Brace yourselves. It’s time for another story about the dysfunction and incompetence of Donald Trump’s White House, from the popular vote loser himself on down. The opening anecdote of the latest installation is fantastic:
[Trump] took it upon himself to explain that his presidency was actually on track, inviting a pair of POLITICO reporters into the Oval Office for an impromptu meeting. He sat at the Resolute desk, with his daughter Ivanka across from him. One aide said the chat was off-the-record, but Trump insisted, over objections from nervous-looking staffers, that he be quoted.
And then, we can only presume, those nervous-looking staffers buttonholed the reporters on their way out to offer up anonymous quotes about how terrible everything is. Anyway, plenty of White House staffers talked anonymously to Politico’s Josh Dawsey, Shane Goldmacher, and Alex Isenstadt, allowing them to make Trump’s insistence on being quoted bragging about himself and his operation look especially foolish.
The biggest thing—a recurring theme of behind-the-scenes reporting on the Trump White House, but shocking every time it’s reported—is the way staffers have learned to treat Trump like a child:
“If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”[...]
But they’re learning. One key development: White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.
“You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”
Downplaying the downside risk of a decision can win out in the short term. But the risk is a presidential dressing-down—delivered in a yell. “You don’t want to be the person who sold him on something that turned out to be a bad idea,” the person said.
And Trump obviously isn’t responsible for making decisions based on his inability to consider competing options and make reasoned decisions.
It’s like Trump’s own aides are determined to let the world know that however incompetent and unstable and just plain stupid the casual observer might believe Trump to be, reality is worse.