This interview offers a terrifying window into the utter chaos & amateurism of the Trump Administration. Take a colossally ignorant & incurious man in decline, have him divide his working hours between Fox News & golf, and then give him the nuke codes.
nytimes.com/2019/10/24/pod…
nytimes.com/2019/10/24/pod…
The key takeaway is that Trump does not trust any of the million+ people who work in the federal government, unless they are already in his personal orbit or if they've explicitly pledged their loyalty to him. He's running the federal government like a corrupt suburb.
Need to redesign the VA? I know these two doctors, long time members of Mar-a-Lago, good guys...they'll take care of it. Hey VA Sec, wanna come meet with 'em tomorrow? Oh, can't make it? That's ok, we'll take it from here.
Reminds me of this story from Michael Lewis's Fifth Risk where Trump thinks he and Christie can handle the entire transition process between the two of them in a couple hours after the November victory party.
This is corruption, but I think it's not as sinister as it might look at first blush. Trump, who has never worked in a functional organization his entire life, simply has no concept of how complex institutions work. His entire world is about "knowing a guy."
It's like asking your buddy who runs the bar & grill down the street to cater the Oscars. Tomorrow.
That's basically what's been happening for the past 2.5 years. We asked Don the bartender to cater the Oscars, so he called in some of his friends who have a line on some frozen stuff that "fell off a truck," and they're watching YouTube videos to figure out how the sterno works.
Oh, and the YouTube videos they stumbled upon were made by Nazis and now the algorithm has sent them rocketing down a rabbit hole into antisemitic conspiracy theories about Hollywood that made them realize they need to figure out how to inject rat poison into the food.
Oh dear. That got might dark mighty quick. Time to call it a night.
