Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

The butcher’s bill keeps growing: Donald Trump abuses his voters and yet they love him – Salon

The butchers bill continues to grow. While he was apresidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to uplift his white working class voters, a group he described as the forgotten Americans. As president, Trump has enacted policies that will hurt them. As I have written beforefor Salon, I have no pity for Donald Trumps voters. They have agency. They are adults. They made the choice to support a neofascist who has quickly made America less great before the eyes of the world.

It will be glorious to see Trumps voters continue on their highway to hell.

The butchers bill now includes Donald Trump and the Republican Partys efforts to end environmental protections for clean water that will disproportionately harm rural red state America, removing mandatory overtime pay for low- and middle-income employees and cutting back and ending programs that provide infrastructure, heating and fuel assistance for the poor. Againthis will disproportionately affect those communities that voted for Trump.The president will also target the Americans he views as useless eaters by taking money away from programs such as Meals on Wheels, which feedpeople who are elderly orhomebound. He will also remove support for programs that help the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

There was a momentary pause in adding another entry to the butchers bill when Donald Trump and the Republican Partys effort to end the Affordable Care Act was derailed. Trump and the Republican Party, however, are continuing their efforts to take away health care from millions of Americans. It is estimated that if the Republican Party and Donald Trump get their way and the Affordable Care Actwere to repealed,at least 43,000 Americans a year woulddie.

The jobs Donald Trump promised his voters continue to leave the country. And Trumps vowto drain the swamp has been replaced with an overflowing cesspool of greed and malfeasance.

With the election of Trump, the American news media has discovered a new subgenre of pseudo-anthropological writing akin to stories from an earlier era about dirty hippies or how hillbillies had descended upon Chicago and Detroit.

The American news media now sends intrepid reporters out into the hinterlands of the Rust Belt and exurb America to speak with the denizens of Trumplandia.

What have these reporters discovered?

Some of Trumps loyalists are dismayed and angry at how their champion has been exposed to be a liar and a fraud. Nevertheless, most of Trumps voters continue to support him. There are few voices of dissent. Even factsshowing that Russia undermined the American election do not diminish their devotion. Trump is a Svengali. His voters remain beguiled by his gaze.

But even by the bizarre norms of Trumplandia, some stories stand out more than others. The New York Times Nicholas Kristof recently journeyed to Tulsa, Oklahoma. There he spoke with Judy Banks. She is a senior citizen who is dependent on the programs that Donald Trump has promised to either eliminate or greatly reduce. Banks also voted for Donald Trump.

The New York Times explained:

Judy Banks, a 70-year-old struggling to get by, said she voted for Trump because he was talking about getting rid of those illegals. But Banks now finds herself shocked that he also has his sights on funds for the Labor Departments Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is her lifeline. It pays senior citizens a minimum wage to hold public service jobs.

This program makes sense, said Banks, who was placed by the program into a job as a receptionist for a senior nutrition program. Banks said she depends on the job to make ends meet, and for an excuse to get out of the house.

If I lose this job, she said, Ill sit home and die.

Yet she said she might still vote for Trump in 2020. And thats a refrain I heard over and over. Some of the loyalty seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots, some from a belief that budgets are complicated, and some from a sense that its too early to abandon their man. They did say that if jobs didnt reappear, they would turn against him.

Donald Trump is quite literally a threat to Judy Banks health, safety, security, well-being and livelihood. Yet, she continues to support him.

It is easy to mock and laugh and enjoy Schadenfreudes warm embrace as Trumps voters are made to suffer at the hand of their chosen leader. But this does not explain Donald Trumps hold over his supporters and why they remain so loyal even while he increases their misery.

His power is drawn from several sources.

Trumps voters have been conditioned and programmed by the right-wing news entertainment complex to believe disinformation and lies. As such, Trump has found a ready public for his fraudulent presidency. This is shown by how only 3 percent of Trumps voters regret supporting him.

