This is an opinion column.
In 2016, Mo Brooks said Donald Trump wasn’t to be trusted — before he gave his loyalty over to the reality TV president.
Six years later, he’s learned that lesson the hard way, having carried the former president’s MAGA agenda to the brink of insurrection and being unceremoniously dumped when he wouldn’t or couldn’t take it any further.
“It’s quite clear that Donald Trump has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself,” Brooks told me this week.
Is that sour grapes or simply a fact?
Likely both.
Brooks was once Trump’s loudest and fiercest advocate. How that bromance ended says something important. It might be more than Trump and Brooks going their separate ways. The MAGA movement itself seems to be coming apart.
Trump would like you to believe the most important moment in the Alabama Senate race happened in Cullman last November.
He might be right.
It was there, before thousands of Trump supporters who trudged through rain and braved the lightning of the late afternoon thunderstorm — when somebody said the wrong thing and all those folks booed him.
Trump wants you to remember that guy — the one who lost the script — was Congressman Mo Brooks.
Indeed, Brooks told the crowd it was time to move on from the 2020 election.
“There are some people who are despondent about the voter fraud election theft of 2020,” Brooks said to a crowd already impatient to hear Trump. “Folks, put that behind you.”
Boos erupted.
“Folks, put that behind you,” Brooks repeated.
A wave of angry Trumpists shouted “No!”
“Yes!” Brooks shouted back, trying to speak over the boos. “Look forward! Look forward! Beat them in 2022! Beat them in 2024!”
But the crowd wasn’t having it. Finally, Brooks conceded and threw up his hands.
“Alright, look back at it, but go forward and take advantage of it,” he said. “We’ve got to win in 2022. We’ve got to win in 2024.”
Brooks would never win back the crowd that night, and months later, Trump would say that was when the congressman lost his support in the Senate race. (Let’s be clear, Trump withdrew his support when Brooks began to plummet in the polls.)
“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke,’” Trump said about that moment four months after it happened.
But the most curious thing that happened in that Cullman county pasture might not have been Brooks running off the Trumpist tracks.
Rather, it was Trump himself getting booed.
That night Trump took credit for Project Warp Speed, the government-backed race to develop the first Covid vaccines, and he absolutely deserved credit for supporting the program.
It didn’t sit well with some in the crowd, though.
“You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms, I do. You gotta do what you have to do, but I recommend taking the vaccine,” he said, patting his shoulder. “I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines.”
Boos again from the crowd.
“No, that’s OK. That’s all right,” he said. “You’ve got your freedoms, but I happened to take the vaccine.”
More murmuring from the crowd.
“If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know,” he said, this time drawing laughter from the crowd.
Trump had grazed the treetops without slamming into the mountain, but the moment once again confirmed something important.
Trump and Trumpism are not the same things. And that night made it clear.
The months since then might have revealed something else in Alabama: Trumpism is fading.
His endorsement of Brooks did no good, so he withdrew it.
Now Trump has endorsed Brooks’ opponent, Katie Britt, whom Brooks has tried to frame as a lobbyist and lapdog for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.
Again, it’s clear why — Britt had a strong lead going into the runoff and has performed well in the polls since the primary.
Brooks has since said Trump has been lost to the swamp, conned by the D.C. creatures, including McConnell, whom he once opposed.
But something more important is happening here: Trump and Trumpism might be at odds. It’s happened elsewhere and it’s happened here before when Trump could not convince Trump fans to back Luther Strange for Senate nor Roy Moore after Strange lost the GOP primary.
I asked Mo Brooks what he made of Trump’s final pick. He didn’t hold back. Trump is still chasing voters after too many losses, he said.
“Donald Trump just had his head handed to him by Georgia voters, having lost five major races that he endorsed in, and he’s trying to restore his brand,” Brooks said on Tuesday. “And he looked at who he thought had the best chance of winning and that’s who he endorsed. It had nothing to do with philosophy of government other than that, he abandoned the conservative movement and the MAGA agenda in order to try to improve the reputation of his brand.”
Like Strange, Britt is an establishment candidate. She has experience in Washington and the backing of elites. Their super PACs have given her the air support and ubiquitous billboards she needed to rise to the top.
Brooks challenged Britt to a debate, which is his right to do, but regrettably no longer a custom in Alabama politics. He branded himself “MAGA Mo Brooks,” which he is duly entitled to do — he was, after all, the first representative to push Congress to overturn the 2020 election.
On Twitter, Brooks said he had just two questions for Britt: Was the election stolen and did Trump really win?
“I say ‘yes’ to both,” Brooks said. “Katie can accept or reject this debate challenge publicly on any of her social media.”
Britt’s campaign has declined the challenge and said Brooks wants a circus.
I called Britt to ask her directly. Regardless of Brooks’ intent, these are important questions and voters deserve to know what she thinks. She said she’d already answered Brooks’ questions.
“I think I’ve answered it numerous times, actually, so I’m happy to get that to you,” she said. “I’ve answered it probably 30 times. So I’ll get that to you.”
Britt said she would have her spokesman send me her answer. I asked her if she had answered it so often already why she couldn’t just do it over the phone. There was a long pause.
“OK, well, I will get Sean (Ross, her spokesman) and I will get right back to you,” she said.
Ross later emailed me a statement.
“Katie has nothing new to add to her extensive comments throughout the campaign on this topic,” he said, adding a link to this story.
The Trump legacy is one official after another sacrificing their careers and destroying their reputations, none having learned from the example set by the last person who did the exact same thing.
Like Brooks last November, Trump hasn’t been quite sure what to do in Alabama. But he needs a win, because another loss, like in Georgia, could cause people nationally to go back to the old question: Are Republican voters following Trump or is Trump following the voters?
By changing his endorsement, he gave us an answer.
He’s following the crowd, not the other way around. He and Britt both are hoping you don’t notice.
They’re tiptoeing away from the circus and leaving Brooks to break down the tent.
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group, 2020 winner of the Walker Stone Award, winner of the 2021 SPJ award for opinion writing, and 2021 winner of the Molly Ivins prize for political commentary.
You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram.
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