Omarosa Out

Trump protégé Omarosa Manigault-Newman (she became Mrs. Newman when she got married in April), who served as Trump's communications director for the White House Office of Public Liaison, either resigned or was fired and either was escorted out of the White House or left on her own.  What really happened is all in doubt.

But here's one thing that's not in doubt. Mrs. Newman, pictured above, is leaving with a lot less respect for Trump than she once had because she found out something very shocking and disturbing . . . there is racism in the Trump White House.

No, Omarosa.  You don't say.  Like, wow.

Here are some other things Omarosa found out at the White House:

Water is wet.

Daffodils grow in the spring.

The Oval Office really is an oval office.

And - she found this out along with Melania - ballerinas dance on their toes.

I understand - this is just a rumor - that the O-Woman is planing to write a memoir about her association with Trump.  I have a perfect idea for a title, but Charles Schulz already used "Things I've Learned After It Was Too Late."

So let's see how soon Omarosa, who leaves the White House in January 2018, can find a job after tax reform passes and the economy starts, ahem, growing.

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.

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.)