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Trump World: Thoughts from Goldberg


Jonah Goldberg by Gage Skidmore.jpg

 I wrote here recently about Omarosa. The tone of my comment was dismissive. You probably didn't
believe, reading this, that I would return to the subject so soon.

And I don't want to. But all the fuss about her -- her book, her tapes, her media tour -- even in the
few days since I last wrote about her here, has exposed some important facts about the shaky coalition
that now runs the country.

Jonah Goldberg, portrayed here, writing for the old-line conservative journal National Review, catalogs the different worlds whence come this President’s appointees. His examples come both from those still at work within this administration and from those who have departed. Some of them are from the world of business or the military, like Wilbur Ross from the former or Jim Mattis from the latter; others come from the Bannonite “counter-establishment,” (Bannon himself, and Gorka); others from the GOP hierarchy (Priebus, Spicer); others are movement conservatives, like Sessions or Pruitt. But there is another group, the source Goldberg thinks of all of Trump’s worst appointments, that come from Trump world itself -- the world of family and friends of the POTUS.

 So there are five circles involved, in the Venn diagram of this administration. And, as Goldberg also observes, there are overlaps.


Given this typology, Goldberg then claims that Omarosa was the worst of the worst of Trump’s appointees, because she had no contact with any of those sources other than the last -- she was from no relevant world other than Trump world. Everybody else in Donald Trump’s orbit went along passively with his hiring her because of what Goldberg calls the “weird fable that he hires the best people.”

Goldberg isn't, by the way, taking Trump's side here, not even against Omarosa even less so in general. Goldberg is saying -- "you may have made some bad choices along the way, Dr Frankenstein."
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