How Trump’s intimidation tactics have reshaped the Republican Party

By Peter Eisler and Ned Parker for Reuters

When US congressman Tom Rice voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the US Capitol in January 2021, it was the beginning of the end of his political career.

Angry calls and emails - including three death threats - flooded the South Carolina Republican's office. The next year, as Rice ran for a sixth term, a sheriff's deputy often guarded him at public events. Trump backed Rice's foe in the party's primary election. At a rally, the ex-president warned voters that the congressman "partnered with the Democrats to stab the Republican Party and, frankly, to stab our country in the back."

Rice got crushed in the primary. Today, the one-time conservative darling, a small-government fiscal hawk, is shunned by former allies and some old friends, he told Reuters. He feels betrayed by fellow Republicans who, "rather than upholding their oath and defending the Constitution, decided their position and their power was worth more."

In cementing his third-straight Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump and his staunchest followers have used menace and harassment to fundamentally reshape the party of Reagan, purging officials and activists seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump and his Make America Great Again agenda. Trump has imposed this fealty at every level of the party, from minor state and local officials to members of Congress, cabinet secretaries and rivals for the presidency, calling for revenge on those who resist his demands, vote against his interests or cross his allies.

Since launching his Truth Social media platform in early 2022, Trump has posted more than 600 attacks on fellow Republicans, singling out more than 100 party officials, activists and right-leaning media figures for condemnation, according to a Reuters review of his nearly 20,000 posts during that time.

One recent target: Brian Kemp, Republican governor of the battleground state of Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost in 2020. Trump berated Kemp at an 3 August rally as "Little Brian" for refusing to help overturn the last presidential election. Trump framed his Kemp attack as part of a broad cleansing of the party.

"He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy," Trump said of Kemp. Earlier that day, he wrote on Truth Social: "We have to purge the Party of people that go against our Candidates and make it harder for a popular Republican President to beat the Radical Left." Kemp did not respond to a request to comment.

Trump's ultimate weapon is his coveted endorsement, often wielded to drive the disloyal from office. Since the start of 2022, he has endorsed Republican challengers against at least 13 members of his own party in Congress who he's accused of betrayal, a Reuters review of his endorsements shows. All but three of the 13 lost their seats or quit the race.

And of the 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach him, just two remain in office. Four lost to Trump-backed primary challengers, including Liz Cheney, a former member of the Republican House leadership, and four opted not to run again. At least seven were threatened or harassed by Trump backers, according to police reports, court records and their own public statements.

Trump also subjects lower-tier party officials to opprobrium, often triggering copycat harassment and political defeat. More than a quarter of his Republican targets on Truth Social were state legislators, state judges, local election officials and other relatively low-profile political figures, Reuters found.

Asked about the former president's attacks on his fellow Republicans, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "President Trump continues to build a historic and unified political movement to make America strong, wealthy and safe again."

Glenn Rogers, a conservative Texas legislator and rancher, faced intimidation after joining a vote last year to impeach the state's attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, over allegations that he abused his office to benefit a donor. Paxton ultimately was acquitted, but the vote sparked rage from the Republican right - and ultimately from Trump himself.

One Facebook post warned Rogers he should prepare to "face your maker." Vandals spray-painted RINO - short for Republican in name only - on his campaign signs. Then, days before the party's nomination vote, Trump ripped Rogers on social media, calling him a RINO and endorsing his Republican opponent, who unseated him.

The fallout "was like a tsunami," Rogers said in an interview. "There's people that actually worship Trump like a deity." He still plans to vote for Trump, dismissing Democrats as too far left.

Reuters documented at least 39 cases of elected national and state Republican officials who have been threatened or harassed since 2021 for taking actions or expressing views seen as contradicting Trump and the MAGA agenda. Targets included Republicans who question Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

"Menace is a big part of the power," said Sarah Longwell, a former Republican strategist who publishes the Bulwark, an anti-Trump publication, and runs Republican Voters Against Trump, a political action group. Republicans who oppose Trump must consider the possibility they'll face threats or intimidation from his supporters and be driven from politics, she said. "It's hard to disaggregate the fear of political violence and the fear of career suicide."

The result: By the time Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on 18 July, the party was fully behind him. Most of his prominent Republican critics had fallen in line - including his most potent challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and onetime Attorney General William Barr. Both called Trump unfit for office but later recanted and said they would vote for him.

