Writing for the right-wing National Review, conservative commentator Charles C.W. Cooke tore into former President Donald Trump, asking his readers whether they are "sick of this crap" and realize that nothing the former president is doing is helping the Republican Party or accomplishing anything coherent.
The article came in response to Trump's public demand to "terminate" the Constitution — and his subsequent denial he ever said any such thing, even though he had posted it on his Truth Social platform for everyone to see. "Trump's lying, of course," wrote Cooke, but it is a familiar pattern and Trump's supporters are going to keep helping him do it.
"On Monday, he’ll say that 'people with red hair ought to be drowned in butter,'" wrote Cooke. "On Tuesday, normal people will say, 'that really doesn’t sound like a good idea,' which, because our politics is stupid, will prompt Trump’s fans to say, 'actually, what America needs — and what it’s always needed — is for us to drown people with red hair in butter.' On Wednesday, Trump will say that he 'actually never said that we ought to drown people with red hair in butter' ... and, at this signal, the people who’d defended him on Tuesday will pretend that this is what they’d understood him to mean all along, and then insist that the real villains of the story are the people who heard him say 'people with red hair ought to be drowned in butter.' On Thursday, Trump will say the original thing again, in slightly different words."
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"Why does this happen? Beats me," wrote Cooke. "At this stage, literally nothing is being achieved by it — except, of course, to drive independents and mainstream Republicans from the coalition. No laws are changed. No judges are appointed. No arguments are won. No thorny topics are broached. America doesn’t improve. Conservatism doesn’t improve. The GOP doesn’t improve. Everything just gets dumber and more cultish."
The only question, then, Cooke concluded, is when Trump's loyalists are going to realize they are getting nothing out of participating in this game.
"At some point, conservative-leaning voters are going to notice that all Trump cares about now is the pretense that he won the election of 2020, and that, in order to push that idea, he will happily destroy anything and everything that gets in his way," wrote Cooke. "Until then, I must ask: Are you not tired of this crap?"