Far-right WA-03 candidate Joe Kent lists employer as a ‘tech start-up’ that seems to barely exist

Posted on (Updated by David Neiwert

Joe Kent, the Donald Trump-endorsed Republican candidate in Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District, clearly has a lot to hide. He’s done his best to cover up his multifarious connections to the right-wing extremists—including white nationalists, Proud Boys, and their cohorts—who provided him with his earliest and most vociferous support. He downplays the reality that he is a carpetbagger who only moved to the district across the state border from his hometown of Portland, Oregon, in 2021.

Now there are serious questions with real legal ramifications about how he’s being bankrolled—including doubts that his supposed employer is a real company—and instead of clarifying the issue, he’s been busily throwing up a smokescreen to throw off reporters and the public.

Kent’s dubious employment was exposed this week by William Bredderman of The Daily Beast, who went searching for the company from which Kent claims he receives an annual income of over $120,000—and came up empty-handed. Kent’s campaign first responded by giving vague assurances the company exists, and subsequently handed Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) a handful of photos of tax documents that raised more questions than they answered. No reporter has yet been able to actually speak with anyone from the company, and his former campaign manager told OPB that Kent doesn’t appear to actually work, but instead campaigns full-time.

The company, Advanced Enterprise Solutions (AES), is ostensibly registered in Delaware and operates out of Virginia. Kent has described it as a “tech start-up,” and says it works with 5G infrastructure. He also has repeatedly called it American Enterprise Solutions, including on his campaign filings.

Bredderman’s report—which was based on searches from county-level business registration records to databases of government contractors—focused primarily on finding a company by the latter name, and he only was able to speak with people at companies with that name who either said they had never heard of Kent and didn’t employ him, or companies that had no employees. When OPB reporters came calling, however, the campaign explained that the company instead used the former name, and that the appearance of the latter on campaign documents, and its use by Kent in his speeches, was simply a mistake they intended to correct.

However, no reporter has yet been able to speak with anyone from AES. Its only online presence is a brief report in the OpenCorporates database. The Kent campaign directed OPB to the Washington, D.C., law firm Ambrose Partners, which it said represents the firm that employs Kent.

The attorneys would only confirm that Kent “is employed by a U.S. company,” and would not identify it as AES or any other entity. They said the company “does not wish to be identified, only because while their employees are free as individuals to participate in politics, they as a company do not.” The law firm added that the employer “fully supports his patriotic pursuit of civil service as they do for all citizens regardless of political affiliation.”

Kent’s campaign provided OPB with a handful of photos of tax documents only showing the company’s name as Advanced Enterprise Solutions, based in Virginia, while redacting its tax identification number, but showing that it had paid Kent a salary of $122,000 in 2021 and $111,000 in 2020. However, the company does not have an active business license in Virginia, having failed to pay its annual fee last August.

When the Kent campaign filed its financial disclosure in April 2022, it reported Kent’s salary from “American enterprise solutions.” Kent’s senior policy adviser, Matt Braynard, told OPB that it was simply a typographical error and blamed himself.

“The typo is my fault and I accept full responsibility for the transcription error,” Braynard explained via email. “We will be updating/amending the report post haste.”

But Kent himself repeatedly called the firm “American Enterprise Solutions” at campaign events. Federal records, as Bredderman reported, show that he used that name to list his employer from May 2020 to July 2021 in over 30 donations he made to politicians and political organizations.

Braynard told OPB that Kent’s job is legitimate and he works regularly, and so did Kent in a phone interview. “I do have flexibility, and I can dictate my schedule. I don’t have a boss, you know, making sure I clock in and clock out and report at a desk somewhere,” Kent told OPB. “But it requires, you know, a fair amount of work on a daily basis.”

However, Kent’s former campaign manager, Byron Sanford, who oversaw the candidate electoral efforts through all of 2021, tells a very different story. In an interview with OPB, he called Kent’s employment a “phantom job,” and said that he spends most of his time campaigning.

“I really don’t think he put any actual hours into doing anything other than campaigning,” Sanford said.

Sanford described how Kent’s schedule was packed with media appearances on right-wing media, including Tucker Carlson’s and Sean Hannity’s Fox News shows and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. He also packed his schedule with campaign appearances; Kent has boasted that he has held over 240 “town hall” events.

“I think people should know that (Kent’s) using these funds to run for office,” Sanford said. “That money is coming from somewhere. It’s coming from this company that he doesn’t even work for.”

Both Kent and Braynard, unsurprisingly, dismissed Sanford—who currently works in Nevada for a political action committee that works to elect Republicans—as a jilted former staffer. Kent insisted the company is real and provides analysis of telecommunications infrastructure, but mainly works internationally. Its executive, he said, is a man named Sean Reed who he met through other veterans like himself, and who hired him in August 2019. He says he is a project manager for AES.

“We’ll go out and do mapping and survey and say ‘This is what the infrastructure is, it’s capable of this,’” Kent said.

How often would say he’s clocked in for work? Kent told OPB that “it varies.”

“There’s definitely work weeks that are lighter,” he said. “But then there are, you know, 30-hour work weeks, 40-hour work weeks.”

According to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Kent’s campaign has raised nearly $3 million dollars to date. FEC regulations threaten stiff penalties for providing inaccurate information.

Kent was joined this week on the campaign trail by former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who recently renounced the Democratic Party and has subsequently become a favorite of far-right “populists” like Bannon, on whose podcast she also has appeared, while campaigning for Trumpist MAGA candidates.

“The reason I am here and not back home in Hawaii is because our very freedom and our very future is at stake in this election,” Gabbard told the crowd at a Kent event in the small town of Bucoda. “And I do not use those words lightly.”

Gabbard told the audience that Democrats and the Biden administration are undermining “God-given rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution,” with the help of with “Big Tech” internet and social-media companies.

This kind of conspiracism—ranging from COVID denialism to election denialism and avid support for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists—has been a central feature of Kent’s campaign since its outset. A veteran of military intelligence whose wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed in a Syrian suicide bombing in 2019, he first moved back to his native Portland that year and voted in Oregon’s elections in 2020, but moved to the rural Clark County town of Yacolt in early 2021, just before he announced his candidacy. He often has cited his military credentials to support the conspiracy theories he spouts—claiming variously that COVID vaccines are a globalist plot, that the 2020 election was fraudulently decided, that the FBI orchestrated the Jan. 6 insurrection—in his campaign speeches and at his “town halls.”

Braynard, who replaced Sanford as Kent’s campaign manager in January 2022, is a former Trump aide who organized a protest in Washington, D.C., against the continued detention of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, who they called “political prisoners.” One of the keynote speakers at that September 2021 event was Joe Kent. Braynard is also a onetime campaigner for white-nationalist hero Patrick Buchanan, and worked for Trump’s campaign in 2015-16 (he says he was fired for seeking a raise). He has played a role in efforts to undo Trump’s 2020 defeat, including serving as an “expert witness” in challenges to election results in states like Arizona and Georgia.

Kent is so deeply immured in the conspiracist swamps that some of his early supporters have turned on him, claiming—mostly on the basis of his deep connections with military intelligence—that he’s secretly a CIA operative. One of them site up a website devoted to those claims and promotes a #JoeKentIsCIA hashtag, claiming Kent is a “deep state puppet.”

Moreover, Kent’s associations with conspiracists and far-right activists, including white nationalists, are extensive and varied. This is particularly the case with Kent’s long association with Joey Gibson, the founder and leader of the street-brawling group Patriot Prayer, which has an extensive history with a rotating cast of violent extremists and white nationalists. Many of Kent’s early campaign appearances—including a January 2022 rally against the COVID-19 vaccine based on misinformation—featured Gibson joining him on stage as a speaker.

Joe Kent, left, with Joey Gibson, right, at an event honoring a slain Patriot Prayer member.

Kent also was photographed socializing with Gibson and several of his Patriot Prayer cohorts at an August gathering at Cottonwood Beach near Washougal to honor the memory of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the group who had been shot to death a year beforehand by a Portland resident who was tracked down and killed in short order. Similarly, Kent shows up in a Patriot Prayer group selfie taken by one of the group’s more notorious figures, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, a Proud Boy currently awaiting trial on multiple felony assault counts.

Later, Kent got into a well-publicized spat with notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes after the latter’s infamous America First PAC convention at which a number of Republicans spoke. Fuentes also caught considerable attention for praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin and comparing him favorably to Adolf Hitler.

These remarks sent Kent—who has continuously embraced the America First label and its associated “Groyper army,” and reportedly had conversed with Fuentes about social media strategy—running for cover. Fuentes went on his popular podcast and described his conversation with Kent. One of Kent’s Republican opponents called on him to denounce the association with Fuentes.

Kent, who has a Twitter following of 125,000, claimed his opponents were “spreading lies about me,” and insisted that he condemned Fuentes’ politics. He said he didn’t seek the white nationalist’s endorsement “due (to) his focus on race/religion.”

About a month before the dispute broke out, Kent had been interviewed by David Carlson of the Groyper-adjacent white nationalist group American Populist Union (which shortly thereafter rebranded itself as American Virtue), a kind of competing far-right organization that embraces most of the ideological fundamentals of white nationalism but tries to eschew the incendiary rhetoric of groups like Fuentes.

