The thing about Donald Trump that consistently eludes my former colleagues in the media and most surprises me is this: for all of his cultish followers and the damage he has done to our democracy, he is the most incompetent politician in the modern history of America.

I always thought of him as another celebrity clown. I didn’t know he was so dumb. We really are a remarkable country; look how far a conniving, compulsively lying hustler can go!

His latest stupefying stumble: He has anointed Liz Cheney as the most known and respected conservative in America, now admired by liberals, progressives, women, independents, original Republicans, and moderate voters. This is a base almost every sane politician in America would love to have.

The “defeated” Liz Cheney is now everything Donald Trump is not and could never be. He made a monster he couldn’t control and then set her free. She’s gone from extremist Trump supporter to our own Joan Of Arc. She really will save us, I believe.

Cheney is awfully smart and strong. She’ll be after Trump like a border collie after sheep, calling out his lies and menace, nipping at his trail of lies. He will soon regret ever calling her a “threat to fair and free elections.” He will be chewing on those words.

Politics are really great when you think about it. Historians will be writing about Liz Chaney for a long time. She was decidedly unpopular among many Americans just a blink ago. Now, she has come to embody a struggle between the best of our politics and the worst. It is truly Biblical, as I think she senses.

This is really how heroes are made; sometimes, unlikely people get to rise to the moment and stand out in transformative ways. She will be known as one of the great heroes of American democracy.

Last night, the commentators on cable news were all talking about what a great victory Cheney’s defeat was for Trump.

(Photo by Maria Wulf. I should also mention that I have worked for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe. I covered politics in Atlantic City and for the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer. Before writing books, I was an Executive Producer for CBS Morning News. I loved covering politics, but I doubt I would like it now.)

They all had Washington blinders on; they could only see what was in front of them on their screens, and they didn’t dare to look ahead since they are so often wrong these days.

Trump is the honey to their hives. And because of budget cuts, reporters don’t get out much anymore to talk to real people, so they mostly speak to one another.

There was no reason for Trump to drive Cheney out of the Republican Party in this ennobling way.

She was no fuzzy-head elitist or progressive. She was one of Trump’s most loyal extremist allies; she voted with him 93 percent of the time.

If she had only not insisted on attacking the Republic and lying about his election loss, she would still be in the House of Representatives, helping him to end abortion rights, deny any aid for the poor, and vote against funds to fight climate change.

She was one of the high Queens of Trumpism. She was given a leadership role in the House Of Representatives, talked about as the next Speaker Of The House.

Two years ago, she won re-election to the House by a 73 percent margin. But as with any genuinely gifted politician, times change, and so do values. That’s politics. Trump’s assault on the U.S. Capitol brought her some religion, as it did many Trump supporters with a still functioning conscience.

Trump is unusual in many ways but is consistently awful and wrong. Lies flow from his mouth like water over Niagara Falls.  He is Cannon fodder for media-savvy Cheney.

Instead, look at what Trump has done and called a victory. He has made this articulate patriot into a national hero, a living martyr, the most dangerous thing in all of politics, something he always claims to be but can never pull off because he cares only about himself.

And a deep conservative, of all people, to be his best noir.

Liz Cheney has nothing to lose now by relentlessly and eloquently attacking him and everything to gain.

She is smarter than he is and much more articulate. Trump can only love those who love him, whereas great politicians learn to love anyone they need to love. Since he believes he is smarter than anyone, he can learn nothing.

She has made him the anti-Lincoln, a dread hater of freedom, not it’s champion. Americans are funky that way; most like their presidents to believe in liberty and vote freely for their leaders.

Today, hours after her so-called “defeat,” Cheney is a much more popular figure than Trump has ever been or will ever be, and she will haunt him all the way to the end of his disastrous reign. She has become the most genuine politician in the country, Americans love that because it is so precious and rare.

Lincoln’s most radical and brilliant political idea was to keep your friends and enemies closer. And it worked. All of his greatest enemies were in his cabinet.

In chasing Cheney out of his party, he unleashes a monster.

This stunningly stupid and pointless move follows yet another historic Trumpian bumble: the attempted theft of top secret documents for God knows why (we will find out soon) on the eve of a rumored second re-election bid.

This is the story and legacy of Donald Trump – monomania, a sociopathic aversion to truth, and a Freudian addiction to self-destruction. The problem with cult leaders is that nobody in the cult can stop them from doing stupid stuff. They can’t handle the truth.

His loyal followers will defend him, and his unfortunate worshippers will send him their hard-earned money. But no one can stop him from going over the cliff.

All he had to do was say oops! I made a mistake; here are the documents, and it would have been over.

But believing himself to be invincible, a King, he assumed he was simply untouchable—the downfall of the arrogant man. We see it again and again.

Trump can claim the election was stolen all he wants, but no amount of lying can hide the fact that it wasn’t.

And he will always be remembered for claiming he de-classified those top secret documents in his head while hauling them upstairs to the White House living quarters. It was his best lie ever.

Running Cheney out of the party is just another awful mistake in a historic series of astonishing mistakes. Remember Omaha? And the Bible in Washington Square? And his catastrophic debate with Joe Biden, who is not the brightest bulb in the shed either.

The defeat of Cheney is in no way a tremendous victory for him.

It has given every rational and thinking citizen in the country a spotlight on the difference between a liar and despot and a true patriot fighting for freedom.

Nobody was paying much attention to Liz Cheney before Trump decreed she must be driven out of the promised land for the heresy of criticizing him. Everyone is paying attention to her now. Trump did it. And attention is his fuel. She will drive him nuts in the coming months. And there is no way to cancel her now.

