As has been the case in almost every day of the Trump administration, we’ve had almost a month’s worth of news already this week — from the firing of the Mooch to the reporting that Donald Trump wrote Don Jr’s false statement about his meeting with Russians. We begin today's roundup with Dana Milbank on the firing of the White House Communications Director:
“I said we were brothers,” Scaramucci, the newly named White House communications director, said last week of his rivalry with Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff. “That’s because we’re rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel.”
Scaramucci’s retelling of Genesis had a twist: It was a murder-suicide. Priebus’s Abel was indeed slain by Scaramucci’s Cain; the chief was ousted Friday. But Cain met the same fate Monday afternoon; his buffoonery, self-aggrandizement and foul mouth caused him to be sacked after just 10 days on the job. He wasn’t officially supposed to start until Aug. 15, so his tenure, technically, was minus 16 days.
Much too soon, The Mooch is gone. As the Good Book says: What the &@%$#? Those &@%$# can go &@%$# themselves with a &@%$#.
The Washington Post reports on Trump’s latest lie:
Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”
Olivia Nuzzi:
A well-groomed and carefully dressed hedge-fund type who had wanted to be an actor and who, upon meeting almost anyone, would tell them what movie star they resembled, Scaramucci lacked traditional political or even PR experience. He talked casually and — as the world now knows — “colorfully.” He didn’t quite grasp the meaning of rudimentary journalistic terms that could protect a person dealing with the press in any circumstance, like off the record and background, often confusing the two. Steve Bannon — the president’s chief strategist, who is defined in many ways by his dislike and distrust of the Establishment — had cautioned against Scaramucci’s hiring. What he suggested instead was that they find a professional, someone who had displayed an ability to do the job in a competent but unremarkable way.
But the counterargument was compelling: How much worse could things get?
Molly Ball at The Atlantic takes an in-depth look at “the final humiliation of Reince Priebus”:
Ironically, Priebus’s own career in national politics began with an act of disloyalty. In 2011, he won the RNC chair by running against his own boss, then-chairman Michael Steele. Despite big wins in the 2010 midterm elections, party activists had become dissatisfied with what they viewed as Steele’s mismanagement and penchant for gaffes. Steele knew he would have challengers when he sought another term as chairman—but he didn’t expect a challenge from Priebus, his general counsel, whom he considered a teammate.
“This is the bed Reince has been making for himself since he was my general counsel,” Steele told me. “He’s a guy who’s always positioning himself for the next thing. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
John Podesta says he would have advised Trump’s newest chief of staff not to take the gig:
As a former White House chief of staff, the best advice I could have given Gen. John F. Kelly has been overtaken by events: Don’t take the job.
Kelly, who has rendered extraordinary service and sacrifice to the nation, just signed up for what may truly be an impossible mission: bringing discipline, order and strategic focus to the chaos that is the Trump White House.
On Russia, the administration is still stunningly silent on Putin’s explusion of hundreds of American diplomats and staff. Here is The Los Angeles Times on the matter:
In December, when Putin didn’t immediately retaliate for President Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and his closing of two compounds allegedly used for espionage, then-President-elect Trump tweeted: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) — I always knew he was very smart!”
After Trump took office, his administration floated the idea of easing sanctions. Last month, Trump aide Sebastian Gorka said the administration was considering returning the compounds in Long Island, N.Y., and Queen Anne’s County, Md., to Russia because “we want to give collaboration [and] cooperation a chance.”
And even when Putin lost patience and retaliated, it wasn’t because Trump changed his mind about Russian meddling. According to Anthony Scaramucci, the president’s now-fired communications director, Trump recently said, “Maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times calls out the Trump administration on its bluster on North Korea:
Mr. Trump was driven to play the blame game after North Korea on Friday tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that, for the first time, appeared capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. It marked the second ICBM launch in 24 days and the kind of technical achievement that American presidents said the United States could not tolerate. Mr. Trump, in fact, had insisted in early January that such a missile “won’t happen.”
Well, it did happen — twice. And while experts question how soon a reliable nuclear weapon can be fired on a missile, it is wise to assume that North Korea’s program will continue to advance, putting the United States and its allies South Korea and Japan at greater risk, unless a way is found to break the present cycle of threats and testing.
Paul Krugman looks at Republican incompetence and malfeasance:
The problem is that once you accept the principle that it’s O.K. to lie if it helps you win elections, it gets ever harder to limit the extent of the lying — or even to remember what it’s like to seek the truth. […]
Given this history, the Republican health care disaster was entirely predictable. You can’t expect good or even coherent policy proposals from a party that has spent decades embracing politically useful lies and denigrating expertise.
And let’s be clear: we’re talking about Republicans here, not the “political system.”
And on a final note, Eugene Robinson explains why Ivanka Trump is part of the problem in Trump’s chaotic administration:
Foolish optimists expected Ivanka Trump to be a moderating force in the White House. But by now it should be clear that she’s not part of any solution, which by definition means she’s part of the problem.
Can anyone tell me why, other than nepotism, she has an office in the White House and a back-bench seat at meetings of the Cabinet? Washington is full of people who are smart, successful, well-educated — and actually have experience in developing and implementing government policy, which Ivanka completely lacks.