After the feud broke out with the Groypers—culminating in Fuentes taunting Kent, “You’re not for white people. You’re not for America. You’re not for Christianity. You’re not for our heritage”—Carlson reinterviewed Kent, who repeated his reasons for distancing himself from Fuentes, more for strategic reasons than ideological ones.

Kent also began appearing on a variety of far-right programs with nationwide reach. He was a guest of Infowars’ Owen Shroyer on two occasions. He started appearing regularly on ex-Trump aide Bannon’s War Room podcast. On one of those occasions, he promoted his and Gibson’s January 2022 rally against “COVID tyranny” and the “forced quarantine.”

Kent defeated incumbent Republican Jaime Herrera-Beutler in the July primary after she was targeted by Trump for having voted for his impeachment in February 2021, and promptly began working hard to cover up these connections. He now faces a Democratic opponent, Marie Glusenkamp Pérez, who finished with the most votes in the top-two primary. However, Kent will be favored in a district that has trended Republican over the past couple of decades.

Gluesenkamp Pérez said the November race will be “a national bellwether for the direction of our country,” and denounced his ties to far-right nationalists, saying his “unapologetic extremism and divisive approach demonstrate he is unfit for public office.”

Ballots have already been mailed out in Washington state.

Fight the tide of Republican extremism with a better Democrat, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. Pitch in to her 2022 victory fund.

Joe Kent’s numerous far-right associations inevitably drag WA Republicans into abyss with him

Posted on by David Neiwert

Hardcore MAGA candidates on the fall ballot present a dilemma for Republican Party officials in blue states: As their nominees, party leaders are obligated to get behind them and offer at least nominal logistical support, but their inevitable extremism threatens to taint every other Republican by association since the bulk of those candidates are furiously working to downplay the GOP’s MAGA radicalism. Inevitably, the extremism wins out.

Exhibit A is Joe Kent, the GOP congressional nominee in southwestern Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. Kent’s long-running propensity for associations with right-wing extremists—including Proud Boys and white nationalists—wound up casting a shadow over the state Republican Party this week when it was revealed that a neo-Nazi who interviewed Kent for his podcast had also been hired, and then abruptly fired, as a campaign worker by the Washington GOP.

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Greyson Arnold, who runs a white nationalist media outlet called Pure Politics (booted from Twitter, but still present on Telegram) based in Arizona, not only interviewed Kent for his podcast in person in a small town in Washington, but actively campaigned for awhile for both Kent and the Republican Party, Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo reports.

The Washington GOP cut Arnold a check for $821.87 on July 15 for his campaign work. But a state Republican spokesperson said he had been fired shortly after being hired.

“When the Washington State Republican Party became aware of this individual staffer’s conduct and views expressed on social media, we terminated the employee,” Communications Director Ben Gonzalez told Petrizzo. “He no longer works for the party. The stated viewpoints in question do not reflect the values of the Republican Party.”

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski had previously reported that not only had Arnold been photographed with Kent at an April fundraiser, he also canvassed for GOP candidates with Washington State Young Republicans. At a Trump rally in Michigan, he was photographed wearing a Joe Kent shirt. In April, according to the Seattle Times’ Jim Brunner, Arnold also posted a photo taken at a King County Republican Party fundraiser, saying he was there “after a personal invite.” Arnold was also photographed with Kent at his victory party in July.

Arnold apparently traveled to Yelm—a small town south of Olympia—for a Kent campaign event in July to interview him there, and had to ask Kent what town they were in. They eagerly conversed about the “America First agenda”—which Republican officeholders like Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene use to describe their Trumpian caucus in the House, but which also indicates their allegiance to Nicholas Fuentes’ white nationalist organization of the same name, and with which all of them have associated. Gosar in particular has become white nationalists’ favorite Congress member, and Kent told Arnold that he had been getting advice from Gosar while visiting Arizona.

“Paul Gosar has been excellent, obviously immigration—border state down there. He took me down to the border, so I got a firsthand feel of all the crises we face there,” said Kent. “Representative Gosar also has some awesome legislation he’s proposed about getting rid of a lot of the legal immigration.”

On his “Pure Politics” Telegram channel, as well as his now-suspended Twitter account, “American Greyson” (as he refers to himself) has shared posts describing Nazis as the “pure race,” and complaining that Americans should have sided with the Germans in World War II. He also has referenced antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming there were “Jewish plans to genocide the German people,” and shared a quote saying that the “Jewish led colored hordes of the Earth” were attempting to exterminate white people. Arnold has advocated shooting refugees and killing undocumented immigrants.

Arnold also praised Hitler on Twitter: “He is definitely a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand, the events of Weimar Germany are not taught for a reason,” he wrote.

When the association became public, Kent’s campaign tried desperately to create distance between the candidate and Arnold. Spokesperson Matt Braynard at first told Kaczynski that the campaign “does not do background checks on the thousands of people who’ve asked to take selfies with Joe.”

Then, when the video of the Yelm interview—in which it was fairly clear the two were acquainted, and it’s unclear how or why Arnold would have made it to the locale without help from the campaign or Kent—Braynard retorted: “Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was when he encountered him on the street and Joe Kent has repeatedly condemned the statements that the individual is accused of making.”

The campaign added that Arnold “is not in any way part of our campaign nor would we allow our campaign to be associated with someone who has that background. We also have no record of any contribution from that individual and if we had received one, we’d return it.”

Arnold created a stir in Oregon in 2021 when he interviewed one of the state’s top Republican officials, Solomon Yue, for his podcast. Yue promised on the podcast to use his influence within the GOP to promote “America First” candidates. “If somebody like the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) came to us, asking for favors both in terms of money and in terms of a boots on the ground, I would have leveraged that,” Yue told Arnold. “I would ask, ‘What are you going to give to me in return,’ right? In return, you cannot support, in the primary, you can’t support your incumbents. You have to allow people to decide, and Republican voters to decide.”

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Arnold is one of Fuentes’ top lieutenants in America First. However, in February, Kent got into a well-publicized spat with Fuentes after the latter’s infamous America First PAC convention at which a number of Republicans spoke. Fuentes also caught considerable attention for praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin and comparing him favorably to Adolf Hitler.

These remarks sent Kent—who has continuously embraced the America First label, and reportedly had conversed with Fuentes about social media strategy—running for cover. Fuentes went on his popular podcast and described the call with Kent. One of Kent’s Republican opponents called on him to denounce the association with Fuentes.

Kent, who has a Twitter following of 125,000, claimed his opponents were “spreading lies about me,” and insisted that he condemned Fuentes’ politics. He said he didn’t seek the white nationalist’s endorsement “due (to) his focus on race/religion.”

About a month before the dispute broke out, Kent had been interviewed by David Carlson of the Groyper-adjacent white nationalist group American Populist Union (which shortly thereafter rebranded itself as American Virtue), a kind of competing far-right organization that embraces most of the ideological fundamentals of white nationalism but tries to eschew the incendiary rhetoric of groups like Fuentes.

After the feud broke out with the Groypers—culminating in Fuentes taunting Kent, “You’re not for white people. You’re not for America. You’re not for Christianity. You’re not for our heritage”—Carlson reinterviewed Kent, who repeated his reasons for distancing himself from Fuentes, more for strategic reasons than ideological ones. He told Carlson:

Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group. They have to be very careful about the way they couch that and the way they frame that, obviously in terms of messaging and in terms of getting credibility. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As far as me running as a candidate, running out there and saying this is all about white people, that does not seem like a winning strategy.

Moreover, Kent’s associations with conspiracists and far-right activists, including white nationalists, are extensive and varied. This is particularly the case with Kent’s long association with Joey Gibson, the founder and leader of the street-brawling group Patriot Prayer, which has an extensive history with a rotating cast of violent extremists and white nationalists. Many of Kent’s early campaign appearances—including a January 2022 rally against the COVID-19 vaccine based on misinformation—featured Gibson joining him on stage as a speaker.

By that summer Kent had formed an alliance with Gibson, both appearing at various COVID-denialist events as speakers, including an “Unmasked Unjabbed Uncensored Rally” at Vancouver’s Esther Short Park in August. Kent also was photographed socializing with Gibson and several of his Patriot Prayer cohorts at an August gathering at Cottonwood Beach near Washougal to honor the memory of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the group who had been shot to death a year beforehand by a Portland resident who was tracked down and killed in short order. Kent also shows up in a Patriot Prayer group selfie taken by one of Patriot Prayer’s more notorious figures, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, currently awaiting trial on multiple felony assault counts.

Gibson regularly promoted Kent’s campaign on social media. After Gibson spoke at a Kent fundraiser 2021, Kent lavished him with praise, explaining that Gibson “defended this community when our community was under assault from antifa.”

Campaign finance disclosures reveal Kent recently paid $11,375 for “consulting” over the past four months to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a law enforcement report and was charged with cyberstalking his ex-girlfriend in 2018. The charges were dismissed in late 2019. But a judge in Vancouver, Washington, issued an order of protection requiring Jorgensen to stay away from her, records show.

Donald Trump endorsed Kent in June, largely because he had openly condemned the vote by the incumbent Republican, Jaime Herrera-Beutler, to impeach him in February 2021. Within a matter of weeks, he had financial backing from pro-Trump billionaires like Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel.

