Oh, come on

Friday began with the now-routine flurry of tweets from President Donald Trump — two about the acquittal of an undocumented immigrant accused of a 2015 killing in San Francisco, one about his tax legislation. White House staffers, fresh from their inhouse holiday party Thursday, prepared to welcome the press to the annual media party later in the afternoon.

[...]

No one in the White House was prepared.

  Politico

I find that very hard to believe. If they didn't know Flynn was going to be indicted sometime fairly soon, they're the only people in the world who weren't simply waiting for it to manifest.

There were no leaks in advance that former national security adviser Michael Flynn planned to plead guilty to a single count of lying to FBI agents.

Maybe not that specifically, but his attorneys had recently withdrawn cooperation with Trump's, immediately after Mueller called in Kushner for a "talk". (Unless, maybe Kushner has already separated himself from Trump and didn't tell him.  And even then, he would have found out a couple of days ago when the rest of us did.) And there were stories about Flynn's dealings with Turkey and involvement in a plot to kidnap a Turkish national. What did they imagine was going on? Had Flynn been secretly sending them false assurances that it was all just a smokescreen or something?

Trump told associates as recently as last weekend — while he was visiting his Mar-a-Lago resort for Thanksgiving — that he isn’t worried about the outcome of Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

He's been saying that since the beginning. He says that about everything. And that's going to be the public pronouncement until he gets indicted himself.  He's not going to say he's about to get the royal shafting of his life.

But there is a growing sense of dread among Trump’s closest confidants that the noose is tightening — if not around the president, then around his closest advisers and family members.

With very good cause! And if it tightens around his family members, it tightens around him, because while Don Jr may fall on his sword, I can't imagine Kushner would.  I could be wrong.

One person close to the White House described the mood this way: “What they’re freaked out about is that there are no leaks. Papadopoulos didn’t leak. Flynn didn’t leak. They feel like they can’t trust anyone. Their own counsel didn’t know.”

Bullshit.

“[Flynn's] false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year,” Cobb said. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel's work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion.”

What did people expect him to say? Of course he's downplaying it.  We should be glad they're playing it the way they are, because I hate to think what Trump's rabid, gun-toting supporters might do if they think their lord is in trouble.

“I know this is hard for people to understand this, but people inside the White House are genuinely not concerned,” said one former White House official.

But there were signs of stress. The press office abruptly canceled a scheduled pool spray with visiting Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of Libya. Trump appeared only for brief and relatively restrained remarks at the media holiday party, and many senior administration officials appeared only briefly or skipped the party altogether, a departure from prior years under Trump’s predecessors.

So which is it? Everybody's freaking out or nobody's bothered in the slightest? This is one of the worst Politico articles I've ever read.

The president, who jabbed at the media at a White House Halloween trick-or-treating event for children of the press corps, used the holiday party to commend the press for having ‘stamina’ like him. “Very special people, at least many of you,” Trump said, according to a person who was there.

Scared shitless.