How Long Can This Go On?

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/how-long-can-this-go-on/535188/

How Long Can This Go On?

One of Trump’s top aides viciously attacks the others, even as the president lambastes his own attorney general. Is there any limit on this administration’s dysfunction?


David A. Graham
Jul 27, 2017 Politics

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No one can be surprised by the antipathy between top Trump advisers—for months, the press has been full of reports about skirmishes between various, rotating cliques—but such fights have not been not discussed this openly. This was true even in the early days of the Clinton White House, the previous gold standard for early-term dysfunction. Though staffers were frequently stabbing each other in the back, including undercutting the then-chief of staff (sound familiar?), they were not calling up The New Yorker to speak about it on the record. (They were also living in a pre-internet era, though that would change by the second term, when Drudge Report first revealed the Monica Lewinsky scandal.)

But Scaramucci put it best on CNN Thursday morning: “The fish stinks from the head down.” President Trump has set the tone for making these fights public with his own bizarre, cruel treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In two newspaper interviews and in a series of tweets, Trump has lambasted Sessions—one of his earliest and most loyal supporters—as weak and ineffective, and has complained about his decision to recuse himself from investigations of Trump’s relations with Russia, calling it “unfair” to the president. Not since the Andrew Johnson administration has a president so viciously attacked one of his own Cabinet members.

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Trump’s reluctance to fire anyone is one of the great mysteries of his presidency so far, but so too is the willingness of humiliated staffers to stick around. In the case of Priebus and Sessions, they might not see much upside beyond the velvet coffin of a TV-contributor gig. Sessions is 70, gave up a safe seat in the Senate to become attorney general, and is remaking the justice system along the lines he desires. Priebus is a mild-mannered longtime operative whose life’s ambition seemed to be making the Republican Party work better. He appeared successful, until Trump came along. On the one hand, the GOP now controls the Supreme Court, both houses of Congress, and the presidency. On the other hand, it can’t seem to get anything done and is saddled with, well, vulgar feuds involving Anthony Scaramucci, to say nothing of the looming special-counsel investigation of Trump.

So how long can this go on? The Trump presidency has seemed to be falling apart for at least two months now, and yet so much has happened since then: the appointment of the special counsel, the revelation of Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer, the Scaramucci saga, and dozens more half-forgotten threads. One possibility is that Priebus or Sessions exit, leaving the president with no chief of staff, a vacant attorney general’s office, or both. Another is that either of them sticks around, guaranteeing continued dysfunction. Neither seems likely to improve the situation, at least in the short-to-medium term.

During the presidential campaign, the idea of Trump’s ceiling became a running joke. Smart prognosticators would insist that there was a “ceiling” on Trump’s support, only to see him burst through the alleged barrier. But as the Trump presidency keeps sinking lower, past what seemed to once be rock bottom, it begins to suggest a peculiar possibility: Could it be that Trump has no floor, either?