Donald Trump leads a cult of personality in a celebrity-obsessed culture. For his voters, Trump is a type of personal avatar. This is demonstrated by how according to a recent poll, Republicans trust Donald Trumps administration more than the mainstream news media to be truthful.

The right-wing media news media has created an alternate reality for its public. As detailed by a recent report inthe Columbia Journalism Review, this alternate reality is remarkable for how it circulates disinformation and talking points to its public (and affects the broader news media and public discourse). Bursting this bubble is verydifficult.

Extreme political polarization and the phenomenon known as information backfire have combined to make Trumps supporters and other Republican voters hostile to empirical reality.

Conservative authoritarians are binary thinkers who view the world in simple terms. They are also highly resistant to change and new experiences. Conservative authoritarians also in-group loyalty and obedience to authority figures. Together, these factors compel them to support Donald Trump.

Christian evangelicalsare some of themost enthusiastic supportersof Donald Trump. Radical religion and radical politics combine to excuse and rationalize hisfailures in office.

The white rural and Rust Belt communities that elected Donald Trump are in disarray: they are suffering from high levels of social disorganization caused by drug addiction, declining life spansand an increase in suicide, a breakdown in family structure and high levels of economic anxiety. Ultimately, many of Trumps white working class voters are facing a crisis of meaning and value in their own lives. He offered them an elixir. It has instead been provedso far to be a poison.

And with almost every area of American political and social life, the color lines influence is great. Donald Trumps ascendance was fueled by white supremacy, nativism, racial authoritarianism and a promise to make America great again by punishing nonwhites and elevating (even more) white America. Trumps voters remain willing to pay the butchers bill because they know and hope that he will hurt those people and take care of people like us. This transactional politics of race and class was explained by W.E.B. Du Bois more than 80 years ago:

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.

Trumps white working class voters in red state America are dead enders. They remain loyal to a man and a cause that has no use for them except as fodder. Trumps voters have not yet accepted this grim truth. When they do, the question will become against who and what groups will Donald Trumps whiteworking class voters direct their rage and anger at having been played as useful idiots.

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The butcher's bill keeps growing: Donald Trump abuses his voters and yet they love him - Salon

Donald Trump’s golf problem – CNN

For the last two presidents, their preferred leisure time has been spent primarily playing golf. Which, again, is totally fine! Being president, in case you might not be able to guess, is a very stressful job. You need ways to blow off steam.

The problem for Trump is -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- the fact that he was very, very outspoken about the number of rounds of golf that President Barack Obama played during his time in the White House.

And then there is the fact that Trump promised on the campaign trail that he wouldn't be golfing if he got elected president because he would be too busy cutting great deals on behalf of the American people. "I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf," Trump said in August 2016 on the campaign.

If he ever did play golf, Trump promised, he wouldn't just play with his buddies like Obama did, but rather use the golf course as a sort of outdoor board room -- playing with foreign leaders, members of Congress and the like to convince them about something or other related to the running of the country.

The point of this all is that Trump has made the bed he is currently lying in. Had he said nothing about his predecessor's leisure habits, there'd be no stories -- or, at least, a whole lot fewer stories -- about his own love of the links. But since Trump attacked Obama relentlessly for his golf outings, it's difficult to turn around and say that it mattered for Obama but not for him. Golf is just golf. But, it's a reminder that Trump doesn't really believe that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. He sees no apparent hypocrisy in railing against Obama's golf-playing while playing even more golf himself.

Welcome to the wonderful world of contradictions that is President Trump.

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Donald Trump's golf problem - CNN

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Appointee To Be Sworn In – Huffington Post

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Reuters) - Neil Gorsuch, U.S. President Donald Trumps Supreme Court appointee, is due to be sworn in on Monday morning with a formal appearance at the White House, marking the biggest triumph so far for the new administration.

The lifetime appointment reinstates the nine-seat courts 5-4 conservative majority, fulfilling an important Trump campaign promise.

He will be a great Justice, Trump said in a Twitter post on Saturday. Very proud of him!

