Weird, weird, weird, weird, weird.

Weird. Dare I say “deplorable”?

This isn’t some rando who worked in a far-flung outpost of Hillary Inc. Reines has been in the Clinton inner circle for 15 years as an advisor and spokesman. If she had won the election he’d be in the West Wing right now, possibly even press secretary. He was important enough to Clinton to have played Trump opposite her in her debate prep. He’s well-known among reporters for firing off nasty emails to them over their Hillary coverage, but few as nasty as this, I’d guess:

I thought only alt-righters called people cucks. It’s okay, though — it seems Don Jr was asking for it because he’s “not a human”:

Yes, the responses do skew heavily towards his followers. He is a monster, not a human. I’m going to treat him like a monster. If that makes me somewhere in between the two, so be it. But they don’t get to spew venom at others but cry like babies when it’s too close to home. — Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) May 9, 2018

Not everyone agreed that Reines’s taunt was a sick burn, though:

Reines’s most recent cameo in the news, by the way, came in the book “Chasing Hillary” by NYT reporter Amy Chozick, which contains this charming recollection:

The undercurrent of sexism spills over when Chozick and Original Guy spar over whether a prior conversation can go on the record, and he randomly paraphrases a crude line from “Thank You for Smoking,” a 2005 film in which a reporter sleeps with a lobbyist for information. “I didn’t know I had to say it was off the record when I was inside you,” Original Guy smirks. (“The words hung there,” Chozick recalls, “so grossly gynecological.”) Chozick doesn’t name him but later cites a Times story by Maggie Haberman revealing that Original Guy served as the Trump stand-in during Clinton’s debate preparation. “Hmmm, wherever will Hillary find a manipulative, sometimes-charming, often hilarious, possible sociopath?” Chozick muses. I won’t out Original Guy here, except to say that his name rhymes with “Philippe Reines.”

I’m surprised. It’s not like Hillary to surround herself with dirtbags.

Normally in a case like this, with even the dauphine Chelsea left recoiling, you’d expect a flack to tuck his tail between his legs and apologize, if only for damage-control reasons. It’s one thing to have right-wingers throwing roundhouses at you but even liberal reporters are WTF-ing over Reines’s tweet this afternoon. I’d give only 50/50 odds at best on an apology, though. That would be way off-brand for Reines, who’s famous for being not just a political enforcer but one who does his job unapologetically, with unusual gusto. It’d be hard enough for him to apologize to a Clinton enemy for anything, but to a Trump? I’m going to revise the odds downward to 40/60.

Tangentially, via the Free Beacon, watch his old boss tell an interviewer in New Zealand that she felt stalked by Trump at the second debate when he was following her around the stage and thought in hindsight that maybe she should have told him to “back up, you creep.” She decided against it, she says, because it would have been used by her opponents as proof that the woman candidate couldn’t handle a little pressure. Probably, yeah, but it also would have been celebrated rapturously by Democrats and the media as the ultimate “you go, girl!” moment. At least it would have left them with a memorable moment to reminisce over after she crapped the bed in the general election.