Is the White House hitting the reset button or is it hitting rock bottom? That was the question yesterday as yet another week of high drama transpired in the Trump White House, culminating dramatically, once again, in a Friday termination, this time of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, in the wake of the pyrotechnically profane New Yorker interview of newly hired White House Comms Director Anthony Scaramucci. Now comes the obligatory fallout and the question is, is this just one more rock on the pile of dysfunction for the Trump administration, or has a new leaf been turned over and things are now going to be different?
The Hill:
Mac Stipanovich, a veteran GOP operative in Florida who is close to the Bush family, recalled Jeb Bush’s comment during last year’s Republican presidential primary that Trump would be “the chaos president” if elected.
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“I think that is absolutely the case. It’s not even a matter of interpretation,” Stipanovich said. “We don’t have any effective government, we don’t have any effective leadership and the White House is a snake-pit."
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“How many glasses of wine did The Mooch have at dinner?” one GOP strategist close to the White House asked via text message, in the hours after Scaramucci’s profane interview with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza became public. “This does not come across as rational thinking.”
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"How this level of dysfunction helps the White House move its agenda, I have no idea," said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. "This is a circus right now."
The GOP has always had a Faustian bargain to say the very least in Donald Trump. The higher ups appeared quite willing to use Trump’s celebrity and Washington outsider “brand” to serve its political agenda but now in the wake of failure over health care and the ever expanding Russia scandal the GOP is having buyer’s remorse and pulling away from Trump, even as rumors fly that Trump is pulling away from the Republican party, as signified by Priebus’ departure. Again, The Hill:
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, GOP strategist Rick Tyler declared Trump’s presidency “effectively over.”
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Tyler, who previously served as communications director on Sen.
Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) 2016 presidential campaign, later told The Hill that Trump's skill sets don't match his current office.
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“The president campaigned in part on the idea that he was a business guy who knew how to make deals. It turns out his skill sets are completely inappropriate for the presidency. Trump is enormously talented — but his talents have no applicability to governing," he said
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Trump loyalists vigorously dispute that assessment. Their spirits have always been buoyed, even in the administration’s darkest days, by the knowledge that Trump defied all predictions to become president in the first place.The most optimistic among them believe that Trump loyalists have belatedly seized full control of the White House and that the changes could ultimately lead to less drama, not more.
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Even Priebus himself gamely insisted in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity on Friday evening that “I think actually going a different direction, hitting a reset button, is actually a good thing and the president did that.”
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But others assert that Trump is in uncharted territory once again.“If he’s had a worse week, I can’t think of it,” said Stipanovich.
So there you have it, either Trump has finally regrouped and is now going to find his way, and lead his followers to the great life he promised them, or the political compass is just as smashed as ever and its still the blind leading the blind in Trump’s Washington. The one thing to be sure of is that in this political climate, there's nothing to be sure of. Anything goes.