A Presidency "off the rails"
From PoliticoIn response to:
Trump veterans see a presidency veering off the rails
By DANIEL LIPPMAN
10/19/2019 06:31 AM EDT
Former Trump White House officials and other Republicans close to the White House are increasingly worried about President Trump’s erratic behavior and say there are no longer enough safeguards around him to prevent self-inflicted disasters large and small.
Just in the last two weeks, Trump precipitously withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria and attacked America’s Kurdish allies as “no angels,” sparking outrage among GOP lawmakers; released a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose undiplomatic language was widely mocked; called his former defense secretary “the world’s most overrated general”; and blew up at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a meeting his own White House had called.
His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, also admitted on national television that the administration had held up aid to Ukraine for political purposes, before reversing himself hours later on Trump’s orders and claiming his remarks had been “misconstrued.”
Under the strain of a metastasizing impeachment probe on Capitol Hill and helming an administration run by a diminishing number of heavyweight officials of independent stature, the president is displaying the kind of capricious behavior that once might have been contained or at least mitigated, former officials say.
“The wheels are not off the car. The situation is way worse than that. The car has been impounded and we are now waiting to figure out what the fine is and to see whether or not we’re going to get the car back,” said former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. “Mulvaney is a good Catholic and in fairness to him, that was a full-blown Catholic confessional on Thursday afternoon.”
Trump has never felt shackled by traditional ways of running a government. But earlier in his administration, “there was enough guardrails around Trump or enough caution on his part that when he did things that were more impulsive, they had less significance and fewer external ramifications,” said a former White House official.
Now it’s become more of a one-man White House and government.
Trying to constrain Trump is “a pipe dream,” said one current White House official. “Everyone who has tried had eventually failed in some way.”
“It’s just looking like everything is coming apart,” said a former White House official. Another former senior West Wing aide agreed that the White House seemed to be “a little bit unraveling” in recent days.
Some current White House officials say they are simply exhausted after all the constant fighting, and lack the energy to try to constrain a wilful president bent on having his own way. It’s normal for officials to return to the private sector after a few years of pressure-cooker public service, but the Trump administration has seen extraordinary levels of turnover, and the administration’s current ranks are thin and getting thinner. A current White House official described a “who cares” attitude creeping through the building under Mulvaney’s hands-off management style....
Trump veterans see a presidency veering off the rails
By DANIEL LIPPMAN
10/19/2019 06:31 AM EDT
Former Trump White House officials and other Republicans close to the White House are increasingly worried about President Trump’s erratic behavior and say there are no longer enough safeguards around him to prevent self-inflicted disasters large and small.
Just in the last two weeks, Trump precipitously withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria and attacked America’s Kurdish allies as “no angels,” sparking outrage among GOP lawmakers; released a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose undiplomatic language was widely mocked; called his former defense secretary “the world’s most overrated general”; and blew up at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a meeting his own White House had called.
His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, also admitted on national television that the administration had held up aid to Ukraine for political purposes, before reversing himself hours later on Trump’s orders and claiming his remarks had been “misconstrued.”
Under the strain of a metastasizing impeachment probe on Capitol Hill and helming an administration run by a diminishing number of heavyweight officials of independent stature, the president is displaying the kind of capricious behavior that once might have been contained or at least mitigated, former officials say.
“The wheels are not off the car. The situation is way worse than that. The car has been impounded and we are now waiting to figure out what the fine is and to see whether or not we’re going to get the car back,” said former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. “Mulvaney is a good Catholic and in fairness to him, that was a full-blown Catholic confessional on Thursday afternoon.”
Trump has never felt shackled by traditional ways of running a government. But earlier in his administration, “there was enough guardrails around Trump or enough caution on his part that when he did things that were more impulsive, they had less significance and fewer external ramifications,” said a former White House official.
Now it’s become more of a one-man White House and government.
Trying to constrain Trump is “a pipe dream,” said one current White House official. “Everyone who has tried had eventually failed in some way.”
“It’s just looking like everything is coming apart,” said a former White House official. Another former senior West Wing aide agreed that the White House seemed to be “a little bit unraveling” in recent days.
Some current White House officials say they are simply exhausted after all the constant fighting, and lack the energy to try to constrain a wilful president bent on having his own way. It’s normal for officials to return to the private sector after a few years of pressure-cooker public service, but the Trump administration has seen extraordinary levels of turnover, and the administration’s current ranks are thin and getting thinner. A current White House official described a “who cares” attitude creeping through the building under Mulvaney’s hands-off management style....
The Trump administration has not only been an erratic embarrassing shoddy circus, but of great damage to the country and it's reputation. The election of Donald Trump, officially THE WORST US president in history, is perhaps one of the worse mistakes the country has ever made.
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Trump Team’s Conflicts and
Scandals: An Interactive Guide
Updated: March 14, 2019, 2:00 PM EDT
Donald Trump promised to drain the Washington swamp. Instead, he has surrounded himself with family members, appointees and advisers who’ve been accused of conflicts of interest Conflict of interest, misuse of public funds Misuse of public funds, influence peddling Influence peddling, self-enrichment Self-enrichment, working for foreign governments Agent for foreign government, failure to disclose information Failure to disclose information and violating ethics rules Violating ethics rules. Some are under investigation Under investigation or facing lawsuits Facing Lawsuit, others have resigned Resigned and five have either been convicted or pleaded guilty Guilty, including three for lying to government officials Lying to government officials. Scandals plague all administrations, but Trump’s is only two years old and the allegations keep on coming.
Indeed, as reported in Psychology Today, many psychiatrist experts have warned the public of Trump's mental illness.
According to The Independent, over thirty mental health experts, all of whom have never personally examined President Trump, say they have an "ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump's dangerous mental illness."
In some ways this can be an advantage when observing someone with certain personality anomalies - those who lack emotional empathy, but have a cognitive sense of it, are renowned for manipulative behaviours. A truer picture of their functionality may be gleaned if they're not aware they are being scrutinised by a psychiatrist.
I was of the understanding that distance diagnoses were considered unethical and a breach of practise. It was once a two line clause, but after Trumps election extended to a couple of pages of guidelines. I was of the understanding that a number of eminent psychiatrists had openly campaigned for a full psychiatric assessment based upon Trump displaying traits of 'dangerousness'.
If Yale University has since associated itself with suggesting he is suffering from a 'dangerous mental illness' rather than 'displaying traits of dangerousness which warrant assessment', they have thrown all caution to the wind in terms of their own standing.
I suspect the phrase 'dangerous mental illness' may be a matter of misrepresentation by the media, but if it isn't and they have upped their ante, it says something about the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps that's not surprising given Trump's recent withdrawals of aid and troops, demonstrating that his dangerousness is escalating as the psychiatrists in question predicted.
The truth is that for every vote you import you give the right 3. Which is very kind of you but it’s not helping yourselves. The right will project and claim you support immigration for cynical self-serving reasons - if you were doing it for that reason then it’s a utterly incompetent self-serving - no, it’s more like a selfless own that guarantees victory to your opponents.
Better to have a bottle in front of me