Mad House White House

Trump isn't a politician; he's an entertainer and a grifter. And he seems to have believed he could bullshit his way through a presidency with a three-ring circus or, in today's parlance, a reality TV show. But peopler wising up. A new Morning Consult poll released by Politico has Señor Trumpanzee 8 points behind a generic Democratic candidate, 44 percent to 36 percent, with an astonishing 19% undecided. And Trump being in the dump is largely due to women voters.-- and independents.

Male voters are evenly split: 42 percent would vote for Trump, and 42 percent would back the Democratic candidate. Among female voters, the Democrat has a 15-point lead, 46 percent to 31 percent... Among independents, the Democratic candidate leads, 35 percent to 29 percent, with 36 percent undecided.

Other indicators also suggest Trump is in perilous shape at this early stage. The president’s approval rating in the new poll is 43 percent, down from 46 percent last week. And Democrats’ lead on the generic congressional ballot is up to 7 points, 44 percent to 37 percent.

The mad house atmosphere-- chaos-- is beginning to spook voters, who are starting to focus on what insiders are living through in the Trump insane asylum-- which some say is cascading completely out of control. Trump demanded his chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, back his protectionist/trade war agenda on Tuesday. Two hours later Cohn announced he was resigning. Yesterday, there were rumors that Trump would either hire him back in a higher capacity-- or higher John Bolton, causing another Republican to say, if he brings John Bolton into the White House, "we're all going to die."

[W]ith his resignation announcement Tuesday, Cohn joins the long list of policy experts who have departed in recent months-- a brain drain that leaves the president with fewer people around him who know how to get policy made, and how to stop Trump from moving ahead with unworkable ideas.

Some worry the White House could return to the uncontrolled days immediately following Trump’s inauguration, when many West Wing jobs were still unfilled and former strategist Steve Bannon was writing executive orders with policy adviser Stephen Miller, including the disastrous travel ban that was ultimately knocked down by multiple courts.

“The number of bad ideas that have come though this White house that were thankfully killed dead-- there are too many to count,” a White House official told Politico. “With Gary gone, I just think, from a policy perspective, it means disaster.”

...Cohn’s departure was celebrated by Trump loyalists who believed he was trying to moderate the president and persuade him to abandon the promises he made during the campaign.

Just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, one former Trump campaign official sent a Politico reporter a message that simply said: “RIP globalists.”

Meanwhile CNN reported that Trump had encouraged Scaramucci to publicly attack and undermine chief of staff John Kelly, who is also in a fight-to-the-death struggle with Kushner-in-law. Trump admitted publicly he likes watching his staffers fight each other and asserted the result is better policies. "I like conflict. I like having two people with two points of view. I like watching it, I like seeing it." Much to Trump's delight, the Mooch has been referring to Kelly as "General Jackass" in TV interviews. CNN reported that "According to conversations with a dozen Trump advisers inside and outside the White House, little has happened to change the feeling of malaise that has settled into the West Wing. Morale, many of these advisers said, remains low, with few signs of turning around... Trump insisted on Tuesday that his White House has 'great energy' and was not in a state of chaos."

Wednesday morning Wall Street signaled what it thought of the chaos in Trumpworld by opening down 200 points. The NY Times speculated the White House isn't the well-oiled machine Trump delusional claims it is.

A host of top aides have been streaming out the White House door or are considering a departure. Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary and a member of the inner circle, resigned after spousal abuse allegations. Hope Hicks, the president’s communications director and confidante, announced that she would leave soon. In recent days, the president has lost a speechwriter, an associate attorney general and the North Korea negotiator.

Others are perpetually seen as on the way out. John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, at one point broached resigning over the handling of Mr. Porter’s case. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, has been reported to be preparing to leave. And many officials wonder if Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will stay now that he has lost his top-secret security clearance; the departure of Mr. Cohn further shrinks the number of allies Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have in the White House.vv More than one in three top White House officials left by the end of Mr. Trump’s first year and fewer than half of the 12 positions closest to the president are still occupied by the same people as when he came into office, according to a Brookings Institution study.

Mr. Cohn’s departure will bring the turnover number to 43 percent, according to updated figures compiled by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution.

...[The psycho-"president"] insisted that he had no trouble recruiting or retaining people to work for him, despite widespread reluctance among Republicans to join his staff.

“Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House,” he said. “They all want a piece of the Oval Office. They want a piece of the West Wing.”