When kicking your friends is bad politics (spoiler: almost always)

I live in the world where Pres. Trump’s job approval ratings are trending badly for him. I live in the world where Trump’s support is eroding even with core parts of his base.

I live in the world where insulting people likely to be allies in that Reagan 80 percent way is bad advocacy and bad politics, particularly when those being inaccurately insulted are largely responsible for someone like Gorsuch being nominated in the first instance.

I live in the world where the Trump administration still routinely embarrasses itself. If and when they do so on a truly grand scale, people like Freeman may find they have reaped silences where there might have been tepid support, or criticism where there might have been silences.

And yet Trump and his media defenders can’t seem to give up attacking those from whom they probably need support, as we saw when the President and various of Murdoch’s minions decided to try to place all the blame for the failure of a bad and wildly unpopular healthcare bill on the conservative Freedom Caucus, rather than the House leaders who drafted it in secret or the President who backed it to the bitter end.