Some excellent analysis along the lines of what we’ve been saying about the moral decay that is becoming pervasive and permissible in Washington, and it begins at the top.
Axios’ Mike Allen reports this morning on what he calls “Trump Creep”:
“All habits, good and bad — in all organizations, big and small — flow down fast from the top.
“Trump’s lifelong habits — to improvise, to attack, the deny the undeniable, to leak — spread fast through the White House, metastasized in the agencies, and infected Republicans in Congress. They are Republican habits now…
“A senior administration official told me: “It’s the Donald Trump culture. It’s every man for himself — do what’s best for me, not for the organization.”
And all this has created a White House in chaos, as Peter Baker writes in the New York Times:
“More than a year into his administration, President Trump is presiding over a staff in turmoil, one with a 34 percent turnover rate, higher than any White House in decades. He has struggled to fill openings, unwilling to hire Republicans he considers disloyal and unable to entice Republicans who consider him unstable. Those who do come to work for him often do not last long, burning out from a volatile, sometimes cutthroat environment exacerbated by tweets and subpoenas.”
And let’s not forget the trillion-dollar deficit that came about from tax cuts and mega-spending.
The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle calls what Trump and his allies on the hill have cooked up, “fiscal malpractice”…
“Budget discipline is not the only concept Republicans no longer sell. Trump has replaced the free-trade GOP with a protectionist outfit. He’s pushing isolationism and nativism instead of global engagement. Remember how Republicans used to pitch virtue and personal accountability? They’ve become the party of alleged wife-beaters and hush money to porn stars…
“To those of us who value a two-party system, though, it’s a shame to see the conservative party sell itself for scrap. The ticker symbol GOP is now POT: Party of Trump.”