Yes and with trump`s huge ego, ambition and/or unfiltered mouth. Little trumpets to follow his tune.
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Yes and with trump`s huge ego, ambition and/or unfiltered mouth. Little trumpets to follow his tune.
N'oublions pas non plus le courage exemplaire des 2 Sénatrices du Maine et de l'Alaska qui ont résisté aux pressions et manigances de Trump....sont restées fidèles à leurs idées et croyances....on peut facilement comprendre le CALVAIRE que ces femmes vivent au sein de leur Parti.....chapeau Mesdames.
Check out the next article....written by conservative columnist Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. It's even better:
Trump is Woody Allen Without the Humor
If you are not subscribed to the WSJ, you can read about it here:
Conservatives turning on Trump as WSJ describes him as 'weak' and not a 'real man'
or here:
Peggy Noonan says weak and sniveling Trump is not as strong as his wife
Another very good article:
Trump doesn't care about this issue — he's shamelessly exploiting bigotry in an effort to keep himself in office
by Lucian Truscott
Trump's latest desperate gamble: Damaged president trying to save himself by persecuting transgender Americans
Trump doesn't care about this issue — he's shamelessly exploiting bigotry in an effort to keep himself in office
by Lucian Truscott
Trump's latest desperate gamble: Damaged president trying to save himself by persecuting transgender Americans
Unbelievable!!!!
Scaramucci's furious wife 'was nine months pregnant when she filed for divorce' - and he was with Trump when she gave birth on Monday and met his premature son in hospital FOUR DAYS later
-Deidre Ball was spotted running errands on Saturday without her wedding ring
-She filed for divorce on July 6 while nine months pregnant, Page Six reported
-She gave birth on Monday while husband Anthony Scaramucci was in West Virginia accompanying President Donald Trump at Boy Scouts Jamboree
-He reportedly texted her, 'Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child' and didn't meet his premature son, who is in the neonatal intensive care unit, until Friday
-Sources claims Deidre opted for the split because she doesn't like Trump
-Sources also claim she enjoyed her life in Long Island, not the 'insane' DC
by Jessica Chia, Wills Robinson and Chris Spargo
Anthony Scaramucci's wife has been spotted in Long Island amid sensational reports she filed for divorce three weeks ago while she was nine months pregnant.
Deidre Scaramucci gave birth on Monday to their two-week premature son James while the White House communications director was in West Virginia accompanying President Donald Trump at the Boy Scouts Jamboree.
Deidre was reportedly furious that her husband simply texted her: 'Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child'.
Amid an allegedly acrimonious divorce, Scaramucci met his son, who is still in intensive care, on Friday night, an associate said.
A family member of Deidre's confirmed the birth.
The 38-year-old decided to call it quits after three years of marriage. 'She is tired of his naked ambition, which is so enormous that it left her at her wit's end.'
Another said that she liked his Wall Street life and Long Island home, and not the 'insane' surroundings in DC.
Deidre filed for divorce in the Nassau County Supreme Court on July 6 while she was nine months pregnant.
On Monday, she gave birth to her second son with Scaramucci. James, who was due on August 8, was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at 5 pounds, 13 ounces.
Scaramucci's ambitions for a position in the Trump administration reportedly cost him his marriage - and the 53-year-old was with his new boss on Monday while his wife was in labor.
Scaramucci texted his congratulations, and met his newborn son four days after he was born.
The couple's relationship appears to have deteriorated after three years, with Deidre reportedly branding her husband a 'Trump sycophant' and a 'grifter', according to one person close to Scaramucci.
Scaramucci had harsh words for his wife as wel: 'The [pain] runs deep. [Anthony] tells her she’s not that smart, that he’s out of her league.'
Scaramucci's wife filed for divorce while nine months pregnant
Scaramucci's furious wife 'was nine months pregnant when she filed for divorce' - and he was with Trump when she gave birth on Monday and met his premature son in hospital FOUR DAYS later
-Deidre Ball was spotted running errands on Saturday without her wedding ring
-She filed for divorce on July 6 while nine months pregnant, Page Six reported
-She gave birth on Monday while husband Anthony Scaramucci was in West Virginia accompanying President Donald Trump at Boy Scouts Jamboree
-He reportedly texted her, 'Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child' and didn't meet his premature son, who is in the neonatal intensive care unit, until Friday
-Sources claims Deidre opted for the split because she doesn't like Trump
-Sources also claim she enjoyed her life in Long Island, not the 'insane' DC
by Jessica Chia, Wills Robinson and Chris Spargo
Anthony Scaramucci's wife has been spotted in Long Island amid sensational reports she filed for divorce three weeks ago while she was nine months pregnant.
Deidre Scaramucci gave birth on Monday to their two-week premature son James while the White House communications director was in West Virginia accompanying President Donald Trump at the Boy Scouts Jamboree.
Deidre was reportedly furious that her husband simply texted her: 'Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child'.
Amid an allegedly acrimonious divorce, Scaramucci met his son, who is still in intensive care, on Friday night, an associate said.
A family member of Deidre's confirmed the birth.
The 38-year-old decided to call it quits after three years of marriage. 'She is tired of his naked ambition, which is so enormous that it left her at her wit's end.'
Another said that she liked his Wall Street life and Long Island home, and not the 'insane' surroundings in DC.
Deidre filed for divorce in the Nassau County Supreme Court on July 6 while she was nine months pregnant.
On Monday, she gave birth to her second son with Scaramucci. James, who was due on August 8, was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at 5 pounds, 13 ounces.
Scaramucci's ambitions for a position in the Trump administration reportedly cost him his marriage - and the 53-year-old was with his new boss on Monday while his wife was in labor.
Scaramucci texted his congratulations, and met his newborn son four days after he was born.
The couple's relationship appears to have deteriorated after three years, with Deidre reportedly branding her husband a 'Trump sycophant' and a 'grifter', according to one person close to Scaramucci.
Scaramucci had harsh words for his wife as wel: 'The [pain] runs deep. [Anthony] tells her she’s not that smart, that he’s out of her league.'
Scaramucci's wife filed for divorce while nine months pregnant
Another very good article which appeared today in The National Review:
Death of a F***ing Salesman
*by Kevin D. Williamson
A few years ago in New York, Al Pacino starred in a revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and the casting was poignant: In 1992, a much younger and more vigorous Pacino had played the role of hotshot salesman Ricky Roma in the film adaptation of the play; in the Broadway revival, a 72-year-old Pacino played the broken-down has-been Shelley Levene.
