Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Chaos Reigns

Via Talking Points Memo today:

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks will resign in the coming weeks, the New York Times’ first reported Wednesday.
The announcement comes one day after Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee for its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The reports are hinting that Hicks is bowing out because she admitted to the Committee - even as she refused to answer most of their questions - that she told some "white lies" during her time working in trump's administration.

Here's the part that's both tragic and hilarious:

Hicks is the fourth person to serve as communications director in the Trump administration, in addition to Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke and Anthony Scaramucci. She was named to the position in September of last year, after serving in an interim capacity the previous month.

This trump White House has one of the most chaotic managements in modern political history. It's already gone through Four Communications Directors, Three Chiefs of Staff, Two National Security Advisors, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree (sorry, couldn't resist).

Part of the problem is trump himself: He favors a competitive form of having staffers under him compete with each other to curry his favor and receive his boons. As a result, rather than have the departments and staffers work harder to prove themselves competent, his underlings tend to backstab each other and overplay their position among the ranks (meaning they worry more about looking good than actually being good).

Hicks had been under fire recently, partly for her role in the Roy Porter scandal, partly for the fact that she'd never really been qualified to hold a position as important as Communications Director before, partly for the possibility she's getting scrutinized by Mueller's investigation due to her role trying to cover up trump junior's involvement in the June 2016 meeting with Russians that may have interfered in our Presidential elections that year. Her jumping overboard with a life preserver on is actually the sanest move she can make right now.

If anything else, Hicks is a sign that the trump administration is about to implode from staff desertions. There's been buzz for months that the people working there are overwhelmed - because they couldn't find enough people to actually WANT to work for trump in the first place - and incapable of keeping up with the constant chaos trump employs.

For a long-standing trump employee and faithful family ally like her to bolt for the exits can well be the flag drop for everyone else to race out the door.

This is gonna get uglier, real fast.

1 comment:

dinthebeast said...

Kinda like the guy who runs Sears killing the company with Ayn Rand inspired policies that read very similar to Fergus organizational style.
And I bet Hope's lies are the very whitest lies on the whole planet.
Andy Borowitz came up with a good one yesterday: The mendacity of Hope.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/sarah-huckabee-sanders-organizing-million-liars-march-to-support-hope-hicks

-Doug in Oakland