So sad to be in the White House instead of on the Mar-a-Lago golf course

If it weren't for the Fed, everything would be great.

Still fuming about Mattis.

Trump decided hastily to remove Mattis in reaction to negative news coverage, according to senior administration officials, one of whom said the president was eager to retaliate against Mattis and show up the widely respected former general. Another official said Trump and other advisers suspected Mattis of being part of a campaign to stoke negative coverage about the president.

  WaPo

When you're that big of an asshole, you're bound to be paranoid.

After canceling his Christmas trip to Florida in view of the government shutdown, Trump was marooned this weekend at the White House watching hours of cable television news shows. Advisers said he stewed over commentary hailing Mattis as heroic — a human guardrail against the president’s impulses.

Trump was so angry with Mattis that on Sunday morning he directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to inform the defense secretary that he was being pulled from office two months early, according to a senior administration official.

Too chicken to face him. As always. And too stupid to know that Mattis was resigning in protest and that the War Party Congress and pundits would be disturbed by it.

In recent days, Trump went so far as to tell White House aides that he does not need Mattis and that his defense secretary was not as important a figure as others believed, a senior administration official said.

[...]

Trump’s advisers have persuaded the president to remove the troops more slowly than he would like, White House aides said, because withdrawing too quickly could jeopardize their safety.

Whose safety? The troops or the aides?

Trump found Republican support from Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), a libertarian-leaning critic of military intervention whose position represents a minority in the party.

“I think the president is doing the best thing,” Paul said on CNN. “He said we weren’t going to be for nation-building. We’re not going to go create a nation out of that chaos of Syria or Afghanistan. We’re going to take care of things we have got here at home. And I think, actually, the people are with him.”

With Trump’s elevation of Shanahan, the list of senior officials serving on a temporary basis grows. The White House chief of staff, attorney general and Environmental Protection Agency administrator are each serving in an “acting” capacity. On Jan. 2, the Interior Department also will have an acting secretary.

Unlike Mattis, Shanahan was not in the military and has little foreign policy or government experience. Shanahan worked for decades at Boeing handling the aviation behemoth’s commercial aircraft and missile defense programs.

Rand Paul, Secretary of Defense?

Since his arrival at the Pentagon, Shanahan has emphasized making the department more efficient and business-friendly — and has won plaudits at the White House by pushing through Trump’s vision for a space force, against the wishes of many of the military’s uniformed brass.

So maybe he can stay.