Glengarry Glen Ross is the Macbeth of real estate, full of great, blistering lines and soliloquies so liberally peppered with profanity that the original cast had nicknamed the show “Death of a F***ing Salesman.” But a few of those attending the New York revival left disappointed. For a certain type of young man, the star of Glengarry Glen Ross is a character called Blake, played in the film by Alec Baldwin. We know that his name is “Blake” only from the credits; asked his name by one of the other salesmen, he answers: “What’s my name? F*** you. That’s my name.” In the film, Blake sets things in motion by delivering a motivational speech and announcing a sales competition: “First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize? A set of steak knives. Third prize is, you’re fired. Get the picture?” He berates the salesmen in terms both financial — “My watch cost more than your car!” — and sexual. Their problem, in Blake’s telling, isn’t that they’ve had a run of bad luck or bad sales leads — or that the real estate they’re trying to sell is crap — it is that they aren’t real men.
The leads are weak? You’re weak. . . . Your name is “your wanting,” and you can’t play the man’s game. You can’t close them? Then tell your wife your troubles, because only one thing counts in this world: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. Got that, you f***ing f*****s?
A few young men waiting to see the show had been quoting Blake’s speech to one another. For them, and for a number of men who imagine themselves to be hard-hitting competitors (I’ve never met a woman of whom this is true), Blake’s speech is practically a creed. It’s one of those things that some guys memorize. But Blake does not appear in the play, the scene having been written specifically for the film and specifically for Alec Baldwin, a sop to investors who feared that the film would not be profitable and wanted an additional jolt of star power to enliven it.
That’s some fine irony: Blake’s paean to salesmanship was written to satisfy salesmen who did not quite buy David Mamet’s original pitch. The play is if anything darker and more terrifying without Blake, leaving the poor feckless salesmen at the mercy of a faceless malevolence offstage rather than some regular jerk in a BMW. But a few finance bros went home disappointed that they did not get the chance to sing along, as it were, with their favorite hymn.
These guys don’t want to see Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. What they want is to be Blake. They want to swagger, to curse, to insult, and to exercise power over men, exercising power over men being the classical means to the end of exercising power over women, which is of course what this, and nine-tenths of everything else in human affairs, is about. Blake is a specimen of that famous creature, the “alpha male,” and establishing and advertising one’s alpha creds is an obsession for some sexually unhappy contemporary men. There is a whole weird little ecosystem of websites (some of them very amusing) and pickup-artist manuals offering men tips on how to be more alpha, more dominant, more commanding, a literature that performs roughly the same function in the lives of these men that Cosmopolitan sex tips play in the lives of insecure women. Of course this advice ends up producing cartoonish, ridiculous behavior. If you’re wondering where Anthony Scaramucci learned to talk and behave like such a Scaramuccia, ask him how many times he’s seen Glengarry Glen Ross.
What’s notable about the advice offered to young men aspiring to be “alpha males” is that it is consistent with the classic salesmanship advice offered by the real-world versions of Blake in a hundred thousand business-inspiration books (Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World is the classic of the genre) and self-help tomes, summarized in an old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan: “Fake it ’til you make it.” For the pick-up artists, the idea is that simply acting in social situations as though one were confident, successful, and naturally masterful is a pretty good substitute for being those things. Never mind the advice of Cicero (esse quam vider, be rather than seem) or Rush — just go around acting like Blake and people will treat you like Blake.
If that sounds preposterous, remind yourself who the president of the United States of America is.
Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans — and America — went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man.
We did not elect Donald Trump; we elected the character he plays on television.
He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies’ man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (“negotiator”) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, “bigly,” “major,” “world-class,” “top,” and superlatives), but he isn’t much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, can’t manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.
He wants to be John Wayne, but what he is is “Woody Allen without the humor.” Peggy Noonan, to whom we owe that observation, has his number: He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isn’t smart enough to do the job and isn’t man enough to own up to the fact. For all his gold-plated toilets, he is at heart that middling junior salesman watching Glengarry Glen Ross and thinking to himself: “That’s the man I want to be.” How many times do you imagine he has stood in front of a mirror trying to project like Alec Baldwin? Unfortunately for the president, it’s Baldwin who does the good imitation of Trump, not the other way around.
Hence the cartoon tough-guy act. Scaramucci’s star didn’t fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi. That’s Scaramucci’s best impersonation of the sort of man the president of these United States, God help us, aspires to be.
But he isn’t that guy. He isn’t Blake. He’s poor sad old Shelley Levene, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all.
So, listen up, Team Trump: “Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.”
Got that?
Donald Trump can't close the deal
Death of a F***ing Salesman
*by Kevin D. Williamson
A few years ago in New York, Al Pacino starred in a revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and the casting was poignant: In 1992, a much younger and more vigorous Pacino had played the role of hotshot salesman Ricky Roma in the film adaptation of the play; in the Broadway revival, a 72-year-old Pacino played the broken-down has-been Shelley Levene.
Glengarry Glen Ross is the Macbeth of real estate, full of great, blistering lines and soliloquies so liberally peppered with profanity that the original cast had nicknamed the show “Death of a F***ing Salesman.” But a few of those attending the New York revival left disappointed. For a certain type of young man, the star of Glengarry Glen Ross is a character called Blake, played in the film by Alec Baldwin. We know that his name is “Blake” only from the credits; asked his name by one of the other salesmen, he answers: “What’s my name? F*** you. That’s my name.” In the film, Blake sets things in motion by delivering a motivational speech and announcing a sales competition: “First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize? A set of steak knives. Third prize is, you’re fired. Get the picture?” He berates the salesmen in terms both financial — “My watch cost more than your car!” — and sexual. Their problem, in Blake’s telling, isn’t that they’ve had a run of bad luck or bad sales leads — or that the real estate they’re trying to sell is crap — it is that they aren’t real men.
The leads are weak? You’re weak. . . . Your name is “your wanting,” and you can’t play the man’s game. You can’t close them? Then tell your wife your troubles, because only one thing counts in this world: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. Got that, you f***ing f*****s?
A few young men waiting to see the show had been quoting Blake’s speech to one another. For them, and for a number of men who imagine themselves to be hard-hitting competitors (I’ve never met a woman of whom this is true), Blake’s speech is practically a creed. It’s one of those things that some guys memorize. But Blake does not appear in the play, the scene having been written specifically for the film and specifically for Alec Baldwin, a sop to investors who feared that the film would not be profitable and wanted an additional jolt of star power to enliven it.
