Surreal shift around the fringes of Trumpism: this morning I interacted with someone talking about finding out "who controls" Trump's fundraising apparatus, which has been milking donors since November "for no clear purpose".

I suggested the obvious answer and was blown off.

Trumpism demands that everybody who fails or bails be regarded as part of the swamp, so all the resignations including Mulvaney who Trump has relied on implicitly in so many capacities is now a mole who was against him from the start.

Mike Pence failed to manifest the "plenary power" they were told he had and that they were told he could, should, would, and must use to save Trump, so he's also a swamp creature.

Kraken lawyer L. Lin Wood notably called for his execution days ago.

None of these mental gymnastics are new, but the shift I'm seeing is as people closer and closer to him are pushed irretrievably into the swamp category, and people start to worry about who is pulling the strings in Trump's fundraising:

He starts to look pathetic. Pitiable.

Before the shift, the idea that there could be any other answer than "Trump" to the question "Who controls Trump's funding?" would have been unthinkable.

Now that it's clear the legal efforts they ostensibly support went nowhere, the idea that it's Trump is unthinkable.

So for some -- not all -- of the people on the Trump conspiracy fringe, Trump is undergoing a metamorphosis from infallible canny genius god-king who won't lose because he can't lose into a poor doomed fool, a noble yet trusting soul who was betrayed from the start.