Peter Schorsch
Tallahassee’s own Rick Wilson sat down with Ana Marie Cox of The New York Times Magazine to talk Donald Trump this week and, predictably, well-informed hilarity ensued.
Wilson — leading GOP political consultant and Dean of the #NeverTrump movement — spoke forthrightly, as usual, about the 2016 campaign and his personal jihad against Trump and his backers, for whom he said Trump represents “their own private postmodern Hitler.”
“What started your personal campaign against Trump?” Cox asked.
I wrote a column in June, for Independent Journal Review, arguing that this thing’s not going to end well. But I figured that the campaigns were gonna take him out. None of them did. Donors thought Trump was a joke, or an idiot, or a clown. Then they thought: Well, Trump will destroy Marco [Rubio] for me if you’re a [Jeb] Bush guy. Or if you’re a Marco guy: Trump will take out [Ted] Cruz for me. For me, the catalyzing moment in this was the moment he had actually filed his financials.
With accounting by Gabriel, García & Márquez. Exactly. It was completely recursive: I’m worth $10 billion ’cause they say I’m worth $10 billion. I waited for the media to just rip him apart. And no one did. I had thought I was Paul Revere — turned out I was Cassandra.
Wilson’s reference to the unheeded truth-teller of ancient Greek myth is a primary motif for him these days. He went on to predict that for a die-hard conservative like himself, Donald Trump’s America would be worse than a third consecutive Democratic term in the White House.
So, whom do you think you’ll be voting for in November? I will not vote for Hillary, and I will not vote for Trump. At the end of the day, I believe that President Clinton would be less damaging to the Republican Party than President Trump. Because five minutes after she’s elected president, every bit of this anxiety in our party disappears instantly. We will go at the main enemy as we do. It will be a terrible four years, but it will have stopped this lunacy.
Wilson, uh, also said some stuff about anime and single, childless men. Check out the full story here.
