Republican party rot from top to bottom

President Donald Trump boards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House photo)

By Rich Moniak

“This is the golden age of America,” President Donald Trump proclaimed during his State of the Union speech a few months ago. To his credit, Sen. Dan Sullivan thought it was still important “to acknowledge how working families are struggling with high prices, whether in the grocery store, or in other places.”

At the time he could make believe Trump cared too. Not anymore.

“The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran — they can't have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said on Tuesday when asked if that’s motivating him to make a deal. “I don’t think about anybody. I don't think about Americans' financial situation.”

Last June, he emphatically stated “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities” were “completely and totally obliterated” by the U.S. bombing mission he ordered. He said it again during his SOTU speech.

Obviously, it wasn’t true. So, three days after the speech he launched a war with Iran without congressional approval.

Sullivan celebrated that decision by falsely claiming “Iran has been at war with us for almost 50 years.”

What he’s learned from Trump is there aren’t any political consequences for routinely lying. Or for betraying the conservative principles that anchored the Republican Party for generations.

In that same interview following the SOTU speech, Sullivan argued the Biden administration had unleashed the highest inflation rate in 50 years.

The partisan American Rescue Plan Act Biden signed did contribute to the 8% annual rate in 2021. But not to the 7.93% global inflation. Both were largely a side effect of the pandemic, including disruptions to energy supplies and manufacturing supply chains. During Biden’s last year inflation was only 2.9%.

Last month, the average of consumer prices rose to an annualized rate of 3.8%. But the price of ground beef is up 20% since Trump took office. 

Similarly, Sullivan intentionally mischaracterized Trump’s impact on energy production. It’s true “we’re producing more American energy than ever.” But records for oil and natural gas production were set each of the last three years of Biden’s term. That trend merely continued into 2025.

He stated the One Big Beautiful Bill Republicans passed last year gave senior citizens tax breaks of $6,000 for individual filers and $12,000 per couple. That’s not true. A couple eligible for the $12,000 deduction who fall in the 22% tax bracket would have their income tax reduced by $2,640.

And Trump didn’t bring down the price of gas “about 25%.” Sullivan omitted the fact that the national average had dropped to around $3 per gallon before Trump took office. During the next 13 months it only dropped 7%.

It’s gone up 50% since the war started.

There’s a reason why lying comes so naturally to Sullivan. As David French wrote in the New York Times article I referenced last week, for years “much of the Republican establishment paid lip service to principle but really cared about power.”

By establishment, French was referring to everyone from the elected officials down to the party’s most reliable voters, which he admittedly had been until Trump came along.

Charlie Sykes is another conservative who jumped ship in 2016. Two years later the long-time talk show host listed “fiscal conservatism, free trade, the global world order, our allies, truth and the rule of law” as some of the party’s principles under assault by Trump. 

It’s much worse in his second term. And because French and Sykes continue to use their media platforms to speak out, they’re no longer welcome in Republican circles.

Other media figures turned the freedom of speech into an act of self-censorship. There’s no better example than the internal correspondence among Fox News executives and talk show hosts regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

“Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country,” Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch wrote in an email to the CEO of Fox News. “Pretty much a crime,” he added without a hint of awareness that by keeping the truth from reaching their audience, his company aided and abetted it.

Trump’s political comeback relied on Fox News keeping it that way. Similarly, prominent conservative voices in Alaska censor themselves to protect Sullivan. They can offer glowing platitudes about what he’s done for Alaska. But they’d be cast out of the tribe as heretics if they called him out for betraying their principles by lying to cover up Trump’s many lies and character flaws.

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.