How have Republicans reacted to the FBI raid on Trump?

The FBI search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago has got Democrat supporters pleased. If the evidence is found that he has committed a crime, it could mark the beginning of the process for preventing Trump from running in the next election. He is a proven vote-winner after all.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans took a different view to proceedings. For them, it is an effort for the establishment, confusingly not including themselves, to demonise their candidate. It is another measure to keep up the witch-hunt against Republicans that started with the ‘stealing’ of the election in 2020. There is no evidence for any of these claims.

It is by no means fringe candidates or the far-right that are causing the hullabaloo. Republican high command have been leading the charge.

Some of the reaction

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House, claimed in a statement that the justice department had reached “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and that once the Republicans were back in charge this would be reversed. What this would entail is unclear, but he made a thinly-veiled threat towards the attorney general.

Lindsey Graham, US senator for South Carolina, said, “Time will tell regarding this most recent investigation. However, launching such an investigation of a former President this close to an election is beyond problematic.”

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), chimed in with an attack on the ‘deep state’, “The Deep State will do anything in its power to slime President Trump,” Schlapp said, “Americans need to keep growing the big Red Wave and save the country from these corrupt fascists.” Irony is not dead, it seems.

Despite the insistence of the ‘deep state’ acting against the Republicans, the current head of the FBI is Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump. For Republicans, surely this would put Trump’s judgement into question, or render him a part of the same deep state. Apparently the current Republican party is not one of critical thinking.

These attacks on institutions has been a cornerstone of Republican rhetoric since Joe Biden won the presidency. Republicans have been stalwart in their opposition against the January 6 commission, despite or because its findings that Republicans were intimately involved with the riot.

Joe Walsh, a Trump critic and former Republican congressman, tweeted, “The Republican Party has abandoned the rule of law. Just listen to them tonight. They’re at war with the rule of law.”

Others were quick to point to Republican backing of police despite numerous shootings of black men and used their own language against them.