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Conservatives try to gaslight us about 'extremism.' Here's a mirror.

34 0
22.03.2026

Republicans have made it abundantly clear, from behind the presidential seal and in the halls of Congress and on all manner of news networks, that the extremists in America are liberals like me.

We are, in the oft-repeated words of President Donald Trump, “radical left lunatics.” We are agitators. Insurrectionists. Thugs.

Our ideas are extreme, always.

“Radical left climate extremism.”

“Extreme gender ideology.”

“WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology.”

Really, MAGA Republicans? You think liberals are the extremists?

To all of that, I say: Seriously? You all kneel at the altar of a narcissistic conman who eviscerates every democratic norm he comes across and slaps his name on things like a dollar-store Mussolini. And you want to gaslight people into thinking liberals are the extremists?

As the Republican Party has morphed into an averse-to-democracy cult of personality – 63% of Republicans now identify as part of Trump’s MAGA movement – their labeling of the left as radicals has had to keep pace. It’s the “No I’m Not, YOU ARE!” approach honed throughout history by bullies and abusers. 

In January, when Democrats were criticizing then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s handling of immigration raids, Trump labeled them “Radical Left Lunatics, Insurrectionists, Agitators, and Thugs.” 

He said in 2025: “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious and they're horrible and they're politically savvy, although they want men in women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”

He said in September: “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”

Everything a liberal does is radical in the eyes of Trump

A statement on the White House website posted ahead of the Democratic rebuttal to Trump’s recent State of the Union address carries the headline: “Radical Left’s Rebuttal Will Contrast........

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