Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

“But what about the lurkers?”

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Usually wrong but never in doubt

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

T R E 4 5 O N

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Pre-Dawn Startle-Awake-Nightmare Open Thread: “Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles”

Pre-Dawn Startle-Awake-Nightmare Open Thread: “Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles”

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KellyAnne Conway, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Steven Miller. It’s the Trumpstunting parade, on its way to a vast garbage smorgasbord of stupidity and failure!

THANKS, REPUBLICANS, FOR BREAKING THE WHITE HOUSE!

… During his first two dizzying weeks in office, Mr. Trump, an outsider president working with a surprisingly small crew of no more than a half-dozen empowered aides with virtually no familiarity with the workings of the White House or federal government, sent shock waves at home and overseas with a succession of executive orders designed to fulfill campaign promises and taunt foreign leaders…

The bungled rollout of his executive order barring immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, a flurry of other miscues and embarrassments, and an approval rating lower than that of any comparable first-term president in the history of polling have Mr. Trump and his top staff rethinking an improvisational approach to governing that mirrors his chaotic presidential campaign, administration officials and Trump insiders said…

Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and an old friend of the president’s, said: “I think, in his mind, the success of this is going to be the poll numbers. If they continue to be weak or go lower, then somebody’s going to have to bear some responsibility for that.”

“I personally think that they’re missing the big picture here,” Mr. Ruddy said of Mr. Trump’s staff. “Now he’s so caught up, the administration is so caught up in turmoil, perceived chaos, that the Democrats smell blood, the protesters, the media smell blood.”…

Cloistered in the White House, he now has little access to his fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation — and feels increasingly pinched by the pressures of the job and the constant presence of protests, one of the reasons he was forced to scrap a planned trip to Milwaukee last week. For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon…

Mr. Bannon has rushed into the vacuum, telling allies that he and Mr. Miller have a brief window in which to push through their vision of Mr. Trump’s economic nationalism.

Mr. Bannon, whose website, Breitbart, was a magnet for white nationalists and xenophobic speech, has also tried to reassure official Washington. He has been careful to build bridges with the Republican establishment, especially Mr. Ryan — whom he once described as “the enemy” and vowed to force out. He now talks regularly with Mr. Ryan to coordinate strategy or plot their planned overhaul of the tax code…

Mr. Trump remains intensely focused on his brand, but the demands of the job mean he spends less time monitoring the news media — although he recently upgraded the flat-screen TV in his private dining room so he can watch the news while eating lunch.

He often has to wait until the end of the workday before grinding through news clips with Mr. Spicer, marking the ones he does not like with a big arrow in black Sharpie — though he almost always makes time to monitor Mr. Spicer’s performance at the daily briefings, summoning him to offer praise or criticism, a West Wing aide said…

If you’re old like me, you can remember when these stories last leaked out of the White House — during Ronald Reagan’s second term, when he was rapidly descending into full-blown Alzheimers. President-Asterisk Trump has been on this job for two fvckin’ weeks. And at least Ronnie had his “Mommy” Nancy and a loyal & experienced (if extremely venal) staff to cover for him.

Earlier reports in the same vein: Politico, “Distrust in Trump’s White House spurs leaks, confusion“:

‘Trying to nail down who the leakers are is like trying to count the cockroaches under the couch,’ one longtime Trump adviser says.

A feeling of distrust has taken hold in the West Wing of Donald Trump’s White House and beyond, as his aides view each other and officials across the federal government and on Capitol Hill with suspicion.

The result has been a stream of leaks flowing from the White House and federal agencies, and an attempt to lock down information and communication channels that could have serious consequences across the government and at the Capitol, where Trump tries to implement and advance his agenda…

While reports have emerged in recent days about various officials blindsided by the orders, interviews with several people involved in the process reveal the extent of the secrecy and chaos. The highly controversial immigration and travel ban signed by Trump last Friday was so tightly held that White House aides, top Cabinet officials, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and other Trump allies had no idea what was in it even when it was signed — and that was just how top advisers and aides wanted it.

