A message for US Republicans

You have a choice: tell the truth, or be complicit in dangerous madness

Let’s start with a spelling lesson.

T is for Tariffs.

It is also for Trash, as in Trash The Economy.

T is also for Trump, and for Truss, both of whom, as it happens, know quite a lot about how to trash economies.

Maybe you have forgotten about Liz Truss. I wouldn’t blame you, because most people on this side of the Pond have forgotten about her as well.

She was briefly our Prime Minister back in 2022, and when I say ‘briefly’, I really do mean ‘briefly’.

She lasted all of 45 days in office, making her the shortest-serving PM in British history. The reason she quit? Her own party lost confidence in her and forced her out.

Now, you don’t need to tell me that the US political system is very different from the UK’s. You have Presidents, elected by the people (well, elected by an Electoral College, to be exact, but for our purposes, it makes little difference), whereas we have Prime Ministers, who are elected by members of their own party.

The UK Conservatives are especially good at toppling their Prime Ministers when they become too much of a liability: Margaret Thatcher was forced out in 1990, Theresa May in 2019, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss in 2022.

You Republicans don’t have the same power. Although after the events of the past week — did you see what happened to the stock market? — you probably wish you did.

What you do have, however, is the power of your voice. And what I simply don’t understand is why so few of you are prepared to use it to tell Mr Trump, loud and clear, again and again, that he is taking your party and your country on the road to ruin.

Have you seen the opinion polls? More than half of US voters now disapprove of the way the President is doing his job. His approval rating is at its lowest level since last November’s election.

Even Republican voters are turning against him: while 45 percent of them still think the current state of the economy is ‘good’, 55 per cent rate it as ‘not so good’ or ‘poor’.

You might like to bear that in mind as your thoughts turn to the mid-terms next year.

This weekend there have been anti-Trump protests in several US cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Not your people, perhaps, but maybe the start of something bigger?

What do you think will happen once the voters of MAGA-land — your voters — see what has happened to the tariff-laden prices of their Chinese-made TVs, iPhones, trainers and T-shirts?

I’m told that many of you live in fear of the power of the Musk millions, the constant threat that Tesla-man will throw unlimited amounts of cash at your election rivals if you dare to so much as suggest that the President may not be what your country needs.

In which case, I would refer you to Wisconsin. Despite shelling out something like $20 million to back his favoured candidate in last week’s Supreme Court judge election, Musk lost, and lost bigly, as Mr Trump might say.

In other words, although Wisconsin narrowly went Republican in the Presidential race last November, within less than three months of Trump taking office, the state’s voters have already had a change of heart.

So maybe buying votes isn’t as easy as Mr Musk seems to think.

I’m sure you saw the front page of this weekend’s Wall Street Journal: ‘Market Carnage Worsens’ was the headline. ‘Dow plunges 2,200; Nasdaq enters bear territory.’

And beneath it was a photo and a caption: ‘Trump heads to golf club amid market turmoil.’

Is that really the message you want to take to your voters? Voters who have seen thousands of Federal government employees summarily dismissed, while watching the investments on which their pensions depend slump in value?

Are you really prepared to defend a President about whom The Economist magazine, not exactly a bastion of the radical far-left, said this:

‘Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded.’

Remember, it’s not that long ago that a leading Republican said he couldn’t decide whether Trump was ‘a cynical asshole like Nixon’ or ‘America's Hitler.’ (That was JD Vance in 2016, who, in case you need reminding, is now Trump’s Vice-President.)

Another one said, also in 2016: ‘Whatever happens in this election, for years to come, there are many people … that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump, because this is not going to end well.’ (Yep, that was none other than Marco Rubio, now serving as Trump’s secretary of state.)

Are these the people you’re happy lining up with? Defending to your voters as men of principle who know what’s best for America?

Republicans: you have a choice. You can say what you know to be true — that the man in the White House has embarked on a ruinous policy that must be challenged and resisted at every opportunity and in every way possible — or you can stay silent and know that every time you look in the bathroom mirror you will see someone complicit in the wholly unnecessary impoverishment of the people you were elected to represent.

Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have already spoken out against this dangerous economic madness. It’s time for more of their colleagues to join them.