Day 1,093: It was the HHS Secretary’s turn to get knifed by Trump
Donald Trump has a special proclivity for throwing his senior aides under the bus in public and in private. The goal is always to insulate himself from wrongdoing, no matter how slight the issue and no matter Trump’s level of involvement.
He constantly lambasted previous and current top aides and senior officials, including an Attorney General, a Secretary of State, a Secretary of Defense, a Director of National Intelligence, multiple National Security Advisors, multiple Chiefs of Staff, multiple FBI Directors and plenty more.
With lagging poll numbers on health care, it was Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s turn to get shivved, only to promptly praise Trump for the blade in his back.
After one of Mr. Trump’s pollsters, Tony Fabrizio, described the importance of health care as an electoral issue, Mr. Trump reached for the phone on the Resolute Desk and called Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services.
“I never should have done this vaping thing,” Mr. Trump said, adding an expletive, according to two of the people familiar with what happened.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Azar appeared on Fox News and lavished praise on Mr. Trump, a fact the agency highlighted in a news release on Friday.
Mr. Azar supported a ban on flavored e-cigarettes to try to curb their widespread use among teenagers. Mr. Trump agreed to such a ban in the fall, but repeatedly waffled on formalizing it after his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said it would hurt him with his base of voters.
Trump’s frustration stems from the fact that he — as the final decision-maker — and not Azar “has become so associated with the ban…”
True leaders take accountability for their decisions. True cowards, like Trump, want credit for victories while pushing the blame off to others when something goes even slightly askew.
1,093 days in, 369 to go
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