GOP Implodes While "Little Anthony" Trump Explodes

During the campaign, we had all kinds of reports and analyses that the GOP was imploding and was about to be history. Then the election came, and we had analyses saying the GOP was stronger than ever and the Democrats were imploding. Now we're back to GOP implosion.

Hopefully, they both are.

Why would a president whose legislative agenda is so dependent on Senate Republicans bash Mitch McConnell in terms he usually reserves for more predictable enemies like the “fake news” media and Kim Jong Un? Can the Republican Party survive a president who came to office convinced that bashing his own team’s powerbrokers was just as much a reason for his victory as his attacks on the Democrats?

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From five top Washington insiders like Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham, Republican Main Street Partnership chief Sarah Chamberlain, and former top advisers to 2016 candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, [come] increasingly pointed laments about Trump’s “lack of presidential leadership,” his bombastic party-bashing tweets, absence of a governing philosophy and political compass ruled by a “collection of impulses” rather than a coherent strategy.

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It is just such thinking that infuriates Trump himself and his diehard backers, as was abundantly clear when I later interviewed for The Global Politico a second group that included strategist Roger Stone, a Trump friend and adviser of decades; Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an anti-immigration activist now heading a controversial national electoral commission for Trump; and Kentucky-based commentator Scottie Nell Hughes. Not only were they not chagrined by Trump’s contentious first six months of his presidency, they urged him to get even more combative—against enemies within the GOP perhaps above all.

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Stone, for one, says Trump should “throw Mitch McConnell and the boys over the sides so fast it would make your head spin” and fire his national security adviser H.R. McMaster for alleged ties to “globalists” like liberal Democratic donor George Soros. Stone even has unkind words for McConnell’s wife, Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Trump’s new chief of staff, John Kelly, came in for a warning after just two weeks on the job, with Stone saying the retired Marine general is already “on a very slippery slope” by trying to cut off Trump from hard-line supporters and the alt-right media.

“Will these quislings that he has appointed,” Stone asks of the president, “take him down?”

  Politico

Sadly, no.

“Trump in many ways is bigger than the Republican Party,” Stone said [a year ago].

See for yourself:

Agitated about being pressured by aides to clarify his first public statement, Trump unexpectedly unwound the damage control of the prior two days by assigning blame to the “alt-left” and calling some of the white supremacist protesters “very fine people.”

“In some ways, Trump would rather have people calling him racist than say he backed down the minute he was wrong,” one adviser to the White House said on Wednesday about Charlottesville. “This may turn into the biggest mess of his presidency because he is stubborn and doesn't realize how bad this is getting.”

  Politico

And by "doesn't realize", the adviser meant "doesn't care".

Negative television coverage and lawyers earn particular ire from him.

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For Trump, anger serves as a way to manage staff, express his displeasure or simply as an outlet that soothes him. Often, aides and advisers say, he’ll get mad at a specific staffer or broader situation, unload from the Oval Office and then three hours later act as if nothing ever occurred even if others still feel rattled by it.

Toddler temper tantrums.

White House officials and informal advisers say the triggers for his temper are if he thinks someone is lying to him, if he’s caught by surprise, if someone criticizes him, or if someone stops him from trying to do something or seeks to control him.

Pretty much everything, then.

The outbursts extend back to Trump’s campaign days when he could become irritated about expenses and money, according to a senior campaign official.

They go way back further than that. They go back to his childhood. He's still a toddler throwing temper tantrums.

“The possibility that the president is annoyed and angry and yells at someone in the building is not of a lot of consequence to me because it happens all of the time,” said one informal yet frequent adviser to the White House.

Sad!