Wait -- Republicans Hate Donald Trump Now?
When the fuck did that happen?
There’s no easy way to say what I’m about to tell you. I follow Ann Coulter on Twitter.
I know, I know. Trust me, I’m ashamed of myself. I suppose I could try to justify it by claiming that I need to follow all sorts of people in order to write this column. But if I’m being honest, I follow Ann Coulter because, well… I love Ann Coulter. She’s hilarious. She’s witty. And she pulls no punches when it comes to sharing her opinions.
Sound like anyone you know?
Ah, Ann. I feel like we might have been twins separated at birth. You’re basically me without the sweater vest and the humanity.
(By the way, the next time you need a new image to fantasize about, try Ann Coulter in a sweater vest. Interestingly, it works for both male and female arousal.)
Judge me if you like, but if I didn’t follow Ann Coulter on Twitter, how would I make sure that this Tweet of hers last week didn’t escape your attention?
Geez, Ann. With an attitude and a potty mouth like that, you could get a job writing for The Krich Report!
And that’s not the only time Ann has gone public with her abrupt dismissal of Donald Trump in recent days. She also referred to last week’s election results as a “short-term loss for a long-term victory of getting rid of Donald Trump.” When Trump threatened not to support Herschel Walker in next month’s runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat, Ann remarked that maybe that would be a good thing.
That’s a pretty big change of heart. After all, this is the woman who in 2016 wrote the New York Times bestseller In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!
So what happened?
Frankly, I think Ann Coulter simply woke up last Wednesday morning and saw the same thing that the rest of the country saw. In key battleground states, candidates who were selected, groomed, inspired, or endorsed by Donald Trump ended up losing. The voters spoke, and what they had to say was that maybe they just aren’t as fired up about Donald Trump as they used to be.
Ann is no dummy. She can see when a ship is sinking.
To be clear, losing the support of Ann Coulter is not Donald Trump’s biggest problem; rather, it is a harbinger of his biggest problem. Ann Coulter held her finger up in the air and felt which way the wind was blowing. In other words, former supporters of Donald Trump are not following Ann Coulter’s lead. Ann Coulter is following their lead.
And she’s smart to do so. A year ago, if you had asked me whether Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, I would have said absolutely yes. If you ask me today, I’d put the chances at ten percent. That’s how far, and how quickly, his star has fallen.
Once the most feared apex predator in American politics, he now looks more like a wounded, aging, and desperate pack leader about to get knocked off by a younger, stronger rival. The list of prominent Republicans who begged him to delay his 2024 campaign launch is long, and includes names that were once considered to be his close allies. And of course, anyone with a brain understands that asking him to delay the decision is really a polite way of telling him not to run at all. Some Republicans simply came out and said it. Marc Thiessen’s opinion piece in the Washington post on Monday wasn’t subtle with its title —Dear President Trump: Please Don’t Run Again. Thiessen is a lifelong Republican operative and used to be one of Trump’s fiercest advocates.
How bad is it for Trump? Imagine if I told you that he announced his candidacy last night and Fox News didn’t make it their lead story this morning. You’d be shocked, right? Well, I’m looking at their website and the top headline is about U.S. missile defense needing an overhaul, and next is a story about how Democrats avoided the red wave in the House and Senate, and then a story about the FTX cryptocurrency scam. And then, in fourth place: Trump Ignores GOP Rivals in White House Run Announcement.
So fourth place, and not exactly a celebratory tone. Yikes. You know it’s bad when even Fox News isn’t getting a boner for Trump anymore.
Did I say ten percent chance he wins? Make it five percent.
By the way, FUKRs, Ann Coulter is on Substack now, if that interests you.
Hate is a strong word. I dislike him as a person, even tho I believe his private life with his family is probably very quiet and serene. I'm not gonna vote for him in the primary, but depending on who the Democrat nominee, I would vote for him over Biden for sure.
You’re not the only pundit seeing this as the end of Trump, and I truly hope you’re all correct, but I don’t think I’ll actually believe it until he’s six feet under. The man would probably win >50 million votes from a jail cell, and that’s an entirely plausible outcome in 2024 to me.
If the GOP establishment actually does move on from him, am I being foolish to think he’s arrogant enough to run on a third-party MAGA ticket? Even the threat might be his best leverage to win the nomination. I can imagine even DeSantis bending the knee if Trump makes clear how easy it would be to pull off a TR/Bull Moose Party maneuver and usher in a (hopefully nonracist) Woodrow Wilson equivalent to the White House. In some ways that’s my fondest hope because the field of Dems looking to succeed Biden is not exactly awe-inspiring, and the party could easily pull off the unfathomable (again) and lose to Trump atop the Republican ticket.