'Trump is panicking': Ex-GOP insider 'smells fear' in White House as 'chilling' plan fails

"There’s an odor in the West Wing," and it's fear as Donald Trump's favorite tactic appears to have failed when it comes to immigration enforcement officers killing American civilians, according to a former GOP insider.

Ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson, who once said he might depose Trump in a lawsuit and force the president to explain his ties to the deceased child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, ahead of the weekend wrote a piece about the "fear" he is smelling.

"There’s an odor in the West Wing. No, not Trump’s notorious eau de Depends, but something sharper: metallic, sour, unmistakable. Fear," he wrote. "The smell of a frightened crew on a ship taking on water, while the officers on the bridge quietly eye each other’s life jackets."

Wilson goes on to say, "Donald Trump is panicking," and that it is spreading to others who are close to him. The reason is that their go-to plan failed when it comes to Alex Pretti and Renee Good, according to Wilson.

"And when Orange Cthulhu panics, the MAGA rats inside the White House bucket start turning on one another, scratching, biting, desperate to prove loyalty, clawing for the rim no matter the cost to truth or dignity," the analyst wrote. "For years, the MAGA apparatus has run on a simple, brutal loop: do something horrific, lie about it, scream 'fake news' at anyone who notices, and barrel ahead. It worked with chilling consistency. Until Minneapolis. Until the public executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti jammed the machinery."

Wilson explained how he thinks the situation led to the current "crisis" within MAGA.

"Stephen Miller and his dead-eyed acolytes reached reflexively for the old script. Within hours, Pretti was labeled an 'assassin.' A threat. A monster. But the video was too clear. The facts are too stubborn. And the victim, fatally for the propaganda machine, was too achingly normal. Midwestern normal. Human. Real. Furious at watching his city being turned into an armed camp," he wrote. "The backlash didn’t stay confined to activists or cable panels. It radiated outward into Senate offices, governors’ mansions, and even pro-Trump corporate boardrooms. When Target’s CEO is privately calling your people and asking what the hell is happening, you don’t have a messaging problem. You have a crisis."

Wilson went on to say the situation has "created martyrs Trump couldn’t smear away," leading to a "knife fight" between Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller.

"Kristi Noem knows the ice beneath her is thinning. Stephen Miller knows he’s the most despised man in the building. And Donald Trump knows that, for the first time in a long while, he’s losing control of the story," Wilson wrote. "The rats are fighting. The bucket is shaking. They’re not stopping. They’re just waiting for the smoke to clear so they can see their targets better."

Read Wilson's Friday Brief here.