当前总统唐纳德·特朗普想表达他对一个1月6日佣金本周，他在他的团队发表的声明中加入了一句可能没有必要的话:“希望米奇·麦康奈尔和凯文·麦卡锡在听!”

当然，那时他们已经听到了消息。麦卡锡众议院共和党领袖，已经反抗他的一个副手曾帮助他设计。万一特朗普错过了这一点，麦卡锡周二晚上在福克斯新闻上抨击它是“完全由政治和南希·佩洛西驱动的”。

参议院共和党领袖麦康奈尔说，宣布反对第二天，在之前说他的党团会议“尚未决定”之后这一立场本身就注定要试图建立一个独立的委员会来审查未遂叛乱麦卡锡和麦康奈尔都认为这位前总统至少应该受到一些指责。

Evelyn Hockstein/路透社

2021年5月17日，华盛顿特区，参议院少数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔走向参议院。

麦卡锡和麦康奈尔认为民主党人会有太多支配佣金尽管它是以两党9/11委员会为模型，并在共和党的广泛参与下制定的。

他们还可能会辩称，他们支持特朗普是代表他们成员或他们政党的意愿。在这一点上，他们不会错。

特朗普可能不光彩地离开了办公室，但从那以后的四个月里看到他的影响力增长。就在本周，该委员会可能会解散，该委员会将审查特朗普在煽动暴力方面的作用以及联邦政府对平息暴力的缓慢反应，就在上周，众议院共和党众议员莉兹·切尼(Liz Cheney)也将出席。脱离领导因为她坚持说实话来对抗特朗普选举谎言。

“作为一个政党，我们正处于一个前总统非常危险的境地，”切尼警告说在她下台后的美国广播公司“本周”节目上。

美国广播公司新闻

众议员利兹·切尼在华盛顿接受美国广播公司首席记者乔纳森·卡尔的采访

不仅仅是在国会大厅特朗普统治的后果显而易见。几十个州已经颁布或接近最终确定投票限制，至少部分是受到特朗普关于2020年的“大谎言”的启发。

在亚利桑那州，共和党州立法者仍在推动对选举的私人“审计”,甚至一些共和党人恐惧正在变成一场闹剧。这个过程包括寻找竹纤维痕迹，以支持一个涉及来自亚洲的选票的阴谋论。一名当地共和党官员嘲笑这个过程是“假的”，另一名官员嘲笑这个过程是“嘲弄”。

与此同时，特朗普的忠实者正在填写2021年和2022年的选票。弗吉尼亚州共和党人上周提名了一名州长候选人，他对“选举诚信”的关注为他赢得了特朗普的迅速认可，此前一场初选将候选人坑成了——用一名分析师的话来说——”王牌、王牌和最王牌。"

这样的初选还会有更多。鲁道夫·朱利安尼35岁的儿子安德鲁正在竞选纽约州长，特朗普支持的共和党众议员李·泽尔丁也将参加竞选

向黑人的命也是命抗议者挥舞步枪的圣路易斯律师马克·麦克洛斯基竞选参议员在密苏里州，他和他的妻子是特朗普去年共和党全国代表大会的主要发言人。

亚历克斯·布兰登/美联社

众议院少数党领袖凯文·麦卡锡和众议员加里·帕尔默一起接受记者采访

至于现任国会领导人，麦卡锡和麦康奈尔采取了与他们目前立场略有不同的路线，尽管两人都反映了更广泛的共和党及其对特朗普的态度。

麦卡锡与特朗普保持着密切联系，部分原因是共和党相信，只要保持团结，该党将重新控制众议院。就在前总统离开华盛顿几周后，他在马拉加访问了特朗普，这被视为特朗普的一次实质性和象征性的政变，也是麦卡锡在中期选举中下注的一个信号。

麦康奈尔更公开地与特朗普绝交，在投票反对对他的弹劾指控定罪后不久，谴责他所说的“可耻的失职”。

但和麦卡锡一样，他知道尽管特朗普失去了总统职位，让共和党失去了众议院和参议院，但无记名投票的共和党人在2020年相当成功，他位居榜首。

周三关于委员会的众议院辩论快结束时，领导该党谈判的共和党众议员约翰·卡特科(John Katko)恳求两党的同事们超越党派偏见。

“我们所有人——就这一次，就这一次抛开政治，”纽约的卡托科说，“我请求你通过这项法案。”

