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August 16, 2017 10:32 AM UTC

Donald Trump May Have Lost Control of the White House

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, left, and other staffers during Trump’s Tuesday press conference (Kristin Donnelly, NBC News)

Donald Trump has gotten away with saying more ridiculous things than any President in modern history. With his stunning remarks Tuesday on the violence in Charlottesville, VA, Trump may have finally gone beyond a point that his own staff is willing to follow.

As multiple media outlets are reporting today, Trump’s insane comments seemingly defending white supremacists could lead to a mass exodus of vital staff members.

Here’s NBC News:

To President Trump’s aides, it was stunning. Multiple sources inside and close to the White House described the president’s senior staff as confused and frustrated, caught off guard by Trump’s decision to defend his initial response to the violence in Virginia.

He “went rogue,” one senior White House official told NBC News.

And Politico:

White House aides are wrestling with how to respond to President Donald Trump’s defiant news conference on Tuesday in which he doubled down on his statement that “both sides” are to blame for the Charlottesville violence and offered what some perceived to be overtures to white supremacists.

No aides had yet threatened to resign as of Wednesday morning, according to White House officials and advisers, but a number of White House staffers had private conversations on Tuesday night about how terribly the day went. [Pols emphasis]

White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who was standing near Trump on Tuesday for what was supposed to be a statement about infrastructure, was particularly displeased, according to people familiar with the matter, as the president launched into a rant about the culpability of the “alt-left” while calling some of the protesters at the white nationalist rally “very fine people.”…

And The Washington Post:

Now that President Trump has reverted to his earlier position that “many sides” are to blame for the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, the dismay of senior people very close to him is suddenly getting smuggled out to the rest of the world, as if by magic. [Pols emphasis] We are told that Gary Cohn, a top economic adviser to the White House, was “disgusted” and “upset.” We learn that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been urging moderation. We are informedthat Trump’s top aides were “stunned” by Trump’s comments, and that new chief of staff John F. Kelly was “very frustrated” by them.

And the New York Times:

No word in the Trump lexicon is as tread-worn as “unprecedented.” But members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private. [Pols emphasis] The National Economic Council chairman, Gary D. Cohn, and the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who are Jewish, stood by uncomfortably as the president exacerbated a controversy that has once again engulfed a White House in disarray.

We could go on and on and on, but let’s wrap up with this story from CNN:

Donald Trump always got away with everything.

The most unorthodox candidate and president in history has exhibited a near-mystical capacity to evade the price of blunders that would have felled conventional politicians.

If that is ever going to change, the moment may be now.

Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet, as does his hope of advancing any sort of policy agenda with Congressional Republicans who are increasingly distancing themselves from the President. The President has already burned through three different Communications Directors in his first 200 days in office; Hope Hicks, who is all of 28-years-old, is the new White House Communications Director. But what happens when critical staff members such as Cohn and Kelly decide that they can longer work for Trump?

At what point does the White House all but cease to function? We may be on the verge of finding out the answer to that question.

Comments

6 thoughts on “Donald Trump May Have Lost Control of the White House

  1. This is why direct Russian "collusion" is likely a red herring.

    A White House in complete disarray, headed by a repulsive childish blithering idiot profiteer, who is a source of disgust and embarrassment to the majority of American people, and incapable of rallying any kind of constructive consent or action  — as well as an FBI and a Congess expending time, personnel, and resources on wild semi-goose chases — is a much better deal for Putin than any Manchurian Moscovian candidate could ever be. 

    If our politicians can’t do the job of excising this cancer, then maybe we better all start hoping for a military coup to save our democracy, before things get really awful? . . . (sarcasm)

  2. Congratulations to everybody who answered "one" to the question, "How many black presidents will it take to persuade the U.S. to turn over the executive branch of its federal government to an actual shit show?"

  3. Trump's day of reckoning is approaching. We'll all get up one day and the traps will have been sprung, the killing floors will have dropped away, additional subpoenas will be flying in all directions, and indictments will be being handed down en masse, starting with the top.

    It's going to be sweet. Be ready, so as not to miss one delicious minute of it…

    Meantime, I’m getting the sense that Trump’s warm, open embrace, not only of Russian oligarchs, dictators and mafia types, but this time of anti-American nazis, rebels, radicals, racists, skinheads, insurrectionists and seditionists may just turn out to be seen in retrospect as the proverbial straw finally breaking the staggering, long-suffering camel’s back…

  4. The Sad!-ministration is so much an amateur operation that they couldn't bother to get facts — instead, they must have relied on something they heard, or thought they heard, on Fox.  
     
    One problem of having a rotating cast of amateurs as Director of Communication (or Interim Director) — they haven't learned that credibility is the main coin for their treasury, and by the time they learn some lessons, they quit (sometimes with a push or a knife in the back).  
     
    Since the election — 9 months —  
    Jason Miller 2 days 
    Sean Spicer 45 days (acting)  
    Mike Dubke 88 days 
    Sean Spicer 49 days (acting) 
    Anthony Scaramucci 10 days* (never sworn in) 
    Hope Hicks ?? days (acting)

  5. While the members of Trump's White House staff are many vile things, I don't think they are stupid. Which means, they could not possibly have been "stunned" that Trump actually thinks the things he said Tuesday. To claim they are "stunned" that he actually said those things–in public, to the press–to be surprised they could not control him, well, that does strike me as stupid on their part. 

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