Gorsuch, 49, was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 picked Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades, while Trump could make further appointments to the high court to make it even more solidly conservative because three of the eight justices are 78 or older.

Gorsuch, whom the Senate confirmed on Friday, will take his judicial oath at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) in a Rose Garden ceremony. It will be administered by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch clerked as a young lawyer.

Gorsuch will become the first justice to serve alongside a former boss.

At 9 a.m. EDT, Gorsuch is due to take his separate constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court .

The Senate, which last year refused to consider Democratic former president Barack Obamas nominee to the court, on Friday voted 54-45 to approve Colorado-based federal appeals court judge Gorsuch. The vote brought to an end to an almost 14-month battle over a vacancy created by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.

Once sworn in, Gorsuch can prepare for the next round of oral arguments, starting on April 17, at the court, whose current term ends in June.

He will also participate in the justices private conference on Thursday to consider taking new cases. Appeals are pending on expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public, state voting restrictions that critics say are aimed at reducing minority turnout, and allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to providing gay couples certain services.

Gorsuch could also play a vital role in some cases on which his new colleagues may have been split 4-4 and therefore did not yet decide. Those cases may have to be reargued in the courts next term, which starts in October.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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Donald Trump's Supreme Court Appointee To Be Sworn In - Huffington Post

White House on edge as 100-day judgment nears – Politico

President Donald Trump has far more than three years left in his first term. But inside his pressure-cooker of a White House, aides and advisers are sweating the next three weeks.

The symbolic 100-day mark by which modern presidents are judged menaces for an image-obsessed chief executive whose opening sprint has been marred by legislative stumbles, legal setbacks, senior staff kneecapping one another, the resignation of his national security adviser and near-daily headlines and headaches about links to Russia.

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The date, April 29, hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find their footing or else.

But however real Trumps frustrations are with the three rival power centers he has installed chief of staff Reince Priebus, son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Stephen Bannon top officials inside and around the White House dont expect Trump to make any drastic changes until after 100 days, lest staff turmoil stories swamp a key stretch of media coverage.

That reprieve unless Trump simply decides hes had enough has both bought his staff a little time and put them on edge.

One hundred days is the marker, and weve got essentially two-and-a-half weeks to turn everything around, said one White House official. "This is going to be a monumental task.

For a president who often begins and ends his days imbibing cable news, the burden has fallen heavily on a press team that recognizes how well they sell Trumps early tenure in the media will likely color the presidents appetite for an internal shake-up.

That was the backdrop for a tense planning session for the 100-day mark last week.

More than 30 Trump staffers piled into a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjoining the White House, according to a half-dozen attendees who described the Tuesday meeting.

Mike Dubke, Trumps communications director, and his deputy, Jessica Ditto, kicked off the discussion of how to package Trumps tumultuous first 100 days by pitching the need for a rebranding to get Trump back on track.

I think the presidents head would explode if he heard that, one of the White House officials present said.

Staffers, including counselor Kellyanne Conway, were broken into three groups, complete with whiteboards, markers and giant butcher-block-type paper to brainstorm lists of early successes. One group worked in the hallway.

It made me feel like I was back in 5th grade, complained another White House aide who was there. Thats the best way I could describe it.

Dubke, who did not work on the campaign, told the assembled aides that international affairs would present a messaging challenge because the president lacks a coherent foreign policy. Three days later, Trump would order missile strikes in Syria in a reversal of years of previous opposition to such intervention.

There is no Trump doctrine, Dubke declared.

Some in the room were stunned by the remark.

It rubbed people the wrong way because on the campaign we were pretty clear about what he wanted to do, said a third White House official in the room, He was elected on a vision of America First. America First is the Trump doctrine.

One of the administration officials lamented, Weve got a comms team supposedly articulating the presidents message [that] does not appear to understand the presidents message.

Dubke told POLITICO he was disappointed White House staff would complain in the press rather than in real time.

It was a brainstorming session and I really wish they had spoken up in the room so that we could have had an open and honest conversation, he said. It is unproductive adjudicating internal discussions through the media.

