The Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Ship—and Talking to Bob Woodward
I admit. My gob was as smacked as anybody's was when details of the forthcoming Bob Woodward book, Fear, started trickling out. From the BBC:
Woodward describes several instances where Trump administration officials - chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, in particular - removed documents from the president's desk to keep Mr Trump from signing them. It was all part of a larger effort to insulate the administration, and the nation, from what they saw as Mr Trump's more dangerous impulses. Documents that would have allowed the president to withdraw the nation from the North American Free Trade Agreement and a trade deal with South Korea were hidden - and the US has since committed to renegotiating the pacts. Woodward describes these acts as "no less than an administrative coup d'etat".
And:
On 27 January, according to Woodward, the president's personal attorney John Dowd staged a mock interview session with the president to demonstrate what he feared would be the disastrous results if Mr Trump were to sit down with Robert Mueller's special counsel team investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. It didn't go well, as the president grew increasingly frustrated with the intensity of the questioning, at one point angrily calling the investigation "a goddamn hoax". Dowd would go on to meet with Mr Mueller and reportedly tell him that he couldn't agree to the interview because he didn't want to let the president "look like an idiot" and embarrass the nation on the world stage.
Also:
"We're in Crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had." - John Kelly.
Too, from CNN:
Chief of staff John Kelly describes Trump as an "idiot" and "unhinged," Woodward reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis describes Trump as having the understanding of "a fifth or sixth grader." And Trump's former personal lawyer John Dowd describes the President as "a fucking liar," telling Trump he would end up in an "orange jump suit" if he testified to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Over the weekend, more than a few people on the electric Twitter machine had their innings with me because I found the obvious disdain for El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago at John McCain's funeral service to be a cause for some optimism. In fact, if elite opinion turns against him at the same time that resistance to him rises in the street and at the ballot box, he's got nowhere to run and, if half of what Woodward apparently wrote is true, he's more than halfway off the trolley already. And, from what we know of Woodward's modus operandi, this book is even more evidence that the "establishment" has had enough of the festival of fools in the Oval Office.
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In most of Woodward's now annual doorstops-God, the man writes with a spray-can-you can tell who the folks are who deal the juiciest material. They're the ones using Woodward's credibility to cover their own hindquarters. When things go bad in a White House, they're the ones who see talking to Woodward as a way to distance themselves from the stench of failure and maintain some semblance of a future career.
Of course, since this White House already has a staggering number of ex-employees, Woodward had a target-rich environment. (From the excerpts, Gary Cohn seems to be one of the more prominent patients at the rehab clinic.) But this is one more barrage from yet another quarter. These are all people with plans for the future that don't include Donald Trump. If the rats desert the sinking ship, the ship sinks nonetheless.
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