Finish him!
There is often a moment in the fight where you realize your opponent is on the ropes, and all you need to do to finish him off is to deliver a strong series of rapid punches. I’m not sure if we’re there yet when it comes to Donald Trump, but something has fundamentally changed over the past few days – to such an extent that I’m left wondering what we’re suddenly looking at here.
It started when Trump showed up for his summit in Singapore. I expected that the mainstream media would treat his reckless stunt of a meeting with Kim Jong Un as if it were some wonderfully historic occasion, and sure enough, that’s what happened. But once the deal was announced, and it was a total turd, the media was largely willing to call it out for the turd that it was. The blunt honesty was surprising enough that it caught me off guard.
I don’t care what fiction Fox News is peddling to Trump’s delusional base. I’m talking about the reactions of CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times and the Washington Post. They didn’t feel even slightly compelled to pretend that Trump’s disastrous deal with Kim was a good thing. These are usually the moments (State of the Union, etc) in which they feel like they need to hand Trump a “win” so they can still feel like they’re being “unbiased” when they go back to accurately condemning him for his criminal scandals a few days later. But for once the media skipped right over it, as if it no longer felt like it needed to occasionally throw Trump a bone.
Then came yesterday’s White House press briefing. There were more layers to this, because it had just been reported that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was preparing to resign. Nonetheless, the briefing largely consisted of one reporter railing against her after another. She’s their official liaison to the White House, so they usually have to play ball with her, no matter how dishonestly or unprofessionally she behaves. But not this time. How much of this was the media deciding that she’s a goner, and how much of it was the media deciding that Trump was a goner? Probably a little of both.
There are other examples. Several of Donald Trump’s key White House officials have decided in the past two days that they’re going to quit. It’s almost like watching the losing team’s biggest fans heading for the exits with some time still left on the clock, because they just figured out their team is definitely going to lose. Something is in the air this week. Maybe it’s because Paul Manafort is going to jail today and Michael Cohen is facing judgment day as well. We’ll see. But keep an eye on this. Trump feels like a falling-down boxer who’s a few proverbial punches away from going down for good.
