Reince Priebus Is Destroying the G.O.P. by Trying to Save It

There is so little discipline in the Donald Trump campaign (and even less shared long-term interest) that we already know a fair bit about what has transpired in the past forty-eight hours inside the Trump Tower penthouse. According to the Washington Post, Trump was holed up in his home with a group of what are, politely, called “advisers” but seem more like characters in a tossed-off screenplay, each representing a cliché of cravenness. Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani were reportedly there. While technically different people, in this context they were redundant: two reckless gamblers who had lost everything until Trump gave them a long shot at getting their power back. Kellyanne Conway stood in for the amoral professional operative. Stephen Bannon, the Breitbart chief, was the whisperer whose interests are served by chaos. (His business appeals to a narrow target audience of angry white conservatives and flourishes on outrage.) We can ignore Donald, Jr., and Hope Hicks, who have shown themselves to be ineffective loyalists with no perceivable judgment independent of Trump’s. The most telling detail in the reports has been the absence of Ivanka Trump, the one person who seems intent on preserving the value of a non-loathsome version of the family name. (Her husband, Jared Kushner, reportedly violated his Sabbath and was present; Ivanka turned down opportunities to defend her father.)

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