The 'President' is a Pyromaniac : The Week Trump Set Fire to The White House
What Went Wrong? Take Your Pick: Healthcare, Transgender Troops, The Fallout From His Savaging of Jeff Sessions, The Boy Scouts Speech – It Was the Worst Week in Trump’s Short Presidency
The Guardian UK, 30 July 2017
‘Everything that has happened has been self-inflicted’: can Trump ever get out of his own way?...
Donald Trump began the week by turning a national scout jamboree into something resembling a youth rally. He ended it in front of more massed ranks in uniform, telling police officers “please don’t be too nice” to suspects they arrest in what sounded to many like an endorsement of police brutality.
And then, amid a blizzard of stories about White House infighting, chief of staff Reince Priebus resigned, becoming the shortest-serving occupant of the post in history. Though he seemed blithely unaware of it, it was a fitting finale to the worst week of Trump’s short political career.
In five torrid days, the US president alienated conservatives by savaging his own attorney general; earned a rebuke from the Pentagon over a rushed ban on transgender troops; watched impotently as the Senate dealt a crushing blow to his legislative agenda with the fall of healthcare reform; ousted Priebus; and threw a human grenade – the new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci – into his already dysfunctional White House.
“This is certainly the week in which the Trump administration went off the rails,” said Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton.
“And it’s going to require some heavy lifting equipment to get it back on the rails and off down the track.”
Where to start? The most tangible defeat was over healthcare. Trump had repeatedly promised during his campaign to repeal and replace Barack Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But when it came to the tough part, arm-twisting members of Congress or making landmark speeches, the self-proclaimed deal-maker was notably absent.
In the early hours of Friday, after months of wrangling, senators voted on a bill to undo major parts of the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare. In a moment of reality TV suspense that Trump might otherwise have appreciated, John McCain of Arizona, who had returned to the floor after brain surgery, was decisive in sinking the bill.
McCain is an old adversary. The 80-year-old is a decorated navy veteran who was tortured during more than five years of captivity in the Vietnam war. Just over two years ago, Trump, who received five draft deferments, mocked him as “not a war hero”. McCain has become something of a conscience for his party, and nation, as Trump tramples and trashes every norm.
His vote – along with those of Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – left a seven-year Republican promise in ruins and Trump with zero legislative achievements after more than six months in office. The president had tried to intensify the pressure on Murkowski during the week, tweeting that she “really let the Republicans, and our country, down”.
His interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, phoned Murkowski and her fellow Alaska senator, Dan Sullivan, with a threat to withhold federal support for major economic development projects in the state. The dirty trick failed and Zinke may have cause to regret his actions: Murkowski is chair of the Senate energy and natural resources committee, with power over the interior department’s budget.
Meanwhile, poison was seeping in at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Scaramucci, a mouthy Wall Street financier, publicly declared war on Priebus and Trump adviser Steve Bannon in an expletive-laden interview with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker magazine. He described Priebus as a “****ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac”, and predicted his imminent demise as chief of staff. Yet far from being punished, “the Mooch” was vindicated on Friday when Priebus confirmed his exit.
He will be replaced by Gen John Kelly, who moves over from leading the homeland security department.
The arrival of Scaramucci was, observers said, the moment the White House went full reality TV. Galston said:
“It’s off the charts. Both the president and the communications director have really defiled the temple of our democracy.”
Dangerously for Trump, the critics of Scaramucci’s invective included loyalists such as the former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Fox News and Breitbart, which described the interview as a “rambling rant that was so outrageous and discordant that reporters wondered whether Scaramucci drunk-dialed Lizza, was drunk with power, or, reveal[ed] he was unqualified for his communications director job”.
The Trump base had another reason to be upset. The president spent several days publicly humiliating Sessions, his attorney general, over his decision to recuse himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia during last year’s election. Sessions refused to quit, perhaps consoled by conservative voices of dissent.
Kenneth Starr, a former US solicitor general who served as independent counsel in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations during the Clinton administration, wrote in the Washington Post:
“Mr President, please cut it out. Tweet to your heart’s content, but stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general.
“An honorable man whom I have known since his days as a US attorney in Alabama, Jeff Sessions has recently become your pińata in one of the most outrageous – and profoundly misguided – courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital.”
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, told CNN:
“If Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay.” If Trump tries to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, Graham added, he will be crossing a “red line”. “Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.”
