Mike Allen reports that the POTUS is pissed off at almost everyone on his team and thinking about firing anyone who isn’t nailed down.
“He’s frustrated, and angry at everyone,” said one of the confidants.
The conversations intensified this week as the aftermath of the Comey firing pushed the White House from chaos into crisis. Trump’s friends are telling him that many of his top aides don’t know how to work with him, and point out that his approval ratings aren’t rising, but the leaks are.
“The advice he’s getting is to go big — that he has nothing to lose,” the confidant said. “The question now is how big and how bold. I’m not sure he knows the answer to that yet.”
If Trump follows through, his innermost White House circle would shrink from a loop to a straight line of mid-30s family members with scant governing experience: Jared and Ivanka. So while the fighting and leaking might ease, the problems may not because it’s the president, not the staff, calling the shots.
Allen reminds us that Trump frequently threatens to fire people without following through, which is true, but I’m more interested in the underlying assumption that Trump wouldn’t replace the folks he gets rid of and would just reduce the number of people in his inner circle down to his immediate family.
It might not be an actual choice, though, because I don’t think people would be beating down his door to work for him.
Since it seems profitable to note all commonalities to the Watergate scandal, I’ll simply observe that by the time Nixon felt compelled to fire the folks in his inner circle the noose had already tightened around his neck and it did nothing to save him.
What’s different this time is that many of Trump’s crimes were committed by him and disclosed by him, so he can’t argue that the problem is solved by removing a few bad apples. With Nixon, there was always some question about what he knew before the fact even after we knew that he orchestrated a coverup. With Trump, he’s boasted of his intention to obstruct justice and tampered with witnesses in plain sight. He’s also a rolling violation of the Emoluments Clause to the Constitution.
It was hard work to figure out what Nixon knew and when he knew it. Trump will just come out and tell us without seeming to realize that he’s daring us to do something about it.
It’s true that we still don’t know what his role was with the Russians, but he’s provided a Constitutional Crisis without that even being resolved.
So, he can fire everyone but his daughter and son in law, but that won’t inoculate him in the least. We’re already in the zone where the Republicans have to decide whether they’ll allow a criminal to remain in office.
Trump exists in his own universe. He never bothered to study history, American or otherwise, so he doesn’t know how a structured government works. He viewed the Presidency as a monarchy, so he’s the king and everyone else is there to serve him and follow his every gold-plated whim.
He is frustrated because democracies just don’t work that way. In a real democracy, a president appoints people who know what they’re supposed to be doing and has intelligent, experienced aides who can advise on policy and protocol. He assumed that hiring other crooked business-oriented people would help him blow up the “big government” rules and regulations, paving the way for his own personal gain and the enrichment of his cronies. Republicans rode his wave of destruction because they reap the benefits of power and economy in their favor.
So who gets chopped? He’s pissed at everyone, so the guillotine could be sharpened for any number of loyals. Spicer would probably welcome the blade, as his pitiful hangdog face is in the news every day. I think there are quite a few members who might be loaded onto the tumbrels soon.
If only Trump would be on the same wagon.
. . . on:
The emperor does seem to be lurching ever deeper into baffled frustration, broadcast suspicion, and paralyzed inability to get control of the lumbering Hydra that is the federal government; his supposed minions in Congress aren’t helping him much; the lapdog media are refusing to wag their tails and “Sit”, let alone “Roll over” for him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! It’s all going so dreadfully wrong! How dare people refuse to shut up about that stupid Russia thing!
It occurs to me that a hamstrung Trump continuing in office and continuing to be distracted from getting much done is in some ways preferable to his removal or resignation, which of course would install Pence as president. That transition would be greeted with delight by Congressional Republicans (and some Democrats), would be embraced by a MSM pathetically desperate for a “normal” pol in the office, and would pave the way for the GOP to achieve mass quantities of their retrogressive agenda.
On the other hand, given Trump’s riding the MOAB to brief basking, I can see him ginning up a war somewhere, likely in the Middle East, in a desperate flail for war president glory and redemption.
Choice liars and fools have wrought.
I continue to think it more likely than not that “we” fail to survive it.
“What’s different this time is that many of Trump’s crimes were committed by him and disclosed by him, so he can’t argue that the problem is solved by removing a few bad apples.”
It takes removing ONE bad apple, that is spoiling the whole barrel. Name of “Donald J Trump”.
Put the dismissal letter in front of Trump and see if he signs it without reading it.
Heh. If they tell him it’s an EO overturning one of Obama’s pet accomplishments he’ll sign it without hesitating.