“Someone would have leaked it,” one administration official said…

And from the Washington Post, “Trump’s White House tries to gain a sense of order amid missteps”:

… At a senior staff meeting last Monday, according to one adviser in attendance, the president delivered an unmistakable decree: “Reince [Priebus] is in charge. He’s the chief of staff. Everything has to go through him.”

That directive included setting clearer boundaries among the various departments and assertively tamping down reports of staff infighting, which aides said personally angered the president.

Over the rest of the week, Priebus sought to assert control over the policy process and interagency communications, slowed the assembly line of executive orders to avoid errors and tried to organize the daily rhythms in the White House…

The big thinker remains chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has used chaos as a tool for implementing transformative policy but who aides said is now trying to adapt to working within Priebus’s structure….

And we know how well that worked, because look what happened Friday. Best possible outcome of this whole mess would be Thomas-Cromwell-admirer Bannon finding out that things didn’t end well for Mr. Cromwell… or for the capricious authoritarian who briefly made him powerful and notorious.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  2. 2.

    CarolDuhart2

    He. cant. read. He.cant.read. And he probably never tried to learn, as he was going to work for Dad or in his dad’s industry.

  3. 3.

    Aleta

    in his mind, the success of this is going to be the poll numbers.

    Well that’s easily fixed, by the people in charge of his reading material.

  5. 5.

    CarolDuhart2

    Light switches. What’s the collective IQ, 80? I imagine light switches in the White House aren’t much different than elsewhere (maybe a few more dimmers for mood).
    But that’s not the only things. Lamps? Even if you had a hard time finding the switches, what about those, or candles, or flashlight? Or asking the help for help?

    Jesus.Take.The. Wheel.

  6. 6.

    marcion

    I’m rooting for injuries in what looks to be a Trump-Bannon spat. Imagine what Breitbart headlines would look like of Bannon got shitcanned after an argument? Trump can’t afford to lose many more friends…

  7. 7.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mary G: It’s symbolic. These are not bright people. It was so nice having a competent, intelligent President for the last 8 years. Sigh.

  8. 8.

    Anne Laurie

    @CarolDuhart2:

    He. cant. read. He.cant.read.

    I think it’s more he can’t read easily — that he’s got ADHD (as do I), it’s always been hard for him to read big blocks of serious text, and years of not having to make the effort combined with the ‘natural’ effects of aging brains (& eyes) have only made him disinclined to even try.

    He did read stuff off teleprompters, during the campaign. He did so very badly, with the most inappropriately flat affect, and went off-script whenever he felt he was losing his audience. That’s a clinical sign of ADD (or dyslexia, and he doesn’t make the kind of errors dyslexics do). The fact that everyone noticed how badly he read, and complained about it afterwards, makes him even less inclined to sit down and plod through all those werds, because the only word that applies almost as strongly to Donald Trump as vain is lazy.

  9. 9.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I think we’re missing the bigger issues here, which are that Hillary Clinton is a big, fat, smelly poopie head who used the wrong e-mail, and that Barack Obama is an illegal immigrant from Kenyastan who stole the presidency for eight years. and he’s a Muslim terrorist, too. Also, Donald Trump is amazing, and everybody loves him, and he works so hard that he never even sleeps, but he doesn’t need to sleep, ’cause he’s, like, some kind of super-awesome superhero, and everybody loves him, and the only people who don’t love him are illegal immigrants like Obama, and there aren’t any protests, ’cause everybody loves him, and feminists are nazis, too. Also.

  12. 12.

    robert thompson

    Bannon may be the Grim Reaper but Jared is the real menace. The weasels always win in the end. Jared has familial ties which apparently are valued and will stab them all in the back until only he is left. This administration, if that is the appropriate word, is more than a nightmare; it’s truly apocalyptic.