斯特凡尼·雷诺兹/纽约时报

2021年5月12日，众议员约翰·卡特离开华盛顿特区的国会大厦

它确实通过了，所有众议院民主党人都加入了211名共和党人中的35名——考虑到特朗普和政党领导人的反对，这个数字要么小得可笑，要么大得惊人。然而，特朗普的反应并没有让任何人感到惊讶:他抨击了他所说的“35名任性的共和党人”，并隐约威胁要进行政治报复。

特朗普在一份声明中写道:“有时无效和软弱会带来后果。”

Trump leaves GOP paralyzed, in Congress and up and down ballots: ANALYSIS

When former PresidentDonald Trumpwanted to express his opposition to aJan. 6 commissionthis week, he included a line in the statement his team blasted out that probably wasn't necessary: "Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!"

They had heard the message by then, of course. McCarthy, theHouse Republican leader, had alreadycome out againstthe commission one of his lieutenants had helped craft. In case Trump missed that, McCarthy went on Fox News Tuesday night to slam it as "driven solely by politics and Nancy Pelosi."

McConnell, the Senate GOP leader,announced his oppositionthe following day, after previously saying his caucus was "undecided." That position alone all but dooms attempts to create an independent commission to examine theattempted insurrectionat the Capitol -- an event that both McCarthy and McConnell have said the former president deserves at least some blame for.

McCarthy and McConnell are arguing that Democrats would have too muchsway over the commission, though it was modeled on the bipartisan 9/11 Commission and crafted with extensive GOP input.

They might also argue that they're representing their members' or their party's wishes in backing up Trump. On that, they wouldn't be wrong.

Trump may have left office in disgrace, but the four months since then haveseen his influence grow. Just as this week saw the likely demise of the commission that would scrutinize both Trump's role in instigating violence and in the slow federal response to quelling it, last week saw the House GOP cast Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.,out of leadershipfor her insistence on telling the truth to combat Trump'selectionlies.

"We as a party are in a situation with respect to the former president that is really dangerous,"Cheney warnedon ABC's "This Week" after her ouster.

It's not just in thehalls of Congresswhere the consequences of Trump's dominance are evident. Dozens of states have enacted or are close to finalizing voting restrictions inspired, at least in part, by Trump's "big lie" about 2020.

In Arizona, GOP statelawmakers are still pushinga privately run "audit" of elections that even some Republicansfear is becoming a circus. The process -- which involves, among other things, looking for bamboo fiber traces to bolster a conspiracy theory involving ballots that came from Asia -- has been derided by one local Republican official as a "sham" and another as a "mockery."

Meanwhile, Trump loyalists are filling out 2021 and 2022 ballots. Virginia Republicans last week nominated a gubernatorial candidate whose focus on "election integrity" won him a quick Trump endorsement, after a primary that pit candidates who are -- in the words of one analyst -- "Trumpy, Trumpier and Trumpiest."

There will be more primaries like that. Rudolph Giuliani's 35-year-old son, Andrew, is running for governor of New York, in a race that will also feature Trump-backing Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.

Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis lawyer who waved a rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters, isrunning for Senatein Missouri, after he and his wife were featured speakers at Trump's Republican National Convention last year.

As for current congressional leaders, McCarthy and McConnell took slightly different routes to their current positions, though both are reflective of the broader GOP and its attitude toward Trump.

McCarthy has kept closer to Trump, driven in part by GOP confidence that the party will retake control of the House so long as it stays united. His trip to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago, just weeks after the former president left Washington, was seen as a substantive and symbolic coup for Trump -- and a signal of where McCarthy would be making his bet for the midterms if not beyond.

McConnell broke more publicly with Trump, decrying what he called a "disgraceful dereliction of duty" shortly after voting against his conviction on impeachment charges.

But like McCarthy, he knows that while Trump lost the presidency and cost the GOP both the House and Senate, down-ballot Republicans had a fairly successful 2020 with him at the top of the ticket.

Toward the end of Wednesday's floor debate on the commission, the Republican who led his party's negotiations, Rep. John Katko, implored his colleagues in both parties to rise above partisanship.

"All of us -- set aside politics just this once, just this once," said Katko, R-N.Y. "I beg you to pass this bill."

It did pass, with all House Democrats joining 35 of the 211 Republicans -- a number that's either laughably small or astonishingly large, given the opposition of Trump and party leaders. Trump's reaction, though, surprised no one: He blasted what he called "35 wayward Republicans" and vaguely threatened political blowback.

"Sometimes there are consequences to being ineffective and weak," Trump wrote in a statement.