Have fun White House ‘Week’ themes gone with Priebus?
So much outcry about chaos at the White House. Who’s in? Who’s out?
Yet we’ve failed to consider one important question: What happens to the Weeks?
They’ve been such an administration highlight. Who can forget White House Infrastructure Week? Or Energy Week? Or the current American Dream Week, which the president celebrated by calling for a 50 percent cut in legal immigration?
Reince Priebus was said to have been a big Week maven, and he’s been, um, disappeared. Which is why I’m sort of worried about the end of a great new national tradition.
We still haven’t heard what the next Week is supposed to be. Do you think John Kelly got rid of them? That man cannot stop cleaning house.
All modern presidents have promoted themes they want us to think about, but the current administration has been a pioneer in packaging things into Weeks and then staging lots of events to remind us about their topic. President Donald Trump also generally proposes a bill on the same subject, which Congress promptly rejects.
This happened even during Infrastructure Week. But Trump hasn’t been able to get his act together on a package of projects, so he started the week with a call for privatizing the air traffic control system, which the Senate commerce committee cheerfully vetoed.
Also, to be fair, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a letter from a 10-year-old boy from Virginia who wants to
(and will) mow the White House lawn. “It’s our responsibility to keep the American dream alive for kids like Frank,” she said.
Because this administration has been so danged exciting, it’s easy to merge the Weeks with unrelated presidential events of the moment. So we’ll also remember Infrastructure Week as the one when the fired FBI director testified before Congress. And that during American Dream Week, a golfing story revealed that Trump had called the White House “a real dump.”
Obviously, the idea of having the president give a speech to the Boy Scouts during Heroes Week was planned. But it’s a good bet the planners didn’t expect him to brag to the kids about winning the election, snipe at his political opponents and tell a really long story about a friend who sold his business and bought a yacht.
So that was American Heroes Week. Plus the speech to law enforcement officials in which Trump appeared to advocate police brutality. Which Sanders said was just a joke.
“The president went out of his way this week to give a special honor to some very special people,” said Lara Trump, the host of a new news program on the president’s Facebook page. She is the wife of Eric Trump, otherwise known as the adult son not currently under investigation for talking with Russians.
There are all kinds of ways we could turn the Weeks around to the national interest. For instance, the State Department appears to be struggling to get the normal day-to-day business done for lack of staff. Perhaps we could have a Who Wants to Be Ambassador to Norway Week.
“I bet you haven’t heard about all the accomplishments the president had this week because there’s so much fake news out there,” Lara Trump told her audience.
What about a Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Week?