When in doubt, send in the Marine
Donald Trump has been President of the United States for less than 200 days, but it already feels like a lifetime in hell for those who desperately want to see him burn.
Into that political conflagration stepped retired four-star Marine General John Kelly as Trump’s new chief of staff, having been yanked out as head of Homeland Security to secure the White House before it implodes beyond repair. Monday was his Day 1.
Around him, the White House is seemingly out of control. Kelly’s predecessor, Reince Priebus, the last solid connection with the Republican Party, had been shown the door within hours of Trump’s new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, having called Priebus almost every expletive imaginable in a magazine interview that gave new definition to the word candid.
Scaramucci’s alliteration, however, was jawdroppingly awesome. Rarely has a stream of profanity been delivered with such cadence.
But now, just 10 days in, the Mooch is gone too, purportedly escorted off the grounds Monday like a common felon.
A day after warning the U.S. that the sanctions levelled by Congress against Russia, which Trump failed to dilute, would result in retaliations, the Russians gave the boot to 755 mostly Russian employees working at various American diplomatic missions in their country, throwing even more frigidity at the escalating cold war between the two countries.
Democrats and Trump haters, determined to push the envelope on alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign team during the election, are now forced to see the possibility of “collusion” being downgraded to something more akin to “interference.”
The relationship between Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, after all, has not exactly turned out to be one of two leaders in symbiotic lockstep.
China, yet another wary adversary, is also angered at the United States for talking behind its back with Japan after the rogue North Korean nation of Kim Jung-Un launched another intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped dangerously close to Japanese waters.
Naturally, it did not help matters when Trump went to his Twitter podium to announce that he was “disappointed” in China, and that it had done “nothing” for the United States with regards to North Korea despite its own profiting from U.S. trade deals.
This prompted China to release its own statement telling with world that U.S.-China trade deals have zip all to do with how China deals with North Korea over its nuclear testing program.
“The two aren’t related,” said China’s vice commerce chairman, Qian Keming. “And so, they should not be discussed together.”
The U.S. domestic front already has the Trump Administration reeling from its failure to end Obamacare.
House Republicans, in fact, spent 378 hours on votes to undercut it, and came out of it with nothing more than sleep deprivation.
And into all this walks John Kelly, the chiefof-staff to a U.S. president, arguably one of the toughest political jobs in the world. Kelly will need the draw on the experience and strength of backbone that earned him each of his four stars as a Marine general, and look upon each day in the White House as a new minefield.
Semper fidelis.