Kent began appearing on a variety of far-right programs with nationwide reach. He was a guest of Infowars’ Owen Shroyer on two occasions. He started appearing regularly on ex-Trump aide Stephen Bannon’s War Room podcast. On one of those occasions, he promoted his and Gibson’s January 2022 rally against “COVID tyranny” and the “forced quarantine.”

After Kent defeated Herrera-Beutler in the July primary, he began working hard to cover up these connections. He now faces a Democratic opponent, Marie Glusenkamp Pérez, who finished with the most votes in the top-two primary. However, Kent will be favored in a district that has trended Republican over the past couple of decades.

Gluesenkamp Perez said the November race will be “a national bellwether for the direction of our country,” and denounced his ties to far-right nationalists, saying his “unapologetic extremism and divisive approach demonstrate he is unfit for public office.”

For his part, Kent has simply doubled down. Appearing on Bannon’s podcast in August, he declared: “We are at war.”

“The left isn’t the left of 10, 15 years ago,” Kent went on. “These guys don’t care about winning arguments anymore. … It’s a total, full-frontal assault, and they’re going after every one of us.”

“So what we have to do when we take back power … we have to play smash-mouth.”

Establishment Democrats, however, do not appear to be prepared for such tactics, considering that they have been slow to rally behind Gluesenkamp Pérez. The Democratic Central Campaign Committee, for example, has not invested in her campaign even though it’s rated a tossup by many pollsters and would be a prime opportunity for Democrats to take a Republican seat. A number of prominent Republicans have announced their support for the Democrat in the race.

“On the issues of the day, [Kent] is a radical extremist, and he continues to show poor judgment with the people he associates with,” GOP fundraiser David Nierenberg said. “I don’t want to be represented by somebody like that.”

Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, has been campaigning heavily for Gluesenkamp Pérez. Noting the size and energy of her campaign rallies, as well as her quality as a candidate, he told Crosscut’s Joseph O’Sullivan that abandoning the field would be “a mistake.”

“I'd encourage them to consider what folks on the ground here see,” Ferguson said. “And what I see is a race that's winnable.”

Fight the tide of Republican extremism with a better Democrat, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. Pitch in to her 2022 victory fund.

After an eruption of even more scandals among Republican Senate candidates, FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich returns to The Downballot to discuss the effect these sorts of scandals can have on competitive races; whether Democrats stand a chance to keep the House; and the different ways pollsters create likely voter models.

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After beating incumbent, Joe Kent aims to be both Trump’s guy in Congress and the Proud Boys’ too

Posted on by David Neiwert

Joe Kent checks all the boxes: He spouts extremist rhetoric that reflects a white nationalist worldview. He associates with far-right extremists, including Proud Boys and their neofascist street-brawling cohorts. He insists that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, angrily defends the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as innocent, patriotic Americans, and is currently demanding the disembowelment of the FBI and the Justice Department for their recent search of Mar-a-Lago. Naturally, he also sports Trump’s avid endorsement.

So it wasn’t terribly shocking when the final results of last week’s Washington state primary election showed that Kent, a political novice, had defeated six-term Republican incumbent Jamie Herrera-Beutler after she had made the politically fatal mistake of voting to impeach Trump in February 2021. But his victory represents much more than just Trump’s revenge: It manifests the intimate and profound relationship between Trumpism and the far-right extremism that has overwhelmed the Republican Party.

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Kent, an Iraq War veteran who served 11 tours of combat, led the parade of Republicans who showed up on Fox News this week to denounce the Department of Justice and FBI for serving a search warrant at Trump’s Florida estate. Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s nightly program on Fox—where Kent had previously appeared to attack the Jan. 6 committee—he essentially reiterated his tweet from earlier that day claiming that “we must bring the national security state to heel or we won’t have a country anymore,” and that “we start with the FBI & DOJ.”

He told Carlson’s fill-in host, Will Cain:

We’ve seen the complete and total weaponization of our national security state. You mentioned how this all began with the Russiagate sham hoax and we saw the national security state at the highest levels weaponized against President Trump and his campaign throughout his administration. And now with the narrative coming from Jan. 6—and make no mistake, this is where the narrative really really was fortified to turn these potent tools against not just President Trump, but many of his top advisers, people who were working on the ground Jan. 6, and then people who were put away, thrown essentially into political prisons without any kind of due process.

Now the national security state continues to be on the hunt against President Trump, or now even all the way down to parents who show up to school board meetings. We have to realize that we are at war. When we take back the House in 2023, bringing the national security state to heel must be our top priority. Any Republican who is not ready for that fight is unfit for duty.

In June, Kent had appeared on Fox News with Carlson himself as they attacked the Jan. 6 committee hearings—and Republican Liz Cheney particularly—for conducting what they considered one-sided hearings. Carlson complained that the hearings would only be worthwhile “if there was somebody defending the rest of the county up there, and there doesn’t seem to be.”

Kent replied:

No, and that’s supposed to be the Republican Party, and that’s a big reason I jumped in and decided to run for Congress. The woman who I voted for, the Republican I voted for, voted for the impeachment of President Trump, which gave this Jan. 6 narrative, which is being smeared against every conservative or anybody who has an issue with the way things are being conducted in the country or the way the last election went, it’s being used to turn the national security state against us. She voted for that impeachment, and then she voted for the formation of this very sham trial, Soviet kangaroo court Soviet-style.

Carlson and Kent were particularly put off by how Cheney shamed Republicans at the end of that day’s hearing. Kent huffed a thin rationalization and then threatened Democrats with dire consequences in classic conspiracist “Patriot” movement fashion:

She also brings up this whole, ‘Oh, it must be a Trump thing.’ No, it’s not a Trump thing. There is, the fact of the matter, the reason people were there on that day of Jan. 6, is that the American people, a vast majority of them, did not feel that their voices were heard at the election box, and therefore things started to get a little bit dicey.

And if our ruling class won’t actually go back and adjudicate what happened with our elections, our system is going to continue to decay. And no matter how much people in Congress lecture us or ignore these problems, our system will continue to crumble, until we get people in there, like I think we’re going to have this November, that can actually say, ‘Hey, we hear you, we’re going to go back, we’re going to look at the election of 2020, we’re going to have a full committee, we’re going to keep the Jan. 6 committee going, we’re going to disclose to the American people once and for all what really happened.’ Disclose all the footage. Disclose the government’s involvement.

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Those far-right notes weren’t an accident: Kent’s entire background in politics is imbued with his close relationship to far-right Patriot movement activists and their Proud Boys cohorts. As Brian Slodysko’s recent profile of Kent for the Associated Press lays out in gory detail, Kent’s associations with conspiracists and far-right activists, including white nationalists, are extensive and varied.

Of those soon facing elections, Kent stands out for the breadth of his ties to a deep-seated extremist fringe that has long existed in the Pacific Northwest but is often obscured by the region’s overwhelming liberal politics.

Campaign finance disclosures reveal Kent recently paid $11,375 for “consulting” over the past four months to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a law enforcement report and was charged with cyberstalking his ex-girlfriend in 2018. The charges were dismissed in late 2019. But a judge in Vancouver, Washington, issued an order of protection requiring Jorgensen to stay away from her, records show.

More to the point is Kent’s long association with Joey Gibson, the founder and leader of the street-brawling group Patriot Prayer, which has an extensive history with a rotating cast of violent extremists and white nationalists. Many of Kent’s early campaign appearances—including a January 2022 rally against the COVID-19 vaccine based on misinformation—featured Gibson joining him on stage as a speaker.

Kent announced his candidacy in February 2021 and made his first campaign foray with a video explaining that he had been inspired to run following his return to the Pacific Northwest and the Portland, Oregon, area where he had grown up.

“I left my job in the intelligence community and returned home to the Pacific Northwest. But peace wasn’t in store for us. Shortly after we returned home I watched Portland and Seattle devolve into nightly riots and lawlessness. Once beautiful cities destroyed by the left’s quest for power. I wanted to do something to stop the downward spiral that our society was heading.”

He went on: “The events of 2020, including the lockdowns, riots and a presidential election manipulated by a cabal of technocrats and bureaucrats followed by a sham impeachment—a sham impeachment that our congresswoman voted for—made it clear to me that I had to go forward and fight once more.”

By that summer Kent had formed an alliance with Gibson, both appearing at various COVID-denialist events as speakers, including an “Unmasked Unjabbed Uncensored Rally” at Vancouver’s Esther Short Park in August. Kent also was photographed socializing with Gibson and several of his Patriot Prayer cohorts at an August gathering at Cottonwood Beach near Washougal to honor the memory of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the group who had been shot to death a year beforehand by a Portland resident who was tracked down and killed in short order. Kent also shows up in a Patriot Prayer group selfie taken by one of Patriot Prayer’s more notorious figures, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, currently awaiting trial on multiple felony assault counts.

By then, Kent had already secured Trump’s endorsement by coming out early as a critic of Herrera-Beutler for her vote to impeach Trump. A July Washington Post piece quoted Kent, speaking at conspiracist “America First” rallies and tweeting: “We need to fight for election integrity. Do not reward incumbents that refused to contest the 2020 election.”

Trump endorsed Kent in June. Within a matter of weeks, he had financial backing from pro-Trump billionaires like Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel.

