Everyone’s deserting Trump now except for the most cynical and transactional politicians in the Republican party such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, i.e., the most Trump-like politicians.
For the rest, I am sure there’s a combination of genuine horror at what the man is capable of unleashing and calculation that he’s gone too far. Every major TV network was unequivocal about condemning both the day’s events and the president. Even Fox turned against Trump. After all the condemnation, Trump came back on TV the next day and read out a scripted piece about this being the time for reconciliation etc. A perceptive commentator had this to say:
Trump is a creature of social media and once Twitter and Facebook decided to ban him, he lost his biggest bullhorns. It’s possible Trump’s political career is over. That’s a good thing, but I feel the door has been opened for competitive authoritarianism in the United States. Trump is in his seventies but Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley are much younger. Consider Josh Hawley (he’s a senator from Missouri, BTW):
That’s Josh raising his fist in support of the MAGA protesters before they broke down the gate. Josh is only forty; he’s doubling down on his support and is very savvy about tech. In fact, he had a book on the topic that’s now been canceled:
But that act of cancellation gives Hawley the perfect platform to complain about the power of big tech. MAGA supporters already believe that social media is stacked against them (even though FB has been instrumental in their growth - but facts aren’t the point here) and Josh has plenty of time to stoke that anger and build a career on top of it.
It will be interesting to see if Parler or Gab or some other explicitly conservative social media app becomes the place where these new careers are built.