Before I get to the main point of today’s “little ditty about Jack and Diane”, I just wanted to share something that tickled me pink over the weekend. After the collapse of the light repeal and replace on Thursday night, one of the political writers commented late Friday that Trump was upset with his Attorney General for not being able to push the healthcare law over the finish line. I dunno why, but it just seems so Trumpian somehow.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming, Everyone please rise, bow your heads, and observe a moment of silence for the tragic political passing of Anthony Scaramucci, a foul mouthed, trash talking little ass kissing toady true American patriot who fell courageously on the West Wing battlefield. He will be missed. *snicker*
Seriously, Trump has once again managed to step on his schlong in spectacular fashion while trying to accomplish something completely different. fortunately, this approach is becoming almost mechanically predictable. It has also become terribly boring for those of us who like to make fun of everything Trump does. The White House press office release on Scaramucci’s departure stated that he “wanted to give General Kelly a clean slate to start with”. Sean Spicer use the “clean slate” phrase in his resignation notice, as did Reince Priebus. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, if that slate gets any cleaner, it’ll be as spotless as Trump’s pristine brain.
But there really is a problem in this, which is going to hamstring The Tiny Thumbs Diktator well down the road, which should be fine with us. No matter what the original motivation for bringing The Mooch in was, the way it went down, and the way it looks now and will always look, The Mooch was an out of town hitter, brought in for one reason and one reason only. To drop the hammer on Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. To purposely misstate the Meat Loaf lyrics, “One outta two ain’t bad”.
But here’s the problem. The Trump administration now has more openings than a honeycomb. Some of those spots are still open because Bannon wants to deconstruct the federal government, and what better way to do that than to starve it from within. But some of these spots, like the now vacant DHS cabinet seat are kind of important to how we run as a country. Trump already had trouble trying to get qualified help to join his administration, all the way to the point that McConnell is now having trouble getting top shelf candidates to run in what should be competitive Senate seat races next year.
How does Trump get anybody to even interview for these positions, especially the now gaping Communications Director? Anybody even thinking about it will automatically wonder to themselves which scalp they’re going to have to give to Trump to make their bones, and what happens to them once they do. And just as importantly, when and if there is a replacement, what does everybody in the west wing automatically think. Do they look at that person and wonder if they have a target on their own back? was this guy brought in to do a Howard Stern riff on them in the media?
Everybody has already learned that Donald Trump loves to sow tension, dissent and conflict in his underlings. As far as I’m concerned, we are now on the official resignation watch for retired General John Kelly. You can’t bring normalcy to a White House when the President wants to rule over an asylum, any more than you can take the glass out of a drunks hand it he doesn’t really want to quit drinking. Alas poor Kelly, we knew you well, but you didn’t know enough.