Playbook this AM: "What’s going on at the White House?"
WE USUALLY USE THIS SPACE to try to pose smart questions about strategy, highlight deep reporting from inside the halls of Congress or the White House or say something provocative to start a conversation.
BUT THIS MORNING, our question is simple: What is going on in the White House? It seems as if the president and his aides are in the midst of a fever dream, bereft of strategy, confused, listless, restless, uncomfortable and desperate.
NOW, IF YOU ASK some people in the White House, they may scoff and say that the media is always wrong, so pipe down and do your job. But let’s just review the last day:
-- AT 10:05 TUESDAY NIGHT, IVANKA TRUMP posted a bizarre photo to Twitter of her holding a Goya bean can, with this caption: “If it’s Goya, it has to be good. Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno.” bit.ly/32fCzdU
Yes, we understand that the chief executive of Goya appears to be a TRUMP fan, and that’s angered some liberals. But … this is … just weird.
IT ALSO MAY BE ILLEGAL, IVANKA: “Executive branch employees may not use their Government positions to suggest that the agency or any part of the executive branch endorses an organization (including a nonprofit organization), product, service, or person.”
-- TRUMP used a CBS interview with CATHERINE HERRIDGE to push back against bans on the Confederate flag. He said many people like the battle flag and don’t link it to slavery
. “All I say is freedom of speech -- it’s very simple.” He likened it to the phrase “Black lives matter” -- but he called that a symbol of hate.
WHEN ASKED why Black people were dying at the hands of police, he said it was a terrible question. “So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people by the way. More white people.”
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-- WH SPENT DAYS suggesting that they hadn’t sanctioned a hit campaign on FAUCI.
Yet this morning, the nation’s largest newspaper -- USA Today -- is carrying an op-ed from the president’s top trade adviser, PETER NAVARRO, with this headline: “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.” bit.ly/2Ow6x53
WH says this was not sanctioned, and he went “rogue"
MAYBE AT SOME POINT, the president’s aides will convince him that there is a message to stick by -- or maybe they believe what we just reviewed is the message that will work.
Either way, two things seem consistent at this point: the president’s zigzagging, and the polls that have JOE BIDEN up by healthy margins across the country.
