ALL THE PRESIDENT'S ENABLERS

I keep hearing that it's only a matter of time before Donald Trump's fellow Republicans cut him loose, at which point he'll resign, be impeached, or be compelled to surrender the presidency under provisions of the 25th Amendment. This cheery scenario overlooks the fact that Republicans target other Republicans only when those Republicans forget the Prime Directive, which is never to stop denigrating and enraging liberals and putatively liberal institutions like the media (while, of course, putting more money in the pockets of the rich). Trump is still attacking us and pissing us off, and of course he's pro-plutocrat, so trust me, he's safe. His voters aren't going to abandon him as long as he's bashing the media and leading "Lock her up!" chants directed at Hillary Clinton. GOP politicians and pundits won't abandon him as long as he backs tax cuts for the 1% and extreme deregulation. H won't be politically fragged.

It's easy for Trump loyalists to defend him, because torturing the facts in order to generate today's talking points is what conservatives have done every day for years. Here's a defense of Trump's grasp of history from Newt Gingrich, a Hall of Fame bullshit artist who really should have Sean Spicer's job, because concocting brazenly implausible defenses of Trump is the kind of thing Gingrich does as naturally as breathing:

“There’s a certain amount of hunting for ‘what is it that Trump has done that’s dumb?’” said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who taught history as a college professor in Georgia and has written multiple historical novels. “Trump’s not a student of history. Trump’s an extraordinarily successful, entrepreneurial personality who learns what he needs to know when he needs to know it. Trump is learning history as he governs.”

No surrender, no shame.

Now let's move on to Salena Zito, whose Washington Examiner interview with Trump included the now-notorious Andrew Jackson comments. Roy Edroso, a braver man than most, sat down and listened to a podcast in which Zito discussed the interview with the Examiner's Michael Graham. Now, you and I might think that Trump is ill-informed and unable to concentrate on any serious subject long enough to master it. But Zito -- who's clearly angling for the job of ghostwriting Trump's presidential memoir -- assures us that this is a mark of Trump's executive brilliance:

Before the tapes were rolling, he and I were discussing the portraits that hung behind him, which was of Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was to his right as he’s sitting at the Resolute Desk, and Jackson to his left. And, in very vintage Trump style, he bounced back to that, apropos of nothing, and that’s sort of how those quotes were inserted in the conversation — now, if you were in the earlier conversation it makes sense -- but you know — if you’re following — I mean — let’s face it, he just bounces around when he talks. He is very much a businessman in his display of language —

... It’s very different than your typical politician or journalist who use very crafted, very vetted words and sentences and that’s not who he is. He’s not a politician. That’s largely why he was elected president.

Yes, what we cynics see as his ADHD is just him being "very much a businessman." And this semi-coherent speaking style is "largely why he was elected president."

And finally there's former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson Marc Thiessen. In his latest Washington Post column, Gerson Thiessen insists that it's the Democrats, not Trump, who have had an awful hundred days:

Let’s face it: The past 100 days have been a disaster ... for Democrats....

The Democrats spent much of Trump’s first months in office pushing their unfounded narrative of Trump’s alleged collusion with Vladimir Putin. But that narrative went up in smoke when Trump launched missile strikes against Putin’s Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad.... His Syrian strikes were followed by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s blistering speech before the U.N. Security Council laying the blame on Russia for failing to stop Syria’s use of chemical weapons and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s charge, on a recent visit to Afghanistan, that Russia is arming the Taliban. Suddenly, we’re in a new Cold War with Moscow — which pours cold water on Democrats’ case for Trump-Putin collusion. All that effort at character assassination down the drain.

Right, because a pivot to conventional U.S. policy means that the past never actually happened, even if we have evidence to prove that it did.

But most damaging has been the Democrats’ seemingly nonstop efforts to further alienate the millions of Americans who twice voted for Barack Obama but switched to Trump last year.

You know where this is going: Tom Perez said Democrats should be pro-choice, therefore Joe Sixpack won't vote Democratic a year and a half from now, or three and a half years from now, because we all know that blue-collar whites always vote based on years-old pronouncements by party operatives.

What else you got, Mike?

They also see that Democrats have not even made a pretense of cooperation with the candidate they elected.

Yes, because nothing is more important than civility to a Trump voter.



The right chose Trump, and the majority of right will never concede the error of that choice. The first rule of Republican Fight Club is never stop fighting. And Trump will keep doing that, even if he screws everything else up.