The lead story today from the Washington Post gives a bit of color to what we already know: Trump’s presidency is chaotic and failing because he has no idea what he’s doing an acts out of impulse and anger.
As usual, Trump is blaming other people for his inability to stick to the bullshit explanation that he and Pence cooked up for more than a few hours:
Privately, Trump has lashed out at the communications office — led by press secretary Sean Spicer and communications director Michael Dubke — and has spoken candidly with advisers about a broad shake-up that could include demotions or dismissals. The president personally has conducted postmortem interviews with aides about the Comey saga, investigating the unending stream of headlines he considers unfairly negative, according to several White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Trump is cracking down on unauthorized leaks.
That’s not new. What is a bit shocking is this (much higher up in the story):
Across Washington, Trump’s allies have been buzzing about the staff’s competence as well as the president’s state of mind. One GOP figure close to the White House mused privately about whether Trump was “in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion.”
Trump’s own allies think that that Trump is a dangerous lunatic. This leads to an obvious question which is:
Why are you still supporting him?
It’s true that there’s an obvious proximate answer: Trump has no real ideology or legislative agenda outside of using the power of the state to attack immigrants and minorities. In fact, Trump’s main goals relate to leveraging the presidency for financial gain.
The accommodation the Republican elite has with Trump is then clear: Trump gives them control of the courts, tax cuts, and dismantles the welfare state. In return they cover up his corruption and normalise his general vileness.
However, I think it’s important to take a step back from being sophisticated. What we’re seeing here isn’t just a political accommodation. It’s really a complete institutional failure of the elite American political establishment. To restate:
Trump’s own allies don’t just think he’s coarse and undignified. They think he is mentally ill. But they are still ok with him having nuclear weapons and control of the FBI.
This is really crazy, and it underscores how the Trump story is, to a large extent, one of elite failure. As a contrast, faced with a dangerous neo-Nazi in the final round of their presidential election, the French establishment and the other candidates recommended, as a group, voting for the other candidate (who overperformed the polls substantially).
The point here is not that the French establishment is perfect. Just that it at least does the job of avoiding catastrophically bad outcomes. This seems like a minimal level of competence.
The Republicans are doings the opposite, and they, apparently know it and will admit it to reporters!
No clever political analysis will explain that. Something is really wrong here.