We’ve Got Him Now: An Abridged Compendium of Occasions Outlaw Contrarian Jennifer Rubin Decreed the Coward Donald Trump Was Cracking Up, Bonkers, Cornered, and Finished at Last

Which led to the Second Era of Ear-Piercing Grief and Bewailment following his resurrection and return before Rubin proclaimed the Miracle of the Fresh Death Spiral that ended with Trump's reelection.

Jennifer Rubin at her canonization ceremony as the Patron Saint of Bereaved Liberals. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public domain.

I was happy to hear Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin resigned her job because it will be almost impossible for the newspaper to find anyone worse to replace her, but what really struck me in the news about her departure was that she’s launching her own news outlet called The Contrarian. There are many words that capture the spirit of Rubin’s work and would have worked well in as a name for the new publication — The Toady, The Joke, and The Tool are a few of the options that immediately come to mind — but contrarian isn’t one of them.

Rubin has been a bland, boring, weathervane of conventional opinion since she began her career writing for neoconservative magazines like Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and even at the latter the staff privately mocked her, according to Philip Terzian, who worked there at the time, which really tells you something. The Post hired Rubin in 2010 and it became just as essential to not read anything she wrote there either, as her work didn’t get any better.

The only thing that changed after she joined the Post was that Rubin shifted from being her political position as a standard neocon affiliated with the Republican Party to being a neocon on foreign policy who became one of the leaders among the GOP defectors in the Never Trump movement. That quickly boosted Rubin to stardom in the camp of her former political enemies, since opposing Donald Trump is pretty much all that it takes nowadays to be embraced by the Democratic Party, as seen in the case of Liz and Dick Cheney, to name two prominent recent examples.

Another point that’s relevant to make here is that Rubin isn’t merely a journalist who’s never expressed a genuinely contrarian opinion in her life, she’s not a journalist at all. The most generous way to describe her is as a PR copywriter — mouthpiece is less charitable but would be more accurate — which is particularly evident when she’s writing about the quadrennial US presidential campaign, when she does her best to sell her preferred choice to lead the nation and disparage the rest of the field.

Back in the her early days at the Post when Rubin was writing about the 2012 GOP presidential primaries, she was enamored with Mitt Romney and wrote favorably about his campaign while savaging Rick Perry when it seemed like he would be a strong challenger. After Romney prevailed in the race for the nomination, she opened fire on Barack Obama, his opponent in the general election.

Rubin’s role as a political PR flack has been even more apparent since she enlisted in the anti-Trump crusade during the 2016 campaign and the Big Orange Meany became almost the sole focus of her wrath. Her MO during that year’s GOP primary campaign was to ardently promote her No. 1 favorite among Trump’s opponents who she thought had the best chance of beating him, which forced Rubin to move from one camp to another as her confident predictions of Trump’s imminent demise failed to materialize while her hand-picked choices dropped out one by one.

Rubin didn’t fawn over Hillary Clinton with the same passion she displayed towards Trump’s Republican challengers, however her favoritism towards the Democratic nominee was apparent. Trump didn’t have a serious Republican primary opponent during the two succeeding presidential campaigns, but in 2020 she changed her Twitter profile from “conservative opinion writer” to “NeverTrump, pro-democracy opinion writer” — she now labels herself as a “radical centrist” — and became a full-fledged Joe Biden cheerleader that year and in 2024 before he dropped out and she went to work on Kamala Harris’s behalf.

Whenever I write anything about Trump that’s not openly hostile I receive hate mail from Democrats, but I’m not a fan of his and my critique of Rubin is primarily about her work, not her politics. If you despise Trump and love to hear that he’s going to lose every election and eventually be executed for treason, I urge you to read Rubin exclusively because she’ll deliver the goods you’re looking for in boundless quantities.

I prefer being informed by people who have at least a tenuous grip on reality, rather than trusting someone who’s unwilling or unable to report anything honestly because their conclusions are so badly skewed by their personal desires, and are constantly and often laughably wrong. Personally, I don’t see Rubin’s appeal even if you hate Trump as much as she does, because the stories she tells always play out in the same way. First comes the initial jolt of euphoria produced by her reports that her prey has finally been cornered, as she’s confidently reported countless times over the past decade, and next there’s the brutal crash when Trump escapes the latest impossible-to-escape fix situation Rubin has him in, whether it’s his descent into drooling lunacy, or the personal humiliation he’s about to suffer when his crimes are exposed, or his crushing upcoming political defeat, just as happened last November when Harris destroyed him, just like Rubin said she would.