That’s some fine irony: Blake’s paean to salesmanship was written to satisfy salesmen who did not quite buy David Mamet’s original pitch. The play is if anything darker and more terrifying without Blake, leaving the poor feckless salesmen at the mercy of a faceless malevolence offstage rather than some regular jerk in a BMW. But a few finance bros went home disappointed that they did not get the chance to sing along, as it were, with their favorite hymn.
These guys don’t want to see Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. What they want is to be Blake. They want to swagger, to curse, to insult, and to exercise power over men, exercising power over men being the classical means to the end of exercising power over women, which is of course what this, and nine-tenths of everything else in human affairs, is about. Blake is a specimen of that famous creature, the “alpha male,” and establishing and advertising one’s alpha creds is an obsession for some sexually unhappy contemporary men. There is a whole weird little ecosystem of websites (some of them very amusing) and pickup-artist manuals offering men tips on how to be more alpha, more dominant, more commanding, a literature that performs roughly the same function in the lives of these men that Cosmopolitan sex tips play in the lives of insecure women. Of course this advice ends up producing cartoonish, ridiculous behavior. If you’re wondering where Anthony Scaramucci learned to talk and behave like such a Scaramuccia, ask him how many times he’s seen Glengarry Glen Ross.
What’s notable about the advice offered to young men aspiring to be “alpha males” is that it is consistent with the classic salesmanship advice offered by the real-world versions of Blake in a hundred thousand business-inspiration books (Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World is the classic of the genre) and self-help tomes, summarized in an old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan: “Fake it ’til you make it.” For the pick-up artists, the idea is that simply acting in social situations as though one were confident, successful, and naturally masterful is a pretty good substitute for being those things. Never mind the advice of Cicero (esse quam vider, be rather than seem) or Rush — just go around acting like Blake and people will treat you like Blake.
If that sounds preposterous, remind yourself who the president of the United States of America is.
Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans — and America — went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man.
We did not elect Donald Trump; we elected the character he plays on television.
He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies’ man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (“negotiator”) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, “bigly,” “major,” “world-class,” “top,” and superlatives), but he isn’t much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, can’t manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.
He wants to be John Wayne, but what he is is “Woody Allen without the humor.” Peggy Noonan, to whom we owe that observation, has his number: He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isn’t smart enough to do the job and isn’t man enough to own up to the fact. For all his gold-plated toilets, he is at heart that middling junior salesman watching Glengarry Glen Ross and thinking to himself: “That’s the man I want to be.” How many times do you imagine he has stood in front of a mirror trying to project like Alec Baldwin? Unfortunately for the president, it’s Baldwin who does the good imitation of Trump, not the other way around.
Hence the cartoon tough-guy act. Scaramucci’s star didn’t fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi. That’s Scaramucci’s best impersonation of the sort of man the president of these United States, God help us, aspires to be.
But he isn’t that guy. He isn’t Blake. He’s poor sad old Shelley Levene, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all.
So, listen up, Team Trump: “Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.”
Got that?
Donald Trump can't close the deal
More from the dark side.
An Economic Confidence Boost:*Trump is not responsible for every good thing that happens in our economy, just as he’s not responsible for every bad thing that happens. That being said, it’s hard to miss the fact that the American economy seems to be taking off in response to his election. Consumer confidence is at the highest level in 17 years. Over half a million jobs have been created in his first 3 months in office. Furthermore, the stock market rally since Trump has been elected has been the*2ndbiggest since John F. Kennedy was in office. The fact that everyone realizes Trump has forgotten more about business than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton combined ever knew is helping to get our economy going back in the right direction.
9) Imposing A Five Year Ban On Lobbying The Government By Former White House Officials And A Lifetime Ban On Lobbying For Foreign Governments By Former White House Officials:*Our government is utterly and completely corrupt. We have members of Congress and White House staffers doing favors for businesses and picking up huge checks from those same companies as soon as they get out of office. When you see Barack Obama giving $400,000 speeches to the same Wall Street fat cats he railed against incessantly as*President, your first thought should be, “I wonder what he did for them that merited the $400,000 payback?” Trump’s reforms ARE NOT going to fix all these problems, but they are a step in the right direction.
An Economic Confidence Boost:*Trump is not responsible for every good thing that happens in our economy, just as he’s not responsible for every bad thing that happens. That being said, it’s hard to miss the fact that the American economy seems to be taking off in response to his election. Consumer confidence is at the highest level in 17 years. Over half a million jobs have been created in his first 3 months in office. Furthermore, the stock market rally since Trump has been elected has been the*2ndbiggest since John F. Kennedy was in office. The fact that everyone realizes Trump has forgotten more about business than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton combined ever knew is helping to get our economy going back in the right direction.
9) Imposing A Five Year Ban On Lobbying The Government By Former White House Officials And A Lifetime Ban On Lobbying For Foreign Governments By Former White House Officials:*Our government is utterly and completely corrupt. We have members of Congress and White House staffers doing favors for businesses and picking up huge checks from those same companies as soon as they get out of office. When you see Barack Obama giving $400,000 speeches to the same Wall Street fat cats he railed against incessantly as*President, your first thought should be, “I wonder what he did for them that merited the $400,000 payback?” Trump’s reforms ARE NOT going to fix all these problems, but they are a step in the right direction.
I found this to be a very good, eye-opening article about the current state of Donald Trump and the White House:
Without Priebus, Trump is a Man Without a Party
by Tim Alberta
Reince Priebus looked battered. It was Monday, October 10—the morning after the final presidential debate—and our eyes met as I boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. It had been an extraordinary weekend: On Friday night, the biggest bombshell of the 2016 campaign dropped when the Washington Post published a decade-old audio recording on which Donald Trump made lewd comments about groping women. Speaker Paul Ryan disinvited Trump from a unity event in Wisconsin scheduled for the following day, and Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, quietly made the case to Trump and his associates that he should quit the race. Trump refused. The Sunday debate, 48 hours after the tape’s release, was dominated by discussion of Trump’s history with women. He dismissed his recorded remarks—“grab them by the pussy,” Trump had said, boasting that his celebrity status allowed him to get away with aggressive advances on the opposite sex—as “locker room talk.”
Priebus occupied a window seat, a pair of staffers to his left. The chair behind him sat empty; my instinct was to grab it and start firing questions through the slit at his left shoulder. But after studying Priebus—the slouched posture, the uncharacteristically rumpled suit, the groaning bags under his eyes—I decided it might backfire. Whether it was pity or strategy, or a bit of both, I settled in two rows back, deciding it would be better to talk upon landing in Washington.