  13. 13.

    EBT

    @Mary G: I am guessing they are those switches that you have to push a key into and use the shaft as the switch. And none of them have any keys because fucking everything up as much as possible is what President Bannon needs to happen.

  16. 16.

    waspuppet

    So when do our media stars start saying that this or that stumble “feeds into a narrative” that Trump’s a dope? or “fuels perceptions” that he’s unprepared? Oh right; the word “narrative” has been shelved for at least four years.

    Doesn’t mean we can’t start calling it the failed and/or scandal-ridden Trump presidency.

  17. 17.

    Origuy

    It’s a 200-year-old building that had electricity installed in 1891. The switches were round push buttons, like a house I lived in in Champaign. I wonder if they still have any of the original switches left. The president at the time, Benjamin Harrison, refused to touch them because he was afraid of being electrocuted.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    @EBT: They could always ask one of the housekeepers/janitors. Except none of the Trumplodytes can bear to lower themselves to talk to the help. (Who are no doubt snickering behind their backs at the dumbarses literally stumbling around in the dark.)

  20. 20.

    m.j.

    “Now he’s so caught up, the administration is so caught up in turmoil, perceived chaos, that the Democrats smell blood, the protesters, the media smell blood.”…

    Of course.
    These people aren’t at all interested in the fate of the nation. They are simply seeing opportunity.
    Fuck You.

  21. 21.

    robert thompson

    @Aleta: Yeah, I think that vibe is strong is his coterie. And his followers parse the signs every day. Much interpretation has changed since “The Late Great Planet Earth'”. I blews my families mind when i suggested that if Gog ( in Revelations ) was Russia, with Trump in power perhaps that makes us Magog. Chills down their spines. Delicious.

  22. 22.

    EBT

    @Anne Laurie: Didn’t he fire all the staff with the intent on bringing his own over? I know I remember reading about how some of the senior residency staff had been working there since GW and were being told they weren’t long for employment.

  23. 23.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Origuy: Truman has the place gutted in 1948 to the walls and an entirely modern lighting system installed back then. That was when the South Lawn balcony was installed.

  24. 24.

    robert thompson

    @m.j.: Well said. It’s always just politics. There are no good causes just partisans. Fuck them indeed.

  27. 27.

    robert thompson

    @CarolDuhart2: There is an amazing picture of a small backhoe operating inside the walls during the renovation. The building was in terrible condition and actually dangerous with floors visibly sagging and foundation masonry that was eaten away. Good thing Taft wasn’t around.

  29. 29.

    Ryan

    I imagine President Bannon is already working to subvert or weasel out of Priebus’ control. Point of curiosity. Is there a reason Old Man Trump uses a sharpie as opposed to a pen?

  30. 30.

    Aleta

    Strange changed world now when someone has to spell this out:

    it is both pointless and dangerous for America to fight ISIS alongside Russia. Pointless because the Russians are not there to fight ISIS — their real goals in the region have nothing to do with eliminating the terror group, but with empowering Assad and other anti-American allies. Dangerous because the United States and Russia share neither common goals nor common tactics. Our forces are not interoperable, and neither is the way we fight wars. Russians operate differently from Americans at every level of conflict — tactically, operationally, and strategically. There is no established trust between our nations or our forces, and the place to build that trust is not during a major operation where our goals are fundamentally misaligned.

    The United States views the war on terror — rightly — as a messy, confusing world of gray authorities, targets, and battlefronts in which legal frameworks matter as much as military or law enforcement operations. We try to be careful in sorting moderate from extremist, civilian from militant, bystander from believer. We get it wrong at times, and we subject ourselves to scathing review, and our lawmakers investigate those missteps to avoid repeating them in the future. We are constantly reevaluating civil rights and protections in an unclear war.

