Normally in the course of presidential events the firing of a chief of staff would be a big deal. Not so in the Trump White House. There, turmoil, tension, recklessness and failure reign daily. Let us review.
In addition to Reince Priebus' brutal defenestration, this week the WH press secretary resigned in disgust and the president's promise of great, terrific, damn-near cost-free health care went down in an ignominious rout. Trump has had no domestic policy victories in a legislature of his own party. Congress rebuffed the American president's power in the arena of foreign policy by toughening sanctions against his beloved motherland, Russia. He's under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice; other charges or articles of impeachment to come. His job approval rating is in the tank. He was forced to fire his first national security adviser. He has fired an FBI director and an acting attorney general; also departing were a communications director, a deputy chief of staff, and a deputy national security adviser — all in six months.
To sort of smooth things out public relations-wise, Trump has hired a communications director whose rhetorical skills are roughly on a par with those of a button man in the old Scarfo crime family. Trump himself had already degraded presidential discourse to once-unimaginable lows; Anthony Scaramucci is merely perpetuating Trump's "tradition" with better suits and more stylish ties. The twosome's chief accomplishment so far has been to motivate actual conservatives to ask: "How did so many of the same people who spent the past 50 years bemoaning the decline of morality and decorum become the agents and enablers of the most morally grotesque administration in American history?"
It's reported that Trump fired Priebus partly because the chief of staff failed to return Scaramucci's verbal fire. "I [wasn't] going to get into the mud on those sorts of things," said Priebus, post-firing, about Scaramucci's personal assault. Priebus went on to say, "I’m always going to be a Trump fan. I’m on Team Trump." The president may have had a point. Simply defending oneself isn't "getting into the mud." Furthermore, effusively praising the clown who just fired you is a sign of excessive demureness, which is an underlying characteristic of any failing chief of staff.
Perhaps the most telling remark on why this White House is in concentrated free fall comes from a Trump friend and presumed defender, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy. "Trump is a guy who’s all about results," said Ruddy to the NY Times. "I think he’s taking stock and seeing that this health care thing that was promised to him by Reince and Paul Ryan was not properly developed. In my view, he’s a disappointed customer."
Or, rather, a disappointed bystander — a bystander in the political process. Trump seems to have believed that his mere presence would be daunting to congressional lackeys; they would do whatever Trump wanted done, even if Trump himself never knew what the whatever was. Trump is a James Deanean demagogue without a cause — except that of his greater glorification through lowest-brow discourse. Street-brawling is not leadership.
Hence continuing to reign daily in this White House will be turmoil, tension, recklessness and failure — turmoil and failure so breathtaking, even the sacking of a chief of staff barely rates notice.