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Mary Trump, the niece of Donald Trump, said that Sarah Palin's rise in the GOP helped "soften the ground" for the more "openly extreme" policies of the former president.
Mary Trump, author and frequent critic of her uncle, discussed on her podcast with political journalist David Corn why it is fair to describe Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda as being "semi-fascist" as President Joe Biden recently did.
During the discussion, both Mary Trump and Corn suggested that Trump's extreme policies which helped him win Republican voters were not born out of isolation, but had been built up in the GOP over decades.
Corn noted that when Palin ran on John McCain's presidential ticket in the 2008 election, she was accusing Barack Obama of being a terrorist and people were shouting "kill him" at political rallies.
Corn said that after Palin and McCain lost the 2008 election, the former Alaska governor was not "drummed out" of the political world because of her rhetoric, with the conservative Tea Party group forming one year later.
Mary Trump added that Palin ultimately paved the way for Donald Trump to enter politics with even more extreme policies, which helped him win the 2016 election.
"Palin and McCain's ticket didn't succeed, obviously Palin succeeded personally, but it just serves to soften the ground so that when the more obviously extreme—not more extreme, but more openly extreme—like Donald, that's just sort of the way it is," Mary Trump said.
Corn added that Palin accusing Obama of being a terrorist is just an escalation of the GOP "vilifying" their opponents as they had been doing since the 1990s.
Corn listed examples such as Republicans suggesting there were suspicious circumstances around the death of White House staffer Vince Foster during Bill Clinton's first term, and the then president was somehow connected to Newt Gingrich bringing in the line of attacks against the Democrats saying that they are "radical, they're traitors, they're the enemies."
Corn said that after Palin had accused Obama of being a terrorist and a communist, and Tea Party members had wrongly suggested Obama was a Muslim, the GOP needed to keep "upping the ante" which paved the way for Trump.
"They need a new fix. It's like being a junkie in some ways" Corn said.
"And so in 2016, you have these 15 Republican candidates out there saying 'I have a good tax plan,' 'Oh, I have a better education plan, I was education governor,' 'Oh, I want to talk about housing policy' or 'my foreign policy is better'," Corn said. "And Donald Trump says, 'Don't you get it? There are Muslims who are trying to kill us. We got to get rid of them.'
"Donald Trump was not an aberration, he was a continuation," Corn said.
"He just threw all the niceties aside and said 'I've got the good stuff here. It's not cut, it's not watered down. I'm gonna give you the bloodiest red meat I can give you,' but it's only because the taste of red meat had been enhanced and cultured and catered by Republicans for decades."
Newsweek has reached out to Palin and Trump for comment.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more