Archives for May 2017

A senior official in the Trump administration, who previously worked on the president’s campaign, offered a candid and brief assessment of the fallout of the president’s possible interference in an FBI investigation to the Daily Beast: “I don’t see how Trump isn’t completely fucked.”

Said another: “I feel like running down the hallway with a fire extinguisher.”

Dan Balz: “As President Trump lurches from one crisis to another, Republicans have chosen a strategy of compartmentalization over confrontation. It is a survival mechanism, one that comes with no guarantee of ultimate success but with significant risks attached.”

“With each controversy, Republicans try to look away, in the hope that the storm around the White House will pass and some sense of calm and normalcy will emerge. Events of the past eight days — the firing of James Comey as FBI director and now the report that the president shared highly classified information from a U.S. ally with the Russians — underscore just how difficult it has become to maintain that posture.”

“Republicans desperately want this relationship to work. They have a big policy agenda that they want to see turned into law. They want to move on health care and taxes, government regulations and budget priorities. They waited through the last years of the previous administration for the opportunity to hold all the levers of power.”

New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s appetite for chaos, coupled with his disregard for the self-protective conventions of the presidency, have left his staff confused and squabbling. And his own mood, according to two advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, turning against most of his aides — even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — and describing them in a fury as ‘incompetent.'”

“Even before the latest bombshell dropped, reports swirled in the White House that the president was about to embark on a major shake-up… Mr. Trump, who still openly laments having to dismiss his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, has groused that General McMaster talks too much in meetings, and the president has referred to him as ‘a pain.'”

Daily Beast: “Communications staff and senior staffers at the White House were literally ‘hiding in offices,’ according to a senior Trump aide, as a gaggle of White House press stormed White House hallways just after the Washington Post story broke on Monday evening.”

James Hohmann: “Let’s step back for a second and ponder why Trump thought it was a good idea to give an audience to two leaders from an adversary of the United States, who the intelligence agencies believe meddled in last year’s presidential election. The FBI continues to probe possible connections between Trump associates and the Russian government. So are multiple congressional committees. Adding insult to injury, Trump scheduled this meeting for the morning after he axed Comey.”

“Not only that, Trump welcomed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — a key figure in the earlier Russia controversies — to the meeting. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had to resign because of fallout from his contacts with Kislyak and misleading statements about what he’d said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from matters related to the FBI’s Russia investigation after it emerged he met and spoke with Kislyak, despite denying any contact with Russian officials while under oath during his confirmation hearing. Any conventional president would avoid Kislyak like the plague. Trump welcomed him with open arms.”