Fecteau: Chaos in The White House

Wednesday, August 02, 2017
Matt Fecteau, GoLocalPDX Guest MINDSETTER™

Former president of Mexico Vicente Fox recently commented via Tweeter President Donald Trump’s White House is like Survivor with low ratings. I respectfully disagree with Mr. Fox. While Trump’s approval ratings are in the toilet, it would have the highest ratings on the airways. Everyone would be on the edge of their seat asking: who is next?

Take the latest contestant, I mean administration official, to bite the dust, former White House communications director Mr. Anthony Scaramucci. Mr. Scaramucci just had the job for eleven days, and yet still managed to get fired. In a recent New Yorker interview, he described outgoing White Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as a “f****ing paranoid schizophrenic” and spoke of White House Chief Strategist Mr. Steve Bannon in even more vulgar terms (if you can believe it!). A real winner if I ever saw one. This interview clearly had a lot to do with Mr. Scaramucci’s ouster.

As for the other members of Trump’s administration, there are a number of individuals that may resign or may be fired. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been criticized by Trump via Twitter, and Trump has hinted he may fire him subsequently. It was reported U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was considering resigning because of Trump’s unprofessionalism towards Mr. Sessions. It was also reported, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was disgusted over Trump’s announcement of a transgender ban which makes his future questionable. As for the newly appointed Chief of Staff, John T. Kelly, he is upset with the way Donald Trump fired former FBI director James Comey – not sure how long Mr. Kelly will last.

The Trump White House had the most shake-ups of any modern-day president. Already, a number of White House officials parted ways with the White House such as Chief of Staff Reince Prebius, press secretary Sean Spicer, FBI director James Comey, and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. This comes at a time when Mr. Trump is continually bogged down by a number of investigations into his ties to Russia.

This is a completely cancerous state of affairs for our government. Instead of working on getting legislation through Congress or working to make our government conducive for every American, these scandals have held up and at times, complete thwarted any progress. All the while, Mr. Trump loves to blame – via Tweeter of course – the Democrats, and claim there is no turmoil in the White House. In other words, he is completely delusional, and perhaps, as Rhode Island’s U.S. Senator Jack Reed said, crazy.

As for the rest of us, we are not just in the audience, but contestants as well in this very real reality television. Everything Trump says and does impacts all of us. It is very entertaining watching “Survivor White House” but as Mr. Fox says as well, it is also remarkably “sad.” This is our government, and it is in chaos because we have an individual, elected to office, who loves attention and demands absolute loyalty over everything else. This is our president, and this is the individual who represents the free world, a reality television star obsessed with ratings; did we really expect anything less?

Matt Fecteau ([email protected]) is a former White House national security intern and Iraq War veteran. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewFecteau