He's lost Ann

The author of In Trump We Trust made it clear in a flurry of tweets over the weekend that she's no longer part of the crowd that so trusts.

Having long established her bona fides as a shoot-from-the-hip hothead who proudly revels in hyperbole and provocation, we shall see if this new stance has legs.

Ann Coulter has long been emblematic of the dismaying decline of public discourse in America. Over the years, when she's been on her game, she's displayed a razor-sharp wit and talent for discernment of the higher order. She was editor of the Michigan Law Review, clerked for a judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator for the Center for Individual Rights.

But the capacity for playground-bully-ism and the tendency to quickly come unglued were showing up with greater frequency.

And right after the September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks, when she was writing for National Review, something went awry.

Jonah Goldberg's piece about it sums it up well:

In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent. She’s a smart and funny person, but this was Ann at her worst — emoting rather than thinking, and badly needing editing and some self-censorship, or what is commonly referred to as “judgment.”

Running this “piece” would have been an embarrassment to Ann, and to NRO. Rich Lowry pointed this out to her in an e-mail (I was returning from my honeymoon). She wrote back an angry response, defending herself from the charge that she hates Muslims and wants to convert them at gunpoint.

But this was not the point. It was NEVER the point. The problem with Ann’s first column was its sloppiness of expression and thought. Ann didn’t fail as a person — as all her critics on the Left say — she failed as WRITER, which for us is almost as bad.

Rich wrote her another e-mail, engaging her on this point, and asking her — in more diplomatic terms — to approach the whole controversy not as a PR-hungry, free-swinging pundit on Geraldo, but as a careful writer.

No response.

Instead, she apparently proceeded to run around town bad-mouthing NR and its employees. Then she showed up on TV and, in an attempt to ingratiate herself with fellow martyr Bill Maher, said we were “censoring” her.

By this point, it was clear she wasn’t interested in continuing the relationship.

Her book titles became increasingly snarky over the years. Her persona became ever more brittle. Moments when some heart and humanity were detectable became increasingly rare.

At some point in the middle of the last decade, she became a one-note-johnny policy-wise, obsessing over immigration to the exclusion of all else. When the Trump phenomenon infected American politics, she was immediately on board. She once even famously claimed that she'd be cool with Trump performing abortions in the White House if he successfully rid the country of illegal aliens.

That's all changed now, apparently. The catalyst for her about-face was Trump's recent treatment of Jeff Sessions:

Coulter went on a tear after the president trashed his former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Trump has endorsed Sessions’ GOP opponent in the Alabama Senate race, Tommy Tuberville, and recently tweeted that the people of Alabama should “not trust” Sessions because he let the country down with his now-infamous recusal.

Coulter went on a tear defending Sessions (calling him “the ONE PERSON in the Trump administration who did anything about immigration”), calling Trump a “moron” and a “blithering idiot,” and even saying, “I will never apologize for supporting the issues that candidate Trump advocated, but I am deeply sorry for thinking that this shallow and broken man would show even some remote fealty to the promises that got him elected.”

Here's a sampling of her Twitter rampage:

Ann Coulter

@AnnCoulter

Sessions HAD to recuse himself, you complete blithering idiot.  YOU did not have to go on Lester Holt's show and announce you fired Comey over the Russian investigation.  That's what got you a Special Prosecutor.

and:

Ann Coulter

@AnnCoulter

COVID gave Trump a chance to be a decent, compassionate human being (or pretending to be). But he couldn't even do that.

Myself, I think this is a fine development. Coulter had been one of the most high-profile faces of Trumpism. We all know what's going to happen now. The Very Stable Genius and his most fevered throne-sniffers are going to turn on her, and it's going to be ugly and juvenile. We will see like never before how this grotesque movement eats its own.

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