WHEN IN DOUBT, TRUMP ALWAYS WITHDRAWS TO HIS ADORING POLITICAL BASE

…Trump at one of his adoring campaign style rallies.

 

There are amazing levels of dysfunction occurring in the White House.

 

Now that the world knows that President Trump is under an official FBI, NSA and Justice Department investigation, he is acting more like a flailing swimmer that is going down for the third and last time.  As usual, the president’s basic instinct is to withdraw to the warmth and comfort of his political base that will support him, no matter how much he tells his untruths. 

 

The president of course starts his days with his rants on Twitter.  He then schedules a campaign-style rally, like he did recently in Florida .  Of course, both of these may boost his morale, but they will do nothing to make his problems go away.

 

And if these efforts don’t work for him, Trump just retreats to his Florida White House retreat, this occurs at 10 times the cost to the tax payers of any former president’s retreats.  (FYI, Trumps first month of tax-payer paid travel costs and security for his family was equal to a full year of costs for the Obama family!  Trump travelled to his Mar-A-Lago retreat every weekend of his first month.)

 

Currently within the Trump administration and the White House, they are dealing with two serious conundrums:

First, there is the serious question about Trump’s election campaign’s contacts with official and unofficial representatives of the Russian government.  The US Intelligence agencies believe these contacts made questionable efforts for helping Trump win the 2016 election, thus we have the official investigations.

 

Trump being implicated w/ Putin by a "supporter"?

 

The other issue is that there are amazing levels of dysfunction in the White House that make Trump and his staff’s self-inflicted wounds the rule, rather than the exception.

 

To demonstrate as to what I am referring, just take one of the times Trump took questions from the network reporters at the White house.

 

First, Trump started this day with his usual early morning Tweet.  This one said: “The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story — RUSSIA. Fake news!”

                                                                                                                            

Now, when he later took questions from reporters in the White House, here are the misinterpretations, distortions and contradictions from his responses.

 

Trump's childish claims as demonstrated by Newsweek

 

Trump again made the ridiculous claim that the Russia allegations are nothing more than a tantrum by Democrats that were upset that Hillary Clinton did not win as they had expected.  Trump stated, “they lost the election, and so badly”.  But of course, that ignores the fact that Clinton did comfortably win the popular vote by millions, and Trump’s electoral margin was historically one of the narrowest.

 

Another distortion is that the Democrats “did NOT make the accusation that Russia had anything to do with Trump winning the election”.  That statement was made by the 17, US Intelligence Agencies.  It was  not the Democratic Party nor the Clinton campaign that made the finding that Russia meddled in the US election.  And it is now clear that the Russian’s aim was for directly boosting Trump’s winning prospects. If anything, the chief Democrat, President Barack Obama, he had reacted much too mildly as he was concerned about being accused of interfering in the election.

 

And then there’s that false Trump way of ending every Tweet with his “Fake News” declaration.

 

If it was “Fake”, why did Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, have to step down over a “fake news report”?

 

In his later tweets, Trump attacked “low-life leakers” in the intelligence community.  So, that just confirms that leaked information about the Russia connection is genuine, not “fake”.  

 

Come on Trump, just because you are president doesn’t mean you can have it both ways.

 

Trump still doesn’t seem to realize that what is the most important about the idea of the Russian President Vladimir Putin playing a big role in the election is that it presents a grave challenge to our democracy. Even the reluctant Republicans in Congress agree we have to seriously investigate the Trump connection.

 

The FBI was already probing reported contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence officials. We must and will eventually learn the truth.  But the fall of Michael Flynn just asks more questions, than it answers

 

But another issue today is that it is really difficult for anyone to understand who is in charge at the White House….?

 

The Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has yet to establish any reasonable sense of order or any effective process for making decisions.

 

The bogus Chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon and Senior Adviser, Stephen Miller are said to constitute a competing power center to Priebus.  In addition, these two were responsible for the first, shoddy, travel and refugee ban that was blocked by the federal courts.

 

Counselor and adviser Kellyanne Conway goes on television and speaks confidently for the administration.  But when she does, she is increasingly out of the loop.  Like when she said that Trump had “full confidence” in Michael Flynn, just hours before his resignation was requested.

 

And then there’s the clownish Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who continues to struggle with “foot-in-mouth-disease” every day.  He does this while he trys (and usually fails) to reconcile Trump’s bazaar pronouncements and his total lack of political reality.

 

As with the other still open White House positions, no communications director has been hired, but that asks the question, “Who the hell would want the job anyway?”

 

Just the empty halls due to so many un-filled White House positions

 

 

The reality is that among Trump’s inner circle, his Senior Advisor, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and his daughter Ivanka, they seem to be the only ones that have a real positive impact. Yes, this current administration reduces an observer to actually recognize that nepotism in the White House is its only level of real stability.

 

Just look at how things occurred when Trump and his so called “brain–trust” learned the details of the North Korean missile test.  This happened while the president was hosting a dinner party for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a dining terrace at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago White House in Florida.

 

At that event, within the range of the prying eyes of the media, Trump and the party members had to use their flashlight apps on their cellphones to read the incoming defense documents.

 

Trump later said that his administration was functioning like “a fine-tuned machine.”   But it’s more like he was referring to his administration like a federal crash-test simulator, not a Formula 1 Ferrari or a B1 bomber. 

 

Yes, I guess things could be a lot worse, but I’m not sure how that’s actually possible.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017