I am still undecided about how much weight to give Gabriel Sherman’s reporting. He relies so much on unnamed sources that I find myself doubting that all his quotes are real. On the other hand, he does seem to have a gift for cultivating sources in right-wing circles. I’m not sure how he does it or why they talk to him, but they do.
If his reporting today is accurate, we have plenty to worry about.
With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the Trump presidency is entering a new phase—one in which Trump is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “Trump is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican said. Trump’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a Trump friend said. “Trump is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.”
According to five Republicans close to the White House, Trump has diagnosed the problem as having the wrong team around him and is looking to replace his senior staff in the coming weeks.
There’s plenty of palace gossip and intrigue in Gabriel’s piece, but the basic gist of it is that Trump has become convinced that he needs to stop listening to moderating and controlling voices and get back to the rhetoric and policies he was advocating on the campaign. He expects, allegedly, that Jared Kushner will soon return to New York with Ivanka to follow later. He wants to replace his chief of staff John Kelly and his national security adviser H.R. McMaster. He already went rogue enough on tariffs to force Gary Cohn out. In combination, these departures should free Trump up to be Trump.
And that’s a bad thing no matter where you stand. Say what you want about his record so far, it would be far worse if people had simply followed his instincts and directives. We’d already be in a full blown constitutional crisis if the White House lawyer Don McGahn hadn’t refused to fire Robert Mueller or if Reince Priebus hadn’t stopped Attorney General Jeff Sessions from resigning. Defense Secretary James Mattis simply ignored Trump’s proclamation on transgendered troops. There are more than a dozen other examples of Trump making policy statements that were walked back or heavily modified to make them comply with the law or simple sanity.
The courts have also played an important role in saving Trump from himself, and they’ll need to continue fulfilling that role because we’re entering a new phase where the president is going to find it much easier to convert the insane ideas that pop into his head into official policy.
What happens when a court countermands something Trump wants done, and he decides to ignore the court’s order and tells his underlings to go ahead, judges be damned?
For example, court-ordered stays of the DACA expulsions: Trump orders ICE to ignore the rulings, round up every Dreamer they can lay their Gestapo-like hands on, and throw them on buses to Mexico (whether or not they actually came from there; just shove them over the border to be someone else’s problem)? Given what we’ve already seen of ICE in action, what odds that they do as Trump orders, not the court?
And then what? Who will stop the lawless conduct?
Exactly, chunks of law enforcement and the military feel the same way he does.
Not sure, but with a court order or decision, they might be required to ignore what Trump says due to its illegality.
No one is required to follow an illegal order. In fact, your duty is to not follow such orders.
Wish I could accept that your premise will hold, but I fear euzious, below, is more likely to be correct:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2018/3/9/165725/7665#19
sigh…. and of course I managed to misspell euzoius’s name….
Need to get some coffee.
The scariest part is, the only thing standing between Trump and the Constitution is the republican controlled Congress. Which means there is nothing to stop Trump from ignoring any law and ripping the Constitution to shreds.
You write:
A “constututional crisis’ is what is needed to bump Trump out if power. Better sooner than later.
As Sherman writes:
Of course…as always in this shadowy play, this source is either an unnamed “Republican,” a construct of several leakers’ comments and/or whatever the author wants us to think is some kind of reliable source. Any way you cut it, the arc of the story remains the same. Trump is getting the lay of the land. DC-Land, He has staged multiple raids on the supposed boundaries to his power and found them wanting. He no longer feels the need for much more coaching from outdated, pro swampdwellers..
If the Mueller thing does not publicly hit paydirt…and soon…Trump will simply get stronger and stronger. Better a constitutional crisis while the government is still at least somewhat functioning…at least that’s a fair to good bet…than no constitution at all after Trump has finished defying it to the point that it is essentially a paper tiger.
Rule by Twitter posts.
Rule by fiat.
It’s coming…
Twitternacht.
Watch.
Any day now.
Aaaany day now…
Watch.
AG
Where is he going to find these awesome people that will simply let him let his freak flag fly? I’ve been reading that people who work there are struggling to get out but can’t find jobs because working there is killing their career prospects. Does he have a secret horde of people clamoring to work in his administration stashed away somewhere?