Trump's salvos against fellow Republicans bring political risks, some political experts say. The attacks mattered less when Trump's Democratic opponent for the White House was 81-year-old President Joe Biden, who trailed him in polling for months, burdened by concerns about his age. As Biden's successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, draws even in polls, Trump's intra-party assaults, like the one against Kemp, amount "to self-harm," said David Wasserman, senior editor at the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political publication. In a tight race, Trump needs the support of Republican moderates, he said.

In Arizona, where Trump recently seemed headed for victory, Harris now has a lead of seven percentage points over Trump with independent and unaffiliated voters, said Doug Cole, a Republican strategist whose Phoenix-based firm, HighGround, surveyed voters there in late July and early August. "He's got a problem with moderate Republicans," Cole said. "I don't know how this premise of purging the party helps him." Polling aggregates show Harris and Trump broadly even in Arizona among voters overall.

'You hit the wrong button'

Sometimes the intimidation happens behind closed doors. At other times, it plays out in public, amplified by right-wing influencers and Trump himself. Congressman Rice experienced both kinds.

After Rice cast his ballot to impeach Trump in January 2021, then-House Minority Whip Steve Scalise immediately phoned him, Rice told Reuters. The Republican leadership had told party members to vote their conscience, but Scalise was calling to register disapproval.

"He said, 'Tom you hit the wrong button,'" Rice recalled. "I said, 'No, I didn't, Steve. I loaded it exactly the way I intended.'" Scalise's office did not respond when Reuters asked about the exchange.

Rice received hundreds of angry emails and voice messages after the vote, including a warning "to watch out." Within weeks, the South Carolina Republican Party censured him, a formal expression of disapproval.

Trump piled on, calling Rice "a disaster" who was "respected by no one." At public events, some constituents called Rice a traitor, he said. Others harangued him for condemning the pro-Trump rioters who sacked the Capitol. One state politician confided to Rice he wanted to denounce Trump, too, but knew voters would throw him out, Rice recalled without identifying the individual.

Rice said he doesn't regret the impeachment vote: "If you are conservative and support the Constitution, you cannot support what Donald Trump has done."

Trump had help in hounding him. After the vote, Rice and the nine other Republican House members who defied Trump were targeted by Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in Trump's White House. On Bannon's daily "War Room" podcast, Rice was lambasted by Jason Miller, a Trump 2020 campaign advisor, as "worthless" and "not coming back." The "War Room" abuse went on for two days. In an email responding to questions from Reuters, Miller did not address his attacks on Rice.

Bannon's War Room programme, a go-to interview for pro-Trump celebrities, claims to reach millions of viewers. That puts him at the centre of a far-right online influencer network that joins and amplifies Trump's calls to purge unfaithful officials. Other top MAGA figures have been hosting the show since July, when Bannon began a five-month prison sentence for refusing to testify to Congress about the Capitol attack.

Nebraska congressman Don Bacon, a retired Air Force general and evangelical Christian with a firmly conservative voting record, says he has been threatened and harassed repeatedly by people "radicalised" by far-right media personalities such as Bannon.

Last October, Bannon targeted Bacon as disloyal to the Trump agenda after the congressman opposed the candidacy of Trump ally Jim Jordan as speaker of the House of Representatives. "Bacon is one of the hardcore of the hardcore. He's never-Trump, hates Trump," Bannon said, urging the audience to call the lawmaker's office.

They did. Bacon and his wife each received anonymous threats and harassing messages by text and phone, he said. One caller vowed to stalk and molest his wife, prompting her to begin sleeping with a loaded gun. "You think you're the chosen one because you married the pig," warned another message reviewed by Reuters. "See you later, bitch."

Bacon says Bannon and other far-right commentators inspire an "ends-justify-the-means" mentality with their audiences in enforcing loyalty to Trump and his agenda. "You have a few bloggers out there and people on social media with a million followers, and everything they say is gospel," he said. Bacon, seeking a fifth House term, managed to win the Republican nomination for his seat this spring with more than 60 percent of the vote, despite the state Republican Party chairman endorsing his opponent.

Fred Upton, a former Republican congressman from Michigan, also voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol riots. That day, Bannon called on his show for constituents "to deal with" the Republican impeachers. Upton was deluged with threats.

"Who the HELL do you think you are?!!! You work for US!!! There is NO GOP without MAGA Nation!," read one emailed message, which Upton shared with Reuters. "Get ready for hell. Cause we're going to make your life a living one," the email said.