Kent began appearing on a variety of far-right programs with nationwide reach. He was a guest of Infowars’ Owen Shroyer on two occasions. He started appearing regularly on ex-Trump aide Stephen Bannon’s War Room podcast. On one of those occasions, he promoted his and Gibson’s January 2022 rally against “COVID tyranny” and the “forced quarantine.”

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Kent was one of the featured speakers at a September 2021 rally in support of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists currently awaiting trial for their actions that day, calling them “political prisoners.”

“Our fellow citizens when their constitutional rights are taken, if we do not speak out against that we are guilty of standing by and watching those rights erode,” he said, claiming that Jan. 6 rioters were “detained and have their due process denied.”

“That’s not the way this works—this is a slippery slope and we are on it right now,” he said, telling the audience that the Capitol Police officers who defended Congress from the rioters “are not our enemy.”

Our enemies are those that will deny people their constitutional rights, and will take a narrative that labels all of us as terrorists or insurrectionists for just questioning things. It’s our God-given right and duty as Americans to actually question things, to question the narrative. It’s our job.

In February, he got into a well-publicized spat with white nationalist Nick Fuentes after the latter’s infamous America First PAC convention at which a number of Republicans spoke. Fuentes also caught considerable attention for praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin and comparing him favorably to Adolf Hitler.

These remarks sent Kent—who had previously embraced the “America First” label, and reportedly had conversed with Fuentes about social-media strategy—running for cover. Fuentes went on his popular podcast and described the call with Kent. One of Kent’s Republican opponents called on him to denounce the association with Fuentes.

Kent, who has a Twitter following of 125,000, claimed his opponents were “spreading lies about me,” and insisted that he condemned Fuentes’ politics. He said he didn’t seek the white nationalist’s endorsement “due (to) his focus on race/religion.”

About a month before the dispute broke out, Kent had been interviewed by David Carlson of the Groyper-adjacent white nationalist group American Populist Union (which shortly thereafter rebranded itself as American Virtue), a kind of competing far-right organization that embraces most of the ideological fundamentals of white nationalism but tries to eschew the incendiary rhetoric of groups like Fuentes.

After the feud broke out with the Groypers—culminating in Fuentes taunting Kent: “You’re not for white people. You’re not for America. You’re not for Christianity. You’re not for our heritage”—Carlson reinterviewed Kent, who repeated his reasons for distancing himself from Fuentes.

But it was simultaneously clear that their differences were more stylistic than ideological. Kent assiduously avoided any direct endorsement of white nationalist views on race and demographics, but his own previously stated positions (particularly his endorsement of an “immigration moratorium,” a longtime white nationalist agenda item) made it hard to run too far away.

Kent ended up agreeing that he doesn’t see “anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” that America’s racial demographics should remain in their current state, and that “legacy Americans whose ancestors fought in the American Revolution” should have their needs prioritized over those of (in the words of a questioner) “Chinese-speaking anchor baby citizens.” These are all classic white nationalist positions.

The interview revealed Kent’s own inner white nationalist:

Carlson: If the constituency of the movement is young white Christian men that would be true the same way the constituency of BLM is black people, you know that doesn’t mean it’s only for those people, right, there’s also like white liberals that self-hate that are part of BLM.

Kent: Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group. They have to be very careful about the way they couch that and the way they frame that, obviously in terms of messaging and in terms of getting credibility. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As far as me running as a candidate, running out there and saying this is all about white people, that does not seem like a winning strategy.

Carlson seemed unpersuaded, and eventually posed a question shaped by white nationalists’ favorite conspiracy theory, that of “white genocide”:

Carlson: We’re talking about demographics here. American demographics right now are like what, 70 percent white, 30 percent minority. Um, I mean, at what point have we lost America?

Kent: It has a lot more to do with, like, who are we bringing in. I think America is very lucky in the fact that like the people to our south the Hispanic community most of them are Christians, they’re Catholic right, so I think that’s why they are so easy to kind of absorb. Again I don’t want to absorb all. But we are very lucky compared to Europe who their version of Mexico is Africa and the Middle East where there’s drastic cultural and religious differences, so we’re fortunate in that place. I don’t know what the ideal ratio is, I would never want to look at it in terms of racial percentages, I would want to keep it very close to the way it is right now.

After the Associated Press published Slodysko’s revealing portrait of Kent, his campaign was dismissive. “The establishment is attacking me b/c they fear us, 1 day they say I’m a Bernie bro, the next they copy a page out of the dem’s play book & call me a nazi,” he tweeted. “I’m targeted at my town halls by the far left & real racists—I take them all on b/c truth is on my side.”

He now faces a Democratic opponent, Marie Glusenkamp Perez, who finished with the most votes in the top-two primary. However, Kent will be favored in a district that has traditionally voted Republican.

Gluesenkamp Perez said the November race will be “a national bellwether for the direction of our country,” and denounced his ties to far-right nationalists, saying his “unapologetic extremism and divisive approach demonstrate he is unfit for public office.”

For his part, Kent has simply doubled down. Appearing on Bannon’s podcast this week, he declared: “We are at war.”

“The left isn’t the left of 10, 15 years ago,” Kent went on. “These guys don’t care about winning arguments anymore. … It’s a total, full-frontal assault, and they’re going after every one of us.”

“So what we have to do when we take back power … we have to play smash-mouth.”

If Kent does win this fall, he’ll certainly have one distinction: He will be the closest thing the Proud Boys get to having “their guy” in Congress.

Trump’s fanatical supporters ready to ‘lock and load’ for ‘civil war’ after Mar-a-Lago searched

Posted on (Updated by David Neiwert

America’s right-wing extremists have been hankering for a civil war for a long time now, and in particular have been eager to start using their guns in defense of Donald Trump ever since he came onto the political scene. They tried to start a civil war on Trump’s behalf after he lost on Jan. 6, 2021.

So to no one’s great surprise, they’re currently flooding social media and right-wing media bandwidth with vows to begin a civil war on Trump’s behalf after the FBI executed a search warrant at the ex-president’s Florida waterfront estate, Mar-a-Lago, and seized evidence in a yet-unspecified investigation. The rhetoric is mostly a mixture of over-the-top hysteria and dark threats, and it’s being wielded by everyone from congressional Republicans to anonymous militiamen.

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Back when Trump was facing his first impeachment, he tweeted out a hint that the proceedings might unleash a civil war—which did unleash a deluge of militiamen and Trump supporters vowing to do exactly that. The sentiments they voiced then were remarkably similar to the threats of violence directly preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Right after news of the Mar-a-Lago search broke, mentions of “civil war” on Twitter suddenly spiked, as Donie O’Sullivan reported.

The most prominent elected Republican to weigh in on the matter was Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose tweets became increasingly militant as the day progressed. They started out in typically unhinged fashion:

The FBI is raiding President Trump’s home in Maralago!

This is the rogue behavior of communist countries, NOT the United States of America!!!

These are the type of things that happen in countries during civil war.

The political persecution MUST STOP!!!

Later in the day, Greene’s tone became threatening: “What is happening will NOT be tolerated!!!” she wrote. “We are coming.”

A Florida Republican legislator running for Congress, Anthony Sabatini, wants the Florida state government to get involved and protect Trump from the evil federal government:

It’s time for us in the Florida Legislature to call an emergency legislative session & amend our laws regarding federal agencies

Sever all ties with DOJ immediately

Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight.

Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who is also running for Congress in Florida, was even more incendiary:

Time to take the gloves off. It’s been time. If you’re a freedom loving American, you must remove the words decorum and civility from your vocabulary. This is a WAR!

And it’s time to obliterate these communists. Tonight they attacked President Trump. If you sit on the sidelines and refuse to act, they will attack you and your family next.

What will you choose? Will you be a fighter? Or will you be a victim of the Deep State?

Arizona’s far-right Republican nominee for the governor’s seat, Kari Lake, posted a statement warning of the nation’s imminent demise:

This is one of the darkest days in American history: the day our Government, originally created by the people, turned against us. This illegitimate, corrupt Regime hates America and has weaponized the entirety of the Federal Government to take down President Donald Trump.

Our Government is rotten to the core. These Tyrants will stop at nothing to silence the Patriots who are working hard to save America. This is an incredibly horrendous abuse of power. If we accept it, America is dead.

We will not accept it. The 10th Amendment can and will save our Republic and the road to stripping the Feds of power travels right through Arizona.

We must fire the Federal Government. As Governor, I will fight these Tyrants with every fiber of my being. America—dark days lie ahead for us. May God protect us and save our Country.

Trump-loving right-wing pundits were similarly running around with their hair on fire, urging their audiences to prepare for war—and not just the metaphorical kind.

Jesse Kelly—the right-wing radio talk-show host who believes fascism is an inevitability for the American right, and is good with that—gave a shout-out to the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” who have threatened to get involved in the nation’s election apparatus in defense of Trump. “Do you have a county sheriff who will stand between you and a federal agent trying to violate your rights? If you don’t, you better get one. Or better yet, BECOME one,” Kelly tweeted.

He later tweeted out a quote with threatening implications: “Do not quote laws to men with swords.’ -Pompey Magnus,” Kelly tweeted.

Far-right pundit Candace Owens had a regular meltdown on Twitter:

The FBI must be legally and formally dissolved.

