The Great Moustache of Understanding has this to say about the Republican Party with Donald J. Trump at the head:

"This version of the Republican Party needs to die."

Look, you'll get no argument about that from me or any regular reader of C&L, although I suspect for different reasons than Friedman. It's hard for someone who has spent the better part of a generation touting the soberness and seriousness of Republican values over silly progressive ideas of income, racial, gender equality and social safety nets to watch the party devolve into a collective lizard brain of intolerance, white nationalism and conspiracy theories. But I have to stop right here and remind Friedman and the rest of the punditry of this critical fact:

YOU BUILT THIS.

Clutching your pearls over how this fascist monster has "taken over" your party ignores the manifold articles and appearances where you and all the other overwhelmingly conservative pundits touted this toxic narrative. The only difference is that Trump has insulated himself from any other viewpoints and he's not smart enough to realize that your dog whistles shouldn't be so overt. His ego doesn't allow him to deal in dog whistles. But what he is trumpeting isn't any different from what you've been suggesting to these true believers for decades: that everything will be much better and happier if we let white men hold on to the power structure, teach all the brown-skinned people and women to know their place and let all the wealth go to those who truly deserve it.

So yes, let us all hope that the Republican Party is, in fact, imploding. But let us also hope that the conflagration torches pundits like Friedman, for feeding this fire in the first place.