Ryan Lizza, writing in the New Yorker, of disarray in President Elect Trump’s first week of electedness. A disarray that has seen purges of those seen as disloyal, promotion of those closest, particularly his family, a continued predilection for defensive tweeting of less than true things, and warming of relations with Putin .
On Friday, the purge began, when Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, was fired as chairman of the transition and Mike Pence was installed in his place. During the campaign, Christie, perhaps the most unpopular governor in America and Trump’s most embarrassingly sycophantic supporter, was appointed to head the transition. At a time when nobody believed Trump would win, the job seemed like a demotion, a way to park Christie away from the campaign. Christie seems to have taken the role seriously, though. While he stacked the transition team with some New Jersey hacks and Washington lobbyists, he also brought in some talented Republicans who were previously alienated by the insular Trump campaign, including Mike Rogers, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Then the Trump campaign team, led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, began a takeover of the team run by Christie, who, when he was a U.S. Attorney, sent Kushner’s father, Charles, to jail for tax evasion and witness tampering.
On Sunday, Trump woke up and attacked the press:
9:16 a.m.: Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the “Trump phenomena”
9:43 a.m.: The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change – doubt it?
11:03 a.m. The @nytimes states today that DJT believes “more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.” How dishonest are they. I never said this!
All three of these tweets were false.
As of Wednesday morning, Trump has given two interviews—the ones to the Journal and “60 Minutes”—and has spoken in public twice, at his victory speech, early Wednesday morning, and at his Oval Office meeting with Obama, on Thursday. His transition office has issued half a dozen press releases, and he has made several important personnel and policy decisions. He has tweeted twenty-three times. Seven days may not be enough time to fully assess any new leader, especially in the case of Trump, whose first week was marked by seeming chaos in his efforts to put together an Administration. But what we’ve learned so far about the least-experienced President-elect in history is as troubling and ominous as his critics have feared. The Greeks have a word for the emerging Trump Administration: kakistocracy.
We passed normal a ways back.
the magnelephant review 