Raskin: GOP being reduced to a ‘cult of authoritarian personality’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Wednesday the GOP is being “reduced to a cult of authoritarian personality” after former President Trump nearly swept the Super Tuesday primary states.

“[I]t is disgraceful that a great political party, much less Abraham Lincoln’s party, a party of liberty and union, should be reduced to a cult of authoritarian personality in league with autocrats and kleptocrats and dictators all over the world,” Raskin said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”

Raskin’s comments came as Trump’s last GOP primary rival, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race Wednesday. However, she didn’t endorse Trump and said he’d have to earn the backing of her supporters.

“I applaud Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, The Lincoln Project, all of the Republicans who are standing up for the Constitution, but what we’ve seen in this election, and we’ll have to follow what happens with Nikki Haley, is the Republicans break, but they can’t bend,” Raskin continued.

“In other words, there’s no ability to accommodate other views because everybody has to follow Donald Trump, like a monarch.”

Haley, Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, stepped up her attacks on Trump as the campaign wore on, and he often viciously attacked her with nicknames like “birdbrain.” Trump also at one point said donors to Haley were barred from his MAGA movement.

“At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away,” Haley said Wednesday in remarks from Charleston, S.C. “And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.”

Raskin was a leading figure in Trump’s second impeachment for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and served on the House Jan. 6 committee alongside Kinzinger and Cheney. He is now the ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, making him a chief defender of President Biden amid GOP probes into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.