Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter took to Twitter on Tuesday to blast President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, further signaling her distance from a man whose political career she once adamantly supported.
"45 minutes in, we got 30 seconds on the wall. He better be breaking ground tomorrow," Coulter tweeted on the evening that Trump delivered his address.
Later she tweeted to Trump, "WRONG! If you don't build a wall & deport illegals, we'll be a socialist country in about 5 years. Nice words though."
Coulter also demonized undocumented immigrants in one of her tweets, writing that "Americans in America killed by ISIS: 0. Americans in America killed by illegals: tens of thousands. BRING THE TROOPS HOME AND GET THEM BUILDING THE WALL."
Overall, Coulter's view seemed to be that the speech was too saccharine and too long, a point she emphasized in a quartet of angry tweets.
"So Trump is AGAINST childhood cancer, AIDS and the Holocaust. Glad I tuned in to hear that," Coulter opined. She added, ""Golden beaches of California"? This was the lamest, sappiest, most intentionally tear-jerking SOTU ever. Please fire your speechwriter, @realDonaldTrump."
In response to radio/TV host Mark Simone, who speculated that Trump delivered a very lengthy speech so no one would listen to the Democratic rebuttal, Coulter wrote that "I was too tired to watch his whole speech." After columnist Frank Rich expressed concern that people would praise the speech as "presidential," Coulter countered by saying that it would be viewed as "surprisingly Oprah-like."
This is a radical departure for someone who once described Trump as her "emperor god." Since Trump's defeat at the hands of congressional Democrats during the government shutdown, Coulter has harshly turned on the president for not managing to wring his promised US-Mexico border wall out of the situation. Last month she also blasted him for his response to the arrest of Roger Stone, his former political adviser, insinuating that a stronger president would have had a more effective way of reacting to it.
"Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States," Coulter tweeted at the time.
She added, "Trump tweets about Roger Stone raid, 'Who alerted CNN to be there?' Just think! If you were president, you could haul the FBI director's ass into the Oval Office and ask him yourself."
Some pundits argued that Coulter's bellicose language toward the president had caused him to drag out the government shutdown for as long as he did, arguing that he was motivated by a desire to placate his far right base.
So what caused Trump to flip back? Some have suggested that he bowed to backlash from high-profile conservative pundits — notably Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh — who lambasted the president for appearing to concede on the wall funding.
On his radio show Wednesday, Limbaugh said the president was “getting ready to cave” on getting money for the wall in the budget.
“It’s a textbook example of what the drive-by media calls compromise,” Limbaugh said. “Trump gets nothing, and the Democrats get everything, including control of the House."
Coulter, during a podcast on the Daily Caller, said Trump’s White House would become “a joke presidency that scammed the American people” if he didn’t build the wall, adding that “he’ll have no legacy whatsoever.” She also wrote a scathing column about the president and launched a flurry of criticisms on Twitter.
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