In case you haven't noticed, the whole operation is coming unstrung all at once, and it starts with the guy at the top. Over the last few days, in addition to traversing the landscape talking unmitigated rot with dubious syntax in front of steadily dwindling live audiences, the president has taken to sharing a snuff film on his social media platform. On Thursday, he retreated on the notion of live-streaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, thereby hanging Pete Hegseth out to dry, which is not altogether a bad thing, now that I think about it.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the administration, we had the disastrous debut of new press secretary Katie Zacharia, which has been followed by a torrent of leaks from inside the administration fitting her career for a shroud. There was the bungling dismissal of Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece, which was followed by nervous leaks from the administration as to whether Madame Guilfoyle will spill all the Trump family beans. There's a serious feud between former Trump parking garage lawyer Alina Habba and Richard Grenell over a multi-million donation earmarked for the Kennedy Center that allegedly has gone missing. From Axios:
Former Trump attorney Alina Habba told the president that another one of his top advisers—former Kennedy Center leader Ric Grenell—failed to deposit a multimillion-dollar donation that her billionaire husband made to the center a year ago, according to four senior administration officials and three insiders briefed on the controversy. Grenell denied the accusations as "absurd" and a "lie." Habba and her husband, Turhan Mildon, declined to comment through a spokesperson.
And now there's this, from Politico:
At moments of frustration and adversity, President Donald Trump has long made a habit of calling up friends to ask what they think of his advisers—and whether he should consider making changes. These days, he’s asking about Susie Wiles, the once-unassailable White House chief of staff. Trump has been soliciting allies’ views of Wiles and musing about replacements for his top aide, according to four people with direct knowledge of the conversations. We’re told Trump is getting plenty of encouragement from rivals to Wiles and people who’ve felt “burned” by his loyal enforcer. Some have been sharing unfavorable coverage of Wiles and her family ... with the president. “She’s burned a lot of people,” a Republican operative close to the White House said.
Wiles’s departure would be an earthquake. And simply contemplating the idea of the president's picking a new chief of staff is flatly terrifying. (Mark Levin, come on down!) Meanwhile, we have the president's barnstorming. Here he is, helping Ohio GOP senatorial candidate Jon Husted.
“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body. ... And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass and I looked at the whole. And then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands, he’s got these, like, claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete. I didn’t know that because he doesn’t talk about that. Congratulations, now they finally know. That was very good.”
Two more years of this?