It was an eventful flight: Ryan, while we were at 30,000 feet, had told House Republicans on a conference call that he wouldn’t be defending the president anymore—and urged them to do whatever was necessary to survive in their districts. Meanwhile, there were reports Priebus would hold his own call with RNC members to discuss ousting Trump. Priebus was understandably not keen to discuss any of these developments. But he seemed to appreciate my earlier gesture. When I greeted him, just beyond the entrance to the jet bridge, his staffers tried to shut down any interview. Priebus told them to back off. “It’s OK,” he said, offering the sort of forced half-smile you see at hospital visitations. “Go ahead. Shoot.” We walked out of the terminal and past the baggage claim, covering all of it: the tape, the debate, Ryan, the RNC and what (if anything) it could do at this point. Priebus asked twice to speak off the record, which I allowed. But his most telling comment—in retrospect—came at the end of our conversation, after he explained that the RNC had no mechanism to remove Trump as its nominee.
“Look,” he said, stepping into the sunlight outside Reagan National Airport, his staffers loading up an idling black Chevrolet Suburban. “We don’t get to pick the nominee. And we don’t get to just walk away from him, either.”
By “we,” the chairman was referring to the RNC and the broader party leadership. But it seems obvious now—in studying his approach to Trump throughout the primary season, the general election and during his tumultuous 27-week run as chief of staff, the shortest in history—that Priebus was also talking about himself. As head of the party, Priebus never foresaw the real estate mogul running, much less becoming its standard-bearer. He cracked jokes about Trump early on and flashed outrage at some of his incendiary rhetoric. But as Trump gained momentum and won the nomination and, later, the presidency—and as the RNC chairman emerged as the bridge between him and the Republican Party—Priebus could never bring himself to abandon Trump.
It's not without irony that some will hold him responsible for Trumpism—Priebus should have kicked Trump out of the GOP debates, some critics suggest—seeing how the RNC chairman would have personally loved to see Scott Walker or Marco Rubio as the party's nominee. Trump was the last choice of the party establishment, which Priebus embodied. It became clear, however, that Republican voters had other ideas—and Priebus made it his mission to ensure a level playing field. He ignored calls to remove Trump from debates after he threatened to run as an independent, and bent over backward to make the reality TV star feel welcome in the GOP. Priebus knew he would be accused of sabotaging the party, but he was unwavering in the belief that it was his job to be a facilitator and an ambassador, not a kingmaker.
His friends had mixed feelings about the chief of staff position, and some cautioned Priebus against taking it. After all, he had inherited a penniless, disorganized, technologically bankrupt Republican Party in 2011 and transformed it by 2016 into a financial behemoth with adequate field and data operations. On his watch, the GOP had kept the House, taken back the Senate and now won the presidency; why not ride into the sunset, spend time with his family and cash in on those triumphs?
The fateful answer: Because Priebus couldn’t just walk away. He felt a sense of loyalty to Trump, and more acutely, an enduring responsibility to the party and the country. Plus, the second-most prestigious office in the West Wing was beckoning. Priebus jumped at the job.
It was a mismatch from the start. As RNC chairman, Priebus had two primary responsibilities: dialing for dollars (typically three to five hours each day) and sorting out disputes among his 168 members to keep everyone happy. Key administrative functions were mostly handled by other RNC staff, including Priebus’ own chief of staff; some associates feared that Priebus’ skill set simply would not translate to the new job. Making success all the less likely was the Wisconsinite’s disposition: laid back, naturally soft-spoken and nonconfrontational, a classic people pleaser. Priebus kept a mini-fridge stocked with Miller Lite in his RNC office and would later hold occasional Friday happy hours in his West Wing suite, inviting officials from across the building to grab a can of beer or a Solo cup of wine and commiserate about the week that had been. This calm, consensus-minded approach made Priebus a beloved party chairman, and Republicans held out hope that it would make him a good chief of staff. But it didn’t. Trump trampled Priebus from Day One, sending out press secretary Sean Spicer, a longtime Preibus ally, to deliver a demonstrably false rant about the inaugural crowd size. Trump resented the idea that his chief of staff was there to tame him, and resented even more the notion that Priebus was the conduit to a Republican Party he had conquered.
But Priebus was the conduit. By firing him, Trump has severed a critical connection to his own party—not simply to major donors and GOP congressional leaders, but to the unruly, broader constellation of conservative-affiliated organizations and individuals that Priebus had spent five years corralling. He was effortlessly tagged as an “establishment” figure—inevitably, given his title atop the party—but Priebus was a specialist at coalition-building. He convened regular meetings as RNC chairman with influential players in the conservative movement, picking their brains and taking their temperatures on various issues. That continued as chief of staff: Priebus spoke by phone with prominent activists, such as the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, at least once a week. There is a meeting scheduled at the White House this Wednesday of the Conservative Action Project—an umbrella group that brings together leaders from across the right—and Priebus was planning to attend. It was this kind of systematic outreach that made Priebus, whatever his flaws as a West Wing manager, an essential lieutenant for Trump.
There is no question, however, that Priebus’ absence will echo loudest on Capitol Hill—particularly in the speaker’s office. Ryan’s team had heard whispers for months of Priebus’ possible departure, but the news was nonetheless a dagger, especially on the heels of a health care defeat and at the dawn of tax-reform season. Ryan and Priebus, both Green Bay Packers fans and local beer loyalists, have been friends for decades; Ryan’s former chief of staff, Andy Speth, was Priebus’ college roommate at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Priebus was the first call Ryan made when things got hairy this year, and vice versa. Working with a West Wing that contains few other true allies—and with a volatile president who has viewed him suspiciously ever since the speaker accused him of making “the textbook definition of a racist comment” about a Hispanic-American judge—Ryan saw Priebus as his staunchest ally and bunker mate. And now he’s gone.
In his place is John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and respected disciplinarian whose mandate is to succeed where Priebus failed: imposing order and organization on a chaotic White House. Kelly, however, is not a political figure; he did not support (or oppose) Trump’s campaign, and is not known to hold strong political or ideological inclinations. Looking around Trump’s inner circle, there is communications director Anthony Scaramucci, a political novice who in the past donated to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; chief strategist Steve Bannon, who used Breitbart to try and burn the Republican Party to the ground; National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, a lifelong Democrat; director of strategic communication Hope Hicks, who has zero history with GOP politics; and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, a pair of self-professed Manhattan progressives. Of Trump’s closest advisers, only Mike Pence has any association with the Republican Party.
