This is serious. The last week or so has been disastrous for the Trump Administration, almost entirely because of its own foolishness, recklessness, and lack of competence. As I have noted more than once in this period, its missions are too important to be placed in jeopardy by hubris and stupidity, but that is what is happening. This is a phenomenon for which the President himself is entirely at fault. I have scant hope that he is capable of either recognizing the peril he is placing the nation in, or reforming. The President and his hand-picked loose cannons aren’t just shooting themselves in the metaphorical foot. The photo above is more accurate.
First, of course, we have the President’s own cruel, useless, gratuitous post insulting Rob Reiner after the director and his wife were murdered. Trump might as well have hit himself in the face with a cast-iron frying pan on national TV. It gave people who already hate him ammunition to say, “See?” It made moderates question his stability, self-control and character if they already didn’t, and it put his defenders in the position of defending the indefensible, thus diminishing their credibility and influence.
The we had the Marx Brothers performances by Kash Patel, Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, plus the White House, sending out inaccurate information on the Brown shooting, following a disturbing pattern of informing the public of “facts” that had not been sufficiently checked.
Finally, we had the inexplicable fiasco of Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles giving a series of 11 interviews to Vanity Fair over the past year. The magazine, a card-carrying member of the relentlessly anti-Trump, Democratic Party pocketed Axis news media, of course intends the President no good, yet she blathered on about behind-the-scenes intrigue, painting an operation crippled by chaos (at least as her comments were presented by the magazine) and gave the news media a juicy “bombshell” quote that was ensured of MSNBC immortality, saying that the President had “an alcoholic’s personality” because he believes “there’s nothing he can’t do.”
Nice. Shut up, Susie. I guess Trump doesn’t need embedded Democratic operatives and turncoats to leak dubious or damaging inside information to the hostile press: the President’s loyal staff will do it anyway! Morons.
Let’s see, in no particular order:
- Vanity Fair cannot be trusted and has a well-established anti-Trump bias. Wiles should not have been talking to one of its writers. In fact, a White House Chief of Staff shouldn’t be talking to anyone about what goes on in the White House.
- Her comment about Trump’s personality was particularly irresponsible. Most people will assume that by “personality of an alcoholic” she means that Trump is like a drunk, and therefore untrustworthy. She’s not a psychiatrist or a psychologist or an expert on alcoholism. I lived with an alcoholic for 43 years, and I have no clue what “alcoholic personality” means. Wiles says it means Trump “thinks he can do anything.” That’s funny: my wife was crippled by low self-esteem and anxiety and didn’t believe she could do what she in fact did extremely well.
- The President shrugged off his closest aide’s indiscretion. He shouldn’t. That kind of “talking out of school” should be a firing offense, more so for a Presidential aide than anyone.
- Wiles responded to the article in a statement on X yesterday, calling it “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” What did she expect from Vanity Fair? Did this really surprise her? Really?
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” she went on.“The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”
Don’t bet on it, you silly fool.
I’m looking at my “Six Pillars of Character” chart, and the ethics values Trump and his team have apparently left behind in a file cabinet somewhere are trustworthiness, reliability, civility, decency, competence, self-restraint, and prudence,
Good job, guys!
Ethics Alarms 
Vanity Fair fiasco the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Reiner comment disastrous. J.D. Vance looking in peril as well. Very sad. Counting down to non-stop impeachments in a couple of years.
Vice-Presidents are rarely successful at getting elected to the top job in their own right. Vance’s chances were always going to be slim. Having to campaign on his record during Trump’s administration handicaps him further.
Surely not “slim.” Who is a viable Democratic candidate with a shot at being nominated? Newsom is unlikely (in addition to being ridiculous) because he’s a white male. Jasmine Crockett and AOC are not getting elected President. We’ve elected three VPs since 1968, four if you count Gore’s popular vote win. Nixon, Bush, Biden. The ones who lost, like Mondale and Harris, were weak candidates. The question is how popular with the GOP base Trump is when his term is over. Reagan, TR and Jackson were strong enough to pick their successor even though none of them were especially strong candidates.
It is and long has been obvious to many that Trump fails in all six of the Pillars of Character. Those who voted for him, especially in the election last year, and those of MAGA who continue to heap praise on him both enable and contribute to his deficiencies. It has been said of him too often, ‘That’s just the way he is’. It is more accurate to say that’s the way he wants to be. Yes, I know, fish gotta swim, etc., but, human beings are not fish; most of us have at least a bit more intelligence and volition than creatures of the sea. Trump chooses to be the way he is because of he has the ego of a 2-year-old, and he craves loves the adulation he receives.
Sadly, our best hope is that more mature minds within the administration can hold things together until voters bring in a better, more public-minded Congress in the all too-far-off mid-terms next year. The room for optimism is slim.
Jack: It gave people who already hate him ammunition to say, “See?”
Yeah, so what? Nothing we did not already know.
Someone posted on Facebook that his insult of Reiner was a “new low.” My response: “He has been (falsely) accused of inciting an insurrection for the last for years and this is a new low?” Insulting Reiner is worse than trying to overthrow the government? The hysteria on the left is hysterical.
