A brooding and petulant president
Trump’s trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I was a disaster, marked by a brooding and petulant president mocked and condemned wherever he went…
After deciding not to attend a ceremony honoring those killed in the war because rain apparently made it inconvenient to get there, Trump grew enraged at his staff “for not counseling him that skipping the cemetery visit would be a public-relations nightmare.” Somehow he was not able to figure out for himself that doing so might not go over well.
I wondered about that at the time. Really, Trump-people? You thought it would be a good look for Trump to squat inside all day doing nothing instead of going to the cemetery, when observing the centenary of the end of World War One is what he was there for? It didn’t occur to you that that would be insulting to pretty much everyone there and a lot of people not there? Is he drugging you?
Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, a move meant to protect him from the Mueller investigation, is turning out to be a mini-scandal in its own right, to the point where the president vacillates between singing Whitaker’s praises and claiming he doesn’t know him.
Again – what did they think would happen?
Anyway. At least he’s miserable. That’s our only consolation these days.
Hopefully the House only endeavors to make him more miserable…
More embarassing leaks. The circle of people privy to these moods and outbursts cannot be very large, and many/most must be people Trump himself hired or appointed. Sounds like someday there’s gonna be a metric fuckton of tell-all books from White House insiders, Trumpian NDAs notwithstanding. Trump is constitutionally incapable of inspiring any sort of loyalty or trust in his staff/underlings/minions and the toadies surrounding Trump (at least those who aren’t family members) are the sorts who will want to make a buck off their “insider” status. The more lurid the tales in the offing, the higher the advance is likely to be. Trump certainly can’t count on the good will and discretion of those people actually willing to work for him.
The President’s clothes are just fabulous, the best garments imaginable, each thread a masterwork.
I imagine that plenty of people did realise that Trump not attending the ceremonies would be bad; it’s just that no-one wanted to actually tell him. That’s the problem when you surround yourself with yes-people who are generally the types not to stand up to you, and when you’ve spent years building a reputation for firing people who do.
I can imagine all his staffers imagining how that conversation will go:
“I’m not going to attend the ceremony”
“Mr. President, I don’t think that’s a great idea”
“What are you talking about, I have the best ideas. You must have a low IQ. You’re fired”
Yup, better to just not mention it, and hope someone else does instead. Maybe the fallout won’t be that bad, and if it is maybe it’ll be someone else who Trump blames for it.
The White House kitchen should tell him they’re out of ice cream. That should finish him off.
Karellen: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, there, with an additional factor folded in–Trump surrounds himself with horrible people, because horrible people are the only ones who will abide working for him. This turns his staff into a viper’s nest. They aren’t just hoping he’ll pass them over on his next tirade–they’re also actively trying to throw one another under the bus. I can guarantee that there’s more alliance-forming and backstabbing in a given week among his staffers than on an entire season of Survivor. So they are quite likely all perfectly willing to let Trump make an ass of himself if they think it will undermine some other advisor (especially one who currently has more favor). There’s most likely an ongoing calculus, here–you want to be close enough to the man that you aren’t easily pushed aside by other courtiers, but you don’t want to be ‘most favored’ because that’s the slot that often gets the chopping block (outside of family, of course).