Always angling to make others feel smaller
Guess who:
He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in newspaper clips. He seemed confused about the structure and purpose of organizations and became overwhelmed when meetings covered multiple subjects. He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.
No, not him, the other one.
This isn’t how President Trump is depicted in a new book by former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. Instead, it’s McCabe’s account of what it was like to work for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”
Ok who should be more insulted here, Irish people or members of the nose rings and tattoos community? I’m thinking it’s a toss-up.
The description of Sessions is one of the most striking revelations in “The Threat,” a McCabe memoir that adds to a rapidly expanding collection of score-settling insider accounts of Trump-era Washington. McCabe’s is an important voice because of his position at the top of the bureau during a critical series of events, including the firing of FBI chief James Comey, the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller, and the ensuing scorched-earth effort by Trump and his Republican allies to discredit the Russia probe and destroy public confidence in the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
I think “score-settling” is too frivolous, not to say cynical. No doubt Comey and McCabe and others do have grievances, but they don’t need personal grievances to have urgent reasons to make clear how inept and destructive these crooks are. The grievances are supererogatory as reasons for warning us about Trump and Sessions and the rest.
McCabe is a keen observer of detail, particularly when it comes to the president’s pettiness. He describes how Trump arranges Oval Office encounters so that his advisers are forced to sit before him in “little schoolboy chairs” across the Resolute Desk. Prior presidents met with aides on couches in the center of the room, but Trump is always angling to make others feel smaller.
And himself feel enormous.
The irony is that I suspect McCabe would have gone quietly into traditional retirement if he hadn’t been first hounded and then fired, just a day short of receiving his pension. If he does have a grudge I wouldn’t blame him and he certainly needs to make up for the loss of his pension.
Overall, what is described in the Washington Post piece amounts to a constitutional crisis for the US.
Today, a British or Commonwealth prime minister who had the same erratic history as Trump would simply lose office through a parliamentary no-confidence vote, and a new or acting PM immediately appointed.
I think that that provision came out of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which in the main part was Britain’s response to the American Revolution of 1776, which revolution had become a lighthouse to much of the rest of the world. (The English Revolution of the 1640s led by Oliver Cromwell was largely a failure in terms of realising its own objectives.) The American Revolution of 1776 ironically became Britain’s own democratic revolution in its ultimate effects. Once that was in place, British plutocracy was plunged into permanent crisis.
The British have no written constitution, only conventions and traditions. Thus their House of Lords has wisely not exercised its veto power on House of Commons bills since about 1907, lest it suffer complete abolition.
In Australia, the Queen’s power, exercised through he Governor-General, is limited to the power to sack a parliament and immediately call a general election. Her Majesty thus, ironically, becomes a representative and spokesperson for the entire voting population, which is the ulimate authority.
Australia has never had the problem of a hard-to-remove Trump. Nor has Britain or New Zealand.
But bear also in mind that both Iceland and Switzerland have far older democracies and democratic traditions than Britain’s.
Wow, it sounds like Sessions should have recused himself from…everything.
What a great way to inspire loyalty, confidence, and trust in your staff. And then to not read the briefings, and to ignore or disregard the advice and information offered. Why even bother? No wonder the White House leaks like a sieve that’s had a fist punched through it. I wonder if Trump got that seating arrangement idea from watching the scenes in It’s a Wonderful Life between Potter and George Bailey that take place in Potter’s office…
It’s so telling that even being gorram PRESIDENT OF THE UNITES STATES is not enough for Trump to feel secure.
Um…Chaplin and Jack Oakie?
Please. The word is “bigly.”
I wasn’t sure if that idea had originated in It’s a Wonderful Life or not. I’d expected not, but had no other candidates I could recall. It’s been decades since I’ve seen The Great Dictator. Just as Trump is not what I would call “well read”, I’m guessing he’s not that “well viewed” either.I think IAWL is a more likely source for him picking it up.
Waddabout Yuge?