This no longer seems accidental. Trump has, since taking office, consistently referred to Republicans as though he is not one himself—it's invariably “they” or “them.” Unlike past presidents of his party, Trump entered the White House with few personal relationships with prominent Republicans: donors, lobbyists, party activists, politicians. This liberated him to say whatever he pleased as a candidate, and, by firing Priebus, Trump might feel similarly liberated. The fear now, among Republicans in his administration and on Capitol Hill, is that Trump will turn against the party, waging rhetorical warfare against a straw-man GOP whom he blames for the legislative failures and swamp-stained inertia that has bedeviled his young presidency. It would represent a new, harsher type of triangulation, turning his base against the politicians of his own party that they elected.
Things have not yet escalated to that point. But some, including officials in his own administration, took the dismissal of Priebus as a signal that Trump is willing to go rogue against the GOP. Only a day after announcing Kelly as his new chief of staff, the president let loose on Twitter, calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not changing the Senate’s filibuster rules and saying Republicans “look like fools” for not doing so. He also tweeted that Democrats are “laughing at” the GOP. In a final taunt, Trump tweeted that Republican senators would be “total quitters” if they move on from health care following last week’s failed repeal vote.
More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one. If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP. But it’s not Priebus’ problem anymore. He is officially unemployed. And with a few weeks of summer vacation remaining, chances are that he—along with his wife and two young children—will soon be on an airplane, heading someplace where no reporter will be waiting to ask him about Donald Trump.
Trump is now a man without a party
Without Priebus, Trump is a Man Without a Party
by Tim Alberta
Reince Priebus looked battered. It was Monday, October 10—the morning after the final presidential debate—and our eyes met as I boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. It had been an extraordinary weekend: On Friday night, the biggest bombshell of the 2016 campaign dropped when the Washington Post published a decade-old audio recording on which Donald Trump made lewd comments about groping women. Speaker Paul Ryan disinvited Trump from a unity event in Wisconsin scheduled for the following day, and Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, quietly made the case to Trump and his associates that he should quit the race. Trump refused. The Sunday debate, 48 hours after the tape’s release, was dominated by discussion of Trump’s history with women. He dismissed his recorded remarks—“grab them by the pussy,” Trump had said, boasting that his celebrity status allowed him to get away with aggressive advances on the opposite sex—as “locker room talk.”
Priebus occupied a window seat, a pair of staffers to his left. The chair behind him sat empty; my instinct was to grab it and start firing questions through the slit at his left shoulder. But after studying Priebus—the slouched posture, the uncharacteristically rumpled suit, the groaning bags under his eyes—I decided it might backfire. Whether it was pity or strategy, or a bit of both, I settled in two rows back, deciding it would be better to talk upon landing in Washington.
It was an eventful flight: Ryan, while we were at 30,000 feet, had told House Republicans on a conference call that he wouldn’t be defending the president anymore—and urged them to do whatever was necessary to survive in their districts. Meanwhile, there were reports Priebus would hold his own call with RNC members to discuss ousting Trump. Priebus was understandably not keen to discuss any of these developments. But he seemed to appreciate my earlier gesture. When I greeted him, just beyond the entrance to the jet bridge, his staffers tried to shut down any interview. Priebus told them to back off. “It’s OK,” he said, offering the sort of forced half-smile you see at hospital visitations. “Go ahead. Shoot.” We walked out of the terminal and past the baggage claim, covering all of it: the tape, the debate, Ryan, the RNC and what (if anything) it could do at this point. Priebus asked twice to speak off the record, which I allowed. But his most telling comment—in retrospect—came at the end of our conversation, after he explained that the RNC had no mechanism to remove Trump as its nominee.
“Look,” he said, stepping into the sunlight outside Reagan National Airport, his staffers loading up an idling black Chevrolet Suburban. “We don’t get to pick the nominee. And we don’t get to just walk away from him, either.”
By “we,” the chairman was referring to the RNC and the broader party leadership. But it seems obvious now—in studying his approach to Trump throughout the primary season, the general election and during his tumultuous 27-week run as chief of staff, the shortest in history—that Priebus was also talking about himself. As head of the party, Priebus never foresaw the real estate mogul running, much less becoming its standard-bearer. He cracked jokes about Trump early on and flashed outrage at some of his incendiary rhetoric. But as Trump gained momentum and won the nomination and, later, the presidency—and as the RNC chairman emerged as the bridge between him and the Republican Party—Priebus could never bring himself to abandon Trump.
It's not without irony that some will hold him responsible for Trumpism—Priebus should have kicked Trump out of the GOP debates, some critics suggest—seeing how the RNC chairman would have personally loved to see Scott Walker or Marco Rubio as the party's nominee. Trump was the last choice of the party establishment, which Priebus embodied. It became clear, however, that Republican voters had other ideas—and Priebus made it his mission to ensure a level playing field. He ignored calls to remove Trump from debates after he threatened to run as an independent, and bent over backward to make the reality TV star feel welcome in the GOP. Priebus knew he would be accused of sabotaging the party, but he was unwavering in the belief that it was his job to be a facilitator and an ambassador, not a kingmaker.
His friends had mixed feelings about the chief of staff position, and some cautioned Priebus against taking it. After all, he had inherited a penniless, disorganized, technologically bankrupt Republican Party in 2011 and transformed it by 2016 into a financial behemoth with adequate field and data operations. On his watch, the GOP had kept the House, taken back the Senate and now won the presidency; why not ride into the sunset, spend time with his family and cash in on those triumphs?
The fateful answer: Because Priebus couldn’t just walk away. He felt a sense of loyalty to Trump, and more acutely, an enduring responsibility to the party and the country. Plus, the second-most prestigious office in the West Wing was beckoning. Priebus jumped at the job.
It was a mismatch from the start. As RNC chairman, Priebus had two primary responsibilities: dialing for dollars (typically three to five hours each day) and sorting out disputes among his 168 members to keep everyone happy. Key administrative functions were mostly handled by other RNC staff, including Priebus’ own chief of staff; some associates feared that Priebus’ skill set simply would not translate to the new job. Making success all the less likely was the Wisconsinite’s disposition: laid back, naturally soft-spoken and nonconfrontational, a classic people pleaser. Priebus kept a mini-fridge stocked with Miller Lite in his RNC office and would later hold occasional Friday happy hours in his West Wing suite, inviting officials from across the building to grab a can of beer or a Solo cup of wine and commiserate about the week that had been. This calm, consensus-minded approach made Priebus a beloved party chairman, and Republicans held out hope that it would make him a good chief of staff. But it didn’t. Trump trampled Priebus from Day One, sending out press secretary Sean Spicer, a longtime Preibus ally, to deliver a demonstrably false rant about the inaugural crowd size. Trump resented the idea that his chief of staff was there to tame him, and resented even more the notion that Priebus was the conduit to a Republican Party he had conquered.
