From Josh Hammer, 5-16-17, at the Daily Wire:
As my friend Steve Berman memorably phrased it last December: “I feel like the first responder at a Porta Potty explosion. I don’t even know where to begin, but I do know everything is covered in crap.”
Alas, begin somewhere we must.
The ink was barely dry on President Trump’s West Wing offers of employment when rumors had already begun to circulate of top-level staff facing pressure on the hot seat. AOL reported in early February that Trump was already considering replacing White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer a mere few weeks into his nascent presidency, and U.S. News noted in early April that Trump was considering at that time firing both White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Over this past weekend, fresh on the heels of the controversial dismissal last week of FBI Director James Comey, all the old rumors came back again.
My unsolicited advice for the man who made tens of millions of dollars off of saying “You’re Fired!” on national television is relatively straightforward: Fire (basically) everyone. Clean house. And do not waste another minute.
To call the current state of this White House a dumpster fire would be far too kind to dumpster fires, which, after all, still burn unwanted refuse. To call the current state of this White House a mere run-of-the-mill poop show would be to overstate the devastation wrought by your median Porta Potty explosion.
When Spicer isn’t saying asinine things about the Holocaust, Bannon is calling Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner a “cuck” (which, if you recall, is a horrific slur in Bannon’s erstwhile Breitbart pastures) behind the latter’s back. When Priebus isn’t shilling for milquetoast establishmentarianism on the Sunday talk show circuit or providing cover for his long-time friend House Speaker Paul Ryan to both lie about Obamacare repeal and throw the free market under the bus on Obamacare repeal, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is demonstrating Sofia-Coppola-in-The-Godfather-Part-III-levels of gross incompetence with her messaging on Russia.
Each and every one of these people ought to go. And ideally, so should Jared and Ivanka.
Coming so soon after Comey’s inglorious dismissal, the usual suspects amongst the media and Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) will howl about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and consolidation of power. Let them do so. I too feared that this president might well harbor pseudo-strongman tendencies, but I think we can all soberly now concede that such fears were either over-amplified or misplaced. Would-be despots, in our constitutional scheme, do not nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court pro-separation of powers, anti-administrative state jurists such as Neil Gorsuch. Would-be “conservative” totalitarians, in our constitutional scheme, do not have a first 100 days of office wherein they get their already-twice-watered-down immigration executive orders struck down by judges, fail to get their staggeringly weak Obamacare “replacement” plans past more one than one measly house of Congress, or get absolutely steamrolled by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on their first major budget battles.
Trump is not an authoritarian figure. Instead, as a brand-new hullabaloo seems to remind us each and every day, the reality is deceptively much simpler: Trump just has no idea what he is doing. There is no plan, and there is—no matter what Bill Mitchell says—no four five six-dimension chess being played. There is only sheer incompetence and a general cluelessness about the solemnity of the office to which Trump has been elected. Rodney Dangerfield fit in better as a frontman at stodgy Bushwood Country Club than Trump fits in leading the free world out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The current course upon which this White House is set is utterly unsustainable. There are brutally warring rival factions, uncontrollable leaks galore, a deeply distrustful intelligence community, a complete lack of communication among the president and many of his top aides, and an impetuous amateur with all-too-trigger-happy tweeting fingers at the top who cares about nothing more than his own approval ratings.
It cannot possibly get much worse than this current dysfunction. So clean house now. Trump should ditch the hapless Spicer and Huckabee Sanders quicker than Spicer can say, “Holocaust centers.” Trump should ditch the irksome Bannon—who never should have been within a fifty-mile radius of this kind of power, to begin with—quicker than Bannon can say, “nationalist populism.” And Trump should replace Priebus, a lifelong GOP party man and paragon of Chamber of Commerce-esque establishmentarianism, with a genuine conservative in order to both appease the party’s downtrodden conservative faction and to increase the odds of perhaps haphazardly stumbling upon a chief of staff who might summon the testicular fortitude to cajole Trump into deleting Twitter from his phone. And if Trump wants to make things a bit more interesting at the dinner table, then he really ought to also consider removing lifelong Leftists Jared and Ivanka from the corridors of power.
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Maybe it’s just me, but Trump should have left the family members out from the onset – running a family business is one thing, but running the country is a whole new ballgame. I never would have hired Priebus either – he reminds me too much of Paul Ryan. If I were in charge, I’d start there and simply replace them with already existing staff – it’s already too crowded to bring in new faces.
Trump’s put himself in a position where he’s getting conflicting information because he hired entirely too many advisers. If he wants to drain the swamp, he could start in the Oval Office.
~Kathy
Categories: Political
Pesky Truth 
“… an impetuous amateur with all-too-trigger-happy tweeting fingers at the top who cares about nothing more than his own approval ratings.”
Yep. Trump is the REAL problem, and replacing everyone else isn’t going to fix it.
Why did the “anti-establishment” candidate choose establishment Republican Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff? Why subject the administration to the criticism that comes with Steve Bannon? How did the daughter of Mike Huckabee find her way into a high profile WH job? Because Trump’s first priority is to reward those who helped him get where he is.
Ivanka and Jared? There just aren’t enough words to express my disgust with Trump for turning the presidency into a family business/temporary monarchy (and if Trump isn’t careful it may be a lot more temporary than he expected). If Hillary won and put Chelsea in an office in the WH and made her a central part of the advisor team, “conservatives” like Sean Hannity (cough, cough) would be rightly apoplectic, but I haven’t heard many complaints about the whole Ivanka/Jared nepotism thing from him or other Trump cheerleaders.
It would be nice to think a sweeping change in staff would cure what ails this administration but I just don’t think it will.
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You’re right, CW – Trump owed all those people that got him there, and hiring them would have been a good thing if they were working for the country instead of themselves.
In addition to having too many advisors, there’s also about 60 of O’s people who are still in key places that need replacing. The problem is there’s been no time to focus on that, because they’re too obsessed with the whole Russian collusion ordeal. If the Dems would dial it back for a little while, we might see some effective changes, but that’s not likely to happen any time soon. It would also help a great deal if Mr. Twitter Fingers could ignore the side show and concentrate on his goals.
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