Trump promised to surround himself „only with the best and most serious people“ in the White House. How’s that working out?<\/b>
\nFormer Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke at an event in Houston yesterday, and shared some uncomplimentary thoughts on Donald Trump. According to the nation\u2019s former chief diplomat, the president is \u201cpretty undisciplined,\u201d \u201cdoesn\u2019t like to read,\u201d and \u201coften\u201d urged Tillerson to pursue policies that were inconsistent with American laws.
Evidently, Trump heard about the remarks .
I don\u2019t doubt that the president found this satisfying. Someone who saw how Trump tries to govern told the public some unflattering truths, so Trump found it necessary to lash out and insult his new critic. He gets hit, he impulsively hits back.
But if the president assumes these little outbursts make him look better, he has this exactly backwards. In fact, Trump\u2019s tweet leads to a fairly obvious follow-up question: if Rex Tillerson is \u201cdumb,\u201d \u201clazy,\u201d and lacking in \u201cmental capacity,\u201d why exactly did the president make him the secretary of state?
Remember, it was just a few years ago when then-candidate Trump vowed to surround himself \u201conly with the best and most serious people\u201d if elected. It was right around the time he promised via Facebook to \u201chire the best people.\u201d
Either he\u2019s succeeded on this front or he hasn\u2019t \u2013 and according to Trump, there\u2019s a fair amount of evidence for the latter.
I\u2019m not just talking about all of the many, many members of his team who\u2019ve left; I\u2019m thinking more about the members of his team who\u2019ve left, only to face public ridicule and condemnations after their departures.
The Atlantic \u2019s David Frum had a good Twitter thread along these lines this afternoon, highlighting the president\u2019s needlessly acerbic rebukes of all kinds of former allies, from his former attorney general (Jeff Sessions) to his former personal attorney\/fixer (Michael Cohen) to his former chief White House strategist (Steve Bannon).
Maybe \u201cthe best and most serious people\u201d were too hard to find?<\/p>\n