Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Washington, D.C. may soon be littered with the political bodies of people who believed they could spin their way out of the impact of the new Bob Woodward book, https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Trump-White-Bob-Woodward/dp/1501175513 (Fear). I’ve been to the Washington rodeo enough times to know that Woodward’s methodical, grinding style of investigation doesn’t lend itself to escaping unscathed, especially for bad actors and loose cannons. Hell, as a young Department of Defense aide in 1990, I saw it up close when his book, https://www.amazon.com/Commanders-Bob-Woodward-ebook/dp/B000QCTNE6 (The Commanders), led to the firing of USAF Chief of Staff Mike Dugan. He had tapes then, as he does now.

This week, it’s Donald Trump’s turn under Woodward’s political electron microscope, and the President’s hissy-fit reaction tells us how close Woodward’s work has struck. Trump knows his White House staff, up to and including his daughter, thinks he’s off the rails, a danger to himself and the country, and unable to execute the duties of a Waffle House manager much less the President of the United States.

Instantly, Washington has divided into familiar camps. For Trump fans, everyone else in the world is lying, and only Trump speaks the truth. For them, Woodward and his dozens of sources are fabulists, making it all up to harm the political fortunes of President Trump. For the rest of us, there’s the comforting knowledge that Trump’s White House just read the first draft of their history, and it isn’t pretty. From Trump’s insult-a-minute style to his profanity-laden regret at admitting he was wrong about Charlottesville, nothing here is flattering to a man deeply addicted to flattery.

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Here’s the problem for Trump supporters: Woodward’s recounting of the chaos, discord, and toxic atmosphere inside the White House, and of Trump’s erratic and dangerous behavior, echoes both other reporting and the clear reality. From serious journalism like Woodward’s, to https://www.amazon.com/Unhinged-Insiders-Account-Trump-White/dp/198210970X (Omarosa’s embittered but demonstrably insider take), to https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Fury-Inside-Trump-White/dp/1250158060 (Fire and Fury), to https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1982103124 (my own book on Trump and his team), the story is the same. In this political Rashomon, the perspectives are so similar because the truth is so evident.

What we see, especially via Woodward, is a de facto execution of the 25th Amendment. Trump’s cabinet members remove papers from his desk, ignore his more lunatic orders, make sure he’s out of the loop on consequential decisions, and run separate policies both at home and abroad to forestall the damage his ego and anger may cause to America’s reputation and security. None of this is pretty, and even those who oppose Trump will stir uneasily at the extra-constitutional risks taken by Trump’s staff to prevent even worse consequences.

The tale told in Fear is one of an administration led by a man who combines rampant personal instability, ravenous ego, and an inability to tell the truth even when it would help his legal and political standing. Trump’s allies and supporters will dismiss Woodward’s latest opus as “fake news” while the man they worship continues to prove the veteran journalist's assertions every day.

 

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[Michael Scally MD]

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[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

“The speculation about who replaces Mattis is now more real than ever,” said a senior White House official who was not authorized to speak about internal matters. “The president has always respected him. But now he has every reason to wonder what Mattis is saying behind his back. The relationship has nowhere to go but down, fast.”

 

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[Michael Scally MD]

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THE PRESIDENT’S AMORALITY. ANYONE WHO WORKS WITH HIM KNOWS HE IS NOT MOORED TO ANY DISCERNIBLE FIRST PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE HIS DECISION MAKING.

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Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

 

[Senorman]

If Woodward was actually lying, Kelly would straight out call Woodward a liar. Woodward’s name wasn’t even mentioned in Kelly’s statement. Guess why? Woodward would sue for defamation.

Ps...same goes for Mattis. Notice how Mattis doesn’t address any specific quotes of Woodward’s he disagrees with. If he did, defamation again.

Just one big conspiracy against Trump, LOL.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The 25th Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:

Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.

But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.

And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this piece. They will be worse because of this piece.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]