Civil Commotion

The bald fact that Trump would advertise Kim Yong Un’s support ought to worry you. Is it really not obvious that Trump is off his rocker?

The New York Times published yesterday an anonymous editorial, ostensibly written by an aide to Donald Trump. The editorial affirms claims found in Bob Woodward’s about-to-be-released book, Fear, that there is a cadre of people within the administration who believe the country must be protected from Trump’s ignorance and incandescent emotional instability.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

It seemed clear to me before the election that Trump utterly lacks the administrative skills that the presidency demands, and that his emotional instability would be crippling even if he did have the necessary talents, and so I’ve thought all along that there must be core personnel who are quietly subverting him. Recall that almost two years ago I urged professionals to decline to work for Trump — predicting that they would find themselves in exactly the position the anonymous editorial writer describes:

Imagine this wholly plausible scenario: Ben Carson, Creationist nutjob who believes that the pyramids were built to serve as granaries, is nominated for Secretary of Education; he is much-discussed as a likely nominee for that job, and weenies like Paul Ryan will doubtless urge his swift confirmation. Carson reads some law or other as granting him authority to withhold federal educational funding from states which don’t teach creationism as an alternative scientific explanation of human existence, and piously adds that to do so will uplift the country’s morals.

He has said he believes exactly those things, and millions of Trump voters agree with him. This could actually happen.

What is an honorable mid-level science professional serving in the Department of Education supposed to do in that case? Disgrace himself by attempting to implement such a policy, condemning a generation of American schoolchildren to appalling ignorance and sweeping the floors of the Chinese-owned factory on the midnight shift?

S-a-a-a-y that he is trying to implement the policy and look busy-busy-busy while underhandedly subverting it?

Y’all read it here first, folks, except that the stakes are higher than I anticipated: the author of the Times piece seems to be associated with national security.

The immediate criticism, by Trump and others, is that the writer of the editorial is a coward.

No. We are not talking about a coward; we are talking about somebody with a sense of responsibility who is caught in a madhouse and trying to hold on till the cavalry arrives.

The editorial is an appeal to the cavalry — Congress — to giddyup.

That’s not likely to happen, though, because the cowards in this squalid little drama are the Congressmen who know that the White House is occupied by a corrupt madman — but refuse to act because they fear that Ma and Pa Kettle will terminate their sinecure.

We are beyond policy differences now; the country itself is at stake, and there is no defense but the annihilation, in November, of the Republican Party.

“Your heavenly citizenship is infinitely more valuable than your earthly citizenship.” Uh-huh …

Remember: You subsidize that cult-like nonsense.

The new book by Bob Woodward about Trump’s White House, Fear, claims that aides routinely swipe papers off his desk to prevent Trump from reading them and signing them.

President Donald Trump’s closest aides have taken extraordinary measures in the White House to try to stop what they saw as his most dangerous impulses, going so far as to swipe and hide papers from his desk so he wouldn’t sign them, according to a new book from legendary journalist Bob Woodward.

I don’t have any difficulty believing this because …

1. Woodward is well-connected and generally trustworthy, and …

2. We’ve all heard things similar to this over the past year, and …

3. I’ve privately speculated that something along these lines must be going on because, you know, Donald Trump is emotionally unstable and an ignoramus.

I’ve already pre-ordered my copy.

Once again, Trump is proposing misuse of Federal power to punish political enemies; he is doing it overtly and publicly. Again, then, Trump has gone to a place beyond policy, where policy no longer matters. Trump himself is the threat to the country, and he and his Republican accomplices must be ruined in November.