As for the rebranding remark, Dubke said that had been misinterpreted. There is not a need for a rebranding but there is a need to brand the first 100 days, Dubke said. Because if we dont do it the media is going to do it. Thats what our job is.

Trumps communications team is now plotting to divide their first 100 days into three categories of accomplishments, according to people familiar with plans: prosperity (such as new manufacturing jobs, reduced regulations and pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal), accountability (following through on swamp-draining campaign promises such as lobbying restrictions) and safety/security (including the dramatic reduction in border crossing and the strike in Syria).

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Amid near-constant talk of staff shuffling, Dubkes name has fallen below the radar, in part because he cuts such a low profile. He was a late addition to Trumps team after the initial pick for the job, Jason Miller, bowed out for personal reasons. A behind-the-scenes operator, Dubke has yet to appear on television, Trumps favorite medium.

But as most of Trumps senior team Cabinet members, military and economic advisers, Bannon, Priebus, Kushner and White House press secretary Sean Spicer went to Mar-a-Lago last week for the bilateral meeting with China amid the unfolding Syrian situation, Dubke was conspicuously absent and back in D.C.

That would tell you exactly how he is perceived, said one of the White House officials.

However, another White House official defended Dubkes internal role, saying before his arrival people in the press operation were doing whatever they wanted to do without a broader set of goals being defined. Dubke imposed structure and thats going to ruffle some feathers.

Still, the more sympathetic aide to Dubke admitted, He has not yet integrated into the senior leadership.

The constant presence of senior advisers encircling Trump has created a vicious and some officials say self-defeating cycle in which top aides feel they cannot leave his side, lest they lose influence or be perceived to have.

People are saying, Why is everyone traveling with the president? and in the next breath, You must not be important, youre not traveling with the president? another White House official complained. You cant have it both ways.

Trump hired Dubke in mid-February after a frustrating first month of bad press, telling Fox News later that month "in terms of messaging, I would give myself a C or a C+. But even after Dubkes arrival, Trump and his senior team have continued to seek outside advice.

During the failed push to pass health care legislation, Miller drafted a short messaging memo with four bullet points that was given to top White House officials, including Kushner and Bannon, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Miller, who now works for Teneo, the consulting firm created by former aides to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has been spotted around the White House twice in recent weeks, though he has made clear to friends in the administration that he has no interest in joining the White House.

The constant palace intrigue and internal jockeying has left the White House in a state of paralysis.

Trump parted with deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh in late March, his aides are discussing a reorganization and Trump himself has begun floating names to replace Priebus, his chief of staff, for feedback, according to a person close to the White House. On Friday, Trump ordered his two other senior-most advisers, Kushner and Bannon, to settle their differences in a Mar-a-Lago sit down after a week of their increasing shadowboxing through anonymous accusations in the press.

One White House official last week questioned why Bannon was taking on a member of Trumps family so openly.

For a Svengali that doesnt seem like a smart thing to do, the official said. I dont think that ends well for him.

A White House ally of Bannon noted that despite bumping up against Trumps son-in-law, he had held sway over the most crucial policy rollouts, such as Trumps hard line on immigration and trade. Anyone who thinks that Steve has lost his influence, they dont know what the f--- theyre talking about, this person said.

The strikes on Syria, a successful summit with President Xi Jinping of China and Fridays sit-down between Bannon and Kushner appear to have calmed some frayed nerves. Two people who have spoken with the president in recent days said Trumps mood has improved.

Still, the question of how to frame the first 100 days remains a challenge.

Trump aides are grappling with the reality that they will end this opening period with no significant legislative achievements other than rolling back Obama-era regulations. Even the White Houses most far-reaching success, the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, required the Senate rewriting its own rules to overcome Democratic opposition.

Though the White House continues to push for progress on stalled health care legislation, there are only five legislative days remaining once Congress returns from a two-week spring break. Plus, another deadline looms: Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress must still pass a bill before April 28 to keep the government running.