But Priebus was the conduit. By firing him, Trump has severed a critical connection to his own party—not simply to major donors and GOP congressional leaders, but to the unruly, broader constellation of conservative-affiliated organizations and individuals that Priebus had spent five years corralling. He was effortlessly tagged as an “establishment” figure—inevitably, given his title atop the party—but Priebus was a specialist at coalition-building. He convened regular meetings as RNC chairman with influential players in the conservative movement, picking their brains and taking their temperatures on various issues. That continued as chief of staff: Priebus spoke by phone with prominent activists, such as the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, at least once a week. There is a meeting scheduled at the White House this Wednesday of the Conservative Action Project—an umbrella group that brings together leaders from across the right—and Priebus was planning to attend. It was this kind of systematic outreach that made Priebus, whatever his flaws as a West Wing manager, an essential lieutenant for Trump.
There is no question, however, that Priebus’ absence will echo loudest on Capitol Hill—particularly in the speaker’s office. Ryan’s team had heard whispers for months of Priebus’ possible departure, but the news was nonetheless a dagger, especially on the heels of a health care defeat and at the dawn of tax-reform season. Ryan and Priebus, both Green Bay Packers fans and local beer loyalists, have been friends for decades; Ryan’s former chief of staff, Andy Speth, was Priebus’ college roommate at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Priebus was the first call Ryan made when things got hairy this year, and vice versa. Working with a West Wing that contains few other true allies—and with a volatile president who has viewed him suspiciously ever since the speaker accused him of making “the textbook definition of a racist comment” about a Hispanic-American judge—Ryan saw Priebus as his staunchest ally and bunker mate. And now he’s gone.
In his place is John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and respected disciplinarian whose mandate is to succeed where Priebus failed: imposing order and organization on a chaotic White House. Kelly, however, is not a political figure; he did not support (or oppose) Trump’s campaign, and is not known to hold strong political or ideological inclinations. Looking around Trump’s inner circle, there is communications director Anthony Scaramucci, a political novice who in the past donated to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; chief strategist Steve Bannon, who used Breitbart to try and burn the Republican Party to the ground; National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, a lifelong Democrat; director of strategic communication Hope Hicks, who has zero history with GOP politics; and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, a pair of self-professed Manhattan progressives. Of Trump’s closest advisers, only Mike Pence has any association with the Republican Party.
This no longer seems accidental. Trump has, since taking office, consistently referred to Republicans as though he is not one himself—it's invariably “they” or “them.” Unlike past presidents of his party, Trump entered the White House with few personal relationships with prominent Republicans: donors, lobbyists, party activists, politicians. This liberated him to say whatever he pleased as a candidate, and, by firing Priebus, Trump might feel similarly liberated. The fear now, among Republicans in his administration and on Capitol Hill, is that Trump will turn against the party, waging rhetorical warfare against a straw-man GOP whom he blames for the legislative failures and swamp-stained inertia that has bedeviled his young presidency. It would represent a new, harsher type of triangulation, turning his base against the politicians of his own party that they elected.
Things have not yet escalated to that point. But some, including officials in his own administration, took the dismissal of Priebus as a signal that Trump is willing to go rogue against the GOP. Only a day after announcing Kelly as his new chief of staff, the president let loose on Twitter, calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not changing the Senate’s filibuster rules and saying Republicans “look like fools” for not doing so. He also tweeted that Democrats are “laughing at” the GOP. In a final taunt, Trump tweeted that Republican senators would be “total quitters” if they move on from health care following last week’s failed repeal vote.
More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one. If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP. But it’s not Priebus’ problem anymore. He is officially unemployed. And with a few weeks of summer vacation remaining, chances are that he—along with his wife and two young children—will soon be on an airplane, heading someplace where no reporter will be waiting to ask him about Donald Trump.
Trump is now a man without a party
It's nice and actually quite a relief to find out the arrival of Trump had no economical impact so far. If you look at the stats the economy was doing very well since Obama took over Bush. And it just kept on so far.
Cheers,
Retired General Kelly....a no nonsense kind of guy had requested the Mooch`s removal from chief of communication. Trump didn`t resist the request. Who is next?
BTW if you believe in that stuff....astrologers are predicting bad news for trump with the coming solar eclipse.
It doesn`t really take an astrologer to predict that trump is in deep shit....eclipse or not.
BTW if you believe in that stuff....astrologers are predicting bad news for trump with the coming solar eclipse.
It doesn`t really take an astrologer to predict that trump is in deep shit....eclipse or not.
This may be the best article i've read in a long time. It's written by Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona:
My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
We created him, and now we're rationalizing him. When will it stop?
By JEFF FLAKE
Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.
I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president—the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime. It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.
I’ve been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesn’t ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of one’s own party. Michael Gerson, a con*servative columnist and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote, four months into the new presidency, “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased,” and conservative institutions “with the blessings of a president … have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.”
For a conservative, that’s an awfully bitter pill to swallow. So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, “If I took the time to respond to every presiden*tial tweet, there would be little time for anything else.” Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge. It would be like Noah saying, “If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else.” At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention. At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.
Under our constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. It is what we talk about when we talk about “checks and balances.” Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, “Someone should do something!” without seeming to realize that that someone is us. And so, that unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.
There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the president’s party. We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplars—the Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more important, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great.
But then the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals—even as we put at risk our institutions and our values—then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn’t be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faus*tian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?
Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a con*certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.
It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwater’s book, to a chapter entitled “The Soviet Menace.” Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of Goldwater’s critique had seemed particularly anachronistic. The lesson here is that nothing is gone forever, especially when it comes to the devouring ambition of despotic men. As Goldwater wrote in that chapter:
Our forebears knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.
So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldn’t hesitate to speak out if the president “plays to the base” in ways that damage the Republican Party’s ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.
We have taken our “institutions conducive to freedom,” as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.
Jeff Flake is a Republican senator from Arizona. This article has been excerpted from his new book, Conscience of a Conservative.
My party is in denial about Donald Trump
My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
We created him, and now we're rationalizing him. When will it stop?
By JEFF FLAKE
Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.
I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president—the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime. It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.
I’ve been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesn’t ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of one’s own party. Michael Gerson, a con*servative columnist and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote, four months into the new presidency, “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased,” and conservative institutions “with the blessings of a president … have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.”
For a conservative, that’s an awfully bitter pill to swallow. So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, “If I took the time to respond to every presiden*tial tweet, there would be little time for anything else.” Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge. It would be like Noah saying, “If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else.” At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention. At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.
