Enablement

The torture self justification of one very powerful Trump loathing anonymous republican.

- By Olivia Nuzzi

ONE AFTERNOON this year, a Washington Republican wove through packs of tourists on the Mall and considered, as he often did, the collapse of America. How would all of this appear from a distance? He looked at the monuments, lucent in the sun, and pictured them disfigured by centuries of neglect and carnage. “Do you ever think about how, 2,000 years from now, people are going to do what we’re doing right now how they do it in the Forum in Rome?” he said. “Unless it’s destroyed, the ruins of the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial”—he gestured over there and over there, where the future ruins would be crawling with Jetsons— “they’ll have their headsets, which will probably be a chip in their brain.”

While growing up in a coastal suburb, he first visited Washington on a class trip. “I don’t think it was very inspiring,” he said. “I’m a pretty cynical person.” He was not raised in a political family. (“I’m like Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus,” he joked.) But he loved history, and he decided he wanted to arrive here someday, work for someone powerful, contributing to what will become history tomorrow. “Did I become a Republican in high school because I agreed with them? Was it because I was a contrarian, or did I think it was cool?” he said. “Who knows. It’s academic at this point, anyway.” He registered as a Republican, and as soon as he could, he took on jobs with mainstream conservatives, which felt, at the time, a world away from the fringe movements and personalities of the day, though he did observe them with interest.