Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said Friday on MSNBC’s “All In” that the Republican Party was attempting to overthrow American democracy since the Tea Party movement in response to former President Barack Obama’s administration.
Gallego said, “The coup is ongoing. It means that the coup has moved from, you know, the rabble-rousers, those losers, those terrorists that showed up on January 6th into the political realm, which actually happens a lot if you follow terrorism. They sometimes find themselves in politics, and there will be another attempt at some point. It will be in the courtrooms, it will be in the board rooms as what you are seeing with Fox News, or it will be in the voting booths where they are making it more difficult for people to vote. So it’s a scary situation for this country. The insurgency has moved on from a bunch of people wearing camo pants to a bunch of men and women wearing Brooks Brothers. It is probably more dangerous than what I saw January 6.”
Hayes said, “You feel quite clear there is essentially a fundamentally illiberal authoritarian faction that’s formed that has gained control of the Republican Party.”
Gallego said, “Correct. But this has been going on for a while, Chris. Now a lot of people are seeing it. Let’s begin. You know this goes back prior to this election. When you saw the Tea Party movement, and you were at the protests of the Tea Party, I was at the first one observing them, you saw people trying to overthrow, start overthrowing the government because they didn’t like the fact that there was a Black president. We saw the rhetoric they were using. You saw the legislation. For example, in the statehouse, they were putting in legislation to overturn the right of citizens to vote for the U.S. Senate. They wanted to have the state legislators do that from now on. This has been an existing part of the Republican Party. The problem is the Republican Party and the corporate overlords always thought they could contained it. Now it’s taken over. Now Trumpism is in charge.”
Gallego added, “The only real way to defend ourselves right now is for us to have a very vigorous democracy where we get out the vote and stop all attempts for them to actually disenfranchise us because the coup is ongoing. It’s not armed but now it’s armed with legal briefs, armed with different ballot initiatives to diminish peoples right votes, other legal means that, unfortunately, could have bad results, more so than what we saw on January 6th.”
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