But an incontrovertible truth came from an unlikely source this week: Fox’s Laura Ingraham. While, on the few occasions we’ve met over the decades, Ingraham has always been perfectly delightful to me, I’m not in the habit of agreeing with her much these days. Since Trump took office in 2016, she’s tended to be so in the tank for him, she should do her show in Trump-branded scuba gear. (The man who has branded everything from steaks to vodka might as well get a piece of the in-the-tank action.) Yet on a recent podcast, Ingraham said: “The country, I think, is so exhausted. They’re exhausted by the battle, the constant battle, that they may believe that, well, maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump.”
I wish Laura good luck in finding someone in the party who is a viable candidate who has not adopted Trump’s thuggishness and looseness with the truth. Trumpism is no longer politics, but religion. (And the smart money says Larry Hogan and Liz Cheney aren’t posing any immediate electoral danger.) I can’t speak for the nation. But speaking only for myself, I agree with Ingraham entirely: I am exhausted by Trump and all his Trumpiness. What was once a sideshow, an entertainment, has become the country’s enduring albatross. His lies. His raging narcissism. His ginning up support by feeding off division. And as of now, barring all his pending prosecutions, he’s poised to win the Republican nomination yet again. Even if he’s yet to win the popular vote, and has already helped Republicans lose the House and Senate. He might not be as tired as Sleepy Joe, but he’s tiresome. And so no, I don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. But yes, I do suffer from Chronic Trump Fatigue.
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