If they fail, a shutdown would begin on Trumps 100th day in office.

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White House on edge as 100-day judgment nears - Politico

The Trouble With Trumps White House Is Donald Trump – Daily Beast

If Bannon is cut loose, the old Washington adage of better to have your enemy inside the tent pissing out will come into play.

It took Donald Trump 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to buy himself one day of kind coverage at the end of another otherwise terrible week. But what the president himself described as an impulsive reaction to heartrending photos of Syrian children gassed by Assad on his watch isnt a coherent strategy to punish Assad for using chemical weapons.

Even supporters who hoped the strike would show Trump as a he-man leader willing to grasp the saber of state in his tiny hands and rattle it firmly, it failed to paper over the political crisis consuming his White House as his staff and family have become warring factions seeking his favor so that the story has become not about the presidents goals, policies, or accomplishments, but a group of people around him who make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch.

Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn. The cancer in the presidency isnt his staffthough they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that.

Lets start with the leader of the Pepe Army sleeper cell at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Steve Bannon. If Trump keeps his chief strategist, he keeps the poisonous, post-conservative nationalism and thinly-veiled racial and religious animus that helped put him in the Oval Office. Bannon was great at running a conspiracy blog, but his political instincts are those of an arsonist, not a strategist. He has led Trump into a series of unforced political debacles, tainted relations with Congress, and alienated members of Americas new royal family.

Hes already become persona non grata in Congress for his absurdly villainous performance trying unsuccessfully to browbeat them into accepting the ludicrously unpopular Trumpcare bill, and his economic nationalism is big-government statism wrapped in populist trade and industrial policies. Bannon is a famous brawler, and like many brawlers after too many beers, he lashes out any anyone for lookin at him funny. A Bannon power center in the White House is as dangerous as its vacuum.

If he fires Bannon, Trump should prepare for war. The information warfare architecture Bannon built with the money of Robert and Rebekah Mercer is already restive and nervous that Trump has been co-opted by (((them))) and lured into being a more conventional president. Since the Trumpbart/Bannon/Mercer propaganda platform helped elect Trump with its lurid reporting and its troll army (shoutout to Putin!), it can just easily be turned against him. Trumps social media power was always boosted byif not contingent uponthis system, and the idea of a vengeful Bannon turning those tools against him should keep Donald awake at night.

If Bannon is cut loose, the old Washington adage of better to have your enemy inside the tent pissing out will come into play. The coverage of Trump in the Bannon/Mercer echo chamber will go from gushing hagiography to more in sorrow than in anger to Trump is now a globalist cuck shill for the ZOG faster than Andrew Breitbart can rotate in his grave.

Another reason firing Bannon is fraught with risk: Bannon is running the Russia pushback operation from inside the White House. Hes up to his ample ass in the Nunes shenanigan with NSC staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnik and White House Counsels Office staffer Mike Ellis. Bannon doesnt just want to protect Trump over the Russia allegations; he wants to protect Russia, a nation he sees as an essential ally in his new alliance of white Christian nations against the Muslim horde. Does Trump really want Bannon, angry and in the wind, declaring his own jihad?

What about Jared Kushner, the new golden child of the Celebrity White House?

Elevating his son-in-law to Ambassador Plenipotentiary for Everything and Czar of All U.S. Government Programs is already straining credulity. Other than an accident of marriage and birth, Kushner isnt regarded as particularly shining intellect, a masterful leader, or a man of any particularly notable ideological standards. Hes the son of a New York billionaire married to Trumps daughter, and thats really about all he brings to the table.

Teachers pet types emerge in every organization. The leader will take a shine to a person of particular talent or ability, and elevate them faster than the norm. Its one thing when that person actually has talent and ability. In that case, other team members will see it with grumbling admiration, even if they dont like it. In Kushners case, accomplished, smart people who have managed more than their daddys real-estate company will look at him as being elevated on the basis of his marriage, not his ability.

