Having supported a president who demanded his political opponents be imprisoned, who publicly attacked independent judges and attorneys general overseeing cases against his business and political dealings, who privately demanded a loyalty oath from the director of the intelligence agency investigating his campaign dealings, who encouraged violence against protesters and members of the free press at rallies, who openly praised and privately met with the leader of an American adversary after intelligence services discovered it interfered with the election he won, who attempted to blackmail the leader of an American ally by threatening to withhold aid unless it gave him information he could use in the next election he wished to win, who hosted foreign dignitaries at his Mar-a-Lago resort and charged them for rooms, who banned people from the United States if they came from Muslim countries, who locked children in cages if they came from Latin American countries, who knowingly lied to the country about the nature and danger of a deadly pandemic, who called to “LIBERATE” states from his rivals as they were terrorized by militias, who disputed the legitimacy of the voting process before it began, who when asked whether he would accept the peaceful transfer of power ordered a white supremacist group to “stand by,” who refused to concede the election he lost by the same number of electoral college votes he described as “a landslide” when he won them, who called for millions of ballots to be discarded, who demanded a state official tamper with ballots lest he be jailed for non-compliance, and who called for citizens to rush the capital and for the vice-president to refuse to certify the election results—having supported the president through all this—it is clear: the Republican party has become an authoritarian party. It backed an authoritarian; it is authoritarian.