    Russia has no such uncertainties or concerns. There is only one rule in Vladimir Putin’s counterterrorism tactics: anything done in the service of defeating “extremism” is justified. Russian tactics are brutal and indiscriminating: targeting a terrorist or his family or his community are all the same. The Russians have no concept of “collateral damage” in their attacks; it’s all tallied in the same column. If it ends up dead, it was a terrorist.

    But, even putting aside moral differences, there is no feasible way to form a coalition with the Russians and have a joint force that is interoperable. We can’t, as they say, “plug and play.” It has taken decades of training and joint exercises to integrate NATO forces — especially the armies of former Soviet nations — so we can work together at a command-and-control, doctrinal, procedural, technological, and human level. It has cost billions of dollars to achieve and maintain this interoperability. It is fantasy to believe even a bandaid version of this can happen easily or quickly with a large, lethal force five years deep in a spreading, bloody, total war.

    Russian anti-terror ops are not about providing security, but exacting vendettas and controlling an environment through fear and devastation. In the Kremlin’s calculus, high civilian casualties contribute to those objectives, so they are considered tactically acceptable.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/trumps-plan-to-fight-isis-with-putin-isnt-just-futile-its-dangerous-214743

  31. 31.

    robert thompson

    @CarolDuhart2: Thank you. That was fascinating. It really is an archaic building but sentiment will never allow any other. It seems so out of place and small for these grand imperial times

  32. 32.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @robert thompson: Correct, the residence is a steel frame building built in the late 40’s early 50’s. The West Wing was built in the early 1900’s when TR was President, it’s been modified and reconstructed though over the years with significant work done during the Obama administration*.

    *Most of the recent construction is classified.

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    @Aleta: Rest of that article has good details. It’s by Molly K. McKew, “an adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili’s government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015.”

  34. 34.

    robert thompson

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: i was wondering if any major additions or retrofitting had been done. I have this weird mental picture of a White House two stories tall and a hundred stories underground. Mole people clones pushing brooms with orange Satellite of Love uniforms and Bannon’s office in the lowest level with Gollum like minions scurrying in and out.

  36. 36.

    opiejeanne

    @Origuy: We had those push-button switches in a house built in 1912, but the last one was on the front porch for the porch lights. We were amazed at how many people pushed those instead of the doorbell. We’d spot them through the front door and ask why they didn’t ring the bell. It was a standard doorbell button, right next to those switches. We thought the electricity was added in the 20s because there was a converted gas chandelier in the dining room.

  37. 37.

    robert thompson

    @Aleta: Both Georgia and Moldova have good reason to analyze this Russian threat being on the front lines. I wish someone in the asterisk administration was as capable. They don’t seem able to be able to make use of that book learnin. It’s easier to just wing it. Lazy. Sad.

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    He never wanted the job, did he? All he ever wanted was to win the election and the title His wife still lives in New York If it were up to him, he’d stay in NYC too and let MIke Dense do the POTUS job (That was the deal he had Donald Jr float to John Kasich.)

  44. 44.

    Bobby Thomson

    A few months ago BooMan said Trump’s focus on carpet swatches and the like in his buildings was evidence of a strong work ethic. Talk about your white billionaire privilege.

  47. 47.

    sherparick

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): You forgot that George Soros is paying all the protesters, too.

    However, we should not get to caught up in the “White House in disarray” stories. They are a Village Media trope, which he Village particularly trots out for White Houses filled with people they consider “outsiders” and how ol’Village types are eventually going to save the day (I would note that Priebus is not negatively mentioned in the stories and the favorable mention of Paul Ryan providing a steadying, helping hand to the President – gives you an idea of who is spinning these tales. Similar stories ran for the first time in the Carter administration, Reagan’s first term, the Clinton’s first term, and even the first year of Obama’s Presidency. Although, in my opinion we are being run by group who have stupefied themselves by repeating to each other conservative memes for the last 30 years. Like virtual prions, they have destroyed their mental faculties and sense of empathy, although the skills of low cunning and back stabbing remain.