How godawful is Rubin’s work? I was hoping you’d ask, because the short answer is it’s absolute shit and the long answer, which is often highly amusing, follows below in the chronology of her presidential campaign coverage starting beginning in 2015. Unless otherwise noted, the excerpts of Rubin’s work that are cited some from her Washington Post columns. Also, full disclosure: I condensed most of the excerpts because otherwise it would have required the use of crates of ellipses, but none of the edits altered the meaning of her writing.

September 24, 2015, “Is this Marco Rubio's time?”

Donald Trump has plateaued in the GOP primary race, having claimed all the voters he is likely to attract and offended most everyone else. Sen. Marco Rubio is steadily winning support and making his way up the polls.

December 29, 2015, “Upside of the mainstream Republican,”

The crowded field is not going to be crowded for very long, and it is Rubio (or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is surging in New Hampshire) who stands to gain the most when others drop out. Donald Trump - with 100 percent name recognition and high unfavorables - is about topped out.

March 7, 2016, “#NeverTrump is working,”

With each batch of presidential contests, the MSM’s storyline that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee takes another hit. Not until the Feb. 25 debate before Super Tuesday did Trump get consistently attacked by both Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Mitt Romney spoke out forcefully against Trump for the first time last week. Liz Mair’s Make America Awesome, the Our Principles PAC and Rubio’s super PAC are just hitting their strides.

March 10, 2016, “Sorry, Marco Rubio, it's time to fold,”

Here is what someone should be telling Sen. Marco Rubio: Right now you have remarkable leverage. You can endorse Sen. Ted Cruz and likely get the vice presidential spot. Cruz would be seen in a whole new light - someone who can unite the party and who understands that politics involves winning people over. And one last thing: Understand that if Trump gets the nomination, the party shatters and Hillary Clinton gets the White House, the Senate flips to Democratic control and Clinton picks the late Antonin Scalia's successor.

April 28, 2016, “Clinton is shady but it won’t be fatal to her campaign”

She has already nailed down the segment of voters who prefer 'corrupt' over 'unhinged.' So long as Trump is her opponent, she sails along.

July 15, 2016, “Five signs Trump's campaign continues to fizzle.”

There is little sign that Donald Trump is attending successfully to his multifaceted campaign problems. To the contrary, there is ample evidence his operation is continuing its political death spiral. State laws cannot legally bind delegates. If delegates choose to jump ship, no one is going to fine or jail them.

October 21, 2016, “Trump’s inner circle knows he has lost”

Hillary Clinton is going to win comfortably. Pundits, elected officials, activists, pollsters, the media and donors know it. Even some of the people closest to Trump know the handwriting is on the world.

March 6, 2017, “Trump: Bonkers, paranoid or trapped?”

He is increasingly out of touch with reality. Just as he obsessed over the crowd size at his inauguration and the fictional illegal voters upward of 3 million, Trump's mammoth ego cannot take the daily drumbeat of attacks and accusations. When adversity strikes he becomes unhinged and paranoid

May 4, 2018, “Here's how you can tell Trump is losing right now,”

I see no reason Mueller wouldn't move to subpoena Trump Instead of relaying the White House spin that a new "aggressive" posture is coming, the press might want to explain that Trump is now reduced to stalling. It's a tactic of a severely weakened player trying to prevent the indignity and inevitably of losing. It's what one does when cornered, outmaneuvered and outlawyered.

[Mueller never moved to subpoena Trump.]

November 7, 2018, “Trump freaks out after the election and ousts Sessions.”

President Trump’s party lost the House — handing Democrats one chamber’s subpoena powers — and racked up big losses in governors’ races. So naturally, Trump freaked out. Should moves be made to fire Mueller or curtail his investigation, we will face a serious constitutional standoff. In short, welcome to an even worse version of Trump — defensive, cornered, possibly looking at indictments of more aides or family members.

(This was one of a number of times that Rubin warned that Trump had plans to fire Mueller, which never happened.)

November 12, 2018, “Donald Trump is cracking under pressure.”

Trump acts out when he is weak, humiliated and cornered. He's all those things right now. His performance in Europe was panned. Mueller ploughs ahead. Obamacare is here to stay. It's more popular than ever, and red America has fallen in love with Medicaid expansion. Trump's finances are no longer protected from scrutiny, nor are his daughter and son-in-law's. Trump's constitutional offenses are part of a bigger picture of a failing president and a party incapable of breaking with him. Trump is cracking up, as is the GOP.

