Will Saletan takes on Kristen Welker’s Meet the Press interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, arguing that Blanche’s evasions on Justice Department independence, Trump’s influence over prosecutions, January 6 pardons, and a proposed compensation fund expose him as a loyalist ready to do the president’s bidding.
Will Saletan gives his take on how Republicans accused of serious misconduct have learned to survive scandal. All they have do is follow Donald Trump’s example: never resign, deny everything, attack the accusers, call the investigation “political,” and invoke Trump’s own history as proof that they can stay in the fight. From Duncan Hunter and Matt Gaetz to George Santos, Cory Mills and Max Miller, Will walks through how Trump has become the model for Republican politicians facing allegations, investigations and convictions — with endorsements, pardons and political support often waiting on the other side.
Read more from Will: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-to-survive-a-republican-scandal-imitate-trump
AFTER THREE WOMEN ACCUSED Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) of physically abusing them, Donald Trump placed a phone call to the congressman last week. The president warned Miller that he might have trouble winning re-election to Congress. Republican officials hoped Miller would drop out of the race, allowing the party to nominate somebody else.
Instead, Miller told Trump he would stay in. Then he went on TV and hailed Trump as his model. He boasted that Trump had survived similar allegations in 2016 and that he, Miller, would now do the same.
Miller is the latest in a line of scandal-plagued Republican congressmen who have played the Trump card. In the face of investigations, indictments, or convictions, they have denounced law enforcement and invoked the felon-in-chief as their inspiration to fight on. It hasn’t always worked out for them. But in doing so, they’ve clarified the ethos of today’s GOP: It’s a party of reprobates, led by a crook.
IN 2018, REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R-Calif.) was indicted on charges of stealing money from his campaign for personal use. “I am not going anywhere,” he vowed. Hunter accused the Justice Department of bias against him, and he embraced Trump—who was being investigated for obstruction of justice in the Russiagate scandal—as a fellow victim. “There is a culture operating within our Justice Department that is politically motivated,” Hunter alleged. “We are seeing this with President Trump; we are seeing this with my case.”
At the time, DOJ was headed by Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions. But Hunter didn’t let that get in the way of his partisan story. “This is the new Department of Justice. This is the Democrats’ arm of law enforcement,” the congressman told the press. “That’s what’s happening right now. It’s happening with Trump. And it’s happening with me.”
The ploy paid off. Soon after Hunter delivered those remarks, Trump publicly rebuked Sessions for allowing DOJ to indict the congressman. Two months later, Trump dumped Sessions. And two years later, after Hunter pleaded guilty to the charges, Trump pardoned him.
IN 2021, REP. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) faced scrutiny in a federal sex-trafficking investigation. “I am absolutely not resigning,” he declared in a Washington Examiner op-ed. Gaetz wrote that he was being falsely accused, “just as they once falsely attacked President Donald Trump as a Russian asset.”
Gaetz suggested that he had been targeted by the feds because “I decided to take on the most powerful institutions in the Beltway,” including the FBI and the “Biden Justice Department.” He also bragged that “anti-Trump cheerleaders,” including The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol, would “call for me to resign.” (In fact, Kristol had already done so.)
In an interview on Newsmax, Gaetz humbly submitted that DOJ’s persecution of him was nothing compared to “the level of venom they brought against Donald Trump.” But he claimed kinship with the martyred ex-president. “If they would do that to the president of the United States,” Gaetz asked, “do you think it would be the last time they’ve done it? I think there’s a lot of swamp left to be drained at the Department of Justice.”
Again, Trump rewarded the suckup. In November 2024, he nominated Gaetz to be the attorney general. Trump dropped the nomination only after it became clear that Gaetz couldn’t get confirmed. A month later, the House Ethics Committee reported “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
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IN 2023, REP. GEORGE SANTOS (R-N.Y.) was indicted on charges of money laundering, wire fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, and theft of public funds. He refused to step down. “I’m entitled to that same process that Joe Biden is entitled [to], that Donald Trump was entitled to, but Donald Trump was denied,” he protested.