    The plan to disable the Welfare State and the Progressive legislation of 130 years and turn the legal and Government world back to at least the 1880s and 90s continues and the distractions created by Trump, who in his own mind apparently remains a reality TV star with the new reality show “Trump the President, is useful as Ryan grinds the hard work of repealing the Affordable Care with the Replacement program of “don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly;” means testing Social Security; voucherizing Medicare, and reducing the taxes on the rich to insignificance.

    Finally, the ultimate popularity of Trump and Ryan’s congress depends on the economy. In the medium and long term, they are likely to disastrous. The anti-fact, ideology and tribal symbolic policies of political movement, a 90% White movement making up 58% of the White vote united on White identity, Christianist ideology, plutocratic supremacy, and grifter morality will just screw the pooch and break things without much help from the opposition. But right now the economy continues to chug along and politically and if they do all those voters who have given the Republicans an apparent lock on the White South and Great Plains and an increasing larger % of the White vote in the Midwest probably won’t have a cause to change their minds (even in 2008-09 the white workers in the South and Appalachia who lost jobs, went on unemployment and started drawing SNAP ended up blaming “Government deficits,” and Black and imaginary “illegal immigrants” who received food stamps for their problems.

  54. 54.

    Sondra

    Two things I just noticed about this NYTimes article. First: is it correct that his father’s middle name was Christ?That is what they wrote in that last line of the article. I guess I’ll be looking it up on the google machine later, but really…if that’s correct it would explain a lot about #45’s various complexes.

    The second thing concerns his ability to go through 17 pages of drapery options but his lack of a similar attention span for the details of briefing options. As someone who works with Autistic children I am familiar with this type of thing. They can focus relentlessly on things that interest them while disregarding the details of almost everything else going on around them. To get him to see/hear/focus on important details of important governing issues like Presidential briefing sessions, they must tie those details to something he can integrate into his focus. Give him a drapery choice and a national security choice as an item of business and he will remember that choice and be able to focus on it.

    What they need is to find someone who teaches autistic people how to focus and put them into a new cabinet post as an advisor. That way in every important meeting there will be someone to re-focus #45 before his Attention Deficit Disorder kicks in and he floats off into his alternate reality. His habits are typical of someone with this problem but no one could have diagnosed it in him when he was a child nor would there have been access to effective therapies back then either.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-strategy.html

    Flanking his desk are portraits of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. He will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

    snip
    With most of his belongings in New York, the only family picture on the shelf behind Mr. Trump’s desk is a small black-and-white photograph of that boss, Frederick Christ Trump.
    snip

  56. 56.

    J R in WV

    @m.j.:

    “Now he’s so caught up, the administration is so caught up in turmoil, perceived chaos, that the Democrats smell blood, the protesters, the media smell blood.”…

    Of course.
    These people aren’t at all interested in the fate of the nation. They are simply seeing opportunity.
    Fuck You.

    So, from your final sentence, “Fuck You.”, I take it that you believe that Donald J Trump cares more about the fate of the nation than he does about Donald J Trump. Also Steve Bannon, he who edited and ran a white supremacist publication, Breitbart Report, cares more about the nation of America than he does the “Leninist” fall of civilization.

    What makes you think that any of these people care more about the nation than their own self interest? Their service in the military? Bannon was an O-3 and got out, probably because he wasn’t capable of advancing his rank and responsibility. No one else ever volunteered to do anything without a major personal profit.

    Donald J Trump failed to pay his contractors, a major flaw in a “real estate developer”, ran multiple casinoes into bankruptcy, founded a fraudulent pseudo-university specifically designed to take a maximum amount of money from potential “students”, bought a beauty pageant so he could peer at nude and underaged girls, and forced his own lawyers to meet with him in pairs as witnesses to prevent him from lying about oral agreements reached in their meetings. How does any of this indicate a loyalty to America in The Don?

    But here I am, speaking at length to a troll, again, just because it has a new name. Shame on me!!

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