Former Republican lawmaker warns ‘America is not OK’ as Trump divides the country

A former Republican lawmaker who once backed President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that “America is not OK” because of how the GOP leader has divided the country.“We are not OK,” Walsh said in his Substack post. “America is not OK, and we all know that.”After describing how Trump attended the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on birthright citizenship in person to be a “bully” and violate “the very notion of separation of powers” as “no other president has done this,” Walsh contextualized Trump’s intimidation within the broader paradigm of his polarizing America.“Look, no one knows how difficult this is more than I do,” Walsh said when discussing the need for self-reflection. “I spend half of every day grabbing my musket, fighting for the things I believe in passionately — fighting Trump, and fighting my former political party, and fighting to try to help the Democratic Party get in shape. I spend half of every day on the political battlefield, like so many of you do. And I spend the other half of my day trying to do what I can to help keep this country together. It’s hard, right? It’s hard.”Yet he then asked if America is “just too damn divided to even listen to each other anymore. Think about that. Are we too divided to even want to listen to the people who disagree with us? Is that where we are right now?”From there he speculated that Trump, on America’s 250th birthday, is dividing the democracy and threatening its institutions so fiercely that the crisis may be the greatest the nation has faced since the Civil War.“So my question is this: Are we so divided that we as a people can’t even — and won’t even — listen to people anymore?” Walsh asked. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”Earlier in March, Walsh lamented that the Republican Party of small government to which he became attached has instead seemingly become the “white Christian nationalist party.”“Man, they’re out of the closet,” Walsh said. “They’re loud and proud. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks about this. Republican members of Congress talk about this. Republican and MAGA thought leaders talk about the fact that America needs to be a Christian country. It needs to be officially designated as a Christian country.”The fiery ex-Republican has also referred to Trump’s supporters as being like members of a “cult” because they back the president even when he flip-flops on important issues.“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh said. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”He added, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”

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