In November 2023, the House expelled Santos. In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft. In April 2025, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Two weeks after he was sentenced, Santos appeared on Piers Morgan’s podcast. “President Trump has got the power to pardon you,” Morgan told him. “If Donald Trump is watching this interview, do you want to make a personal plea to him?”
Santos knew exactly what to say:
I am in the process of filling an application to a pardon for the president. I’ll take a commutation, clemency, whatever the president is willing to give me. . . . I think [there is] no one better than President Trump to know what a weaponized Justice Department looks like. And, you know, this is—this is exactly it.
Five months later, Trump commuted Santos’s sentence, springing him from prison. “George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years,” Trump wrote. He added that “Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
LAST NOVEMBER, THE HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE opened an investigation of Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who faced allegations of sexual misconduct, violence and threats against women, and breaking campaign finance laws, among other offenses. In a January interview with Fox 35 Orlando, Mills blamed the accusations on Democratic “lawfare.” “It’s the same thing President Trump faced, where everything was about allegation, accusation, indictment,” said Mills. “But when it came down to it, the proof just wasn’t there.” He went on:
I also remember when President Trump was going through his election, he was facing, you know, a life sentence in prison. He was facing hundreds of millions of dollars in indictments and many allegations. . . . If you’re going to come into politics, you got to have thick skin. And at the end of the day, you’re going to be accused or allegated [sic] of something.
Three weeks after that interview, as other Republicans looked for a challenger to replace Mills, the convicted president gave the congressman his blessing. “Cory Mills has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election,” Trump pledged.
CONGRESS ISN’T THE ONLY PLACE where accused Republican miscreants play the Trump card. In 2018, Gov. Eric Greitens (R-Mo.), facing allegations of violent and coercive sexual behavior, called a press conference to denounce his inquisitors. Four times in his seven-minute statement, he claimed to be the victim of a “witch hunt,” echoing Trump’s favorite term for the Russia investigation.
In case anyone missed the reference, Greitens made it explicit. “This is exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “Smearing, lying, and attacking people who want to change how things are done is wrong in Washington, and it’s wrong in Missouri.”
Greitens eventually resigned, but he ran for the Senate four years later. In that race, he faced additional allegations of domestic violence. Again, he appealed to the GOP’s most exalted defendant. Politico reported that in an interview, Greitens “said he’s been more viciously attacked than anyone other than Trump.”
Three days after that article appeared, Trump declared, “ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” The statement was deliberately ambiguous, allowing both Greitens and another candidate, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, to claim Trump’s blessing.
THIS WAS THE HISTORY MAX MILLER banked on when he invoked Trump’s name last week. On CNN, Jake Tapper asked the congressman whether all three of his three accusers were lying. Miller responded by drawing a parallel to the women who accused Trump of sexual abuse:
In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day—and people in the media, very much like yourself and others, said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the president of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in, and he was resilient. And what the American people can see is that they can see that somebody is fighting who is resilient. And that is a quality that the American people cherish. And so, for no second am I going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and baseless allegations and be pushed out of this seat.
Miller said he had told Trump the same thing in their phone call: “I reminded him of the same resilience that he had when people told him that he was going to struggle in 2016, and he became the 45th president. . . . I am never going to give up.” In an interview with Newsmax, Miller added:
When we go all the way back to 2015, 2016 . . . everyone came out with allegations. Dozens of women, dozens of crazy allegations, dozens of nasty criminal misconduct. And do you want to know what he [Trump] did, Rob? He stayed in the fight, because Americans see, and one of the qualities that they respect the most is, somebody who is resilient.
It’s not clear what part of Miller’s argument moved Trump. Maybe it was the congressman’s refusal to concede anything; maybe it was his appeal to Trump as a fellow victim of lying women. Either way, the ploy worked. Two days after Miller gave those interviews, a reporter asked Trump whether Miller should withdraw. “I’m not going to get involved in that,” the president shrugged.
