October 27, 2019

Donald Trump boasts, exaggerates, tells lies and generally plays the buffoon.  He is incompetent and dangerous.  Some who have been on his staff in the past have attempted to bring some level of rationality to the White House, but others pretend that Trump‘s babbling makes sense.

John Kelly, former Chief of Staff, who falls into the former category, recently described a conversation with the President shortly before his departure: “I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth — don’t do that. Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”[75]  Trump denied that any such meeting took place.   

His “Press Secretary,” Stephanie Grisham, whose assignment is to avoid and malign the news media, demonstrated that she belongs to category two by offering this rejoinder: “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”[76]

It is Kelly’s replacement, Mick Mulvaney, who can’t handle Trump’s genius, i.e. cover for him and maintain some level of deniability.  Instead, when interviewed about withholding funds from Ukraine, he acknowledged that Trump subordinated foreign policy to domestic politics.  (The reference is to “unproven claims that Ukrainian officials assisted Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign,” including a “debunked conspiracy theory that a hacked DNC server was taken to Ukraine in 2016 to hide evidence that it was that country, not Russia, that interfered in the presidential election.”) [77]

QUESTION: So the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine?

MULVANEY: The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate.

QUESTION: Withholding the funding?

MULVANEY: Yeah, which ultimately then flowed. . . .

QUESTION: But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is, funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well.

MULVANEY: We do — we do that all the time with foreign policy. . . . And I have news for everybody. Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.

 

The White House, the “fine-tuned machine” and “well-oiled machine” of Trump’s boasts, is managing, simultaneously, to obstruct and aid the impeachment inquiry.

_____________________

75.https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/i-feel-bad-that-i-left-john-kelly-warned-trump-he-would-be-impeached?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

76. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-house-john-kelly-trumps-genius_n_5db4eecbe4b 05df62ec 04e6b

77.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-johnson-ally-of-trump-and-ukraine-surfaces-in- crucial-episodes-in-the-saga/2019/10/28/40b9e44c-f684-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html?wpisrc=nl_ most&wpmm=1