Upton said lawmakers are desperate to avoid attacks by Trump and Bannon. "Nobody wants to be on that list."

Reuters was unable to contact Bannon in prison. Maureen Bannon, CEO of the War Room and Bannon's daughter, dismissed his critics, including Upton, as "out of touch millionaires". She warned "the real threat to freedom" is "coming from the elites" who are "intimidating and trying to silence dissent and punishing their political opponents" like her father.

In a December 2022 social media post, Trump savaged Upton after the lawmaker's name was floated as a candidate for House Speaker, calling him a "RINO" and "a disaster for anything having to do with the word Republican".

Upton opted not to seek re-election after a new map of his district put him in the same seat as a Republican who had Trump's strong backing. He said he worries about score-settling against enemies in a second Trump White House, citing Trump's vows in speeches to exact "retribution."

"They're going to be going after people," he said.

Denunciations and threats

Two categories of Republicans have faced the heaviest fire from Trump, the review of his social media posts shows: his rivals for this year's presidential nomination and officials who resisted his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

Trump ridiculed early rival Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, more than 250 times as "DeSanctimonious". And he derided his last rival to drop out, former South Carolina Governor Haley, more than 50 times as "Birdbrain".

Both were subjected to threats and harassment throughout the campaign, prompting increased security measures, according to their respective offices and law enforcement agencies. DeSantis, who later endorsed Trump, did not respond to a request for comment. As Trump competed with Haley for the Republican nomination, some of his supporters posted violent messages on social media, calling for her death or physical abuse. Her office told Reuters it wasn't aware of any threats made against her by Trump supporters.

Trump also has gone after lesser-known state and local officials.

Rusty Bowers, a conservative Republican who was speaker of Arizona's House of Representatives, refused to overturn Biden's narrow 2020 win in the state. Local party members called him a traitor, threatening messages flooded his office, and a man with a pistol turned up at his home, Bowers said in an interview. Trump blasted Bowers as "weak" and "wrong on everything," and he backed a Republican rival in a 2022 state senate race.

Bowers lost but the rancour endured. "I have been neutralised in their mind," he said, referring to Trump's supporters. "I am not a factor."

'Worship and Idolatry'

In the new Republican Party, grassroots supporters have taken it upon themselves to enforce loyalty to Trump by identifying and vilifying Republicans they see as out of step with the leader.

Matt Fogal, the Republican district attorney in Pennsylvania's Franklin County until late last year, has the kind of pedigree that once made politicians hard to beat in the state's conservative south-central region. He attended an evangelical church and served in the National Guard with deployments in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Fogal became district attorney in 2009. He ran uncontested three times, in a county where Trump won more than 70 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2020.

When Trump became president, Fogal disagreed with his comments denigrating immigrants, Muslims and women. But he kept his views to himself. He told himself the country would survive the next four years and then mend any damage caused by Trump, he said. But in May 2020, as racial justice protests swept the nation after the police killing of George Floyd, Fogal publicly broke with Trump.

As protesters against police brutality and racism rallied peacefully in heavily white Franklin County, Fogal issued a statement praising their "positive spirit of change and equality." He also criticised Trump for authorising the National Guard to use force on protesters in Washington.

Trump supporters - and some police officers - swiftly condemned him.

Fogal met with local law enforcement to explain his stance. At one meeting, an officer accused him of being "a Marxist," he said. At a local church, the pastor demanded to know if he supported looters and rioters, Fogal recalled. His wife, a beautician, lost customers. Some relatives stopped talking to him, he said. The local Republican Party denounced him.

Fogal struggled to understand how he'd misread his own community. "It was the first time I had seen this kind of worship and idolatry, the way they talked about Trump," he said.

That September, already disowned by Republicans, Fogal endorsed Biden in the 2020 election. After the Capitol riots, he announced he had registered as an independent. Although he hadn't received death threats, police officers he considered his friends told him he should carry a gun "in case someone did something stupid", he said.

As the end of his term approached and he sought work in the private sector, Fogal discovered he wasn't welcome at local law firms. Some told him "he was too hot to handle," he said.

Last October, he found a job as a lawyer with the Pennsylvania governor's general counsel office and resigned as district attorney. But he said many in his home town haven't forgiven him.

"I'm quite literally a pariah," he said. "Things used to be different here."

- Reuters