It’s been yet another hectic week for the Trump administration, a sentence political commentators and media members have written countless times since Trump took office. It seems like everytime we turn around, there’s another bit of news that could have ended any other president’s reign of power.
From Stormy Daniels to the Russia investigation to concerns about Trump’s business affairs and more, it seems like the universe has been sending us a myriad of messages begging us to acknowledge that Trump is not suited for the role of president.
But as story after story comes out, Republicans don’t process the news about their president - they just develop a counter-story, almost by rote, to push out and fight back against any negative media coverage. Actually considering the news being presented and letting it affect their opinion of Trump seems off the table.
Trump’s pull over the right wing is baffling and inexplicable. Even when he betrays people on an individual or political level, they don’t abandon their loyalty to him. I mean, everything from his policies to his day to day tweeting could be considered an attack on various groups of people.
I recently witnessed my conservative Hispanic family attempt to explain away Trump’s “shithole countries” language by saying Trump is forceful, if strong, with his language. They didn’t want to admit Trump was saying people like them should never have been let in, because that would contrast with the image they have of Trump as someone who cares about them personally.
Meanwhile, Republicans in congress are finally beginning to acknowledge that clearly Russians had a vested interest in getting Trump into office, even if there is as of yet no evidence of collusion, suggesting that there was something unique about Trump that would make him the best candidate for the nation of Russia, not necessarily the nation of the United States.
And clearly it was a big deal to Russia for Trump to get elected - the extent and severity of their attempts to influence our election cannot be overstated, except by Republicans, who really want to sweep it under the rug of a bulletproof car.
Then there’s the fact that member after member of his administration is being kicked out unceremoniously, blamed for everything going wrong with his administration. And sure, maybe Tillerson, Hicks, Spicer, Scaramucci, Price, Cohn, Porter, Omarosa, Powell, Gorka, Bannon, Priebus and Flynn all had personal reasons why they weren’t suited for the job they were in. But perhaps the most significant issue they all had was they all worked under Trump, and you can’t salvage Trump’s policy.
From his team-building abilities to his maintenance of White House operations, Trump has floundered in getting things off the ground. And everyone who works with him leaves utterly disgraced - hated by Democrats for allying with him, hated by Republicans for failing Trump and hated by Trump for making him look bad. Working for him is really a truly thankless job - so why hasn’t everyone jumped ship yet?
His presidency isn’t going to rise from the ashes of the dumpster fire he’s created in his first year. It’s just going to keep smoldering. It’s time for Republicans to clean it out.