Donald Trump demands fealty from his evil cult but never reciprocates: Trumpism is Fascism

After crushing primary defeat in a primary, the Republican incumbent Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana used his concession speech to deliver a message about — and to — Donald Trump.

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Renée Graham

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to,” the two-term senator said. “But you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen, ... you don’t manufacture some excuse. You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”

What Cassidy also did was something he had failed to do since Trump returned to office — call him out publicly❗ Never mentioned Trump's name. But, only when his own political career was left in ashes was Cassidy willing to singe  Trump.

Cassidy has been a marked man since 2021, when he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. At the time, Cassidy said, “Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.” In response to Cassidy’s vote, the Republican Party of Louisiana censured him.

But Trump, who turned the power of the presidency into a revenge fest, made no secret of his desire to get Cassidy, whom he called “disloyal,” out of Congress. 

In the Senate primary, he endorsed House Representative Julia Letlow, who received 45 percent of the vote and will face John Fleming, a Louisiana state treasurer, in a runoff on June 27.

As soon as Trump returned to office, Cassidy tried to get back into his good graces — only to discover that Trump doesn’t have any. But to appease him, Cassidy voted to confirm every member of Trump’s Cabinet.

That included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As a doctor, Cassidy knew that Kennedy was not only unqualified to be the health and human services secretary but, also, that he was an anti-vaxxer and a peddler of the junkiest junk science.

But with his vote, Cassidy, a staunch vaccine advocate, appeased Trump and gave Kennedy undeserved trust. That didn’t stop Kennedy from blaming Cassidy for the derailed confirmation of Casey Means, a so-called “wellness influencer” as surgeon general.

In a social media post, Kennedy said that Cassidy “once again did the dirty work for entrenched interests seeking to stall the [Make America Healthy Again] movement and protect the very status quo that has made America the sickest nation on earth.”

Whatever legacy Cassidy hoped to cement during his Senate tenure, his decision to help Kennedy become The Worst Health and Human Services Secretary™ in American history will overshadow all of it.

Cassidy learned what other Republicans, despite their stalwart sycophancy, have found when they thwarted Trump’s fragile ego — he will stop at nothing to destroy them politically.

A year after Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Georgia congresswoman, heckled former president Joe Biden during his final State of the Union address in 2024, Trump excoriated her as a “lunatic” when she pushed for the release of the Justice Department’s files on convicted sex offender and former Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

(House Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky also demanded the Epstein files release, which landed him in Trump’s crosshairs. He faced a tough primary challenge on Tuesday against a Trump-endorsed candidate.)

Without Trump’s support, Greene declined to seek reelection. But she has continued to joust with Trump, and she has said that “MAGA has become a cult.”

MAGA has always been a cult. But not until Trump turned on Greene did she bother to notice. That’s typical of Republicans who only tend to buck Trump on their way out of the door — like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not running for reelection. His scathing cross-examination of Kristi Noem in March probably helped get her fired as Homeland Security director.

Having lost his shot at another Senate term, Cassidy should also behave like a man with nothing to lose. Perhaps his concession speech was a preview.

“Let me just set the record straight: Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution,” Cassidy told his supporters. “And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Instead of a potential three-term senator, Cassidy is a cautionary tale for Republicans. He traded his conscience for capitulation to a man he knew was not qualified to be a leader. 

In search of his own self-preservation, Cassidy toadied up to a tyrant, placed Trump above country and the Constitution, and still ended up as a loser.