“We’re already in the zone where the Republicans have to decide whether they’ll allow a criminal to remain in office.” They’ve decided.
That decision has a sell by date. Eventually enough crap will come out they will have to take him down, he just isn’t (obviously) hurting them enough –yet.
Ayup. Plus, if they do take him down, they get President Pence — the same GOP fever-dream of their retrogressive agenda done without all the distracting sturm und drang.
By the time those curves cross, it will already be too late for them (maybe for us too). They’re trapped. Either decision (stay, go) is fatal for them.
. . . too)”.
RE: “fatal” . . . though I think more “likely” than just “maybe”.
saw a poll, don’t know how reliable, with Quist 8 points ahead, but still under 50. any thoughts?
Right=wing media is very supportive of the Comey firing –
“Charlie Sykes“
GOP pols are largely in their media bubble, maybe do not realize how badly this is playing, or really envision how much more dirt – re, e.g, money laundering – is yet to come out. Eventually, though, reality will bite, and a history of supporting DJT will not be a plus.
That’s interesting. Anti-anti trumpism explained as a form of cognitive dissonance management.
No cure, unless external events force movement.
. . . “he hates the same people they hate.”
The minority of American voters, in a fluke election result irreparably tainted by the anachronistic Electoral College and the use of selective, highly corrupt statements by the FBI Director, made a terrible, terrible mistake.
While the hourly, daily, and weekly actions Trump and his Administration have taken during his four months in office have frequently shocked the conscience and hurt our Nation, nothing that he and his hirelings have done is surprising. He told us he’s be a crass, racist, sexist, oligarch-enabling, tyrranical President during his campaign. Only the propagandizing of the American people by the media, WikiLeaks and the Russian government whose stolen information they laundered, and the Justice Department could have caused Americans to have given the Presidency to such a terrible, anti-American person.
The model the GOP will follow is that of the Scott Walker recall.
Rest assured that while there are plenty of people favoring it in theory, not enough people willing to take steps to turn theory into action.
Partisanship’s a helluva drug. “Respect for the office” and “don’t want all this commotion” will do the rest.
And once you’ve dodged the bullet, you and your tame legislature can finish carrying out the agenda, and carrying off the swag.
I refuse to let that happen. Not interested in wallowing in despair and cynicism here. Yes, history is a guide. Among the things we see from history is the electoral routing of W. Bush’s coalition in 2006 and 2008.
The United States is not Wisconsin.
Wisconsin handed us the current president.
So I’m not so sure.
If the United States passes Federal election laws which suppress the vote as effectively as the laws passed in Wisconsin did in 2016, then you would be closer to the truth. But I’m determined to prevent that and refuse to accept that, collectively, we can’t do anything to change all of this.
I’ve seen exactly NOTHING to date that would suggest that Ivanka and Jared will stick by Trump. In fact, when the final shoe drops I expect Ivanka and Jared will be among the first to find that they have immediately urgent business in … Uzbekistan or Israel probably.
There is no loyalty in that family except to $$$ and self. And maybe not to self.
It’s probably way more complex than that. Stockholm Syndrome writ large. Poor little rich kids who rely on daddy’s approval and wouldn’t know what to do with their wealth if he turned on them. Not easy growing up as the child of a narcissistic sociopath.
yes, Stockholm syndrome, esp Ivanka. awful. awful to see. and awful in addition to all the other awfulness of T that he calls his wife from his golf course to wish her happy mother’s day – just awful.
King, Prince and Princess.
Fairy tales do come true!!!
Even the dark ones.
AG
Tactically, this is great. Keeping this incompetency focused on churning itself keeps it from focusing on something important, and acting incompetently thereby. Churn has to spill over into Congress so it keeps that dangerous crew busy, too.
Strategically, this chaos is really dangerous.
It does damage the 25th amendment article 4 protocol that some advocate. Perhaps that’s why it’s being floated – Trump smells smoke.
Not until the legislative branch says so, and aside from some mild consternation from the usual suspects, the Republican majority has cast their lot. Hell, whiny ass miss McConnell has made it pretty clear that he’s not going to support any sort of independent investigation of the Russian affair.
If there is a constitutional crises, it’s in the fact that Republicans have firmly committed to the party over country philosophy. Expecting them to behave like responsible people is a fools errand. Maybe if Trump starts costing his backers some serious money, perhaps they will start wavering, but right now I’m convinced that Trump could take a dump on the desk of the oval office on live TV, and the only thing Republicans would care about would be how much it upset the Democrats.
