Ok, pretend for a moment you are Ann Coulter. (I know, but that’s what brain-bleach is for later. Bear with me)
You’ve made your living bashing Libs, selling books, puffing up R politicians, culminating in a book that was pretty much fluffing up Trump as a modern God-King.
It’s been good for you financially, but you still have been a female-in-toxic-R-culture for your whole life and no matter how famous or influential you get, every day is full of microaggressions, including a bunch from the Groper in Chief whenever he happens to notice you.
You are actually a smart, tactical person who can influence policy because you can influence the R base. Usually you just use it to get rich, but you know this is a thing you can do.
Fastforward to Dec 2018.
You’ve been around for every shutdown. They’re unpopular, always. Trump has put himself on record as owning the shutdown on national TV. But Congress is doing what it usually does, brinkmanship but in the end some kind of a deal to keep the govt running. Senate passes 100-0 and it’s about to go to House and Trump has indicated he will sign.
You think to yourself “I have no skin in this game. Hell I can probaby get more talk shows, speeches, book sales at this point by turning on Trump. But if I act now I can completely fuck that asshole over while remaining pure to my persona.”
You know the Wall is now a symbol of racism to D’s and do NOT underestimate Pelosi’s ability to hold her caucus together. You know Trump is incapable of taking “yes” for an answer (he only deals in “win/lose” transactions). You know Trump will underestimate Pelosi and make an utter ass of himself. You know he’s surrounded by idiots who won’t be able to move him. No win situation, no way out.
So with one tweet You can destroy his presidency and worse, make him look foolish and weak while doing it.
Imagine how powerful that would make Coulter feel in that moment. She can literally bring down the most powerful man on the planet who represents everybody who has disrespected her in a few biting sentences. So she pulls the trigger and doesn’t hold back. She is in fact an author and knows how to make words sting.
Twitter not being big enough for the full nuance of her article she went this route, and put the bulk of it in a column
NEW COLUMN IS POSTED! GUTLESS PRESIDENT IN WALL-LESS COUNTRY www.anncoulter.com/...
To twist the knife in she also got onto Daily Caller
“Why would you Vote?”
“To make sure, I don’t know, Ivanka and Jared can make money? That seems to be the main point of the presidency at this point.”
“They’re about to have a country where no Republican will ever be elected president again,”
“Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, amused the populists for a while, but he’ll have no legacy whatsoever.”
It worked. Trump shut down the govt. Every time it looks like he might walk back from the cliff she pokes him again. Case in point.
You, Ann Coulter, have moved the entire US Government with your actions. You have affected the State Department, Homeland Security, all kinds of areas. You also owned lots of liberals and enraged lots of the folks who follow you and buy your books, without getting splashed by a single bit of the unpopularity the shutdown will cause. And you got to give Donald the middle finger and get praised as a hero for doing it.
I mean...damn. That probably felt really awesome if you are Ann Coulter.
She’s been doing her best to keep him from backing away from the cliff too. On the 16th when Trump issued his not-a-compromise :
“Trump proposes amnesty," Coulter tweeted. "We voted for Trump and got Jeb!”
100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals. So if we grant citizenship to a BILLION foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall.
If my wife’s theory is even close to true I can imagine her appreciating Pelosi’s polite but firm messages schooling the President, holding a glass of wine up to her sister, then laughing all the way to the bank while composing her next counter to any hint of Trump doing the sane thing and backing down.
She’s continuing to prod. Another rant on the 23rd www.anncoulter.com/...
If the theory is true and the Senate vote goes our way, expect another broadside from her.
This would of course be a lot funnier if it wasn’t hurting so many people.