As if this country hadn't already blundered its way into the bughouse of dissociation — that troubled, collective mental state in which citizens are bothered more by the rising cost of kumquats than the mounting stacks of the president's impeachable offenses — it now seems, reportedly, that Matt Drudge has cooled on the hot-tempered virtues of Donald J. Trump.
"Publicly, Trump hasn’t said a peep about the highly popular news aggregator,"declares the Daily Beast. "But privately, he has simmered over the critical coverage that the site has run and linked to, with regards to the impeachment proceedings.
"'What’s going on with Drudge?' Trump has been asking allies.... Other sources who’ve heard the president complain told The Daily Beast that Trump has asked those close to him why they think Drudge and his website have seemed 'so anti-Trump' lately."
Although Trump, as to impeachment and removal, has more protective backstops than Tom Brady on his best day, he nevertheless frets and fulminates about inadequate allied support in Congress. Like the little corporal in his disintegrating bunker, nearly all his generals on Hamburger Hill are agin' him — he thinks.
Then, "this past week, the president went after the largely Trump-aligned Fox News for hosting certain pro-impeachment voices — 'Losers!' he said—on the air," just before, no doubt, Fox returned to another of its Goebbelseque blitzkriegs in defense of the paranoid scammer.
And now? Trump even suspects the usually baton-twirling Mr. Drudge of pulling back from his oath of personal loyalty to Der Fäilure.
Evelyn Waugh's Daily Beast further reports that Trump is not alone in his creeping distrust of the Dredge Factory. "Numerous others in the president’s orbit … have noticed the site’s drift, as well. Some have expressed their anxieties about it directly to the president." I suspect, however, that Trump's reputed comrades in anguish are merely catering to his all-demanding paranoia.
Still, if there is truth to Drudge's heresy and Trump's inquisitional hand-wringing, I also suspect that what makes this otherwise commonplace saga of Washington intrigue strangely newsworthy is this bit of insight from a former White House official, "senior" level:
"[Trump] knows Drudge isn’t able to be bullied. [Matt] doesn’t owe his career to anyone … [and] can’t be moved the way others can because he’s not afraid."
How can a man — of sorts — re-befriend another man who's unfearful of the shameless, intolerant of grifters, and simply cannot be bought?
He can't.