The attempted purging of Jeff Sessions indicates that Trump meant nothing he said about American sovereignty and well-being
Ever since inauguration day just over six months ago. the Trump White House has been beleaguered by allegations of nefarious – and possibly illegal – ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign. For half a year now, those allegations have gradually grown more specific and more serious, while Team Trump’s inept handling of these weighty accusations has only rendered them politically more cancerous.
Months of denials from the president and his retinue that they had any ties with Moscow were unwise, since we now know of numerous hush-hush meetings in 2016 between core members of Team Trump and Kremlin representatives. Hence present White House efforts to brush off these mysterious rendezvous with protests that it’s all no big deal and “everybody does it” ring hollow – since for months the president and his spokespeople repeatedly denied there had been any such meetings.
The recent appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director indicates where this scandal is headed. A hedge-funder billionaire and media gadfly, Scaramucci has traits which the president admires, above all his well-honed willingness to lie baldly and loudly – if not always convincingly – on camera.
Trump was dissatisfied with Sean Spicer, his initial spokesman, from day one. While Spicer was willing to lie for the president, his efforts sometimes seemed half-hearted, TV comedy depictions to the contrary. A veteran Republican National Committee staffer, Spicer is a rather normal Washington type and he clearly was never fully at home in the Trump lie factory. Hence his gradual replacement at press briefings by the more ethically malleable Sarah Huckabee Sanders, followed by his recent departure when Scaramucci was appointed to shake up White House messaging.
Based on his initial forays as Trump’s media guru – complete with anticipated bluster about shaking things up and firing leakers – Scaramucci seems to be functioning more as de facto White House chief of staff than the president’s communications director. That said, “The Mooch” is ideally suited to a job which will require ever grander public deceptions of mounting implausibility as multiple investigations into President Trump’s 2016 relations with the Kremlin start to bear fruit.
Read the rest at The Observer …
The XX Committee 