Welcome to Standing Room Only, the biweekly politics newsletter for Salon readers who like to be plugged in and a little bit rowdy. I’m your host, Amanda Marcotte. Grab a beverage and let’s review what’s rocking in politics right now. 

One of the unchangeable truths about authoritarians is they are nasty, cantankerous people who often end up fighting each other in ugly ways. We’re seeing this now in how the House Freedom Caucus is tearing itself up, especially by booting their most famous member, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

We got an especially entertaining example Saturday, when a meeting of Michigan's GOP state committee broke out into a brawl, which led to one member being sent to the ER with a broken rib. “He kicked me in my balls,” the injured Republican said. In April, another meeting of the group ended in a face-shoving match between two women. 

The way Republicans hate each other is a real weakness in their party. Luckily, Democrats are finally learning to exploit it.

That Republicans hate each other so much is a big part of the reason the GOP has a long-standing intra-party grifting problem. Anyone who follows the world of right wing media and Republican organizing closely can attest that their world is rife with snake oil salesmen selling fake “cures” and shoddy investment schemes. It’s one reason Trump fit in, as he’s been a con artist his whole life, and has faced serious legal consequences for frauds like Trump University. 

Maybe it’s their empathy-free ideology. Or maybe it’s just that they don’t like each other very much. Or both, but Republicans are always scamming each other. This week, ProPublica published another expose on the latest flavor, AdStyle, a service that provides ads for right wing and Christian sites. Not only do they routinely make false promises of miracle cures, AdStyle ads often feature fake endorsements from celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Dolly Parton, who are invariably angry when they find out. This comes on the heels of recent New York Times reporting about how Trump’s social network, Truth Social, is rife with similar fraudulent ads. 

I laughed pretty hard at the news that Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the novelty candidates “running” the GOP presidential primary, promised his supporters a 10% cut of every donation they somehow scrounge up. He’s selling it as an empowerment scheme, but of course it’s actually a shell game. He’s doing this in order to avoid hiring real fundraisers, hoping instead he can get supporters to work at below-minimum wage to do the hustling for him. 

Trump has viewed his supporters as marks for a long time now, and is currently diverting money from campaign coffers to pay his legal bills. The Republican affection for fraud pre-dates him, of course, but he’s made it much worse. I suspect Ramaswamy’s scheme is just the beginning of what is going to be a hairy season of various efforts by fake — or even real — candidates separating fools from their money. 

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Because of this penchant for fraud, I was always skeptical of the GOP claim to be a “law and order” party. (Also because historians have traced the racist dogwhistling of that phrase.) Still, it’s remarkable how badly Republican leaders want to blow up the residual memory that they were ever anything but a pro-crime party. But their leader is a habitual criminal who is only getting worse, as evidenced by his recent efforts to entice one of his followers to assassinate Barack Obama.

House Republicans are ever more obsessed with performative outrage over the mere existence of federal law enforcement. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been openly musing about impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland for even considering enforcing the law against Trump. McCarthy backed off, no doubt out of fear that low info voters might hear about this and learn about the GOP’s pro-crime stance now. Now right wing media is pushing a back door strategy of zeroing out funding for Garland’s salary, hoping to both appease the pro-crime MAGA base without scaring normies who think crime is bad. 

“Crime is good, actually,” was the inevitable endpoint for the party once Trump secured the GOP nomination in 2016. There’s still an effort to pretend Trump is innocent, but it’s losing steam in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The documents case is almost comical, there’s so much proof of Trump’s guilt. And the news every day suggests special prosecutor Jack Smith could soon roll out a wowser of a case on the attempted coup. 

Since most Americans remember January 6, that’s not one that sweeps under the rug very well. So it’s going to have to come to arguing that attempting a coup is good and prosecuting insurrection is the problem. Granted, Republicans have decades of practice arguing up is down, so this isn’t going to make them break a sweat. But “crime is good, actually” might still be a harder sell to the public than they’re anticipating. 

• “Media Maelstrom: Enough already, mainstream journalists, with adopting right-wing framing!” Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis
• “What history reveals about the biggest new power player in US politics,” Nicole Hemmer, CNN
• “The Most Baffling Argument a Supreme Court Justice Has Ever Made,” Adam Serwer, Atlantic
• “Ron DeSantis’ Dumb, Failed Strategy to Campaign on Culture War Bullshit,” Rotimi Adeoye, Daily Beast