A Warning

by Anonymous

The conductor would be unqualified, the engineer would be fired in the middle of a trip, and Chinese-built trains would zip right by us, watching the disaster with wonder at their unbelievable good fortune.

“About a third of the things the president wants us to do are flat-out stupid. Another third would be impossible to implement and wouldn’t even solve the problem. And a third of them would be flat-out illegal.” Heads nodded.

Take February 2018, for instance, when the president proposed a way to end gun violence in our schools. He suggested to aides that weapons be given to all of America’s teachers so they could fight back against mass shooters. This was typical Trump. An idea was formed in the ether of his mind, and he decided it was brilliant because he thought of it. Most sane folks raised an eyebrow.

either way, advisors were mortified.

They’ll give him one of those polite smiles reserved for a deranged relative

who thinks you want to hear about his soul-searching solo retreat to the Rockies.

Ironically, many of those who worked to protect the president from losing his job became some of the people he was most interested in firing.

He fans the flames of gossip about potential firings, often starting the rumors himself by complaining about his aides, knowing listeners will spread the word.

Officials are perpetually on “deathwatch,” as it is known inside the administration, waiting for that assassination tweet to come.

"Assassination Tweet" 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Every week there is a new potential victim.

People laugh or offer approving facial expressions, usually relieved that the anvil isn’t hovering over their own head.

😂😂😂😂

Trump avoids directly firing people, contrary to his television image. Instead he takes the cowardly way out and cuts them loose by way of social media.

July of 2017, he got rid of his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, with a tweet.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Another humiliating spectacle.

Incredibly, the first official duty of the new chief of staff was to get rid of someone else the president wouldn’t fire himself, Anthony Scaramucci, the short-lived White House communications director. The day he was sworn in, John Kelly told Scaramucci his eleven-day tenure was finished.

We realized as year two wore on that we couldn’t rely on any system to instill in the president the leadership traits he’d never developed.

Everyone is the chief of staff but the chief of staff.

The high rate of turnover was a direct result of the president’s leadership.

Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani

The danger is that President Trump runs the most powerful government on earth and cannot afford to be without dissenting opinions. Yet the Oval Office has become an echo chamber.

He is who he is.

That is the job of the

voters and their elected representatives.

Not everyone sees the full Trump, especially the one who is red-faced, consumed with fury, and teetering at the outer limits of self-control.

He can also be funny.

In the history of American democracy, we have had undisciplined presidents. We have had incurious presidents. We have had inexperienced presidents. We have had amoral presidents. Rarely if ever before have we had them all at once.

Donald Trump is not like his predecessors, everyone knows that. But his vices are more alarming than amusing.

Any entertainment derived from seeing this sort of irreverent behavior in the West Win...

replaced by lingering dread about what comment, tweet, or direct o...

The character of a president should be of the utmost concern for citizens. We are ceding day-to-day control of the gov...

it’s not enough to have good morals. Your behavior

must spring from them. Simply put, your moral code is your “software”—your belief system—that operates your “hardware”—your body and its actions.

His four-part rubric will sound familiar: (1) “understanding and acknowledging truth”; (2) “maintaining good fellowship with men, giving to every one his due, and keeping faith in contracts and promises”; (3) “greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered mind”; and (4) “the order and measure that constitute moderation and temperance.” In short, it was a version of the cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Buchanan is now considered to be one of the worst American presidents.

we should invest in someone whose virtues outweigh their vices.

A president must be equipped to do more good than har...

Trump doesn’t have a deep bench of knowledge about how government works.

What is troubling about the president is not that he came into office with so little information about how it runs. It’s that he’s done so little to try to learn more in order to do his job.

Donald Trump is not a curious person. He barely reads, if at all, and he scolds officials who come to brief him with anything more than the most succinct reading material possible, as noted previously.

“Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.

He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

He proclaimed himself a great advocate of the Bible, remarking in February 2016 that “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” He was unable to point to a single Bible verse

that he found inspiring, almost certainly because he’s never actually read it.

Trump once said he had no time to dive into books. “I never have. I’m always busy doing a lot.”

The lack-of-time argument is dubious. Looking each morning at the president’s daily schedule, any of us could tell you he carves out more than enough time to do what he wants. The demands of the job rarely keep him away

from the golf course.

Both of President Trump’s predecessors, Bush and Obama, were...

Trump himself frequently stays up late in the residence, and he often doesn’t start the day in the Oval Office until 10 or 11 a.m. Rather than consume books, he spends his time bingein...

The sheer level of intellectual laziness is astounding.

I found myself bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental