Saturday, July 22, 2017

Failure to Communicate

Commenting on the Trump administration is like multitasking.  Just when you think you know what you're going to talk about, along comes another bombshell of a story to push aside (possibly for good) the story you were going to talk about previously.
This time it's the shakeup in the White House press office.  Anthony Scaramucci, a slick Italian-American Wall Street investment banker from Long Island who seems to live up to every negative stereotype about Italian-Americans from Long Island and Wall Street investment bankers, became the White House communications director in an effort to get Trump's White House on message.  (He can't get it back on message because it never was on message in the first place.)  He's the type of guy who worships Trump and is the consummate yes-man for his, umm, ideas.  Which means that Scaramucci will never have a disagreement with Trump, always assuming that Trump is right even when he's wrong (and he usually is).
This appointment infuriated White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned.  (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and deputy White House press secretary, will replace Spicer.)  White House chief of staff Reince Preibus, also said to be frustrated with the yes-men around Trump, may be the next to go, though he is safe for now.  Indeed, Scaramucci will be less concerned with the staff and more concerned with how to spin the loss of one of Trump's lawyers as the investigation into his business dealings heats up - and Robert Mueller wants some answers about Trump's finances that Trump will likely fire Mueller over before he answers them.
And the Republican health care bill will have to include subsidized antacid for members of Congress.
As if all of this weren't enough, it was reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions - whom Trump excoriated for recusing himself from the Russia investigation rather than showing the sort of loyalty that Trump craves -  is reported by the Washington Post to have discussed campaign-related matters, especially policy issues of concern to the Kremlin, with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak despite earlier insistences from Sessions that he did no such thing.
What we have here is a failure to . . . you know the rest.
I'm ready to give up commenting on Trump.  It's too much goshdarned work, and I'm not getting paid to do this blog.  (You probably figured that out from the typos that have slipped my attention in the past.)  

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