December 9, 2018, MSNBC, AM Joy with Joy Reid

He will resign the presidency 10 minutes before Mike Pence leaves office, allowing Pence to pardon him if there is not a Republican president to follow him.

December 21, 2018, “Americans have had enough of Trump’s mayhem.”

President Donald Trump may have misread — if was reading at all — the vast majority of Americans' patience for an hysterical, chaos-creating and non-functioning president. Sending the markets reeling may have moved us to a tipping point.

January 28, 2020, “Republicans are trapped, thanks to Nancy Pelosi”

With an assist from former national security adviser John Bolton, Pelosi cornered Senate Republicans who had hoped to escape the spectacle of a full airing of President Trump’s unconscionable conduct. They can acquit, and in all likelihood will, but they cannot facilitate Trump’s cover-up without implicating themselves and entirely discrediting the process. They face humiliation when evidence eventually comes out. With even former chief of staff John Kelly rooting for Bolton to testify, it likely is now a matter of when, not if, Bolton will appear.

January 28, 2020 “John Bolton could be Trump’s John Dean”

Bolton might have information regarding corrupt schemes extending far beyond Ukraine and having nothing to do with the Bidens. We once speculated that sooner or later, Bolton would figure out that playing the role of John Dean — the once-loyal adviser to President Richard M. Nixon who pulled down the whole administration — is much better for one’s career and book sales than clamming up is.

March 30, 2023, “Trump is indicted, and justice is served”

New York state judges, unlike some right-wing, handpicked federal judges, are likely to dismiss any frivolous arguments and attempts to delay from Trump’s attorneys. Trump is about to be treated like any criminal defendant. The rule of law seems finally to have caught up to him.

Robben Island Maximum Security Prison in South Africa, where Trump’s ass has been in the slammer since moments after Rubin published the story noted above. Don’t ask me why he was send to a prison in South Africa or what he was convicted of, all I know is he had it coming and that’s the final nail in his political coffin. Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public domain.

May 19, 2024, “How Biden’s debate performance could blow open the race”

Trump has done Biden a favor over the past few months by painting the president as an infirm, doddering old man. If Biden appears even remotely sane, alert and engaged at the debates, he will have defied expectations. This might be the rare election cycle in which a presidential debate can significantly affect the race.

May 7, 2024, “The New York trial is wearing down Trump — and it shows; His nodding off in court is a sign that he is weaker and more vulnerable than ever”

Pundits inside the courtroom chime in to inform Americans when he nods off. You can believe Trump’s sleepiness has become noticeable when Fox News propagandists try to cover for him by praising his naps. He and his followers have grounded his 2024 campaign on the myth that President Biden (who bikes, dashes off to war zones and works out five times a week, according to his doctor) is the enfeebled one. One wonders whether Trump’s attacks on Biden’s aging are yet another example of habitual “projection.”

June 9, 2024, “For presidents, it’s not age but judgment that matters”

[Rubin wrote this column in response to a story in the Wall Street Journal that reported Biden was showing signs of “slipping” physically and cognitively.]

The widespread media condemnation of a shoddy front-page Wall Street Journal article about President Biden “slipping” with age suggests we may have reached a journalistic inflection point. The Journal’s faceplant should lead to a much larger discussion: to what extent and in what way age matters to the performance of the chief executive. Frankly, it has nothing to do with the sort of factors Biden’s critics obsess over (e.g., verbal slips, how fast he moves). Biden has gained immense experience, formed relationships and absorbed data that helps guide his current decision-making. Should we care that he walks more stiffly than he did 10 years ago? FDR served 12 years in a wheelchair.

June 26, 2024, from an episode of ’“Green Room,” Rubin’s podcast, about the following night’s Biden-Trump debate on CNN

[Biden is] a pretty witty guy. He is rather quick on his feet. Although physically, he may seem elderly and a little stiff, he is with it, he’s on the ball. That’s why in the run-up to the debate you have Donald Trump making excuses, because somewhere in that muddled brain, he knows the person who has trouble getting out a sentence in English is not Biden, it’s him.

June 28, 2024, “What the debate told us: Biden’s facts are no match for Trump’s lies”

As the debate continued, Trump began to show the extent of his break with reality. Biden got stronger, more incensed as the debate went along. He will not, however, silence questions about his age.

