"The president continues to call … Stephen K. Bannon, from his personal phone when Kelly is not around." https://t.co/T7kLGDTfIH
— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) September 1, 2017
The nuns in my childhood parochial school were not fans of self-esteem. One of the first things they taught us (right after handing out little blue Baltimore Catechisms, which were just on the verge of being declared obsolete) was that if we’d done something wrong, we should feel terrible about ourselves. Guilt and shame were God’s way of discouraging us from persisting in bad behavior. Donald Trump, of course, is incapable of either guilt or shame… but at least I can take pleasure in seeing that he’s not enjoying his ill-gotten office!
President Trump spent the final days of August dutifully performing his job. He tended to the massive recovery from Hurricane Harvey. He hit the road to sell his tax-cut plan. And he convened policy meetings on the federal budget and the North Korean nuclear threat.
Behind the scenes during a summer of crisis, however, Trump appears to pine for the days when the Oval Office was a bustling hub of visitors and gossip, over which he presided as impresario. He fumes that he does not get the credit he thinks he deserves from the media or the allegiance from fellow Republican leaders he says he is owed. He boasts about his presidency in superlatives, but confidants privately fret about his suddenly dark moods.
And some of Trump’s friends fear that the short-tempered president is on an inevitable collision course with White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
Trump chafes at some of the retired Marine Corps general’s moves to restrict access to him since he took the job almost a month ago, said several people close to the president. They run counter to Trump’s love of spontaneity and brashness, prompting some Trump loyalists to derisively dub Kelly “the church lady” because they consider him strict and morally superior…
Meanwhile, people close to the president said he is simmering with displeasure over what he considers personal disloyalty from National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who criticized Trump’s responses to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. He also has grown increasingly frustrated with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has clashed with the president on issues including Afghanistan troop levels, the blockade on Qatar and Cuba policy…
Pre-Dawn Open Thread: He SHOULD Be Miserable!Post + Comments (30)