What happened to President Trump is positively stunning and a mark of unchecked government power.

I no longer recognize the country I live in. Left or right, we must all come together to fight this evil.

Meanwhile, longtime Fox News host Monica Crowley decided it was time to throw down the gauntlet: “This is it,” she tweeted. “This is the hill to die on.”

White nationalist pundit Jack Posobiec, who now hosts a daily show for the right-wing campus organization Turning Point USA, posted a series of tweets that essentially urged his audience to gird their loins for a real shooting war:

Are you ready.

The federal security state has declared war on Donald J Trump and his supporters.

The country you grew up in no longer exists.

We are living through the times our forefathers warned of.

Preemptive coup.

Welcome to the end game.

Longtime conspiracy theorist Steven Crowder’s unhinged tweet was shorter and more succinct: “Tomorrow is war,” he wrote. “Sleep well.”

The ominous suggestions that the base become engaged in violence could be heard on Fox News as well thanks to host Jesse Waters, who told his guest, Dan Bongino:

I think there is going to be some more action you are going to see out on the streets from the base after they see this break tonight... They've had it with what this corrupt government and what the FBI has done.

Another Fox News host, Mark Levin, claimed that investigating Trump was an attack on the nation itself:

This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period. And it’s not just an attack on Donald Trump. It’s an attack on everybody who supports him. It’s an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties. I haven’t heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the Senate! Have you? Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they’re weak. That’s why.

Onetime Trump aide Sebastian Gorka tweeted: “This is the real insurrection.”

On Trump’s social media site Truth Social, radio host Wayne Root, Trump’s longtime fan and supporter, wrote: “This is now officially Nazi Germany Gestapo meets Soviet Union KGB.”

Trumpist pundit Carmine Sabia also penned a series of increasingly unhinged tweets to his 80,000-plus followers:

It is time for a #NationalDivorce before there is a Civil War. We cannot be a part of the same nation anymore.

And if I haven’t been direct enough let me say it again. If you are not for Donald Trump you are my enemy. I did not believe that four hours ago. But I believe it now. This was a gigantic fucking mistake Democrats.

This is war. Pick a side. There is no gray area.

The America that you knew and loved as a kid is gone. It’s gone and it’s never coming back.

These same sentiments could be found throughout right-wing social media, being voiced by ordinary randos and trolls at large and often at high volume.

  • “The Dems are starting a civil war.”
  • “Is this the first shot of a civil war? Is this the tyranny mentioned in the 2nd Amendment? The Founding Fathers would have started shooting a long time ago!”
  • “It’s time for a civil war. The deep state has proven they are real, they are corrupt, they are dictators.”
  • “Civil war! Pick up arms people!”
  • “The fbi just declared war on the republic. Treat them accordingly.”
  • “A civil war is coming after what the DOJ did today.”
  • “August 8, 2022 will be remembered forever. The start of Civil War II.”
  • “Our government is pushing for a civil war. Americans are only going to take so much.”
  • “I already bought my ammo”
  • “Civil War 2.0 just kicked off.”
  • “Let’s do the war.”
  • “One step closer to a kinetic civil war.”
  • “Lock and load”
  • “Let history show that Biden and his DOJ drew first blood with this raid on Mar-a-Lago.”
  • “FBI is headed by Jews. I warned you about these demons.”
  • “We’re at war.”
  • “It’s going to be wonderful to see FBI agents get killed in the future!”

“Prior to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, we saw unprecedented plans online to conduct real-world violence,” observed Advance Democracy president Daniel J. Jones, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staff member, in a statement to NBC News. "The online outrage was based on false allegations of voter fraud and bizarre theories of coordinated government corruption. The raid by the FBI has provoked similar violent rhetoric online—including from at least one individual charged in relation to the insurrection on January 6th.”

Jones added: “The promotion of broad government conspiracy theories by political leaders, elected officials, and political entertainers continues to undermine our democracy—and will likely lead to additional political violence.”

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

Republican politicians running ads on white-nationalist platform Gab, including Herschel Walker

Posted on by David Neiwert

As if the radicalization of the Republican Party weren’t already clearly enough established, a number of GOP candidates—notably, ex-football star Herschel Walker, the nominee in the race against incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat—have begun advertising on the white-nationalist-friendly platform Gab.

The list also includes some less surprising names, such as Republicans’ go-to white nationalist in the House, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and the QAnon-loving keynote speaker for the white-nationalist “America First” conference earlier this year, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

As Alex Kaplan reports at Media Matters, Gab last August introduced a new feature enabling people to advertise on the site. Founder Andrew Torba called it “a huge step forward for our vision of a parallel economy” comprising clients who have been removed from other platforms for terms-of-use violations.

Walker has been among the more prolific advertisers. One ad, saying “we need your support today,” depicts Warnock as “celebrity funded” and “celebrity approved,” while another shows a lineup of liberal celebrities who have donated to Warnock’s campaign and asking, “Georgia Values? Or Hollywood Values?,” adding: “I need your help to WIN.”

Other “Team Walker” ads on Gab claim “the race is in a dead heat,” claim that “the Liberal Media is out to get me,” and “the road to defeating the Biden Agenda runs right through Georgia.”

As The Informant’s Nick Martin notes, it’s not clear whether Walker himself has an account at Gab. One unverified page with 7,000 followers uses his name and photo, but it has only posted there once—three days after the Jan. 6 insurrection, when its owner wrote: "Hey everyone. Coming on over to Gab after the sad news about Parler."

Among the other Republican candidates advertising on Gab has been Jerrod Sussler of Washington state’s 4th Congressional District, who is seeking to unseat incumbent Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse, who was targeted for primary defeat by Donald Trump after he voted for Trump’s impeachment in January 2021.

Gosar, who also delivered a taped speech at the white-nationalist America First convention in February, asked “every America First Patriot” to chip in to defend his reelection bid. He has previously praised Gab as comprising “people who respect real diversity, diversity of opinion, thoughts, and views.”

Greene’s ads on Gab have featured her aiming a .50-caliber sniper rifle (“Enter to win MTG’s gun!”) and posing with former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka with an “Impeach Biden” sign. “Joe Biden must be impeached,” the text reads. “Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year. NOW … before it is too late!”

Gab established itself in 2016 as a friendly environment for right-wing extremists. “When a group of people are being systematically dehumanized and labeled as the alphabet soup of phobias,” Torba wrote, “they will look for a place that will allow them to speak freely without censorship and devoid of Social Justice bullying.”

The reality is that the site has been a free-for-all of bigotry, conspiracism, and violent rhetoric. Posts with headlines like “Satanic PizzaGate Is Going Viral Worldwide (Elites Are Terrified)” are standard fare. Antisemitism flourishes in the comments, where a mere downvote can get users accused of being a “#Jew.”

Pittsburgh mass shooter Robert Bowers was a regular Gab user, and posted his final threat (“Screw your optics. I’m going in”) to the site before embarking on his 2018 rampage inside a synagogue that left 11 people dead. Gab was largely deplatformed in the aftermath of that incident, but eventually found a hosting service with the Northwest-based Epik, which also hosts Alex Jones’ Infowars operation.

Torba’s own antisemitism is well established. Speaking at the February America First gathering, he told the audience he “rebukes the Synagogue of Satan.” He also called for “a parallel Christian society,” because “we are fed up with the Judeo-Bolshevik one.”

When criticized, Torba responded: “Sadly many Christians today are so afraid of being called a silly meaningless name by the world (bigot, antisemite, homophobe) that they refuse to even remotely share or discuss the Gospel in their daily lives, let alone live it,” adding: “You reveal your anti-Christian hatred when you refer to Biblical Truth as ‘antisemitism.’”

After its post-Pittsburgh downturn, Gab has worked to reestablish itself among far-right activists; in 2019, it was able to return to financial stability thanks to an online crowdfunding strategy. After the Jan. 6 insurrection—particularly the demise of Parler, which had become an effective competitor for the same audience—it once again became a popular place for extremists to gather and share their violent seditionist worldviews.

Media Matters noted that Gab also introduced targeted advertising recently. That means that there may be other Republican candidates buying ads on the platform whose activity is not immediately visible.

Over 100 extremist candidates demonstrate how radical-right takeover of GOP is complete

Posted on by David Neiwert

The radicalization of the Grand Old Party into a far-right political entity is a now a fait accompli, manifested in the extraordinary incoming tide of Republican candidates who openly embrace extremist conspiracism and Trumpian authoritarianism. What makes the transformation complete is that not only has the GOP establishment refused to oppose this extremism and denounce the rising tide, but it is actively punishing any Republicans who do.

A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found more than 100 such “problematic” candidates running for office in 2022 under the Republican banner. The extremism they embrace runs the gamut, from authoritarian QAnon cultists to insurrection-friendly “Patriots” to COVID denialists to white nationalists.

Additionally, the GOP currently boasts 207 elected officials who aided Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to the voting rights organization Public Wise, which lists them all in its Insurrection Index.

“The real danger is not just the wave of extreme candidates, it’s their embrace, their mainstreaming by the Republican party,” Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, the co-author of How Democracies Die, told Sergio Olmos of The Guardian. “The United States has always had nutty, extremist, authoritarian politicians around the fringe. What is new and really dangerous for democracy is that they’re increasingly running as Republican candidates.”

