Rick Wilson is a national Republican message and media strategist.

Greetings, Donald Trump super fans. I am a member of the GOP establishment. I’m writing to tell you that, no matter how much you wish it otherwise, the Donald Trump candidacy is almost over.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s double-digit lead in a new poll: He is not going to win. He’s not going to win the primary. He’s not going to win the general. He’s not going to win a third-party bid. Sure, he can damage the GOP ticket badly enough to guarantee Hillary’s election, but he can’t win. He’s too flawed, too liberal, too undisciplined and too afflicted with verbal dysentery when even slightly provoked. He lacks the fundamental presence and gravitas of a commander-in-chief.


Donald Trump is not running a real campaign. He is working the phones, stirring the pot and using the media ecosystem to its fullest. Soon, the bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump, they’ll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages—ads built not just to cut, but to kill. They’ll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA loop and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It’s what real campaigns do.

Trump will lose, and Trump supporters will wake up with a combination I call “herpes and a hangover.” They may have had fun the night before, but they’ll regret the hangover for a day. However, if Trump’s games in this campaign lead to the election of Hillary Clinton, they’ll regret the herpes a lot longer.

I know that Trump fans reserve special scorn and disdain for people in my line of work—card-carrying members of the Republican establishment, that dreaded political consultant class that is so clearly to blame for Barack Obama’s presidency and all that is wrong with the Grand Old Party. It would be just so much easier to have The Donald as president without this messy election business. But Trump supporters need to wake up before they help elect another Clinton.

So excuse me if I speak out of turn. Here, Trump enthusiasts, is what I’m hearing you say, and why you’re Hillary Clinton’s new best friends:

1. You’re angry as Hell, and by God, you’re going to teach the GOP a lesson. Even if it means (and it well may) that Hillary Clinton sits in the White House, names 3 or 4 Supreme Court justices and lets Bill run around the East Wing molesting the help, you’re going to teach the hated Establishment a lesson by becoming Trump Super Fans, even if he runs as a third party candidate and guarantees Her victory.

2. You’ve decided to become one-issue voters, and immigration is the be-all, end-all issue. Here, I’ll surprise you. I’m against comprehensive immigration reform, and always have been. It’s a sham, and with Obama, Reid and Schumer in the mix, it’s an egregious sham. You’re filled with incandescent rage because “we” aren’t talking about the one thing you care about. But not a single GOP candidate is a full-blown “fling wide the gates” immigration cheerleader. No, not Marco, nor Jeb. Not one. The broad (and correct) consensus is that no immigration reform bill will ever move before border security is ensured. But Donald Trump is feeding you like a seal trainer throwing herring into the sea life, amused by your reflexive barking and the flapping of your flippers.

3. You think we’re dismissing the message, but we’re dismissing the messenger. Yes, opinions in Washington vary widely over immigration. Yes, they aren’t what most of you seem to want: a mile-high wall made of solid steel with auto-firing laser turrets every six feet and mass deportation roundups of 13 million people. Yes, the presence of illegal alien criminals is an outrage. The presence of sanctuary cities is a legal travesty. Donald Trump is not the man to fix these problems. If you think he’s a man of his word, look at the creditors in his multiple “strategic” bankruptcy filings, or the victims of his bogus “Trump U” scam and tell me you think he’ll really deliver on his ludicrous promises.

4. You don’t care about his record. It’s an ideological train-wreck of epic proportions if you care about any conservative values. He’s been pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax hikes, pro-single-payer and is a past master of crony capitalism, to say nothing of his political and financial support for the Clintons and Barack Obama. It’s a mess. You’d never give any other candidate the benefit of the doubt on such a wide portfolio of positions that have changed 180 degrees and back again so many times. And yet, I imagine you can drill into Marco Rubio’s or Jeb Bush’s or even Scott Walker’s record for some sign of apostasy that you can never, ever, ever forgive.

5. You hate candidates not named Donald Trump. Remember when Ted Cruz was your idol? When he was going to turn the world upside down and bring the TruCon revolution to its zenith? A month ago seems like a long time, doesn’t it? Ben Carson? Suddenly haram. Perry? Off the list. I’ve even seen Trump fans savaging Scott Walker, who almost everyone seems to love. You do know we’ve seen this movie before, right? A celebrity candidate? Cult-like devotion? Iconic posters? Vehement, bordering on violent reaction to any criticism of the One? Weird; I remember conservatives in 2008 reacting to the Obama Cult with disdain, but now we’ve got one of our own.

6. You don’t know and don’t care why the professionals want Trump in the rear-view mirror. It’s not because we hate you or look down on you. It’s not because we want to elect RINO X. It’s not because the Evil Establishment wants to turn the Southwest into Aztlan. It’s because Donald Trump is not electable. He is the surest guarantor of Hillary Clinton’s election. If I were working for Hillary, I couldn’t think of a better weapon than Donald Trump to blow up the GOP, damage the conservative movement and put Hillary behind the Resolute Desk. And that’s not even factoring in a 3rd party run on Trump’s part.

7. You hate political consultants. Message received. We’re the despised lepers of American political life because we’re warning you about Trump. You hate that we work for candidates who are not perfectly ideologically homogenous with your litmus test-du-jour. You hate me, for mocking His Majesty King Donald the Coiffed. You can’t imagine I do it because he’s not a conservative, and that by every professional metric this is a con game, not a campaign. A little part of you hates us because we’re telling you the truth about this flamboyant fraud, and you loathe being wrong, just as you were about Akin, McDaniel, Angle or the others.

8. You think we’re only about Jeb. I’ve probably had a hundred people tweet at me that I’m working for, beholden to, or in a relationship (#LoveWins!) with Jeb Bush. Fun fact: I’m not. One presumption that has reached medieval witch-hunt intensity is that every member of the consulting community is a) liberal, b) evil, c) a minion of the hated Bush campaign and d) in league with the media and the DNC to elect Hillary Clinton. We’re the wicked handmaidens of the dreaded “establishment.”

9. You think Donald Trump is the character he plays on television. You think his swagger and bellowing is the Leadership America Needs and that he’s an antidote to the herd of RINOs running for president. You think Donald Trump is the only one speaking truth to power. You think he’s the only one who really gets you. Remember when you had a crush on some movie or TV star as a teenager? Of course you do. You weren’t really in love with them. You were infatuated by a crafted, manufactured, stage-managed image. The purpose of what Clive James called “The Fame Planet” is to manage and monetize celebrity; you’re being played by a celebrity branding operation. There is nothing authentic about the character of Donald Trump that you’re seeing on the campaign trail. (Certainly not that exotic item that rests on his head.)

10. Every minute wasted on Trump hurts the eventual nominee in the general election. There are five or six smart, gifted and thoughtful national candidates in this race. I don’t expect that we will agree on who will be the best candidate to compete against Hillary, and that doesn’t matter. All in the broad-appeal, competent candidates like (in no particular order) Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Walker, Paul, Perry, Fiorina are markedly superior to Donald Trump for the general election. You can make a case for any one of them...or you could if Trump wasn’t sucking all the air out of the room. All Trump is doing now is giving Hillary Clinton more footage for attack spots.

As a celebrity, Donald Trump knows that fame and ratings are fleeting. The hit show of one season can disappear in the next. I won’t make a “Donald, you’re fired” joke because it would be trite, but the ratings are coming in, and the odds are heavily against Trump making the schedule for next Fall.

The circus is almost over.

My advice to Trump fans?

Don’t be the last clown out of the tent.