GOP strategist Rick Wilson: White House doomed to fail because ‘there is no better version of Trump’
Republican strategist Rick Wilson said the White House is chaotic and incompetent because institutions tend to resemble the men and women who lead them.
In a column posted on The Daily Beast, Wilson described the inner workings of the Trump White House as a “shambolic adhocracy” — which he said reflected the president’s “chaotic, disordered thought process and lack of mental discipline.”
“As long as Trump is president, there will never be a pivot,” Wilson wrote. “There is no better version of Trump, simply waiting for the right org chart or the right staffer.”
Top aides Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner are feuding through media leaks and jockeying for position behind the scenes, but Wilson said the president was left with few good options.
“Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn,” Wilson said. “The cancer in the presidency isn’t his staff — though they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that.”
He faulted Bannon for leading Trump into “a series of unforced political debacles” — but the president can’t fire his chief strategist because he’ll turn his old website, Breitbart News, and its “troll army” against the White House.
“Another reason firing Bannon is fraught with risk: Bannon is running the Russia pushback operation from inside the White House,” Wilson said.
“Bannon doesn’t just want to protect Trump over the Russia allegations,” he added, “he wants to protect Russia, a nation he sees as an essential ally in his new alliance of white Christian nations against the Muslim horde. Does Trump really want Bannon, angry and in the wind, declaring his own jihad?”
Wilson said the chaotic early days of the Trump White House reminded him of a favorite literary quote.
“I’m always struck with how a simple phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson captures politics over time, and how it captures the Trump administration perfectly,” Wilson said. “That phrase? ‘An institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.'”