One can always find the Martin Bormanns….
Trump may think he understands how Washington “works” but it’s pretty clear that he actually doesn’t and simply acting as a self-styled dictator doesn’t mean things he want will actually happen. Trump has the attention of a flea. Yes, he announced the sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs but he also immediately made exceptions for Canada and Mexico. Expect the actual implementation of the tariffs to be really so-walked notwithstanding Navarro and Sleepy Li’l Wilbur’s wishes.
If Trump instructs ICE to ignore the Court’s stay on DACA deportations, that will, in fact constitute a constitutional crisis. The GOP Congress will ignore it. However, Trump is basically gutless and, while he will bitch and moan, I don’t think he will attempt a putsch.
Agreed on all fronts except the last part. The court says “stop doing this”, Trump “complies” but conspires with his sympathetic ICE director, and ICE follows Trump rather than the court. Trump isn’t going to tell them to stand down, and their Director is “one sick puppy”. He doesn’t need Trump’s boot in his ass when he’s full steam ahead.
HHS came down on Idaho in some way for non-compliance on Obama care plans. That surprised me so who knows really?
Yes this is another thing. How are all these waivers being allowed? Idaho doesn’t even pretend to comply. They straight up say they’re not compliant, and what are you going to do about it?
Then there is Alabama adding work requirements, but with no income exemptions for this work requirement. In other words, you need a job to qualify for Medicaid, but their income limit is so damn low that if you get a job that complies with the requirement you will earn too much. I was wondering if any state would go that route when I first heard of the work requirement, and here we are.
That’s just the thing though. The GOP has been clamoring for the work requirement re: Medicaid for a while now. Rubio or Cruz would be doing the same thing.
Gotta say, a constitutional crisis is way better than some of the alternatives. Best to have the right CC at the right time but you don’t always get to–or know how to–choose.
More gossip that Peter Navaro will replace Cohan and John Bolton will replace McMaster. Katie bar the door or as one pundit succinctly put it, ‘we’re all gonna die’.
If Melania decides that her last straw is Stormy we would see the last Trump whisperer calming voice walk out as well.
Fire at will seems an apt description of what the great unhinged one will opt for.
. . . calming voice”, much less “the last” such?
Not seein’ it myself.
My guess would be she recognizes her assigned role as arm candy and heir-producing concubine and accepts it, more or less. Not likes. But accepts.
Is there some limit to how much humiliation she will tolerate? Is there some point at which she would say “FUCK the pre-nup” (that I presume exists and is onerous indeed wrt Melania’s — and Barron’s — personal interests)?
If so, arrival at that point would make for an interesting spectacle, no doubt!
It’s only a constitutional crises only when congress says so, and right now all congress is saying is… “meh… he signed the tax cut”
And if you haven’t figured this out by now, the punchline to this sad joke Republican voters played on America is “The Aristocrats!” It’s not going to get better.
Really, if the 17 Democrats in the Senate haven’t made it painfully obvious, Congress just wants in on their piece of the grift. Hey, as long as the guy is willing to sign anything…
Trump may have the IQ of a radish, but sooner or later, he’s going to fully grasp the concept that the Republican-controlled Congress won’t take any action against him, no matter what he does. All he needs then is followers who will simply ignore whatever the courts might say and looks like he’s got those already.
dude you know you want a bright red IROC guido sled cause I am pretty sure you got the gold chain to match.
“Spending your life in the service of a movement you should abhor is taxing on the soul.”
My father was a good man who lived through the Depression on a farm in the dustbowl. He was an agronomist who spent his life trying to improve farming practice so that kind of disaster would never happen again. One of the projects he worked on was 2,4-D. 2,4-D eventually was used in the making of Agent Orange, and was implicated in all manner of environmental and health problems as documented in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”.
My father was never able to come to terms with the damage his work did. To the end he denied the evidence and claimed that that evidence was faulty. He just couldn’t face the fact that he, a scientist devoted to making the world a better place, could be responsible for doing so much harm. So I can totally endorse the above quote.
… and it looks like I posted this comment to the wrong thread <sigh>. It belongs on the David Brooks thread.
