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People are stupid.

That subject line, in an email Wednesday from Donald Trump, grabbed my attention more than other fundraising messages I get several times a day from the ever-grifting former president.

Stupid people, the email said, are those who dont believe there was massive Election Fraud in 2020. To solve that fraud, Trump needed $45 from patriots like me desperately.

The man is desperate all right.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

And yet, this losers 13-month-old delusion that he won reelection is fully embraced by millions of Americans and one of our two major parties. In fealty to his Big Lie, Republicans in 19 states have passed laws making it harder to vote and solidifying their partys control over elections, and now theyre putting partisans in local offices charged with certifying results. The prospect of chaos in the 2022 and 2024 elections is real.

Every week brings fresh evidence of Trumps danger to democracy and this week was no different. Newly disclosed text messages from yet-to-be-named House Republicans to Mark Meadows, Trumps final White House chief of staff, documented their real-time terror about the Jan. 6 insurrection they now downplay and of their collusion in schemes to overturn Joe Bidens election.

For the mainstream media, the challenge has been to convey the seriousness of this crisis to a public exhausted by politics and polarization. Covering the lie of the year like politics as normal wont cut it.

Yet as the weeks developments underscored, the far-right media ecosystem Fox News and its imitators propelled Trumps con from the start and continues to drive it. Its audience, full of the election deniers most in need of truth, gets the alternative news it wants. For them, any reporting from the mainstream media is discredited after years of Trumps anti-press rants.

Not surprising that Fox News, Newsmax and One America News didnt broadcast the public hearing Monday night of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Their viewers didnt see Rep. Liz Cheney and other members read aloud some text messages Meadows received amid the siege from frightened Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump Jr., begging Meadows to get the commander in chief to stop the attack. The pleaders included Fox celebrities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank read what he aptly called a particularly chilling text to Meadows from a House Republican, lamenting the failure of the scheme to throw out millions of Biden votes: Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. Im sorry nothing worked.

When Fox News finally did address the hearing on Tuesday, its hosts dismissed the texts and attacked the messengers, chiefly Cheney, a popular target for its anchors because shes stood up to Trump, which got her bounced from the House Republican leadership team in May and the Wyoming Republican Party last month.

Real journalists would have noted that the Republicans plaintive texts contradicted their efforts since Jan. 6 to play down the violence and oppose a bipartisan investigation. A real news network would have been embarrassed to have its stars exposed as such hypocrites, pleading with the White House based on the fact that the rioters were Trump loyalists and then suggesting otherwise to viewers.

Ingraham texted Meadows during the insurrection, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Hours later, she was on air suggesting a discredited theory that the siege was the work of people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement, including perhaps antifa sympathizers.

The disclosure of the text messages came just a day after Chris Wallace, a respected longtime Fox News anchor, announced he was leaving. It was regrettable that he left without offering any criticism of the network, unlike two longtime conservative contributors, including my colleague Jonah Goldberg, when they recently resigned in protest.

Fox News is not the same place it was when Wallace joined it 18 years ago. Even then, its fair and balanced slogan was easily mocked. But in recent years, Fox News has become a truth-defying partisan propaganda operation led by Tucker Carlson. It is unabashedly in league with the first president ever to reject the peaceful transfer of power a former president who, Cheney suggests, could be criminally liable for his role in disrupting Congress constitutionally required count of the electoral college votes.

Cheney gets the last word, from her speech to the House Tuesday night:

Whether we tell the truth, get to the truth, and defend ourselves against it ever happening again, is the moral test of our time.

Her estranged Republican colleagues, and their enablers in conservative media, seem determined to fail that test.

@jackiekcalmes

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Calmes: Bigger holes keep appearing in the 'big lie' - Los Angeles Times

In any contract or relationship, the person whos willing to walk away holds all the leverage. That dynamic is the key to understanding Donald Trumps takeover of the Republican party writ large as well as David Perdues primary challenge against Brian Kemp for the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, which is the same phenomenon in miniature.

Go back to the time before Trump won the Republican nomination, when the Republican establishment and conservative movement elite stood opposed to him shoulder to shoulder. That opposition seemed to many of us to present an insurmountable obstacle to Trumps election in November. But the rights complaints about Trump, however loud, contained a crucial escape hatch. They were framed almost exclusively in pragmatic terms: Trump was, as National Review put it in its scathing editorial, a menace to American conservatism. But since Democrats were also menaces to conservatism, should Trump win the nomination, it was inevitable that they would fall behind him as the lesser evil.

Now the conservative establishment is objecting to Perdues primary challenge against Kemp. Perdues campaign is utterly devoid of policy content, and serves the sole function of advancing Trumps goal of liquidating internal resistance and aligning the party behind his refusal to accept electoral defeat. Unlike Trumps 2016 candidacy, Perdues has no confounding elements of populism or reality-show entertainment in the mixture. It is laboratory-pure authoritarianism.

