Last month, I wrote that for the first time ever, I was angry at the US government for their restrictive travel ban. The ban was overturned by various federal courts in the days following, so that crisis has been averted.
But in the weeks since then, I have been amused at the number of leaks coming out the White House. These are not related to national security, but rather, about the personalities in the White House and how things are in disarray.
One of my favorites is the Twitter account RoguePOTUSstaff. This is a Twitter account run by a handful of low-to-mid-level employees in the White House that are unhappy with the administration’s incompetence. In it, they talk about the inner workings of the Oval Office, and how personality clashes and chaos is reigning over there. We get to hear about how Trump and Bannon are raging egomaniacs who have their own view on things that are out of touch with reality.
RoguePOTUSstaff is populated mostly by Republicans unhappy with the state of things. They are passive-aggressive and their intent is to #resist the current administration by leaking how incompetent they are.
Another source of leaks is the intelligence community. When Trump’s NSA advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign, the White House tried to deflect the issue by saying the real outrage is that the phone calls by Flynn were leaked. Indeed, we’ve been seeing leak after leak by the intelligence community and it is distracting the Trump administration. That’s what happens when you go to war with your nation’s spies; they get back at you in all sorts of ways. It’s surprising to me that Trump couldn’t predict this when he took Russia’s word for it that they didn’t hack the election over the word of 17 different intelligence agencies.
However, the big reason I am enjoying this schadenfreude is because during the election campaign, President Trump reveled in the difficulties his opponent had with her political opponents (Russia) leaking her own team’s sensitive emails. Trump couldn’t say enough good words about Wikileaks. My criticism back then was that we had to take the foreign interference seriously because while Trump was benefitting from it at the time, eventually the shoe would be on the other foot and he would be negatively impacted when the leakers turned on him. He ignored this sage advice at his own peril. It never occurred to him (or his supporters) that he, too, could suffer the wrath of the leakers.
And now they have turned on him. That was fast.
So, to see a little bit of poetic justice being done fills me with warm fuzzies.
I know that’s not being mature.
But I am enjoying it nonetheless.