As Olmos observes, some of these extremists—particularly Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy, infamous for leading the 2016 armed standoff at Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge—have been using their GOP campaigns to expand their already existing networks of far-right activists.

Bundy, who only moved to the state in 2015 but is campaigning around the slogan “Keep Idaho Idaho,” has been able to expand the membership of his far-right “People’s Network,” which has primarily been advancing the cause of COVID denialism in the state. The network currently has some 33,000 members with 398 activist leaders in 39 states. (Bundy is also competing for the GOP governor’s nomination with another far-right extremist, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin.)

The ADL’s list includes candidates who have no direct links to extremist organizations, but who promote far-right views, openly associate with radical ideologues, or embrace extremist conspiracy theories. It tracked at least 45 candidates seeking office in 2020 who promote QAnon conspiracy theories. A number of them—including Darren Aquino, a Florida candidate for the U.S. House; Melissa Carone, Rudy Giuliani’s “election-fraud witness,” seeking a seat in the Michigan House; and Alison Hayden, running for a congressional seat in California—have tweeted out QAnon’s “#WWG1WGA” hashtag slogan.

There are also at least a dozen Republican candidates included on the list who have “explicit connections to extremist groups or movements including white supremacists, anti-government extremists and members of the far-right Proud Boys”:

At least two dozen candidates have expressed admiration for or appeared in public alongside extremists. In September 2021, during a “Justice for J6 rally,” Arizona State Rep. Walter Blackman, U.S. congressional candidate (R-AZ), reportedly told the crowd, "The Proud Boys came to one of my events and that was one of the proudest moments of my life.” In March 2021, former Texas GOP chair and 2022 Texas gubernatorial candidate Allen West appeared on the same stage as Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes during an anti-immigration rally in Laredo, Texas.

In June 2021, Nick Taurus, U.S. congressional candidate (R-CA), took to social media to boast about meeting with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist leader and organizer. Sharing a photo of himself posing with Fuentes he tweeted “A legend and inspiration to us all!” On Facebook Taurus shared the same photo with the caption, “This guy is the truth and it was an absolute honor to meet him! AMERICA FIRST IS INEVITABLE! #AMERICAFIRST #NICKFUENTES.” On January 6, 2022, Taurus tweeted, “A great night honoring the J6 Heroes!”

The radicalization of the Republican Party has been a decades-long process, reaching its seeming apotheosis in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump extremists. But rather than reeling back from the violence and radicalism, the GOP establishment instead has embraced the “Patriot” movement that led the insurrection, even as those forces have hardened into an anti-democratic insurgency intent on overthrowing liberal democratic rule.

Republicans have done this by brazenly lying to cover their culpability for the insurrection, gaslighting the public about who was responsible with “bloody shirt” rhetoric that inverts the reality by making the perpetrators into victims and the victims into perpetrators. Congressmen and Fox News anchors have insisted that it “wasn’t an insurrection,” while GOP politicos have publicly valorized the insurrectionists.

Meanwhile, the very few Republicans who have refused to succumb to the extremist tide and have supported the Jan. 6 commission investigation and the impeachment of Trump that shortly followed the insurrection have been severely punished for doing so by the party’s apparatchiks, with the apparent approval of GOP voters. Just this week, the two Republican Congress members who sit on the commission, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, were officially censured by the party, which also voted to support Cheney’s primary opponent.

It is apparent that the conservative movement, as Tucker Carlson and his guest Jesse Kelly suggested last year, is giving up on democracy and embracing right-wing authoritarianism, moving down the road to explicit fascism. Their strategy as they move down that path, demonstrated over the past year, has involved targeting local politics—school boards, county commissions, city councils—for far-right takeovers by extremist “Patriots” such as what we have recently seen in Shasta County, California, and elsewhere, fueled by the ugly proto-fascist politics of menace and intimidation.

As the ADL’s report observed: “Support for such candidates demonstrates a continuing shift of the so-called Overton Window—the parameters of what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ in political and social discourse. This ever-shifting window signals an expanding mainstream acceptance of extreme beliefs and ideologies.”

“At first you had a flirtation and tolerance with a handful of extremists at the fringes,” Levitsky told Olmos. “We’re now seeing an army of extremists embraced by the former president. They’re marching in and taking over the Republican party at the state and local level.”

Republicans double down on gaslighting narrative in House hearing: ‘It was not an insurrection’

Posted on by David Neiwert

Republicans clearly have settled on their strategy for a post-Jan. 6 narrative about the Capitol insurrection: Gaslight, gaslight, and then gaslight some more. That was made crystal clear today in a House hearing on the insurrection, when a parade of GOP House members consistently tried to convince the public that what it witnessed that day wasn’t real.

One congressman tried to claim that “it was not an insurrection, and we cannot call it that and be truthful.” Another doubted that the mob was comprised entirely of Donald Trump supporters:” I don’t know who did the poll to say they were Trump supporters.” And their go-to white nationalist complained that “law-abiding citizens” were under attack from “the national security state” in the course of investigating and prosecuting the insurrectionists.

YouTube Video

The hearing, titled “The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions,” featured testimony from former Trump officials—then-acting Attorney General Phil Rosen, and then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller—involved in the slow response by security forces to intervene in the riot. Both men generally refused to directly answer any of the questions posed to them by Democrats, and mostly claimed they had done nothing wrong that day.

But the hearing was dominated by Republicans who insisted that Democrats were making much ado out of nothing, like Charles Boyer telling Ingrid Bergman that those gaslights weren’t flickering. The most audacious of the bunch was Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who opened the hearing’s second half with a straight shot of alternative-universe ether:

This hearing is called “The Capitol Insurrection.” Let’s be honest with the American people: It was not an insurrection, and we cannot call it that and be truthful. The Cambridge English dictionary defines an “insurrection” as, and I quote, “An organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence.” And then from the Century Dictionary, “The act of rising against civil authority, or governmental restraints, specifically the armed resistance of a number of persons against the power of the state.”

As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor, who with other Republican colleagues, helped to barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter. I can tell you, the House was never breached, and it was not an insurrection.

This is the truth: There was an undisciplined mob, there were some rioters and some who committed acts of vandalism, but let me be clear—there was no insurrection, and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a boldfaced lie.

Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, people in orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures—you know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

There were no firearms confiscated from anyone who breached the Capitol, so the only shot fired on January 6 was from a Capitol Police officer who killed an unarmed protester, Ashli Babbitt, in what will probably, eventually, be determined to be a needless display of lethal force.

Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina was similarly skeptical. All those Trump banners carried up the Capitol steps that day by people who got started at a Trump rally failed to persuade him that the crowd actually was comprised of Trump supporters:

When I read this sheet, and on the timeline, let’s see, at 2:07, “a mob of Trump supporters breached the steps”—I don’t know who did a poll that it was Trump supporters. You had the media saying the same thing, just like the media was saying Officer Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher, which he was not. But I don’t know who did the poll to say they were Trump supporters.

Clyde similarly displayed a kind of cognitive obtuseness—refusing the plain meaning of words, declining to see what’s plainly in view, while inverting reality and claiming it’s the opposite—while remaining somehow oblivious that his definitions of “insurrection” perfectly described the events of January 6, while an event he considers an “insurrection”—namely, the so-called “Russiagate” investigation—bears little to no resemblance to one:

You know, but the only insurrection I’ve witnessed in my lifetime was the one conducted by the FBI with participants from the DOJ and other agencies under the banner “Russia Russia Russia.” High-ranking employees from these federal agencies and members of an independent counsel coordinated and fed a false narrative for over two years that the 2016 election was stolen and illegitimate. Democrats were on the news almost every night saying the evidence is there, and the mainstream media amplified the fake news. This was indeed a very coordinated and well-funded effort by a determined group of people to overthrow the duly elected president, Donald J. Trump.

Georgia Congressman Jody Hice thought that Trump had established his innocence in inspiring the mob by having urged them at one point to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically,” apparently magically overwhelming his exhortations that “if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore” and using the word “fight” some 20 times:

I would like to address how the media and the many Democrats have put forth a narrative that has been circulating around about how January 6, and has never been corrected. For example, the narrative that President Trump incited riots on January 6, I don’t know even understand, Madam Chair, why you yourself don’t speak the truth as to what President Trump actually stated. And what he said on the morning of January 6, he said that “I know every one of you will soon be marching over to the Capitol buildings to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.” Madam Chair, why don’t you talk about how the president used those words, “peacefully and patriotically,” instead of cherry-picking words that you want to use to portray an image of something that did not happen.

Congressman Yvette Herrell of New Mexico also clearly was partaking of some of the same Trump-cult kool-aid, claiming that “fake news” had “poisoned the well”:

Do you feel like the well has been poisoned here? We’ve had so much fake news, cynical politicians, disinformation—far, far from the truth. I mean, we’ve heard that Officer Sicknick was killed by a fire extinguisher in the riot, but indeed he died by natural causes, a stroke. … How much of an impact do you think social media and other outlets had on an investigation?

Miller replied to her that “some people are using that against us very effectively”—to which Herrell quipped: “Yes, I think they call that ‘fake news’.”