Suddenly, Chaney has one of the loudest voices in American politics. She also doesn’t lie much, which helps. And the media now loves her story almost as much as it loves Trump’s. They love martyrs even more than demented billionaires. She isn’t going away.

Yes, Trump is the master of the Republican Party, a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one, somewhat akin to Jim Jones becoming the master of his cult in Guyana in 1978. He’s forged his own awful punishment.

Many of his candidates delight their Democratic opponents with their weirdness, hidden scandals, and political extremism. I think there is a good chance of Trump doing more to restore our democracy than any other single thing.

Governor DeSantis may not like it, but we are “woke”  now. And even Floridians are beginning to notice just how much like Fidel Castro he is getting to be.

Cheney would never have become so powerful, popular, and compelling a politician if not for Donald Trump.

She owes every bit of that to him and his lovesick followers, and trust me, she will stick that truth up his ass every day from now to his first criminal trial, soon coming to a courthouse near you.

Here is the amazing and almost impossible feat Cheney has just pulled off:

She’s trading a minor position in Washington politics for a leading place on the national stage and a future of great prominence and influence; she was a radical extremist from a small red state who has made herself the most important warrior for freedom and justice in all of Washington in just a few months.   And the darling of liberals too!

She almost single-handedly ensured that the truth about the attack on our capital became known, something she will be doing all Fall and which has showcased her great skills.

People on all sides of the political spectrum, including me, are forever grateful to her. Two years ago, few people had heard of her; now, almost everyone listens carefully to her.

It doesn’t look like a defeat to me.

Imagine the ratings for the first Cheney-Trump debate? Is he really crazy enough to do that? Yes, almost certainly.

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There was a point yesterday where I thought it was likely that I would end up in the hospital, perhaps on one of those ventilators we’ve heard so much about.

The congestion was intense, and so was the coughing; at moments, it seemed hard to breathe. I started thinking about what might happen if this was the end; I’m prone to panic and deep anxiety in the dark, a legacy of so many years of bed wetting.

I promised myself that there were three things I would do on Tuesday, no matter what happened. One was to give Maria my book of digital passwords so that she could access all of the information now stored in my Iphone.

The second was to get Gerry’s box of books from Alaska over to the Mansion (I left a message for Tania Woodward saying I’d leave them on the steps and drive off before anyone came out).

I got to do both of those things, leaving the most significant for last.

The third was to get up early to watch Liz Cheney’s concession speech. It was, as expected, a perfect martyr’s speech; she was wise to evoke Abraham Lincoln, who was a martyr more than once in his life, and Dr. Martin Luther King, who she most likely who have done little to support.

Cheney showed in her concession speech (the beautiful mountains of Wyoming looming behind her) that she was a vastly better politician than the bobblehead with that orange nest on his head who got her defeated.

Her speech made it clear that while her career in the House of Representatives was over, her campaign for the Presidency and to keeobTrump out of it had just begun.

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Not known for her commitment to civil rights, Cheney quoted Dr. Martin Luther King in her concession speech: “It has been said that the long arc of history  bends towards justice and freedom. That’s true,” King said, but only if we make it bend.”

But her much more significant and relevant quote came from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburgh address, made while he was  standing over the graves of thousands of dead Union soldiers:  “..that we here highly resolve that these dead shall now have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln was right; the Civil War, the bloodiest and most terrifying attack on our democracy, did end up giving rebirth to freedom. The United States, reeling from years of division and bloodshed, became the most powerful democracy in history and the most powerful nation in the world.

It was pure genius to evoke Lincoln and King in that way. Reminding us that Trump is now the leader of the party of Lincoln sent a chill through anyone who has ever read a history book. Just imagine what Lincoln would make of Trump.

Cheney is now beloved (or at least respected) by all of the true Republicans who remain in this world and many millions of Democrats and progressives who will now listen to her and support her, thanks to Trump’s reminding us every day of the genuinely horrid alternative – him.

I doubt she will be President but I’d bet my house on her making sure he isn’t either.

Trump has unwittingly and almost singlehandedly awakened millions of Americans to the precious nature of freedom and the fragility of democracy. He is doing what Lincoln asked Americans to do – fight for their freedom and their ideas of a free and democratic way of life. It seems he was just what the country needed to overcome its complacency and wake up.

Lots of us were sleeping.

Now we are wide awake.

But if Trump and Cheney often viewed public policy in the same way, one staggering difference will become more apparent every day as she stalks him and his campaign.

Cheney believes in democracy and the peaceful transition of power – she graciously called her opponent to concede early in the evening – and Donald Trump believes in his delusional mind that he can become a powerful despot in America.

Our democracy is much stronger than it was after the Civil War, the federal bureaucracy is still intact, and our media is still very much alive and free; the very controversial Supreme Court stood up to Trump when he tried to steal the 2020 election.

Politics is the art of winning more and more people over to your side. Trumpism is the art of alienating as many as possible while pretending you are a genius and everyone loves you.

In orchestrating the defeat of Liz Cheney, Trump, already fighting for his life, just put a giant nail in his political coffin.

I now believe something I didn’t think possible until a week or so. Donald Trump will likely end up in jail, perhaps like his buddy Jeffry Epstein. If he is lucky, his cellmate might be Roger Stone, whose name was on those documents the FBI saved from Mar-A-Lago, or Harvey Weinstein, who also thought himself invincible.

It’s a strange thing about our democracy. Reports of our demise are premature.