'Not built for the apocalypse': columnist blames Trump for devastating Congress

The mass exodus of lawmakers fleeing D.C. ahead of the portentous 2024 election is proof that "MAGA hellions" are determined to run the show and run out those who don't agree, according to a new political analysis.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni expressed as much in his latest piece, "The great 2024 exodus is all about Trump-era discord and dysfunction".

Bruni focuses on the dozens of House Republicans he says are heading for the exits because of fatigue with the Tea Party movement, MAGA and Trump.

"What matters is who those Republicans are," Bruni writes, "the disgust in their goodbyes, their palpable sense of defeat and how it contradicts the fact that they have been in the majority in the chamber since early 2023."

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Bruni argues this is the result of a Capitol Hill Catch-22.

"In power, they have found themselves close to powerless," Bruni writes. "That’s the hellish paradox of their surrender to Trump."

Bruni blames the exodus on a "poisonous climate" created by "Trump’s spiritual spawn;" Republicans such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

"The Trump giveth, and the Trump taketh away," Bruni writes. "[Trump] begot their antics. He nurtured their rage."

Bruni says of Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), "They carry the scars of a scabrous 2023."

The columnist then turns to a deeper, chicken-or-the-egg conundrum.

"Which came first, the tempest or the Trump?" Bruni writes. "It’s indisputable that he worsened the weather. Perhaps he swept in on storm clouds already formed. But only then came the lightning."

But if Bruni has pity for the fleeing Republicans, he also has some rage.

"They weren’t built for the apocalypse," the New York Times columnist writes. "They should have done more to head it off."

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