The departure of Gary Cohn is sending shock waves through the finance wing of the Republican Party. As Ezra Klein points out, there is a crisis in staffing in the Trump White House. No one wants to work for an unstable, meglomaniacal ignoramus apparently.
Nobody except the Republican House.
What is so striking is that you have some guys like McMaster, Mattis and possibly Tillerson who are hanging on in order to prevent Lord Smallgloves from launching a war because Fox and Friends tells him to. They probably have to swallow the regurgitated bile in the back of their throat every time they walk into Trump's presence, but you can understand why they feel the need to stay.
Then you have men with their own agendas, like Sessions' war on voting while black or Steve Mnuchin's...I have no idea what that sack of crap wants.
But everyone else is pulling the rip cords as soon as they can. My guess is that before Tax Day, Mueller has some spectacular indictments on the offer. He might think about waiting until November to bring in the really big fish, so that he might have a Democratic House to protect him, but he's clearly zeroing in on some big targets.
Meanwhile, the Devin Nunes wing of the GOP continues to carry water for Trump. True, many Republicans are balking at the trade war, as Cohn did. But until Paul Ryan's distaste for tariffs leads him to actually take a stand against Trump (maybe removing Devin Nunes and replacing him with Trey Gowdy, for instance), it's all just words. (Jon Chait explains why Paul Ryan hasn't definitively broken with Mango Mussolini yet.)
The Republican Party currently has the worst of both worlds. They are watching their approval ratings be demolished by the worst president in this country's history, while unprecedented levels of corruption infest the White House and executive branch. They are losing the only people in that White House who have a clue about anything, so the dysfunction and corruption will only get worse. And yet their pants-wetting fear of their own voters precludes them from doing anything about it.
Couldn't happen to a better bunch of people.
No comments:
Post a Comment