Attentive to his lapses and repetitions
Michael Wolff has a summary of his Trump book at the Hollywood Reporter (a fitting place for it).
Most of it is what we’ve already seen via the news: shock-horror, chaos, incompetence, mass departures, how did we get here, what does this even. But toward the end there are some…let’s say noteworthy details.
There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.
Most succinctly, no one expected him to survive Mueller. Whatever the substance of the Russia “collusion,” Trump, in the estimation of his senior staff, did not have the discipline to navigate a tough investigation, nor the credibility to attract the caliber of lawyers he would need to help him. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.)
There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.
That. That’s very Alzheimersy, very dementia-indicative.
Hope Hicks, Trump’s 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the “real wife” and Hicks as the “real daughter.”) Hicks’ primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him. It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season.
Ah. In other words she realized that an interview would expose how far gone in dementia he is.
That, by the way, is a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment, not to protect him.
Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country’s future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.
At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.
Oh.
Frankly, it worries me that this might in the end come down to dementia, and we will fail to recognize a very important lesson from the Trump presidency in general: we need trained, experienced people running the country at all levels.
I find this dementia situation doubly bad, because not only are we at the mercy of a nasty, money-grubbing, pussy-grabbing, hateful old man with his mind slipping away, we are at risk of attributing the failure of this administration solely to dementia, and ignoring the level of incompetence that goes all the way down (including to many of the members of Congress, who have no real knowledge other than how to schmooze voters).
Which means it could happen again….and again….and again….and again. Even if we manage to get rid of him, we may still find ourselves stuck with an Oprah (who has kidded about running) or an Emeril, or a Phil Robertson sort of presidency. Celebrity instead of competence.
We’re screwed, aren’t we?
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” Sure looks like it. And people will grab the dementia explanation. “It’s not us voters who were sexist idiots for giving this man the ticket. It’s his fault for not telling us!”
Re this: “At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.”
??? Which New Year? The one a few days ago, or the one a year ago?
The one a few days ago.
My one misgiving about this book is that I don’t trust Bannon, who I’m sure is in it for money and notoriety, not for the sake of setting straight the public record. It’s all consistent with stuff we’ve heard before, but I’m a bit reluctant to grant high credibility to reports that match my prejudices, just on principle.
My misgiving is that it reads so much like an airport novel.
“John Kennedy flicked his chestnut hair, and forgetting about the blonde, turned his attention to his brother. ‘We’ll take Castro by the beard and balls, Bobby,” he said.
It is so lurid, the characterisation so crude, the incompetence so farcical, that it’s hard to believe.
You’ve got this theory, and it’s one that gives cause for hope because, if true, is a reason to get rid of him that Republicans would find it hard to argue with. It is, in many ways, a comforting theory that plenty of people would very much like, even desperately like, to be true.
I worry that you’re looking for facts to support your theory. That’s… not a reliable way to figure out what’s true. It wasn’t reliable when right-wingers thought Clinton had a weak heart, or seizures, or whatever else they desperately wanted to believe during the election campaign, and focussed any evidence they could find to “prove” it. And as Feynman reminds us “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Please, think twice about believing things that you really really want to be true.
(Also, I know there’s a great deal of caution around lay diagnoses of mental health issues in these parts. Shouldn’t there be a similar level of caution around diagnoses of physical health issues?)
No, I don’t have a theory. A lot of people think, and say in public that they think, that he’s in cognitive decline. I don’t have any particular idiosyncratic theory about it, and here I’m just reporting what other people are saying.
I don’t find it comforting. It’s true that IF Republicans had any scruples it would be a reason to remove him from office, but 1. they don’t and 2. he can continue doing horrible damage up to and including nuclear war even IF someone eventually manages to remove him.
Reagan had dementia and nobody thought it a reason to remove him from office.
As long as they think they can control him just enough to get what they want out of his presidency, they’ll put up with him, whatever the reason for his demented behavior.
And one of the most corrupt administrations, surrounded by people who broke laws with impunity, though a great many did end up being convicted of wrongdoing.
And things have just gone downhill with Republican administrations since. Nixon set the bar on corruption pretty high, and they’ve been managing to clear it (except maybe Bush 41; his administration was so bland, I don’t remember if there was much corruption or not).