Michigan Republican Jason Roe’s fate was sealed before he even took the job. After Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, Roe went on record with Politico to break some bad news: “The election wasn’t stolen, he blew it.”

Roe, a veteran GOP strategist who would later be hired to run the state Republican Party, didn’t mince words at the time.

“The unfortunate reality within the party today is that Trump retains a hold that is forcing party leaders to continue down the path of executing his fantasy of overturning the outcome—at their own expense,” he said. Continuing to entertain the notion that the election was somehow stolen, gave Trump an out for having sealed his own fate. “Up until the final two weeks, he seemingly did everything possible to lose. Given how close it was, there is no one to blame but Trump,” Roe said.

That bit of clarity hasn’t gone over well with Trump’s cultists. On Wednesday of this week, Roe resigned as executive director of the Michigan Republican Party after a sustained campaign by pro-Trump activists, according to the Detroit Free Press. Roe, who was hired in February, declined to say why he stepped down, but the reasons were clear enough. Trumpers demand lies to justify their distorted view of the world—anyone who doesn’t comply is exiled. 

Michigan Republican Party chair Ron Weiser issued a statement praising Roe’s work for the party. 

“Jason did a tremendous job putting together a team and getting us ready for 2022,” Weiser said. “We wish him nothing but the best and know he will be an asset to Republicans in Michigan and all over the country this cycle and for years to come.”

But pro-Trump activists celebrated Roe’s ouster more in the vein of putting one’s head on a stake and parading it around the town square.

“This is just [the] beginning of the RINO Hunt,” read a Facebook post by Debra Ell, who helped organize a resolution calling on party leadership to fire Roe. “He was so arrogant to blame the 2020 election ‘loss’ on our Republican president not the Democrats and cited ‘there was no fraud.’ So he’s calling out our president…He basically does not represent us as America First Republicans in Michigan and yes ROE MUST GO!”

Michigan Republicans are in the midst of a messy and chaotic civil war. Even though GOP lawmakers are attempting to secure more restrictive voting measures based on Trump’s election lies, the GOP-led Senate Oversight Committee dared to call out those lies, issuing a report last month that found “no evidence” of widespread or systemic fraud. 

Trumpers are also pretty ticked off at two Western Michigan GOP congressmen who actually held Trump accountable for Jan. 6 Capitol attack by voting to impeach him. As one of those congressmen, Rep. Peter Meijer, observed, “People are willing to kill and die over these alternative realities.”

The Republican mayhem, says Sam Inglot, deputy director of the liberal group Progress Michigan, is a byproduct of the GOP’s continued fealty to Trump. 

“Michigan Republican lawmakers and officials have no one to blame but themselves for the current splintering of their party,” Inglot told the Washington Post. “They’ve been giving oxygen to the ‘big lie’ since November, holding bogus hearings with conspiracy theorists and repeating baseless claims. Now, their grass-roots base is on fire with disinformation and lies and ready to burn the party down.”