In the early minutes of Wednesday’s Republican debate, while everyone on stage was studiously ignoring the fact that their AWOL rival is a serial criminal defendant, someone on Twitter asked what we’d prefer to be doing instead of watching that show. I posted my answer:

Prepping for a colonoscopy.

I would’ve preferred gagging on polyethylene glycol than witnessing what happened at the 58-minute mark of Fox News’ fascist-adjacent spectacle. That’s how long it took for this pitiable assemblage to even begin to address the most crucial issue facing America today: the ongoing, still-metastasizing threat to democracy itself, as perpetrated by the criminally accused racketeer and espionage agent who will soon be immortalized in a mug shot.

Nearly one hour in, co-inquisitor Bret Baier braved the braying MAGA audience and asked whether the contestants would still support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee if he were convicted of a crime prior to the election.

Six of the eight candidates actually raised their hands.

Trump is staking his 2024 campaign on his criminal contempt for democracy, and most of the wannabes are on board with it. That’s how precipitously far this party has fallen since the bygone days when it prided itself for being tough on crime, for championing law and order.

Did it matter a whit that Trump will be prosecuted for trying to overturn a free election and subvert democracy? That Trump’s former top lawyer, plus the lawyer who authored a coup blueprint, have now been booked in a Georgia jailhouse? That a key witness in the stolen documents case has flipped, and is now confirming that Trump tried to destroy key video footage?

Nope.

Instead, when Chris Christie stated the obvious – “Whether you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, (his) conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States” – the audience roundly booed him.

When Vivek Ramaswamy, the rich entitled motormouthed twerp who’s running as MAGA 2.0, declared that if he were president he would pardon Trump of all convicted crimes, the audience lapped it up like it was Jim Jones’ killer Kool-Aid. When Tim Scott was asked whether he supported Mike Pence’s pro-Constitution stance on Jan. 6, he bobbed and weaved and said “the bigger question” was the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department – and the mob in the arena ate it up. When underwhelming Ron DeSantis was similarly asked whether Pence had done the right thing, he dodged a la Scott and dredged up a golden oldie, to the mob’s delight, about sending Joe Biden back to his basement.

The lies began even before the show kicked off. Fox News branded its event as “Democracy ’24,” which was a tad hilarious, coming from the network that shelled out a $787,000,000 settlement to the Dominion balloting firm, which Fox had defamed while magnifying Trump’s lying assault on democracy.

One more thing: How was it possible for Nikki Haley to occasionally sound so sane, like when she dared say out loud that Trump (“the most disliked politician in America”) is no longer electable…yet she raised her hand to signal that she’d support him as a ’24 candidate anyway, even if he were criminally convicted for trying to overturn an election?

I could list more of the evening’s horrors – like when Christie detailed Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, reminded the audience that Trump has called Putin “a genius,” and was then heckled for his candor – but writing about this cult sickens me almost as much as colonoscopy prep. Excuse me, I need to lie down and gird myself for the next debate one month from now. At least colonoscopies are spaced every few years.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]