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Notes -
And how much did that change, concretely?
Again, there doesn't seem to be a particular visible difference between the "Trump movement" and the Republican party - because the Republican Party is Trump's party, and what the Trump movement does is follow Trump and rationalize his actions, no matter what they are. Trump wants Mehmet Oz as a candidate in Pennsylvania despite him being an obvious charlatan? Then Oz is a candidate. Trump wants to moderate on abortion, or throw away free-market principles? Then that happens. Anti-vaxxers who believe the vaccine was a genocide going to bat for Trump, who couldn't stop talking about his big beautiful vaccine that came to be because of him? No sign of cognitive dissonance in evidence.
What the "non-Trump" Republican Party, insofar as it has an independent existence (staffers, politicians etc.) thinks, seems to be ephemeral. Either they pledge allegiance to Trump or they're out. And it's easy to pledge allegiance since Trump didn't want any radical ideological changes anyhow - the most radical things he did, ie. around Jan 6, were simply related to his continual desire to cling in power.
It delayed funding (money laundering) for globalist wars for a few months. After that it changed nothing, but this isn't because the republicans in congress are captured by Trump. It's because they rebelled against Trump and enough of them were talking about voting with the democrats to push the funding through. The reality is that Johnson isn't a Trump populist. He does what the other snakes in congress do and pays lip service to Trump, Trump is shallow and doesn't learn from his betrayals so this works, and then ultimately does what the neolib/neocon police state wishes.
They don't care who Trump appoints to get elected because the elections are already rigged in a, heads I win, tails you lose way. If Oz is a charlatan and loses then their guy that is willing to go to bat for the imperialist occupiers still gets in via the dem candidate. McConnell will even play with republican campaign funding to help that happen.
The anti-vax thing is just another weak man. Republicans were no more anti-vaccine than dems, if anything the vaccines cause autism thing was more of a California hippy, "nature is good, not nature is not good" thing prior to covid totalitarianism. The friction came when the state decided to force it on people and use a bizarre and illegal interpretation of OSHA rules to pressure employers until that was struck down. Before that there was a lot less pushback and maybe if the globalists hadn't held back news that the vaccine had passed trials til after the election to help their team republicans would've been more for it.
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