The Trump White House is a toxic hellhole in which to work, and that’s been no secret since the early days of Miles Taylor, writing as Anonymous, to the present time. Trump’s personal relationships have all gone south since the election which he refused to acknowledge losing and his subsequent crazy campaign to pretend that something else happened when in fact it didn’t. Bill Barr is one of the principals in this mad drama who decided that things were getting too weird for him and who tried to talk Trump out of believing MAGA media and into dealing with reality. We know how that worked out. Axios:
Trump was positioned in his usual seat at the head of the table, facing a huge flat-screen TV with the sound on low. On the screen, the conspiracy-drenched One America News network was playing a Michigan Senate hearing on election fraud.
Trump had seen Balsamo’s [Associated Press] story, and he was fuming. “Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump. There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump,” the president charged, speaking about himself in the third person.
“These things aren’t panning out,” Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president’s internal campaign lawyers would have to do it.
The Justice Department, he continued, had looked at the major fraud allegations that Trump’s lawyers had leveled. “It’s just bullshit,” Barr told the president. Cipollone backed up Barr by saying the DOJ was investigating these claims.
That was not a good day in Trumpville, to be sure. But it got even worse when Strikeforce Rudy started going off the rails. Apparently that was too much for Barr’ and there was no way he could persuade Trump that Giuliani and company were doing more harm than good, because Trump wanted to believe a miracle was just around the bend.
I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t fucking figure out what the theory is here,” he added. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”
“Maybe,” Trump said. “Maybe.”
It wasn’t Barr’s first time to this particular rodeo, either. This was just a replay of what he had experienced when Trump wanted to send the military to occupy Portland last August, after he bragged to the MAGAts that “in fifteen minutes” he could solve all the problems there. “Trump wanted televised displays of shock and awe, particularly in Portland and Seattle.” Trump wanted to play Cecil B. DeMille and stage a political theater epic for his fans and his attorney general was shutting him down.
From his seat behind the Resolute Desk, an agitated Trump told Barr to go and do something, and to do it right away — make an announcement, send in the troops, something. Just go in and resolve it, the president ordered. He wanted a devastating and provocative show of strength.
Barr disagreed. He thought the heat in the protests was gradually easing. He explained law enforcement strategy and his opinion that military intervention would backfire. Federal investigators were already hunting for the ringleaders in the protests. […]
Trump grew more and more frustrated, but Barr pushed back harder, standing his ground in front of everyone in the room. He was ready, willing and able to be strong, he said. But, he added, we also have to be thoughtful.
What would these soldiers do, Barr pointed out. Just stand around and get yelled at? Trump didn’t care. We look weak and this is hurting us, he ranted. Then he slammed his hand on the Resolute Desk.
“No one supports me,” Trump yelled. “No one gives me any fucking support.”
Trump got up and stormed out of the Oval Office to his private dining room, leaving Barr and the others behind. Barr glanced over at a red-faced White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and joked, “Well that went well.”
It’s always prudent to remember that Trump’s first instinct as a young man was to go to film school. He wanted to be a movie mogul. He wanted to put on a show. His father wouldn’t let him and steered him into real estate but Trump’s show biz aspirations never went away at all, they just morphed into reality TV and the tabloids and that brought him into politics. Mary Trump would tell you that thwarted instincts will manifest later in strange ways. Makes you wonder how different life would be if Fred Trump had just said, “Oh, go ahead Donald. Go work in the movies.” We’ll never know.
Well, time for some hearings. Later. Under oath and in close session. Then gather all the crap and live TV.
Of course, just to make the SCOTUS squirm a little more and actually do some of the fancy dancy legal stuff, pass another impeachment inquiry into PARDONS. Just have it ready to fly out the door. Automatic if not notarized and witnessed by sensible 3rd parties (the pardon office, that is).
“Makes you wonder how different life would be if Fred Trump had just said, “Oh, go ahead Donald. Go work in the movies.” We’ll never know.”
Given everything we know about Fred Trump (granted, it’s all mostly hearsay and third-person stories but often those come from people who knew ol’ Freddie), you left off one crucial statement which would’ve led to Donnie’s plans falling apart and following “Daddy Dearest” in the real estate business: “Of course, you realize, Donald, I will NOT be supporting you financially. YOU want to go into the movie business; MY MONEY will not!”
The very next day, Donald would be in his ill-fitting suit and tie, at Daddy’s office, fiddling around with paperwork and yelling at subordinates (and probably sleeping his way around whatever passed for the secretarial pool).
At least then he could have spun all the horrible fantasies he wanted, maybe gotten rich, & not lived under the stain the trump name will carry throughout US history. And he can no more remove it than Pontius Pilate tried removing Christ’s blood by washing his hands. I bet no one reading this will ask ” who is pontius pilate?”.
Duh…he’s the guy who invented Pilates. Who,doesn’t know that? His name is right there in the title.
Trump would have failed in the movie industry just as he has failed at everything else he has tried to do his whole life!
Let me be clear…this lame duck period has been awful and a catastrophe. However, I’m one to always look for silver linings. Trump’s obsession over the election loss led him down a road of insanity, but also futility. He’s poured his energy into efforts that keep going nowhere.
Horrible…insane…stupid. But preferred to a lot of other abuses he might have tried to occupy himself with if he wasn’t distracted by the notion he could overturn the election.
Exactly. And quite possibly he cost the GOP the Senate. His insanity certainly caused some R’s not to vote in GA, and caused an awful lot of D’s to make sure they voted.
And I just read yesterday where in Ohio, repugs are re-registering their party affiliation or canceling their registrations altogether. That can’t be a bad thing.
I will admit I have lingering anxiety over the possibility that Trump could have won, or that Biden could have won but we lost the Senate, or any other number of bad outcomes for us. But you know what? We won all three chambers, so go #$#@# yourself, ptsd anxiety over things that didn’t happen. Lol.
A young Austrian guy called Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist, a painter, but that didn’t work out, due to abject lack of talent. So he took his frustrations out on the cold uncaring world. In spades.
Actually, he did have some talent painting landscapes,buildings, scenes without people’s faces. He was not good at that. Go figure.
Hello,
You misspelled the word “incels” on your website. Sometimes errors like can hurt your web traffic. Maybe check out a service that alerts you to issues like SpellReport.com or CheckMySite.com.
-Jarred
The term incel itself is inaccurate. As I understand it, it’s a contraction of involuntarily celibate. Basically, it’s guys who are pissed off that women won’t fuck them. Call me crazy, but if being an asshole with a healthy dose of straight up misogyny mixed in is something most women don’t want any part of then maybe instead of complaining they should undergo an attitude adjustment. Lean shit. Develop at least a little kindness and compassion. Maybe get a decent job and show some stability.
For the record, my own love life is non-existent and unlikely to change. I’m older (sixties), involuntarily early retired on a limited income and though I go through bouts of trying unlikely to ever get a full-time good paying job again. I’m also very much overweight. I don’t blame women for not wanting to date me, much less be intimate with me. The guy I look at in the mirror every day made the choices that led me to this point. My celibacy isn’t involuntary. It’s my own damned fault. If I were a woman I wouldn’t want to be anything more than a casual friend to me so I’m not going to whine and complain about how unfair everything is! These dipshits need to become better men and human beings, or STFU.
I’m sick of this whole incel bullshit. They are just assholes who wear that quality on their sleeve and have no one to blame but themselves for women rejecting them.