The rumored demise of the Weekly Standard is yet another of Donald J. Trump’s achievements that will go uncelebrated by his liberal enemies: indeed, they are even now mourning the death of the neoconservative flagship as they never did when it was at the height of its maleficent glory.

And of course neoconservatism’s many fellow-travelers are out there with panegyrics. It “stood up for conservative principle” in the age of Trump, writes Meghan McArdle. What principle this might be, Ms. McArdle somehow neglects to say: perhaps it’s a penchant for perpetual war, the only known characteristic this famously eccentric and variable band hold in common. BothMcArdle and the editors of the Standard thrilled their readers with stories of the great danger posed by Saddam Hussein, who they told us had nukes hidden beneath his palace ready to launch at a moment’s notice.

Let’s take a look at the three important roles played by the Standard and its editors in the history of the post-9/11 era.

To begin with, Kristol and his neoconservative cadre served as the point men and chief agitators for the series of wars we fought, to disastrous effect, in the Middle East. Through a series of front groups and thinktanks, such as the Project for a New American Century, the neocons spread their propaganda with promiscuous alacrity, to Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, until they finally succeeded in getting Bill Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act. With Ahmed Chalabi and his fellow “heroes in error” – yes, they had the gall to characterize themselves as such! – on the CIA payroll, the machinery of regime change was oiled, fueled up, and ready to go.

PNAC testified before Congress, published reams of literature, cultivated interest groups, lobbied strenuously, and effectively encountered no real opposition: the field was wide open, and they swarmed over it like midges over a swamp.

Secondly, the magazine was key to getting out the disinformation that made the Iraq war possible. Supposedly based on leaked “intelligence,” and given the benefit of a doubt due to the magazine’s closeness to the Bush administration, the Standard told us with full confidence that al Qaeda was behind 9/11, that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” posed a physical threat to the territory of the United States, and that the Iraqis would greet us as “liberators.” It was Kristol who infamously predicted that the war would last “two months.”

Most importantly, however, the Standard was the flagship of the conservative faction of the Right – a querulous group of intellectuals who originally identified as leftists, far leftists, in most cases – who gradually moved rightward until they became “leftists for Reagan” at the height of the cold war. Rejecting the pro-peace stance of Democratic party activists during the Nixon years, they crossed over to the GOP and have been ensconced in the party, especially its policymaking machinery, ever since – until now.

Kristol went on to say that the right is “obsessed” with Soros because he is Jewish. He then repeated the theory floated by Talking Points Memo’s John Marshall that the “Soros-occupied State Department” remark was a reference to neo-Nazi conspiracy theory, known as the “Zionist Occupied Government.”

Some choppy paddle boarding for the Weekly Standard.

This whole article is worth reading, but let me cut to the really juicy part.

The revelation of secrets.

Secret One: The angry phone call from a Bret Baier staffer, over, she thinks, making life difficult for Bret Baier's college roommate and best friend Steven Hayes.

…

First, you may remember that I have talked a lot about Weekly Standard pissboy Jim Swift's public Twitter campaign to get Washington Examiner reporter Selena Zito fired.

He kept retweeting people accusing her of inventing entire quotes and entire people in her coverage of Trump supporters that the media had overlooked. He basically joined a coordinated (paid?) political operation to get her fired and in fact drummed out of the journalism industry entirely.

This was bizarre not because Jim Swift was attempting to cancel a conservative-leaning journalist -- that's par for the course for this crew -- but because she was in fact a co-worker, as both the Washington Examiner and Weekly Standard were owned and operated by Clarity Media.

I have never seen before someone publicly attempting to take out a colleague -- and not being told to stop it by his bosses, like William Kristol and Steven Hayes.

I'm not a fool; I know this kind of cutthroat ratf***ing goes on all the time in organizations.

But behind the scenes. Not right out in the open on a public forum.

So my first bit of information here comes from a source familiar with the Weekly Standard, who believes that Jim Swift's plan was to so badly damage the Washington Examiner that Phil Anshutz, owner of Clarity Media, would be forced to keep the Weekly Standard in print.

If two children are competing for Daddy's Love (and money), one sociopathic child may think: kill the other child and then Daddy will be forced to love me.

…

Here's the context for my second bit of information: NeverTrump and the Conservative, Inc. whiners who say that the Weekly Standard was "murdered" make this claim based on the belief that some people were interested in buying the Weekly Standard and keeping it afloat. Most likely as a Fake Conservative Anti-Republican propaganda outlet, which is what it had become anyway.

The Standard was allowed to keep on operating -- all the while losing Phil Anshutz money -- while they sought out a White Knight Leftwing Investor to buy the worthless neoliberal rag.

But then, suddenly, Clarity Media and Phil Anshutz pulled the plug, and would not entertain any offers to buy the magazine. (I don't think they had any actual offers, just "possible interest.")

And here's what a source tells me about that. This source has acquaintances in Clarity Media itself.

And he tells me that the sudden decision to kill the Weekly Standard, rather than trying to get some minor amount of money in selling it, was provoked by the realization that a Weekly Standard employee, Jim Swift, was attempting to destroy the other Clarity Media publication, the Washington Examiner.

And that he was being allowed to do this, at least tacitly, by Steven Hayes, Jonathan Last, and Bill Kristol, any of whom could have -- and should have -- immediately ordered him to stop his online campaign to cancel Salina Zito.

…

Now, I'm not 100% sure that it was only that that killed any deal for selling the worthless money-pit called the Weekly Standard.

The bosses at the Weekly Standard had serially ignored or subverted efforts by Clarity Media to turn the Weekly Standard into an actually-influential, highly-trafficked magazine.

Phil Anshutz was not bothered by its increasingly neoliberal politics, but by the fact that it was failing to attract readers and show influence, even in the small sphere of Beltway-born-and-bred-neoliberals-pretending-to-be-conservatives.

So Anshutz and Clarity Media already were annoyed at the Weekly Standard. It wasn't just losing them money, but Kristol and Hayes were arrogant, recalcitrant, and defiant in deciding they would continue losing money exactly as they saw fit, without any "interference" from the actual owner.

Insubordinate, really. Incapable of managing themselves, and defiant of any efforts to impose management on them.

They even started paying out huge salaries to late-comers like Charlie "3-Wives" Sykes! Just throwing out money to a bunch of useless, audience-poor NeverTrumpers in some kind of Grifter Charity effort.