The same Left that despises President Trump despised George W. Bush long before him.
.. What’s driving McKay? The need to live out his anger against Bush. McKay recalls attending the victory party for John Kerry — who, needless to say, did not win. “Everyone you could imagine was there,” McKay describes, including Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, and Ferrell... According to McKay, Cheney was far more powerful than W... This, of course, is untrue. But the punch line is this one: “I would choose Trump over Bush and Cheney.” Why? Because, according to McKay, “Donald Trump has no belief system. So I would take the hyenas, the random wild animals running through the White House over Cheney any day of the week.”This is how you got Trump... Trump, for the Left, isn’t a departure from conservatism. He’s just another variation on a theme: All conservatives are evil... Which is why, of course, Trump is the president right now. Leftist contempt for conservatives seeps through Hollywood and drips off our television and movie screens. And conservatives responded in 2016 to that contempt by nominating a man who wouldn’t take an insult, who wouldn’t respect the office of the presidency enough to forgo a cultural fight. Those on the right elected Trump more to fight those like McKay than to fight those like Nancy Pelosi... That’s why they revel in Trump’s tweets (see Schitt, Adam) and his willingness to slam anyone who knocks him (see Admiral McRaven). Trump doesn’t take, for lack of a better word, schitt. And conservatives have been taking it for far too long... There’s one problem for conservatives, however: They’re missing that McKay and his colleagues aren’t the target audience. The anti-Bush films bombed because most Americans don’t see politics the same way McKay does
They do appreciate class in the Oval Office, and they do take dignity seriously. That’s why Bush won reelection in 2004, to McKay’s horror. The best revenge against Hollywood is political success, not temporarily cathartic blowback. Which is why Republicans — and President Trump — would do well to remember that strategic cultural warfare is useful, but if conservatism isn’t advanced, McKay and his ilk will sleep better at night.
Women Who Love Trump
His approval among female Republicans is 93%—higher than among GOP men.
They aren’t just women. They are self-identified Republican women. No one likes Mr. Trump more than Republican women do. This parallel truth about women in the electorate jumped out from the data in the Dec. 17 Fox News Poll, a random national sample of registered voters.
.. Mr. Trump’s overall approval rating in the Fox poll is 46%. His approval among Republican women is 93%—8 points beyond his approval among GOP men. Republican women outrun men in their support for Mr. Trump on virtually every issue Fox polled.
The president should be especially happy with the love he’s getting on the great hate of his life—the Russia-collusion investigation. The percentage of GOP women who think the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016 is a mere 12%. The Republican men in their lives buy the collusion narrative at a 20% rate.
.. The percentage of the Fox sample self-identifying as Republican women is 17%. Mainly, the strength of their belief stands as a benchmark of Trump support. If they ever go wobbly on Mr. Trump in any significant way, he’s done.
.. I will argue until the final day that if Twitter didn’t exist, Mr. Trump would be having a politically successful presidency. The Trump tweets and counterattacks keep the country in a state of perpetual agitation. That artificially created anxiety may net out as a steady downdraft on the Trump presidency.
.. No other potential Democratic candidate registers a heartbeat among these women, with one exception—Joe Biden, with what I’d call a nonnegative rating of 41%.
White House Digs In for Chief of Staff Hunt
Mick Mulvaney says he’s not interested; Trump campaign official David Bossie is in the running
Mr. Trump has told associates he is unhappy with aspects of how the West Wing is running, complaining that staff morale is low, some aides are disloyal and his press coverage is negative.
Both men who have held the position thus far—Reince Priebus and then Mr. Kelly—found it difficult to manage Mr. Trump and create a White House that sticks to a message and pursues goals in disciplined fashion. Rival power centers have emerged, with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Mr. Kushner, and daughter Ivanka Trump wielding enormous influence and chafing at the chief of staff’s direction. Mr. Priebus would ruefully refer to himself as merely “Chief of Stuff.”
Another challenge is the dearth of qualified individuals willing to take the job. Current and former senior staff members describe the Trump administration as a high-stress, unpredictable atmosphere in which they are subjected to unsparing criticism from inside the building and out.
Top officials often leave their posts with bruised reputations. Several high-level members of the administration have left their jobs in humbling circumstances, with Mr. Trump writing derisively on Twitter about them. Mr. Trump has fired a chief of staff, secretary of state and attorney general on the social media platform.
Aides to Mr. Trump have advised him to hire as chief of staff a former or current lawmaker who knows how to work with Congress, according to one adviser. Among those Mr. Trump is considering is Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), a longtime ally, say people familiar with the matter.
Advisers also have urged Mr. Trump to look for a chief with more political experience than Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, one who will work well with the 2020 re-election campaign. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said in an interview that Mr. Trump needs a chief of staff “able to add more political experience needed for the next two years.”
.. One of Mr. Kelly’s frustrations was that he couldn’t manage a president who insists on following his own instincts rather than working within a hierarchical process that vets and manages the information and people he sees, people close to the White House said... Advisers to Mr. Trump say he should install a chief who, even privately, will talk more positively about the administration. At meetings, Mr. Kelly often took on a negative tone about Mr. Trump’s tweets and the circumstances the White House faced, to the detriment of staff morale, one person familiar with the matter said... A better approach for the next chief of staff would be to let Mr. Trump be himself and focus instead on managing and motivating a staff whose morale has plummeted.. The chief of staff job is difficult job to fill in part because Mr. Trump tends to “grow weary” of anyone in his company for an extended period of time, another person familiar with the matter said.Referring to the next chief of staff, the person said: “I just don’t believe there’s any person who isn’t going to get crushed.”
Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering
legal experts are calling Monday’s missives a newsworthy development that amounts to evidence of obstructing justice.
Trump’s first statement went out after Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney who pleaded guilty last week for lying to Congress about the president’s real estate project in Russia. In his tweet, Trump alleged that Cohen lied to Mueller and called for a severe penalty, demanding that his former fixer “serve a full and complete sentence.”
.. After the overt attack on Cohen came a tweet encouraging Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump, not to become a witness against him:
.. “We’re so used to President Trump transgressing norms in his public declarations,” Eisen said, “but he may have crossed the legal line.”
.. Respected figures across party lines also responded to Trump’s tweets on the social media platform.
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) called it “serious,” adding that “the President of the United States should not be using his platform to influence potential witnesses in a federal investigation involving his campaign.”
.. Attorney George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, referenced the federal statute most likely to create legal liability for Trump: 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512, which outlines the crime of witness tampering.