Commentary
Latest From Swamp DC TV: Trump Fires Senior Staffer
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 31, 2017
President Donald Trump has fired another person; or has forced a resignation; or has just offered a push.
No, it wasn’t about Attorney General Jeff Sessions. After a long week of sending some publicly negative comments about Sessions, a decision was made — to push out Reince Priebus as chief of staff of the Trump Administration.
John Kelly, secretary of Homeland Security, is in — as of Friday, July 28. Reports also say Priebus resigned the day before. Trump announced his decisions via Twitter.
In any event, now everything is back to normal in all of TV land; entropy continues to reign in Washington, DC. And Trump supporters love the continued disruption.
All this comes after an early morning Senate vote on repealing parts of Obamacare, which failed.
The drama came after Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) wandered onto the Senate floor, looked at the Senate aides keeping vote scores, and signaled his decision: thumbs down. He did so while seemingly avoiding the gaze of Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, standing directly in front of him.
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Ah, and you thought all the action was coming out of Television Critics Association meeting this week in Beverly Hills, Calif! (Well, there was all that Discovery Network "Shark Week" promotion!)
“I am disappointed in the attorney general,” said Trump last week. He called Sessions “weak” and “beleaguered.” And then he fired Priebus. Nice plot twist!
Sinister to some, Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, said a few things about Priebus, which maybe have given Trump a few ideas.
In The New Yorker interview, posted Thursday, July 27, with writer Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci called Priebus "a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.” Later in the article, he added: “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers, and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people.”
Kill and succeed. Sounds like a good, upcoming political campaign theme.
Waiting for next week’s episodes -- and for more key advertisers to buy in, especially those erectile dysfunction drug makers that regularly advertise on TV news programs that target older viewers.
More summer plot twists may be coming. Hello, Steve Bannon?
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
While I cannot abide by the way Trump's going about his business, I must say that it's nice to see that he's re-casting "The Swamp" and making it clear as a bell that ANYBODY can get fired in Washington.
For too long, our federal government has been fat, lazy, ineffectual, and inefficient... ZERO accountability while spending taxpayer dollars on DUMB things that have long ago been proven not only NOT TO WORK, but make matters worse. And, traditionally in DC, nobody gets "let go" for being so lousy. NO LONGER!