‘This Shit Is Hard’ Says Trump White House Official

Your Job Is ‘To Talk Him Out of Doing Crazy Things’ Says Confidante

A Thursday morning Politico exposé on the Trump presidency reveals what some have rightly assumed from the beginning: President Trump and his administration had no idea what they were getting themselves in to, and have been making bad decisions ever since. 

The so-called “populism” wave that fueled astoundingly ignorant comments last year from voters who “just want a change,” and thought “anyone but Hillary” would be better has proven to be as inane now as it sounded to many then. 

Many Republicans, including Donald Trump, think government should be run like a business. It shouldn’t, from many perspectives, like a mandated balanced budget, but there are of course business concepts that apply to government as they do to many things.

Key among them: you don’t hire someone for an important job who has no relevant experience. It literally can be harder to become a waiter in an upscale Manhattan restaurant than it was for Donald Trump to become President of the United States. Why? They all demand experience.

Experience matters in business, and it matters when running the nation. 

In Congress, sure, there are 435 House members. Political novices can be included without destroying the country. But even for the Senate, voters usually demand more experience than they did in the 2016 election of the president.

Politico notes Trump’s “unexpected win gave him and his closest advisers the false sense that governing would be as easy to master as running a successful campaign turned out to be.”

“I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here,” one White House official said of these early months. “But this shit is hard.”

“This shit is hard.”

No kidding.

It’s just amazing that that unnamed White House official, along with Trump voters, and Trump himself would ever have thought otherwise.

Trump, contrary to what many believe, is not a great business person. He’s declared bankruptcy four times. Americans really have no idea what the state of his finances are. He does not run a huge public corporation, he runs lots of privately-held small businesses, and has never had to report to a board of directors. Every business parson has a boss, unless they own their own company, which Trump does. And his decision making skills have proven to be that of a private oligarch, not a public CEO.

“White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy,” Politico reports. “Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.”

Let’s say that again: “how it will play in the press.”

“You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”

Meanwhile, more disturbing insight into Trump and his White House.

“If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

“To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

Note that quote comes from someone outside the White House. Which means they don’t watch over him 24/7. 

And in fact, it’s clear, no one does. Which should make the world very nervous.

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Image by Joe Flood via Flickr and a CC license