(THREAD--7 tweets). Yesterday I said that I agreed completely with the tweeters who approved of the decision of Michael Schmidt at the NYT to let Trump free associate, without challenges, at the “impromptu” interview at Mar-a-Lago. tinyurl.com/yd49823x
1/ Now we have WaPo reporting that WH staff and advisers were “surprised,” “frustrated,” and “embarrassed” by that freewheeling interview, where none of them were present. tinyurl.com/yaggqz5c
2/ The article doesn’t say what the staffers and advisers were “frustrated” and “embarrassed” about, but the interview gave them plenty of reason to feel that way.
3/ First, Trump’s remark that he thought Mueller would be “fair” clearly hurt the efforts by Nunes, Fox News and others to smear the FBI and the Mueller probe.
4/ And his remark that the media would end up supporting him in 2020 because otherwise their ratings would go down must have made them cringe
5/ The critics of the interview seem to be incapable of thinking strategically. They apparently fail to to understand that politics is no longer about who will win the public debate. There IS no public debate, really. There is only a culture war.
6/ And it is a culture war that we will have only ourselves to blame if we lose it in 2018 and 2020.
7/ So I say again: let Trump talk and free associate away. The more he talks, the better it is for us. Even Trump’s Republican allies understand this. They hope and pray every day that Trump will stop tweeting and just shut the f*#k up.
