The GOP response to Trump’s conviction is incoherent — until you remember the conspiracy

Republicans have conjured a conspiracy to justify their self-righteous anger and their plans for revenge. Predictably, Republicans responded to Donald Trump’s 34 state felony convictions by loudly proclaiming the outlandish conspiracy theory that president Joe Biden engineered Trump’s conviction. Whereas, any version of “Biden engineered Trump's prosecution and fixed the outcome of his trial” is a conspiracy theory and it’s the Republican Party line. Rather than blaming Trump for falsifying business records to win an election – or themselves for nominating a candidate facing dozens of felony charges – a group of far-right Republican senators accused the White House of “making a mockery of the rule of law” and altering our politics in “unAmerican ways.” In retaliation for this wholly imaginary injustice, they pledged to oppose Biden’s legislative agenda. Elected Republicans routinely call for the defunding of the FBI, the DOJ, and other mechanisms of accountability on the grounds that they’ve been “weaponized” by the “deep state.” This kind of talk was relegated to Infowars a decade ago, but now you hear it on “Meet the Press.” The House GOP conference has squandered its time in the majority investigating conspiracy theories ranging from a US government cover-up of alien visitations to lab leak theories to advanced topics in Hunter Biden.