Just another day in the paradise on earth called Trumpmenistan, where the weather’s always rainy, and the beer is always warm. In other words, same old shit. Another day, another scandal. But this latest little blow up about Reince Priebus calling on the FBI to toss the White House a lifeline and trash the press reports about collusion with Russia has kind of spread out some.
Now, there is starting to be some guarded, and not so guarded, speculation about the shelf life of Steve Bannon. I wrote a DIARY yesterday outlining how Priebus was now in the same precarious, possibly untenable position that Mike Flynn was in a couple of weeks ago due to his interaction with the FBI on a current investigation. There were several comments in the diary that questioned how much longer Bannon could last as chief strategist if this scandal continues to spread. Personally, at the moment I think Priebus is in a much more precarious situation. Trump has never really liked priebus, Bannon is his right hand. And Priebus, as Chief of Staff would make a high profile and convenient scapegoat, along with sticking it in the eye of the GOP establishment.
My readers weren’t the only ones wondering about Bannon’s grip on survival. Thursday night on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, either Lawrence or one of his guests posited the question of how long Bannon could go on, not only from the scandal, but how many more weeks of pounding in the media, bunker mentality, dysfunction, and sinking poll numbers can Trump’s ego take before he finally turns on the architect of all of this, the one that is bringing him all of this grief? That’s a very good question, at what point does Trump’s all encompassing ego make him lash out at the source of his problems in his mind?
But in this scenario, there are four variables that I don’t hear being discussed at all. Those variables are Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Jared. Bannon may well be King Trump’s White House Rasputin, but nobody has his ear like his kids do. And never let anybody tell you that they don’t have a vested interest in the way things are going in the White House.
Eric and Donnie Jr. are allegedly running the day to day operations of Trump’s business while he’s busy fucking up the country. Ivanka is having her own marketing issues in her business with the decline of the family’s name, and Jared has divested his conflicting interests to be able to work with Pop-in-law in the White House. They need a strong Trump brand name to thrive, and this is not going well for them.
Since Daddy’s bigoted rise, Ivanka has seen a reversal in fortunes. More and more retail outlets are dropping her line, in some cases pulling them from the shelves, in others sticking them in the middle of generic clothing racks, taking them from the branded racks with her name on a cardboard placard. More and more retailers are removing Trump’s high priced, low quality, foreign produced crap from their shelves, and other than foreign interest money pouring into his Washington hotel, bookings at most of his other hotels are down, so are golf bookings at his resorts. Trump branded condo complexes are pulling his name from the marquee and over the doors, pulling up and replacing Trump logo carpeting from the lobby and giving contact employees new uniforms without the Trump name or logo on them. And all you need to know about Eric’s high business acumen is that Daddy had to bail him out of a bankruptcy of a failed industrial park in South Carolina, creating a minor controversy when Daddy tried to screw the state of South Carolina into paying for the cleanup of the toxic waste in the derelict building he had just purchased from his son. Didn’t work.
This Presidency is a nightmare scenario for his children. To keep the company running at a profit, they need the Trump brand, name recognition, and glamour press coverage he received as a real estate mogul and reality television star, not the daily coverage that they’re getting now, of a morally bankrupt, incompetent, racist and possibly mentally unstable personality. This Presidency is killing the business.
The Trump name, brand and glamorous image is essential to their livelihoods and inheritance. I don’t see this as being able to continue for much longer until a full court “over cheeseburgers, fries and coke on Sundays” press starts for Daddums to ditch Bannon, and to get someone competent in there to start turning this thing around, so Trump can look good, and they can start making oodles of money again. Once that blitz starts, I’m betting it’s “hasta la vista baby” to Bannon in short order. Look how long Chris Christie lasted once Jared Kushner started doing his Wormtongue number into Trump’s ear. Mark my words, while leaked outside revelations may take Bannon down sooner, even if he stays in the shadows, his days are numbered when the Trump children decide to do a “Julius Caesar on the Senate steps” number on him.