Thursday, May 18, 2017

Douthat has had enough

I see that Ross Douthat has had enough of Trump and calls for his removal using the 25th Amendment.  In doing so, he makes a point which is crucial:
Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpitate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor.

It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration.
Yes, since virtually Day 1, the extraordinary level of leaks to the press has indicated something was very wrong.   Trump, and his gullible defenders, claim the leaks are invented.   It is an inversion of reality, coming from the man who rose on the back of internet fake news and years of birtherism and other stupid conspiracy theories.  

The real problem, though, may be the gutlessness of the anonymous sources.  If they really think he should be gone, all it might take is a good handful of close aides to resign, and then speak freely to the press about their doubts, from observing him close at hand, as to his intellectual suitability for the job. 

As for his defenders:   they fall into two main categories - the culture warriors who are quite stupidly blinded by the partisanship of Right wingnut media and will never be convinced he's unsuited to the task; and the culture warriors who know he's a joke but take the view "he may be an incompetent idiot,  but he's our incompetent idiot.  We'll just get what we want by leaving him in place and working around him."  

Both upset me, but perhaps the later are morally the worse of the two groups.

*  OK, to be more accurate, it's probably more like a spectrum with those at either end, and some crossover in the middle.

2 comments:

not trampis said...

It is a very good point about the leaks. Why don't they simply resign?

John said...

Trump will resign rather than face impeachment or pressure to stand down. He can't admit failure so I wouldn't be surprised if he puts forward some lame excuse such as Melania misses him too much or he even admits his son Eric has "special needs". He looks tired, is whining a lot, and has lost his bluster. He is worn down, he is very overweight, he might even have a cardiovascular event because obesity, stress, and his famous little sleep routine is a dangerous combination.