You are far from the first to make that mistake. I seriously doubt you’ll be the last.
Interesting comment, though.
As a con-man and political criminal, Der Trumper has little regard for the rule of law, that’s crystal clear already. The supposed “moderating” influences of Crackpot Cabinet and WH clown-show haven’t had much impact on such things as the Day 1 travel ban, the ongoing ethnic cleansing by the GICEtapo, the intentional destruction of the government’s finances or the radical flushing of administrative regulations left and right. We are engaging in a variety of unauthorized wars to boot. And Jeebus how many more times do we have to hear about Kelly being ushered out before it happens?
As for relying on the federal courts to continue containing Trumper’s “impulses”, the courts are ultimately controlled by the 5 “conservative” activists masquerading as justices, and I don’t know of a ruling Roberts’ Repubs have issued against a Trumper policy to date. Generally speaking, for “conservative” justices, actions taken by Repub prezes are permitted, only Dem prezes are “constrained”—such as Obama’s attempts to have a moratorium on Gulf oil drilling, or ensure access by the poor to health insurance. In the Sandra Day years, there were some rulings against our last lawless Repub prez, Dick Cheney and Bushco, but it’s likely those days are gone with Alito taking her seat and the increasing partisanship of Kennedy.
Vis-a-vis presidential compliance with court orders, we may recall the “impulses” of another populist man-of-the-people prez, Andrew Jackson. When the Great Chief Justice ruled in favor of the Cherokees and against Georgia in 1832, Jackson reputedly remarked, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” I believe the turd Bannon hung Jackson’s portrait in the oval office as symbolic of the themes Der Trumper hoped to re-enact for the delectation of our incompetent white electorate, and surely Jackson’s view of executive “deference” to court rulings mirrors the attitude of our Conman-in-Chief.
Ultimately, the courts are the weakest branch and without a law-abiding Congress riding herd on the executive, the rule of law cannot exist. I have prophesied that Trumper will be the greatest law-breaking prez in history and this theory that Trumper is now throwing off the shackles of “moderation” doesn’t undermine that prediction in the least, haha.
Ultimately The 46% presumably want “Trumper to be Trumper!”, so if this journalist is correct, they will be getting what they want and deserve. Under the theory that citizens reduced to braindead status need a Gotterdammerung moment to teach them the lessons of reality, then letting Trumper be Trumper is a move along this path. It will all be up to Mad Dog Mattis electing not to comply with an illegal order to unleash a massive (undeclared) war. Thanks to the abdication of duties by our corrupt and complicit Congress, we have set up the entire federal government to ensure that the orders of our imperial Commanderer-in-Chief are carried out immediately. With the failure of the citizenry and our constitution, it looks very likely that this will be our undoing.
Not mentioned in any of the above is that Trump ruling by fiat and with open contempt for all the “experts” is EXACTLY what his supporters were voting for.People in this country who yearn for a dictator to tell everyone what to do – especially if it makes liberals mad in the process – are not a majority, except maybe in Congress. But it’s a sizable enough group to feed the egos of Trump, and to create a lot of other problems as well.And somewhere in the wings, someone smarter than a Trump but with similar aspirations is paying very close attention.
And this is the part we should be concerned about. By the time Dolt45 is finished, the norms of governing will have been entirely trashed, and the institutions upon which our particular variety of liberal democracy depends will be weakened at least somewhat if not substantially. We may well luck out and have some form of sanity in the White House for a couple terms, and those norms may be re-established, but those norms, having been broken before, will be at best fragile. We may have some effort to restore institutions that have been badly drained of human potential, but that will be at best incomplete by the time the next would-be despot has a chance at getting the keys to the White House. And a chance at victory becomes plausible under the wrong conditions – some significant military humiliation (entirely plausible), an extended economic crisis, or even extended economic stagnation could be enough to ramp up enthusiasm for the same base of voters who went all in for the current tinpot despot. The next decade or two will be particularly perilous ones for those of us who still value liberal democracy.
I think being mired in an un-winnable war in Afghanistan for 17 years is humiliating. I think it was a factor in the last election and we’re still not out of there.