Day 194: The Trump White House: A Bad Soap Opera
An excellent television show has everything: gripping plot lines, interesting characters and an approachable subject. But when a couple things start getting screwy, the whole show can fall apart. The plot stops making sense. The new characters disappear after only an episode or two. The subject matter dissolves into ancillary nothingness. If that was the case with your favorite show, you’d probably stop watching, right?
Well, that’s what we have in Washington D.C. right now, but it’s not a show, it’s the White House.
At 8:28 a.m. Donald Trump began yesterday’s episode by tweeting:
“No WH chaos!” he declared, as if that would automatically make it true.
Well, things went off the rails quickly, as usual. Though the twists and turns were more dramatic than normal.
Hired a week and a half ago, Trump’s bombastic communications director, the man who was going to right the ship, Anthony Scaramucci, was abruptly fired by new Chief of Staff John Kelly. The Scaramucci character burned bright, but quick. It’s almost as if the writers tried to jam all of the Mooch’s plot lines into a few episodes since he had other obligations next week.
If you’re having trouble piecing together the last few weeks’ worth of installments, here you go:
Also, for yet another plot twist, a sitting Republican senator, Jeff Flake (R-AZ), announced that he was releasing a book that he had written in secret. The book’s subject? The GOP’s blame in ensuring Trump’s rise to power and sitting idly by in silence as the craziness and erosion of democratic values continues. Hell, the book even praises Barack Obama and lambastes Republicans for allowing fringe figures to cast false aspersions about 44’s character.
After all of that, Trump, with one of his least self-aware tweets in some time — and there is plenty of competition — sent this out less than ten hours after his morning tweet denying chaos:
Even Trump can’t be this obtuse, right? He’s hiring and firing people for the same position weeks apart. He’s looking for his fourth communications director in less than seven months — for perspective, Obama had five in eight years — and there are rumors of other Cabinet members inching toward their exit stage right.
But like many TV shows, there’s often a voice-over at the end declaring “on the next episode.” That’s what the nation got late yesterday too.
That’s right: Trump wrote his son’s statement about meeting with Russian officials. As the Post reported:
Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Like all good hooks, this one wants to make sure you keep coming back.
The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.
As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III looks into potential obstruction of justice as part of his broader investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, these advisers worry that the president’s direct involvement leaves him needlessly vulnerable to allegations of a coverup.
If this was fiction, you would have already turned it off as having jumped the shark. But what’s going on in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is very real, and you can’t stop watching, even if you want to.
194 days in, 1268 to go
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