Sessions, a hardliner on criminal justice and immigration, is seen as the most Trumpist member of the administration. Taking on the former Alabama senator could prove a huge political miscalculation.
Galston said: “He has managed to alarm and alienate a substantial element of his conservative base. Sessions is the conservative standard bearer in the administration.”
‘Retired Sergeant Says Transgender Ban Hurtful’
Trump faced blowback on yet another front. On Wednesday morning he tweeted, out of the blue, that he plans to reinstate a ban on transgender people from serving “in any capacity” in the US armed forces. He claimed he had consulted his “generals” but the Pentagon was blindsided and a day later it pushed back, insisting the policy would not be overturned until it received formal direction.
In a sign of how much America has changed, a decision seemingly calculated to rally the base played badly in media outlets in socially conservative states. The TV station WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina, reported: “Lowcountry transgender veteran ‘stunned’ by President Trump’s transgender military ban.” The Rapid City Journal in South Dakota said: “Retired Ellsworth sergeant says transgender ban hurtful.”
There was also rare defiance from Republicans in Congress. Senator Orrin Hatch, up for re-election soon in Utah, hardly a liberal bastion, said: “I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone. Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.”
Trump faced blowback on yet another front. On Wednesday morning he tweeted, out of the blue, that he plans to reinstate a ban on transgender people from serving “in any capacity” in the US armed forces. He claimed he had consulted his “generals” but the Pentagon was blindsided and a day later it pushed back, insisting the policy would not be overturned until it received formal direction.
In a sign of how much America has changed, a decision seemingly calculated to rally the base played badly in media outlets in socially conservative states. The TV station WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina, reported: “Lowcountry transgender veteran ‘stunned’ by President Trump’s transgender military ban.” The Rapid City Journal in South Dakota said: “Retired Ellsworth sergeant says transgender ban hurtful.”
There was also rare defiance from Republicans in Congress. Senator Orrin Hatch, up for re-election soon in Utah, hardly a liberal bastion, said:
“I don’t think we should be discriminating against anyone. Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.”
After months of bending over backward to accommodate Trump, Republicans gave other indications that they had run out of loyalty or fear. The Senate voted 98-2 to pass a bill increasing sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, blocking Trump’s ability to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin. The White House bowed to political reality and announced that Trump intended to sign the bill.
Ever more isolated, with even Republicans turning against him, Trump went to feed off the dark energy of crowds. But his rambling speech at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia was widely condemned as inappropriate for its overt political content (along with a reference to a party with “the hottest people in New York”), prompting an apology from the head of the Boy Scouts of America.
And as all these dramas unfolded simultaneously, handing Trump a week of unmitigated disaster, North Korea conducted a new intercontinental ballistic missile test that landed in the sea off Japan. Experts have warned that North Korea will have the ability to strike the US mainland with a nuclear weapon as soon as next year. It was a sobering reminder of the high stakes facing a White House in disarray.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist, said:
“It’s fair to say Trump has lost control of the narrative. What I don’t know is how and when he can regain it.”
It might have been so different. Figures showed that US economic growth rebounded to 2.6% annual rate in the second quarter. Foxconn, an electronics manufacturer, announced plans to invest at least $7bn in the US and create between 30,000 and 50,000 jobs with a massive factory in Wisconsin. Trump buried his own good news.
Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said:
“It could have been one of his best weeks with the Foxconn announcement. But this has been his worst week ever and everything that has happened has been self-inflicted.
“You have a White House in meltdown because the president is a pyromaniac. The thing that’s got to rattle Republicans is the damage he’s doing to the administration, to the party and to the country.”
Scaramucci is “Trump’s id”, Sykes said.
“A friend said to me today, in a rational world, Scaramucci would have been fired for that interview. But in a rational world, Scaramucci would never have been hired. And in a rational world, Donald Trump would not be the president of the United States. We’re well past the rational world.”
It is far from certain whether Trump has actually hit rock-bottom. With Priebus’s departure, he appears to be severing his links to the Republican establishment, even though he will have to work with Congress on tax reform in the hope of a better result than was achieved on healthcare. The potential for conflict between Kelly, a career marine, and Scaramucci seems high.
And Trump has not yet been tested by a major international crisis.
'There has been an explosion of crazy, spread over the past seven days'
Quote:
Rick Tyler, a political analyst, warned:
“It could get a lot worse. North Korea just fired off a ballistic missile today that landed 230 miles from Japan.
