Baby-sitting The Donald is
an important job
This weekend, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) ruffled feathers in the
White House, leveling a slew of attacks on President Trump that culminated with
the Tennesseean tweeting, “It’s a shame the White House has
become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this
morning.”
Politico’s Josh Dawsey reports that ten
current and former Trump insiders, including West Wing officials, confirm that
“adult day care” is exactly the role that the president has forced them into.
The sources told Dawsey
that in order to avoid inciting a presidential tantrum, aides employed delay
tactics and distractions to sideline Trump from acting on his ill-informed
urges.
Dawsey writes:
“Trump
would impulsively want to fire someone like attorney general Jeff Sessions,
create a new wide–ranging policy with far–flung implications like increasing
tariffs on Chinese steel imports or end a decades–old deal like the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Enraged with a TV segment or frustrated after a
meandering meeting, the president would order it done immediately.
“Delaying the
decision would give [former Chief of Staff Reince] Priebus and others a chance
to change his mind or bring in advisers to speak with Trump – and in some
cases, to ensure Trump would drop the idea altogether and move on.”
The strategy dates back to Trump’s days as a private citizen,
where Barbara Res, a former executive in the Trump Organization, notes
“you either had to just convince him something better was his idea or ignore
what he said to do and hoped he forgot about it the next day.”
Those traits have only been exacerbated by the Oval Office, where aides say Trump often comes in, enraged by a Fox News reports he just saw or a conversation with Stephen Miller, and staffers have to distract him with a chart or a phone call until he forgets what got him worked up in the first place.
White House aides report
that one reliable source of distraction they sought out had been Corker,
lending credence to the Senator’s accusations.
Dawsey writes:
“Corker,
for example, has been called by White House aides several times to speak with
Trump about foreign policy, from Iran to Syria to North Korea to his
Afghanistan strategy; sometimes, he’d check in with senior officials like
Tillerson and Mattis before talking to the president.
One senior administration
official said Corker had even been put on speaker phone in the Oval Office,
where aides sat gathered in chairs.”
When President Obama
handed the reins of the executive branch to Trump, few were under the illusion
that the president would again be the smartest man in the room for some time.
We hoped, however, that he could at least be one of the adults.
Those hopes were in vain,
and now we must deal with the reality that the President of the United States
needs a team of executive babysitters to keep him from taking the country even
farther off the rails than he already has.
SHEILA
NORTON IS A WRITER WITH TEN YEARS OF CAPITOL
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