Heilemann: There Is No Republican Party Anymore; It’s the Party of Trump

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: "Well, Joe, I think that the corruption and bankruptcy of the Republican Party has been a long time in the making, but there is no Republican Party anymore in any sense that you would have defined the Republican Party ten years ago, and the way you would have — what the Republican Party stood for at least in the post-World War II era. It has become the party of Donald Trump. And so in a thorough way, we’ve seen this not just in the startling polling in relation to how Republicans now have seen the performance of Donald Trump in Helsinki, presumably how they will see his invitation now of Vladimir Putin to come to Washington to give him the ultimate kind of — rather than to chastise him, rather than to criticize him for Russia’s role in meddling in an American election, he’s giving him the ultimate kind of cherry on top of a sundae. This is the thing that a Russian president would want most of all, especially in this week."