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The only people who can stop this crisis pretend it doesn't exist.
The Incapacitated PresidentTrump’s own aides don’t trust him to lead the country. Meanwhile, the only people who can stop this crisis pretend it doesn’t exist.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/bob-woodwards-fear-trump-in-the-white-house-raises-the-specter-of-the-25th-amendment.html
In Fear: Trump in the White House, veteran reporter Bob Woodward portrays an administration where Trump’s own high-ranking advisers hold him in contempt and disdain, scorning him as ignorant and dangerously irresponsible. In the first months of his presidency, Trump is said to have asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, told Defense Secretary James Mattis that he wanted Bashar al-Assad assassinated, and brought the White House to a standstill with his anger over the appointment of Robert Mueller as special prosecutor.
Aides like Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser, were so concerned about his behavior that they took steps against his will to stop him from acting. When Trump demanded a plan for assassinating Assad—“Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them”—Mattis said he would look into it before telling a senior aide to disregard the request. To stop Trump from breaking a trade agreement with South Korea, Cohn removed the executive order in question from the president’s desk. Trump didn’t notice. He advised another aide, Rob Porter, to do the same when the president wanted to withdraw from NAFTA.
...
Washington may understand and acknowledge the fundamental dysfunction of the Trump White House, but the relevant power brokers—congressional Republicans and their allies—have shown no desire to act upon this slow-motion collapse of the executive branch. Their reasons are narrowly self-interested: Trump may be incapable of effectively carrying out the duties of the presidency, but there is enough of a working policymaking apparatus to accomplish key goals like crippling the regulatory state and building a durable conservative majority on the federal judiciary.
...
More than the public nature of President Trump’s deterioration, it’s the inaction and complicity of the majority party that truly differentiates the present situation from those of Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. Like them, Trump has a cadre of aides and advisers essentially acting in his stead as president, working around him and circumventing his worst impulses. But unlike those presidents, Trump is also insulated by a political movement that ranks pursuit of its ideological goals above all else, including the integrity of the presidency.
Aides like Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser, were so concerned about his behavior that they took steps against his will to stop him from acting. When Trump demanded a plan for assassinating Assad—“Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them”—Mattis said he would look into it before telling a senior aide to disregard the request. To stop Trump from breaking a trade agreement with South Korea, Cohn removed the executive order in question from the president’s desk. Trump didn’t notice. He advised another aide, Rob Porter, to do the same when the president wanted to withdraw from NAFTA.
...
Washington may understand and acknowledge the fundamental dysfunction of the Trump White House, but the relevant power brokers—congressional Republicans and their allies—have shown no desire to act upon this slow-motion collapse of the executive branch. Their reasons are narrowly self-interested: Trump may be incapable of effectively carrying out the duties of the presidency, but there is enough of a working policymaking apparatus to accomplish key goals like crippling the regulatory state and building a durable conservative majority on the federal judiciary.
...
More than the public nature of President Trump’s deterioration, it’s the inaction and complicity of the majority party that truly differentiates the present situation from those of Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. Like them, Trump has a cadre of aides and advisers essentially acting in his stead as president, working around him and circumventing his worst impulses. But unlike those presidents, Trump is also insulated by a political movement that ranks pursuit of its ideological goals above all else, including the integrity of the presidency.
6 replies
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To stop Trump from breaking a trade agreement with South Korea, Cohn removed the executive order in question from the president’s desk.
Trump didn’t notice.
Trump didn’t notice.
