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Playboy Undercover: The Almost 40-Year-Old Virgin "I am 38 and I still haven’t had my first kiss yet—which means yes.… I am a virgin too."
I never thought raising three boys would prepare me for covering the White House as a reporter, but President Donald Trump’s continuing Twitter tirades remind me daily he is an adolescent who will never grow up.
To cover this administration, I recommend editors everywhere send home their White House correspondents used to dealing with professionals who possess a shred of decorum. Instead, they should send police beat reporters and war correspondents. These people are used to covering the worst of humanity in the worst circumstances. They know better than anyone how to obtain information when they’re being stonewalled.
The boos at game five of the World Series in Nationals park, followed by a spontaneous chant of “Lock him up,” gave a clear signal that the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would not make people forget Trump’s own crimes as president. And in the process his reaction showed us how childlike he is.
He has been in virtual hiding since that day, limiting his actions to angry tweets and guarded appearances with few or no questions.
“He’s not that bright,” Democratic strategist James Carville told me last weekend at the Politicon event in Nashville. “He’s going to get impeached; the Republicans might as well get over it. He’s going to be impeached. What are they gonna do about it?” He asked with a quizzical smile.
Thursday Democrats moved forward, taking away some of the steam from Republicans who had criticized the process of impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi outlined a list of procedures for a formal impeachment inquiry she said honored the Constitution. The House, along strictly partisan lines save for “no” votes from two Democrats, approved the measure.
Trump’s response? He tweeted. He fumed.
The administration has been unable to come up with a cogent response to the House inquiry. The Republicans have instead attacked, disrupting committee meetings they also attended and making spurious claims the Democrats were violating due process.
On Tuesday, struggling to react to the Democratic announcement that a formal vote was forthcoming, Trump’s latest press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, released a statement that drew wide-open stares from most human beings who possess the literacy of at least a sixth grader and belly laughs from high school English teachers who had to wonder what qualifications Grisham held to write or speak the language.
“The resolution put forward by Speaker Pelosi confirms that House Democrats’ impeachment has been an illegitimate sham from the start as it lacked any proper authorization by a House vote.”
What is a “illegitimate sham”?
If Trump and his boot-licking lackeys did not fear what was being said, you can be damn sure they’d be screaming as much from the rooftops.
Thursday, Grisham doubled down. She issued a statement, after the Democrats voted on procedures, that is marginally more literate than her Tuesday missive but that also accuses the Democrats of presenting a verdict without due process—when there is no verdict, because there haven’t even been charges made yet. (Grisham also said Democrats didn’t want to legislate and were letting down the country on reducing gun violence and improving healthcare.)
The laughter continued in D.C. through the veil of tears. But we now know, if there ever was a doubt, how the GOP and the president will respond to formal impeachment inquiry procedures. They are doing what they do best: disrupting and discrediting the investigation as much as is humanly possible. The GOP and the president fear public https://scalise.house.gov/media/press-releases/scalise-mistrialtestimony by credible witnesses. If Trump and his boot-licking lackeys did not fear what was being said, you can be damn sure they’d be screaming as much from the rooftops. Instead they’ve tried to discredit every witness so far called to testify while chief propagandist Grisham tells us the closed-door depositions are “completely and irreversibly illegitimate” and the proceedings are a sham.
Ahead of the Thursday vote, Congressman Steve Scalise told reporters he opposed “any attempt to legitimize this Soviet-style impeachment process,” because the work was “tainted.”
“Republicans can spuriously attack the process while we expose the truth,” Rep. Adam Schiff said.
The Republicans are making a naked power play. Their claims about defending the Constitution are as meritless as Trump’s claims that he had the largest inaugural crowd in history. There are many members of the GOP who don’t like Trump and would be happy if he were gone: It would make their lives immeasurably easier. Trump, however, is the key to power. Matt Gaetz, a charter member of the president’s frat boy society, depends upon the very same voters who voted Trump into office. If he turns on Trump then he will have an opponent in the primary. Gaetz and others like him are therefore tethered to Trump apparently no matter what happens.
Meanwhile there are plenty of GOP staffers on the Hill that fear after public hearings they’ll still be out of a job, even if their bosses vote with Donald Trump. Several Senate and House staffers told me, in effect, that they’d then lose the general election—that they’re screwed if they vote with him or if they don’t.
That was apparent when Trump showed up at National’s Park and got booed by thousands of people, many of whom are likely registered voters. In one of his first public appearances that wasn’t choreographed by his campaign, Trump tested the waters and found them as hot as a coming impeachment.
Right now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is no fan of Trump, and the GOP exist at the confluence of two different stress points: If they vote for removal, they’ll encourage opponents in a primary. If they vote for Trump, they’ll face losing the general election.
Yesterday, after talking to some sources in the Senate, I walked to my car to drive to the parking garage near the White House. Once inside I flipped on the Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM. At the exact same time the House was voting on impeachment procedures, “Revolution 9” played. I couldn’t help but laugh. The cacophony of the dystopian tune meshed perfectly with the reality of the circus ongoing in Congress. It may have been happenstance, but it was uproariously appropriate.
Meanwhile, on that cold, rainy Thursday in Washington D.C., the White House called a lunch lid. The president, with no scheduled public appearances, or even any non-public appointment on his schedule, was hunkered down in his White House bunker furiously tweeting:
“READ THE TRANSCRIPT!”
Nothing mattered to the president in those moments but his obsession to vent his spleen.
That’s when it struck me. I couldn’t keep the thought of my children when they were adolescents from my mind. Unable to convince you with logic and reason, they’d yell—even if what they were yelling made no sense.
Read the transcript?
“Yelling won’t get you anywhere, young man,” I replied in a tweet of my own. “You know what you did. Now go to your room. You’re still grounded.”
Later he ranted and raved even more. It obviously didn’t matter if it made sense. It didn’t matter if it resonated with his base. Nothing mattered to the president in those moments but his obsession to vent his spleen. Without the courage to face the press, he sat in the White House tweeting.
That’s who our president is. That’s what he does. That isn’t governing and it is extremely unhealthy for a country reeling in divisive decay. Trump doesn’t care. It’s always about him.
Looking forward, it isn’t going to get any better for him. A vote in the House for impeachment will come, and it will fall down roughly along the same lines as the Thursday procedural vote.
Sometime after the first of the year the Senate will tackle the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. No one expects McConnell to play fair there. First, all of the relevant testimony is going to be heard as the House considers charges; between now and the ultimate Senate trial a deluge of tweets, tantrums and adolescent accusations will spew forth from the president. Will this poisonous flood erode his foundation? Will his base flee? More important, will his support in the Senate defect and vote him out?
It is obvious he fears this and every tweet, every accusation, every news release from a press secretary who has all the mental acumen of a desiccated cactus exposes that fear.
Trump cannot seem to help himself. His whining and mewling is fodder for social media, for the general public, the Democrats and most of the world.
Ultimately it boils down to about 20 Republican Senators. Will McConnell, with those round, supple shoulders, one day walk into the Oval Office and tell Trump the game is up?
That’s where we’re going to be at the beginning of 2020.