Bret Stephens Is Ready To Leave ‘Never Trump.’ It’s Too Late.

In hopes of remaining relevant to the political discourse, some big-name people in the media are professing a change of heart or newfound enlightenment that, coincidentally, only arrived after the election, when it no longer matters.

The prime example of media members attempting to keep their prominent status was MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, rabid Trump haters, crawling to Mar-A-Lago because, they said, “It’s time to do something different.” In recent days there were a couple more cases, one less severe than the other.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith got loud on his podcast on Sunday after reading the Department of Justice inspector general report reconfirming what was already known (if not to such an extent) — that there were numerous FBI informants trolling through the Jan. 6 protest crowds (though supposedly only three of them were formally tasked with attending the event). “My big issue,” Smith said, “is that I’m really, really sick and tired of, every time I turn around, finding something else that the Democrats have lied about or downplayed or misrepresented along the way.”

It’s welcome news that the deafening sports talker is “really, really sick and tired” of being lied to by Democrats, but the timing isn’t so hot. He would have known about this months ago if he had listened to what anyone truly curious about Jan. 6 was saying — that something was off, that there was clear evidence of a setup (if even only by negligence), and that people in charge were lying about what actually took place that day. That DOJ report filled in some blank spaces but otherwise only lent greater authority to what had already been demonstrated many times.

What Smith is doing is recalibrating his political position so as to maintain the favor he has among some right-wing commentators, despite insisting prior to the election that he wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. He committed his support to Kamala Harris, according to the Los Angeles Times, and said in September, “The way the streets of America was when [Trump] departed from office in 2020, I don’t think a lot of people are going to want to relive that. They’re going to remember that, and by that virtue, it’s going to compel her to the presidency.”

Things didn’t quite work out that way. Trump was elected to a non-consecutive term in an Electoral College landslide, shifting 90 percent of counties across the nation to the right and securing a majority of the so-called “popular vote.” Such a victory is nearly unheard of.

Now Smith wants to act like this little report is what’s making him rethink some things. I can promise you if the election had gone the opposite way there would have been no epiphany, even with the same report. Instead, Smith would have said he was right, that voters like himself would have been comfortable voting for any Republican but Trump and that Kamala was simply a more appealing candidate who earned the trust of independents to govern as a centrist.

But whatever. Smith is mostly in the sports realm, so his political insight is often entertaining but, as we just saw, not really much else.

Of greater interest is someone like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, the self-identified conservative who has rooted against Republicans in virtually every nationwide election since at least 2012. Stephens wrote on Tuesday as a once proud “Biden conservative” that it’s “time to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement.” He wrote of a newfound understanding that Trump’s voters are largely animated by resentment for a “self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better but often doesn’t, whether the subject is Covid restrictions, immigration policy or how to get our allies to pay more for their defense.”

Stephens concluded by pledging to “enter the new year by wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump’s cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear, that whatever happens, this too shall pass.”

That’s a pleasant sentiment, but it also comes just a few days too late. Which is to say, weeks after a decisive election. Before that election would have been the opportune time for adopting a more charitable view of your fellow citizens who are concerned less with Jan. 6 and more with their dwindling savings and a southern border overrun by destitute foreigners requiring care courtesy of the rundown American taxpayer.

Stephens, Smith, Scarborough, Brzezinski, and all the rest — they lost. Despite their best efforts — and boy did they put their backs into it — they were defeated. They don’t get to merrily bounce back into the conversation and expect to be taken seriously by suggesting they’ve learned something meaningful, as if learning and understanding calls for new kinds of courage or intelligence.

If they want to keep professionally talking about politics, they’re out of options. They have to pivot. But that doesn’t earn them credit. They deserve no grace now that the stakes are no longer in play.

Their status is diminished. That’s the price they have to pay. Their audiences should ensure they pay it for a long time to come.