With Reince Out, Trump's Plan for Survival Is Clear

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 July 17

t all ended for obvious anagram Reince Priebus with him left alone aboard an SUV in the rain. He had just returned from a trip to Long Island where he'd watched the president* put the presidential* imprimatur on the kind of police violence that killed, among others, Freddie Gray. When Air Force One landed at Andrews, everybody except the president* got out of the SUV. Priebus was invited in. Within minutes, he was no longer the White House chief-of-staff, the president* was long gone, and obvious anagram Reince Priebus was alone in the rain as Friday evening fell. Poor bastard. I'll bet they even took the cannoli.

The button had been put out on Priebus long before. (Even Priebus says that he actually resigned on Thursday.) If that wasn't clear from the start, it was absolutely crystal on Thursday, when it was revealed that Anthony Scaramucci had called him "a fucking paranoid schizophrenic" in a phone call with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. From The New York Times:

Mr. Priebus's ouster was the latest convulsion in a White House that has been whipsawed by feuds and political setbacks in recent days. The president became convinced that Mr. Priebus was not strong enough to run the White House operation and that he needed a general to take charge. Mr. Kelly, who has demonstrated strong leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, had become a favorite of Mr. Trump's.

Let it be said for the record that the only way truly to run this White House would be to sedate the president* until late January of 2021. That Priebus has been replaced by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is nothing more than another demonstration of the president*'s sweet-tooth for generals. Kelly's clock is ticking, too; one friend who is wise in these particular areas gives Kelly six months before either he quits for his own sanity's sake, or the president* fires him for reasons that make sense only in the deep box canyons of the presidential mind.

(The worst rumor of the day was that Kelly's replacement at DHS might be the inexcusable Kris Kobach. Sure, why not give the country's most prominent vote-suppressor,and its most virulently anti-immigrant public official, his own personal army?)

John Kelly's clock is ticking, too.

Priebus's departure is a further indication that, its policy failures now as manifest as its profound ethical disabilities, the administration, from the president* on down, is planning to survive by going full thug. That's why Scaramucci was brought in, and why his profane indiscretions weren't enough to fire him. That's why the president* has opened up on Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and on the Republicans in the Senate. That's why he's been giving those profoundly disturbing slasher film speeches all over the country in recent days.

More than just a personnel dispute, the disagreement suggested a broader cleavage that would lead to Mr. Priebus' resignation. In tapping Mr. Scaramucci, Mr. Trump was turning to a wealthy New Yorker who had become part of his inner circle, and who compensated in charisma and rapport with Mr. Trump and his family for what he lacked in governing experience. Mr. Priebus represented a more conventional breed of senior White House figure, chosen by the president despite a career defined by the calculations of traditional Republican Party politics, which Mr. Trump regards as part of "the swamp" he was elected to drain.

This, of course, gives the president* way too much credit for having a consistent ideology, and for the ability to keep a coherent thought in his head for longer than 20 seconds. (The idea that he really meant that whole "drain the swamp" business is ludicrous. All he did was introduce some new invasive species into it, like the pythons that are breeding in the Everglades. Priebus lost his job because he was working for an unstable man and because there are more than a few people in that White House who are perfectly happy to have an unstable man running the Executive branch.

To be entirely fair, Priebus did come a long way. This was a guy who couldn't get elected to the Wisconsin state legislature in two tries. Yet he moved all the way up to chairman of the Republican National Committee and White House chief-of-staff, in which job, if the Times can be believed, he functioned more as a piñata than anything else. Now he can go home, sort through all the memorabilia he's accumulated over the past decade, and gradually reappear as a person. He no longer is the emptiest suit in American politics.