Archives for May 2017

President Trump “has never shown any reluctance to sacrifice a surrogate to serve a short-term political need, so he apparently did not think twice this week about exposing a series of staff members to ridicule as he repeatedly shifted his explanation for firing James Comey, the F.B.I. director,” the New York Times reports.

“But his career-long habit of viewing his public protectors as somewhat disposable, on vivid display after Mr. Comey’s sudden ouster, has not exactly been an incentive to step into the firing line on his behalf.”

Noted former Obama adviser David Axelrod: “You wind up looking like a liar or a fool, neither of which is particularly attractive.”

Washington Post: In service to Trump, Pence keeps saying things that are not true.

“How does it all end? Not well for Trump. I’m not too good at the tea leaves, I don’t think anybody is. I just can’t believe that there isn’t something there on the Russia matter, with Trump doing all that he’s doing. He’s throwing every signal out that he’s got a problem, and he’s trying to make it go away. So that’s why I say I can’t imagine it ending real well for him.”

— Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, in an interview with New York Magazine.

President Trump “is considering broad changes to his communications team and strategy, which he blames for failing to contain the controversy surrounding his firing of former FBI Director James Comey,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Among other moves, Mr. Trump is again weighing replacing Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who returned to the briefing room podium on Friday after two days away on Naval reserve duty. But the president is considering a larger reorganization of his team… a senior communications staffer has been reaching out to people from supportive cable TV surrogates to gauge their interest in joining the staff.”

President Trump told Fox News that he might do press conferences himself to replace the daily briefing by his press secretary.

FOX NEWS: “Are you moving so quickly that your communications team can’t keep up with you?”

TRUMP: “Yes it’s true.”

FOX NEWS: “So what do we do about that?”

TRUMP: “We don’t have press conferences…”

FOX NEWS: “You don’t mean that!”

TRUMP: “I do. Unless I have them every two weeks and I do them myself. I think it’s a good idea.”

John Cassidy: “It is often said that the U.S. Presidency is a relatively weak office—but that is a contingent statement. To prevent the President from gaining too much power, or abusing that power, the Founding Fathers divided authority among the different branches of government, and established some fundamental governing principles. These are the fabled checks and balances, arranged, as James Bryce, the British jurist, noted in his venerable 1888 tome, ‘The American Commonwealth,’ to ‘restrain any one department from tyranny.'”

“But the checks and balances only work if each of Bryce’s departments agrees to play its allotted role. A President enabled by a spineless and supine Congress that fails to exercise its oversight powers isn’t a weak executive at all: he is a potential despot. Using his authority to hire and fire federal officials, he can rapidly remake the government to his own design, appointing loyalists to key positions, eliminating potential threats, and undermining alternative repositories of power.”

“Authoritarian leaders in foreign countries seize and maintain power this way. And, despite his bungling start, this is the project that Donald Trump appears to have embarked upon.”

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

— President Trump, on Twitter.

First Read: “This isn’t the first time, of course, that Trump and his team have been caught in contradictions, inaccurate statements, and outright whoppers. (Remember the inaugural’s crowd size? Or Trump’s claim that Barack Obama wiretapped him?) But it’s amazing on a matter that’s so important — and that was executed by the White House on its own timetable — that the Trump White House can’t tell a straight story here.”

“So what happens when there’s a story outside the White House’s control (like war, natural disaster, or another kind of tragedy)? Those are times when a president and White House will need a deep reservoir of credibility with the American public. But what happens when that reservoir is empty? Additionally, what now happens to Vice President Mike Pence’s credibility? He has been the good soldier, but his earlier insistence that the Rosenstein recommendation served as a basis for Comey’s ouster hurts him. And Pence often has been the administration’s best advocate and messenger.”