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Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

Are you racist for defending a racist? Are you despicable for defending Trump?

We are living in an altered universe when Congressman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) parades one African-America woman in front of the world trying to prove Trump isn’t racist and then gets upset when he is called a racist. The same Meadows who said in 2012, “We will send him back to Kenya or wherever that is” about President Obama. There is a saying “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a duck.” I felt sorry for the woman who stood behind Meadows looking like a deer in the headlights until I read a story in the paper about her loving the attention. Apparently she wants to star in a reality show.

Donald Trump has verbally attacked immigrants and people of color. He has defended white nationalists and anti-Semites. He promotes a host of policies harmful to African Americans, the LGBTQ community, women and immigrants. One can say considering him racist is being too kind. He is a totally disgusting individual lacking in any empathy or decency. Listening to their attacks on Michael Cohen in their zeal to defend this president we must feel free to question Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), among his top defenders, about their beliefs and principles. It is clear after listening to Meadows go after Cohen and how in the past he has defended the outrageousness of Trump he doth protest too much when attacked. I don’t know about his nieces and nephews being people of color but that fact alone doesn’t make him not a racist. It speaks to the saying: “some of my best friends are,” which some people use to explain why they really aren’t racist. Trump hiring his son’s wedding planner to work at HUD clearly doesn’t make him not a racist.

Republicans falling over themselves to hitch their wagon to Trump once again have managed to make themselves look like fools. When they attack Cohen for being a liar he readily agrees with them reminding them it is the reason he is about to go to prison. But these Republican fools can’t see the hypocrisy in attacking him while defending the sad excuse for a man in the White House who it has been proven has lied thousands of times to the American people since being elected president. Listening carefully to most of Trump’s sycophants on the Committee while attacking Cohen they weren’t actually defending Trump though one of the blithering idiots, Jim Jordan, has said in the past he has never heard Trump lie. This the same Jim Jordan who has been accused by his former athletes when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State of knowing team doctor Richard Strauss sexually abused athletes but failed to report it. So I guess pretending to not hear Trump lie is really a minor thing for him to pretend not to hear or see.

So what does it make all Republicans who continue to defend Trump? As Cohen said maybe it makes them all like him. We can only hope Trump and his family will be punished for their lying and cheating and even serve time in jail. The way the American people can punish Trump’s congressional defenders is by defeating them in an election. They can continue to sputter and make excuses for him and attack those who would call him out but in the long run that is like pissing in the wind and with any luck the wind will be at their faces. We must demand those like Rep. Matt Gaetz who issued an explicit threat to Michael Cohen to intimidate him before he testified will be held accountable to the full extent the law allows.

We are at a point when even though each day brings another surprise we are no longer shocked. Yet there are still many Americans who believe what he says. There are still Republicans on the Hill who defend him.

This is the world Donald Trump has wrought. We must fight together to bring this despot and his cohorts down and restore some semblance of sanity.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.