Democrats are not the only ones counting the minutes until noon on January 20. No, in fact that very thing is going on in the West Wing and has been for some time. Trump might as well leave town now for all of the power and respect that he’s got left. It’s been reported that aides are going out of their way to avoid dealing with him, and are “white knuckling” it. Some aides have walked out in the wake of the Capitol riot, most surprisingly Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s aide and Trump’s one-time press secretary who never gave a press conference. Grisham gave no reason for her abrupt departure, just upped and quit, giving the obligatory “it’s been an honor to serve” press release as she ran into the night, we guess.

Then Elaine Chao abruptly resigned, that was unsurprising considering she’s married to Mitch McConnell. Deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger also walked. The situation in the White House now is that key people that are left are literally being begged to stay at their posts, so as to assure continuity of government and have an adult available in case of national emergency. It has been noted that Trump is not responsible or mature enough to conduct himself properly on Twitter or Facebook and is currently on a suspension from those sites — but nevertheless, he’s got the nuclear codes. Rattle that one around in your noggin.  Axios:

  • Multiple Cabinet officials and senators from both parties, including senior Senate Republicans, have privately urged National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to stay in their jobs for the sake of the nation’s security and continuity of government.

  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also intends to stay on, according to a source briefed on his thinking.

  • Two senior national security officials told Axios that they and their colleagues at the top level of government have decided to defy any requests they believe would put the nation at risk or break the law. They plan to force Trump to fire them.

Between the lines: Some senior officials at the State Department and other agencies privately discussed the need to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. That idea is going nowhere.

  • Many view it as bad for the country and technically unworkable in such a short period of time. […]

  • Yesterday, Pence directly urged the Pentagon to hurry the deployment of the National Guard to the Capitol.

Of course Pence called out the National Guard, Trump was too busy eating French fries and watching TV. This is how this all fizzles and flops. First Trump incites a riot and then his people are gathering behind his back and drawing straws and the loser has to go talk to him. The White House has got to be a wild place to work right now, if a place can be both wild and depressing simultaneously. Surreal and nightmarish might be better descriptors to use. I’m going to bet that anybody with a Valium prescription is a very popular person right now.

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21 COMMENTS

    • Not all of them because there’s an awful lot of idiots among them. Gohmert immediately springs to mind and Joni Ernst (how did she get re-elected?) and Ron Johnson. There’s quite a few in the Executive branch too, most notably Pompeo, Carson and Meadows. They’re just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a heap more in MAGAville.

      • I said “when this is over”, Michelle. We got a couple of years of mop-up and consequences ahead minimum. Once all that’s done, THEN it will be over.

      • Joni Ernst getting reelected when she didn’t even know the price of a bushel of soybeans? Did you see that debate? My jaw is still on the floor, I’ll have to pick it up someday. And that Rethug Governor, Kim Reynolds is a piece of work. A covid denier. I don’t know how this country is in one piece. We must be blessed or something. We’re certainly filled with morons, who apparently don’t know or care who they send to Washington to make laws.

    • Quite a few of them will continue to sing his praises for years, because that’s what their constituents want to hear and they want to be re-elected.

  3. My favorite part of the clown show is where Trump-O tells his MAGAts that he will march with them on the Capitol and once they start heading that way he runs away and hides in the bunker.

    ……what a guy, rite.

    • He isn’t physically capable of walking that far. Even when he’s playing golf, he doesn’t walk more than 40 or so feet. He drives the cart right onto the greens and fairways – a serious offense for golfers.

    • He couldn’t have walked anyhow. He would have had to take the golf cart, like he did with the heads of NATO. Another glorious moment in American history.

    • He was exempted from taking part because he had a letter from a doctor saying he had bone spurs (it’s possible that they were between his ears this time)

  5. I hate to say this, but there really needed to be heads broken open and knees crushed and blood running on the steps of the Capitol to send those people a hard message that what they were doing was wrong and intolerable. Instead they were given the message “It’s ok, just chill a little.” Even if they start sending out mass arrest warrants after the fact as they identify people it doesn’t send the vivid message at cracking skulls and knocking people down — as they did to racial justice protestors — does.

    • So unimaginative, Anastasia. Pain like that fades, the lesson forgot. Ask any minority that’s ever been held down and they’ll tell you what I’m about to. To REALLY drive home the point of your place on the food chain, it has to be the 3 Ses: social, systemic and sustained. That approach hurts far more because it lasts far longer…whole lifetimes, in fact. It’s what they’ve always really dreaded…which is why we need to give that to them in economy-size doses.

    • I don’t necessarily agree about the bloody parts, but every single one that was inside the barriers should have been arrested and carted off to jail to await charges of rioting and sedition! If they resisted arrest then the police, state troopers, and national guard should have done what was necessary to arrest them.

      • Having been arrested at a peaceful protest once a long time ago. It is not as easy as you might think. You need multiple people to detain the person, then you need a holding area and then you need to devote resources to hold those people. Arresting the most violent is best. Getting people on video so they can be tracked down later is second best. In all of that I must say the Capitol police were totally underprepared for what they faced which is a huge lack of leadership.

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