No one knows more about presidencies in failure than Carl Bernstein. He was the diarist as Nixon drank, swore and covered-up, on his way down in ignominy. Now he has called out the Trump administration as being in the same kind of free fall.
Appearing on CNN’s New Day, “What there is a sense of, people I talk to in the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill, is that the wheels are coming off the presidency,” Woodward said.
Bernstein also reports on a sense of unease among the President’s men (and women) as they desperately attempt to keep the regime on an even keel.
“It’s almost as if there’s a protectorate around the President. He’s constantly complaining, going into rages about the investigation, about disloyalty among his aides. It’s an extraordinary situation. Unlike anything I have seen in 50 years in Washington.”
John Kelly was installed as Chief of Staff with the idea that he would isolate Trump from his coterie of conspiracy theorists, nationalists, white supremacists and other gadflies. But unless the big guy’s TV is tuned to HGTV, and someone hides the remote, he will still luxuriate in front of Fox and fume to the news from MSNBC & CNN.
I doubt Trump reads newspapers — but I’m sure’s aware of the headlines in the ‘failing’ NY Times and Besos’, ‘non-sales tax paying’ Washington Post.
And there is, of course, the ‘covfefe’ Trump — the tweeter-in-chief. The same guy who can’t stop insulting women and minorities even in the midst of a hurricane.
Bernstein knows people, and apparently they know that it is indeed the “calm before the storm”.
(Credit: Mediaite)
(Update: This diary has been edited to remove the time ‘Bernstein’’s name was spelled ‘Woodward'.