Kushner already has so many titles, assignments, and projects that it would be impossible for even an experienced manager and leader with a staff of hundreds to manage them. Hes never managed projects even close to the scale of what Trump has ladled onto his plate, and its going to show. The death will be from a thousand tiny cuts, but politically fatal in the end. In addition, Trump requires Kushners presence so frequently that Im surprised Jared doesnt have a cot outside Donalds bedroom door.

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Despite all that, Kushner is a rising force in the White House, and thats a problem for two reasons. First, hes also no conservative, as he and Ivanka frequently leak to friendly media. Theyre New Yorkers in both social political temperament, meaning quite far to the left on social issues not only by GOP standards but by the standards of most Americans. Pushing Trump to the left on social and economic policy further harms Trumps chances in Congress, and though Trump is no conservative, will shock the rubes who were sold on him as one. A Kushner-Goldman Sachs alliance seem to be emerging in the White House. Has anyone checked Alex Jones for signs of stroke?

Replacing Reince Priebus, a process-driven, mainline conservative before he sipped the sweet, sweet Kool-Aid of Trumpism, is another option. The chief of staff may stay. The chief of staff may go. The question is, would anyone notice?

Priebus is an administrator in an administration led by a man with little interest in his ministers and none at all in being managed himself. You can see the former party chairman desperately trying to put up guardrails and establish lanes and to staff the administration with something other than ex-Breitbart reporters. One of his jobs was to be the Washington Whisperer for Trump, and in the wake of the Trumpcare debacle, and the fact that Trumps entire legislative agenda is in limbo, its plain that whatever hes whispering isnt penetrating.

What about some of the other ideas in play? Might a D.C. Wise Man/Usual Suspect of the old school right this ship? This too is a path where Trump cant win.

First, its an instant way to alienate his base of fervent burn down da gubbmint and let Trump be King morons. A swamp veteran is going to smooth down the edges, take away Trumps tweeting phone, cut deals with Congress, and fire the embarrassing mouth-breathers like Scavino, Gorka, and their like. Hell work deals, manage expectations, and close the Oval Office to the random calls and visits that send President ADHDs agenda bouncing wildly as an ideological Pachinko machine.

Some of the people mentioned are smart, competent folks with decades of experience in the folkways and traditions of D.C. Some know how to manage large, complex operations. Heres the problem; no White House chief of staff can change Trumps essential character. No White House chief of staff can set up a chain of reporting and accountability for a man who is driven almost entirely by the need to draw every particle of praise and adoration into the event horizon of the black hole of his boundless, hungry ego.

A strong, effective chief of staff would be of enormous benefit to this president, but so would avoiding Kentucky Fried Chicken, early morning tweet frenzies, and 20 hours of Fox News every day.

The last scenario that will also cause an explosion in the Trump base is if the president who blasted Goldman Sachs relentlessly allows the Vampire Squids friendly takeover of the Oval Office to come to fruition. With Gary Cohn as a widely discussed replacement for Priebus, and with a host of Goldman alumni staffing senior positions, Trump will have a circle of advisers who are more liberal, more (ahem) globalist, more comfortable with regulation and crony capitalism, and who believe that whats Good for Goldman Is Good for America. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see how this will play with Trumps lower-middle class base of the economically fragile, to say nothing of the conspiracy media.

Youll note Ive left off hapless non-factor Kellyanne Conway from this piece. Shes already in Siberia, chewing shoe leather to survive the political winter, and its unlikely she can make it back into Trumps good graces after becoming a national laughingstock with her relentlessly post-fact spin. Shes five minutes away from a well-paid sinecure as a Fox News contributor.

As long as Trump is president, there will never be a pivot. There is no better version of Trump, simply waiting for the right org chart or the right staffer.

Im always struck with how a simple phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson captures politics over time, and how it captures the Trump administration perfectly.

That phrase? An institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.

The shambolic adhocracy of his White House is a perfect reflection of Trumps own chaotic, disordered thought process and lack of mental discipline, and thats not changing any time soon.

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The Trouble With Trumps White House Is Donald Trump - Daily Beast