An advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing
Rich Lowry at Politico nudges us to look at the implications of Trump’s apparent inability to fire his insubordinate subordinates.
First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration—i.e., Donald J. Trump—must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then, it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.
In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense (although, in Mattis’ defense, he more accurately stated official U.S. policy than the president did). Tillerson, in particular, should have been told before he was off the set of Fox News on Sunday that he was only going to be allowed to return to the seventh floor of the State Department to clean out his desk.
The fact that this hasn’t happened is an advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing, broadcast by officials he himself selected for positions of significant power and prestige.
Well, yes. Mind you it’s also a sign of how awful he is. His own people are disavowing him, because he’s even more awful than they thought.
Trump, of course, largely brought this on himself. He is reaping the rewards of his foolish public spat with Jeff Sessions and of his woeful Charlottesville remarks.
By publicly humiliating his own attorney general, Trump seemed to want to make him quit. When Sessions stayed put, Trump didn’t take the next logical step of firing him because he didn’t want to deal with the fallout. In the implicit showdown, Sessions had won. Not only had Trump shown he was all bark and no bite, he had demonstrated his lack of loyalty to those working for him.
So all his people now know two things: he’ll trash them in public any time he feels like it, and he won’t do anything about it if they trash him back.
Sounds like a fun place to work.
Mattis and Co. obviously consider themselves the president’s minders more than his underlings. But the least they could do is not air this patronizing attitude. They are impressive and accomplished people, but no one elected any of them president of the United States. They don’t do the country any favors by highlighting Trump’s weakness and by making it obvious that the American government doesn’t speak with one voice.
Oh I don’t agree with that at all. They do the country the favor of making Trump’s removal more likely. The less support he has from his own side, the more likely it is that Congress will act.
I agree. The more people who openly speak and act in a way that makes it clear that the US Government, its departments and institutions is more than the hopelessly unqualified, unfit person currently occupying the Oval Office, the better. The time for the de-normalization of Trump’s behaviour, the better.
The problem with this approach is if you get obstructionist elements in future administrations deciding they will defy legitimate policy directives from presidents of whom they disapprove for less than honourable reasons.
We can hope. On the other hand, if they can minimize the damage and help encourage people to think of the U.S. now as (e.g.) a constitutional monarchy with a mere figurehead head of state, who can harmlessly rant, rave, drool, and bite the furniture, while the ministers nominally serving him take the responsibility and do the work… then there’s less impetus to get rid of him, look bad for selecting him, and alienate his supporters.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand the American obsession with titles. “President Trump”. “Mr President”. “Secretary of fucking state whoever it is today” etc.
I live in a monarchy and even here we don’t do that shit. We don’t call May “Prime Minister May”, we just call her “May”. It’s weird. I don’t think you guys know how weird the rest of us find it. We have lords and knights and bullshit like that and I wince every time someone calls someone sir or lady or dame, but even that isn’t quite as bloody ridiculous as calling the president “Mr President” instead of, say, “dickhead”.
Now I’ve written this down, I’m not sure which of us has it more stupid, but the whole “mr president” thing is something we Brits will never understand.
@Latsot #3, Except no-one, but no-one[0], calls Her Majesty The Queen “Elizabeth” or (heaven forbid) “Windsor”.
Also, the ministers do call each other “my right honourable colleague”, even if no-one else does, but that is at least somewhat ridiculous.
[0] OK, except maybe Prince Philip. But no-one else is sure if that’s because he’s allowed to, or because calling people by names he shouldn’t is just habit now.
You’re quite right Karellen but quite a few do call her Brenda.
Probably showing my age there.
latsot – I know; it’s absurd. I always call him Trump, but the newspapers do call him President T on first mention. I’m not sure if that’s deference or just the usual journalistic explicitness, like saying “Houston, Texas” on first mention then just Houston after that.
I call Betty Windsor sometimes Betty sometimes Brenda sometimes just the queen. The heir is Priss Choss.
It’s often been observed that we seem to compensate for the getting rid of monarchy thing by being absurdly deferential and title-conscious. It’s embarrassing.
I think the use of titles here goes back to working out the proper republican ceremonies back in the late 18th century. Then, there, they were aiming at ones that (1) would be taken seriously by the unregenerate monarchies and aristocracies of Europe, but also (2) mark the U.S. as a wholesome republic. By the standards of the late 18th century, “Mr. President” fits those pretty well – if anything, it’s not formal enough.
In the meantime though, the use of titles in the vastly nearly-republicanized denatured formal aristocracy of Great Britain has grown much less formal, while the American ones haven’t changed much since, oh, the late 19th century or so. (I think they’ve been set by the usage of major print newspapers.)
We’re all lagging a bit behind, depending on when social progress shook up the hold on older traditions. The older traditions that have been shaken off in Europe were much, much older ones, so the “springing forward” that we see is much further forward. The newer old traditions in the U.S. haven’t had so much pressure from progress to spring forward, so they’ve lingered through til today better.
(Something like that may account for a lot of American conservatism too – some sense that we progressed far enough forward compared to Europe that living like it’s 1870 is quite all right.) (Yes, that is bat-shit crazy; I’m just saying it’s a possible explanation for bat-shit craziness of our political variety.)
The weird thing to me about American titles for politicians is how they seem to get to keep them for life. Sarah Palin served a half-term as Governor of Alaska a decade ago before quitting, but she’ll forever be “Governor Palin” whenever she’s interviewed or introduced in public.
I think we should continue using President Trump – it serves as a reminder to him that he IS NOT THE KING. Except, of course he isn’t listening, and he doesn’t realize that president isn’t king, anyway.
So let’s just call him Toddler Trump, to differentiate from all the other Trumps that might have reached the stage of bullying teenagers.
Oh jeez, will you get rid of Trump, this farce has gone on for far too long.
@RJW:
Yeah, joke’s over, America, we get it. Time to move on.
I’ve noticed that Kelly’s arrival has triggered much of this shift–several of the more visibly horrible individuals ousted (even though they were adept at planting a wet pucker on the orangutan’s sphincter) and less ‘loyal’ individuals who bucked Trump, but are ~competently~ horrible, being shielded.
I’m genuinely torn about whether it’s better (for decent humans trapped in this society at this time) for Donnie Two-Scoops to have competent advisors who are actually capable of controlling him. It decreases the odds of alienating foreign allies, but it seems to increase the odds of us actually enacting the vicious, cruel and vindictive GOP agenda.
The best way to derail this at this point would probably for everyone to start referring to the boss of the White House by his proper title: “President Kelly”.