“There could be a lot of worse things to come from Trump and we’ll be lucky if we survive them.”
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Is the American Republic Built to Withstand a Malevolent President?
The principle of common good underpins the constitution. Donald Trump is gleefully shredding that ideal.
Michael Goldfarb
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MORE;
Scaramucci, One Week In: Civil War in The White House and an Even Wilder Trump
It’s been one helluva week in the White House, and, like a shot of adrenaline, the president has found the arrival of his Mini-Me invigorating.
Now Scaramucci's wife is to divorce him after only 3 yrs of marriage.
Reince Priebus and Anthony Scaramucci in the Oval Office.
If looks could kill. There is Anthony Scaramucci going full alpha male: chest out, shoulders back, thumbs on belt, feet planted solidly apart, eyes fixed in a deadly stare. There is Reince Priebus, less obviously macho but with a face like thunder as he glares back, a yawning chasm between them. Many historic photographs have been taken in the Oval Office, but few have captured mutual loathing so indelibly.
Scaramucci’s first week at the White House was one for the ages. The new communications director declared war on Priebus, branding him “a ****ing paranoid schizophrenic” in what appeared to be a brazen play for his job as chief of staff – which, late on Friday, went instead to Gen John Kelly, the homeland security secretary. He roared from TV studio to TV studio, offering his street fighter’s defence of Donald Trump and vowing to take out leakers. And not least importantly, he seemingly jolted the president back into his most unfettered, unscripted, offensive and authentically Trump-like self.
Indeed, just as Trump was an agent of disruption in the Republican party, so Scaramucci has run riot in the White House. “He’s in a supernova phase at the moment,” said William Cohan, an author who has known Scaramucci personally for seven years. “He’s burning so bright and hot in the feeling that waiting out his foes has paid off.”
Six months into the Trump administration, Scaramucci exploded like a new character in the second series of a TV drama designed to unsettle the cast and spice up storylines. The slick-haired wolf of Wall Street has been unleashed in Washington, a comparatively sedate government town, to bring his shtick to the political class. “The Mooch” is, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, “a self-promoter extraordinaire and master salesman who doesn’t mind pushing a bad product – and probably sees it as more fun”.
In his first encounter with the press on 21 July, Scaramucci was smooth and self-assured, blowing a kiss and claiming that he and Priebus were like brothers who roughed each other up once in a while. The former hedge fund manager said his start date would be in a couple of weeks so he could be “100% totally cleansed and clean” of business conflicts, but it was soon clear that he was working at full throttle.
Scaramucci deleted past tweets that showed him expressing admiration for Hillary Clinton and contradicting Trump on everything from climate change to gun control. He was all over the Sunday political TV shows with typical brio aimed at one viewer: his boss. On CBS’s Face the Nation, for example, he said of Trump’s hopes for healthcare legislation: “I don’t know if he’s going to get what he wants next week. But he’s going to get what he wants eventually. Because this guy always gets what he wants. OK? What I know about President Trump is that ... he’s got very, very good karma.”
Scaramucci rapidly began a crusade to purge the White House of staff who have been leaking like a sieve since Trump became president. “I’m going to fire everybody!” he warned. But the first leaker turned out to be the Mooch himself.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that assistant press secretary Michael Short had been sacked, as confirmed by Scaramucci. Short then came forward to say no one had told him. Almost an hour later, Scaramucci, sporting blue-tinted aviator sunglasses, told reporters that the “leak” about Short’s dismissal “really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic”, conveniently forgetting that he was the source. That afternoon, Short announced his resignation.
Wednesday began with more TV interviews including Trump’s favourite show, Fox and Friends. “What I don’t like about Washington is that people don’t let you know how they feel,” Scaramucci said. “They’re very nice to your face and then they take a shiv or a machete and stab you in the back. I’m a Wall Street guy, I’m more of a front-stabbing person.”
That night, he went to a dinner with guests from central casting of liberal nightmares: Trump and his, first lady Melania Trump; Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Fox News executive Bill Shine. The gathering had not been listed on the official White House schedule. When word of it broke via the New Yorker magazine’s Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci called him to demand who had leaked it, then became convinced that it must be Priebus. According to Lizza’s jaw-dropping account, Scaramucci predicted that the chief of staff would be asked to resign “very shortly” and said: “Reince is a ****ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
Scaramucci was also incensed that his financial disclosure form had been made public and again appeared to blame Priebus. But it was not a leak: it was released after a public records request by Politico. On Thursday morning, Scaramucci denied that he was blaming Priebus. He told CNN: “Some brothers are like Cain and Abel. Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don’t know if this is reparable or not, that will be up to the president.”
