If you once reveled in the over-the-top story lines driven by Kerry Washington's character Olivia Pope in the TV drama Scandal, you know why that show has lost a bit of its juice in the last couple seasons. Even a fictional tale of Washington intrigue and deceit can't compete with the episodic scandals pouring out of Donald Trump's White House; the only difference is the characters aren't as easy on the eyes and Trump's actually ruining our country.
This week’s "Oh, sorry, we had no idea" spin about wife abuser Rob Porter is only the latest in a long line of real-life scandals—any one of which would have rocked to the core a White House that was actually functional. But in a West Wing where hours of Fox News consumption has replaced the daily intelligence briefing as the pr*sident's sole source of intel, scandals ebb and flow like the sea: daily. NBC News has a list of some the most serious scandals that rose and fell shockingly quickly because Trump always managed to steal the spotlight back. It's not hyperbole to say that there's more scandals flowing from Trump’s White House than there are reporters to investigate them.
- Jan. 25, 2017: Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 after a surge in membership applications following Trump’s presidential victory, according to the New York Times.
- Feb. 13, 2017: National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned just after the Washington Post first reported that the Justice Department had informed the White House that Flynn could be subject to blackmail.
- May 9, 2017: Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. Two days later, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt the firing was due to the Russia investigation. "When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story."
- Aug. 18, 2017: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn resigned from his role as a White House adviser amid allegations that he pushed for regulatory changes that benefited his investments.
- Oct. 2, 2017: The Interior Department’s inspector general’s office announced it opened an investigation into Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s use of taxpayer-funded charter planes.
- Oct. 30, 2017: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and 2016 campaign aide Rick Gates were indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe; another 2016 adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty.
- Dec. 1, 2017: Flynn, the former national security adviser, pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI.
- Jan. 31, 2018: The Washington Post reported that HUD Secretary Ben Carson “allowed his son to help organize an agency ‘listening tour’ in Baltimore last summer despite warnings from department lawyers that doing so risked violating federal ethics rules… Career officials and political appointees raised concerns days before the visit that Carson’s son, local businessman Ben Carson Jr., and daughter-in-law were inviting people with whom they potentially had business dealings.”
- Feb. 8, 2018: White House staff secretary Rob Porter officially departed the White House after the allegations surfaced that he abused his ex-wives; Porter has denied the allegations.
Just at look at that list—remember way back to when Tom Price had to resign as HHS Secretary—and did he ever pay back the taxpayer money he used for his luxurious travels?
Or what about Jeff Sessions so misremembering his contacts with Russians that he had to amend his sworn testimony several times, or how about the multiple times Jared Kushner has updated his security clearance with foreign contacts he originally omitted?
Or hey, remember when Kellyanne Conway tried to turn a nationally televised interview from the White House into Ivanka Trump's personal QVC network?
None of these even made the cut although they're all series ethics breaches, not to mention potential legal violations. In any serious administration, Sessions would have resigned, Kushner would have had his security clearance yanked and been forced to step down, and Conway would have been sent packing without a second thought.
But this White House isn't actually governing the nation, which isn’t to say it isn’t having grave national consequences—it is. But its occupants spend more time containing Trump than they do thinking about serious policy initiatives on a broad spectrum of issues. Instead, just like a bad hit-job memo, White House aides cherrypick issues of focus that will keep Trump occupied while everything is left to lawmakers on Capitol Hill or perhaps simply not attended to at all.
Just think about how irrelevant he was to the most recent budget deal—lawmakers literally ignored his shutdown threat in order to get something done.
On the TV show Scandal, the viewer is always left thinking, “When do these people have time to actually do their jobs?”
Exactly.