Vinay Menon: Donald Trump is now the GOP’s drunk designated driver. Nobody wants him behind the wheel

Is this the end of Donald Trump?

The U.S. midterm elections unfolded on Tuesday. Well, the count-a-palooza is still unfolding as cable anchors and pundits clock quadruple overtime. Has anyone contacted the FBI? I fear CNN execs have chained John Berman to the Magic Wall.

They must be holding him hostage because Magic Berman is on my TV every hour. It’s inhumane. He is clearly in need of a hot meal, nap, foot rub, a merciful reprieve from Don Lemon’s endless yammering.

Stop interrupting colleagues, Mr. Lemon! No more Don-splaining!

Where was I going with this? Right. Donald Trump. The real estate scion turned failed casino operator turned reality TV goofball turned liar-in-chief turned woebegone narcissist is now taking it on the chin for his party’s failure to win winnable races after he sensibly endorsed a crackpot menagerie of doomed bootlickers and alternate-reality dipsticks to run for public office.

ABC News calculated “at least 14 of Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates are projected to have lost their election bids.” As one Trump adviser told the outlet, possibly after doing shots of Pepto Bismol: “This is a sinking ship.”

Agent Orange is getting blamed for crashing the Red Wave.

On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel played a supercut of various talking heads calling Trump “the biggest loser” in an election that remains ongoing like a baseball game in the 194th extra inning. Even Fox News is now treating Trump the way Burberry security treats a filthy vagabond trying to sneak in and use the washroom.

Then the New York Post, once a safe space for Trump, published a front-page story that is unlikely to end up framed and stored with fake Time magazine “Man of The Year” covers and stolen classified docs at Mar-a-Lago.

“TRUMPTY DUMPTY,” screamed the Post headline, below a doctored photo of Donald as Humpty, perched precariously on a brick wall, one giant egg head with tiny arms outstretched. The subhead: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall — can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?”

Yikes. Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal, the bible for rational conservatives, the headlines were so anti-Don, I had to check to make sure I wasn’t reading Slate: “The Trump Liability for the GOP.” “With No Red Wave, Trump Is Out At Sea.” And sure enough, “Trump Is The Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”

Now, to predict Trump’s reaction to this internal blowback, all you need to do is listen to what he said of his Looney Tunes candidates on Tuesday before the polls closed: “Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”

Makes sense. Look, I’m giving a bazooka to this crazy guy. If he doesn’t use it and wins the Powerball, the jackpot is mine. If he kills someone, not my fault.

Trump is so beyond self-parody that even his hardcore cultists must feel like antique wood connoisseurs trapped inside Ikea: We sacrificed our credibility in search of ancient wattles and acacias and all you have is particleboard?

Is it over? Has Trump, this fiendish ghoul haunting politics, this charlatan hopped up on Diet Coke, Big Macs and terminal grievance, finally disgusted the people who lifted him up and are now eager to tear him down? Is Republican Geoff Duncan correct to pronounce, “Trump is no doubt in the rearview window”?

It’s tough to say. There have been so many times I’ve thought Trump was done and then he springs back to life like a masked serial killer with a machete in a low-budget horror flick. But this time does feel different, mostly because it’s the concertgoers who enabled Trump’s Auto-Tuned BS who are hitting the exits and speed-dialing Ticketmaster to see if they can get a refund.

Republicans will tolerate a poisonous toad if they believe it can win an election. But the second that amphibian morphs into an albatross, that’s a wrap. If Lauren Boebert loses her re-election bid this week in Colorado, she’ll be steaming shower curtains inside a Bed Bath & Beyond. And pointing guns at customers.

You know who might know it’s really over this time? Donald Trump. On Thursday, as Republicans pointed fingers and the internecine warfare became less civilized than a grade school food fight, all he could do was strum a few of his greatest hits about how the “Fake News Media” is truly “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!!!”

Word is he is still planning to throw his toupee back in the presidential ring. But how when even former mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany is publicly urging him to hold off?

Trump is now the GOP’s drunk designated driver.

Nobody wants him behind the wheel.

If you injected Sean Hannity with truth serum and asked him to pick between witnessing another Trump presidential run or performing heart surgery on himself, he’d lunge for a scalpel. Have you seen the glum faces on Fox this week? Jesse Watters looks like he came home to discover his poodle dressed in drag. Laura Ingraham hasn’t been this inconsolable since Obama wore a tan suit.

Conservatives are in meltdown. And they can no longer ignore the obvious.

Donald Trump really is the biggest loser.

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