Can we trust in Trump, let alone Ann Coulter?

Now, with In Trump We Trust, the reader is presented with lines such as “I’m too busy too footnote.” The decline in Coulter’s writing is not limited to research methods. The whole book has the feeling of something dashed off quickly, a stream-of-consciousness rant from someone determined to cash in on the Trump phenomenon before it crashes and burns in November.

There are flashes of the old brilliance. Take the charge that Trump publicly mocked the physical disability of a New York Times reporter, for example. Coulter builds a convincing case that Trump is unjustly accused. She explains that the reporter in question, Serge F. Kovaleski, wrote a story in 2001 including the detail that some New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11 attacks. When Trump adopted and amplified that claim earlier this year, Kovaleski disavowed the story. Trump then mocked him for his pusillanimity, not his disability. In Coulter’s telling, Trump was not mimicking any of Kovaleski’s physical traits but, as she crudely puts it, “doing a standard retard, waving his arms and sounding stupid.”

Whether you find that explanation convincing or not—and I have mixed feelings, as it’s best you never go full “standard retard”—it at least shows the kind of work of which Coulter is capable, and which she once produced on a regular basis. Explaining the background of an event, providing citations, presenting a convincing alternate argument, and all while being entertaining and bombastic: This was the sort of writing that made Coulter famous, but it is in too short supply here.