IN THE YEARS BEFORE TRUMP, Republicans talked a lot about character. They denounced Bill Clinton’s adultery, his perjury, and his exploitation of an intern. They said moral rot was infectious. They warned that a party led by a scoundrel, and dedicated to defending that scoundrel, would come to resemble him.
Under Trump, they’ve proved it.
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Will Saletan gives his take on Trump’s new NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, becoming a loyalist defender of the Trump administration’s most controversial and absurd health claims. Bhattacharya repeatedly blames Anthony Fauci for COVID-era school closures, declining vaccine confidence and other public-health failures, even when the record doesn’t support those claims. He also refuses to clearly say that vaccines do not cause autism and dodges questions about anti-vaccine misinformation and the CDC shooting. What happens to science when the people running America’s health agencies become more focused on defending Trump and RFK Jr. than following the evidence?
Will Saletan dismantles RFK Jr.'s disastrous CNN interview, exposing one false claim after another on COVID, vaccines, Anthony Fauci, Donald Trump, and the media. From conspiracy theories to blatant contradictions, the secretary of Health and Human Services spends more time attacking Dana Bash than defending his own claims and the facts don't hold up. If the nation's top health official is still pushing COVID misinformation, Americans deserve to know.
Will Saletan fact-checks the GOP's Fauci diary attacks, debunking RFK Jr.'s vaccine claims, Fox News's selective editing, and conspiracy theories about lab leaks, school closures, and vaccine sabotage—showing why these "gotcha" moments collapse under scrutiny.
REPUBLICANS HAVE BEEN TRYING for five years to rewrite the history of Donald Trump’s two biggest moral crimes. One was his violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The other was his deadly mismanagement of COVID.
Since Trump returned to power, his party has fallen in line. It has echoed or acquiesced to his nutty tale of a “rigged election.” Republicans have defended or accepted his pardons of the January 6th felons, as well as his persecution of the public servants who investigated those felons.
Yesterday’s Senate hearing on COVID—which saw Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the government’s response to COVID, subjected to hours of lies and insults—showed that the GOP has now fully embraced the other revisionist story: the one about the pandemic. In this twisted narrative, the villain isn’t Trump, China, or even the virus. It’s Fauci.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the second-ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, insisted that the COVID vaccines were “experimental gene therapy.” (They aren’t.) As evidence of their putative lethality, he cited a poll in which 24 percent of Americans supposedly claimed to know someone who had died from the vaccines. That’s 82 million people. Hiding such a colossal death toll would be, to put it politely, impossible.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), claimed that Fauci’s advice to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people—or tens of thousands of people.” Paul referred to the elderly, making it clear that he was talking about Cuomo’s disastrous practice of sending infected patients back to nursing homes. Paul’s numbers were wildly off—the real death toll was about 6,400—and his attempt to blame Fauci was completely backward. Multiple reports found that Fauci had no role in the nursing-home policy. In fact, Fauci had recommended the opposite.
Paul accused Fauci of having denied the plausibility of the lab-leak theory, which holds that the COVID virus developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That’s not true, either: Fauci didn’t buy the theory, but he routinely said it was plausible. Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida repeated another Republican talking point: that Fauci’s change of advice on masks—first opposing their use in the general population, then encouraging it—was based only on the availability of masks, not on evidence that they worked. In reality, Fauci has consistently explained that such evidence was a major factor in his decision.
Meanwhile, Johnson spewed conspiracy theories. He suggested, with no apparent basis, that a pulmonary infarction suffered by Fauci in 2021 was caused by COVID booster shots. The senator also claimed that harm from the vaccines was vastly undercounted because a government “algorithm” systematically hid the evidence. But Johnson’s vigilance was selective: He dismissed the known risks and side effects of his favorite drug, hydroxychloroquine.
THE SENATORS’ CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT COVID intersected at some points with Republican conspiracy theories about
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Will Saletan and Ben Parker take on Mike Waltz's Sunday show gauntlet defending Trump's Iran war—confused goals, dwindling munitions, Russia and China's help, civilian infrastructure targeting, and fantasy pipelines meant to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
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