Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson is warning that a desperate Donald Trump has turned to the "Roy Cohn Distraction Playbook" — named for Trump's ethically-challenged mentor — to cover for the serious schism roiling within the MAGA movement.
Wilson claimed that Trump's chief-of-staff Susie Wiles fired "the Fort Sumter shot of the MAGA civil war" by pushing DOGE head Elon Musk out of the White House last week. Musk reportedly wanted to stay on past his 130 days as a "special government employee," but Wiles had had enough.
Shortly thereafter, Musk publicly raged at Trump's spending bill that passed the House, calling it a "disgusting abomination" that will put the United States into "slavery" for adding $2.4 trillion to the national debt.
Trump has remained quiet over his falling out with Musk, opting to ignore the tweet-raging instead of firing back insults in all-caps. Although the president did ultimately lash out at Musk in the Oval Office on Thursday.
In addition to Trump's "nothing to see here" stance on Musk, Wilson argued that Trump's carefully-orchestrated distractions included his "reboot of the Term-1 travel ban, laser-targeted at brown countries," as well as his “Biden probe” that Wilson called "a transparent media manipulation."
"One feud with the richest ketamine and sperm-donation enthusiast on earth, one hemorrhaging mega-bill, one geopolitical chessboard where Trump is the pawn, an economy flirting with recession, and a nuclear crisis bearing his fingerprints—any single item would be a migraine," Wilson wrote. "Together, they’re a cluster no amount of Diet Coke and Adderall can wash away."
Wilson concluded, "The distance between reality and Trump is widening, and even the credulous and slack-jawed of his followers know something is deeply, badly wrong. The vultures are circling, pecking, wondering if there are any tasty bits on the shambling corpse of MAGA."