Sometimes it’s hard for me to take Donald Trump seriously, because like a 9-year-old, he often seems to be more concerned with getting attention than anything else.
In the run up to this month’s election, I wanted to know more. So I read two books about the first year of his first term as president.
Both “Fear,” by Bob Woodward, and “Fire & Fury,” by Michael Wolff, were really good. Both writers found lots of people in the White House who were willing to talk about the president, and they provided excellent insight into his personality.
Woodward stuck more to the political issues, like Trump continually objecting to paying $1 billion a year for a defense system in South Korea that warned us within seven minutes whenever North Korea fired a missile. The system protected us as much as it did South Korea.
Wolff was more about the gossip, especially the bickering between advisers like Steve Bannon and “Jarvanka,” Bannon’s derisive nickname for Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka. Those people threw knives at everybody.
One theme of both books is that Trump’s inability to focus, unwillingness to pay attention to details and refusal to stop making provocative statements, usually on Twitter, greatly handicapped his presidency.
Given that he lost his re-election bid in 2020, this makes sense. Something certainly went wrong.
But in a few weeks, Trump will be president again, having won handily Nov. 5. What will the experience of his first term teach him?
Apparently that he needs to surround himself with yes-men. That is the only way to explain his nomination of former congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general.
Gaetz definitely imitates Trump, but that’s about his only qualification for this job. He is all surface and no substance. Even most Republicans dislike him.
Plus, he has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations including illegal drug use and sexual misconduct involving an underage girl.
In fact, Gaetz resigned from Congress this week — even though he just won re-election this month — because it appeared that the Ethics Committee was going to vote on whether to release its report on him.
Typically, the Ethics Committee drops its investigation if the congressman in question resigns. Maybe Gaetz asked Trump for the favor of this nomination so he would have an excuse to resign. He didn’t even keep his current job until being approved for the new one.
And who is chairman of the Ethics Committee? None other than Rep. Michael Guest, who represents Pike County.
Somebody in the McComb Rotary Club needs to get him down here as a guest speaker. Maybe he’ll give us the tea on Gaetz. It must be a great story.
That’s the batty thing about Trump. He’s really just a control freak with a one-way loyalty test — in his favor.
He said this week that the Senate shouldn’t even hold hearings on his Cabinet nominations. Instead, they should let Trump appoint them when Congress is in recess.
I think that’s nuts, even if Trump had nominated the highest-qualified people for his Cabinet instead of muckrakers like Gaetz.
It will be interesting to see whether Republicans in the Senate go along with the incoming president’s demand not to hold hearings. If they do, Gaetz might be the attorney general — if only for a little while, because you just know he’ll do something that will get him in trouble.
Trump wants to tear up the federal government, and its sheer size is a sign that it’s due for a makeover. But to do that, you have to have capable and competent people, and Matt Gaetz simply does not fit that description.
George Will, a conservative columnist in The Washington Post, put it perfectly. He said electric-car driver Elon Musk, who will be in charge of Trump’s review of the government, is about to get a free public education.
How true. Musk is used to snapping his fingers to make things happen. That’s not how it works in Washington.
I’m not a Trump fan, but I’m still OK with him winning. I would have been OK if Kamala Harris had won, too. The republic will survive.
But Trump is making a mistake when he values loyalty more than competence. At some point, this will come back to sting him badly.
