Former president Donald Trump called on Congress to investigate the multiple investigations into him on the local, state and federal level in a series of posts on Truth Social.
Most of the leadership would love to be done with him, but remember a record number of people voted for him in the last election. He still holds a troubling amount of sway.
In our representative plutocracy, US parties pivoted their business model to deliver legislation to donors, and deliver tribalism and spectacle to voters.
Trump really upped the bar at delivering spectacle compared to Willard Romney. But Trump is/was shit at delivering legislation, and he wants a personal cut of all the donations. But he brought in new money.
The GOP leadership can't decide if they want him around because he's a pain in their collective asses. He brings in votes and money, but can't be relied on for legislation. What will unite the GOP is Trump having a stroke that leaves him unable to talk.
The earliest uses of this word in English, dating to the 14th century, utilize it as a synonym for forcemeat (“finely chopped and highly seasoned meat or fish that is either served alone or used as a stuffing”).
This is how the sausages are made, folks. This Trump character is a farce. He is what you're buying when they sell the sizzle.
I kinda knew that was a bit of a reach. OK, not to be too pedantic:
There's an idiom (in English), "you don't want to know how the sausage is made," being an oblique reference to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," a contemporaneous novel about the American meat packing industry in the early 1900s. Ostensibly a call to socialism, the fallout was the foundation of the USDA, a regulatory body over farm+to-market processing of meat and dairy. Everyone but the meat packers won with that.
Playing off that, there's a character in Terry Pratchett's Disc world series, one C.M.O.T. Dibbler, an avowed Saleman. His schtick is to "sell the sizzle," with further subtle textual references to Mr. Sinclair's works and a damning view of capitalism and sausage-stuffng.
Thus, we have Trump. Grifter extrordinaire, shameless self-promoter, malignant narcissist, and a putz never to be voted for, now an achievéd of the highest office in possibly the most influential nation of the 20th century. Galling, to be sure, but here we are.