Scott Morefield has written for all the worst conservative publications—Breitbart, Daily Caller, The Blaze, WND, something called “American Greatness” which just has to be the worst, and currently, Townhall. In 2020, he was singularly obsessed with “corona fascism,” claiming that, “people in this country … are so in love with their slave gags that they’re willing to mandate them literally forever,” and hyperventilating that “’Black Lives Matter’ wants to ‘burn down’ Western civilization and replace it with a communist/Socialist hellscape.” It was very measured, well-reasoned stuff.
(Turns out, however, that Democrats were happy to ditch mask mandates as soon as it became possible to do so, and one would think that police could refrain from murdering Black people in a market-based economy.)
On top of all that, he was really big on Donald Trump, arguing that the “lying media” and “Trump haters” were “twist[ing] his words,” that Trump supporters had the moral high ground despite the efforts of “the #NeverTrump ‘right’ and the anti-Trump left,” and blasting “the Republican governors who betrayed Trump.” He wrote about the “five ways Trump is literally saving the world,” claimed that, “God has clearly used a flawed President Trump to accomplish great things,” and lamented that investigations into Trump’s crimes was problematic because “Trump Derangement Syndrome [masked] the tragic combination of overcriminalization and political persecution.”
Morefield was such an ardent supporter of Trump, that he clapped back at critics after writing a less-than glowing piece on Trump: “Others who had quite obviously never read anything I’ve ever written called me a (gasp) ‘Never Trumper.’ If I’m completely honest, that one stung a bit, especially considering how much grief I’ve given real Never Trumpers over the years.”
Well, how times have changed!
On Friday, he tweeted his mea culpa.
One of the saddest parts of this whole Trump / DeSantis party fracture is having to admit that 2015/16 NeverTrumpers & Lincoln Project grifters – many if not most of whom I still believe were acting in bad faith – nevertheless may have been right about something. They said he would destroy the GOP and take the country down with him. Well, it took a few years, but now he’s doing just that, and the pain train that’s coming is only gaining steam. When he won in ’16 and started doing some good things, we thought we were in the clear and those losers were thoroughly repudiated, but in hindsight we were never in the clear. Now, the devil is coming for his due, and none of us are going to like the reckoning.
I won’t sit here and defend the Lincoln Project, as the conservatives behind it are the very same people that created the political conditions that allowed Trump to emerge and thrive in the first place. But there’s no doubt that the never-Trumpers have been objectively right. Trump has been a disaster for the Republican Party, costing them elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Trump’s supporters may not care about his moral bankruptcy, his and his family’s grifting, his crimes, or his support for fascist Russia. But there is no way they can spin three straight losing election cycles in a row (including a midterm amidst high inflation and low Biden approval numbers) as anything but an abject disaster for their party.
Anyway, the “Leopards Ate Face” meme comes from this seminal tweet:
It refers to people who suffer the consequences of their own actions. Leopard Ate Face stories are insanely popular on this site, including the number one story in all of September. It was also the foundation of my long-running and crazy popular anti-vaxx chronicles series during the pandemic. We all love to bask in the schadenfreude of bad people supporting bad things. Morefield smugly mocked those who warned him of Trump’s danger to his party and country, dismissing them as “grifters” suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”
Now, it turns out those “losers” he thought had been “repudiated” were right all along. And not just them, but us liberals too. And now Morefield is left frustrated that everyone else remains as staunchly pro-Trump as he once was.
Why does it seem like nothing can break the support the die-hards have for Donald Trump? Why does it seem like their blind spot is so large that he could seemingly say or do anything and they would still have his back? From the outside looking in it seems irrational, but it’s deeper than that.
Many if not most of us lost friends and even family due to our support for Trump, especially early on. We knew the consequences, but we saw the upside so we did it anyway. We tended to excuse his obnoxious personality and even actions we didn’t like because we knew the good outweighed the bad, especially when he was doing things we liked as president.
If one is losing friends over supporting someone, maybe they should think, “huh, that’s a thing that happens with cults!” and then rethink that support.
