'Trump is a loser': Conservative pundit erupts after 'profoundly disappointing' midterm results

"It's time for Donald Trump to go." That's according to Charles C. Cooke in a new op-ed for the National Review.

According to Cooke, Republican voters must respond to last night’s "profoundly disappointing midterm-election result by telling the Republican establishment to pound sand," adding that Trump has become the GOP "establishment" that he vowed to topple when he first ran for president. "With the country in its present state, Republicans simply cannot afford that sort of frivolous, low-energy, old-boys-club complacency. [Republicans], you’re on notice."

Trump's attacks on now-reelected Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were "classic establishment gate-keeping," Cooke writes.

"Trump is a loser. He squeaked past the most unpopular woman in America in 2016, he presided over a blue wave in 2018, he lost to a barely breathing Joe Biden in 2020, and he hand-picked a bevy of losing Republican nominees in 2022."

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DeSantis, on the other hand, is a "winner," according to Cooke. "He beat the Democratic wave in 2018, he got the biggest challenge of the last four years — the Covid-19 pandemic — almost exactly right, and he won reelection by the largest margin achieved by any Republican gubernatorial nominee in Florida’s 177-year-history."

Cooke writes that Trump actually enjoys destroying prospects who don't show the necessary fealty to him, and now he's applying that treatment to DeSantis.

"These days, Trump isn’t a rebel; he’s the boss. But he’ll only remain the boss for as long as Republican voters allow him to."