July 21, 2024, “How a Harris presidential campaign would transform the race”

[In the aftermath of the debate, ]

To the extent that Biden saw erosion in his support among younger voters, Harris offers the energy to engage and excite them. She offers excitement, eloquence, effectiveness on key issues and, most of all, the power to turn attention back on Trump’s substantial character flaws, criminal record and disturbing plans for the future.

August 16, 2024, “Trump’s decline: His interviews and lies get worse”

Trump seems unable to handle reality. His opponent is beating him by multiple metrics, especially crowd size. A glitch-plagued X interview with Elon Musk only made things worse. People on social media reflected shock at hearing him slur and ramble his way through a softball interview. A much less alarming performance in the debate effectively ended President Biden’s campaign. The MAGA party is caught in a gloom-and-doom loop, forced to defend an increasingly irrational candidate and make excuses for its unlikable, inept nominee for vice president.

Meet the winner of the 2024 election, President Kamala Harris. Trump’s never going to get over this! Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Public domain.

November 1, 2024, “The case for election optimism”

Vice President Kamala Harris has been doggedly working swing states. She has come across as warm, sincere and quick on her feet. (She has about a 10-point advantage over former president Donald Trump on favorability.) As the campaign has gone on, Harris has become more confident, eloquent and, yes, presidential; Trump has become more crass, unhinged, angry and scattered. I concur with Jill Lawrence’s assessment in the Bulwark that Harris’s campaign is one of the best organized, most effective and most enthusiastic in history.

November 6, 2024, “A ‘republic if we can keep it.’ Perhaps we cannot”

Americans have no one to blame but themselves. We cannot attribute the loss to a defective Democratic campaign, intraparty infighting, lack of enthusiasm or a poor candidate. The media, it must be said, did not fulfill its role in educating the public and advancing truth as their primary objective. Refusal to explore Trump’s manifest defects and place him and his movement in the context of fascist strongmen and their cults had the effect of normalizing and legitimizing a candidate utterly unfit for office. But the facts nevertheless were there for anyone who cared to look. At some point, voters are responsible for their own decisions.

And there it is, the inevitable casting of blame on Americans for failing to support Harris, and not due to a lack of enthusiasm based on their conclusion she was a poor candidate — even if it might look that way at first glance since she received six million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020 — but because the unwashed masses were too ignorant to understand the truths Rubin made available in her op-eds.

Since the 2024 election disaster could have been averted had the voters simply agreed with her view of the situation, it would be a waste of time to reflect on whether some tiny share of the fault lay with Democratic Party leaders or Rubin and other members of the press for covering up Biden’s serious cognitive decline, by commission or omission, until it was made obvious to the entire country at the presidential debate in late June. Nor would it be worth pondering if party leaders and most of the mainstream media had failed to note that Harris’s campaign had a great first month between Biden’s withdrawal on July 21 and the Democratic Convention a month later, but it went steadily downhill from there, which was blazingly evident to anyone paying attention.

Two days after the debate, Rubin posted a cluelessly embarrassing tweet saying she was “gobsmacked by the hysteria” of the mounting demands that Biden withdraw from the race, which she traced to “white males [who] publicly freak out when things dont go just so,” whereas “women cope” and “nonwhites don’t have the luxury of melting down.” A significant share of the contingent calling for the president to step aside was comprised of “pundits and pollsters [that] insisted Biden shouldn’t run and are now playing the I told you so game, Rubin added. “They want him out or to lose so they can be right.”

It was a rarely cogent observation coming from Rubin and something all journalists should carefully reflect on because it points to the danger of confirmation bias, which is one of the most common and serious problem in the profession. It was an issue that certainly merited some reflection on Rubin’s part given that three days earlier, and 24 hours before the debate that glaringly exposed Biden’s dementia and quickly forced him to end his reelection campaign, she assured her podcast audience he was a “quick on his feet” and “on the ball."

But as I said from the start, Rubin isn’t a journalist or even a competent op-ed writer who researches their columns, rather than her method of calling a usual suspect or two to validate her own opinion. Rubin is a crude political hack who’s too dumb to know that her opinions, and the largely identical ones of the guests at her dinner parties, and virtually all of the sources she cites in her stories, aren’t universally held and require being subjected to proof., which makes her far more ignorant than the tens of millions of Americans she sneers at as she admires herself in the mirror and casually exonerates herself for abysmal failures that are hers alone.