Backstage
I’m still in a rage about the gag orders, but there are still other matters to follow. There’s Eric Levitz on Trump staffers’ eagerness to report what a car crash their boss is.
The president is a 70-year-old child whose TV time must be closely monitored — because any news story that upsets his ego will trigger a temper tantrum followed by irrational demands that his indulgent, overwhelmed guardians will be helpless to refuse.
Or so Donald Trump’s aides keep confiding to the nearest available reporter.
On Sunday, one of the president’s confidantes told Politico that his staffers have to “control information that may infuriate him,” a task made difficult by the fact that the leader of the free world “gets bored and likes to watch TV.”
Couldn’t they get him to watch one of those Kardashian shows, or one of those “Real Housewives” shows, or wrestling, or something about tiny houses?
That same day, some Trump aides provided the New York Times with a portrait of the president as a moody adolescent.
Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation. When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the Executive Mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.
“The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle,” the paper wrote, “some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage.”
Didn’t they know he’s like that? I knew he’s like that just from checking his Twitter every day. That’s what he’s like. He gets in a huge snit if anyone disses him.
Ultimately, though, the most astounding sentence in the Post’s write-up might be the following:
This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments.
Nearly a dozen of Trump’s closest confidantes helped plant an embarrassing news story about how their boss can’t handle embarrassing news stories. Which is to say: A president who prizes loyalty in his subordinates has already been betrayed by a huge swath of his inner circle.
It isn’t hard to understand why Trump’s aides would want to distance themselves from the mogul’s decision to begin his presidency by shouting self-aggrandizing delusions at CIA employees, congressional leaders, and the Fourth Estate. But we aren’t in the late days of a losing campaign, when it’s normal for advisers to start leaking dirt on the boss to save their reputations. We’re less than four full days into the Trump presidency, with (barring death, impeachment, resignation, or coup) at least 1,461 to go.
Yes I was marveling at that this morning when I read the Post story – his gang are ratting him out already.
They may figure that Trump’s presidency cannot possibly go all the way to 2020 – it could end in impeachment, death, being (formally) ousted as unfit, coup d’état, resignation, or a mushroom cloud. In the case of all but the last, there are tell-all book deals to pursue – best to get the early words in!
Alternatively, they may figure that their employment cannot last much longer, and want to defect while the defecting is good. It does assume, rather optimistically, that they will be merely fired and that he won’t or can’t do much worse to them. I can’t say I have a lot of sympathy for people who choose to work for him, but I do hope they can stop doing that while remaining able to speak of the experience.
I’ve spent yesterday and today at an Air Force facility (managed and staffed by independent contractors, no actual AF people here right now), and the TV in the common area is pretty much always on Fox News so I’ve been watching it. It’s kind if like an alternate universe: if you were the type of person who only watched Fox because ‘mainstream media lies’, you’d have the impression that Trump is off to a fantastic start and everything is going swimmingly.
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