Donald Trump’s week from hell
Donald Trump’s presidency has been so historically and consistently calamitous that he has yet to achieve what anyone could objectively call a “good” week. But these past seven days have gone so preposterously bad for him that one could argue, apart from the week in which Richard Nixon resigned, no president has ever had a week this bad. And so we take a look back at Donald Trump’s ultimate week from hell.
It all began when Trump decided to hire Anthony Scaramucci as his Communications Director, who is so demented that poor Sean Spicer knew enough to immediately run away screaming. Scaramucci spent the week revealing himself to be a man on the verge of an immediate mental breakdown, as he publicly asked the FBI to investigate Reince Priebus for an imaginary crime, while calling up a reporter and accusing Steve Bannon of possessing a yoga-like ability to fellate himself. In a White House already full of inept and mentally unstable people, this week Trump managed to make his most embarrassing hire to date. But Scaramucci’s all-time whacked out meltdown wasn’t the half of it.
Trump put down so many of his few remaining chips on his health care demolition derby that he more or less had to find a way to claim victory. That came in the form of pushing the Republican Senate into voting on a joke of a bill they hadn’t even read. He threatened retaliation against Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski if she voted no on it; she voted no anyway, and she blocked his pending personnel nominations. Trump assumed John McCain was returning to Washington in poor health to help the bill pass; instead McCain ended up proving that his middle finger still works just fine. From there things got even worse.
After Donald Trump spent the entire week setting his administration ablaze in the name of trying to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, he’s still on the job. But those attacks may have chased away another cabinet member, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has taken an unexplained hiatus. Trump’s Twitter post announcing a military transgender ban had the effect of making him look foolish, as the military announced that it doesn’t accept tweets as orders, and won’t implement the ban. Trump’s deranged speeches led him to be publicly rebuked by the Police Chiefs Association and leader of the Boy Scouts. Oh, and the Republican-controlled Congress took away his ability to ever left sanctions on his puppet masters in Russia.
Weeks this comprehensively bad shouldn’t be possible for a president. It shouldn’t be possible for this many things to go wrong while literally nothing went right. Donald Trump has gotten so creative with his failure that he’s now redefining the known limits of failure. And yet, with every inch of his failed administration in chaos, and his mental state in rapid freefall, there’s every reason to expect Trump’s next week to go even worse for him. If you find Palmer Report valuable, make a donation.