But Perdues conservative critics register their objections at a far shallower level. The Wall Street Journal moans that Perdues campaign is a good way to turn a major state over to the progressive left, and the GOPs biggest obstacle will be party divisions. National Reviews Jim Geraghty calls Kemp a safe bet to prevail in November as the nominee, and warns, if the party doesnt unify behind whoever wins the primary, Stacey Abrams is probably going to be the next governor of Georgia. The Washington Examiner editorializes, Perdue is a good man, and it is a shame that he is no longer in the Senate, but it is at least as much a shame to see him splitting the Republican Party in the closely contested gubernatorial race.

None of these conservatives are drawing red lines, or even framing the case in any kind of moral terms. They are merely fretting that the primary will weaken the partys hand against the greater enemy of Stacey Abrams.

Is that argument even correct? Possibly so: Maybe Perdues association with Trump would alienate enough moderate voters to supply Abrams her winning margin. Alternatively, it is possible that a Kemp nomination would be hindered by opposition from Trump, who might very well prefer that she win to the reelection of a Republican who refused to help him steal the election.

Trump and Perdue no doubt grasp the imbalance here. The pro-Kemp forces are warning of division in the event Perdue wins, but ultimately they are not themselves willing to split from their party. Both factions are threatening schism, but only the Trumpian threat has credibility.

This imbalance in willpower has characterized the factional fights within the party for more than half a century. Ive recommended Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservices history of the demise of the GOPs moderate wing, many times, though perhaps not often enough. The conservatives cared more about control of the party (rule) than the risk of losing (ruin). The moderates may have wished to rule, but were largely unwilling to threaten party unity.

Trumps long post-election purge is prevailing because of this same asymmetry of willpower. He is able to grasp that his remaining intraparty critics dont actually care about democracy. They merely want to win. His strategy is to force them to choose, knowing full well what their answer will be in the end.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

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Trump Keeps Beating His Republican Enemies Because Hes Willing to Break the Party - New York Magazine

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EXCLUSIVE: As she crisscrosses the country helping fellow Republicans running in next year's midterm elections, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is spotlighting a new conservative roadmap for the 2022 election cycle.

Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during President Trump's administration, is releasing her first policy book, which is titled "American Strength: Conservative Solutions Worth Fighting For."'

NIKKI HALEY ON MULTIPLE MISSIONS TO HELP THE GOP WIN BIG IN 2022

The book, shared first with Fox News on Wednesday, includes a broad coalition of conservative voices, with both domestic and foreign policy chapters written by friends of Haley who are considered experts in their fields. Haley, whom pundits view as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender, is releasing the book through her Stand for America nonprofit advocacy organization.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is spotlighting a new conservative roadmap for the 2022 election cycle in a new book titled "American Strength: Conservative Solutions Worth Fighting For."

"My greatest passion is lifting people up," Haley writes in her introduction to the domestic section of the book. "So it's frustrating to see that in America today, there are so many barriers blocking the way, with new ones arising at a worrying pace."

Among those contributing to the domestic section of the book are fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott, who penned a chapter titled "A Plan for Safety and Healing in America." Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania wrote a chapter titled "Our National Debt: Why Should We Care and What Can We Do About It?" And Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska penned a chapter on "An Energy, Jobs, and Climate Plan That Strengthens America."

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT NIKKI HALEY

The domestic portion of the book also includes a chapter titled "Bidens Border Crisis" by Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas; "Restoring Life in a Post-Roe America: A Policy Vision," by Marjorie Dannenfelser, a leader of the anti-abortion movement; and "The Tragedy of American Education," which was penned by popular conservative talk radio host and writer Dennis Prager.

Former GOP Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting, on Nov. 6, 2021, in Las Vegas. (Fox News)

Throughout her domestic introduction, Haley emphasizes her goal of empowering people rather than the federal government.

"Theres no combination of elected or unelected experts, elites and do-gooders who are smarter than the American people. The more than 330 million women and men and children who call America home are infinitely creative and capable of creating opportunities for themselves and their communities. They simply need the chance to prove it by pursuing their passions, something socialism only stifles," Haley writes.

And she stresses that "instead of giving Washington control over people, we should be giving the people control over their own lives and futures, like I did as governor of South Carolina."

HALEY, AT MAJOR GOP CONFAB, TARGETS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ON FOREIGN POLICY

Haley, striking a chord thats extremely popular with conservative voters, argues that "it's deeply worrying that anger and hatred toward America are growing. This problem runs deeper than so-called wokeism, and it's bigger than critical race theory. The moment we reject the principles at America's heart and accept the lie that our country is racist and rotten to the core, we throw away any chance of national progress."

She notes that "by all means, let's root out discrimination and injustice wherever they exist, and lets do it by applying America's principles more fully. Take it from me, the first female governor of South Carolina and the first minority female governor in the United States: America is not a racist country."

Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event for Glenn Youngkin, on July 14, 2021, in McLean, Virginia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The foreign policy section of the book includes chapters written by retired general H.R. McMaster, who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration; former ambassador Paula Dobriansky, a top State Department official during President George W. Bush's administration; and John Charles Hagee, a leading pastor and televangelist.

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Haley, in introducing the foreign policy section, notes that "protecting America from so many threats requires military strength." But she adds that "another kind of strength is needed even more: moral strength. Its the only way to win the clash of civilizations."

And she emphasizes that "the rest of the world looks to our example. When we speak, they listen. When we lead, they follow. When we stand for whats right, we not only make our people safer and more secure, we make the world a better place too."

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Nikki Haley's new book showcases 2022 conservative roadmap and vision for future of Republican Party - Fox News

In a world where elected Republicans were not terrified of the most extreme elements of their base, the response to Representative Lauren Boeberts open Islamophobia would have been swift public condemnation. We do not live in that world.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Republicans, has not denounced Boeberts comments comparing Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to a suicide bomber. He knows that scolding her could anger the base, divide his caucus, and threaten his dream of someday being crowned speaker of the House. Other congressional Republicans recognize this reality too, which is why so few of them denounced Boeberts jihad squad comments or Representative Paul Gosars creepy video in which he murders an anime version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So far, only a handful of Republican lawmakers have explicitly condemned these incidents, including two well-known Trump critics: Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, whos retiring in the face of a primary challenge, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose home-state Republican Party no longer recognizes her as a member.

Another was freshman Republican Nancy Mace. On CNN this week, the South Carolina lawmaker called Boeberts rhetoric disgusting. Two weeks ago, she told MSNBC that Gosars video was reprehensible (though she did not vote to censure him). Mace is not exactly a member of the anti-Trump caucus; her position in the GOP ecosystem is harder to nail down. After the January 6 Capitol riot, Mace said that Donald Trump had no future in the Republican Party. She quickly backed away from that position, though, and has spent the rest of the year engaging in petty fights with Ocasio-Cortez, shouting about antifa, and going on Fox News to riff on GOP talking points. This summer, Mace voted to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership position after Cheney was critical of Trump. In the past few months, Mace has seemed to accept the reality that not only is there a role for Trump in her party, but also that he is still its unrivaled leader.

Mace, in other words, appeared to have fallen back in line. So why, then, has she chosen to help police her partys most Trumpian figures? I asked her office and didnt hear back. But knowing the answer to this question could help illuminate why so few Republicans have taken the kinds of risks that she has. I profiled Mace in July, and Ive followed her career closely. She could have any number of motivations, but my reporting points to one in particular.

Read: How a rising Trump critic lost her nerve

Its possible that Mace is genuinely disgusted by Boeberts anti-Muslim comments. Perhaps her gut reaction was to address them head-on. Sometimes politicians do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. That same impulse could be what drove Mace to criticize Trump after January 6, before she seemed to change her mind.

More cynically, Mace might see some sort of political benefit here. Her district, which runs from Charleston to Hilton Head, isnt quite as conservative as the rest of South Carolina. Her voters are a bit more socially moderate and environmentally conscious, and Mace ran on a platform that didnt line up neatly with that of her Republican peers. She might have figured that the voters in her district would be turned off by Boeberts Islamophobia, and that they would give her credit for calling it out. Inserting herself in Twitter spats is probably good for fundraising too: Maces condemnation of Boebert has already been retweeted by at least one Democratic legislator, who held up her tweet as an example of a GOP lawmaker caught being good and recommended that people read Maces book. In the coming weeks, Mace might see an ensuing increase in donations. Shes already expecting at least one primary challenge next year, so she needs all the financial help she can get.

Feel free to believe either of those theories. But something else could also be at work here. Mace is charismatic, smart, and ambitious, and it must be disheartening for her to be constantly overshadowed by colleagues who traffic in racism and conspiracy theories about Jewish space lasers. It must be exhausting, having to fight for attention while people like Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene become the new faces of the American right. Getting involved in this beefor any beefis perhaps the best way for Nancy Mace to get her name out there. Conflict makes for good stories; it attracts the attention of TV producers and Atlantic editors. Throwing punches is a good way for a neglected politician to get ahead. Mace would be far from the first politician to have recognized this.

