Word is he’s fuming in private

Aw, now it’s Kelly that Trump is on the outs with. Poor Donny, he does have such a hard time getting along with all the children in the sandbox.

President Trump on Thursday publicly pushed back against a characterization by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that his views on a southern border wall had “evolved” and privately fumed about the episode.

“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” the president said in a morning tweet. “Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water.”

Tough rivers? Are those the ones that call Africa a shithole?

Trump’s comments on Twitter came a day after Kelly told Democratic lawmakers that some of the hard-line immigration policies Trump advocated during the campaign were “uninformed,” that the United States will never construct a wall along its entire southern border and that Mexico will never pay for it, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Trump associates said the president was furious with Kelly both for what he said and for the tone he used, which Trump thought made it appear he was a child who had to be managed.

Well he’s not a literal child, or not a child in body, but mentally and temperamentally? Decidedly a child, and not a very nice child at that.

One Trump associate who spoke to the president Wednesday night said Trump thought Kelly’s comments made him look bad and that he was giving in to Democrats.

The president, this person said, particularly disliked [that] the word “uninformed” appeared in news reports and has chafed for weeks at the characterization of him as not intelligent and flighty in the best-selling book about his presidency by author Michael Wolff.

Weeks? It hasn’t even been weeks. It has literally, but only just, which means it hasn’t in that non-literal sense. Two weeks doesn’t count as “weeks” in that usage. In short, Trump has chafed for a couple of weeks. Then the question becomes, did he not notice before that many people say he’s stupid, a fucking moron, ignorant, and impetuous as a bull in rut?

Another Trump associate familiar with the president’s reaction to Kelly said his rage was similar to his response in the summer of 2016 when Paul Manafort, then his chief strategist, told an RNC meeting in Florida that Trump had been playing a “part” on the campaign trail but was starting to pivot toward presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.”

“Kelly thinks he knows what policies are important and what aren’t, but Donald Trump is the president of the United States,” said the associate, who also requested anonymity to speak more candidly.

Sure sure, we have to keep up the pretense that Trump is a normal reasonable thoughtful adult who is wholly on top of the job. You bet.

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