NYT again - "Trump, Omarosa and 'Only the Best People'"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/opinion/editorials/trump-omarosa-firing-recording.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

We are yet again reminded of how this president has hired people who reflect and reinforce his nastiness, neediness and narcissism.

By The Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Aug. 13, 2018

President Trump’s spat with Omarosa Manigault Newman, the White House adviser who was fired in December for “serious integrity issues,” is another of those particularly Trumpian innovations in public life — the raging dumpster fire that continues to yield new trash.

In her juicy new tell-all, aptly titled “Unhinged,” Ms. Manigault Newman paints an unflattering portrait of the president, whom she has known since appearing as a contestant on his reality TV show “The Apprentice” in 2004. She characterizes Mr. Trump as a racist, misogynistic narcissist with poor impulse control, severe attention-deficit issues and signs of creeping mental decline, who “loves the hate,” “thrives on criticism and insults” and “delights in chaos and confusion.” Her anecdotes range from the prosaically awful (she claims he has used the N-word) to the freakish (she says she once walked into the Oval Office and found him eating paper). She says the Trump campaign offered her a $15,000-a-month sinecure to keep quiet about her on-the-job experiences. (A copy of the agreement has become public.) And, oh yes, she has secret audio recordings to corroborate some of her claims, including a recording of her firing by the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, in the Situation Room.

Mr. Trump has responded with characteristic restraint. He has dismissed Ms. Manigault Newman as “wacky”; called her a “lowlife”; mocked her for her having, he claims, weepily begged him for a job in the White House; and said she was “hated” by her colleagues for being “nasty,” “vicious, but not smart” and “nothing but problems.” Despite all this, insists Mr. Trump, he had tried his best to make things work because Ms. Manigault Newman always said “GREAT things” about him. For this president, there remains no higher job qualification than constantly telling him and others what a super guy he is.

On both sides, the spat is vintage Trump: tawdry, cruel, vindictive and highly personal. That said, this is about more than a petty feud with a former aide who famously shares Mr. Trump’s love of chaos, confusion and high drama. It is also a glaring reminder of one of this president’s central failings as a leader: his disastrous judgment when choosing people with whom to surround himself.


snip - lots more to read - apologies about the pay wall

[dalton99a]

1. A keen eye for talent

Of course, in terms of self-serving machinations, Ms. Manigault Newman is bush league compared with the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The laundry list of reckless, venal and quite possibly felonious behavior in which Mr. Manafort engaged has been on vivid display this month in federal court, where he is facing 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud. As ethically suspect characters go, Mr. Manafort ranks right up there with, well, with Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and longtime fixer, who is currently under criminal investigation for his own suspect business dealings. Mr. Cohen had worked with Mr. Trump for years. Even so, when it came to light that Mr. Cohen had secretly recorded some of their conversations, the president took to Twitter to rage, “What kind of a lawyer would tape a client?”

Answer: Precisely the kind whose primary client would be Donald J. Trump.

Even if you grade on the Trumpian curve of loyalty matters above all else, Mr. Trump has repeatedly failed. These people are all grifters. Mr. Trump just assumed they were his grifters.

And all of that is before you start poking into the shady dealings of other members of the Trump syndicate. Going back to the earliest days of the administration, Mr. Trump tapped Michael Flynn as his national security adviser, despite an explicit warning from President Barack Obama, who’d had to fire Mr. Flynn from his administration. This year, Mr. Trump nominated the White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, only to have Dr. Jackson withdraw after allegations came to light that, among other issues, he had a tendency to get drunk on the job and hand out meds like Halloween candy. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, (finally!) got shown the door for his industrial-grade grifting. Just last week, the news broke that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been accused of stealing upward of $120 million from various business associates. And so grows the spiral of corruption and incompetence and ethical shadiness.

Surrounding oneself with smart, competent, preferably noncorrupt people is important for any president. The job is too big for even the most gifted leader to handle alone. But for a president with no relevant experience in, knowledge of or identifiable interest in what the job entails, it is all the more vital. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump’s claim that he has a keen eye for talent, like so many of his other promises, turned out to be a mix of alternative facts and hot air.