I heard a TV pundit say yesterday the Eskimo natives have twenty-three different (arguably 50) ways to describe “snow” because it is such an integral part of their lives. According to writer Michael Wolff, the author of the just-released Trump exposé‘Fire and Fury’ current and past administration officials recounted almost as many descriptions of the President’s lack of, ‘intellectual curiosity’ as Eskimos have for snow, Idiot, Dope, Child and one with a commonly used gerund, “f…ing” Moron to add emphasis. That gem, still not directly disputed, from none other than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It makes sense now why Tillerson has never disputed the descriptive words, attached to his opinion of the President. Michael Wolff claims to have hours upon hours of taped and candid remarks from his unfettered access to the White House and WH staff.
People on the hook and counting on clever ‘wordsmithing’ to extricate themselves from comments directly attributed to them, Sam Nunberg, HR McMaster, Katie Walsh and countless others who were either frightened, self-absorbed, greedy for money and power or both are biting their nails down to the nub. Nunberg, so far, is the only one I have seen come clean or at least wash one hand, in a public attempt, on Thursday night’s Meet the Press Daily with Chuck Todd, to own up to what we all have suspected, Trump’s incompetence. Nunberg never disputed the things reportedly said by him in the New York Magazine preview but he employed the evasive, “context” argument quite effectively, at least to Todd’s ink pen acrobatics and nodding, grin.
In fairness, no accounts of someone’s motives can be ascribed to them without total access inside their head, but inferences can be drawn when the principals involved hide from the press and issue lawyerly statements meant to shield them from future recriminations. Again, in fairness having their lawyers shield them from future legal consequences is a move I would make.
The raw 50’s soap opera appetite of the American public for this political incoherence, that would be more at home printed on pulp paper, is conditioning a country that has prided itself on leadership into one that is consuming chaos and liking it.
This pattern of disloyal after school tattling by subordinates to a man who demands it but shows none is not surprising to anyone. Mr. Trump spoke of American, “carnage” in a bleak assessment of the United States during his Inaugural Speech. The real carnage is how the President has trained his associates that CYA is the way to operate. Look at just a few prominent names; Paul Manafort, once the campaign chairman, now described as a seldom seen or used and unpaid volunteer. Michael Flynn the one-time National Security Adviser, now derisively called a former Obama official. Today Steve Bannon, Trump’s trusted confidante, is now Steve Who?
The Michael Wolff book will not be the nail that seals the Trump coffin. His [Trump] political career will be buried by his own paranoia, his avarice and most of all his bigger than reality ego.
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