I haven’t lost a single friend or family for supporting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. I certainly didn’t lose and friends or family over my support for Elizabeth Warren. And I don’t know anyone who’s lost friends or family for supporting Bernie Sanders.
If you think “the upside” is worth backing a moral reprobate with an overt disdain for democratic norms and principles, then yeah, you’re the problem. I mean, he used his charity for a grift. But we’re supposed to now pretend that they actually care about something something Hunter Biden?
Over the years that becomes ingrained, and what was once a pragmatic alliance, for many became a cult of personality. They became ‘onlyTrumpers’, even when the bad started outweighing the good and he became a liability.
Yeah, this wasn’t a gradual process. It was never a “pragmatic alliance.” OnlyTrumpers were a thing in 2016. Trump hated the same people they did. That’s all they needed.
Now, when they are asked to abandon the person they spent so many years supporting, there is an irrational knee-jerk desire to reject that request and ignore any evidence supporting it. Toss in the unjust prosecutions, and the desire becomes even stronger. A perfect encapsulation is people in this camp posting the cartoon frog holding the sign that says, “Don’t care, still voting Trump.” To them, Trump can never do any wrong.
I mean, if you want to argue that Trump is facing “unjust prosecutions,” then you’re still part of the problem. Part of realizing that Trump is a piece of shit is admitting that he’s a crook, who has coasted on life because of his perceived riches and litigious nature. It’s ironic to lament the sentiment that Trump can do no wrong, then look at the Trump prosecutions and think, “Trump did no wrong.”
There is a guilt, but there is also a reluctance to even broach the possibility that something we have put our blood, sweat and tears into over the last several years may have been a waste. It’s human nature. I know. I felt it myself as I considered changing my support. Nobody wants to think they have wasted time and effort for nothing. Nobody wants to think they put their personal relationships at risk for nothing.
This is true. And the desire to find meaning in one’s actions is so strong, that Morefield still can’t admit that the Trump prosecutions have merit and are long overdue. The science on this is strong. Changing one’s opinion means repudiating one’s entire notion of self. Imagine what it would take for you to become a Republican or, even worse, a Trump supporter, and then think of the physical and psychological pain that would ensue. I know it because I used to be a Republican, and my evolution took years, from 1992 (voting for George H.W. Bush) to 1996 (voting for Bill Clinton). That’s why it’s vastly easier to get non-voting liberals (like young people) to participate, than it is to persuade existing conservative voters to change their minds.
With Trump, the GOP is headed for a wipeout of epic proportions. There is no mathematical way he can possibly win the general election, no matter who the Democrats run. We will lose everything we gained and more, and the party will be destroyed.
God I wish that were true. Trump could very well win reelection. It’ll take a lot of work to make sure our people turn out in the numbers we need them to. The consequences of a second Trump presidency would be catastrophic, and too many Republicans still either don’t get it, or would welcome the destruction of our democracy.
As much as I loathe to admit it, the ‘neverTrumpers’ of old, the ones I spent column after column refuting back then, will ironically have been proven right. At this point, Trump’s legacy is being demolished by his own stubborn actions and irrational desire for power and revenge. His diehard remaining supporters need permission to jettison Trump, not just for the country’s good, but for his own. His legacy deserves that.
There is no irony. The never Trumpers and liberals were right about Trump because we never put on rose-colored glasses, excusing his horrible behavior for “the upside.” But Morefield, needing to believe that his previous Trump support had purpose, continues to both implicitly claim that Trump is innocent of the crimes he’s been charged with, and that he has a “legacy” that deserves to be saved.
Conservatives are reaping what they sowed. They should’ve listened to the Lincoln Project, rather than attack it as grifters. And if they’re going to finally break from Trump, they can’t continue to feed fantasy narratives like “it’s all a witch hunt.” Trump is who he has always been. None of it was masked or hidden away. Trump did all the Trump things in plain sight.
They voted that leopard in. It ate their face.
And in this instance, it’s still eating their face.