Under our constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. It is what we talk about when we talk about “checks and balances.” Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, “Someone should do something!” without seeming to realize that that someone is us. And so, that unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.
There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the president’s party. We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplars—the Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more important, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great.
But then the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals—even as we put at risk our institutions and our values—then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn’t be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faus*tian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?
Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a con*certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.
It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwater’s book, to a chapter entitled “The Soviet Menace.” Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of Goldwater’s critique had seemed particularly anachronistic. The lesson here is that nothing is gone forever, especially when it comes to the devouring ambition of despotic men. As Goldwater wrote in that chapter:
Our forebears knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.
So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldn’t hesitate to speak out if the president “plays to the base” in ways that damage the Republican Party’s ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.
We have taken our “institutions conducive to freedom,” as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.
Jeff Flake is a Republican senator from Arizona. This article has been excerpted from his new book, Conscience of a Conservative.
My party is in denial about Donald Trump
Scaramucci lacked discipline. He lasted only 6 days as Communications Director. This broke the old record short tenure of 11 days by Jack Koehler as Communications Director in 1987, after it was exposed that he belong to the Hitler Youth while growing up in Germany.
Trump Screwed the Mooch
Two absolutely great twitter posts about the Mooch's last week:
At least now #Scaramucci has time to practice that trick Bannon was teaching him.
Between being canned this week & his wife filing for divorce last week, #Scaramucci is one dead dog away from becoming a country music song.
Two absolutely great twitter posts about the Mooch's last week:
At least now #Scaramucci has time to practice that trick Bannon was teaching him.
Between being canned this week & his wife filing for divorce last week, #Scaramucci is one dead dog away from becoming a country music song.
The Mooch screwed himself when he got Reince Priebus fired. Little did he know that the person replacing Priebus would turn around and fire him on his first day on the job. Karma's a bitch!
As for "Trump screwed the Mooch" let me point out that Trump destroys everything and everyone he touches. This is becoming obvious to many observers and why he's having a lot of difficulty finding qualified people to work for him.
John Kelly will be an improvement over Reince Priebus in that Trump respects him but never respected Priebus. But Priebus knows Washington and was the administration's bridge to Congress and especially the many GOP donors. John Kelly's political experience is very limited and his connections to the GOP aren't much better. Donald Trump is literally a President without a party since if you look around him today there are very few Republicans left other than the Vice-President. Bannon has spent his life trashing and trying to destroy the Republican party as head of Breitbart. He was also Paul Ryan's biggest critic over the years. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are self-proclaimed NY progressives who always donated to the Democratic party. John Kelly is apolitical who's worked for the Obama administration in the past. Hope Hicks has zero connection to the Republican party. You're left with the likes of Kellyann Conway and Sebastian Gorka, who's a fascist. It wouldn't surprise me to see them gone once John Kelly gets settled in his job.
The Mooch was 100% correct in regards to Bannon, by the way. But Kelly will likely hang on to Bannon since he's more dangerous to the presidency if he's gone. Not only would his forced exit turn his base of right-wingers (a.k.a. 'wingnuts') against Trump, but he could very well return to Breitbart and vent against Republicans AND the Trump administration.
The problem with this administration starts at the top. The fish DOES stink from the head down. Trump is the problem and as long as he doesn't realize this not much will change. He'll keep on tweeting in the morning, continue causing chaos around the White House and make a mockery of the presidency.
Luckily for America and especially Americans, there still hasn't been a major catastrophic incident in the country since Trump took over. This incompetent and chaotic administration simply does not have the means, experience and discipline to deal with any major catastrophy should it happen. And trust me it'll happen.
"I'm not Steve Bannon. I'm not trying to suck my own cock."-----------The Mooch
As for "Trump screwed the Mooch" let me point out that Trump destroys everything and everyone he touches. This is becoming obvious to many observers and why he's having a lot of difficulty finding qualified people to work for him.
John Kelly will be an improvement over Reince Priebus in that Trump respects him but never respected Priebus. But Priebus knows Washington and was the administration's bridge to Congress and especially the many GOP donors. John Kelly's political experience is very limited and his connections to the GOP aren't much better. Donald Trump is literally a President without a party since if you look around him today there are very few Republicans left other than the Vice-President. Bannon has spent his life trashing and trying to destroy the Republican party as head of Breitbart. He was also Paul Ryan's biggest critic over the years. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are self-proclaimed NY progressives who always donated to the Democratic party. John Kelly is apolitical who's worked for the Obama administration in the past. Hope Hicks has zero connection to the Republican party. You're left with the likes of Kellyann Conway and Sebastian Gorka, who's a fascist. It wouldn't surprise me to see them gone once John Kelly gets settled in his job.
The Mooch was 100% correct in regards to Bannon, by the way. But Kelly will likely hang on to Bannon since he's more dangerous to the presidency if he's gone. Not only would his forced exit turn his base of right-wingers (a.k.a. 'wingnuts') against Trump, but he could very well return to Breitbart and vent against Republicans AND the Trump administration.
The problem with this administration starts at the top. The fish DOES stink from the head down. Trump is the problem and as long as he doesn't realize this not much will change. He'll keep on tweeting in the morning, continue causing chaos around the White House and make a mockery of the presidency.
Luckily for America and especially Americans, there still hasn't been a major catastrophic incident in the country since Trump took over. This incompetent and chaotic administration simply does not have the means, experience and discipline to deal with any major catastrophy should it happen. And trust me it'll happen.
"I'm not Steve Bannon. I'm not trying to suck my own cock."-----------The Mooch
Exactly. There is no chance of anything good long term coming up from this administration. At best he will make short term change that will make him look good (and hopefully get out of there!) but will end up real damaging in the long run.
Do not count on Trump to change or realize he is the problem. The guy was born and raised as a god. He as no clue what is humility and collaboration. It's not in his gene. Everything is due to this incredible ass hole who do not know the difference between truth or a lie.
Cheers,
I was watching various morning talkshows this morning and people were saying that since Donald Trump hadn't yet tweeted, John Kelly must already be having a positive effect on him. Then i take a look at twitter a few minutes ago and see that Trump has been tweeting his usual nonsense over the past couple of hours. He even tweeted about his enemies and the fake media not wanting him to tweet, etc. What he's doing is literally telling Kelly that he has no control over him and he'll continue tweeting if he wants to.
Very good article which i agree with:
Why Trump's presidency is already finished
by Andrew Cohen
VINALHAVEN, Maine – Donald Trump has been president of the United States for just over six months. Usually, at this stage of a presidency, the talk is still about the beginning: hopes, ambitions, progress.
