Thursday, January 04, 2018
Political Mayhem Thursday: The sad fate of those around Trump
It seems that if you want to ruin your life somehow, the quickest way is to take a job in the White House. Everyone Trump touches turns to ash, it seems.
Those who got involved first-- in the campaign-- are among those who found misfortune most quickly. For others, the black cloud over their heads has yet to rain down indictments and embarrassment.
The people who ran Trump's campaign (except, for the moment, Kellyanne Conway) are all in some kind of hot mess. Corey Lewandowski, the first of this trio, has been accused of sexual assault by a pro-Trump singer named Joy Villa. Where? At the Trump hotel in DC, of course.
The second campaign manager was Paul Manafort, who is now under indictment as part of the Mueller investigation. He reacted to that yesterday with a lawsuit challenging Mueller's authority-- a suit that seems to be universally scoffed at by legal experts.
Finally, the campaign was put in the hands of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.
Bannon apparently talked to a book author and had quite a bit to say about Trump. Among other things, he supposedly said that Ivanka Trump is "as dumb as a brick." In response, Trump shot back yesterday with a truly unhinged written response (which was apparently too long for Twitter):
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
Yikes! What's next? Oh, right... more indictments.
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I would really like to know what the GOP Congressional leaders think the history books will say about them. Its not going to be good.
IPLG: I think they are hoping the history books will say "in 2018, he avoided a primary challenge..."
Which does not speak well of them or the mess that conservatives have put themselves in, where they are now followers of a man rather than principled actors in the political process.
Which does not speak well of them or the mess that conservatives have put themselves in, where they are now followers of a man rather than principled actors in the political process.
Stating the obvious, Trump is pathologically narcissistic (there is a healthy spectrum). Which - save for his limited attention span, his disinterest in reading, his lack of intellectual curiosity, his impulsiveness, and other childlike behaviors – is what it all comes back to (his narcissism). It has and will always be about him. Keep it simple. It drives all this. Like the women in his life, others are there only to serve him, to gratify his desires, and to reflect back his pronounced grandiosity (e.g. his cabinet meetings). All have a time limited shelf-life and all are expendable. His excessive grandiosity is in direct, inverse relationship to his profound sense of inferiority. His rage is in response to being betrayed, and more so, to his fear of being found out. Not a real Wizard, Toto - just an ambitious sleaze ball snake oil salesman from Queens. In turn, any challenge to his “record setting presidency” and to the potency of his massive button is deflected by ad hominen attacks on the other and fake news dismissals - because it does not support is narcissistic narrative. Always opting for the most mature response. Not sure what the GOP think they are getting from all this, other than some short-term Machiavellian gains … at the price of their integrity and souls. The Dems are far from pure; however, Trump and those that are enabling him, are charting new territory.
# posted by 
: 12:46 PM
: 12:46 PM
Good morning. Hello from the other side. Some of you will notice that I have not checked in for a while. Some of you will remember me as a crazy guy who said a lot of crazy things. For most of 2015 and 2016 I asserted with absolute authority that Donald Trump would not make a serious run for the Republican nomination, even if he did--he could never win the nomination, and, in the end, he absolutely, categorically, unequivocally could never be President of the United States.
In the aftermath of that nightmare, I remembered a few fundamental truths ("nobody knows anything," hubris was in fact the original sin, and I had taken a professional oath at the beginning of my career to never predict the future). How had I gone so wrong?
I resolved to take a year to listen, ask questions (to which I did not already have all the answers), reject conventional wisdom, and observe.
Questions. What is the true impact of the Trump presidency on American policy and political culture? Smaller and more Specific. What grade do I give his judicial appointments? What do I think about his re-orientation of the regulatory state? What do I think about his tax policy? What do I think about ACA moving forward? What do I think about his foreign policy? What is the state of our relations with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Japan, and Mexico--just to name a few? What do I think about the Paris Climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the decision to re-evaluate our traditional policy of buying off our allies and "frenemies" through foreign largesse?
And there are lots more. Just a sample of the many ideas to ponder. I will check in every once and while and let you know what I am seeing and hearing and how it has affected my thinking. Happy New Year.
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In the aftermath of that nightmare, I remembered a few fundamental truths ("nobody knows anything," hubris was in fact the original sin, and I had taken a professional oath at the beginning of my career to never predict the future). How had I gone so wrong?
I resolved to take a year to listen, ask questions (to which I did not already have all the answers), reject conventional wisdom, and observe.
Questions. What is the true impact of the Trump presidency on American policy and political culture? Smaller and more Specific. What grade do I give his judicial appointments? What do I think about his re-orientation of the regulatory state? What do I think about his tax policy? What do I think about ACA moving forward? What do I think about his foreign policy? What is the state of our relations with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Japan, and Mexico--just to name a few? What do I think about the Paris Climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the decision to re-evaluate our traditional policy of buying off our allies and "frenemies" through foreign largesse?
And there are lots more. Just a sample of the many ideas to ponder. I will check in every once and while and let you know what I am seeing and hearing and how it has affected my thinking. Happy New Year.
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