Conservative outlets and commentators had many thoughts on the end of the longest government shutdown in history. (Adriana Usero /The Washington Post)
Macbeth suffered from hubris. Hamlet from self-doubt. The fatal flaw that some conservative pundits fear could lead President Trump, otherwise their macho hero, to his downfall is his failure to keep his promise to build the wall. But is this winter’s tale about the southern border a tragedy or a farce? “The course of true love never did run smooth,” observes a thwarted lover in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The love affair binding Trump to right-wing media and the conservative commentariat entered its roughest patch yet over the weekend, following attacks within his own ranks over his capitulation to Democratic demands that he reopen the government without $5.7 billion for his shape-shifting barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a Wall Street Journal interview published Sunday, Trump hit back at Ann Coulter, a conservative author whose threats about the defection of the president’s base were credited with pushing him to his once-uncompromising stance. When he backed down on Friday, she called him a “wimp.”
View the complete January 28 article by Isaac Stanley-Becker on The Washington Post website here.