With Trump, after six months, the talk is about the end: frustration, defeat, paralysis. In coastal Maine – a state that gave one of its electoral votes to Trump in 2016 – the questions have the same urgency this summer as they do in Washington.
Will Trump last four years? Will he resign, be impeached and convicted or forced out for mental incompetence under the 25th amendment? Will the Republicans abandon him?
Good presidents have had bad beginnings. In his early months in 1861, Abraham Lincoln endured the secession of four more states, the outbreak of the Civil War, and a string of military defeats.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy endured the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, a bruising summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, and the rise of the Berlin Wall.
If Trump knew history, he could say that his first half-year has not been nearly as disastrous as Lincoln’s Civil War or Kennedy’s Cold War. Trump does say that he has appointed a deeply conservative judge to the Supreme Court and that he has reversed much of Barack Obama’s environmental and regulatory regime.
He boasts that he has banned some Muslims from entering the country, banned transgender people from serving in the military, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and approved the Keystone XL pipeline.
All true, with caveats. The transgender ban has not been approved by the military, leaving the Paris Agreement will take years and Trump’s power to reverse Obama’s policies is being challenged in court.
So, if Trump at six months is not Lincoln or Kennedy, nor is he Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society), Franklin Roosevelt (the New Deal) or Ronald Reagan (tax reform). All scored early, major legislative achievements.
Trump has none, other than a law imposing sanctions on Russia, which he had opposed. Obamacare survives. There is no trillion-dollar infrastructure program, no approval for the wall with Mexico, no tax reform, no new trade agreements.
He boasts of a strong economy and a rising stock market. He does not mention the falling U.S. dollar.
He rhapsodizes about his presidency, but his “chaotic” White House suggests he sees the trouble. You do not fire your national security adviser, your chief of staff, your head of communications, your press secretary and the director of the FBI if you think things are fine.
The new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, won’t make a big difference. Yes, he can sack the vulgar Anthony Scaramucci (the first employee in the history of labour relations to be dismissed before he officially started) and stop the leaks. But Trump is Trump, incapable of change.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the powerless couple, cannot moderate his behaviour and are expected to return to New York. They have begged him to stop tweeting. He cannot; it’s his oxygen.
This is why his popularity is at a record low for a new president, why his White House is opéra bouffe, why he cannot get Congress to pass anything substantial. His scalding feud with Jeff Sessions is an exquisite agony for both; Trump realizes now he cannot fire his attorney general, or Robert Mueller, the independent counsel, without angering conservatives and further emboldening Republicans.
How does it end? Impeachment and conviction remain unlikely unless Mueller can prove Trump colluded with the Russians, which may, finally, stir Republicans. Or, the Democrats retake Congress next year. Trump’s cabinet, filled with loyalists, will not invoke the 25th amendment.
Resign? He is too proud.
At six months, Donald Trump is the youngest lame duck in the history of the office. Hounded by investigations, frustrated by his party, estranged from most Americans and some (though not all) of his base, he is reviled but never ignored.
Donald Trump will survive in office as a tin-horn strongman who can cause real damage in the world. At home, though, his effectiveness is over. He is a paralyzed president.
Trump presidency already finished
Why Trump's presidency is already finished
by Andrew Cohen
VINALHAVEN, Maine – Donald Trump has been president of the United States for just over six months. Usually, at this stage of a presidency, the talk is still about the beginning: hopes, ambitions, progress.
With Trump, after six months, the talk is about the end: frustration, defeat, paralysis. In coastal Maine – a state that gave one of its electoral votes to Trump in 2016 – the questions have the same urgency this summer as they do in Washington.
Will Trump last four years? Will he resign, be impeached and convicted or forced out for mental incompetence under the 25th amendment? Will the Republicans abandon him?
Good presidents have had bad beginnings. In his early months in 1861, Abraham Lincoln endured the secession of four more states, the outbreak of the Civil War, and a string of military defeats.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy endured the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, a bruising summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, and the rise of the Berlin Wall.
If Trump knew history, he could say that his first half-year has not been nearly as disastrous as Lincoln’s Civil War or Kennedy’s Cold War. Trump does say that he has appointed a deeply conservative judge to the Supreme Court and that he has reversed much of Barack Obama’s environmental and regulatory regime.
He boasts that he has banned some Muslims from entering the country, banned transgender people from serving in the military, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and approved the Keystone XL pipeline.
All true, with caveats. The transgender ban has not been approved by the military, leaving the Paris Agreement will take years and Trump’s power to reverse Obama’s policies is being challenged in court.
So, if Trump at six months is not Lincoln or Kennedy, nor is he Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society), Franklin Roosevelt (the New Deal) or Ronald Reagan (tax reform). All scored early, major legislative achievements.
Trump has none, other than a law imposing sanctions on Russia, which he had opposed. Obamacare survives. There is no trillion-dollar infrastructure program, no approval for the wall with Mexico, no tax reform, no new trade agreements.
He boasts of a strong economy and a rising stock market. He does not mention the falling U.S. dollar.
He rhapsodizes about his presidency, but his “chaotic” White House suggests he sees the trouble. You do not fire your national security adviser, your chief of staff, your head of communications, your press secretary and the director of the FBI if you think things are fine.
The new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, won’t make a big difference. Yes, he can sack the vulgar Anthony Scaramucci (the first employee in the history of labour relations to be dismissed before he officially started) and stop the leaks. But Trump is Trump, incapable of change.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the powerless couple, cannot moderate his behaviour and are expected to return to New York. They have begged him to stop tweeting. He cannot; it’s his oxygen.
This is why his popularity is at a record low for a new president, why his White House is opéra bouffe, why he cannot get Congress to pass anything substantial. His scalding feud with Jeff Sessions is an exquisite agony for both; Trump realizes now he cannot fire his attorney general, or Robert Mueller, the independent counsel, without angering conservatives and further emboldening Republicans.
How does it end? Impeachment and conviction remain unlikely unless Mueller can prove Trump colluded with the Russians, which may, finally, stir Republicans. Or, the Democrats retake Congress next year. Trump’s cabinet, filled with loyalists, will not invoke the 25th amendment.
Resign? He is too proud.
At six months, Donald Trump is the youngest lame duck in the history of the office. Hounded by investigations, frustrated by his party, estranged from most Americans and some (though not all) of his base, he is reviled but never ignored.
Donald Trump will survive in office as a tin-horn strongman who can cause real damage in the world. At home, though, his effectiveness is over. He is a paralyzed president.
Trump presidency already finished
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