Former Republican Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh announced Tuesday he is formally joining the Democratic Party because “the stakes are simply too high to NOT become a Democrat.”
“Let’s start with the obvious—a tyrant sits in the White House,” Walsh wrote in his Substack, “The Social Contract.”
“The very thing our Founders feared most is here,” he said. “Throw in the fact that one of our two major political parties is a real and direct threat to democracy and the rule of law.”
Walsh, a former supporter of President Donald Trump who later ran against him, amassed a large following through his controversial statements online and on his radio show. In 2012, he declared American Muslims an imminent threat to national security and lashed out at Rev. Jesse Jackson, accusing him of trying to “keep African Americans down on some plantation.”
The former Republican has spent much of his recent past trying to distance himself from the bigotry he promoted in earlier years.
