Representative has become his most powerful ally in Congress – and her name is frequently mentioned as a potential running mate

Representative has become his most powerful ally in Congress – and her name is frequently mentioned as a potential running mate

As Donald Trump aggressively fights multiple legal and political threats, New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik has become his most powerful ally in Congress in key ways by echoing Trump’s dangerous falsehoods and pushing outlandish conspiracy theories around the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

To bolster Trump, Stefanik has mimicked Trump’s calling convicted January 6 prisoners “hostages”, declined in a TV interview to say she would certify the 2024 election in advance, and filed ethics complaints against two judges overseeing cases against Trump or his allies.

Stefanik’s emergence as a major Trump cheerleader has sparked sharp criticism from historians, ex-Republican members and Democrats for fueling election denialism and disinformation which weaken democracy. But it has earned Stefanik a notable distinction: her name is frequently mentioned as Trump’s potential 2024 running mate.

“She scares me in several ways,” said Harvard government professor Steven Levitsky, the co-author of How Democracies Die. “Stefanik appears to be willing to go down Trump’s authoritarian path wholeheartedly.”

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
    24·
    8 months ago

    This should be shocking to everybody but surprising to nobody given that her “breakthrough” in the GOP was being the third most obnoxiously aggressive denier of obvious truth at his first impeachment (just barely surpassed by Gym Jordan and Mark Meadows), which is what immediately made her “a rising star in the Republican Party” 🤮

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      8 months ago

      It sounds like you, kind sir, are a part of the Reality-based community, so you will never understand what they do:

      The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
        9·
        8 months ago

        Yes, the exact same people who repeated Reagan’s line about government being the problem were fine with thinking they could create a working government in Iraq without speaking the language.