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  • The Atlantic

    The Validation Brigade Salutes Trump

    Full support of the former president has become almost banal among Republicans, like joining a grocery line.
    by Mark Leibovich Feb 09, 2024 6 minutes
    Source: Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Al Drago / Getty; Anna Rose Layden / Getty; Kevin Dietsch / Getty; Stefani Reynolds / Getty.

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    Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, officially endorsed Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection two Saturdays ago. The news landed as an afterthought, which is probably how she intended it. “Today at the @WVGOP Winter Meeting Lunch, I announced my support for President Donald Trump,” Capito wrote on X, as if she were making a dutiful entry in a diary.

    Republicans have reached the point in their primary season, even earlier than expected, when the party’s putative leaders line up to reaffirm their allegiance to Trump. Several of Capito’s Senate colleagues joined the validation brigade around the same time: the GOP’s second- and third-ranking members, of Texas and of Wyoming, along with Trump’s long-ago rivals of Texas and of Florida. None of their endorsements caused much of a ripple. Perhaps some mischief-maker surfaced the old video of Cruz “a sniveling coward” in 2016 “the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency.” But for the most part, the numbing shows of conformity felt inevitable, just as Trump’s third straight presidential nomination now appears to be.

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