Then, apparently keying off Clyde’s rant, she asked each of the witnesses: “Do you classify the events of January 6 as a riot or an insurrection? One or the other.”

Many of the Republicans wanted to talk about Black Lives Matter and antifascists in the context of last summer’s civil unrest over police brutality, reverting to their tried-and-true narrative about a “violent left” that “burned down cities” as being a kind of excuse for a Republican mob to attempt to stop the counting of Electoral College ballots.

Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana seemed especially angry:

Nineteen people died during BLM riots last year. Hundreds and hundreds were injured. Teo thousand police officers were injured from BLM riots last year. And yet, we’re gonna discuss today, as if none of that happened, the events of January 6. The hypocrisy of this body is indeed disturbing to the scores of millions of Americans that supported President Trump and love this country, and have been denied access to their own Capitol for over a year!

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who has become Republicans’ go-to white nationalist since the retirement of Iowa’s Steve King, tried to claim that the post-insurrection investigation and resulting indictments and arrests were all the work of the Deep State:

Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding citizens—especially Trump voters. The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime. Mr. Biden calls January 6 the worst attack since the Civil War. A president was impeached for his alleged role in that riot. It was reported early, completely unconfirmed, that an armed insurrection, quote, beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. The government has even enlisted Americans to turn in their own neighbors. Federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin on CBS News’ 60 Minutes continued the, quote, “Shock and Awe,” end of quote. Many of my Democratic colleagues opposed the “Shock and Awe” strategy in Iraq. We should similarly oppose its application against American citizens.

His Arizona colleague, Congressman Andy Biggs, also wanted to divert everyone’s attention to leftist protest violence, apparently on the grounds that it justified the insurrection, or at least made Democrats look hypocritical for trying to hold Republicans accountable for it:

Democrats have said that the events of January 6 were an assault on democracy, and if that’s true, if disorderly conduct in a restricted building is an assault on democracy, then what do we call setting fire to federal court in Portland, Oregon, with people inside—what do we call that? For years, we have watched riots in American cities while House Democrats remain silent or actually supported the violence. The federal courthouse in Portland came under attack every night and Democrats said nothing.  

And then he played a video showing select scenes of nighttime protest violence in Portland. No one mentioned that the protests did not involve an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in a national election.

Not a single Republican denounced Donald Trump’s role in the events or even managed to acknowledge that the insurrection was inspired by the broad dissemination of Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, and its broad support by a large number of congressional GOP members and right-wing pundits. That apparently didn’t fit into their cognitive bandwidth.

Investigators tighten circle around Proud Boys for Jan. 6 violence with two more key arrests

Posted on (Updated by David Neiwert

Life comes at you fast sometimes. Just last summer, Zach Rehl led his Philadelphia-based contingent of Proud Boys in a counterprotest to support then-Vice President Mike Pence. This week, he was arrested for helping lead a mob inside the U.S. Capitol that was intent on lynching Pence.

Rehl was one of two Proud Boys arrested by the FBI this week and charged with the most serious federal crimes facing the insurrectionists at the Jan 6 Capitol siege: conspiracy to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, and to attack Capitol Police officers. Also arrested this week was a Proud Boys leader from North Carolina, Charles Donohoe.

A total of 13 Proud Boys, who played a central role in the ability of the pro-Trump mob to break down police barricades and enter the Capitol building that day, have now been charged in the insurrection. The indictment is similar to one unveiled by prosecutors against two other key Proud Boys figures—Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs—who played key roles in leading the mob that day.

Last July, Rehl’s Philadelphia Proud Boys group gathered outside a Fraternal Order of Police lodge where Pence was speaking, and a small cluster of protesters had gathered. The men shouted at Black Lives Matter protesters and at a group of women.

Rehl, left, with Biggs on Jan. 6.

Rehl, a 35-year-old Port Richmond man, was among them, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “drinking beer and chatting with others in the parking lot who were openly carrying a Proud Boys flag.” Among the men they were chatting with were Philadelphia police officers, underscoring the Proud Boys’ cozy relationship with police officers around the country—a relationship that helped feed their smug far-right extremism. Rehl is a veteran and the son of two Philadelphia police officers.

On Jan. 6, their view of Pence had clearly transformed, largely because the vice president had chosen not to try to contest the validation of the Electoral College votes as Donald Trump had urged him to do—which the crowd at Trump’s rally that morning viewed as a betrayal. The mob entering the Capitol was filmed chanting: “Hang Mike Pence!” Pence himself narrowly escaped encountering this mob, it was revealed during Trump’s subsequent impeachment trial.

Rehl, who later turned up in photos in The New Yorker showing Proud Boys trashing the Senate offices of Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, is expected to have his first hearing in federal court in Philadelphia Friday. His indictment makes clear that federal prosecutors are preparing a conspiracy case charging several Proud Boys with conspiracy, including Biggs and Nordean.

According to indictments released in those cases, investigators say that Biggs, 37, of Ormond Beach, Florida, and Nordean, 30, of Auburn, Washington, were equipped with radios and a bullhorn as they led a mob of about 100 men through the streets of Washington and up the Capitol Mall. Several Proud Boys were among the rioters who shattered windows that enabled others to enter the building and attack Capitol Police officers inside.

Faced with real consequences for participating in insurrection, MAGA followers turn on Trump

Posted on (Updated by David Neiwert

It’s become self-evident that the members of the mob that raged up the National Mall and into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 believed they were doing so with the blessing of their president, Donald Trump, after he directed them there in his speech that morning at the Ellipse. They really believed Trump’s lie that they were saving America from a stolen election—leaving many of them angry and baffled when their fellow MAGA fanatics claim that the insurrection was actually the work of “antifa” leftists.

And now that they are facing real legal consequences for their actions, many of them know who to blame for their misfortune: Trump. Their ex-leader threw them under the bus, and they are happy to return the favor.

Take William “Billy” Chrestman of Olathe, Kansas. A bearded Proud Boy who was mistaken for founder Gavin McInnes when video of the insurrection first appeared on social media, he now faces multiple federal charges related to his behavior that day, including conspiracy, civil disorder, and obstruction of an official proceeding. His attorneys are claiming that Trump invited him and his fellow Proud Boys to engage in the violence.

“It is an astounding thing to imagine storming the United States Capitol with sticks and flags and bear spray, arrayed against armed and highly trained law enforcement,” Chrestman’s attorneys said in a court filing this week. “Only someone who thought that they had an official endorsement would even attempt such a thing. And a Proud Boy who had been paying attention would very much believe he did.”

Chrestman’s attorneys claimed in their filing that the rioters were “actively misled” by Trump: “Trump told the assembled rabble what they must do; they followed his instructions. Then, he ratified their actions, cementing his symbiotic relationship with the rioters.”

He’s hardly alone in that stratagem. A Texas real estate agent who flew to Washington by private jet to attend Trump’s rally said she was there because of Trump, and invaded the Capitol on his behalf. “He asked us to fly there. He asked us to be there. So I was doing what he asked us to do,” she said.

“I think we all deserve a pardon,” she said. “I’m facing a prison sentence. I think I do not deserve that and from what I understand, every person is going to be arrested that was there, so I think everyone deserves a pardon, so I would ask the President of the United States to give me a pardon.”

She regretted having gone at all: "I bought into a lie, and the lie is the lie, and it's embarrassing," Ryan told The Washington Post. "I regret everything."

A number of other arrestees are making the same claim, mostly for strategic legal reasons. Even though it is unlikely to be enough to establish their innocence, legal experts say, it could be a mitigating factor when it comes to sentencing, especially for those with clear criminal records.

"Trump didn't get in the car and drive him to D.C., but it's important to understand the context," attorney Clint Broden, who represents Texas defendant Garret Miller, told USA Today.

"You have to understand the cult mentality,” said Broden, whose client is charged with entering the Capitol and threatening U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, saying she should be assassinated. “They prey on vulnerable victims and give them a sense of purpose. In this case, Trump convinced his cult followers that they were working to preserve democracy."

Pittsburgh resident Kenneth Grayson had announced his intentions even before the rally on Facebook: “I’m there for the greatest celebration of all time after Pence leads the Senate flip!!” he wrote. “OR IM THERE IF TRUMP TELLS US TO STORM THE (expletive) CAPITAL IMA DO THAT THEN!”

Grayson’s attorney, Stanley Greenfield, said his client did not intend violence, and was only responding to Trump’s pleas. "He was going because he was asked to be there by the president," Greenfield said. "He walked in with the crowd. But he went there, yes, with the invitation of the president. He just wanted to be a part of it."

One of the insurrection’s most recognizable figures, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley of Arizona, also blames Trump. He even said he would have be happy to testify against Trump in his February impeachment trial.

Chansley’s attorney, Al Watkins, told reporters: "Let's roll the tape. Let's roll the months of lies, and misrepresentations and horrific innuendo and hyperbolic speech by our president designed to inflame, enrage, motivate. What's really curious is the reality that our president, as a matter of public record, invited these individuals, as president, to walk down to the Capitol with him."

Watkins said Trump's refusal to issue pardons to the insurrectionists served as a wake-up call for his client.

"He regrets very, very much having not just been duped by the president, but by being in a position where he allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made," said Watkins.

