I’m trying not to make too big of a deal out of it (I realize that it’s not quite at the level of Lyndon Johnson losing Walter Cronkite in 1968), but today, Donald Trump appears to have lost the Wheeling Intelligencer. This morning, not one, but two of the Intelligencer’s syndicated columnists suggested that it’s time for Trump to leave politics.

From Cal Thomas:

Toxic Trump Must Leave the Stage

For Thomas, a regular on the Intelligencer opinion page, this has been coming. While Thomas supported Trump during his presidency, Thomas has been edging away from him. Last month, Thomas wrote a column about the upcoming Republican presidential primaries that “Trump Doesn’t Get to Choose” who his opponents will be. Today, he went one step further.

Additionally, George Will column lectured the Republican Party:

Here’s How To Earn Redemption

Will concluded:

Today, the republic deserves, and the Republican Party needs, what Trump Tuesday evening announced: an opportunity for them to prove, by giving him a bruising rendezvous with their repentance, that they are better than he thinks.

As opposed to Thomas, Will has not been a Trump booster. During his presidency, Will was critical of Trump and his enablers in Congress. Unfortunately, for local readers, either the Intelligencer chose not to carry those columns, or they were edited. For instance, in June of 2018, Will wrote a column critical of Trump and his congressional supporters:

In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him.

That column did not appear in the Intelligencer. In another Will column that the Intelligencer did print, the paper made major edits to remove Will’s criticism of senators (like Shelley Moore Capito) who “still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.”

Finally, while it was not in the Intelligencer, here’s the political cartoon that appeared in the afternoon News-Register:

Al Goodwyn - Political Cartoons Daily https://t.co/P03Xglnhmd

— Don (@DonaldDJL) November 18, 2022

Getting rid of Trump: easier said than done

While Ogden may have moved on and the WVGOP continues to ignore him, replacing him in West Virginia’s Trump Party may not be that easy. I think these two tweets explain that dilemma:

Exactly right. They convinced their base Trump was the messiah, his reign was the best time in our history, and elections he loses are fake… now they expect them to turn on him because of those same elections?

Good luck unscrambling that rotten egg. https://t.co/JUAFh5ovwK

— Justin Kanew (@Kanew) November 18, 2022