Gorka Sees the Future, and You're Not in It

Sebastian Gorka, Trump's former White House Lucifer-lookalike, told an auditorium full of College Republicans last night in Chapel Hill that he predicted and firmly believed that Trump will complete eight years in the presidency and will be followed by eight years of Mike Pence. The students cheered. According to the News and Observer, there were about 200 in the room.

I love political prognosticators. They make my corpuscles bunch and run. I listen to them avidly and read their opinions wherever I can find them, and then if they're writers, I want to see what they look like and whether I can take what they predict as possible. Or anyways likely. Or merely self-congratulatory fantasy based on living in a box.

Gorka is not clothed in credibility. He's all about macho dominance of perceived enemies. He famously bragged about Trump, “the alpha males are back,” and he itched to give Islam -- the whole religion apparently -- some alpha male comeuppance. He was in on drafting the first Muslim ban. He was and still is a satellite of Steve Bannon and a regular contributor to Breitbart News. He had an ill-defined job in the White House -- like Omarosa -- and new Chief of Staff John Kelly got rid of him on August 25, 2017.

Gorka wrote a "resignation letter" that was excerpted in The Federalist. It's a "kiss my white ass!" directed at John Kelly:

“given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So Gorka tells the students in Chapel Hill last night that he wasn't fired. He resigned. And then predicted an Era of Trump/Pence. He described Trump as “Kryptonite to political correctness” and an “unstoppable steam locomotive.” Macho authoritarianism? Yes indeedy, there's authoritarianism, but it's all coming from the Middle East, or from anyplace Muslims are in the majority. Trump is, in essence, an alpha male saving the race.

What a time we live in! Members of churches all over Alabama have become winkers at child molestation, perhaps in concert with also thinking Trump was divinely appointed to the job. Trump has finally bullied Sessions into pursuing Hillary Clinton with a Special Prosecutor, and the president just appointed his lawyer's husband to a federal judgeship (in Alabama, no less), a man who only became a lawyer three years ago and has never tried a case and has a social media history that strongly suggests he lacks a judicial temperament, and oops! he failed to tell Congress he has a conflict of interest with the Trump White House.

So in such a whirling world, Gorka predicts 16 years of Trump/Pence. I ask you, in a world so warped, who can confidently prognosticate otherwise? (Though my corpuscles are telling me another story altogether.)

Good Grief?

News came out yesterday in Roll Call that "in the hours after President Donald Trump said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families."

That's called back-filling to protect your backside.

News this morning: reporters for The Atlantic talked to "multiple families who received expressed-shipped UPS packages from the White House on October 20th (Friday), which had been shipped on the 18th."

(Another attack on "fake news" in four, three, two…. and on "failing magazines" like The Atlantic.)

Oh, so what! you shout. He's doing it, ain't he? He's performing presidential duties. The rent's paid, even if it's late. That's what Judge Judy says. So lay off!

Yes, and I didn't want to touch this week's main entrée of Gold Star Families served up for gawking partisans everywhere. Didn't want to write about it, because there's just too much pain all around, including the pain Mr. Trump may have felt if he realized he handled that call to Myeshia Johnson poorly -- didn't know La David's name, was afraid to pronounce the wife's name, and said something about "he knew what he signed up for" in such a way that it was instantly taken very wrongly and very badly.

Yes, I was prepared to cut Trump some slack. Everybody has trouble with those condolence calls to soldier's families. Anybody would. But Trump is special, as we know. He lacks empathy and can't fake it. Plus -- plus -- he was on speakerphone to an audience of women already primed to hate his guts, including a partisan member of the US Congress perfectly capable of exploiting the available politics. So I discounted the congresswoman's spin on what Trump supposedly said.

Then came General John Kelly. God! If he'd only stopped talking before he got to insulting Congresswoman Frederica Wilson! If he'd only stopped before he got to "we've lost what used to be sacred…."

Wilson had made herself a spectacle of condemnation. That's on her, General. Don't splash that puddle! But Kelly stomped and up splashed made-up stuff about what the Congresswoman had supposedly said and could be blamed for, along with a personal insult -- "empty barrel" -- that was just downright mean.

That a woman, that a black woman, would twist the intent of Trump's call and, worse, would eavesdrop on a private conversation … why, it's worthy of nuclear counter-strike. (Nevermind that it was Myeshia who put the call on speakerphone, because at that moment she was in a limousine on her way to pick up her husband's returned body, along with La David's mother and Congresswoman Wilson. "It's the President!" We must all listen!)

Subsequently discovered videotape proved that what John Kelly said about Wilson was faulty memory of a public event at which the Congresswoman spoke, very self-servingly, according to General Kelly. He was stunned, stunned, by her behavior back then, he emphasized, and is more stunned by her now.

We're pretty stunned by General Kelly. We're beginning to believe Josh Marshall's explanation that Trump is poison and poisons everything and everyone he touches.

General Kelly, in a Different Foxhole

The reporting team of Thrush and Haberman serve up another piping hot popover of inside poop on the Trump White House today: "Forceful Chief of Staff Grates on Trump, and the Feeling Is Mutual."

People on the inside are making bets on how long Gen. John Kelly will last as Trump's gate-keeper ... one month or a whole year? (Smart money's on the first option.) Trump has sprayed Kelly with his "volcanic resentment" at being managed -- cussing out the man he hired to manage him.

The Marine general is dealing with the worst, sloppiest, most ill-prepared recruit in his long military career, and he's forced to do it like no Marine is accustomed to, treading "gingerly through the minefield of Mr. Trump’s psyche."

That's real estate no sane military man would want to invade. And we believe that Kelly is nothing if not sane.