-Jut
Thanks, Jut. That was a good Moonstruck, “Snap out of it!” Whack!
Yes, but?
If these “controversies” are viewed as intentional reality-tv-chum-no-press-is-bad-press then it all makes sense. From a political support perspective, Trump has long sense shot his feet off and this proben feet are not needed.
I wonder what they’ve got lined up next after this blows over? Back to Epstein? More double taps and war crimes? Venezuela blockade illegality? Good illegal immigrants? An improper Supreme Court argument?
I must agree with Here’sJohnny. Those of us who did not vote for Trump saw his selfishness and cruelty, almost to the point of psychosis. To think that it would not seep into his domestic and foreign policy is wishful thinking. It permeates his relationships with foreign leaders, Congress and the general public. He is a small man who wants his way and is willing to do real harm to real people in the process.
Thankfully, some Republicans are growing a spine (see Indiana). To think that anyone on his staff in the White House or Cabinet is a mitigating voice has not watched a Cabinet meeting or press conference. They are either sycophants or have even more destructive ideas than he does.
As for Susie Wiles, she is a smart cookie. She knew who she was talking to and did not say anything she didn’t know would appear in print. She should be fired, but I am grateful to her.
“She should be fired, but I am grateful to her.” Complex, provocative, pungent commentary in few words.
Always glad to have you return to the comment wars, Jan! First time since 2022??? Is that possible? Time flies…
This has definitely made me not want to vote for Trump in 2028. I of course will choose the party of back room machinations, the wrap up smear, censorship, gun control, DEI, and unfettered debt creation because they do not have sycophants and destructive ideas and are more public minded. Of course I am being facetious.
I have already gone on record to condemn the comment regarding Rob Reiner. I do have to agree with the idea that being a conspiracy theorist is not a bad thing. Does the FBI draw together facts that suggest multiple persons are involved in wrongdoing for the purpose of developing a charge of conspiracy? Of course they do. Do all those charged with conspiracy to do x convicted? No. That means that the FBI and other law enforcement engage in theories regarding wrong doing The concept has been bastardized to create in the mind of slow witted people that anyone designated a conspiracy theorist is a whack job. We were told that the government gave us the best advice available about Covid and anyone challenging that was labeled a conspiracy theorist. JD Vance went on to identify areas in which he did suggest conspiracies; one of silence and the other issues relating to the pandemic. He did make comments about Haitians hunting and eating pets which was ill advised at best.
Right now the public is being told that the economy is in shambles because the unemployment rates were rising. Well when SNAP recipients now have to look for work and were not in the labor force before but are now then the U/E rate rises. We hear that things are not affordable because inflation hovers around 3% but real incomes rose in the past 12 months 4+ %. This means that consumers have more purchasing power.
There has been a shift in demand for labor especially in the capital region. Counties in Maryland and Northern Virginia are having to cope with reductions in Government employment but this is actually deflationary in the labor market in which labor transitions to higher pay government employment to more market based pay in the private sector. Given that many government employees do not actually produce goods and services that consumers buy there is relatively no change in supplies of goods but as these employees move back to the private sector they will be producing consumer or intermediate goods that will increase supplies leading to tempered consumer prices.
I do agree that Ms. Wiles should be canned. I cannot offer a rationale for her commentary except that she appears to have grown up in drug culture and uses those experiences to create her metaphors. The other explanations are that she is not as competent as has been hyped and is simply a DEI hire with a famous pedigree or she intentionally seeks to undermine the cohesiveness of the group. I for one do not see a chaotic environment. More to the point when everyone is shown to to appear to be in agreement during cabinet meetings you can argue that they are all yes people but you cannot argue that you witness chaos.
Just another week in the clown show presidency! The script writers are scraping for new plot twists at this point I guess.
The Susie Wiles story did surprise me, as she (unlike Noem with her endless photoshoots or Kash Patel with his “live-blog the FBI investigation” tweets) does NOT seem generally inclined to pursue the limelight in a quest for more social media followers or whatever Noem and Patel think they are doing.
So I do wonder what her game is here…. Is she working on adjusting her image for the post-Trump era, perhaps? What was her intended audience? Interesting…
This is fake news of the most atrocious sort. One of Trump’s few redeeming qualities is his near total abstinence from alcohol. In a rare moment of self awareness, Trump even shared, “could you imagine if I drank, what a disaster that would be?”
Unless something’s changed, and I’ve heard no reports to this effect, this comment is hinting that Trump ‘fell off the bandwagon’ and started drinking (even though his abstinence is not due to alcoholism), and is implying that Trump is becoming even more undone. (Wink-wink, nudge-nudge). It is all part of the general character assassination, no different than the various reckless and malicious statement about his age or purported cognitive decline.
Trump running his mouth does enough to assassinate his own character. ‘Alcoholic personality’ must be recognized for the end-round of libel that is.
Trump commented on that description and for some strange reason said he agreed with it, that this was one reason he had never used alcoholic beverages.