GOP debate showed how fascistic the party, Fox News have become

No discussion about Trump calling for execution of General Milley, Trump's mental competency or even a looming government shutdown spearheaded by MAGA extremists and Trump.

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The second GOP presidential primary debate had no reason for being and no purpose at all. Donald Trump, who was absent, is clearly going to be the Republican nominee.

Even if at times chaotic, the debate was largely boring and lackluster. But that was because the candidates and Fox News had put so much off limits.

Trump needed to be completely vaporized with a nuclear attack by every one of the candidates—yet just about all of them (except for Chris Christie) have pledged to the RNC and the world that they’d back him even if he’s convicted of every one of the crimes he’s charged with.

So the most they could muster was Ron DeSantis and Christie criticizing Trump for not being there, while Nikki Haley and DeSantis slapped him about government spending. There were a few more mild attacks, but when you’ve got a candidate with 91 criminal charges in four indictments who has been found by a jury and a judge to have sexually assaulted and raped a woman, is liable for defamation, and who just had another judge rule he committed massive fraud in his business, there’s a treasure trove to hit him with.

Not only that—yeah, I get that the GOP base believes the Big Lie, and thinks the indictments are bogus and Trump is the victim, so the candidates are feebly worried about going there—but we have Trump just in the past few days calling for the execution of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley.

If we’re to believe that the GOP candidates are afraid to attack Trump for calling for the murder of the nation’s top general—who has responded now on 60 Minutes, saying he has had to take security measures for himself and his family—because the base of the party might agree with Trump on the execution or at the very least believe it’s okay for Trump to promote that violence, well, then the GOP is truly a fascist party.

And just in the past couple of weeks, Trump has shown some jaw-dropping mental competency issues, thinking he ran against Obama in 2016 in one speech and confusing Jeb Bush with George W. Bush in another. GOP candidates who can’t stop talking about President Biden’s age—and who recognize some in the public have concerns about it—were afraid to jump on exposing Trump’s mental competency? Even Haley, who previously went there, has completely moved on.

All of this dereliction of duty or outright fear wasn’t only on the candidates; it was on the Fox moderators as well. Did Dana Perino and Stuart Varney really not think it was newsworthy to talk about the call to execute General Milley? They didn’t even talk about Trump’s four indictments and 91 charges this time—or the new decision handed down by a New York judge who ruled that Trump committed massive fraud and ordered his New York-based companies to be dissolved.

They didn’t even bring up the GOP’s government shutdown—driven by 25 deranged MAGA House members—that will harm millions, nor ask the candidates what they would do if they were president at this time. Likely that’s because it’s a shutdown publicly urged on by Trump, and they’re afraid to go there.

Authoritarianism—let’s be clear, full on fascism—is now openly accepted in the GOP base, which wants a strongman, and the candidates and Fox News anchors are themselves afraid of taking on the strongman who is the de facto nominee, afraid about how the base (and in the case of Fox, their customers) might respond.

Or maybe, in the case of the candidates, they were still auditioning—at least some of them—to be Trump’s VP running mate. But Trump is not picking any of these sorry losers, precisely because he hates those he perceives as losers, including, grotesquely, those who have been wounded in war, such as John McCain and many others—another topic that surfaced again in recent days but which the Fox anchors and the candidates didn’t dare broach.

All of these candidates showed themselves to be too pathetic for him. But, conversely, even the mild insults are too much for Trump. He’ll go for someone outside of the current picture, someone who will be loyal to him and show true fealty.

If at this point in time the GOP, having had years to plan it, can’t figure out how to take Trump down, it's a true admission that the cult—the fascist cult that has overtaken millions of their voters—is deeply embedded and that there is no stopping it.