I bet you’d prefer to stick needles in your eyes than watch a millisecond of the espionage criminal defendant’s self-immolating interviews this week on Fox News. But I recommend them (Part Two is tonight!) for their sheer hilarity alone. Who knew that fascism could be so farcical?
First of all – and it’s not even the topic of this column – the guy’s addled loquacity has gifted the feds more ammo for conviction and jail. Rest assured that even if the most legendary criminal lawyers, like F. Lee Bailey and Melvin Belli, were afforded the opportunity to come back from the dead on the condition that they defend Trump in federal court, they’d opt to stay dead.
Host Bret Baier asked him why he refused to obey the earliest requests to give back the classified documents; the putz replied, “I was very busy.” He says he wanted the National Archives to say “please please please, could we have it back?” But why, as an ex-president, did he share a top-secret war-making doc with people who weren’t cleared to hear it? Cue the blather: “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not.” Bottom line: “I have every right to have those boxes.”
Conservative talk show host Erick Erickson tuned in and later tweeted: “Trump admitted on TV that he withheld documents from the grand jury. Game over, legally. What an idiot.”
But one of the most delectable moments last night centered on Trump’s misadventures with his own senior personnel. To set the stage for Baier’s most brilliant question – and credit where it’s due, he’s doing a great job – we first need to remember what Trump promised during the ’16 campaign: “I’m going to surround myself with only the best and most serious people. Top of the line professionals.”
Over to you, Bret:
“You recently called (ex-AG) Bill Barr a ‘gutless pig.’…This week you called your White House chief of staff, John Kelly, ‘weak and ineffective’ and ‘born with a very small brain.’ You called your acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, ‘a born loser.’ You called your first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, ‘dumb as a rock,’ and your first Defense secretary, James Mattis, ‘the world’s most overrated general.’ You called your White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, ‘milquetoast.’
“So. Why did you hire all of them in the first place?”
Baier could’ve gone even further, had he wanted to. Trump called his short-lived communication director, Anthony Scaramucci, a “highly unstable nut job.” He called his final Defense secretary, Mark Esper, “weak and totally ineffective.” He called his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, “weak” and “a disgrace.” He called his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, “mentally retarded.” He called his second national security adviser, John Bolton, a “washed up…disgruntled boring old fool” who “never had a clue.”
So back to Baier’s question: If all those people were so bad, why did Trump – who’d promised to hire only the best of the best – hire those people in the first place?
Trump’s reply, for what it’s worth: “You just went through a list. But don’t forget, for every one you say, I have 10 who love us.”
Baier cut Trump a break. He didn’t ask him to name 10.
Where would Trump even have the time to interview prospective new hires for Dystopia II? In between his criminal arraignments?
Granted, MAGA voters probably don’t care that nobody with quality credentials would ever sign up to work for Trump in another term. MAGA voters don’t care that Rex Tillerson calls his former boss “a fucking moron,” that John Kelly calls him “an idiot,” that former economic advisor Gary Cohn calls him “a professional liar,” that John Bolton says “I don’t think he’s fit for office,” and that so many other former underlings (including Mike Pence, ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ex-Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, ex-national security advisor H.R. McMaster, ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and ex-press secretary Stephanie Grisham) are now aligned against him.
MAGA voters, a distinct minority of the electorate, don’t care about any of that because they don’t care a whit about governing. But the rest of us do. The Biden administration, with its under-the-radar stable of competent hirelings, continues to demonstrate that governing matters. It ain’t sexy, it ain’t perfect, and it doesn’t go viral, but it’s a whole lot better than insulting senior aides who bailed to save their sanity.