It would be nice to have a President who doesn& #39;t spend every waking hour trying to figure out which of his fellow citizens he needs to pick a fight with in order to distract from the fact that he spends very little time Presidenting.
He& #39;s fighting with Joe Scarborough in order to delegitimize media outlets that are critical of him.
He& #39;s fighting with the Democratic governors of North Carolina, Michigan, and New York because he& #39;s trying to whip up local opposition to them which will make their jobs harder and make them more likely to fail so that he can win.
He& #39;s picking a fight with Twitter so he can turn Silicon Valley into an extension of Nancy Pelosi& #39;s refrigerator which will get rural Rust Belt voters to go to the polls for him.
Trump only knows how to lead by manipulating the media by picking fights with people like Rosie or Oprah or Hillary or [take your pick]. All of it is a distraction from his failure to do even the most rudimentary features of his job.
But this is not new. He& #39;s been gaming the media and working the political system behind the scenes to his advantage his entire life. It& #39;s all he knows. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/trumpinc/episodes/trump-inc-taxes-oligarchy">https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/...
He didn& #39;t run to be President so much as he ran to do to the US government what the Gambino and Genovese families did to waste collection in NYC. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbage-collection/">https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...
You figure out which journalists and media outlets need to be intimidated, and which politicians need to be either paid or blackmailed to keep you protected in order to ensure your future survival and prosperity. Providing a service to the community? Pshaw.
"Nobody actually believes that crap about public service, do they? Everyone& #39;s on the take, especially the ones who claim not to be." That& #39;s the beginning and end of moral and political philosophy 101, MAGA-style.
It has also represented a significant thread in GOP moral and political philosophy 101 since the the age of Goldwater.
The distinction between playing hardball to get political power in order to improve the lives of American citizens vs. playing hardball to get political power just for the sake of political power is a distinction that has largely failed to have meaning in our political culture.