Maces political evolution has been difficult to track. She cannot be perfectly categorized as a moderate Republican, nor as apro-Trump member. But one thing seems clear: She recognizes that that the Republican base wants AOC-type celebrities in office, one South Carolina GOP consultant told me earlier this year. A Republican commentator from her home state told me that he wished Mace would keep her head down. You have the option of not being available for comment or [not] taking their call, he said. She seems to be addicted to the cable-news scene. A local Democratic strategist told me that hed rarely seen a lawmaker positioning themselves so openly for a shot at stardom. She wants to grow her list and go on TV every day and raise money and sell books. She isnt thinking about staying in the House, he said. Shes thinking about whats next. Maces decision to participate in my July profile of her is more evidence for this theory. Most politicians dont agree to spend time with reporters, let alone go to the gun range with them, unless they see some sort of advantage to doing so. A politician who grants that sort of access to a reporter may not like the resulting story, but when youre a freshman member of Congress who wants to be well-known, all publicity is good publicity.

Read: The Texas Republican asking his party to just stop

Maybe in the end, Maces motive for calling out Boebert and Gosars bad behavior doesnt matter; maybe everyone should appreciate the simple fact that she is doing it. But if youre looking for hopeful signs that the Republican caucus has grown more willing to crack down on its most extreme members, Maces critiques of her peers are not compelling evidence.

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Nancy Mace and the Hunt for the Republican Spotlight - The Atlantic

In October of 1860, The Atlantics first editor, James Russell Lowell, wrote of Abraham Lincoln that he had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician. Lowell, in his endorsement, was mainly concerned not with Lincolns personal qualities but with the redemptive possibilities of his new party. The Republicans, Lowell wrote, know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments.

Check out the full table of contents and find your next story to read.

There is insufficient space in any one issue of this magazine to trace the Republican Partys decomposition from Lincolns day to ours. It is enough to say that its most recent, and most catastrophic, turntoward authoritarianism, nativism, and conspiracismthreatens the republic that it was founded to save.

From the October 1860 issue: James Russell Lowell endorses Abraham Lincoln for president

Stating plainly that one of Americas two major parties, the party putatively devoted to advancing the ideas and ideals of conservatism, has now fallen into autocratic disrepute is unnerving for a magazine committed to being, in the words of our founding manifesto, of no party or clique. Criticism of the Republican Party does not suggest an axiomatic endorsement of the Democratic Party, its leaders and policies. Substantive, even caustic, critiques can of course be made up and down the Democratic line. But avoiding partisan entanglement does not mean that we must turn away from the obvious. The leaders of the Republican Partythe soul-blighted Donald Trump and the satraps and lackeys who abet his nefarious behaviorare attempting to destroy the foundations of American democracy. This must be stated clearly, and repeatedly.

There will be no recovery from this crisis until the Republican Party recommits itself to democracy, says this magazines David Frum, who was one of the first writers to warn that America possessed no special immunities against demagoguery and authoritarianism.

In 2020, we asked another of our staff writers, Barton Gellman, to examine the ways in which Trumpism was weakening the norms and structures of American democracy. We published his cover story The Election That Could Break America before the election, and well before the insurrection of January 6. Something far out of the norm is likely to happen, Gellman wrote. Probably more than one thing. Expecting otherwise will dull our reflexes. It will lull us into spurious hope that Trump is tractable to forces that constrain normal incumbents.

The Big Story: Join Barton Gellman, along with staff writer Anne Applebaum and Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, for a live virtual conversation about the threats to American democracy on December 13.

As we know, the system held, but barely, America having been blessed, once again, by dumb luck. (The bravery of police officers on Capitol Hill, and the wisdom of a handful of state and local officials, also helped.) When President Joe Biden was safely inaugurated, two weeks after the attack on the Capitol, a belief took hold that Trump, and Trumpism, might very well go into eclipse.

But that belief was wrong. Which is why we asked Bart to examine, once again, the state of our democracy and the various attempts by Trump and other leading Republicans to claim power through voter suppression, subterfuge, and any other means necessary. His current cover story, January 6 Was Practice, suggests that we are closecloser than most of us ever thought possibleto losing not only our democracy, but whats left of our shared understanding of reality.

You will find in this issue other essays and reporting that illuminate the political, moral, and epistemological challenges we face today, including an investigation by Vann R. Newkirk II into Republican voter-suppression efforts, and an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany on a child-sex-trafficking panic intensified by the far rights descent into conspiratorial thinking. The crisis is in good measure a crisis of the Republican Party. A healthy democracy requires a strong conservative party and a strong liberal party arguing for their views publicly and vigorously. What we have instead today is a liberal party battling an authoritarian cult of personality. As David Brooks writes in his essay I Remember Conservatism: To be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.

The Atlantic, across its long history, has held true to the belief that the American experiment is a worthy one, which is why were devoting this issue, and so much of our journalism in the coming years, to its possible demise.

This article appears in the January/February 2022 print edition with the headline A Party, and Nation, in Crisis.

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Jeffrey Goldberg: The Republican Party, and America, Are in Crisis - The Atlantic