With Trump in office and creating exactly the kind of chaos Rick predicted, he has done those of us who haven’t been lost to the cult of Trump a favor. He has written a book, a searingly honest, bitingly funny, comprehensive answer to the question we find ourselves asking most mornings: “What the hell is going on?”
The book is called “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” and, because it’s written by a 30-year veteran of conservative politics, it does what no squishy liberal newspaper columnist like myself can do: It pushes the modern-day Republican Party into the public square and roundly shames it for allowing an obvious con man like Trump to become its standard-bearer.
Rick writes: “Everything we Never Trump folks warned you of, including massive, decades-long downstream election losses, is coming. Alienating African Americans and Hispanics beyond redemption? Check. Raising a generation of young voters who are fleeing the GOP in droves? Check. Age-old beefs, juvenile complaints, and ego bruises taking center stage while the world burns? Check. Playing public footsie with white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Check. Blistering pig-ignorance about the economy and the world? Check. … Shredding the last iota of the GOP’s credibility as a party that cares about debt, deficits, and fiscal probity? Check.”
He goes on to absolutely clobber the voters who make up Trump’s base and devour his conspiratorial ramblings: “Honestly, at this point, it’s almost a moral imperative to slap the stupid out of them.”