Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has previously assured us that she will be going away now that the election is over but who still hasn't followed through on that, took to the Sunday shows to badmouth Mitt Romney, praise her boss for not throwing his political opponent in jail despite his absolute lack of authority to do that, and insist that Donald J. Trump doesn't need those intelligence briefings he has been mostly refusing to get because he gets all the secret world information he needs to know from ... foreign leaders?
BASH: [...] Is this true? Has he turned down the opportunity to get classified intelligence briefings?
CONWAY: So he is receiving classified intelligence briefings and the president-elect is also receiving information through his personal and on the phone meetings with over what's now 41 world leaders. In addition to meeting with 60 men and women who could serve in his government but certainly without the promise of any formal position or certainly — [...]
BASH: But, Kellyanne, has he turned down classified briefings?
CONWAY: I really -- I can't discuss that publicly.
Since the election, according to the Washington Post's sources, he's agreed to sit for only two of the provided daily classified intelligence briefings. But don't worry, says his staff, there's probably nothing important there that he isn't already hearing from his congratulatory phone calls from world leaders. No doubt they’re getting him up to speed.
No matter how incompetent and buffoonish we were expecting a Trump White House to be, we may have to revise our estimates downwards. Again.
On the bright side, Kellyanne Conway has high praise for her boss for not immediately turning America into a banana republic a mere three weeks after being elected. Kellyanne, please explain why the president-elect is not pushing to throw his election opponent, Hillary Clinton, in prison for unspecified crimes?
I think he's being quite magnanimous and at the same time he's not undercutting at all the authority and the autonomy of the Department of Justice, of the FBI, of the House Committees, who knows where the evidence may lead if, in fact, it were -- if the investigation were re-opened somewhere.
But this is the president-elect's position right now and I would say he has been incredibly gracious and magnanimous to Secretary Clinton at a time when for whatever reason her folks are saying they will join in a recount to try to somehow undo the 70 plus electoral votes that he beat her by.
Yes indeed, nothing is quite as magnanimous as not demanding your opponent be thrown in jail. Mind you, the president-elect has no ability whatsoever to throw his opponent in jail—it's not actually a thing. And as president, he will likewise have no authority to throw his opponents in jail if he’s not feeling magnanimous; that is not among the duties or powers of the office he has just been elected to. It's not clear if Donald Trump knows that. It's really not clear Kellyanne Conway knows that.
But that is where we are now: Conway is celebrating how gracious it is for the president-elect to be "not undercutting" the authority of the nation's actual law enforcement officers when deciding who should or should not be jailed. As if that's a thing Donald should be getting a trophy for. This is a thing, with Donald; he is forever expecting praise for not doing the worst possible thing at any given moment in time.
Despite being elected president, Donald Trump appears to still have no actual concept of what the office he will soon be appointed to actually does. He doesn't need intelligence briefings; he gets what he needs to know from "world leaders" who tell him things on the phone. He is being generous to his opponent by not jailing her, though he has no actual authority to jail her unless he wants to create a constitutional crisis the likes of which we haven't seen in the last hundred years.
An idiot surrounded by idiots. Oh, this will be grand.