This is one of the more remarkable articles because it captures more of the casual idiocy that is the Trump WH. Unraveling continues, regardless. It’s not about the nuclear football as it is Trump trying to dictate NFL policy with a tweet.
“The one thing that makes this week so much different is they’re actually trying to fight back. Typically, Trump would say something completely insane and they would just let the media cycle sit. At least they’re trying to fight back. They’re fighting back in the worst possible way, but like, you can see the effort. You know these guys are fucking idiots, but the effort is there.”
The former White House official was reluctant to blame Trump’s handlers or communications staff for the would/wouldn’t “double negative” excuse, which a second former White House official described to me as “one of the all-time great” messaging mistakes in American politics. It’s important to keep in mind, the first person said, that there’s only so much any member of the staff can do, especially when it comes to how Trump talks about Russia.
“At the most fundamental level, the reason why the president struggles so much with this in general is he cannot separate the accusations against him of collusion from the fact that Russia meddled in the election, and he feels like if he were to give an inch on meddling, they’re gonna take a mile on collusion.”
[...]
Still, the perfect distillation of the White House’s amped-up war on reality this week came after a brief moment of darkness that day in the Cabinet Room, when the lights were turned off and then quickly turned back on. Trump joked that it was the work of the intelligence agencies, but ABC News reported that they were accidentally turned off by John Kelly, the president’s chief of staff.
Kellyanne Conway was asked about the incident by Fox News. She said, “Don’t believe what you see. We see things unsourced, thinly sourced, outsourced. There was an article yesterday we denied was true, ran yesterday, but doesn’t have a single White House or single administration source. A lot of folks on the outside think they know what is going on here. You know what is going on here: great economy, security across the world, tax cuts that are working. This is success, and no, but the president did make a joke about that. He said I have full faith in the intelligence community. The lights went off. They went back on.”
nymag.com/...
What a shit-show.
Trumps two tweets yesterday came within a half-hour after he arrived at Bedminster for golf day #129.