That’s because they’re Leninists.
The organs of the State exist to serve the Party, because the Party, and not the State, is the Vanguard of the Revolution. Come the Revolution, in fact, the State is destined to wither away.
All correctly-oriented cadres — and you don’t get as far as Congress unless you’re a correctly-oriented cadre — know this.
Jeez, Spiny!!! Be careful putting ideas like that into the public realm. I mean…what if Trump read it and thought it was a bigly good idea!!!
The U.S. would never ever recover from the embarrassment.
But…on the other hand…maybe that kind of easily and plainly seen public embarrassment might be a good thing.
It would certainly stop the rest of the world from taking the U.S. seriously for a good, long while.
AG
P.S. Plus…it would give the whole “Dump Trump” movement a brand new meme.
I think I like it.
Thanks much.
. . . the Democrats”,
. . . with the problem being it couldn’t possibly succeed at upsetting us enough to satisfy them.
Eventually it’s going to dawn on everyone, even those in the media, that Trump is nothing more than an imbecile with a severe personality disorder. When he becomes an embarrassment to dead enders on the right, his pole numbers will begin to collapse among Republicans.
I don’t think so. Cognitive dissonance management – see the earlier comment & someone’s link to Charlie Sykes opinion piece in NYT.
Its in the media’s best interest to let this drag-out for as long as possible and have people glued to the he said/he said drama of Trump v. Comey, under the backdrop of what Russia did/didn’t do.
I honestly don’t think that Trump has enough energy to keep the momentum up through 2018 (let alone 2020), so maybe they can have some big, sexy hearings this summer a la the OJ Simpson trial while TV is in re-runs and lead-up to a big finale of Trump’s resignation (or removal) right before the NFL season and/or Dancing With the Stars begins.
Then while everyone is distracted they will let Pence/Ryan continue to push their fascist regime; exactly as the wealthy 1% want.
. . . (combined with Bread) to work pretty well for the Romans.
Well, for a while anyway.
An excellent prognosis, mcaffrey81.
Still…there are so many possible variations on the “distract the rubes” theme. I am no longer even sure that Pence will survive the coming carnage. Same same regarding Ryan.
It’s going to be an interesting late spring/early summer, that’s for sure.
AG
No they won’t and that’s not relevant anyway – it’s General Election vulnerability that will get their attention.
“What if they had a constitutional crisis and nobody came?” (Just to get the odious DailyKos-style joke out of the way.)
But this is an ontological question: is it a constitutional crisis if only the press is calling it that? (And, only conditionally, as a Xeno’s Paradox destination we keep approaching but never seem to arrive at?)
It’s crazy at this point becuase we’ve got the President basically bragging that he’s violating the constraints of his mandated rôle and of the public trust, because he doesn’t have the slightest understanding of either of them. Nixon said, “If the President of the United States does it, that means that it is not illegal,” but I’ve always been willing to give the man a break for that one quote because it was out of context and his actions and statements everywhere else show a man who was at least aware of the constitution — unlike Trump, he had the finesse and the wherewithal to realize that he was doing something that needed to be concealed. The taping system — if there is one, now; Yastreblyansky says no — is one such example; it took Alexander Butterfield’s testimony to reveal Nixon’s, but Trump just said it. Everything else follows this pattern: Trump is so ignorant that he brags about breaking the law.
But ultimately it doesn’t matter how many Colonel Jessup moments Trump has, if the GOP keeps covering for him. McConnell won’t investigate Russia and Nikki Haley announced that Trump is “the CEO of the United States” and therefore can fire anyone — we’re just mad, she explains, because he’s so decisive and active; we’re used to “a lot of people talking” rather than acting.
So it’s the Emperor’s New Constitutional Crisis, every day — and in my view it is a Constitutional Crisis, intrinsically, whether its acknowledged through legislative/judicial words and actions or not.
. . . the problem: You just know they all consider Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup the hero of “A Few Good Men”.
I’ve long thought that would make a good psychological-test indicator; like the psychological tests that measure racism not by straightforward questions directly querying attitudes about racism (even most racists know better than to admit it), but by combining results from “stealth” questions that racists have a greater tendency to answer a particular way.
One thing is for certain. The pressure around Trump and his administration is going to build not fade away. In that line we also now that his penchant for unforced errors will continue.
He may have given us a hint what’s next when he said maybe it would be best to cancel the daily press briefings and he’d come out with a memo every couple of weeks. He may simply think that a ‘go big’ firing where he then held all the reins and no replacements were brought in is his cup of tea.
