You know, it wold be tempting for some to try to rationalize Trump’s latest disaster as his being a victim of unintended consequences. And they’d be dead wrong. There was nothing in the last 5 days that was unintended. On Saturday Trump fully intended to give cover to his neo Nazi and KKK base,earning praise from the hater leadership. On Monday his handlers put their foot down, and Trump denounced the white terrorists, but he didn’t. He was sullen, he kept his head down, he was the kid being forced to apologize for hitting his little brother. On Tuesday Trump stood at the podium and said “Nyah-nyah-nyah, I had my fingers crossed behind my back, I didn’t mean nuffin!” No one should have been surprised, his childish reaction to being pressured is always to throw a Trumper tantrum.
I know, in the past week I’ve been saying to watch the polls, let’s see just how much support Trump has thrown away with his racist antics. Forget that for a minute. I have a new thing to watch. The side door of the west wing. Trumps bad tempered tirade over the weekend already started an exodus of CEO’s fleeing him, forcing him to disband his two PR couture business councils. But the next exodus could be from the west wing, and it could cripple White House operations, and depending on who goes, put the entire country in actual danger.
Axios is reporting that that exodus could be one person away. All it would take is one person. And I’m not talking about secretaries and basic staff. I’m talking about his senior inner circle. There was no shock in the west wing about the content of Trump’s rant yesterday, it has already been reported that he has been fuming about these things privately for some time. They were only shocked and disappointed that he exposed them to public scrutiny. And if they stay, they fear the perception that they feel the same way that he does. To quote Axios;
A West Wing confidant tells us: "The danger for Trump now is that one senior resignation will start a run on the bank" — as soon as one top staffer quits, several others could follow.
Now, which one if any will start the salmon run to calmer waters? My guess would be Gary Cohn. He is very influential in the Trump White House, especially on economic matters, But he is born to an Eastern European Jewish family, and he was standing right behind Trump yesterday when he enabled the kind of people who think that the jackbooted assholes who persecuted his grandparents were swell folks. Axios reported that his reaction was “somewhere between appalled and furious”. He has put a very prosperous and successful life on hold for this, and he would lose nothing in very publicly giving His Lowness the middle finger and going back to private life.
John Kelly and HR McMaster are two more prime candidates. Both are career military men, and both value their honor and integrity. Trump’s validation of the neo Nazi’s stands against everything their brother soldiers fought and died for in WWII. As it appears in another diary today, Jennifer Rubin is calling Kelly an abject failure as Chief of Staff and calling for his resignation. But it has been reported that Kelly has been calling other staffers, urging them to hang in there, and McMaster may well decide that loyalty to the country, to not resign while North Korea is such an active and dangerous threat, and Afghanistan is such a sore spot for Trump may keep him in place. But the one thing that could push them over the edge would be a resurgence of power and influence by Steve Bannon in the west wing.
White House Counsel Don Mcgahn is another prime candidate. He is only 48 years old, and his working conditions are less than ideal. The Trump-Russia scandal has him having to refer staffers to outside counsel when they ask him questions because he represents the office, and not the staff. He too has little to gain by continuing to be tarred with the Trump racist brush, and the earlier he departs, the better it will be for his reputation.
This is the problem with being a self indulgent pig. When you show loyalty to no one but yourself, you cannot expect much loyalty to flow in the other direction back to you from the underlings, especially if they have other, more lucrative opportunities open to them. And if the mass migration of senior staffers starts, the lower staffers will most likely be more than happy to follow their bosses examples and blow that pop stand too. And then Trump is truly in the hurt locker. Bluntly put, even people standing on street corners with buckets of dirty water and squeegees have more self respect than to go to work for Trump.
Trump himself, Robert Mueller, the door to the west wing, the polls, the list goes on and on. If this keeps up, we’re gonna have to mutate, like the sci fi movie “Beast with 1000 eyes” just to keep track of all of this stuff. But one thing is sure, all of the “fun” in covering Trump stopped on Saturday.
Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 · 7:04:46 PM +00:00 · Murfster35
I have received several well thought out comments that nobody will leave because they knew what they signed up for. Here’s my response. I seriously doubt that any of these people knew that Trump would expose himself as a serious enabler of racists and neo Nazi’s. And unlike most things, this will NOT be only about Trump. Most, if not all of these people have families. His fawning association with Trump has already cost “The Mooch” his marriage. How many of his advisors will choose to make the same decision when their wives start complaining about things whispered about her, and their kids come home from school crying cuz the other kids called them names and wouldn’t hang with them? Not very many I believe, and Axios is right. Once ONE person makes that moral statement, the floodgates open for everybody else to follow suit.