Trump needs to control his staff

According to the Washington Post:

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. And he confides to friends that he is uncertain about whom to trust.

Here’s a hint: Don’t trust the people who are leaking this kind of information to the press.

The Post says its latest Trump-as-isolated-and-raging-figure story is “based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies.” The Post doesn’t tell us how many of the 22 subscribe to the view of Trump it presents; nor does it say how many actually work at the White House.

But if even one White House official or Trump confidante is providing fuel to the Trump-hating Post, that’s too many.

Why doesn’t the president put a stop to this? Why doesn’t he demand that such leaking cease, and use a polygraph to find out where the next adverse leak comes from? Then, Trump will have a much better idea of whom he can trust.

Is the White House really in chaos? I don’t know. But the fact, if it’s true, that Trump’s own associates and advisers are presenting adverse information about the president to the Washington Post is, for me, chaos in itself, regardless of whether the information is true.

There are plenty of things Trump can’t control, through no fault of his own. He certainly can’t control the media (nor should we want him to). He can’t quite control Congress, even with the GOP majorities. He can’t even control the bureaucracy he heads.

He can, though, control his staff. Or at least he should be able to.

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