With the elevation of Anthony Scaramucci, an avid Trump defender with no communications background, to White House communications director, Donald Trump has once again demonstrated that regardless of skill set or training or knowledge of government, he is only interested in one thing: People who will go to war for him amid the Russia scandal that is smothering his White House and his family.
As Nicole Wallace, a former communications director for George W. Bush, told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Friday morning:
“This is about Donald Trump wanting better-looking men spreading his message.”
Scaramucci was hired over the objections of Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon. But he reportedly has close ties to Don Jr. and was interviewed by only Trump and Ivanka for the job.
Wallace observed that Scaramucci's hiring along with Trump’s recent grousing about Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation demonstrates that Trump has zero understanding of the demands of these positions and how they relate to a functioning government.
“The president views the press operation, the communications director and the press secretary, as people who fight his fights. In the very same way we now know, thanks to the New York Times interview, that he viewed the Attorney General as someone who would protect him from incoming fire. He has laid bare that he has no understanding of the basic functions of the White House staff.”
In other words, the latest reshuffling brings into sharper focus the fact that Trump sees his administration and his staff only as people who are doing his bidding, not as part of a greater apparatus that supports the government.
Wallace viewed this, perhaps presciently, as a sign that Trump's penchant for self-destructive behavior is now moving beyond an inward focus to actually decimating the government around him that's meant to serve the American people.
"It should make people very nervous," she said, "so far we've only covered Donald Trump in the process of inflicting himself with political harm. There is now clearly, not a functioning White House staff."
The cancer of Donald Trump is metastasizing, folks, and the question is both whether and at what point any outside entity will intervene to blunt its growth.