Our view: ‘Crazytown’ accounts escalate alarms about Trump
Two years ago, when the Editorial Board broke longstanding precedent and urged Americans not to vote for Donald Trump, we did so reluctantly and only out of myriad concerns about his fitness for office.
Once voters had spoken, most Americans hoped he was capable of growing into the job. A ship, after all, has only one captain, and all passengers share a stake in his or her success.
The mounting evidence, from people inside the White House itself, that Captain Trump may be erratically steering the nation toward the rock shoals is both clarifying and somewhat terrifying.
When the first insider book was published in January — Michael Wolff ’s best-selling “Fire and Fury” account of a dysfunctional president — it was easier to dismiss because of typos and minor factual errors.
Former reality star Omarosa Manigault Newman’s tell-all account as a Trump sidekick, “Unhinged,” equally suffered from her mercenary image as a slick opportunist.
But then this week came explosive outtakes from Bob Woodward’s authoritative upcoming book, “Fear,” that quoted top administration officials describing a president with the grasp of reality of a “fifth- or sixth-grader” — one who is undisciplined, ill-informed and a “professional liar.” Woodward cites what he says is Chief of Staff John Kelly’s description of a “Crazytown” West Wing where aides scramble to contain Trump’s most dangerous executive impulses.
Within a day, The New York Times published an op-ed from an unnamed senior Trump administration official arguing that, indeed, there is an internal White House “quiet resistance ... choosing to put the country first” and circumvent an “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” president.
None of this is evidence in a court of law. That level of validity awaits the outcome of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But the consistent cascade of curtain-peeling revelations grows harder to ignore and more frightening to contemplate.
And each round of White House denial rings more hollow than the last, particularly given the Trump Twitter rages that so neatly echo the behavioral profile of the man offered by these insider accounts.
Just this week, Trump tweeted that Attorney General Jeff Sessions violated some misguided duty to Trump and the Republican Party by obtaining indictments of two GOP congressman on felony charges. The tweet revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the Justice Department’s duty to uphold the rule of law, without regard to partisan considerations.
How and when the Trump administration ends is unknowable at this point. But its current course is looking increasingly unsustainable.