Goodbye, Uncle Rex

Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State. Donald Trump unexpectedly fired him after rumors of Tillerson's departure kept persisting even as the Secretary of State himself vowed to stay on for as long as he could.  Which wasn't very long.

Out most avuncular Secretary of State since Dean Acheson did his best to reassure allies of American commitment to global stability - and he even tried to keep America in international accords like the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal - and he was pretty much the only thing standing between Trump and total chaos (except for Defense Secretary James Mattis).  Now what can we do?  Pray.  Because nothing is going to stop Trump from pursuing his own dangerous, risky foreign policy and making the sort of rash decisions that Tillerson always tried to keep him from going through with.   Trump isn't going to have anyone holding him back.     

CIA Director Mike Pompeo is expected to replace him, and he's supposed to be simpatico with rump on foreign affairs.  The one good thing about this is that Pompeo has the same important qualification for the job of Secretary of State that Tillerson had - he's not John Bolton.

But then, Pompeo probably got the job because, unlike Bolton, he doesn't have an unsightly, camera-unfriendly mustache.

Because some guys just look all wrong with a mustache.

Go ask Alice. :-O   

Communication Gap

Anthony Scaramucci is out of the White House after only eleven days.  William Henry Harrison actually served longer as President in 1841.  His firing is the biggest shakeup in the Trump administration since Friday.

Scaramucci pretty much did himself in with his off-the-record talk with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza that turned out to be an on-the-record interview because he never actually told Lizza not to report on it.  In that interview, he used foul language, spoke disparagingly of other White House staffers, and displayed a bad attitude.  But even without all that, he went around promoting his own dubious self-worth and tried to make himself the star of this presidential reality show.  Trump was deeply offended by that.  After all, such behavior is . . . his turf!  

So, with John Kelly in as the new White House chief of staff, Scaramucci, who offended Kelly's sensibilities, wasn't going to last very long.  A lot of people believe that Kelly can now get some order established in the administration, and this can only help Trump get his agenda through Congress (watch out, the Republicans are still trying to repeal health care!) and increase his approval ratings.  This sounds very ominous to the opposition until you realize that, at the end of the day, you're still talking about Donald Trump.  

As for Scaramucci, the joke   - and I wish I'd thought of it - is that he was in and out so fast that the cast of "Saturday Night Live," which doesn't come back until the fall, didn't even have a chance to decide who was going to play him.  Scaramucci, though, didn't need a comedian to parody him, because he parodied himself.  Italian-Americans (I'm half-Italian) are now breathing a sigh of relief because of how he played up to every negative stereotype about the ethnic group.   Listening to the foul-mouthed bullying of Scaramucci, people would think that all Americans of Italian origin are, well, foul-mouthed bullies.   

And we'd hate for that to happen.