The Political Thread

IT ONLY GETS WORSE FOR DONALD (STOP LAUGHING TEQUILA; I have told you before it is not Polite to LAUGH at Idiots that are Serial Compulsive Liars who are also Incompetent, Bullies, Racist, Bigots, etc.; but you can GIGGLE).

--09-05-18: www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-real-reason-bob-woodwards-book-is-so-damaging-for-trump/ar-BBMSN4T?li=BBnb7Kz
But what's truly worrisome for President Trump and his administration is that the portrait Woodward paints of a chaotic, dysfunctional, ill-prepared White House is all strangely familiar. It's the same vision of the White House that Michael Wolff wrote way back in January in "Fire and Fury." It's the same picture that Omarosa Manigault-Newman constructed in her memoir of her year in the White House.

It's the same story that White House reporters at CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and virtually every other mainstream media outlet has told of the Trump White House.

Sure, Omarosa could be a disgruntled former aide trying to make money while exacting revenge on her enemies. Sure, Michael Wolff could have been misled by a few sources with scores to settle with Trump. Sure, reporters could get a detail or two wrong. Sure, Woodward could have cast a scene or two in ways that are less than favorable to Trump.

But how could all -- and I mean all -- of the reporting on this White House reach a striking similar conclusion? The portraits of Trump drawn by Wolff, Omarosa and Woodward are all eerily similar to one another -- a man hopelessly out of his depth in the job, but entirely incapable of understanding how desperately out of depth he actually is.

A man motivated almost entirely by personal grievance. A man willing to humiliate people who work for him, to play staffers against one another, to scapegoat underlings to keep blame off of himself.

Someone who has so much self-belief that he rarely adequately prepares for situations involving international diplomacy and national security. Top aides who view that their jobs are primarily keeping Trump from causing serious harm, and grousing every step of the way about the man.

And now Bob Woodward -- without question the preeminent political reporter and chronicler of the White House in the last four decades -- has written a book that confirms every bit of the portrayals we've seen about who Trump is, who he surrounds himself and how he conducts his business.

The consistency in those storylines is virtually impossible to explain in any other way than this: It's true. To believe otherwise, you have to convince yourself that not only the entire daily media but also the likes of Wolff and Woodward all got together and agreed on how to portray Trump across tweets, stories and books. Which is, of course, beyond ridiculous.

--09-05-18: www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/michael-moore-plays-his-trump-card-a-new-movie-modern-fascism-and-a-2020-prediction/ar-BBMUdTw?li=BBnbfcL  
This time out, as Moore, 64, readies his newest documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9, which will kick off the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6, he's not holding back.

"Trump is our Frankenstein and we are Dr. Frankenstein," he declares. "We have helped to create a situation that has allowed us to end up with Trump.

The dumbing down of our society through the media, the lack of education through poor schools, allows for a dumbed-down electorate, and for him to be able to actually get 63 million votes." In the opening moments of his new film, as the comedy curdles into horror, Moore asks bluntly, "How the f--- did this happen?"

Fahrenheit 11/9 — its title reworks that of his biggest hit by referencing the actual date when the 2016 election was called, in the early morning hours — may start with Trump, but it then ranges across a larger panorama, from the Flint, Michigan, water crisis to the growing resistance movement as exemplified by the striking West Virginia school teachers and the Parkland, Florida, students who organized the March for Our Lives in Washington.

"If people think this is Michael Moore's Trump film and that they're going to get two hours of Trump, Trump, Trump, I'm sorry but I'm not going to give you a simplistic film like that," Moore says. "Yes, I will show you some stuff about Trump that you haven't seen, but if you're coming to see the pee tape, you're going to the wrong movie."

THE LATEST ON THE INCOMPENTENT SERIAL COMPUSLIVE LIAR= DONALD. I am afraid Donald MIGHT, JUST MIGHT, DO SOMETHING REAL, REAL STUPID to try and Distract/Distort the Public from all of his rapidly brewing legal issues, etc. etc. etc.

09-05-18: www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/i-am-part-of-the-resistance-inside-the-trump-administration/ar-BBMVtbs?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U147DHP

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
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President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

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

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

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.