It is not a good time to be a mole in the Trump swamp. The dull, plodding, sluggard nesting in the Oval Office is furious with the treachery of his aides, who, once again, have reported him for being a dull, plodding, sluggard, who spends up to nine hours a day watching cable news and chatting on the phone. And now the sluggard is out for blood. Politico:
In the latest, [tell all book] former White House communications aide Cliff Sims recounts the president calling to demand the names of White House leakers.
“‘Give me their names,’ he said, his eyes narrowing,” Sims writes. “‘I want these people out of here. I’m going to take care of this. We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders.’”
Last October, the phrase “Executive Time” entered the daily lexicon. It’s a term cobbled together by former chief of staff John Kelly, and it sounds better than goofing off, because how else would one characterize Trump’s dysfunctional pattern of showing up in the Oval Office at 11:30 a.m., phoning his cronies, having lunch, and then watching TV all afternoon — after his usual morning session, of course, of arising in the wee hours to blast his unique melange of policy and piffle into cyberspace? The October report was followed up by a report Sunday by Axios, publishing three months worth of Trump’s private schedules, which revealed that 60% of Trump’s time is spent doing euphemistic “executive time” tasks — and this is separate and apart from all the vacations and golf outings. Trump reportedly hit the roof and now the search for the White House mole is on.
West Wing officials managing the hunt have enlisted the help of the White House IT office, and believe they are making progress in narrowing the search for potential suspects. One Trump official said the culprit is likely a career government employee who works in the White House, not a person appointed by Trump himself, but did not offer specific evidence.
The search has been approved by the office of acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Trump himself — who has been infuriated by leaks from within his White House — is aware of the mole hunt and supports the effort, according to one of the officials. [...]
“You take the list of who the schedule was sent to and you take who was on that list and who has access to certain things and it’s not that difficult to find out who the person is,” said one of the officials. “The government tracks everything on [employees’] computers.”
Bear in mind that the author of the now-famous New York Times op-ed, ”I Am Part Of the Resistance Inside The Trump Administration,” who only identified him/herself as a “senior official,” dedicated to “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” has never been found. Could the op-ed author and the mole be one and the same person? And what might the mole have in mind to do next? Stay tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel.
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[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]