Donald Trump embarks on his most self destructive move yet
Now that so many people closest to him have sold him out, just how self destructive has Donald Trump become? Even though his controversial Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh depends on the help of White House Counsel Don McGahn, Trump decided today to essentially pre-fire McGahn on Twitter. Considering how badly Trump needs McGahn, and how much more damage McGahn can do from the outside, this is one of Trump’s most self destructive moves to date. But that’s apparently nothing compared to Trump’s attempts at selecting McGahn’s replacement.
Various observers have suggested that Donald Trump might offer the White House Counsel job to Emmet Flood, who is basically already doing the job anyway. That would make some sense, and it may end up happening. But tonight the New York Times is reporting that Trump previously tried to offer Don McGahn’s job to Rob Porter, the alleged serial wife beater who has been run out of the White House.
Based on the way the Times is reporting this, it sounds like Trump repeatedly made the offer before Porter was fired altogether. There is no indication that Trump is still trying to get Porter to take the job. But even if Trump didn’t know about the domestic violence allegations at the time he offered the White House Counsel job to Porter, it would have still been a nonsensical hire. Porter was relatively obscure, and not even the most qualified person in the building for the job.
So why would Donald Trump have offered the job to Rob Porter? The NY Times says it was because Trump’s kids like him. We’ll go ahead and add that Porter was dating Trump’s favorite adviser Hope Hicks at the time. White House Counsel is a make-or-break position for Trump, considering the criminal scandals he’s trying to fend off, as he hopes to avoid going to prison. But he apparently tried to give the job to a guy just to make his kids and Hicks happy. You can’t get much more self destructive than that.