A 20-year-old Maryland man, Emanuel Jackson, similarly blamed Trump, even though bodycam footage showed him hitting police officers with a baseball bat. "The nature and circumstances of this offense must be viewed through the lens of an event inspired by the President of the United States," Jackson’s attorney, Brandi Harden, wrote in court filings.

A profile of the people charged so far in the insurrection compiled by the Anti-Defamation League found that one-quarter of them have connections to right-wing extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Of the 212 individuals identified by COE, 52 (or 25 percent) have ties to known right-wing extremist groups, including Oath Keepers (six people), Proud Boys (17), Groypers and other white supremacists (10) and the QAnon conspiracy theory (14). A number of Proud Boys members and Oath Keepers have been charged with conspiracy in connection with the January 6 insurrection. A conspiracy charge means the government believes these individuals agreed to engage in criminal activity that day.

The remaining 75 percent are considered part of the new pro-Trump extremist movement, a decentralized but enthusiastic faction made up of self-described “patriots” who continue to pledge their fidelity to the former President.

The movement’s true believers who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege and are now facing federal charges are similarly perplexed and outraged by the large numbers of fellow MAGA “patriots” who are now claiming that the insurrection actually was the work of violent “antifa” leftists. This fraudulent claim—promulgated not just by conspiracy theorists and fringe partisans, but by elected Republican officials, including members of Congress—has spread so widely that one poll found that a full half of all Republicans believe it.

This infuriates the people who participated and now face charges, because they all are ardent Trump supporters who believed then that they were participating in a nation-saving act of patriotism—and many still believe it now. They can’t fathom how quickly their fellow “patriots” have thrown them under the bus and are now depicting them as actually acting on behalf of their hated enemies.

“Don’t you dare try to tell me that people are blaming this on antifa and [Black Lives Matter],” wrote insurgent Jonathan Mellis on Facebook days after the event., prior to being charged with multiple crimes. “We proudly take responsibility for storming the Castle. Antifa and BLM or [sic] too pussy … We are fighting for election integrity. They heard us.”

“It was not Antifa at the Capitol,” wrote “Stop the Steal” organizer Brandon Straka, who has ties to Trump. “It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not.”

As Republicans increasingly embrace far-right radicalization, a crisis of democracy looms large

Posted on by David Neiwert

It has become painfully obvious that the Republican Party has ceased to be a viable partner in American democracy, because it has transformed into a profoundly anti-democratic, authoritarian political entity that is willing to resort to the rule of violent mobs and thugs to seize that power. While this transformation has been gathering momentum for years, the Jan. 6 insurrection became its apotheosis.

The aftermath of the insurrection gave Republicans the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the radicalized insurrectionists who assaulted the Capitol with the intent of installing Donald Trump as an unelected dictator. But now it’s becoming clear that, not only are Republicans refusing to distance themselves from the conspiracy theorists and violent thugs who have overwhelmed their ranks, they are doubling down by openly embracing them: In the refusal of congressional Republicans to discipline conspiracy-peddling lunatics within their own ranks; of state-level Republicans to form open alliances with paramilitary militiamen; and most of all, in Senate Republicans’ ongoing refusal to acknowledge the mountain of evidence that Trump incited the violence and do their plain duty to convict him of that seditious act.

No doubt, many of these Republicans are intimidated by the reality on the ground—namely, that hordes of their voters have been radicalized by the disinformation propagandists and conspiracy theorists who dominated GOP politics in the 2020 election, and their anger at any party member insufficiently supportive of Trump threatens them both electorally and physically. The radicalization of state-level GOP offices—including those where Trump lost electoral votes—has been rapid and overwhelming.

This means that Republicans are joining the incoming tide of right-wing extremism, many of them eagerly. In Michigan, the state’s Senate Majority Leader, Mike Shirkey, appears to have moved beyond merely being friendly with the state’s violent paramilitary fringe to an outright embrace of those radicals.

“It is like the Republican Party has its own domestic army,” Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan party, told the New York Times.

Last week, Shirkey told fellow Republicans—who at the time were discussing censuring him for failing to respond strongly enough to Democrats—that he thought the Capitol insurrection was a “hoax” that had been “staged” by unknown sponsors.

“That wasn’t Trump people,” he said. “That’s been a hoax from day one. That was all prearranged. It was arranged by somebody who was funding it. … It was all staged.

Shirkey even suggested that Republicans’ former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, “was part of” the conspiracy. “I think they wanted to have a mess,” Shirkey said. “They would have had to recruit this other group of people.”

Shirkey added: “I think there are people above elected officials. There are puppeteers.”

Shortly afterward, he issued what appeared to be a retraction and apology—except that it wasn’t. “I said some things in a videoed conversation that are not fitting for the role I am privileged to serve. I own that. I have many flaws. Being passionate coupled with an occasional lapse in restraint of tongue are at least two of them,” Shirkey said in a statement. “I regret the words I chose, and I apologize for my insensitive comments.”

But on Wednesday, Shirkey had an exchange on the floor of the Senate with Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, making clear that his statement was a non-apology: "I frankly don’t take back any of the statements I made—I take back some of the words I chose." He then went on to tell Gilchrist he thought that the insurrection had been planned “weeks and months in advance” by Democrats.

Shirkey has a long history of not only encouraging right-wing extremists but also empowering them. When a horde of armed militiamen descended on the Capitol in Lansing in April and attempted to invade the state House chambers, Shirkey embraced their agenda—which was to nullify Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 public health measures—while voicing doubts about their tactics: “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” he commented.

That enraged Michigan’s “Patriot” contingent. The protest’s organizers threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.” Afterwards, event organizer commented on social media that Shirkey had come around to their point of view, and “spoke at our next event.”

On the floor of the Senate during a subsequent Lansing protest—during which armed militia members were watching from the gallery above—Shirkey had called the governor a tyrant: "If she does not recognize the end of the emergency declaration, we have no other choice but to act," he said, not clarifying what kind of action he intended.

He had also appeared at an anti-Whitmer rally that had featured some of those militiamen. “Stand up and test that assertion of authority by the government,” Shirkey said. “We need you now more than ever.”

Later, when some of those came militiamen were arrested for plotting to kidnap and murder Whitmer—after dropping their original plan to invade the statehouse, take public officials hostage, and hold televised executions—Shirkey, rather than striking a conciliatory note, had been even more incendiary.

“This is no time to be weak in our commitment to freedom,” Shirkey told a “Let MI People Go” rally at the capitol. “We need to be strong…and not be afraid of those who are taking our freedoms away from us.”

Shirkey is not alone; the Michigan Republican Party appears to have been completely consumed by militia-loving extremists. Meshawn Maddock, credited as the chief organizer of the April 30 armed protest, was elected Saturday as co-chair of the state party, along with three other diehard Trump loyalists named to top positions. Maddock also helped fill 19 buses full of Michiganders who traveled to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Ryan Kelley, a local Republican official also credited with organizing the April 30 event, last week announced he was running for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias—is that a bad thing?” he wondered aloud in an interview.

That kind of sentiment appears to be increasingly common among Republicans nationally. Talk of “civil war” is increasingly voiced with approval both among conservative pundits and GOP officials. Phil Reynolds, a member of the GOP central committee in California’s Santa Clara County, commented on Facebook during the January 6 insurrection: “The war has begun. Citizens take arms! Drumroll please….. Civil War or No Civil War?”

Randy Voepel, a state Assemblyman in California, voiced support for the insurrectionists in a Jan. 9 San Diego Union-Tribune piece: “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny. Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear in on January 20th.”

The Senate impeachment trial of Trump—which so far has mostly featured unrepentant Republicans insisting the former president had done nothing wrong, either ignoring testimony during the trial or simply sitting stone-faced throughout the proceedings—has only underscored the increasing embrace of extremism by the GOP.

"Washington Republicans have made their choice—they chose to cave to the murderous QAnon mob that has taken over their party," said Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They are "refusing to hold those responsible for the attack on the Capitol accountable, offering nothing but empty words after years of hyping up lies and conspiracy theories."

“The GOP is a counter-majoritarian party now, every week it becomes less like a ‘normal’ party,” said Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor. “The GOP has to make it harder to vote and harder to understand what the party is all about. Those are two parts of the same project. And it can’t treat its white supremacist and violent wings as extremists who should be isolated because it needs them. They provide motor and momentum.”

Democratic strategist Ian Russell told ABC News that the GOP doesn't seem to be reevaluating their own strategies despite losing the White House and the Senate, and having rid themselves of Trump as president.

"Both parties after losing a national election dust themselves off ... and figure out a path back," he said. "What you've seen since the election, though, is the Republicans double down on Trumpian chaos. Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon, those are all symptoms of the underlying disease, which is this chaos that's at the heart—that's taken over modern conservatism, and the modern Republican Party."

"That's all they've got in the gas tank right now," he added. "And this won't get them very far."

“The GOP has radicalized (and is still radicalizing) on its willingness to break democratic norms and subvert or eliminate political institutions. Don’t expect restraint where you’ve seen it in the past,” Charlotte Hill, a political researcher at University of California, Berkeley, told Five Thirty Eight.

“Many Republicans do not accept Democratic governance as a legitimate outcome” of elections, observed Georgetown University history Thomas Zimmer. “America is nearing a crisis of democratic legitimacy because one side is trying to erect one-party minority rule.”