The unique perspective and provocative opinions of Joe O’Neill
Trumpster Diving
Rudy Ghoul-iani says President Trump’s tweets are merely opinions. Hardly official—and hardly an order. For example, Trump said Attorney General Jeff Sessions “SHOULD stop this rigged witch hunt.” He didn’t say: MUST. You have to wonder what former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson thinks of Trump’s Twittered “opinions.” He was fired by tweet.
Maybe a major media boycott of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ dismissive, insulting sham press briefings and Trump’s “Triumph of the Will” pep rallies would be better than, in effect, enabling this inciteful, “enemy of the people” theme.
Will Trump interview with Robert Mueller? Why would a savvy attorney, with his client’s best interest uppermost in mind, allow such a perjury time bomb? Because the client in question is the pathologically narcissistic Donald Trump, and he is his own ultimate adviser.
When the White House rolled out the intelligence chiefs to address foreign media tampering and domestic anxiety, it was cause for concern—and more anxiety. Not just because America remains vulnerable, but because there’s still an obvious disconnect between top intelligence officials and Trump, who remains largely disengaged and creates his own Russian reality. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, for example, still doesn’t seem like an Administration insider. That’s unconscionable. In fact, he still seems uninformed about the details of the Trump-Putin one-on-one and incapable of a deep-diving assessment of the dangers we face. That’s beyond disturbing.
It seems as if Trump tweets are getting nastier when it comes to the media and the Mueller investigation. One conclusion is that even this unhinged president senses a day of reckoning fast approaching. So, he ups the rhetorical ante to undermine the credibility of the results, knowing full well that his fawning fan base–a sizable, but still minority part of the electorate–remains all in.
So, the Russian Foreign Ministry has announced—on Facebook—that it has named Steven Seagal special representative to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia. Isn’t that part of Ambassador Jon Huntsman’s job? But, then, Huntsman never played a hitman in the movies.
Need I.D. to buy groceries? Only in a billionaire-populist, reality-show performer universe.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Tokyo Rose, only not nearly as personable.