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There's a great gulf of silence in our country, a yawning chasm of "no comment" from Republicans on the shocking, disturbing and bizarre things that former President Donald Trump has said and continues to say.

That lack of criticism -- born from fear of retribution not only from Trump but from his minions in and out of political office -- was put on display yet again recently when it came out that John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, said Trump spoke in envious terms of having Adolf Hitler's "totally loyal" generals and said that Hitler "did some good things."

You might be forgiven for thinking that this would cause a media firestorm, that other GOP politicians would rush to slam Trump for praising a man so cartoonishly evil that his name has become shorthand for being the worst person in history. And there has been a rush, yes, but it's been on the part of conservative commentators and politicians hurrying to find an excuse for why the revelations are no big deal.

"Look, we've heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It's kind of par for the course. It's really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it's kind of baked into the vote at this point," New Hampshire's Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said on CNN.

OK, "par for the course."

I mean, Sununu's right, it is par for the course, but is that not ... a bad thing?

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said, oh, maybe Trump is just ignorant and didn't realize they were Nazis.

"I can absolutely see (Trump) go, 'You know what? It'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do, maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever," he said.

To be a third rail, it would have to electrocute someone who touched it. Somehow, the opposite is true. Trump sleeps on the third rail.

Ho-hum, he praised Hitler, la de da.

But instead of criticizing Trump for his comments, Republican leaders have been going after Vice President Kamala Harris' words, releasing an open letter saying that her calling Trump a "fascist" is fanning the flames of violence.

"She must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions," House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement to the media.

Johnson and McConnell were less eloquent about Trump's calling Harris a "fascist," a "Marxist" and a "communist." In fact, they didn't mention it at all. They certainly didn't release any public statements about it, or about Trump saying that he would go after the "enemies within" the United States and prosecute his political rivals. Somehow those comments don't fan any flames or endanger any American lives or institutions.

Johnson and McConnell and Kilmeade and Sununu and all the other GOP backstops seem terrified to criticize Trump at all, even in the mildest terms, lest they be the target of his and his fans' ire.

Even Kelly, who now is anti-Trump, tried to give Trump an out when the former president said he wanted some of those good old German generals who did what they were told, no matter how immoral or illegal the order.

You mean Bismarck's generals? Kelly said he asked.

He really wanted Trump to explain that he was referring not to Hitler but to Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor who oversaw the reunification of Germany, as if Trump could have told you Bismarck's first name for a million dollars. Oh, but Trump corrected him:

No, Hitler's generals, Kelly said Trump clarified.

Trump isn't afraid of third rails. He knows what's up and has for some time.

He knows that fear is a powerful motivator, that those who close their eyes will never see and that the silent can never be heard.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump said in 2016. "It's, like, incredible."

It is, like, incredible, indeed.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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