Republican national strategist Rick Wilson wrote a classic description of President Trump in The Daily Beast a few days back that I missed. It starts off with a bang of a title:
Trump Is Going to Burn Down Everything and Everyone, and Republicans, That Means You
And continues onwards:
Donald Trump’s Oval Office performance-art masterpiece Wednesday was one for the ages, a pity-party, stompy-foot screech session by President Snowflake von Pissypants, the most put-upon man ever to hold the highest office in the land. If you watched his nationally televised press conference, Trump’s shrill, eye-popping hissy fit scanned like the end of a long, coke-fueled bender where the itchy, frenzied paranoia is dry-humping the last ragged gasps of the earlier party-powder fun.
Between calling Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) a panoply of Trumpish insults (and for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to be held for treason), engaging in his usual hatred of the press, talking about Mike Pompeo’s intimate undergarments, and quite obviously scaring the shit out of Finnish President Sauli Niinisto—who looked like he was the very unwilling star of an ISIS hostage video—Trump spent the day rapidly decompensating, and it was a hideous spectacle. All the Maximum Leader pronunciamentos won’t change the reality that Donald John Trump, 45th president of the United States, has lost his shit.
It’s really worth a full read, too, regardless of political persuasion, given Wilson’s status as a Republican insider:
In private, Republicans are in the deepest despair of the Trump era. They’ve got that hang-dog, dick-in-the-dirt fatalism of men destined to die in a meaningless battle in a pointless war. They’ve abandoned all pretense of recapturing the House, their political fortunes in the states are crashing and burning, and the stock-market bubble they kept up as a shield against the downsides of Trump—“but muh 401(k)!”—is popping.
You want to know why so few Republicans have held town-hall meetings since early 2017? Because Trump is the cancer they deny is consuming them from the inside out. They see the political grave markers of 42 of their GOP House colleagues—and several hundred down-ballot Republicans—booted from office since 2017 and know that outside of the deepest red enclaves, they’re salesmen for a brand no one is buying.
It’s a reminder of the essential bankruptcy of the Trump “ideology,” isn’t it? Faced with a probably hopeless situation brought on by Trump’s impulsiveness and amateurism, and the general Republican inadequate understanding of ethics and morals, they appear to be caving in frustration.
Oh, sure, they continue to deploy Trumpian tactics in defense: spreading lies about Representative Schiff and various Senators who may become the next Democratic nominee for a Presidential slot that’s looking increasingly like a lost cause for the Republicans, the classic projection attack for which Trump has become famous (“No, you’re the Russian puppet!” he viciously spat at Clinton at one debate).
But, much like a human being faced with a repeat infection, the electorate is becoming less and less vulnerable to the crazy assertions, no matter how authoritatively pressed by Trump and his proxies, and we’re learning to check the facts ourselves, or to wait for the professional fact-checkers to make a determination.
Oh, sure, not all of a us. Politics is a messy business, and some folks are swayed by preconceptions, emotions, and desperate wishes – but most of us are catching on. And that will be the death of the Trumpian ideology, because that’s all it really was: lie your way to the top. Deny, deny, deny.
American media has come to realize that facts and truth are more important than politeness and hurt feelings, and that’s a good thing for all of us, regardless of who’s doing the lying, or who’s doing the listening.
Oh, and read the rest of the Wilson article. I loved it.
