Run Amok

My personal blog was crowded with Trump junk so I am moving them to their own blog. This was originally posted September 5, 2018.

The portrait Woodward paints of a chaotic, dysfunctional, ill-prepared White House is all strangely familiar.  President Trump would like to believe that not only the entire daily media but everyone got together and agreed on how to portray Trump across tweets, stories and books.

How could all of the reporting on this White House reach a striking similar conclusion? The portraits of Trump drawn by Wolff, Omarosa and Woodward* are all eerily similar to one another:
- A man hopelessly out of his depth in the job, but entirely incapable of understanding how desperately out of depth he actually is
- A man motivated almost entirely by personal grievance
- A man willing to humiliate people who work for him, to play staffers against one another, to scapegoat underlings to keep blame off of himself
- Someone who has so much self-belief that he rarely adequately prepares for situations involving international diplomacy and national security
- Top aides who view that their jobs are primarily keeping Trump from causing serious harm, and grousing every step of the way about the man

What Woodward's book does is confirm all of the negative stories we've already heard about Trump and his administration. This isn't the work of a reporter with credibility problems or a press-loving former aide. This is the story. This is the President and how he really acts and thinks.

paraphrased from an Internet article, analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, 09/05/2018

*   "Fire and Fury" / by Michael Wolff
     "Unhinged / by Omarosa Manigault Newman
     "Fear" / by Woodward