Words and meanings. So slippery.
Like, the things that people who work for Trump say when reporters ask about the wiretap tweets.
“I don’t know anything about it,” John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, said on CNN on Monday. Mr. Kelly shrugged and added that “if the president of the United States said that, he’s got his reasons to say it.”
Well yes, of course he has his reasons to say it – but are they good reasons? Reasons can be anything. His reasons can be that he’s an angry petulant narcissistic little man who hates and resents Obama because Obama is so much better than he is on pretty much any dimension you can think of. His reasons can be that he’s a loathsome malevolent racist shit who hates Obama for loathsome malevolent racist shitty reasons. His reasons can be that he’s totally fucking up his presidency and he’s angry about that and he felt like lashing out.
His poor staff though. He does these things and they have to jump as if electrocuted.
Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts, viewed with amazement outside the West Wing bubble, often create crises on the inside. That was never truer than when Mr. Trump began posting from his weekend retreat at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida shortly after sunrise on Saturday.
His groggy staff realized quickly that this was no typical Trump broadside, but an allegation with potentially far-reaching implications that threatened to derail a coming week that included the rollout of his redrafted travel ban and the unveiling of the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
It began at 6:35 a.m. with a Twitter post reading: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Three other posts quickly followed, capped by a 7:02 rocket that read: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
That led to a succession of frantic staff conference calls, including one consultation with the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, as staff members grasped the reality that the president had opened an attack on his predecessor.
Aw. There they were, sleeping late on a Saturday morning, and wham they had to jump up and have a bunch of conference calls. Nobody wants to wake up that way, especially on a Saturday.
Mr. Trump, advisers said, was in high spirits after he fired off the posts. But by midafternoon, after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far, although he still believed Mr. Obama had wiretapped him, according to two people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.
Wow. He was all happy about it for hours. He’s that thick. It took him nearly all day to realize you actually shouldn’t accuse a former president of a felony with no evidence. On Twitter.
People close to Mr. Trump had seen the pattern before. The episode echoed repeated instances in the 2016 presidential campaign.
During the primary contests, Mr. Trump seized on a false National Enquirer article that raised a connection between the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Later, Mr. Trump justified it to skeptical campaign aides by saying, “Even if it isn’t totally true, there’s something there,” according to a former campaign official.
I guess that’s his much-vaunted (by him) skill at “negotiation”? He puts out a flaming lie as a starting point and then bargains down so that he’s left with a smaller lie? As if that’s what truth is, something you can negotiate?
Comments
10 responses to “A succession of frantic staff conference calls”
I think you’re quite right. To Trump (and many others) truth is negotiable.
I also have no pity for his appointees and staff. They’ve chosen their bed, or trough as the case may be. Let them squirm and attempt to deflect the shit from sticking to them. In fact they make me angry. They’re gutless and dishonest. Their chosen method of deflection also attempts to create an aura of presidential infallibility. I mean, the Homeland Security Secretary has effectively just said that Trump has information related to illegal spying activity on US soil that HE doesn’t know anything about be HE isn’t cleared to know. That is an implication of his statement.
Anyone with a gram of self respect would walk from that administration. No, run from it.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1464325493585907/?type=3&theater
From the Independent; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/barack-obama-donald-trump-wiretapping-furious-angry-us-president-election-campaign-a7617551.html
Everybody’s fault but The Donalds.
Further to Rob’s last line above, what does it say about Trump’s staff when even rats have the intelligence to leave a sinking ship?
Then again, I’d wager that the second Trump goes his ‘loyal’ staff will be trampling over each other to distance themselves from him. I wonder who’ll be first to try playing the ‘only following orders’ card?
Unlike Obama, right? Who had such easy going of it from Day One that no one ever, ever, ever, ever considered him a failed president, an illegitimate president, a president who was undesirable? I don’t remember him setting up Twitter storms to challenge people who demanded his “long-form” birth certificate, called him a Muslim (not that his religion should make him ineligible, anyway), carried around guns in publicly threatening ways, formed entire political movements to combat what they perceived as a major threat to democracy, and obstructed his administration in every way possible.
Poor Trump. Poor besieged Trump. The besieger besieged.
Seriously, when even the weekend turns into a stress-filled shitshow, he’s going to be burning staff out _fast_. People can’t perform without periodic downtime; this is a recipe for meltdown. No wonder it’s a disaster, no wonder it’s steady leaks. His people are going to turn on each other, and on him.
I’d be more gleeful (Trump and many of his circle deserve as much), but this is also dangerous. There’s much power in that office; their working through constant sleep deprivation is _not_ good for judgement… And there are among them whose judgement isn’t good at the best of times. Here’s hoping they _mostly_ destroy only themselves; at this point, that’s the best I think can be hoped for.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1465003893518067/?type=3&theater
I think one thing being overlooked here – or at least under-reported and largely unremarked – is the incredible dignity being shown by Barack Obama. The contrast between the two couldn’t be greater.
Maybe I just have an infantile sense of humour but if I were in Obama’s position I would by now have taken out full-page ads in all the major newspapers consisting of a photograph of myself holding out my birth certificate, with the caption ‘Evidence: I showed you mine, now you show me yours!’
Ths is hilarious from Conan O’Brien, Trump phones Obama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqa-EV5qBPY
Only 2mins long.
AoS – that reminded me of those billboards that popped up a couple of months into Obama’s first term with a smiling Dubya saying “Miss me yet?”
Clearly the Republican party has no class.
‘Clearly the Republican party has no class.’
Make that ‘At long last, no shred of decency.’
Trump really seems to represent his ‘base.’ He really IS one of them: racist, misogynist, profoundly ignorant, irrational, credulous, and perpetually aggrieved.