Scaramucci is said to bear a grudge towards Priebus for freezing him out of the administration when Trump became president in January and continuing to resist his appointment as director of communications last week. In his interview with Lizza, Scaramucci also used expletives to describe Steve Bannon, the chief strategist, who had also sought to block him. Scaramucci said he was not like Bannon because “I’m not trying to suck my own ****”.
As Washington reeled from the vulgar outburst and digested his torrid first week, it seemed that the Mooch – whose backers include Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner – was loving every moment. Speaking from New York, Cohan, 57, said: “He’s like Trump himself. I don’t think Trump ever expected to win. I don’t think Anthony ever expected to be at the centre of the White House.
“He must be feeling like a pig in ****. ‘OK, I showed my loyalty in spades, I worshipped at the feet of Jivanka and it paid off. Now I’m going to show my uber loyalty to the president.’ But he’s had a rough start. He’s got to curb his enthusiasm, otherwise Trump is going to chew him up and spit him out.”
There is little sign of the enthusiasm being curbed so far. Scaramucci, 53, a construction worker’s son and Harvard Law School graduate, tweeted pictures of himself with Trump on Air Force One, beaming like a giddy tourist. He retweeted a video from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show that demonstrated in split screen the close match between Trump and Scaramucci’s hand gestures.
And the past week has demonstrated that the wealthy New Yorkers have much in common. Both speak and tweet what’s on their mind without any of the usual social safety filters. Both like to publicly shame their colleagues: Trump has been tormenting Attorney General Jeff Sessions in parallel with Scaramucci’s trashing of Priebus.
Scaramucci said on 21 July he had just been in the Oval Office with Trump “and we were talking about letting him be himself, letting him express his full identity”. It seems to have worked. The president has found the arrival of this Mini-Me invigorating, like a shot of adrenaline. Even by his own taboo-busting standards, it has been a wild week.
Speaking to the National Scout Jamboree in Glen Jean, West Virginia, Trump joked about firing his health secretary, Tom Price, who was standing nearby, branded Washington a “cesspool” and “sewer”, condemned “fake media”, gloated about his electoral college victory, promised the scouts they’ll be saying “Merry Christmas” again under his administration and told a rambling anecdote that included a party with “the hottest people in New York”. The head of the Boy Scouts of America subsequently apologised for the “political rhetoric” inserted into what is traditionally a non-partisan event.
Then came a speech that was back to the “American carnage” and braggadocio of Trump’s inaugural address, throwing red meat to his supporters. In Youngstown, Ohio, he painted a lurid picture of “predators and criminal aliens” who “take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long.” He promised a tough law-and-order response: “We are liberating our towns and we are liberating our cities.”
Scaramucci was thought to be going after Priebus with the president’s blessing; the White House was appreciably reticent about defending its chief of staff. The relationship between Trump and Scaramucci, by contrast, was said to be “symbiotic”, according to Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“The president probably feels the best he’s ever felt in the job of president with Scaramucci there,” he said. “For the president it’s not about the substance of policy. It’s about the manic of media, creating a message, building a brand and establishing the reality TV-ness of a presidency.”
Just before 5pm on Friday, the axe fell. Trump said it in a series of tweets: Priebus was out, replaced by homeland security secretary John Kelly. In a first week full of fights, Scaramucci had won his first key battle.
Another scrap of news followed:
Scaramucci’s Wife, Deirdre Ball, Has Filed for Divorce.
Anthony Scaramucci and his wife are reportedly calling it quits. The White House communication director’s wife has filed for divorce just days after Scaramucci took on his new role in President Trump's administration, according to the New York Post.
Deidre Ball was tired of Scaramucci’s “naked ambition, which is so enormous that it left her at her wits’ end,” a source told the Post in a Friday story.
Scaramucci and Ball, who once worked as vice president in investor relations at her husband’s former hedge fund, have reportedly been married for three years and have two children.
A spokesman for Scaramucci declined to comment on Saturday.
“Deidre is not a fan of Trump, she hates him,” a source told the paper, “and she hasn’t exactly been on board and supportive of Anthony and his push to get back into the White House.”
The soap opera was in full swing.
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