It's not just about what the reporters found out. What are all those White House leakers trying to tell the rest of us?
At 1:22 PM, December 10, there are over 3,200 comments from our fellow citizens.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Worse than we imagined.
Use one of your 10 NYTimes freebies to read this account of Trump's daily works and pomps: "Inside Trump's Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation."
It's not just about what the reporters found out. What are all those White House leakers trying to tell the rest of us?
At 1:22 PM, December 10, there are over 3,200 comments from our fellow citizens.
It's not just about what the reporters found out. What are all those White House leakers trying to tell the rest of us?
At 1:22 PM, December 10, there are over 3,200 comments from our fellow citizens.
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Trump administration: Look What You Made Me Do!
ReplyDeleteThe basic problem is the world's billionaires live in a place beyond the laws that regulate the rest of us. Most of them are savvy enough not to flaunt that. Trump is not.
ReplyDeleteWe have elected a king, of the old fashioned kind before there were constitutional monarchies. He is not going to change. He is going to continue to behave like a king. The self that he is preserving is himself as king.
It is likely to end badly.
He played golf with Lindsay Graham yesterday, so I hope for Graham's sake that he was happy with the muted praise Graham gave him. The senator was one of the few quoted by name.
ReplyDeleteTrump's propensity for showing off White House bathrooms reminded me of the days when I used to look at floor plans. I noticed that Trump apartments always seemed to have one more bathroom than most people need, e.g., five in a three-bedroom apartment, four in the two-bedrooms. Is he showing some kind of anxiety?
So, the president plays golf, watches televisions and kibbitzes with his Twitter. That describes a lot of the old farts I live among. Maybe it's time for the media to let him play with his thumbs and look at what Betsy deVos is doing to public education, Ryan Zinke to the environment, how the constitutionally mandated census is being redesigned for disaster, where the money to restore CHIPs will come from (hunt: See Medicaid) and what Steve Mnunchin and Mick Mulvaney are doing to produce a rerun of that classic of Laffer curving, The Great Recession.
Or maybe they could cover how the climate change agreement is doing without us and what's being said by those who care about the way we withdrew from the UN talks on a Global Compact for Migration.
You didn't hear about that last one? Neither did I until I stumbled on the USCCB's press release (the bishops are unhappy about it) while looking for something else. I was not looking for further evidence that we elected an unhouse-broken 10year-old with an ago problem.
Tom, since you read the piece, do you care to speculate on what the "leakers" are themselves thinking, i.e., what are their intentions? Of course, there are a multiple of intentions. BUT, is this a cry for help?
DeleteRe Tom's post - Politico runs a regular feature called something like - What Trump did this week while everyone was looking at something else.
DeleteThere are some who believe that the twee storms etc are deliberately planned to focus attention away from all the bad stuff that is going down without need for legislation.
The legislative progress on big items has failed or stalled. But his rollback of regulations has proceeded at a furious pace and will do a lot of harm to our country. They can be reversed again in the future by a new pres aat some point, assuming we get a decent person in the WH. Similarly, the lifetime appointments to the judiciary of extremists, some of whom have zero qualifications for the bench, continues at a fast pace. We will have to deal with that for a very long time.
Margaret, one almost has to laugh at Trump's rebuttal to the NYTimes article. What did he pick out to deny? That he really spends 4 - 8 hours/day in front of the TV.
DeleteYes, Tom, I agree that less personality reportage and more on how the administration is screwing up my life and the lives of other Americans is needed. These unflattering portraits of the president, satisfying as they are to read, really do just look like the NYT wants to "get Trump." God knows I want to get him out of there, but the only way that's going to happen is if even those who voted for him understand what he's taking away from them.
Delete"Get Trump." First time I read it, I thought Haberman and Thrush are bear baiting. The newsman here (retired) says the news is the news is the news. Second time I read it...the second question came to mind: why do the people with him in the White House talk to Haberman?
DeleteTo Tom's point: there is a story this AM about a town in Ohio with a serious air polluter. Under Obama relief was coming. Under Trump/Pruitt delays have come...
MOS, to answer your question of 10:32, I don't see a lot of leaking in the story. I see people talking about Trump, some of whom (Graham) wish him (and maybe us) well. The ones who have their own bases are quoted by name. It didn't hurt Nancy Pelosi to get out comparison of Trump trying to be president with the idea of her trying to do brain surgery. Others, like Kellyanne Conway, who are not identified, undoubtedly talked (does she ever shut up?) on background and didn't see that what they were saying might be harmful to the Great Man's image. For example, the story about his longtime gofer Schiller (who hadn't been in the news) leaving after a showdown with Gen. Kelly could have been told because it made Kelly look good (or maybe bad) in the teller's mind. I'd love to know what and how much Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus contributed to the picture.
DeleteThe thing that struck me most was that Addison Mitchell McConnell actually told the Great Man to shut up and stop interrupting. Too bad that event was (if the story is right) patched up between the two of them.
People in dysfunctional administrations, in my limited experience, will be happy to talk your ear off OTR, but it's really hard to parse out an accurate picture from these disaffected sources who may be using you to screw their rivals, their boss, or both.
DeleteYou have to know that A hates B, that C hates D, that A and D hate the boss, that B hates you, and that A only talks after he's had a lot to drink.
Haberman and Thrush are big city reporters with big city editors, so one assumes that they are sifting through these sands carefully.
Re pollution, I have heard very little since Hurricane Harvey about what's going on in Houston with water pollution. NPR has been on it, but I don't see that anything has been in the WaPo or NYT since September, which is a little odd given Trump's castration of the EPA under Pruitt.
Link to Politico's current "Five things Trump did this week while you weren't looking".
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/08/trump-policy-food-stamps-methane-migration-000590