Women were founders of what I call The Evangelical Tirade. I point this out because it is often laid at the feet of men. White middle-age men from rural South, specifically, who infected white middle-class men in the North with their BS. Men certainly signed on and embedded themselves in making it work but they were not the founders.

“Hello, deplorables!”

That’s how Amy Kremer greeted the thousands of Trump supporters she had helped gather at the Ellipse in Washington, DC, on January 6 to “stop the steal.” Resplendent onstage in a bold leopard-print shawl, with the White House rising up behind her, the former flight attendant had come a long way since she and another Georgia woman, Jenny Beth Martin, became known as the “founding mothers” of the tea party movement back in 2009.

“I come from the tea party movement, and I’m asked all the time: What happened to the tea party?” Kremer told the crowd at the Ellipse. “Well, we’re still here. We just grew and morphed into something bigger and better—the MAGA movement. And I am convinced that were it not for the tea party movement, we would not have the president Donald J. Trump today.”