Sweet Jesus, this White House.
What an absolute mockery Trump has made of all that used to be “America,” the shining city on a hill, the land Reagan once took pride in leading, the country smart enough to have elected Barack Fcking Obama. Somehow, some way, in leading this country, this White House led by this President has reached out for advice, brought back into the fold, a man who has gone on the electric TeeVee and told us that the President of the United States committed “treason” by colluding with Russia with respect to the election and money laundering. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump is giving up on asking White House insiders — including his own chief of staff — for advice and is reaching out to former staffers as his administration continues to be embroiled in daily chaos. Guess which “former staffer” gets the most prominent listing?
Among those he is in contact with? Former strategist Steve Bannon.
Of course he is, because who wouldn’t trust advice from the man who has already told us that the President is a treasonous bastard, for godsake, over a four-star general who in a moment of weakness committed candor and called the President, an “idiot.”
Lesson? If you want to maintain the President’s trust and confidence, accuracy matters, but you best be accurate in noting that the President is a traitor who conspired with Russia, rather than be accurate in noting that he is not one of the “Gifted and Talented” presidents.
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
According to the report, Trump has become disenchanted with Chief of Staff John Kelly and has ignored his advice while lashing out at the media and his other perceived enemies, using former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani as his surrogate — not always to good effect.
The report states Trump has “demoralized several members of his team,” including White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders who was reportedly furious about Giuliani’s appearance on Fox News. Trump’s freelancing has also undercut Kelly’s attempts to control the White House chaos.
If I took the names out, and gave you a choice of random months over the course of 2017 and ’18, you wouldn’t know this was news of the day.
Since every day under this regime is “Groundhog Day,” you will be reminded now that John Kelly is currently playing the role of the “adult” supervising the child who commands the most powerful military in the history of civilization.
Now, I am certainly no John Kelly fan, no one who cares about people of color or immigrants should be. However, that does not mean that I am comforted upon hearing that Trump is going around John Kelly:
According to the Journal, Trump’s latest turn to increased ranting and attacking could be the result of reaching out to bomb-throwing ex-aide Corey Lewandowski — bypassing Kelly by talking privately to the former campaign manager on the phone — and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
The report also states that a White House source has confirmed that Trump is again on speaking terms with Bannon, who was ousted in the wake of comments attributed to far-right conservative in Michael Wolff’s Trump book, “Fire and Fury.”
The article quotes a White House insider as stating (out loud, presumably) that Trump is enjoying “his reality-show strategy.” That “he’s vying for public opinion instead of worrying about the details,” the aide admitted aloud, to god and the world.
We have a president who is concentrating on his popularity more than on the “details.” We are sort of forced to assume that matters of import such as the nation’s economy, whether to go to war in the Middle East, and immigration all fall within that “detail” category. Oh, there is one other “detail” that Trump can’t be bothered with, the detail that Bannon once said: “Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.” That detail must have slipped Trump’s mind. Not surprising, we have it on good authority that the man is an idiot.
