As stunningly awful as the trump 1.0 years were, his craziest ideas and worst impulses were mostly contained because at least some in his administration were sensible enough to either talk him out of things or ‘slow walk’ them until he forgot, and moved on to his next weird obsession. And even the first two years of trump 1.0, when he had control of both branches of Congress, were largely feckless because trump had no idea how to even be an effective bad President. He was mostly talk, and spent huge blocks of ‘Executive time’ watching TV. It was more ‘Apprentice’ style reality show than actual Presidential administration.
But trump 2.0 is a whole new abomination-- not only has trump figured out how to leverage his power in all the worst ways, there is nobody in his admin willing to check his worst ideas and impulses. Quite the contrary-- cosplay Nazis Noem, Miller and Hegseth seem to be in a competition to please trump by gleefully committing worse and worse crimes against humanity, both domestically and internationally.
That’s the one thing Trump learned the first time around. As bad as it was, he really did try to create a “proper” cabinet, even if the people he chose ended up “the best of a bad lot”. But even those people tried to take their jobs somewhat seriously, and so tempered Trump’s worst impulses. He absolutely hated that, and so, this time, his one real criteria was, “Will they follow orders?” Qualifications, competence, experience, common human decency? Not even on the map. Loyalty to Trump not just above all, but all.
The big question is what changed? Who was he listening to the first time that thought about actual governing? Who is he listening to now that is a sociopath? Could we actually be missing Bannon?(I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth!)
WOMAN: Hey, Kalo. Hey, when’s the boss going to do something about the crummy street lights around here, eh? A girl ain’t safe.
WOMAN 2: And how about the laundry pickup? We ain’t had a truck by in three weeks.
KALO: Write him a letter.
WOMAN 2: I did. He sent it back with postage due.
Yep. As chaotic as his first transition was, you can see that a whole lot of “Establishment” Republicans were involved, even if a few of the MAGA loyalists were in among them. Those were “The adults in the room” we heard so much about. They no longer have any real presence in Trump’s orbit.
wguy123 said he’d never seen anyone laugh like that, and he should spend more time in dementia wards. I have seen drunk guys at parties who laughed like that. I was not implying that Trump is drunk; only that you can see that sort of thing in places other than dementia patients. Everyone knows Trump eschews alcohol.
But Miller was definitely part of v1.0, and Herritage picked his Supreme Court nominations. And Musk was a hanger-on and a distraction. We know he had no respect for Pence. Could Ivanka and Pompeo have had that much influence?
I think that came much later, and was largely because Pence was an establishment Republican who didn’t just do whatever Trump told him to do.
By the time Trump figured this out, he’d lost control of Congress, and then COVID kicked him in the balls. This time around, he knew not to make that “mistake” again, and spent four years cultivating his suicide squad of bootlickers and incompetents.
Trump and his administration is like a swirling storm of bb’s in your kitchen while you’re just trying to cook. And then you have to clean it all up. And pick bb’s out of your food.
This mess though will take decades to clean up. IF we even can. No one will ever trust us again.
It wasn’t that he listened to anybody who was giving him good advice about actual governing, so much as there were key figures who had the temerity to block, or at least quietly ‘slow walk’ his worst ideas and impulses, until he forgot about them and moved on to some other shiny distraction. Early on there was Rex Tillerson as SoS and Reince Priebus as CoS who were somewhat pragmatic establishment Repubs who filled the ‘adult in the room’ role to an extent, but did not last long before they were tossed aside. Priebus’ successor, 4-Star General Jim Kelly, also acted as a voice of reason in the admin.
Even Repubs in the admin who by any normal estimate were repugnant in their viewpoints still found some of trump’s excesses to be a bridge too far, even for them, and pushed back, to be thrown under the bus with the rest of the ‘trump traitors’. Like AG Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation. Or National Security Advisor John Bolton, who clashed with trump and paid the price. Even Pence, who was a lickspittle toady for 99.9% of his tenure, found a backbone toward the end of trump 1.0, and refused to try to decertify the election.
Eventually trump ‘learned’ and now only hires people who are as evil, stupid and batshit crazy as himself (Miller, Noem, Hegseth) or are fully invested in prostrating and debasing themselves to his ‘cause’ (Vance, many others).
