At least Donald Trump called Charles and David Koch “two nice guys” while going out of his way to insult them on Twitter. The frustration between the populists and the libertarians broke out into the open this morning, with Trump castigating the wealthy activist brothers as “globalist” for opposing his trade policies, and claimed that they have become a “total joke” within the GOP:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1024236805477097472

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1024239166429769729

As Trump himself surely knows, no one who spends tens of millions of dollars for a party’s candidates is ever a “joke,” total or not, at least within that party. Tom Steyer is only a joke outside the Democratic Party, even though most Democrats have been attempting to distance themselves at light speed from his “impeachment now” messaging. Why? He’s spending $110 million this cycle to elect Democrats, that’s why.

Speaking of which, the Kochs planned to spend $400 million in this cycle, help which Republicans can desperately use in what’s shaping up as a tough midterm cycle. The two Kochs spent nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 cycle, much of that beneficial to the GOP, more than doubling what they spent in 2012. Regardless of their trade policies — or for that matter their heterodoxy on cannabis and same-sex marriage — that kind of help will definitely keep one out of the “joke” category. But like Trump, the Kochs have started getting picky about their allies too:

The powerful Koch political network won’t help the Republican nominee in a crucial Senate race less than 100 days before the midterm elections, saying Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) doesn’t do enough to further the Koch’s policy issues to warrant their help.

And as the Koch network pushes Republicans to not take its support for granted, the network has quietly taken other steps to withhold its support from Senate candidates it sees as out-of-line with its views, despite the party’s push to maintain or expand its majority this fall.

Cramer was the first Republican Senate candidate to be publicly jettisoned by the powerful Koch network this cycle. But during a private briefing over the weekend, donors were given a hand-out that indicated the network is also currently not supporting Senate candidates in two other key states — Indiana and Nevada — according to a photo of the document obtained by POLITICO.

This may be what set Trump off earlier today. Trump personally recruited Cramer to run against Heitkamp, although for a while Cramer wondered whether Trump had forgotten that. Mike Braun in Indiana is running as a Trump-supporting populist as well, having defeated two more traditionally conservative Congressmen for the nomination. Dean Heller in Nevada hasn’t been as vocally in Trump’s corner, being the only Senate Republican running in a state where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, but the Kochs may have decided not to waste money there for other reasons. The Kochs have been openly critical about spending policies too, for which they have legit gripes against a whole range of Republicans.

The Kochs can decide how to spend their own money, of course, and Republicans from Trump down can decide whether to reject them for their pickiness. One has to wonder, however, whether anyone on the Right remembers Ronald Reagan’s famous exhortation about 80% allies not being 20% traitors. Snubbing Braun and Cramer and getting a Democratic majority certainly won’t result in lower spending or better trade policies, and Trump brushing off a major donor over a policy dispute (which the president controls regardless) won’t help in keeping those majorities Republican, either. Elections are won by coalitions, not ideological purity campaigns, a lesson that both parties seem to be forgetting in 2018.