Time to remember the pressure that the FBI can bring to bear. Ezra’s piece on the options the FBI has lay out just when and where pressure can be mounted against Trump. https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/11/15624544/fbi-trump-comey-war
trump never ever really goes “small”, does he?
Every one talks about president*’s demand for loyalty. However, loyalty is a two-way street. How many situations have we seen where trump displayed loyalty to someone. I have never seen such an example.
what do y’all think of Ben Sasse on Face the Nation
Quick Not Complete List of Logical Fallacies Invoked: Appeal to Moderation, Appeal to Tradition, Appeal to Numbers
The only thing I’ll give him some credit for is that he at least acknowledges some thing is wrong, but of course what he wants to do about it is everything that would make things worse. So typical old school conservative. He makes just enough sense to lure you in, and then you find the ‘razor in the apple’ as Driftglass likes to call it.
So even if Sen. Sasse want’s to have a conversation on a very real problem, the title of his damn book alone tells you that it’s pointless because he’s already made up his fucking mind to make the problem worse. If the problem is insufficient social unity, the solution isn’t more and greater individualism!
So please stop shit posting about how Sen. Sasse is some kind of enlightened being suddenly willing to stop being an actual Republican.
P.S. For those who are smart enough to not watch the clip but don’t know the title of the book, Sen. Sasse’s new book is called “The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming of Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.”
don’t understand why you say he is arguing for more and greater individualism?
what do you think about his take on the problem with Trump-Russia? (he is on the committee)
Because a “Culture of Self-Reliance” is the opposite of a culture of social values. “Self-Reliance” isn’t even a dog whistle for individualism, it’s an out and out right admission of Individualism writ large.
Especially when you remember that he’s saying there’s a problem now and his solution is “Rebuilding a Culture of Self-Reliance.” He’s literally saying that there isn’t enough “Self-Reliance” in our culture right now and that is the problem on why people can’t agree about civics and government.
I don’t see that – I read him as talking about the present day economy – contrast with earlier periods where ppl remained in a job and location, that the concept of the person as a consumer of everything creates individualism [absence of shared values, shared civic engagement] passivity, i.e. I read him as contrasting self reliance with passivity. as I understand it he see the problem in no shared civics being that people aren’t discussing the problem [and loss in confidence in institutions – in the language of the discussion here, I understand him to be saying ppl are throwing more money at marketing “choices” rather than talking about the problem.
in his longer discussion [posted before] he talks about working with disagreements about policy within a framework of analyzing the underlying problem – that’s the approach i would hope a lawmaker would take, as passing legislation requires being able to work around policy differences towards constructive legislating.
Absolutely. When he talks about needing to have trust in our institutions (with the implied corollary that our institutions must strive to be trustworthy) he makes some good points.
When he talks about his book, what with the damn kids today not being manly independent adults like back in the grande olde tymes somebody should punch him in his smug little fucking face. Blaming the kids today for the consequences of being stuck in the shit economy conservative policies have produced is classic Republican assholery.
he’s not blaming the kids, he’s blaming the economy, that’s what I find remarkable and constructive about it – blaming as it were, the economic changes of this generation he’s saying economy has changed, we’re in uncharted territory with contemporary economy and no one knows what to do about it, need new strategies for our kids so they don’t remain perpetual adolescents as the consumer concept of the human would have them do. I think he sees the problem because he does come out of a functioning community that retains social fabric.
he’s not blaming the kids, he’s blaming the economy
No he is not. Maybe his book says something more interesting than his words but you’re misrepresenting his words. He’s absolutely blaming the kids.
He’s playing the same Poor Because Fallen game the right has been playing as long as I’ve been alive.
no, you’re wrong. perhaps you’re confused because he gives examples of kids’ behavior. he’s not blaming them though, he’s saying this is the result of the economy being an unknown
No, I’m really not. This garbage is indefensible.
“This garbage is indefensible” is not an argument
Did you not see the link? Arguments to your hearts content.
Isn’t a argument either, it is a declarative statement. Doesn’t seem to have stopped you from trying to fluff up Sen. Sasse and call Marduk a liar.
I only watched the first 30 seconds or so – long enough to conclude he was pretending to be responsible but still de facto maintaining membership in good standing in his do-nothing tribe.
PS: IOW, if you are counting on people like Ben Sasse to come through on Special Prosecuter or whatever, fuggedaboutit.
what’s your thinking on that? what leads you to think he wouldn’t go with special prosecutor [keep in mind he didn’t support T during the General]
obviously he’s not leaving the R party if that’s what you mean