How does Donald Trump find these idiots?

| 9:10 am EDT June 22, 2018
Dear Palmer Report readers,

We all understand what a dark era we're heading into. Journalists will be prosecuted. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. Advertising networks can't be counted on. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight, because someone has to.

In that regard we're looking to start funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens or how dark things get. We've launched a reader supported fund, and we've already raised $2097 and counting. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can contribute here. Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Bill Palmer
Palmer Report

Based on her tenure, no one would accuse Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen of being a particularly good person. After the events of the past week, it’s no longer clear that she’s a member of the human race. But all along she was supposed to be objectively competent at her job, in the Trumpian sense that she could do evil and get away with it. Then yesterday she totally blew Trump’s plan to announce he was going to stop putting immigrant kids in cages and just keep doing it anyway. Turns out she’s an idiot. She’s far from the only one.

Rudy Giuliani’s cartoonish performance as Donald Trump’s defense lawyer has been so unrealistically over the top, there are those who still believe it’s some kind of intentional performance art aimed at getting himself off the legal hook. But if you want proof that Rudy really is just an idiot these days, consider this. He’s making enemies high up in the Republican Party by campaigning for an obscure primary challenger in Louisiana. Why? The freshly divorced Rudy’s new girlfriend works for the challenger. And this is the guy whom Trump is entrusting to keep him out of prison.

Then there are the recent court filings revealing that the Feds were able to piece his shredded documents back together, suggesting that Cohen shredded evidence against himself and then left it in the shredder. There’s the saga of Paul Manafort getting caught tampering with witnesses after he went out of his way to use WhatsApp wrong.

The question of course is whether Donald Trump picks people who were always inherently idiots, and working him causes their incompetence to shine through, or if the stress of working in Trump’s demented criminal environment just causes them to crack. Manafort spent decades doing shady stuff without getting busted, before his work for Trump turned him into a bumbling idiot. Nielsen had a competent career before working for Trump turned her into a stooge. Is it possible that merely associating with a lunatic like Trump causes IQ points to evaporate in real time?

Dear Palmer Report readers,

We all understand what a dark era we're heading into. Journalists will be prosecuted. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. Advertising networks can't be counted on. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight, because someone has to.

In that regard we're looking to start funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens or how dark things get. We've launched a reader supported fund, and we've already raised $2097 and counting. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can contribute here. Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Bill Palmer
Palmer Report