I want to end this awful day with a story. It's about the conservative movement and reaping what you sow.

Two years ago, I was at DC event with a bunch of conservative legal folks. Some of them were friends. A few went to my alma mater.

The subject was judges. We were all very happy about the latest slate of judges that had been confirmed out of the Senate.

And of course, things turned to Trump and whether we'd support him in the next election.

"I oppose him. I'd never able to vote for him," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because of what happened in Charlottesville," I said, a little taken aback. This person had gone to UVA too, surely he remembered?

And he said, "Oh, I forgot about that. But I'm glad we've gotten all these judges!"

And I'll never forget that.

Because it's not that people ignore events and policies that they think don't impact them. It's worse than that - it doesn't even enter their realm of reference. It's like it never happened.

I believe in the conservative legal movement because it understands the proper role of the judicial system. It bolsters the democratic process by telling the public to hash out policy questions in the political, rather than judicial realm.

I really believe in this stuff. And my career reflects that.

And I had assumed that other people who cared about it would understand why the Unite the Right riot was antithetical to the rule of law, why the things Trump did and said undermined our legal philosophy.

But this person didn't see that connection at all. What he saw were colleagues and mentors becoming judges and the ascendancy of a philosophy he agreed with. And that was all that mattered.

I didn't say anything at all. But I was furious. And I've been furious ever since. I've been furious every day. But what could I say? He got his judges. We did.

That's what mattered to him. If he didn't care about how he got that success, I couldn't change that.

And when success and winning and owning the libs is the only thing you care about, this is what happens: you lose.

You lose because you wound up shredding your credibility, undermining the system that helped you secure those pyrrhic victories, and you convince other people that they don't need to care about the rules either.

This day sucked. I'm going off Twitter. /end