consequences, the man who just accused Canada of burning the White House down only grows more powerful. The bounds of Trump's executive privilege have been drawn into sharp focus recently. Last week, he enacted a controversial and possibly illegal trade policy, and in response to the ongoing Mueller investigation, both Trump and his legal team have argued that the president is above the law. Though Republicans have spent the past 16 months doing everything they can to avoid addressing the president's indiscretions, at this point it would seem hard to deny that the president's actions are not only not in America's best interest, but flat-out un-American.
This hasn't stopped Republicans from either holding their tongues or tripping over themselves trying to justify the president's wild assertions. When Sen. Ted Cruz – whose wife Trump has insulted, whose father Trump has implicated in the Kennedy assassination – was asked if he believes the president can pardon himself, Cruz paused for 18 seconds before offering that he is "withholding judgement." He later posted a convoluted Twitter thread breaking down the potential legality of a presidential self-pardon, without condemning the idea.
This hasn't stopped Republicans from either holding their tongues or tripping over themselves trying to justify the president's wild assertions. When Sen. Ted Cruz – whose wife Trump has insulted, whose father Trump has implicated in the Kennedy assassination – was asked if he believes the president can pardon himself, Cruz paused for 18 seconds before offering that he is "withholding judgement." He later posted a convoluted Twitter thread breaking down the potential legality of a presidential self-pardon, without condemning the idea.
Saying publicly that the president is not above the law is a pretty low bar for praise, but as most Republicans' feet stay on the ground, any high-ranking resistance to Trump's delusions is noteworthy. The wildest delusion of Trump's presidency – a particularly high bar to clear – may be his repeated insistence that his campaign was illegally spied upon by the Obama administration. The claim has been debunked thoroughly, and last week Republican congressman Trey Gowdy said on Fox News that after being briefed by the Justice Department on the FBI's use of an informant in investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, he was even "more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/paul-ryan-trump-w521153?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=060618_16
My guess is no.