With Ann Coulter and Mark Levin publicly feuding with the president, the great and inevitable civil war in President Trump’s base has begun. And just in time for the Democrats to capitalize.
Between Trump’s callow caving on the border wall — remember the days when it was an actual wall paid for with a nice, big Mexican check, rather than “artistically designed steel slats” still unfunded by Congress and Mexico? — and an impulse withdrawal from Syria that not even Defense Secretary, and remaining adult in the room, James Mattis agrees with, Trump has found himself in hot water with just about everyone.
Coulter, who authored a book literally called In Trump We Trust, has knives out for the president, penning a column titled “GUTLESS PRESIDENT IN WALL-LESS COUNTRY,” just hours after excoriating him at the Daily Caller.
“Either Trump never intended to build a wall and was scamming voters from the beginning or he hasn’t the first idea in how to get it done and no interest in finding out,” Coulter told the Caller’s Saagar Enjeti. “My prediction is his support will evaporate and Trump will very likely not finish his term and definitely not be elected to a second term.”
When you bet on a grifter, you’re bound to get burned. Actual intellectuals and ideologues who bet on Trump not just to combat the horrific prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency but as an affirmative agent of paleoconservative nationalism and protectionism are finding themselves abandoned by a man who spent his life rolling through marriages and business endeavors only to ruin and abandon them. Left-wing ire over standard-issue Republicans attempting to forge a working relationship with the president always stemmed from the partisan desire to attack Republican legislators for, well, legislating, but those who thought that Trump could win on actual policy rather than cheap points in ego-fueled culture wars are simply reaping what they’ve sown.
Levin, one of Trump’s most ardent yet still respected defenders, begged the president to cancel his plans to recklessly exit Syria while the Islamic State still has tens of thousands of combatants. (For contrast, when conservatives rightly decried Obama’s exit from Iraq, al Qaeda had just 700 fighters.)
“Syria is not Afghanistan, where we have had tens of thousands of troops and significant casualties over a fifteen year period,” wrote Levin. “The U.S. has been very successful in a precisely limited and skillfully executed operation in Syria. To abandon it now is an extremely unwise act, even a provocative act, which will emboldened Iran, Hezbollah, and Russian [sic].”
Senators who have bent over backwards to build a rapport with Trump and attempt to influence him, such as South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Florida’s Marco Rubio, have echoed Levin’s sentiments, slamming the withdrawal which has probably pleased a grand total of four people on the Hill: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii; Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; and Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich.
Trump’s latest missteps, seemingly fueled by midterm election losses or perhaps emerging legal threats with the flipping of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, have illuminated a deep schism within Trump’s base: ideologues versus loyalists.
Though Coulter’s rhetoric during the campaign contributed to Trump’s cult of personality, Coulter has been in politics long before Trump, and she’ll be there long after. Trump’s former supporters, whose paleoconservatism and protectionism predated him, won’t take his broken promises lightly. His rise didn’t inform their political positions; he was just seen as an agent of them.
In contrast, Trump sycophants and hacks have built their vitriol-laden identities around them. Don’t take my word for it — just listen to them!
“Our delight at the effectiveness of Donald Trump at battling our useless ruling class is not about the ‘Trump’ part; it’s about the ‘effectiveness’ part,” writes Kurt Schlichter. “Trump is the avatar of our collected resentments, complaints and fury over our betrayal by an elite that was supposed to be running our institutions on our behalf and that is instead running them for its own sordid benefit.”
Effectiveness? Effective at implementing his most ardent campaign promises? Trump failed at repealing and replacing Obamacare. Trump failed at reducing the deficit. Trump failed at ending nepotistic immigration. Trump failed at building the wall, and, most hysterically, he failed at making Mexico pay for it. Hell, the same idiots who thought that Mexico would in fact pay for the wall are now giving millions to an unverified GoFundMe to pay for it themselves.
Trump’s judicial victories and tax cuts — without a doubt, the most significant conservative victories of his tenure — can be almost solely attributed to the political genius and ruthlessness of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Those still rooting on the president on a personal level, not those hoping that he actually does his job, are simply elucidating what most of us always knew: Trump fights culture wars, not conservative policy ones. He is indeed an avatar of collected resentments from people trolled so hard by the Obama era that they ceased to care about any real principles. And of course, the sycophants and loyalists will continue to perform mental gymnastics to make their principles and facts suit the myth of Trump Almighty.
“Dear House GOP,” tweeted Matt Schlapp, “one reason you lost is [because] grass root conservatives didn’t see you fighting for the Trump agenda. Show us your learned [sic].”
Considering that it was the Senate, not the House, that failed to pass Trump’s shoddy Obamacare repeal, and it was the Senate, not the House, that avoided getting wiped out in the midterm elections. But those who care more about Trump pissing off a few actors in Hollywood and soy boys in Bushwick won’t care, and they evidently won’t learn.
But with the brains behind Trumpism realizing they’ve been duped, Trump enters his divided government increasingly alone.
