Ann Coulter, conservative author whose book got Trump elected, had some harsh words for Trump after a recent spate of tweets where Trump tore into his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is now running for the contested Alabama Senate seat.
Right? We all caught up now after that run-on sentence? Good.
I won’t recount the back and forth but it’s basically what you could expect from people in American politics over the age of 50 on Twitter these days: Trump calling his former Attorney General Sessions “slime”, Coulter calling Trump a “retard”, and so on.
I fully and wholly understand both sides. Trump felt that Sessions’s recusal during the Russia investigation was disloyal at a tough time. Coulter feels that Sessions was the only loyal voice of reason on illegal immigration in the cabinet and was pushing enforcement of on the books law as hard as possible. Tuberville, Sessions’s opponent who Trump endorsed and is running against Sessions, is surrounded by NeverTrumpers.
Everyone who should be on the same side here has their own sides, as politics tends to be.
A name which is usually brought up by the Left as an epithet, Stephen Miller, was raised in Coulter’s tweets, wondering where he is amongst the administration’s slow movement on the Wall and illegal immigration enforcement.
Stephen Miller was a Trump campaign speechwriter in 2016 who put in the real tough immigration restriction language and has languished in the administration as “Special Advisor to the President” or some other Mickey Mouse gig that gives him enough clearance to be in the room when a General says “Taiwan” or something like that.
Coulter is mad that Stephen Miller hasn’t stood or delivered the past three years, and reports have shown that he’s, in fact, obstructed a lot of strong immigration enforcement because of “reasons”.
Maybe people are finally realizing that Miller is at best, useless, and at worst, a self-aggrandizing credit claimer who doesn’t care about advancing any kind of policy unless his name can be on the byline.
If Trump hired Coulter herself to do Miller’s job – the Wall would be done, wars would be ended, and his approval rating would be at least 15 points higher.
Instead, the administration has to bleat out the same “SUCCESS” talking points that they got two judges and renegotiated trade deals, all of which could be handily undone in a Biden administration.
Biden in the first week could rip up every Trump executive order, fire all the at-will employees, and get two young liberal judges to replace ancient Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
After a few months it will be as if the Trump administration never even happened.
A presidency becomes immortal pushing irreversible policy decisions, grand feats of infrastructure, setting up wings of government that can’t be shuttered.
Trump has done none of the above.
His presidency could be a center-right historical blip who yelled at the media.
Of course I could be completely wrong. A second termTtrump unchained from electoral concerns could embark on serious, radical, legacy-stamping change. He could get those court appointments, install new federal agencies, preside over a constitutional amendment, purge the government of rotten opposition, withdraw all troops, and stamp his name on every school and park and dam and wall he can get his hands on.
He could dump his advisors and cabinet people all the way up to VP Pence’s office. He could have such a positive effect that he inspired a new generation of political leaders in his “Make America Great Again” mold, permanently realigning political boundaries and drastically changing the relationship between an American citizen and their American government.
But I don’t know.
Trump’s single biggest mistake has been outsourcing policy decisions away from the people who helped him get elected and towards the people who wanted him defeated.
The same thing crippled Obama’s presidency too.
They won the battle with good political instinct then lost the war.
