The Washington Post hosted a live chat yesterday with its once-“conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin. Even more so than Rubin’s manic Twitter feed, it is a glimpse into the wild excess and utter loss of self-awareness that plagues people who had their brains broken by Donald Trump.
Why is Biden polling poorly? “Inflation, losses (and loss of focus) on his Build Back Better package, poor messaging, voters’ unrealistic expectations, inordinately harsh media coverage and a blizzard of right-wing media attacks” (emphasis mine throughout). Yes, of course, Joe Biden, persecuted by the media. Yet she says of Republican voters, “A cult-mindset has an answer for everything.” And the absence of evidence is itself damning, even after CNN sank the “missing phone logs” story: Q: “Do we know if the phone records with the gaping hole were part of the documents illegally taken to Mar-a-loco? The ones the Archives struggled to reclaim?” A: “That is a great question. One of many reasons the Justice Department needs to get off the dime — evidence may be ‘disappearing.'”
Rubin sees the members of her own former party as utterly irredeemable: “Democrats are remarkably inept at compiling all those issues together to tell voters that these people are nuts. Republicans want to run your lives, bully vulnerable people and increase division. I mean, how hard is that?” On Republicans and whether the country is headed to civil war: “They plainly do not understand patriotism in the way many of us do. Many are driven by the zeal to defend America as a White, Christian country. If Russia or a president in Russia’s thrall can further their aim of creating a racial and theocratic definition of America, they’re all in. The notion that one’s loyalty should be to the Constitution or to a democracy not defined by race or religion but by an ideal is alien to them.” On Clarence Thomas and his wife: “In a perfect world in which Justice Thomas could be shamed into doing the right thing, that would be the result. But he, his wife and the right-wing movement will not be slowed by quaint notions of ethics or propriety. They care nothing for the integrity of the Supreme Court as an institution. They have power and intend to wield it to refashion America in frightful and undemocratic ways.”
And yet, in the very same chat, when asked about right-wing rhetoric: “It is the result of the misguided notion that God is on your side and that the opposition poses a threat to Western civilization. Anything goes when you view the world in such apocalyptic terms.” Well, thank goodness Jennifer Rubin does not see the world in such terms.