It’s finally reached this point, which is actually a good sign. It’s a baby step but I still think it’s meaningful:
There has been a recent uptick of Republicans using the rationale that it’s not Trump making unwise decisions — it’s that he’s received “bad advice” or is not actually serious about some of his most high-profile policy proposals.
Given the solid grip he’s had on the party for the past decade, direct criticism of Trump is a third rail of modern Republican politics, which has been on full display during his second term. Over the past year, Trump has proposed initiatives that have seemingly been at odds with conservatives and his own MAGA base, leaving them to blame external forces for him steering off course.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said Trump has gotten “bad advice” on issues ranging from a proposed U.S. takeover of Greenland; repeated attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell; criticisms of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on approving judicial nominees; and the pardon of Jan. 6 rioters.
“The president has been given bad advice, and whoever gave him bad advice should probably not be in that role,” Tillis told NBC News last week of Trump’s Greenland pronouncements.
Earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., directly blamed Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro for the plan to implement across-the-board tariffs. “Yeah, it’s not the president,” Paul said in April. “I mean, Navarro is a protectionist. He thinks that tariffs are good and that trade is bad, and so he’s wrong on the issues.”
Over the summer, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told NBC News that he thought the president shouldn’t have named Powell as Fed chair in 2018. But, he added, it wasn’t Trump’s fault.“Sometimes you make bad decisions and are given bad advice,” Moreno said. “And President Trump was obviously given bad advice by somebody he trusted.”
And as Trump has recently embraced some economic policy proposals that would usually come from progressives, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he thinks Trump is being steered in the wrong direction. “And so, you know, he may be getting advice on some of those issues, like, for example, the 10% cap on credit cards,” Thune said yesterday. “Don’t know where that came from. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.”
Lol. Bless their hearts.
They’re not wrong, actually. He is receiving terrible advice from the craven opportunists around him who have sucked up so successfully that the addled fool believes they have his best interest at heart. All he cares about now is building his legacy which he apparently thinks will be on the level of Alexander the Great. (More like Nero…) They know that if he can get gold trinkets, build buildings, throw his name on everything including foreign countries, and they flatter him like a god and they can pretty much convince him to do anything. That’s not to say that he isn’t actually for all that. He likes most of it and as for the rest he doesn’t care. But his focus is solely on himself and he’s literally convinced that he can do no wrong.
It’s a good thing that the Republicans are starting to do this because it’s their lily-livered way of finally trying to separate themselves from the president’s policies. It’s just possible they may even exert a tiny bit of their substantial power to stop him from completely blowing up the Atlantic alliance. Maybe. They get no kudos because these are very powerful people who could have put a stop to a lot of this a long time ago ( in fact, they could have prevented him from ever running again after January 6th) but better late than never.