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Scenes From a MAGA Meltdown: Inside the "America First" Movement's War Over Democracy
Scenes From a MAGA Meltdown: Inside the “America First” Movement’s War Over Democracy
Across the country, the Republican Party’s rank-and-file have turned on the GOP establishment. In Michigan, this schism broke the party — and maybe democracy itself.
by Andy Kroll
May 22, 5 a.m. EDT
(ProPublica) Standing in a cafe decorated with tiny American flags and antique cabinets as big as bodyguards, Peter Meijer paused as he considered what to say to the man in the “Stand for God” shirt who had just called for his bodily harm.
It was a snowy morning in February. Meijer was the keynote speaker at a coffee-and-donuts meeting hosted by the Republican Party chapter in Kent County, Michigan, the most populous county on the west side of the state. Dressed in a candidate-casual uniform of jeans, a flannel shirt and an outdoorsy blazer, Meijer was seeking the Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, a race that could determine control of Congress’s upper chamber, in a state that could decide the presidential election. If Republicans wanted to win in November, Meijer told the 40-odd people in attendance, they needed to move on from the past and focus on their shared enemy.
“Is there anyone who thought that Jan. 6th was good for the Republican Party?” he asked. “Did it help us win in 2022?”
“We weren’t gonna win,” someone yelled. “It was rigged.”
....(snip)....
With a consequential election looming, I traveled back to Michigan earlier this year to understand how this all happened. I sought out the activists waging this struggle, a group of people who don’t trust institutions or individuals except Trump and one another — and sometimes not even that. Could they triumph over the elites? I found chaos, incompetence, strife, a glimpse of a future post-Trump Republican Party and, all around me, danger for our system of government and the state of the country. ..............(more)
https://www.propublica.org/article/michigan-republicans-maga-meltdown-democracy-elections